Cesar E. Chavez High School is located in the southeast corner of the Houston Independent School District (HISD). The student population exceeded three thousand students, with more than 90 percent free and reduced lunch and over 99 percent of students from historically marginalized populations. Thanks to the HISD’s selection for a US Department of Education Race to the Top (RTTT) grant, the district and the campus were able to re-introduce Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education to the school. The RTTT grant allowed Chavez to provide students with education focused on STEM outcomes and CTE pathways.
An Academic House
To support this, the school created an academic house system based on CTE pathway strands. The purpose of this was for students to develop strong relationships with their instructors and for administrators to monitor their educational and socioemotional outcomes. As the STEM program matured, Chavez added the International Baccalaureate Career Program (IBCP) to serve the students who struggled to choose between the advanced academics of the IB Diploma Program (IBDP) and the Career and Technology (CTE) STEM certificate and licensing programs.
My connection to STEM education is that I served as the Chavez High School principal during these changes to the school. The importance of this chapter shows that a large urban high school can successfully change course and then sustain STEM education. This success is replicable because the district and the community provided enough financial and postsecondary resources and recruited, retained, certified, and supported the instructors needed to staff the programs.
Chavez High School
Chavez High School is set in a unique place in Houston. In addition to being close to the Texas Medical Center, NASA, the Port of Houston, several colleges and universities, it sits across a tributary of Sims bayou from a contiguous set of five multinational petrochemical companies, one of which had been a partner supporting the school and its STEM program since its inception in 2000.
Near the beginning of my tenure as the Chavez High School principal, I met with a representative from Texas Petrochemical Company (TPC). They shared that they were very interested in having more Chavez students work for their company. She shared that many of its personnel were approaching retirement age, and TPC wanted to recruit Chavez students to provide for its neighborhood and help guide the company’s future. We discussed the different CTE offerings in the school and how they could be helpful to this request.
One thought that she shared made perfect sense to me. In every district adjacent to this southeast corner of HISD, the neighboring district had an associate degree dual enrollment program with San Jacinto College in Process Technology. Process Technology is a hybrid degree where students learn the technology, operations, and leadership and eventually lead within the plant environment. The representative wanted to be sure that Chavez students had equal opportunity to be selected for TPC’s high-paying jobs, just like the students from the neighboring districts.
Initial Changes
With the backing of the RTTT grant and Houston ISD’s CTE department, Chavez High School decided to begin wall-to-wall CTE pathways programming at the school. Chavez’s architecture, built at the end of the 1990s and opened in 2000, was designed with smaller learning communities in mind. So, each pathway could have its own area of the building, replete with an administrative suite and teacher workrooms. The placement of the CTE pathways would not be difficult, but the transition to wall-to-wall CTE would prove to be challenging to get started.
At the time, the school had the vestiges of an engineering program that was not producing enough students with certifications or licenses. Also, the program was not sending graduates on to colleges to earn associate or bachelor’s degrees in engineering. Students frequently took the courses within Chavez’s engineering strand out of order, and the engineering curriculum was not aligned to any end goal. Moreover, neither the school nor the district had updated Chavez’s facilities and instructional resources recently. So, to meet the request of our TPC partner to produce more students interested or qualified to work at its or other companies’ neighboring plants, the school would have to change how it prepared our students for opportunities after high school.
Project Lead the Way
Early on, the first correction we made in the engineering program was adopting Project Lead the Way (PLTW) to coordinate our curriculum, the training, and the certification of our teachers. The curriculum change took about a year and was not the most difficult part of the transition. Rather, once the school addressed the engineering sta, it helped the growth of the program almost immediately. Between retirements and reassignments, we provided a coherent sequence of courses for students to progress through the PLTW pathway.
Chavez had three other STEM pathways in the building. The other pathways include Health Sciences, Environmental Science, and Digital Media. Incoming ninth-grade students became part of the ninth-grade house. In that house, we placed the emphasis on matriculation to tenth grade and the learning of the CTE STEM offerings while being on campus. The Health Science program also began using the PLTW curriculum and coursework. It began producing students who earned their intravenous and Pharmacy Technician certifications. (Given the COVID-19 pandemic, the students who achieved these certificates are, no doubt, high in demand.) The environmental science program included our veterinary and oral technology program. Finally, the digital media program also used the PLTW curriculum and coursework, and it offered opportunities for students to use video editing and graphic design software to create.
CTE Pathways: A Key to Success
One of the many reasons the school experienced this success is that we had wall-to-wall CTE pathways. Every student was assigned a core group of teachers, grouped with a CTE or ninth-grade pathway. These core teachers would have a common pathway planning period to align instructions and interventions. Mind you, to create a master schedule for a three-thousand-student school with these parameters was a herculean task in and of itself. Assembling the courses, the teachers, the planning and conference periods, the classrooms, and the many other permutations took a planning team and a great programmer to get it workable. Had we only had a few pathways, not every student would have direct access to a post‐secondary option, and not every teacher would have a role in providing career-relevant education to the students.
Concurrently, Chavez was also undertaking the process for IB DP authorization. We wanted to ensure that the students of southwest Houston had the same opportunities and access to advanced academics and the benefits thereof that students from the more affluent parts of the city did. Therefore, once we became an IB World School offering the Diploma Program, we began authorization for the Career Program. This way, our students who had difficulty choosing between STEM career pathway options and advanced academics could have the opportunity to do both. Additionally, as these Chavez students applied for jobs, college admission, and scholarships, they would have the dual benefit of the STEM and IB background on their résumé.
An Initial Challenge
An initial challenge for the new CTE teaching staff was the expectations of the older students to whom the change to career-based houses made scheduling or expectations difficult. As we reorganized students into their CTE STEM houses, students in eleventh and twelfth grade had difficulty adjusting to the new courses and expectations. Many of the students wanted to drop the classes, and several did. Still, the reorganization of the school allowed for a coherence of learning that benefited the students who were in the younger grades and who had yet to enroll on the campus.
Outcomes of the Changes
Over the next eight years, we transformed a once nascent STEM CTE program into a consistently strong program. Within a graduating class of six hundred students, the CTE program easily produced over one hundred students who earned Pharmacy Tech, Certified Clinical Medical Assistant (CCMA), Veterinary Tech, Solidworks, Emergency Medical Tech, Fire Technology, and IBCP certificates. In 2019, Chavez graduated its first set of Process Technology associate degree students from San Jacinto College. In 2021, it graduated its first IB CP students. Chavez High School’s successes can be found in the belief in the students and the school by the business community, the consistency and inclusiveness in campus leadership, and access to financial, academic, and curricular resources.
Without these lessons intersecting at the same time at Chavez, this urban high school would not have provided the same number of STEM opportunities for its students. A school or a district must have a shared vision for outcomes that it expects its graduates to attain. Without one, some students will fall through the cracks of the school or district and not achieve the expectations that they, their families, the school, or the community hope for them.
Planning for STEM and CTE pathways
Planning for STEM and CTE pathways in your school or district requires several items to consider and assist in long-range success.
A North Star
First, you will need a North Star to guide your way. Setting a vision and creating the outcomes that the students, school, and community desire is imperative. The shared vision will enable the setting of interim goals to ensure progress toward the long term. It will also allow for short-term wins to celebrate and acknowledge excellence. Finally, it will give a common language to all stakeholders to perpetuate the work necessary to accomplish the outcomes from the shared vision.
Student Accountability
Second, account for every student in the building, especially those from historically marginalized populations. If they are not involved in CTE pathways, they need to be involved in something the school offers. That something within the school will assist them with engagement and belonging and will ensure that they attend school regularly and graduate on time.
Necessary Resources
Third, the teachers, administrators, and students must receive the necessary resources to accomplish the shared vision. Whether the resources include professional learning, extra duty pay, additional software, equipment, internships, transportation, competitions, or anything else needed to accomplish the shared vision, administrators must make sure that the teachers and students have access to it.
Addressed Barriers
Lastly, once the shared vision is created and all along the implementation process, a school or a district will need to find and address the barriers that reveal themselves. The barriers could come in the form of people, systems, architecture, technology, beliefs, curriculum, or geography. The barriers need to be removed or reworked to align the work of the school or the district to the shared vision. They can impede or completely derail the progress of critical STEM work.
Technology as a Tool for CTE Pathways
The administrators and the staff could not have accomplished Chavez High School’s success story without using technology as a tool to help us achieve our shared vision. Our school was fortunate to be part of the pilot for one-to-one laptops for the Houston ISD. The laptops enabled teachers to be proactive in planning instruction and the students to have access to instruction and the curriculum at any time of the day.
For our students who needed to work, play sports, participate in fine arts, or look after their younger brothers and sisters, the laptops and the learning management system proved to be essential to students’ success. Within our engineering and digital media strands, we upgraded the computers to the software requirements needed to provide the experiences and the instruction. Also, for both strands, the school purchased or received the machines, tools, cameras, and other technology to complete the curricular requirements.
Additional Uses for Technology
A second use of the technology allowed the teachers to implement the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Framework. All students need different ways to access the curriculum, share their learning, and engage with the course and students, even in STEM work. While some students can successfully learn utilizing the traditional classroom methods, many others need some assistance in one of those three components. Finally, technology for teachers cannot be underestimated or undervalued. STEM education must be supported by the core content courses.
Both STEM and core content courses need to be able to track student data in academic and behavioral performance. Knowing a student’s literacy and numeracy levels, state assessment scores, attendance rate, and other quantifiable variables can help with intervention and enrichment opportunities. When teachers take student data into planning, whether they use Excel, Google Sheets, Tableau, Mesa Ontime, or other analysis or visualization software, they will support more students along the way and are more likely to accomplish the outcomes of the shared vision of CTE pathways.
Maturing CTE Pathways
As the STEM and CTE pathways matured, Chavez had fewer students wanting to drop out of the CTE pathways. Several of the pathways also became extremely popular and eventually prolific in producing students who graduated with licenses and certificates. The Vet Tech program eventually produced nearly fifteen Vet Tech graduates per year. If the school had access to more veterinary offices, it would have easily made a dozen certificates more a year.
However, this may not seem like a lot given the number of graduates. Keep in mind that Chavez is an urban school without many students who live in the country. The number of Vet Techs produced was among the highest in southeast Texas. The most popular program by far was the school’s Pharmacy Technology program. Each year, it would grow by ten or twelve students, and each year, with a passing rate of over 95 percent, the graduates would pass the CCMA test and the Pharmacy Tech exams.
Eventually, the school successfully licensed thirty-two Pharmacy Tech graduates in one year (the most for a high school in Texas). Meaning nearly one in eighteen graduates saw Pharmacy Tech as the way to pay for college or support themselves and their families. In the first graduating class, nine students of combined Chavez High School and San Jacinto College associate degree students graduated in 2019. Each of the nine who completed the program had a job offer before graduating. In 2021, the first graduating class of IBCP students graduated.
Conclusion
In conclusion, I often think about the number of times that I would arrive at Chavez early in the morning to get a jump on the day’s or week’s work. I would park in the back and walk the length of the building to get to my office. The last area that I would walk through was the cavernous cafeteria. Even if I arrived before six in the morning, there was always at least one student in the cafeteria, either on their laptop or with their head down, sleeping. The scenario repeated if I left the building after six in the evening. (The school day was 8:30 a.m.–4:00 p.m.)
Schools are often a place of refuge, heating, cooling, Wi-Fi, and electricity. Students, particularly those from historically marginalized populations, must see school as the place where the options for their families’ futures develop. STEM education has a direct tie to providing for the families that our students will eventually have as parents, and it can also provide for the students’ parents.
Please take, for example, the collaborative Process Technology associate degree that Chavez and San Jacinto College developed. The starting salary for a student who graduates from high school and San Jac at the same time is over $75,000. With overtime, by the end of a graduate’s first year, usually around when the student is nineteen or twenty years old, the student can earn a six-figure salary. The graduate can move into management with a bachelor’s degree and earn even more. This promotion will not only change the graduate’s life but also has the possibility of changing outcomes for the generations of the family that follow the graduate.
My Vision for STEM and CTE Pathways
My vision for STEM education is for schools and districts to see it as a catalyst for generational change for families and communities. To quote the school’s namesake, Cesar E. Chavez, “Once social change begins, it cannot be reversed. You cannot un-educate the person who has learned to read. You cannot humiliate the person who feels pride. And you cannot oppress the people who are not afraid anymore.” STEM education will provide the social change needed to lift the students, the graduates, the school, and the community so that they can provide for themselves and others and take pride in what they have accomplished.
About the Author
RENE SANCHEZ
Rene Sanchez serves as the new superintendent in the Champlain Valley School District in Vermont. Taking the role in Vermont is a return home for his family. His wife, Jean, is a native of Brattleboro and an alumna of the University of Vermont.
In South Bend, as the Assistant Superintendent for Operations for the South Bend Community School Corporation, Rene oversaw Human Resources and Transportation. He created the New Teacher training monthly series within HR, focusing on equity and Universal Design for Learning. Rene coordinated moving to a new HRIS system and digital personnel records. He spearheaded the purchase and implementation of placing WI-FI on the district’s school buses in the transportation realm. This action led to South Bend Schools’ bridging the digital divide during the COVID-19 pandemic and to recognition of the district in local, state, and national news.
Principal
As principal of Houston ISD’s 3000+ students at Chavez High School, his team founded the IB Diploma and Career programs, the Process Technology A.A.S program with San Jacinto College, which was featured in the book, UDL: Moving from Exploration to Integration for its culture and use of Universal Design for Learning schoolwide, and was recognized by America Achieves and the Organization for Economic and Community Development for closing the academic gap with affluent schools. Scholarships increased from $6 million to over $19 million. And, in just three years, his vertical team increased their fine arts programs by 250 percent.
Originally from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas, Rene attended undergraduate studies at the University of Notre Dame. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Government and International Studies. In addition, Rene has a law degree from Ohio State. From the University of Texas at Austin, and he has a master’s degree in Education. He currently remains enrolled at Indiana State to conclude his Ph.D.
He has been married to Jean for sixteen years, and they have three children and three dogs. Additionally, he loves to cycle, cook, read, fish, golf, and work in the garden and yard.
