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At Southside Independent School District’s Pearce Elementary, fifth graders sat in pairs for an interactive science lesson on the environment just a few days before the end of the school year.
Their teacher, Emily Castor, draws sticks from a cup to choose students to ask questions.
“Lucy,” Castor called.
“How can deforestation affect the animals’ population?” asked Lucy.
“They would lose their habitat,” Castor said. “But if they don't have the resources they need, what could happen, Kathlyn?”
“They could perish,” Kathlyn said.
“They could perish,” Castor agreed. “And thank you for using that vocabulary word.”
They’re discussing the impact humans have on the environment. But they’re also learning vocabulary. It’s part of Southside’s intentional focus on building students’ literacy.
As Castor put it: “I like to think reading and science go hand in hand.”
Southside’s focus on reading over the past five years has paid off. While most districts’ average scores are lower than they were in 2019, Southside’s reading score has gone up half a grade level, according to an analysis of state and national tests called the Education Recovery Scorecard.
The research from professors at Harvard and Stanford University found that most school districts across the country are still working to catch students up from the pandemic. But a small percentage of districts have managed to bring their scores on standardized tests back up to where they were before the pandemic, or sometimes even higher.
Southside and its neighbor Somerset ISD are among those select few —numbering less than a dozen across all of Texas.
Even more impressive: Southside defied the odds for districts with students navigating the challenges of poverty and historically disadvantaged backgrounds.
“The highest poverty districts and the districts enrolling the highest proportions of Black and Hispanic students have seen bigger declines in test scores from 2019 to 2024 than the whiter and more affluent districts,” said Stanford University Professor Sean Reardon, one of the researchers behind the Scorecard.
Southside is located on the southern edge of Bexar County south of Highway 90. Most of its schools are grouped together on one campus along US 281. Nearly 90% of their 6,000 students come from low-income families; 92% are Hispanic.
So, how did Southside do it? School and district leaders point to effective curriculum taught consistently in every classroom.
Brittany Vincent, an instructional coach at the district’s early childhood center, said COVID hit right around the same time Southside adopted a new phonics-based curriculum aligned with the science of reading.
“Speaking as a parent in the district whose kiddo was in kinder, and now to see what he's doing in third grade, and having gotten four years of the phonics program and how much he's grown. That's, I think, a really big factor on the growth from COVID,” Vincent said. “Because the kids are reading. When they're reading, they can do all the other things too, the math and the science and all of that.”
Then, after the pandemic hit, Southside used federal COVID relief money to embed tutoring in the classroom, giving teachers incentives for meeting academic goals, and purchasing a new math curriculum called Sharon Wells. Kym Faircloth, the district math coordinator, said math scores took a big hit when students were learning from home, but the training they got helped them build teachers’ capacity.
“It was a huge effort those first couple of years really building those teachers up, because they were nervous about math,” Faircloth said. “And now the kids will tell me when I walk in, ‘I love math. It's my favorite subject.’”
Southside’s math improvement is even more remarkable than their growth in reading. The district’s average math score is now 1.5 grade levels higher than it was in 2019. They’re now pretty much on par with the pre-pandemic national average.
Faircloth said using Sharon Wells gives teachers a “consistent model across the district.”
“I can walk into any class and I see the same content being taught. I see the same thing being expected of every child,” Faircloth said.
Southside Superintendent Rolando Ramirez meets regularly with all of the district’s campus leaders to make sure they are also working in lockstep to continue to improve.
“All right. Recap of the year, what worked, what went wrong, what needs to change, recommendations?” Ramirez asked at a recent meeting of elementary principals and instructional coaches.
Pearce Elementary Principal Brenda Gonzales said one thing that she liked this year was involving the instructional coaches more.
“There were some meetings that were happening involving our (instructional coaches), and they were more informed of what was happening on the campus with curriculum components,” Gonzales said.
Teamwork and consistency were brought up over and over during the meeting, both as part of their discussion, and as a reason why their students are scoring higher on standardized tests.
“If you go visit any of the campuses, you're going to see the same thing with the same grade levels,” Ramirez said. “From the elementaries to the secondary, you'll see the alignment. There is no gap.”
For Ramirez, high standards are also important.
“It’s our responsibility, and we can’t point fingers at anyone else. It’s on us and it’s our responsibility to teach our kids,” Ramirez said.
A big part of that is meeting students where they are regardless of grade level and focusing on growth.
Even though Southside’s average reading score is higher than it was before the pandemic, it’s still about two grade levels below the pre-pandemic national average.
“We're going to get there. It's just a matter of time,” Ramirez said. “I think we're just getting started.”
Another challenge Southside and districts across the country need to address is chronic absenteeism. After the pandemic, the number of students absent over 10 percent of the year nearly doubled.
In 2019, Southside’s chronic absenteeism rate was 21%. In 2022 in shot up 44%. By 2023, it was trending back down but still too high at 36%.
Heritage Elementary Principal Elise Puente said chronic absenteeism has drastically increased at her school since COVID.
“It used to be, I don't know, 4 or 5%. After the COVID years, it's gone up to 23, 24, 25%,” Puente said.
She said most students attend regularly, but they struggle with a few.
“It’s not everybody,” Puente said. “It's just a small percentage of kids that just continue to have 30, 40, 50 absences per year.”
District and campus leaders said they do summer movie nights and other activities to involve the community in the school district, and remind them how important it is to come to school.
“We all do something very unique at our campuses to encourage attendance, to communicate with parents and get the kids at school,” said Freedom Elementary Principal Selina Puente. “It's not just about coming to school, it's about really being successful at school. And the parents understand that.”
