In Texas, 23% of schools earn an A for Black students — meaning 80% or more of their Black students pass state tests.

In Georgia, 0.6% do. Eleven schools out of 1,945.

The obvious conclusion is that Georgia is catastrophically failing Black children in a way Texas is not. That conclusion is wrong, and understanding why it’s wrong is more useful to a parent than either number by itself.

The honesty gap

Every state writes its own test and decides its own passing score. There is no national standard a state must meet. A state can make its test easier, watch proficiency rates climb, and report those numbers to parents as progress.

There is one independent check: the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP — the same test given to a sample of students in every state, often called the Nation’s Report Card. Because NAEP is identical everywhere, comparing a state’s own proficiency rate to its NAEP rate reveals how honest that state’s test is.

Education researchers call the difference the honesty gap.

In 2013, Georgia had the worst honesty gap in America. Its own test reported that 94% of fourth graders were proficient readers. NAEP put the real number around 34% — a 60-point discrepancy. Georgia’s proficiency standards were rated F, ranked last among all 50 states.

Then Georgia did something states rarely do. It threw out the old test, replaced it with Georgia Milestones, and raised the bar to something closer to what NAEP measures.

The gap collapsed from 60 points to roughly 3. According to Achieve, the independent organization that tracks this, it was the largest single reduction of any state in the country. Georgia’s rating went from an F to an A.

Meanwhile, in that same round of analysis, Education Week reported the finding plainly: “Texas was the biggest offender,” with gaps exceeding 40 points between its reported proficiency and NAEP’s.

What that means for these two numbers

Georgia’s 0.6% and Texas’s 23% are not measuring the same thing.

Georgia is measuring against a standard independently verified as one of the most rigorous in the country. Texas is measuring against a standard that outside researchers have repeatedly flagged as one of the least.

There is a version of this article that says Georgia is failing Black students five times worse than Texas. That version would be easy to write, would probably travel further, and would be wrong.

The honest version is harder and more uncomfortable: we don’t actually know which state is serving Black children better, because the two states are not using the same ruler. What we know is that Georgia is telling parents something closer to the truth about where their children stand.

What Georgia’s numbers actually show

Under Georgia’s stricter standard, here is the picture across 1,945 schools and 852,334 Black students:

The median Georgia school has 26.3% of its Black students proficient. The median school-wide rate is 35.4%.

Only 220 of 1,945 schools — 11.3% — have Black students performing at or above their school’s own average.

Those are hard numbers. Read against a rigorous standard, they describe a state where the typical Black child is not reading or doing math at grade level, and where nearly nine out of ten schools serve Black students worse than they serve everyone else.

The schools that clear the bar

Eleven Georgia schools have 80% or more of their Black students proficient. Against Georgia’s standard, these are genuinely exceptional.

Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science and Technology — 100% of its 122 Black students proficient, slightly above the school’s own average of 98.9%. Every Black student tested, proficient, at Georgia’s bar.

Kittredge Magnet School (DeKalb County) — 97.1%, 102 students Wadsworth Magnet School for High Achievers (DeKalb County) — 94.9%, with 569 Black students — proof it holds at real scale Britt David Magnet Academy (Muscogee County) — 94.4%, and Black students slightly above the school average Elite Scholars Academy (Clayton County) — 94.2%, 618 Black students

Elite Scholars deserves particular attention. Clayton County is a majority-Black district south of Atlanta whose median school has 19.6% of Black students proficient — among the lowest in metro Atlanta. Inside that district sits a school with 618 Black students performing at 94.2%.

DeKalb Early College Academy — 84.2%, and Black students outperform the school average by 2.6 points Davidson Fine Arts Magnet (Richmond County) — 81%, 400 Black students, in Augusta

Nearly all are magnets or early colleges with selective admission. That’s a real limitation — selection is not the same as instruction. But it doesn’t erase the finding, because these schools demonstrate that Black students clear Georgia’s rigorous bar in large numbers when placed in the right environment.

Metro Atlanta, district by district

Atlanta’s reputation as a center of Black achievement is real and earned. Its school data is more complicated.

District Schools Median Black proficiency Median gap Black students Gwinnett County 137 41.3% −2.4 80,913 Fulton County 101 39.3% −4.1 48,064 Cobb County 106 38.0% −7.5 43,019 Douglas County 34 30.6% −2.1 21,311 Rockdale County 18 26.1% −0.9 14,688 Henry County 52 25.8% −2.2 39,916 DeKalb County 121 23.5% −1.1 69,178 Atlanta Public Schools 85 21.7% −1.0 48,695 Clayton County 64 19.6% −1.4 47,746 Newton County 22 19.2% −2.5 16,418

Two things jump out.

Atlanta Public Schools ranks near the bottom of metro Atlanta for Black student proficiency, at 21.7%. The district at the heart of Black Atlanta’s civic identity, in the city that produced Morehouse and Spelman, has a median school where roughly one in five Black students is proficient.

Cobb County has the widest median gap in metro Atlanta at 7.5 points. Cobb’s schools perform better overall than Clayton’s or DeKalb’s — but Black students there fall further behind their own classmates than in any other large metro district. A strong district is not the same as an equitable one.

The gaps that hide inside good schools

The widest gaps in Georgia are not at struggling schools. They’re at schools that look excellent.

Oglethorpe Point Elementary (Glynn County) — 73.1% school-wide, 24.7% for Black students. A 48.4-point gap.

Daves Creek Elementary (Forsyth County) — 87% school-wide, 44.1% for Black students. 42.9 points. Forsyth County is one of Georgia’s wealthiest districts, with a documented history as a sundown county that expelled its entire Black population in 1912.

Roswell North Elementary (Fulton County) — 74.2% overall, 32.4% for Black students. 41.8 points.

Vanderlyn Elementary (DeKalb County) — 72.2% overall, 31.5% for Black students. 40.7 points.

Beacon Hill Middle (City Schools of Decatur) — 75.8% overall, 38.3% for Black students, with 598 Black students tested. 37.5 points. Decatur markets itself as one of the most progressive school communities in Georgia.

If you looked only at these schools’ overall ratings, you would conclude they’re excellent. For Black children, four of five are not.

What to take from this

For Georgia parents: your state is being more honest with you than most. That’s a real asset, and it means the numbers you see deserve to be taken seriously rather than explained away. It also means a school rated “good” overall can still be one of the worst in the state for your child — check the specific number.

For Texas parents: your state’s proficiency bar has been independently flagged as one of the least demanding in the country. When Texas reports that your child is passing, that is worth less than the same word from Georgia. It does not mean your child is on grade level by national standards.

For everyone: stop comparing states. The comparison that matters is the one inside a single building — how Black students perform relative to their own classmates, taught by the same teachers, under the same principal, on the same test.

That number can’t be inflated by a state’s choice of cut score. It’s the same ruler on both sides.

In Georgia, 88.7% of schools fail it.

Data source: Georgia Governor’s Office of Student Achievement, Milestones 2024–25, End-of-Grade and End-of-Course combined. Proficiency means scoring Proficient or Distinguished. Honesty gap findings from Achieve and the Collaborative for Student Success, as reported by Education Week and confirmed by GOSA. Analysis covers schools with 25 or more Black students tested, excluding alternative and treatment programs. Search any Georgia school at bearinglight.org.

That reputation is not wrong, exactly. It’s just incomplete in a way that matters enormously if your child is Black.

We analyzed every Wake County school with at least 25 Black students tested — 185 schools serving 45,824 Black students — using 2024–25 North Carolina Department of Public Instruction data.

At the top: Wake Early College of Information & Biotechnologies, where 93.5% of Black students score Grade Level Proficient or above.

At the bottom: Lacy Elementary, where 16.7% do.

Same district. Same school board. Same superintendent. Same funding formula. A 77-point difference in whether a Black child is reading and doing math at grade level.

The number that should stop you

Here is the finding that matters more than the spread.

Of the 185 Wake County schools we examined, 8 have Black students performing at or above the school’s own average.

Eight. Out of 185. Four percent.

At the other 177, Black students trail their classmates — in the same building, with the same teachers, under the same principal. The median gap is 19.2 points.

This is not a story about a few struggling schools dragging down an otherwise strong district. It’s a pattern that holds across almost every school in the system, including the ones with excellent overall ratings.

The schools with the widest gaps are not the ones you’d guess

The instinct is to assume the biggest gaps appear at the lowest-performing schools. In Wake County, the opposite is true.

Lacy Elementary — School average: 74.2%. Black students: 16.7%. Gap: 57.5 points.

Lacy is, by its overall number, a good school. Three out of four students there are proficient. But among its 108 Black students, fewer than one in six is. If you looked only at the school’s rating — the number on the report card, the number a real estate agent quotes — you would have no idea.

Carnage Middle — School average: 72.4%. Black students: 24.3%. Gap: 48.1 points. With 519 Black students, this is not a small sample.

Root Elementary — School average: 69.3%. Black students: 24.4%. Gap: 44.9 points.

Farmington Woods Elementary — 76.7% overall, 31.6% for Black students. 45.1 points.

Apex Elementary — 69.7% overall, 27.4% for Black students. 42.3 points.

Apex is one of the most sought-after communities in the Triangle. Its elementary school is failing Black children at a rate that would be a scandal if it appeared on the district’s public-facing scorecard. It doesn’t, because district and school averages don’t break the number out by race unless you go looking.

Where the most Black children actually are

The schools with the widest gaps are not where most Black students in Wake County go to school. The largest Black student populations are concentrated in a handful of schools east and south of Raleigh:

• East Garner Middle — 1,204 Black students, 40.4% proficient

• River Bend Middle — 1,040 Black students, 31.3%

• Zebulon Middle — 887 Black students, 37.3%

• South Garner High — 782 Black students, 49.6%

• Rolesville High — 780 Black students, 38.3%

• Southeast Raleigh High — 774 Black students, 24.5%

Notice something about these schools: their gaps are small. East Garner’s gap is 4.4 points. River Bend’s is 0.4. Southeast Raleigh’s is 2.9.

That looks like equity. It isn’t.

These gaps are narrow because the schools are struggling for everyone. River Bend Middle’s overall proficiency is 31.7% — barely above its Black student rate of 31.3%. Southeast Raleigh High’s overall rate is 27.4%.

So Wake County contains two distinct problems, and they require different answers. At schools like Lacy and Apex Elementary, a strong school is failing its Black students specifically. At schools like River Bend and Southeast Raleigh, the school is failing nearly everyone — and it happens to be where thousands of Black children are enrolled.

What’s working

Four schools stand out, and three of them share something in common.

Wake Early College of Information & Biotechnologies — 93.5% of Black students proficient, 62 tested Wake Early College of Health and Science — 91.7%, 72 tested Wake Young Men’s Leadership Academy — 90.0%, 160 tested Wake Young Women’s Leadership Academy — 84.7%, 163 tested

Two early colleges and two single-gender leadership academies. All four are application-based, which is a real caveat — they select their students, and selection effects are not the same as instruction effects.

But note what’s happening at the two leadership academies in particular. Wake Young Men’s Leadership Academy serves 160 Black students at 90% proficiency, with a gap of just 2.2 points. Its sister school serves 163 at 84.7%. These are schools founded explicitly to serve students of color in downtown Raleigh, and they are producing outcomes near the top of the district.

Mills Park Middle deserves separate mention: 80.1% of its 191 Black students are proficient. That’s the highest figure for any non-selective school in the county.

What Wake County families should do

Look up the specific school. Not the district. Not the town. The building your child will actually attend.

The district’s reputation tells you almost nothing about what will happen to a Black child inside it. A school can be excellent overall and still be one of the worst in the county for Black students — Lacy Elementary, at 74.2% overall and 16.7% for Black students, is the clearest example in the data.

Two numbers matter: what percentage of Black students are proficient, and how that compares to the school’s overall rate. If there’s a large gap, the school is working for some children and not others. If the overall number is also low, the school is struggling more broadly.

Both are worth knowing before you sign a lease.

A note on what this analysis excludes

We removed Wake County’s alternative schools from this analysis — SCORE Academy, Mount Vernon, River Oaks, Connections, and Mary Phillips. These programs serve students placed through disciplinary reassignment or credit recovery, and comparing them to traditional schools produces numbers that are technically accurate and substantively misleading. Including them would have made the district’s spread look larger than it is.

We also excluded schools with fewer than 25 Black students tested, where a handful of students can swing a percentage dramatically.

What remains is 185 schools and 45,824 Black students — the actual experience of Black families in Wake County.

Data source: North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, 2024–25 disaggregated performance data. Metric: percentage scoring Grade Level Proficient or above, all subjects combined. Search any Wake County school — or any school in North Carolina, Georgia, or Texas — at bearinglight.org.

When you look at a list of schools where Black students are thriving, the assumption almost writes itself: they must be magnets, early colleges, gifted academies. Schools with applications, waiting lists, and the ability to choose who attends.

That assumption is comfortable because it’s also an excuse. If excellence only happens at selective schools, then your neighborhood school was never going to be one of them.

So we checked.

Using 2024-25 TEA data, we identified every Texas school with at least 50 Black students tested where Black students are passing at 80% or higher and performing at or above the school’s own average. Not just doing well. Doing well relative to the school’s overall performance, which is the measure that separates a school serving Black children well from a school that simply happens to enroll them.

225 schools qualified.

Then we looked at what they had in common.

Finding 1: Most of them are ordinary schools

71% of the high-performing schools are traditional neighborhood schools. No magnet designation. No application. No selective admission. Just a neighborhood school with a bus route and an attendance boundary.

Selective schools are on the list, including early colleges, gifted academies, and magnets, but together they account for a minority of the schools. The single largest category is the plainest one.

And it holds at scale. Thirty-two traditional neighborhood schools have 300 or more Black students passing at 80% or above:

• David Crockett Middle (Fort Bend ISD) — 1,437 Black students, 81% passing

• South Oak Cliff High School (Dallas ISD) — 1,296 Black students, 80% passing

• Manvel High School (Alvin ISD) — 1,131 Black students, 89% passing

• Mansfield Timberview High School (Mansfield ISD) — 1,123 Black students, 84% passing

• Harker Heights High School (Killeen ISD) — 777 Black students, 85% passing

South Oak Cliff is worth pausing on. It is a neighborhood high school in southern Dallas, in a community that has spent decades being written about as a problem to be solved. It has 1,296 Black students tested. They pass at 80%, two points above the school’s own average.

Those students weren’t admitted through a selective process. They simply attend the neighborhood school assigned to their community.

Finding 2: The gap doesn’t just close. It reverses.

This is the finding that changed how we read the rest of the data.

Of the 225 high-performing schools, 172 — or 76% — have Black students outperforming the school’s overall average. Not matching it. Beating it.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A school where Black students match the average could simply be a school where everyone performs well. A school where Black students exceed the average is doing something specific, and doing it well enough that the student group many school systems have historically underserved is outperforming the school as a whole.

Cedar Hill Collegiate High School: Black students at 100%, school average 97%. Manvel High School: Black students 89%, school 88%. South Oak Cliff: 80% versus 78%.

The pattern isn’t simply “these schools are good, so Black students do well.” The data suggests something stronger: these schools are producing outcomes where Black students are performing as well as, or better than, the overall student body.

Finding 3: The schools are strong overall, but that’s not the whole story

Here’s the honest complication.

High-performing schools have a median school-wide pass rate of 83%. Schools where Black students pass below 50% have a median school-wide pass rate of 55%.

So yes, schools that work well for Black students also tend to be schools that perform well overall. Any explanation that ignores that fact is incomplete.

But that explanation is only part of the story. Plenty of schools post strong overall numbers while Black students trail the school average by 30 or 40 percentage points. We documented 50 of them in a previous analysis. A high school-wide average is important. It is not sufficient.

What separates the two groups isn’t simply whether the school performs well. It’s whether the school performs well for everyone in it.

Finding 4: High schools are overrepresented, and that deserves a caveat

The most dramatic split in the data:

• 25.3% of high-performing schools are high schools.

• 2.0% of struggling schools are high schools.

That is a substantial difference. But before treating it as proof that high schools are doing something extraordinary, there’s an important caveat.

High school accountability works differently. Students take end-of-course exams rather than grade-level tests. They may retake those exams. And, most importantly, the students who struggled the most may no longer be in the tested population. Some transferred. Some dropped out.

The high school results are real. They’re also measuring a student population that has already been filtered.

Meanwhile, elementary schools make up 51% of struggling schools but only 22.7% of high-performing schools. That aligns with a separate analysis we conducted: many achievement gaps are already well established before middle school begins. By the time students reach a high-performing high school, much of that sorting has already occurred.

Finding 5: It’s not concentrated in a handful of districts

If excellence were confined to a few well-resourced districts, that would be a discouraging finding. It would mean your options depend largely on where you can afford to live.

That’s not what the data shows.

Eighty-three Texas school districts have at least one high-performing school. The top 10 districts account for 42% of the list, meaning the remaining 58% is spread across 73 other districts.

The districts appearing most often are not necessarily the ones you’d expect:

• Dallas ISD — 19 schools

• Houston ISD — 15 schools

• IDEA Public Schools — 13 schools

• KIPP Texas — 9 schools

• Garland ISD, Socorro ISD, and Mansfield ISD — 7 each

Dallas ISD and Houston ISD lead the state. Both are large urban districts that often appear in national coverage because of their challenges. Both also contain some of the strongest outcomes in Texas for Black students.

Both things can be true. That’s exactly why it’s important to examine schools individually rather than judging an entire district by its average.

Socorro ISD, on the far edge of El Paso, has as many high-performing schools for Black students as Mansfield ISD. Yet it rarely appears in statewide conversations about educational success.

So what do they actually have in common?

Not a school model. Not a district. Not an admissions process. Not a zip code.

What these 225 schools have in common is that Black students perform at least as well as everyone else in the building. That’s not a description of a particular strategy. It’s a description of an outcome.

And the fact that this pattern appears across neighborhood schools and magnets, across Dallas and Socorro, across elementary schools and high schools, suggests there is no single program to copy.

That has different implications for districts and for families.

For districts, it removes one common explanation. If schools with very different student populations, budgets, locations, and governance models are all producing strong outcomes for Black students, then demographics alone cannot explain why other schools are not.

For families, it’s encouraging. It means a school’s reputation or zip code does not determine whether Black students can thrive there. Some of the strongest schools in Texas for Black students are ordinary neighborhood schools that rarely appear on “best schools” lists.

The only way to know is to look at the specific school.

What to do with this

Search your child’s school. Look at two numbers: the percentage of Black students meeting the standard and how that compares with the school’s overall pass rate.

If Black students are performing at or above the school’s overall average, that school has achieved something most Texas schools have not.

If there’s a gap, and at most schools there is, remember that it is not inevitable. Two hundred twenty-five schools across Texas, most of them ordinary neighborhood schools, demonstrate that every year.

Data source: Texas Education Agency TAPR 2024-25. Analysis includes all Texas schools with 50 or more Black students tested, using all-subject STAAR results. “High-performing” refers to schools where Black students passed at 80% or above and at or above the school’s overall pass rate. Full data is available at bearinglight.org.

There is a question at the center of this story.

If a city builds its identity around education, if its economy runs on a university, if its streets are named after scholars, and if its residents hold advanced degrees at rates that outpace much of the country, what does it mean when that city’s public schools leave Black children behind at every grade level tested, in every subject, year after year?

That is not a hypothetical.

That is College Station, Texas.

What the data shows

College Station ISD appears five times on our list of the 50 highest-rated Texas schools where Black students are being left behind, more than any other district in the state. Only one other district, Frisco ISD, appears as many as four times, and Frisco serves nearly four times as many students. The concentration of the problem in College Station is not explained by size. It is consistent and unmistakable.

Here is what the 2024-25 TEA TAPR data shows across College Station ISD schools:

A&M Consolidated Middle School
285 Black students. Overall pass rate: 74%. Black student pass rate: 41%. Gap: 33 percentage points across all subjects. In math, Black students pass at 31% compared with 71% schoolwide, a 40-point gap in a single subject at a single school.

Wellborn Middle School
285 Black students. Overall pass rate: 86%. Black student pass rate: 56%. Gap: 30 points. In a school where nearly 9 in 10 students are meeting the standard, barely more than half of Black students are.

Pecan Trail Intermediate
176 Black students. Overall pass rate: 86%. Black student pass rate: 55%. Gap: 31 points. In math, Black students pass at 53% while the school overall passes at 87%.

Cypress Grove Intermediate
218 Black students. Overall pass rate: 77%. Black student pass rate: 52%. Gap: 25 points.

College Station High School
405 Black students. Overall pass rate: 87%. Black student pass rate: 69%. Gap: 18 points.

A&M Consolidated High School
391 Black students. Overall pass rate: 87%. Black student pass rate: 72%. Gap: 15 points.

The gap does not disappear as students get older. It follows them. A Black child who enters College Station ISD in elementary school and remains through graduation can spend 13 years in a system where academic outcomes consistently trail those of their peers by 15 to 40 percentage points. The system does not appear to narrow those gaps over time. The pattern remains.

The math gap is the most alarming finding

Across every College Station ISD school on this list, math gaps are consistently larger than English language arts gaps.

At A&M Consolidated Middle, Black students pass math at 31%. At Wellborn Middle, 58%. At Pecan Trail Intermediate, 53%. At Cypress Grove Intermediate, 55%.

Math is a gateway subject. Success in middle school algebra opens doors to advanced math in high school, which in turn expands access to STEM majors, technical careers, and many of the highest-paying professions. A 40-point math gap in middle school is not simply an academic concern. It is a pipeline issue. Students who fall behind there often face fewer opportunities long before they apply to college.

That reality carries particular weight in a city whose largest employer is a university known for producing engineers.

The scale is significant

This is not a story about a handful of students.

Across these schools, hundreds of Black students are represented in the data. A&M Consolidated Middle School alone enrolls 285 Black students. College Station High School enrolls 405.

These are not statistical anomalies. They are children, and there are enough of them to make the pattern difficult to dismiss.

What makes College Station different

Every district on the worst-schools list has its own story.

Many rural districts in East Texas face genuine resource constraints. Small communities with limited tax bases confront structural challenges that are well documented.

College Station does not fit that profile.

Texas A&M University is the economic engine of the Brazos Valley. It employs thousands of people, generates billions in economic activity, and produces research on education, child development, and educational equity. Few school districts have comparable access to expertise and institutional resources.

Yet the data still shows Black students falling behind at every grade level represented here.

That raises a difficult question.

If the resources exist, why do the gaps persist?

The questions College Station ISD needs to answer

What percentage of Black students are enrolled in gifted and advanced coursework compared with their white peers?

What does the discipline data show for Black students at each school?

What specific interventions are in place for Black students performing below grade level?

What professional development has the district provided to teachers on addressing racial achievement gaps?

What does the district’s strategic plan say specifically about improving outcomes for Black students?

These are not unfair questions. They are questions any district should be prepared to answer when its public data looks like this.

The data is public.

The accountability should be, too.

A note to College Station ISD

This story is not an attack.

It is a mirror.

The achievement gaps in your district are documented, consistent, and significant. They appear in elementary school and remain through high school. That information is already available to your district.

The question is what you choose to do with it.

Black families in College Station deserve a district that acknowledges these gaps, measures its progress honestly, and commits to closing them.

Not in a press release.

In the data.

The same data that revealed this pattern will also show whether it changes.

We will be watching.

Data source: Texas Education Agency TAPR 2024-25. All figures reflect students meeting the Approaches Grade Level standard or higher on STAAR assessments. Data tool available at texastea.hbcugrad.org.

That is not an opinion. It is a pattern hiding in plain sight across Texas. Schools where the campus is well funded. Where the overall test scores earn praise. Where the principal sends home a newsletter every Friday talking about how great things are going. And where Black students are passing at rates 30, 40, even 54 points below everyone else in the building.

The gap does not show up in the headline number. It does not show up on the marquee out front. It does not show up in the district’s press release or the rating on the school website. It only shows up when you stop looking at how the school is doing and start asking how Black children specifically are doing.

We asked.

Using 2024–25 TEA TAPR data, we identified the 50 Texas schools with the largest gaps between the school’s overall passing rate and the passing rate for Black students specifically. These are not struggling schools. They are not underfunded. They are schools that work — beautifully, in many cases — for most of the children inside them.

Just not for Black children.

That is not an accident. And it is not acceptable.

They deserve to be named.

What the data measures

Every number in this list comes from the Texas Education Agency’s 2024–25 TAPR data. The metric is Approaches Grade Level or above on the STAAR test. The gap is the difference between the school’s overall passing rate and the passing rate for Black students specifically. A gap of 54 means the school overall passes at a rate 54 points higher than its Black students.

To be on this list, a school must have at least 25 Black students tested and an overall passing rate of 70% or higher. These are not failing schools. These are schools that look successful from the outside. That is exactly the point.

The schools

1. Kealing Middle — Austin ISD Black pass rate: 29% | School average: 83% | Gap: 54 points | Black students: 85

This is the largest gap on the list. 85 Black students at a middle school in Austin — a city that calls itself progressive, that uses the language of equity in every policy document and every school board meeting — where the school overall passes at 83% and Black students pass at 29%. That is not a gap. That is a different school entirely, sharing a building with the one everyone else attends. The children in that building can see each other. The data separating them is invisible to most of their parents.

2. Moss Haven Elementary — Richardson ISD Black pass rate: 24% | School average: 75% | Gap: 51 points | Black students: 34

34 Black children at an elementary school in Richardson, passing at 24%. That means roughly 8 out of every 34 Black students at Moss Haven are passing grade-level tests. The school overall passes at 75%. Something is happening in this building — in classrooms, in groupings, in expectations — that produces this result for Black children specifically. It did not happen by accident.

3. Academy Intermediate — Academy ISD Black pass rate: 37% | School average: 80% | Gap: 43 points | Black students: 27

A 43-point gap at an intermediate school. 27 Black students passing at 37% while the school overall passes at 80%. Academy ISD is a small district between Bryan and Waco that most Texans have never heard of. The children inside it are not invisible.

4. Hosp Elementary — Frisco ISD Black pass rate: 41% | School average: 83% | Gap: 42 points | Black students: 27

Frisco ISD is one of the wealthiest and fastest-growing districts in Texas. It will appear on this list four times. Resources are not the problem. What is happening to Black children in Frisco ISD is a choice — even if nobody in the district will name it that way.

5. John F Ward Elementary — Clear Creek ISD Black pass rate: 34% | School average: 76% | Gap: 42 points | Black students: 35

Clear Creek ISD serves the Houston suburbs south of the city — Friendswood, League City, Webster. 35 Black students at John F Ward Elementary passing at 34%. The school overall passes at 76%. These two numbers describe two different educational experiences inside one building.

6. Hallettsville Junior High — Hallettsville ISD Black pass rate: 39% | School average: 81% | Gap: 42 points | Black students: 49

49 Black students at a junior high in Hallettsville — a small town in South Texas — passing at 39%. In a school where the overall rate is 81%, fewer than 4 in 10 Black students are meeting grade level. The town is small. The gap is not.

7. Troup Middle — Troup ISD Black pass rate: 33% | School average: 74% | Gap: 41 points | Black students: 46

46 Black students in Troup, a small East Texas town, passing at 33%. East Texas has a long and documented history of racial inequity in its schools. The data in 2025 says that history has not resolved.

8. A & M Consolidated Middle — College Station ISD Black pass rate: 31% | School average: 71% | Gap: 40 points | Black students: 97

College Station is home to Texas A&M University. It is a city built around education, research, and the idea that knowledge is what matters most. 97 Black students at A&M Consolidated Middle — the school named for the university that defines this community — are passing at 31% while the school overall passes at 71%. College Station ISD will appear on this list four times. This is not one bad year or one struggling campus. This is a district-wide pattern in a city that has every resource it needs to produce a different result.

9. Bellville Junior High — Bellville ISD Black pass rate: 32% | School average: 71% | Gap: 39 points | Black students: 100

100 Black students. That number matters. 100 is enough to fill a room. 100 is enough to feel in your chest. And fewer than a third of them are passing grade-level tests in a school where 71% of students overall are passing. Bellville is a small town in Austin County, an hour west of Houston. The community is not large. The accountability owed to these 100 children is.

10. ILTexas College Station Elementary — International Leadership of Texas Black pass rate: 33% | School average: 72% | Gap: 39 points | Black students: 36

A charter school in College Station — a school that markets itself on leadership and excellence — where 36 Black students pass at 33% against a 72% school average. The branding and the data are in direct conflict.

11. Allen Elementary — Frisco ISD Black pass rate: 50% | School average: 88% | Gap: 38 points | Black students: 26

Frisco ISD appears for the second time. Half of Black students at Allen Elementary are passing while nearly 9 in 10 students overall pass. This is not a school that is struggling. It is a school that is thriving — for some children.

12. La Grange Middle — La Grange ISD Black pass rate: 39% | School average: 77% | Gap: 38 points | Black students: 62

62 Black middle schoolers in La Grange passing at 39%. La Grange sits in Fayette County, a community with deep historical ties to the German immigrants who settled it and a long history of Black residents whose contributions are less visible in the public narrative. The gap in the school data reflects a gap in something older.

13. Montgomery Junior High — Montgomery ISD Black pass rate: 37% | School average: 74% | Gap: 37 points | Black students: 41

Montgomery County is one of the fastest-growing counties in Texas. Families move there for the schools. 41 Black students at Montgomery Junior High passing at 37% while the school overall passes at 74%. What Black families are arriving to find is not what was advertised.

14. Crockett Middle — Amarillo ISD Black pass rate: 45% | School average: 82% | Gap: 37 points | Black students: 49

49 Black students in Amarillo passing at 45% in a school that overall passes at 82%. West Texas is not often part of the equity conversation in Texas education. The data says it should be.

15. McCallum H S — Austin ISD Black pass rate: 48% | School average: 85% | Gap: 37 points | Black students: 65

Austin ISD appears for the second time. Kealing Middle at number one. McCallum High School here. The gap follows Black students from middle school to high school in the same district, in the same city, under the same leadership. That is not a school problem. That is a system that is not designed to serve Black children, regardless of what the system says about itself.

16. Lamar Middle — Austin ISD Black pass rate: 48% | School average: 85% | Gap: 37 points | Black students: 27

Three Austin ISD schools in the top 16 on this list. The middle school years in Austin ISD are where Black children fall furthest behind — and the data shows they never fully recover by the time they reach high school.

17. Northwood Elementary — North East ISD Black pass rate: 44% | School average: 80% | Gap: 36 points | Black students: 27

North East ISD covers the northeast suburbs of San Antonio. 27 Black students at Northwood Elementary passing at 44% against an 80% school average. San Antonio is a majority-minority city. The inequity in its school districts does not get the same attention as Houston or Dallas. The data does not care about attention.

18. William Lipscomb Elementary — Dallas ISD Black pass rate: 41% | School average: 77% | Gap: 36 points | Black students: 27

Dallas ISD is a district that appears on both the best and worst lists. At Lipscomb Elementary, 27 Black students pass at 41% while the school overall passes at 77%. What a district believes about Black children shows up differently on different campuses. This campus is showing one version of that belief.

19. White Rock Elementary — Richardson ISD Black pass rate: 51% | School average: 87% | Gap: 36 points | Black students: 102

Richardson ISD appears for the second time. 102 Black students at White Rock Elementary passing at 51% while the school overall passes at 87%. Richardson ISD has now produced two of the worst gaps in the state — Moss Haven at number two and White Rock here. That is a district with a documented pattern, not two isolated incidents.

20. Meadow Wood Elementary — Spring Branch ISD Black pass rate: 42% | School average: 78% | Gap: 36 points | Black students: 38

Spring Branch ISD serves the west Houston suburbs. 38 Black students at Meadow Wood Elementary passing at 42%. The Houston metro contains some of the best and worst outcomes for Black students in Texas. The difference between those outcomes is not geography. It is what the adults in each building have decided to do.

21. Redwater Intermediate — Redwater ISD Black pass rate: 46% | School average: 81% | Gap: 35 points | Black students: 28

Redwater is a small town in Bowie County in far Northeast Texas, near the Arkansas border. 28 Black students. A 35-point gap. Small towns produce small numbers, but the percentage tells the same story as every large district on this list.

22. Pebble Creek Elementary — College Station ISD Black pass rate: 46% | School average: 81% | Gap: 35 points | Black students: 48

College Station ISD appears for the third time. Elementary school, middle school, and now another elementary. The gap in College Station ISD is not grade-level specific. It is present wherever Black children are enrolled.

23. Borchardt Elementary — Frisco ISD Black pass rate: 58% | School average: 93% | Gap: 35 points | Black students: 26

Frisco ISD appears for the third time. 58% of Black students passing in a school that overall passes at 93%. Borchardt Elementary is by most measures an exceptional school. For Black children, it is not.

24. Kay Granger Elementary — Northwest ISD Black pass rate: 52% | School average: 87% | Gap: 35 points | Black students: 25

Kay Granger Elementary is named for the Texas congresswoman who represented the Fort Worth area for decades. 25 Black students pass at 52% while the school overall passes at 87%. The school’s name is a reminder that the institutions of public life in Texas were built by people who did not always have Black children in mind.

25. Hubbard H S — Hubbard ISD Black pass rate: 43% | School average: 78% | Gap: 35 points | Black students: 28

Hubbard is a town of about 1,500 people in Hill County south of Waco. 28 Black students at Hubbard High School passing at 43%. Small districts in rural Texas are not exempt from accountability. The children inside them are not exempt from deserving better.

26. Van Vleck H S — Van Vleck ISD Black pass rate: 47% | School average: 82% | Gap: 35 points | Black students: 57

Van Vleck is a small community in Matagorda County near Bay City. 57 Black students passing at 47%. Nearly half of Black students at this high school are not meeting grade level while the school overall passes at 82%.

27. Ouida Springer Elementary — Rockwall ISD Black pass rate: 41% | School average: 76% | Gap: 35 points | Black students: 27

Rockwall County is one of the fastest-growing counties in Texas, drawing families from Dallas who want smaller-town schools with strong reputations. 27 Black students at Ouida Springer passing at 41%. The reputation being built in Rockwall is not being built on Black children’s success.

28. Steubing Ranch Elementary — North East ISD Black pass rate: 48% | School average: 82% | Gap: 34 points | Black students: 40

North East ISD appears for the second time. Two schools, two entries. 40 Black students at Steubing Ranch Elementary passing at 48% against an 82% school average. The pattern in North East ISD is consistent.

29. Pecan Trail Intermediate — College Station ISD Black pass rate: 53% | School average: 87% | Gap: 34 points | Black students: 72

College Station ISD appears for the fourth time. Four schools. Four entries. Elementary, intermediate, and middle school all represented. The gap in College Station ISD follows Black children at every grade level. A university town with a research university studying child development, educational equity, and cognitive science cannot plausibly claim it does not know how to close this gap. It has chosen not to.

30. Yoakum H S — Yoakum ISD Black pass rate: 50% | School average: 84% | Gap: 34 points | Black students: 34

Yoakum is a South Texas town of about 6,000 people. 34 Black students at Yoakum High School passing at 50% in a school that overall passes at 84%. Half of Black students at this high school are not grade-level ready. The town is small enough that everyone knows everyone. The adults responsible for this outcome know the children it belongs to.

31. Fairmont Elementary — Deer Park ISD Black pass rate: 50% | School average: 84% | Gap: 34 points | Black students: 32

Deer Park ISD sits in the industrial corridor east of Houston. 32 Black students passing at 50% at Fairmont Elementary. This is a community shaped by the petrochemical industry — a community that has produced enormous wealth. Some of that wealth funds these schools. It is not reaching Black children.

32. Azle H S — Azle ISD Black pass rate: 40% | School average: 74% | Gap: 34 points | Black students: 25

Azle is a city on the western edge of the Fort Worth metro. 25 Black students at Azle High School passing at 40% while the school overall passes at 74%. The Fort Worth suburbs are growing rapidly. The question of whether Black families can trust those growing communities with their children’s education is one the data is answering.

33. Sonntag Elementary — Frisco ISD Black pass rate: 49% | School average: 82% | Gap: 33 points | Black students: 95

Frisco ISD appears for the fourth and final time. 95 Black students. A 33-point gap. Four schools, hundreds of Black children, consistent outcomes that the district’s overall reputation conceals entirely. Frisco ISD is one of the most celebrated school districts in Texas. This is what that celebration has been built on top of.

34. Reuben Johnson Elementary — McKinney ISD Black pass rate: 41% | School average: 74% | Gap: 33 points | Black students: 27

McKinney ISD serves one of the fastest-growing cities in the country. 27 Black students at Reuben Johnson Elementary passing at 41%. Growth does not automatically produce equity. McKinney’s data proves it.

35. Brownsboro H S — Brownsboro ISD Black pass rate: 45% | School average: 78% | Gap: 33 points | Black students: 33

Brownsboro is a small city east of Tyler in Henderson County. 33 Black students at Brownsboro High School passing at 45% against a 78% school average. East Texas counties like Henderson have histories that shape present-day school culture in ways the aggregate data obscures. The disaggregated data does not.

36. Little Cypress-Mauriceville H S — Little Cypress-Mauriceville CISD Black pass rate: 43% | School average: 76% | Gap: 33 points | Black students: 47

Little Cypress-Mauriceville is a community on the outskirts of Orange in Southeast Texas near the Louisiana border. 47 Black students passing at 43%. Southeast Texas has a significant Black population and a history of racial segregation in its schools that legally ended decades ago. The data suggests the educational separation did not fully end with the law.

37. Onalaska Elementary — Onalaska ISD Black pass rate: 48% | School average: 81% | Gap: 33 points | Black students: 27

Onalaska is a small community on Lake Livingston in Polk County. 27 Black students at Onalaska Elementary passing at 48%. Small districts in rural Texas are not small problems. They are the same problem at a scale that makes it easier to ignore.

38. Davis Elementary — Austin ISD Black pass rate: 41% | School average: 74% | Gap: 33 points | Black students: 44

Austin ISD appears for the fourth time. Davis Elementary brings the total to four campuses on this list — middle schools and an elementary school — all showing consistent 30-plus point gaps for Black students. The pattern in Austin ISD begins in elementary school. It does not resolve at middle school or high school. It compounds.

39. J K Hileman Elementary — Queen City ISD Black pass rate: 46% | School average: 78% | Gap: 32 points | Black students: 26

Queen City is a small town in Cass County in far Northeast Texas. 26 Black students passing at 46%. Cass County is one of the counties in Texas with the longest history of racial violence and exclusion. The school data in 2025 carries that history forward in a form that is legal, invisible to most, and devastating to the children living inside it.

40. Anahuac Elementary — Anahuac ISD Black pass rate: 38% | School average: 70% | Gap: 32 points | Black students: 29

Anahuac is the seat of Chambers County on Galveston Bay. 29 Black students at Anahuac Elementary passing at 38% in a school where 70% of students overall pass. This school barely meets the 70% threshold to appear on this list — and it still has a 32-point gap for Black students. The floor and the ceiling are both low here.

41. Smith Elementary — Frisco ISD Black pass rate: 54% | School average: 86% | Gap: 32 points | Black students: 52

The fourth Frisco ISD school and the final appearance. Together, Frisco ISD’s four entries on this list represent hundreds of Black students across elementary and middle school. The gap is not concentrated in one school or one grade level. It is the experience of being a Black child in Frisco ISD.

42. Hightower Elementary — Plano ISD Black pass rate: 60% | School average: 92% | Gap: 32 points | Black students: 62

Plano ISD. One of the most resourced school districts in the state. 62 Black students at Hightower Elementary passing at 60% while the school overall passes at 92%. When a school passes at 92% overall and 60% for Black students, that school has not solved education. It has solved it for some children and accepted an outcome for Black children that it would never accept for anyone else.

43. Watauga Elementary — Birdville ISD Black pass rate: 42% | School average: 74% | Gap: 32 points | Black students: 31

Birdville ISD covers the northeast Fort Worth suburbs. 31 Black students at Watauga Elementary passing at 42%. Fort Worth is a city that has been slower to attract the national education equity conversation than Austin or Houston. The data says the conversation is overdue.

44. Alice Carlson Applied Learning Center — Fort Worth ISD Black pass rate: 53% | School average: 85% | Gap: 32 points | Black students: 30

An applied learning school inside Fort Worth ISD where 30 Black students pass at 53% against an 85% school average. Fort Worth ISD also has schools that appear on the best list. The distance between those schools and this one is not measured in miles. It is measured in decisions.

45. Murchison Middle — Austin ISD Black pass rate: 49% | School average: 81% | Gap: 32 points | Black students: 130

130 Black students. Austin ISD’s fourth and final entry on this list. Kealing at the top with 54 points. Murchison here with 32. McCallum High School. Davis Elementary. Four schools across four grade levels. This is what a district looks like when the gap is baked into the culture rather than treated as a crisis.

46. Bar W Elementary — Liberty Hill ISD Black pass rate: 55% | School average: 87% | Gap: 32 points | Black students: 31

Liberty Hill is a fast-growing community north of Austin in Williamson County. 31 Black students at Bar W Elementary passing at 55% against an 87% school average. The communities building new schools fastest in Texas are not always building equity into the foundation.

47. Cedar Park Middle — Leander ISD Black pass rate: 59% | School average: 91% | Gap: 32 points | Black students: 29

Leander ISD is another high-growth district in Williamson County north of Austin. 29 Black students at Cedar Park Middle passing at 59% while the school overall passes at 91%. The Austin suburb corridor — Liberty Hill, Cedar Park, Leander, Round Rock — is producing consistent gaps for Black students that rarely get named publicly.

48. Thousand Oaks Elementary — North East ISD Black pass rate: 39% | School average: 70% | Gap: 31 points | Black students: 31

North East ISD appears for the third time. Three campuses, three entries on this list. 31 Black students at Thousand Oaks Elementary passing at 39% in a school that barely passes the 70% threshold. North East ISD has a pattern. It deserves the same scrutiny as College Station and Austin.

49. Sweeny H S — Sweeny ISD Black pass rate: 43% | School average: 74% | Gap: 31 points | Black students: 40

Sweeny is a small community in Brazoria County south of Houston. 40 Black students at Sweeny High School passing at 43%. The Gulf Coast corridor between Houston and Corpus Christi has a significant Black population whose education outcomes rarely generate headlines. The data says they should.

50. Creek View Elementary — College Station ISD Black pass rate: 46% | School average: 77% | Gap: 31 points | Black students: 26

College Station ISD closes this list the same way it ran through it. Four schools. Four entries. Elementary school to intermediate to middle and back to elementary. A university town with every resource, every credential, and every reason to produce a different result — and a documented, consistent, multi-grade-level pattern of leaving Black children behind. The university studies educational equity. The school district produces the gap.

The districts that keep appearing

Some districts appear on this list once. Others appear again and again. That distinction matters more than any individual school entry.

A single school with a large gap can be explained in many ways — a difficult year, a teacher transition, an unusual cohort. Those explanations are often wrong, but they are available. When a district appears four times on a list of the worst gaps in Texas, the explanations run out. What remains is a pattern. And a pattern is a policy, even when nobody has written it down.

Austin ISD appears four times — Kealing Middle, McCallum High School, Lamar Middle, Murchison Middle, and Davis Elementary. The gap starts in elementary school and follows Black children through middle school and into high school. Austin is a city that uses the word equity constantly. The data measures what equity actually produces, not what it promises.

Frisco ISD appears four times — Hosp, Allen, Borchardt, Sonntag, Smith. The gaps range from 32 to 42 points. Frisco ISD has among the highest property values and best-funded schools in Texas. Its overall scores are excellent. Its Black student outcomes are not. There is no resource explanation for this. There is only a priorities explanation.

College Station ISD appears four times — A&M Consolidated Middle, Pebble Creek Elementary, Pecan Trail Intermediate, Creek View Elementary. From elementary school through middle school, Black students in College Station ISD fall behind at every level. Texas A&M University sits in this city. The university’s education researchers study exactly this problem. The school district next door produces exactly this problem.

Richardson ISD appears twice — Moss Haven Elementary at number two on the entire list, and White Rock Elementary at number 19. Richardson ISD has two of the worst individual campus gaps in the state. That is not a coincidence. That is a district.

North East ISD appears three times. Three San Antonio-area campuses with consistent 31 to 36-point gaps.

Why this happens in high-performing schools

The gap in high-performing schools is not random. It is produced — not always consciously, not always with malicious intent, but produced nonetheless by decisions that accumulate into outcomes.

Advanced course access is tracked by race whether schools acknowledge it or not. In schools with high overall pass rates, the students driving those numbers are disproportionately white and Asian. Black students are underrepresented in gifted programs, pre-AP courses, and honors tracks at rates that are documented and consistent. When a school’s overall pass rate is driven by a population that Black students are not equally part of, the gap in the data is not a mystery. It is a measurement of who the advanced instruction was for.

Discipline disparities steal instructional time. Black students are suspended, sent to the office, and removed from classrooms at higher rates than any other group — in low-income districts and in wealthy ones, in cities and in suburbs. Every hour a child spends outside the classroom is an hour without instruction. The cumulative effect of disproportionate discipline over a school year is significant. Over twelve years, it is enormous. The gap does not appear in one test. It accumulates through thousands of small exclusions.

Belonging is not a soft skill. It is a prerequisite for learning. In schools where Black students are a small minority, research consistently shows lower academic engagement, lower sense of belonging, and lower outcomes — unless the school actively builds an environment where Black students are seen, represented, and valued. Most schools on this list have not done that work. The data shows it.

Low expectations compound. When a teacher looks at a Black child and unconsciously lowers the bar — assigns easier work, skips the harder question, accepts the incomplete answer — that child learns less. When that happens in first grade, and second grade, and third grade, by middle school the gap is not a gap anymore. It is a canyon. The tragedy is that most of this does not happen because anyone is cruel. It happens because the system was never designed to interrupt it.

The 50 schools on the best list prove that none of this is inevitable. Cedar Hill ISD eliminated the gap entirely. Harmony Public Schools is producing 99% and 100% pass rates for Black students on campus after campus. The gap is not destiny. It is a choice — made slowly, invisibly, and consistently — about which children deserve the most of what a school has to offer.

What the data demands

This list is not an ending. It is a beginning.

Every district named here has access to this data. Every principal on this list can look up their own school’s numbers. The gap is not new information to the people responsible for closing it. What has been missing is the public accountability that comes from naming it.

If your child attends a school on this list — or if the tool shows a significant gap at your child’s school — you have the right to ask for answers. Not reassurances. Not strategies. Answers.

What is the Black student pass rate at this school, and how has it changed over the last three years?

What percentage of Black students are enrolled in gifted, advanced, and honors courses compared to their share of the student population?

What does the discipline data show for Black students, and what has the district done to address it?

What specific interventions exist for Black students who are performing below grade level, and how are those interventions different from what is offered to other students?

What is the plan to close the gap, and what does accountability look like if the plan does not produce results?

The data is public. These questions are yours to ask. And the parents who ask them — in school board meetings, in principal conferences, in the comment sections of district newsletters — are the ones who make it harder for the gap to stay invisible.

A final word

Behind every number on this list is a child.

A child who went to school that morning. Who sat in a classroom. Who was taught by adults who, in many cases, genuinely care about children. And who is still not passing grade-level tests at the same rate as the child sitting next to them.

That child deserves the same education. Not a separate-but-equal version of it. Not a version filtered through lower expectations or fewer opportunities or a discipline policy that removes them from the room where learning happens. The same education.

These 50 schools are being named because the gap they are producing has been allowed to exist without consequence for too long. The children inside these schools do not have the luxury of waiting for the adults to decide the gap matters.

It already does.

Data source: Texas Education Agency TAPR 2024–25. Metric: Approaches Grade Level and above on STAAR. Minimum 25 Black students tested. Schools with an overall passing rate of 70% or higher. Ranked by gap between school average and Black student pass rate. Tool available at bearinglight.org.

Not the school’s overall rating. Not the district average. Not the grade on the marquee out front. The number that tells you exactly how Black children are performing at a specific school, compared to every other group in that building.

When you see that number — really see it — one of two things happens.

You feel the weight of what your child’s school is not doing.

Or you feel something rarer. You feel what’s possible.

This article is about what’s possible.

In Texas, only 23% of schools earn an A for Black students. The gap between the best and worst schools for Black children in the state is 100 points. Most families spend years inside a school system without ever knowing where their child’s school falls on that spectrum. They trust the process. They show up to open house. They sign the folders that come home every Monday.

They deserve more than that.

Scattered across Texas, in suburbs and small cities and districts you’ve probably never heard of, there are schools where Black students are passing at 90, 95, even 100%. Not as an exception. As the norm. These are schools where the adults decided that what was happening everywhere else wasn’t acceptable for their students. And then they built something different.

225 Texas schools meet that standard. This article names the top 50.

They were identified using 2024–25 TEA TAPR data, looking specifically at schools where at least 50 Black students were tested, where Black students pass at 80% or higher across all subjects, and where Black students perform at or above the school’s overall average.

That last condition is the one that matters most. A school can post strong numbers while Black students trail badly behind — we documented 50 of those in a separate piece. Every school on this list clears a harder bar: Black students are doing at least as well as everyone else in the building.

They deserve to be named.

What the data measures

Every number comes from the Texas Education Agency’s 2024–25 TAPR data. The metric is Approaches Grade Level or above on STAAR, across all subjects combined — not a single subject in isolation.

That distinction matters, and it’s what the correction above was about. A school can post an outstanding reading score while its math results lag. Using all-subjects data gives a fuller and more honest picture of what a student’s education actually looks like.

“Above school average” means Black students are outperforming the campus as a whole. On this list, that is the rule rather than the exception.

The 50 schools

1. Cedar Hill Collegiate H S — Cedar Hill ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 97% | Black students tested: 218 | +3 above school average Every Black student tested passed — 218 of them — and they did it three points above the school’s own average. Cedar Hill ISD is a majority-Black district in southwest Dallas County. This is what it looks like when a district builds for the students it actually serves.

2. Tyler ISD Early College H S — Tyler ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 99% | Black students tested: 100 | +1 above school average One hundred Black students. One hundred percent passing. In East Texas, in a city whose school desegregation case ran into the 1970s.

3. Arlington Collegiate H S — Arlington ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 99% | Black students tested: 100 | +1 above school average Another hundred students, another perfect rate. Early college high schools appear on this list more than any other model.

4. James M Steele Early College H S — Northwest ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 99% | Black students tested: 55 | +1 above school average A third early college in the top four. The pattern is not subtle.

5. Kerr H S — Alief ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 100% | Black students tested: 165 | even with school average 165 Black students passing at 100% — matching a school where everyone passes. Alief is one of the most diverse districts in the country.

6. Alief Early College H S — Alief ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 100% | Black students tested: 118 | even with school average Alief ISD twice in the top six. Two different campuses, two different models, the same result.

7. Mansfield Frontier STEM Academy — Mansfield ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 100% | Black students tested: 101 | even with school average A STEM academy where 101 Black students all passed. The idea that STEM is where Black students fall behind does not survive contact with this data.

8. Judge Barefoot Sanders Law Magnet — Dallas ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 100% | Black students tested: 90 | even with school average Named for the federal judge who oversaw Dallas ISD’s desegregation for two decades. Ninety Black students. All passing.

9. Carver Center — Midland ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 100% | Black students tested: 83 | even with school average Named for George Washington Carver, in an oil town in West Texas that rarely appears in conversations about educational excellence.

10. School Of Health Professions — Dallas ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 100% | Black students tested: 77 | even with school average Seventy-seven Black students on a path toward medicine, nursing, and public health. All of them passing.

11. School For The Highly Gifted — Grand Prairie ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 100% | Black students tested: 72 | even with school average Gifted programs are where Black students are most consistently underrepresented statewide. Not here.

12. Challenge Early College H S — Houston ISD

Black pass rate: 100% | School average: 100% | Black students tested: 57 | even with school average The fourth early college in the top twelve, in the state’s largest district.

13. Harmony Science Academy-Sugar Land — Harmony Public Schools

Black pass rate: 99% | School average: 98% | Black students tested: 213 | +1 above school average 213 Black students at 99%, above the school average. Harmony appears repeatedly on this list across multiple campuses.

14. Kinder H S For Performing And Visual Arts — Houston ISD

Black pass rate: 99% | School average: 98% | Black students tested: 182 | +1 above school average 182 Black students at one of the most competitive arts schools in the country — outperforming the building.

15. Judson Early College Academy — Judson ISD

Black pass rate: 99% | School average: 98% | Black students tested: 90 | +1 above school average Judson serves northeast San Antonio and a large military-connected population.

16. BASIS San Antonio Shavano Campus — BASIS Texas

Black pass rate: 99% | School average: 99% | Black students tested: 111 | even with school average 111 Black students matching a school average of 99%.

17. Harmony Science Academy-Houston — Harmony Public Schools

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 87% | Black students tested: 164 | +11 above school average Read that gap again. Black students pass at 98% while the school overall passes at 87%. Black students are not catching up here — they are carrying the building.

18. R V Groves Elementary — Wylie ISD

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 87% | Black students tested: 84 | +11 above school average The second eleven-point advantage on this list. Wylie ISD, northeast of Dallas, is a district almost nobody writes about.

19. Blanson CTE H S — Aldine ISD

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 95% | Black students tested: 145 | +3 above school average Career and technical education is often treated as the lesser track. 145 Black students at 98% says otherwise.

20. iUniversity Prep — Grapevine-Colleyville ISD

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 96% | Black students tested: 148 | +2 above school average A fully online public school where 148 Black students pass at 98%.

21. Arlington College And Career H S — Arlington ISD

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 96% | Black students tested: 65 | +2 above school average Arlington ISD’s second appearance.

22. George B Dealey Montessori Academy — Dallas ISD

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 97% | Black students tested: 131 | +1 above school average Montessori inside a large urban district, with 131 Black students above the school average.

23. SST Sugar Land College Prep H S — School Of Science And Technology

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 97% | Black students tested: 130 | +1 above school average 130 Black students at a college prep charter in Fort Bend County.

24. Carl Wunsche Sr H S — Spring ISD

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 98% | Black students tested: 596 | even with school average 596 Black students. The largest school in the top twenty-five, and the number that should end any argument that this only works at small scale.

25. Young Women’s Leadership Academy — Midland ISD

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 98% | Black students tested: 97 | even with school average A school built specifically for young women, in West Texas.

26. Talkington School For Young Women Leaders — Lubbock ISD

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 98% | Black students tested: 89 | even with school average The second all-girls school on this list. Both at 98%.

27. Henry W Longfellow Career Exploration Academy — Dallas ISD

Black pass rate: 98% | School average: 98% | Black students tested: 84 | even with school average Dallas ISD’s fourth appearance in the top thirty.

28. Dr Kirk Lewis Career And Technical H S — Pasadena ISD

Black pass rate: 97% | School average: 91% | Black students tested: 62 | +6 above school average Six points above the school average at a CTE campus in the Houston area.

29. Kimberlin Academy For Excellence — Garland ISD

Black pass rate: 97% | School average: 96% | Black students tested: 125 | +1 above school average 125 Black students above the school average in a district serving northeast Dallas County.

30. Houston Academy For International Studies — Houston ISD

Black pass rate: 97% | School average: 97% | Black students tested: 164 | even with school average 164 Black students matching a 97% school average.

31. Hornedo Middle — El Paso ISD

Black pass rate: 96% | School average: 87% | Black students tested: 76 | +9 above school average Nine points above the school average, in a city where Black students are a small minority — which usually predicts worse outcomes, not better.

32. Randolph Elementary — Randolph Field ISD

Black pass rate: 96% | School average: 94% | Black students tested: 114 | +2 above school average A military-connected district near San Antonio.

33. Campbell Elementary — Katy ISD

Black pass rate: 96% | School average: 95% | Black students tested: 118 | +1 above school average 118 Black students in a fast-growing Houston suburb.

34. John A Dubiski Career H S — Grand Prairie ISD

Black pass rate: 95% | School average: 87% | Black students tested: 167 | +8 above school average 167 Black students, eight points above the school average, at a career high school.

35. Mahaffey Elementary — Klein Isd

Black pass rate: 95% | School average: 89% | Black students tested: 101 | +6 above school average Six points above the school average in north Harris County.

36. BASIS San Antonio Primary North Central — BASIS Texas

Black pass rate: 95% | School average: 90% | Black students tested: 66 | +5 above school average BASIS Texas’s second appearance.

37. Young Women’s Leadership Academy — Aldine ISD

Black pass rate: 95% | School average: 95% | Black students tested: 202 | even with school average 202 Black girls at 95%. The third all-girls school on this list, and the largest.

38. Dallas Environmental Science Academy — Dallas ISD

Black pass rate: 95% | School average: 95% | Black students tested: 61 | even with school average Dallas ISD again — five campuses now.

39. Col John O Ensor Middle — Socorro ISD

Black pass rate: 94% | School average: 87% | Black students tested: 52 | +7 above school average Socorro, on the far edge of El Paso, with Black students seven points above the school average.

40. Watson Technology Center — Garland ISD

Black pass rate: 94% | School average: 88% | Black students tested: 138 | +6 above school average 138 Black students, six points above the building.

41. Harmony School Of Innovation - Katy — Harmony Public Schools

Black pass rate: 94% | School average: 90% | Black students tested: 552 | +4 above school average 552 Black students, four points above the school average. Scale and performance together.

42. Robert G Cole Middle/High School — Ft Sam Houston ISD

Black pass rate: 94% | School average: 93% | Black students tested: 199 | +1 above school average A school on an active Army post in San Antonio.

43. Sherry And Paul Hamm Elementary — Rockwall ISD

Black pass rate: 94% | School average: 93% | Black students tested: 77 | +1 above school average Rockwall, northeast of Dallas.

44. Central Elementary — Dallas ISD

Black pass rate: 94% | School average: 93% | Black students tested: 67 | +1 above school average Dallas ISD’s sixth campus on this list.

45. Swenke Elementary — Cypress-Fairbanks ISD

Black pass rate: 94% | School average: 94% | Black students tested: 70 | even with school average Cy-Fair is one of the largest districts in Texas.

46. SSG Manuel R Puentes — Socorro ISD

Black pass rate: 93% | School average: 84% | Black students tested: 136 | +9 above school average Socorro’s second appearance, with a nine-point advantage.

47. Coppell Classical Academy — Texas College Preparatory Academies

Black pass rate: 93% | School average: 87% | Black students tested: 61 | +6 above school average Six points above the school average.

48. SST The Woodlands — School Of Science And Technology

Black pass rate: 93% | School average: 88% | Black students tested: 120 | +5 above school average 120 Black students, five points above the building.

49. West Plains H S — Canyon Isd

Black pass rate: 93% | School average: 89% | Black students tested: 56 | +4 above school average In the Texas Panhandle, outside Amarillo.

50. Edward Roberson Middle — Spring ISD

Black pass rate: 93% | School average: 92% | Black students tested: 572 | +1 above school average 572 Black students — the second largest school on this list. Spring ISD appears twice, with Carl Wunsche at #24. Two campuses, over 1,100 Black students between them, both above their school averages.

What these schools have in common

Look at the list long enough and the patterns surface.

Early college and collegiate programs dominate the top. Four of the top twelve are early college high schools. When a school tells a Black student from day one that college is the expectation rather than a possibility, and organizes everything around that, the results follow.

Schools built for young women appear three times — Midland, Lubbock, and Aldine — all at 95% or higher. Aldine’s serves 202 Black girls.

Scale is not the obstacle it’s assumed to be. Carl Wunsche in Spring ISD serves 596 Black students at 98%. Edward Roberson Middle, same district, serves 572 at 93%. Harmony’s Katy campus serves 552 at 94%. Over 1,700 Black students across just those three schools.

Two schools show Black students outperforming their campus by eleven points — Harmony Science Academy-Houston and R V Groves Elementary in Wylie ISD. In those buildings, Black students aren’t catching up. They’re setting the pace.

Dallas ISD appears six times. Houston ISD, Arlington, Alief, Socorro, Garland, and Spring all appear more than once. These are not exclusively wealthy suburban districts. Several are large urban systems that appear in national coverage mainly as cautionary tales.

What to do with this

Look up your child’s school. Compare two numbers: the Black student pass rate, and the school’s overall average.

If Black students are at or above that average, the school has cleared a bar that most Texas schools do not.

If there’s a gap, that gap is not inevitable. Two hundred twenty-five schools in this state are proof.

Data source: Texas Education Agency TAPR 2024–25. Metric: Approaches Grade Level and above on STAAR. Minimum 50 Black students tested. Schools where Black students pass at 80% or higher and at or above the school average. Tool available at bearinglight.org.

I set out to answer a question that every Black parent in Texas deserves an honest answer to. Is the school my child attends actually serving them?

Not serving kids in general. Not serving the district average. Serving Black children specifically.

When I started pulling the data from the Texas Education Agency, I wasn’t prepared for what I found. The gap between the best and worst schools for Black students in Texas is 100 points. One hundred points. That means a Black child at the wrong school is passing grade-level tests at a rate 100 points lower than a Black child at the right school. Same state. Same tests. Same children. Different outcomes entirely.

Most families have no idea where their child’s school falls on that spectrum. The data is public. It’s been public the whole time. But it’s buried in spreadsheets that were never designed for a parent sitting at a kitchen table trying to make the best decision for their child.

So I built something that was.

texastea.hbcugrad.org lets any Black family in Texas look up any school in the state and see exactly how Black students are performing compared to every other group, using the most recent TEA data available. It takes 30 seconds. It’s free. And it will tell you something your child’s school probably never will.

That’s why The Light Bearer exists.

The tool was the beginning. This publication is what comes next. Data-driven stories about what’s really happening to Black students across Texas and eventually across the country. The schools that are getting it right. The ones that aren’t. The districts hiding behind good overall numbers while Black children fall further behind every year.

No fluff. Just the truth, with receipts.

If you’re a Black parent, this is for you. If you’re an educator who knows something is wrong and wants the data to prove it, this is for you. If you’re anyone who believes that where a child is born should not determine whether they learn to read, this is for you.

Rashad
The Light Bearer