About YES

OVERVIEW
During the past 13 years, YES Prep has demonstrably increased academic achievement and degree attainment for low-income, minority youth from across the Houston area. YES Prep was the first public school system in the country to make college acceptance a graduation requirement.

Over the years, the organization has accumulated numerous awards and recognition:

• Profiled in U.S. News & World Report and featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show
• Top 100 Public Schools (repeatedly): Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report
• Best Public Schools in Houston (repeatedly): Houston Chronicle and Houston Press
• Voted "Best Place to Work" by the Houston Business Journal
• YES Prep North Central: U.S. Dept. of Education National Blue Ribbon School winner
• YES Prep North Central and Southwest: EPIC Silver Gain Award winners
• The Texas Business and Education Coalition have named multiple YES Prep campuses to their annual Honor Roll list of achieving schools 
• Every campus, every year of operation has earned an "Exemplary" or "Recognized" ranking, the two highest ratings from the Texas Education Agency (TEA)
• For the past two years, YES Prep has been named an Exemplary school district by the TEA; less than 7% of all districts in Texas achieve this rating

RESULTS-DRIVEN APPROACH
While we are honored to receive the accolades listed above, our data-driven approach is driven by a committment to student learning and college-preparation, not to rankings, awards or one-time accomplishments. We measure student achievement in a variety of ways, including those detailed below. For a more complete summary of our academic results in 2010, please feel free to download a copy of our 2010 Annual Report by clicking here.

STUDENT DATA: STANDARDIZED TEST SCORES
The Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS) is a state mandated proficiency test administered to all public school students in Texas each year in Grades 3-11. Not every subject is tested every year. Depending on the grade level, students are tested in Reading/English Langauge Arts, Mathematics, Science, Social Studies, and Writing. A score of 70 or higher is needed to pass. In 2009-2010, YES Prep once again outperformed both local and state passing rates (see chart below for comparisons).

While strong passing rates on these tests are one useful indicator of student achievement, the TAKS is only a basic skills test and just "passing the test" is not considered to be an adequate measure of college-readiness. Instead, YES Prep uses the TAKS Commended scores (among other metrics) as a preferred benchmark for student performance. A student score of 90 or higher on any of the subject tests administed is recognized as Commended. In this category, YES Prep again leads the existing alternatives by a significant percentage. YES Prep's rate of commended performance in Reading in the most recent school year was 37%, compared to 28% for HISD. In Math, the commended rate of YES Prep students was 45%, compared to 27% in HISD.

STUDENT DATA: GRADUATION AND DROPOUT RATES
Texas ranks last in the nation in the percentage of adults with high school diplomas; only 79.7 percent of Texans have a high school diploma. The average high school graduation rate in Houston is 63 percent and Houston ranks fourth among the 50 largest metropolitan areas for the percentage of high school dropouts. Moreover, dropouts account for half of all prisoners in Texas prisons, and more than two-thirds of inmates on death row never completed high school. YES Prep is committed to changing local high school graduation rates. The system's rates are, and have consistently been, higher than those of the state, region, and HISD. As the following charts illustrate, 90 percent of students in the class of 2010 graduated and, of the 10 percent who did not graduate, only one percent dropped out. The remaining nine percent were retained and will graduate this spring. At YES Prep, a student does not graduate until he/she has achieved college-readiness.

2009-2010 High School Dropout Rates                             2009-2010 High School Graduation Rates
    

STUDENT DATA: COLLEGE GRADUATION AND PERSISTENCE
The average low-income sixth grader in a Houston public school has less than a 10% chance of graduating from a four-year college. At YES Prep, all students must be accepted to a four-yer college in order to receive their diploma. Graduates have been accepted to more than 250 different institutions nationwide, including Columbia, Harvard, Princeton, Rice, Stanford, Texas A&M, UT-Austin, and Yale University. More compelling, however, is the rate at which YES Prep students persist in their collegiate coursework: roughly 80% of YES Prep alumni are currently enrolled in college or have already earned their degree(s), compared to 25 percent of low-income students nationwide who enroll as freshmen. Also, and most importantly for Houston's future, over 75% of YES Prep alumni return to live and work in the Houston area upon graduating from college.

YES PREP'S IMPACT
College has become an unattainable goal for the majority of low-income youth in Houston. Due to its size and integral position in the national economy, the successes and failures of Houston's public schools have the potential to impact not only the state of Texas, but the entire country. Consider: Houston is the largest city in Texas and the fourth largest city in the country; Houston is Texas' largest urban economic enclav; Houston is home to the leading energy, biomedical, and technology industries; and Houston has the second largest concentration of Fortune 500 companies in the United States. Houston is important, and so are the future civic and business leaders it produces. For more details about the impact of YES Prep's growth in Houston, click here.