College & Career Pathways

In 2013, Texas HB 5 (83R) introduced a new system of graduation requirements into the state secondary education environment. The goal of the legislation is to promote college and career readiness by providing a system of endorsement tracks that allow students to choose a specific educational pathway to pursue during their high school tenure, based on future college or career aspirations. These ‘endorsements’ include: Business and Industry; Science, Technology, Education and Math (STEM); Arts and Humanities; Public Services; and Multidisciplinary Studies1.

The bill was designed to promote a decentralized process across the state, allowing individual districts autonomy and creativity in their implementation strategies, and as such, did not include specific state-level guidance on independent school district implementation, nor resources for implementation. As a result, school districts have adopted a wide range of approaches to implementing the requirements of HB 5, which this report has documented and analyzed in an effort to provide more systematic knowledge of the decentralized implementation experience across a range of district types throughout the state, in support of future modifications to the implementation process to enhance quality, efficiency, and equal access within the process. This is the executive summary to the full report.