 today's vital conversation with our community, education and equity solutions, opportunities, growth, conversation between Interfaith Ministries and the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University. Interfaith Ministries is pleased to be able to host these virtual conversations on topics with people and organizations in our community addressing these crucial issues. Thank you all for joining us on Zoom. Please keep yourselves muted and then please use the chat box to send me questions along the way. We welcome as well those who are joining us via Facebook Live. We offer our thanks for the support of Bridgeway Capital Management as the sponsor of our whole three-part fall series, and also thank Sitco Petroleum for being the event sponsor of this final vital conversation of 2020. I'd like to now recognize Kendra Adams from Ridgeway to offer a few words about their series sponsorship. Thank you. On behalf of Bridgeway Capital Management, we are honored to support Interfaith Ministries vital conversation series. Bridgeway's commitment to community is motivated by our passion for servant leadership and global impact, which is why we donate 50% of our profits towards non-profit organizations that are bringing about transformative change. We are excited to be a part of this platform because we understand that our community needs more vital conversations. Interfaith efforts aligned with Bridgeway has created this wonderful partnership where we can create these opportunities for change. So again, we thank you for joining us today and we hope that this vital conversation is impactful. Thank you. Thank you Kendra very much. Thanks. Before I proceed, just a reminder that this event is being recorded. Vital conversations emerged after the shooting of George Floyd, the son of Houston's third ward in June of 2020. We brought our three amigos together, Reverend William Lawson, Archbishop Joe Firenza, and the late Rabbi Sam Karf to begin the series. You can find their dialogue on IMGH's YouTube page. A second summer conversation on allyship followed and then we began our fall series with a conversation between four outstanding young leaders and how their generation is on the forefront of social change. Our second fall conversation was with the fifth ward CRC and its Center for Urban Transformation about transforming communities. All of these conversations can be watched on Interfaith Ministry's YouTube page. Please also visit imgh.org to learn more about Interfaith Ministry's work and how to donate. And you can find us there at imgh.org. Today our theme is education and equity. Equity is constantly lauded as one of the absolutely crucial ways for all people to have a chance at a better life. It is one of the few things in our culture that has a near universal reach. Everyone from a young age, though some younger than others, has access to education. Yet that access and quality and depth and affordability is not equal. And that inequality often is along lines of race and economics. COVID has not helped either with now a digital divide in place with remote learning being so prevalent. We also focus on education because education was near and dear to the three amigos. I'll just highlight the Lawson Academy founded by Ms. Audrey and Reverend William Lawson as a prime example of this commitment. We're pleased to welcome from the Houston Education Research Consortium which will refer to by its acronym HIRC Dr. Ruth Lopez Turley who is the HIRC Director. She's also a professor in the Department of Sociology and Associate Director in the Kinder Institute, the founder of the National Network of Education Research Practice Partnerships. We also welcome Dr. Aaron Baumgartner, the Associate Director of HISD Research and Relations and also Dr. Dan Potter who is the HIRC Associate Director of regional research. Our conversation will begin with introductions to HIRC and its mission and then we'll then follow by addressing key data points and what they mean for education and we'll also look at COVID related effects and conclude then with what people can do to help. We'll have time for question and answer so please use the chat box to submit questions. So let me go ahead and stop my share and we'll go back and seeing everybody and I'll turn to the HIRC Director Dr. Ruth Lopez Turley. Let's start a little bit with what HIRC is and about your work. Thanks Reverend Hahn first of all for the invitation to participate in these very important conversations. The topic of educational equity is obviously very near and dear to our hearts and before I say a little bit about what HIRC does I want to say a little bit about my background to help explain why I do what I do and frankly every single person on the HIRC research team has their reasons for doing what they do. They're very personal reasons for doing what they do and in my case I am from the US Mexico border. I'm originally from Laredo, Texas. My family is from Mexico and I grew up on the border from a very early age observing inequities even though of course at the time I didn't have the vocabulary for it. I didn't have the terms for what I was seeing and experiencing but very early on I knew that that injustice is very real and that people who are poor and people who do not have an education very often experience the brunt of those injustices and I knew that educational opportunities are far from equal and I knew that I wanted to do something about it. I wanted to change those realities for so many people. In the case of my own family my mother had an eighth grade education and my father had a third grade education and despite the many many challenges that my family faced because of that lack of education they worked extremely hard and instilled in us in me and my siblings a very strong desire to pursue educational opportunities but it was extremely challenging for many of them but I got very lucky the right people came into my life at the right time and I was able to pursue a career in education research. Unfortunately I very quickly discovered that education research very often does not actually have an impact on changing these educational opportunities and improving them for the people that need them most unless you make a very explicit effort to connect that research to policy and decision-making and that is why HIRC exists. So we are a group of education researchers who really want to make sure that the research that we produce is easily accessible and actionable for the people who are making decisions and people that are implementing programs and interventions that are really trying to make education more equitable because frankly unfortunately we have a very long way to go and we'll we'll talk more about this in the course of this conversation but the way in which HIRC is trying to improve this connection between education research and education decision-making is that we're working directly with local school district leaders so HIRC is partnering right now with 11 Houston area school districts and we meet very regularly with all of them in order to make sure that our research agenda is of interest or is actually addressing our most pressing and urgent needs here in this local context and in order to make sure that the research that we produce is actually going directly into the hands of those that can actually implement and put it to use and this is not just a matter of handing over some sort of a research report or a research brief but I mean like meeting on a regular basis having discussions before the start of any research project during the course of all our research projects and then of course afterwards to make sure that the information that we're relaying to the people that are on the ground actually doing the work of educating our children to make sure that they have this information in a manner that is really usable so that is my introduction to HIRC and then there's a lot more that I can say about and I'm sure Erin and Dan would love to say some about some of the things that we're learning through this work but I'll let you guide the conversation tell us what you want to hear about. Absolutely and in many ways I mean these conversations are wonderful because it's giving a platform for an important work that's being done especially by organizations like HIRC maybe we can go ahead and this is a way for Dan and Erin to also to be part as well as let's dig into the data. Let me first ask when was HIRC formed and so therefore kind of give a timeline of the amount of data that you've been looking at. So HIRC was founded in 2011 so we've now been doing this work for almost 10 years and but the data that we have access to actually precedes 2011 we have access to longitudinal data from our district partners and that that permits us to follow students over a long period of time and in fact we've done some analyses and for some projects that follow students from like one study where we follow students for about 17 years even though the partnership itself hasn't existed for that long but we were able to follow students in terms of the data to see to see what happens during that educational pipeline during the transition from high school to college and even workforce entry and that's all using local data so we can do some analyses going back further. Super and just to note someone put in the chat great to hear HIRC links research with action so just a nice round of applause for you there already from the chat box. Let's maybe go ahead and get into data what have you found that has been crucial important that you want to share as part of this conversation about the state of education both I guess here in the Houston area with those 11 school districts but I also know you're doing regional work as well. That's a great question so maybe I'll turn things over to Erin who as you noted earlier oversees all our HISD specific research and then Dan can also say some words about he oversees our regional research with all 11 of our school district partners so maybe Erin highlights first. Yeah so I think one of the things that is important for people to know about the work that we do is we really think about the whole educational career of children so we think from the early stages of when they're three and four years old and entering pre-k to when they're as Ruth mentioned transitioning out of high school into some post-secondary outcomes whether that is other education or into the labor market and so the research we do and the things that we've learned over time have really kind of touched all of those places so a few things that I can mention that we learned that we've learned in HISD in particular that touched the beginning and then the end of that trajectory when we think about the beginning we know that there is a large proportion of students in the HISD boundaries who don't attend HISD pre-k and so the way we know that is we look at the kindergartners who are enrolled and we think about whether they went to pre-k the year before and we see that the students who didn't attend pre-k two-thirds of them probably would have qualified and so that's over three thousand students in the Houston just in the HISD boundaries that could have access to free high quality public pre-k and aren't enrolling and there are lots of reasons for that but we want to make sure that families know that those options are available to them and when we think about the the later end of the educational trajectory some of the conversations that we've had with the school district lately are in recognizing that students benefit from all kinds of paths as they exit high school and so that's not only thinking about college but it's thinking about entering the workforce too and a lot of students need support in figuring out what those next steps are and so we have we have some of our research has shown that and some of the conversations we've had with different departments at the district has shown that that we need to figure out how to provide support to students in that transition point not everyone has somebody who can tell them how to apply for a job when they graduate from high school and so some students might need that support they might need to know how to apply for an apartment or fill out a job application or if they're enrolling in college sign up for courses and buy their books and so there are lots of points along the trajectory from the beginning to the end that we really should think about how we can serve students and help provide support to students and their families I'll hop in to talk a little bit about regional then that cool awesome uh so uh as again introduced earlier uh I uh Dan Potter uh oversee the uh regional research component of HIRC and so uh to sort of build on some of what Ruth mentioned earlier HIRC has been around since 2011 uh however our regional efforts were really able to grow in 2017 and in large part those that growth was in response to an acknowledgement and a recognition uh that that for so many issues for so many topics uh challenges that our school districts face those challenges don't know what a district boundary is they don't care where your school district border stops uh they're blasting right through them and uh and so uh you know Greg you sort of ask that you know what might be some pieces of data that we can talk about in terms of the state of education in the Houston area and I think you know one topic that speaks directly to this idea of the way in which challenges and issues uh just just fly across boundaries and borders is it student mobility and so you know when we're talking about student mobility what we're talking about is students changing schools and you know to some degree yes we're talking about student mobility uh in the sense of going from elementary to middle school but we're also talking about students here are going from elementary to elementary middle to middle high to high and some of these moves a lot of these moves are happening over the weekend are happening on Tuesday uh and what we see in the Houston area in particular is quite a bit of student mobility taking place throughout the school year over the summer and what this does is in many ways places our school districts in a very challenging position especially when they have these mobility is taking place over the weekend in the middle of a school year because while we have school systems that have wonderful ways of of having you know information shared between campuses within a district when you have students hopping over district boundaries so thinking about students that might be in Houston independent school district going to spring branch or going up to all dean or going down to Pasadena or vice versa uh these students might be moving a half a mile they might be moving a block uh they're in a new school district their information not necessarily able to follow them immediately and so you start to have this gap in terms of services supports and and opportunities that students might have been being able to to to receive in their home district their original district that doesn't quite follow them immediately and so that type of this type of student mobility this type of disruption to learning has consequences uh and what we're seeing right now is that this consequence uh exists not just for that mobile student yes that move is disruptive to that student and it has implications for their immediate learning that we're thinking about star scores map and reading but it also has lingering impacts if we're thinking about retention graduation dropout college enrollment we're seeing this lingering impact of what these moves are doing but what I think really you know to some degree like oh well that's the student they're moving this is something for them to individual responsibility I think one of the things for us to keep in mind is we also see evidence to suggest that even those students who aren't moving are impacted by this mobility in the sense that it is disruptive if I've got a student coming into my class or out of my class every other week as a teacher I'm in this constant review mode I'm having to go back and I'm having to talk and I've reestablished norms I'm having to cover material uh and it's that type of constant churn in mobility that oftentimes limits what our teachers and classrooms and our districts are able to do with the the the curriculums that they have in place and so uh you know that is one of the topics that we've engaged with on a regional level and and that has been quite you know you were asking about what what amount of data are we talking about I'm just sort of again to build on what Ruth was talking you know she was giving you some insights in terms of this amazing data source we have with Houston Independent School District I will just add to that we have a wonderful and unique opportunity here in Houston with the University of Houston's Education Research Center which houses every single data point that TEA the Texas Education Agency receives from schools in terms of their PMS reporting so that's the Public Education Information Management System I'm throwing around a lot of alphabet soup I apologize to folks but so you've got PMS you've got tapered information in terms of school quality and report cards you've got stuff on star scores tell pass which happens to be the English learner assessment that the state of Texas uses all these different data points get housed at the University of Houston where we as researchers are able to apply and get access to so not only do we have this rich wonderful source of data from our our terrific partners at the Houston Independent School District we have access to statewide data for all districts in the state of Texas this includes our partners going back into the 1990s and so if we just looked for example at some 2018-19 data looking at some enrollment data I'm looking at 5.2 million data points for one year and so that very quickly scales up and that gives us this opportunity to do these longitudinal examinations to follow students across these district borders to to be able to track and see what's going on where are they going are they coming back into districts after they depart are they going to charter schools and then turning back around I mean you know sumability really is this topic that gives us a snapshot of of quite the the in some ways this this churn this this this ever evolving nature of education in the Houston area and you know I know you mentioned earlier we'll discuss some of the COVID pieces and I think that's where this this moment of particular around sustainability is impactful but not to jump the gun too much there we yeah we did we will kind of package that maybe part of our of our COVID because I'd also like to talk a little bit about if you're finding anything but digital divide and again I think of some recent Houston Chronicle articles about just kind of lost students I want Dan let me follow up there is a question well just a follow-up question from me is this mobility issue in the Houston area unique to the Houston area but since you have access to regional data is this or is this a common issue across school districts right so what we're one of the things we're finding is this is something that occurs and in particular it does occur in urban areas so we've considered we've we've done analyses that have looked not just at mobility in the Houston area but we've considered San Antonio Austin El Paso Dallas Fort Worth as other areas that have these types of school districts that again you hop across the street and I'm hopping into another school district right and so some of the stuff that we see is that Houston does have a slightly higher level of mobility relative to what we might see in the Dallas Fort Worth area the San Antonio area and the Austin area El Paso's got a little bit of a higher level of mobility too but this is something that we're seeing as a bit of a of an experience more prevalent in urban areas than we do see in some of the more rural spots in Texas. Okay another one specifically for you and then Erin there are a couple of questions particularly about pre-k and the question is this currently you talked about student mobility currently that is not a factor in determining state aid to school districts is Herc doing anything to holistically describe the additional action services and programs needed to make that so that that student doesn't fall behind and the student level cost of that falling behind and I think this is where again this idea of connecting research to action is so important is that one of the big things we're working with right now is that this moment of we've got all this information about mobility we now understand it in a way that we didn't understand it previously so with this new information what are we able to do with it how are we able to understand the services the supports the the you know the the orientations and you know that might be needed in order to get students tied into classes that allow for this move this this mobility to not be as disruptive as we see it being now there's lots of unknowns still in terms of what is disruptive and how do we do this but you know this this is the exact question we're looking to tackle at this point in terms of getting that research connected into action and then you know from there it really does speak to to raising that up to those at the state level to say you know where is their funding where are their supports that we can do to you know get into districts uh to so that this isn't some sort of you know a solo effort but that it's a more collective combined uh sustained right can I also just one of my favorite things as Dan um so this group of districts that Dan works with each district has representatives that come together and help serve in sort of an advisory capacity and help guide the the idea and the the topics that are going to be covered and so one of the the things that happened one in one of those meetings that has really stuck with me is this is one of the times when you see people from all these different school districts in the same room at the same time and we're having these conversations about issues that cross district boundaries and it's not just history issues it's students it's people crossing district boundaries and some of the superintendents we're looking at each other and saying we need to talk to each other how are we not doing this better and I think that that's a great opportunity for things like this to happen is um is kind of through the work that Dan's doing with the regional team. Now I would add that one of the huge implications of this the reason why we we are so concerned and not we like the our district partners raised this issue in the first place that they should have mobility is that if you think about every effort every program every intervention everything that we are doing to help students especially the most disadvantaged students to bring us back to the equity issue everything that we're doing is ultimately dependent on one thing exposure exposure to those programs exposure to those efforts but when students are moving around so much and especially when it's our most disadvantaged students that are moving around most frequently that means that they do not have exposure to these programs to all these efforts that we're investing in to try to help them or they don't have sufficient exposure so this issue of mobility it's I mean it's about these disruptions it's about these challenges but ultimately it's about equity and just a note again we've got over 60 people on and I and and the people are tuning in because they're they are deeply concerned as well about the issues that you're talking about and so I'd also say that if there are questions that we don't get to in this conversation that they should feel free to reach out to you all at at rice to to to learn more and to get more information. Erin can I come back to you briefly there was a question about how are you working to getting the message to families around these pre-k opportunities particularly for the 21-22 school year and someone also asked a little maybe to give a little more detail on the reasons why many kids do not enter pre-k in HISD. Sure so I'll start with the first one we knew last spring that enrollment for this current school year in pre-k in particular was very low I think that as of I don't know maybe around April HISD I know this directly from HISD and heard it from other districts as well they were around 30% or 40% of the students that they typically have in rolling in pre-k that's a lot of students that that you're not seeing or not planning to come through your doors so the the work that we've done at HERC has been making sure that we're sharing that information with the school district sharing information with other community partners who do more of this outreach work so we don't do a lot of direct outreach work in terms of providing a marketing campaign to families for example but there are organizations like Good Reason Houston who that's one of their mission points is to do work like that and so we make sure that our work also it gets translated to to folks like that who can be using that information and so one of the really great things that I think happened this summer as a result of that is of the work that we do and our partnership with Good Reason Houston is that we were also able to share some of this information about the declines in pre-k enrollment with the people at PNC Bank and through their growing up great I think that's grown up great foundation they were able to provide funds to Good Reason Houston to help support direct a direct call in center in HISD for families because the application system was difficult for families the school district was getting people calling in all of the time to provide support for enrolling and they didn't have the the staffing to be answering that many phone calls and so that was kind of one of the great ways that some of our work and some of our connections were able to to help try to do what we could to improve enrollment for this school year so your other question about or I'm sorry the person's other question about why families aren't enrolling I think there are lots of reasons that families don't enroll one is I I think and I worry that they don't have enough information and so that's something that we're working with again the school district other nonprofit organizations in town to get out the word about pre-k and the opportunity that exists for families in in the state of Texas pre-k is free for at-risk student groups and so for example those would be students who come from low-income backgrounds students who are not English proficient students who are homeless or in the foster care system and so there are a lot of ways that students qualify for pre-k for free public pre-k and not everybody knows about it so we want to make sure that's one of the things the other thing that we've learned is that families are really sensitive to distance and so we need to make sure that school districts are opening pre-k programs and opening classrooms and having seats available in places that are highly densely populated with families with young children because the some of the work that we did last spring was was showing that families who live further away from their closest pre-k program were less likely to enroll and so that that makes a big difference distance matters and so you know that was some work that we were able to share with HISD like two years ago and it impacted the number of pre-k programs they opened for the last school year not this school year so there are a lot of ways that that the work we're doing is getting connected to decisions that are getting made at the school district but also one of the other things is I'm sorry I should say this to some families choose not to enroll their their children in pre-k and I and I get that you know they're they might choose a preschool or a daycare center that's near their house they might have choose home care they might choose to care for them their children themselves and that's fine and you know those are all great options for families it's just we want to make sure if they want to enroll that they have the information and they know how to do it super um I want to shift and for kind of the next 30 minutes of our time I want to switch over to COVID briefly about what's what kind of COVID specific data because I want to leave time Ruth particularly to talk about most pressing issues that the data show and then for sure to have time to conclude with what what the people can do and to to be helpful so can we turn what are some specific issues the data has shown when it comes to COVID affecting education for that question I think I think I should turn things over to Dan because Dan has been leading a group that is specifically focusing on COVID data so Dan if you can sure thank you Ruth so the that is our collective question what what is this impact and what is it going to be you know what is it what is it going to be and so we've been fortunate enough to have our district partners get together to develop a COVID-19 action research committee which we are meeting regularly and what this committee is tasked with doing is identifying and addressing just in time needs just in time research and data needs I should I should specify and so through this COVID committee what we have done is we have worked with school districts to you know help visualize reopening plans to help develop student surveys around engagement and to try to just provide supports to districts recognizing that for so many districts right now 110 percent of their effort is focused on this curriculum and instruction and in other words having schools open teachers in the classroom students learning so much time energy effort to that that a lot of these questions around you know what is this impact and what's going on and how do we understand this moment yeah they've got these questions but again it's a you know you've got to prioritize and and and so what we're finding through a lot of these conversations with our district partners right now in terms of the impact is and there's some silver lining that we can point to and then there's also you know sort of a general level of concern that exists out there and I think you know one of the big concerns right now has to do with student engagement so I think we can we can take a look at the spring so thinking March of 2020 this this immediate move into 100 online learning at that moment one of the big issues was digital divide if we fast forward to today one of these big issues the big issue would be engagement in a large part of why that digital divide issue isn't quite there right now it's because our school district partners did so much over the last six months to immediately address that this had to do with with purchasing and acquiring tens of thousands of laptops tens of thousands of hot spots and distributing those to families that needed them in order that you know if your student is opting to do online learning a device and the internet are not going to stop that student from being able to engage with online learning and so our district partners did we're talking hundreds of thousands of millions of dollars invested over the summer a lot of this coming through the cares act helping support districts in this acquisition of devices so now we arrive at today and what we're seeing is yes we've done so much districts have done so much to address this issue of the digital divide that does not address the issue of engagement and and so many districts right now have this question of where is engagement what is impacting engagement and a lot of it has to do with sort of this holistic impact of the pandemic on the lives of students that if we look at the houston area almost 350 000 jobs so i want to take a second i'm going to focus on two spectrums one is going to be secondary students and one's going to be pre-k so on secondary students we look at the houston area 350 000 jobs and lost 140 000 jobs have come back since april that's a ton of jobs that have come back but quick math tells you you still have a lot of unemployment affecting this area well those jobs were in hospitality construction manufacturing retail and as such you have this sort of middle-ish class to the lower middle-class families that are now in a situation of still having bills to pay a mortgage or a rent that they have to cover but needing additional support to that students are being pulled into this space of needing to go get those jobs as they come back in order to help support and offset some of the lost income coming into families because of the economic this economic impact of the pandemic so these secondary students are getting pulled into these types of familial responsibilities and some of those responsibilities outside of just getting jobs have to do with caring for younger siblings caring for older adults that might be in the household you know all these different responsibilities being placed on these students if we swing to the opposite end of the spectrum the pre-k space what we're seeing there is in the state of texas families students are not legally mandated to it are you know required to get to school until first grade and so parents looking at this pandemic situation and and sort of seeing what their own health care insurance situation might be what their own financial situation might be and what type of burden a you know this interaction or you know this illness could have are opting to keep students out of pre-k and keep them out in really really large numbers these both have very important implications that for students that are not coming into high school what does that mean for dropout what does that mean for on-time high school graduation post-secondary enrollment and credentials and long-term earnings and successes but then at the pre-k level and Aaron talked about this earlier kids that are not showing up to pre-k yes some of them are probably enrolling in private programs some of them are probably involved in some education pods that are popping up but a large chunk of these students are just not getting exposed to pre-k and that has ramifications for kindergarten readiness and early literacy and all of that just continues to ripple throughout the educational careers so that we've got this threat right now this moment of COVID having just enormous consequences that we're just going to keep seeing over time and so you know a whole bunch there so I guess let me pause for a second but you know lots lots to consider and lots to to be concerned with but also lots of opportunities to get involved and to help address these issues now so that we're not seeing that ripple five ten fifteen years down the road super that may be a good segue to get kind of really deep into pressing issues and how people and how people can help I'm seeing a lot of really good questions which is again one of my favorite parts about the vital conversations coming through our students tracked through college you know a really good observation one of the issues that that causes parents not to send their kids pre-k is transportation some parents have a hard time managing a work schedule and taking kids to school I'm sure that again that COVID has only worsened this do you have any data on the difference in impact between half day and full day pre-k again an interesting in observation the Texas homeschooling coalition reported a significant increase this summer in inquiries and if there's data about students who are not in public schools have they gone someplace else private parochial homeschool but I think the question that I want to lead is comes from one of the one of the participants from one from the event sponsor from Cisco petroleum can can you provide some concrete examples of improving equity in older students linking their research to actions also any involvement and then this gets to what people can do in linking research to actions for school partners like nonprofits or corporations so maybe Ruth maybe I'll turn back to you to kind of leave this next step about what's really pressing right now and what's what actions need to be taken and how can people be involved that's a great question and for that I'm gonna if you don't mind I want to subdivide that question it's a big question what's really pressing right now I want to subdivide it into short-term needs and long-term needs and the reason why I do that is because often especially in moments of crisis like what we're in right now we want to immediately turn to our short-term needs which is absolutely necessary but then we neglect the long-term needs and we don't want to do that because as Dan mentioned earlier this is a critical moment that where there's like a whole cohort of students that are at risk and we want it so we want to make sure that we're also setting ourselves up to address the long-term needs so in terms of if getting addressing these needs I would say in terms of big picture long-term needs that one of one of the biggest problems and this is nationwide not just unique to Houston is that the overall the educational experiences of students who are poor black and brown are very very different from the educational experiences of students who are not right and in fact there is evidence that those disparities those differences in terms of the educational experiences are actually growing increasingly different over time and that they're exacerbated especially during crises like the current one so that is that's my way of sort of summarizing the big picture most urgent pressing need is that we as a nation are allowing that to happen and unfortunately I think we seem a little bit too complacent like we don't recognize the the urgency of that problem so so 45 percent of our nation's black and brown students are attending high poverty schools these are schools that are 75 percent or more poor compared to only eight percent of white students nationwide eight percent of white students attend high poverty schools compared to 45 percent almost half of our nation's black students and the same is true for our nation's Hispanic students 45 percent are attending high poverty schools everything is harder in those schools even though often I mean please don't misunderstand often they have amazing teachers and administrators who are sacrificing a lot to to really do the best that they can for these students but when you have a really high concentration of poverty in specific schools and specific school districts everything is harder it's harder to recruit and retain effective teachers and administrators it's harder to offer advanced courses it's harder like all these programs and efforts that that we're all trying to do to help students they don't function in the same way in these schools with a really high concentration of poverty so that's the big picture we have to address that that is a that is a more more of a long-term need and there are things that we can do at the local level at the state level and at the federal level to address this so one of the things that that that erin is is involved in right now we're seeing a project with hist is an equity project that is specifically focusing on inequities in this case within the school district but understanding this broader context right so it's not just up to the school district to improve equity it's up to all of us to improve equity but but we're but we are doing some work with with hist that they requested by the way at their request they are very interested in documenting the inequities across the district and doing something about it so so that is that is one one effort one local effort that I that I think is important to highlight now in terms of short-term needs I would say that it so we were involved in in some student needs assessments with some of our district partners and and and they're the needs are huge right but but there are what we're doing is we are documenting the specific needs like the types of needs that students have the extent of those needs and the location of those needs so we together with an organization called prounitas we have developed an interactive tool that is available through a website that people can can can actually go into this tool and and see okay these are the specific schools that have these needs so if you're a service provider you can you can target the specific areas that have needs whether they're related to food or medical services or or other kinds of services so these are so that's kind and I'm starting to segue into like what you can do right to help meet some of these needs so we do need to to make sure that we help support our local districts in their efforts to to help students both in terms of their academic needs but also their non-academic needs because we know they're connected you know so and if you want to know exactly how to help like we have the the data we have the information in terms of what those needs are and where they are located I would also recommend that that people reach out to support the their local public schools financially you know there are school district foundations that are always seeking assistance to to and they those foundations help to support public school students directly or to support our public schools through volunteering Dan mentioned this need for supervision this need for there are a lot of students that that are disengaging unfortunately especially with this remote learning and and but there are people that can that can help right we can we can still volunteer in schools even though a lot of students aren't actually at the schools you have to remember that there are other ways to volunteer and and and if you want to work through both as an individual or you can work through a congregation there are there's an organization here called Loving Houston that that really works to partner congregations with schools to help meet their meet their needs so those are a few of the ideas I don't know if Dan or Erin there are probably some other ideas that I haven't covered like ways in which people can can help I think I mean to your point this it's not only about service providers providing support to the school districts where the needs exist but if people have resources and they're trying to figure out where do I want to be able to donate that's maybe think about donating to those service providers who can provide the direct service to the school districts you know oftentimes when Ruth was talking about health needs a medical or dental or housing you know the school district can't always provide direct support what they do is rely on service providers in the community to provide that support and so the thing that we can all do as community members is find some of those local organizations maybe you are really connected to this school in your neighborhood well when this resource tool that Ruth is talking about that we are working on a partnership with Pro Unitas comes out you can see okay my campus is campus X at campus X students have really a lot of needs for dental services let me find an organization in town that supports dental services because I really want to be able to support that as it relates to my my campus right so there are lots of ways for people to think about how they can provide support even when they can't provide direct hands-on support themselves one other type of of support that comes to mind I was mostly focused I realized now that I was mostly focusing on how people can help meet the short-term immediate needs but in terms of how people can help meet the more long-term needs I would like to bring attention to our upcoming legislative session there are things that we can do to advocate for specifically to advocate for more funding for education Texas is among the lowest 10 states in the country in terms of the per people funding that we provide we could do we have to do much better than that I mean that's pathetic so we we need to and I know that it's going to be especially challenging I know that there are major challenges in the economy right now because of the pandemic but if we neglect our education that's so the economy is only going to get worse right we can't shoot ourselves on the foot right we have to continue to invest in education and in fact we need to invest more there's a huge need for more funding for education as well as more equitable funding for education so there's a two different things we need more funding overall as a state but we also need to make sure that we do a better job of distributing those resources in an equitable manner and by equitable I mean that we need to give more to those who need more I don't mean we need to treat everybody the same so we can advocate for those things advocate in terms of this upcoming legislative session and one last thing that I would encourage people to advocate for is more school integration efforts we are highly segregated racially and economically and that presents a lot of problems as I mentioned earlier that's not unique to Houston but we sure are up there in terms of segregation and we have seen in our work that that our schools are highly segregated but there's even more segregation between school districts than within school districts so we need to pay attention to that if we want to make our educational opportunities more equitable for all our students thank you so many really so so many really good questions I think I just want to kind of summarize a couple of things you mentioned good reason Houston loving Houston again I think trying to identify those entities that are between you and the amazing ability and your commitment to applying data to change and getting people connected to organizations that are actually in the schools as well so I heard good reason again our friends at loving Houston who have been often on our Thursday 10 a.m call a covid update calls is it is it as simple as calling the school itself um is that is that a way through um is there often a person at the school that is responsible for spearheading community kind of community efforts in partnering with that school so at this point every campus in h this is hist in particular um Dan might know more about some of our regional partners but every campus in hist has a wraparound specialist who is working with that campus and so that's the person who helps identify the wraparound needs that students have recognizing that you know as we've been talking about needs go beyond academic that there are a lot of basic human health needs that students have to be successful and even survive at this time we're not even talking about thriving like let's survive right now and so the wraparound specialist is a person who can really help connect community organizations and resources to the needs that students have on campuses and another organization that I don't think ever mentioned so far is communities in school is another one that has a footprint in several different districts around the houston area and to sort of echo what Aaron was just saying now they offer a similar type of wraparounds where they're they're touching base on several different dimensions of students and engaging in that way I mean as to this you know do I reach out to a campus or I reach out to a district uh you know right now with with so many needs being intensified and exacerbated you know if someone happens to have resources that they are interested in making sure that they're getting to students and students and needs you can connect to someone in districts and they will figure it out and and so you know I I don't think that uh I can't necessarily name the person or the department that you would want to reach out to within each district but they you know districts are you know looking for additional supports and services given the the the less than optimal supports that have been received from state and federal agencies during this pandemic and so you know if those resources happen to be in your possession and you're interested they'll figure that out yeah I think of just a good practical example right at the beginning of right at the beginning of the school year the Texas annual conference of the United Methodist Church as a as a denomination partnered with HISD to try to provide um particularly in this case churches of what could provide a little extra space in order to try to provide some so to to to improve social distancing guidelines and just another space with internet access and even some computers in many cases and so I just want that I found that as a as a good example of particularly a particular denomination partnering with partnering with with schools in order to try to make a difference um I see we've got about five minutes left I do just want to honor a variety of questions and again there's a question about um online tutoring opportunities for individuals information regarding learning differences is that included in the research um uh a lovely um comment from one of your colleagues Aaron I forwarded it on to you from the University of Houston's Education Research Center um just I mean kind of an unanswerable question right now what do education educators expect the path will be for students one in once in-person learning begins again I think the concern is this going to be a lost year or even worse um uh have there been an impact on mobility due to evictions related to COVID someone want to ask can you share the link to the data based on student needs survey so lots of questions loving Houston mentions that they can connect people with the right people in each district and I think that email and and and and uh webpage was dropped into the chat box so um I don't expect you to answer all those questions just wanted you to see what all those questions were um I want to always want to honor those questions I think maybe Ruth I'll turn to you honoring our time for perhaps a closing word um on um what you think is really important and what you want people to to remember going forward from our conversation sure um so first of all just a comment on the the questions obviously we can't answer all those questions right now but I will point you all to um to herk's website uh so if you just if you go to herk.rice.edu so h-e-r-c.r-i-c-e.edu all our research is posted on the website uh we we so although we target our school district partners and informing them all along the way and informing them directly we also make sure that everybody the general public can access uh that all that research so if anybody is interested in reading some of our research briefs it's all locally produced research so it's all based on uh houston information houston data so um please uh please take a look at that and uh or or ask to get on on the herk listserv if you want to be informed on updated on a regular basis on some of this research um but to to end our time together I I do want to say first of all thank you to all of you who are interested in this issue um education obviously I think it's maybe I'm just biased but everyone should should be interested in education I don't care what industry you're involved in or not um this is everybody's concern um and but having said that related to that um that the issue that this is everybody's concern I want to go back to what I said at the beginning which is that um our students are experiencing increasingly different um educational uh trajectories uh increasingly different educational experiences and we just we cannot become placed and first of all we cannot ignore it and pretend that that's no longer an issue and unfortunately I hear that sometimes I hear people say oh you know we've taken care of school segregation you know Brown versus Board of Education took care of that no it didn't I mean well it it did it it helped improve things um but then for a short time and then it didn't last and then um we've done a lot of things since then or we've allowed a lot of things to happen since then that have really taken us back um in in a and and we are currently in a situation that um is just not acceptable and our current crisis is only exacerbating uh those inequities and that is not acceptable um so I would just encourage all of you all of us to continue to support efforts to monitor and document these inequities efforts that that aim to address these inequities and this is going to be a long term if we can't just like say oh today we're going to worry about educational inequity and then move on we have to stay vigilant we hit this is something that we have to continue to work on over an extended period of time and lastly we can't just dump this on our educators on our schools our school districts this is not just their problem this is everybody's problem and we need to support them in their efforts to improve educational equity. Dr. Ruth Lopez-Turley, Dr. Erin Baumgartner, Dr. Daniel Potter thank you for being with us from HIRC the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University um we call these vital conversations with our community because these are about vital issues that are that are that the whole community should be and needs to be concerned about and so we're grateful for your work and grateful for you being with us thank you all for being with us today again you can learn more about HIRC at www.hirk.rice.edu and please visit www.imgh.org to learn more about Interfaith's work and how to support us we will see you all there's a lot going on between now and the next vital conversation but we'll pick up in mid 2021 with our vital conversation series but again we've got a lot going on before then thank you all for being with us thank you again to HIRC for being with us and I hope you have a great rest of your day