IDEA schools expanding this fall to Houston
EDINBURG — When Sebastian Lopez struggled in Advanced Placement classes or dreaded attending Saturday school at IDEA Quest College Prep, he thought about the sacrifices made by his parents.
Lopez’s mother and father gave up their jobs as an accountant and civil engineer, respectively, as they moved from Mexico to Texas’ Rio Grande Valley several years ago. Now, she works as an administrative assistant and he labors as a mechanic — the cost of giving their children an American education.
“Sacrifices like that mean so much to me that I feel the need to pay it back by getting accepted into college,” said Lopez, now a senior.
Lopez has reached those goals this school
year, earning acceptance letters from Louisiana State University, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and St. Mary’s University in San Antonio. He is poised to join an IDEA Public Schools senior class that, if history holds, will send nearly all graduates on to college.
The academic achievements of Lopez and his peers over the past two decades continue to fuel the rapid growth of IDEA, the state’s largest charter school district at about 51,000 students.
Now, as the organization aims to double in size over the next three years, IDEA will debut in the Houston area this August. The network plans to open two campuses in the boundaries of Houston and Spring ISDs, with each site eventually housing two schools that serve students from prekindergarten to 12th grade. By 2025, IDEA plans to establish eight more campuses that ultimately will enroll about 15,000 children living near the region’s lowest-rated traditional public schools.
IDEA’s arrival comes as the organization continues to receive accolades and financial support tied to its results. The district’s rates of high school graduation (99 percent) and college enrollment (more than 90 percent) rank first among large districts serving predominantly lower-income and Hispanic students. IDEA students also excel on the state’s standardized tests compared to their peers.
“I always go back to IDEA’s mission, and we’re unapologetic about it: We exist to provide a high-quality, rigorous, college preparatory education to kids,” said JoAnn Gama, IDEA’s cofounder and superintendent.
District leaders attribute the network’s success to a highly structured, no-excuses system executed by well-trained staff. IDEA students, they argue, respond to the district’s challenging academic requirements, which includes a mandate that all students on a traditional academic path receive acceptance to a four-year college or university in order to graduate.
IDEA, however, also faces consistent criticism that trails many charter school operators.
The charter network’s governing board is unelected and based in the Rio Grande Valley, with no Houston-area representation.
The organization’s spending practices have drawn scrutiny in recent months following the disclosure of since-canceled plans to lease a private jet. Its business dealings also have drawn attention, most notably the payment of more than $600,000 for uniforms, other clothing and gear to a company co-owned by Chief Operating Officer Irma Muñoz’s husband.
IDEA co-founder and CEO Tom Torkelson defended the spending as above-board, but he apologized for “dumb and unhelpful” decision-making while vowing to end business transactions “that could reasonably be perceived as a legal conflict.”
Systematic approach
Critics also argue IDEA’s performance mandates dissuade parents from enrolling children who need intensive academic and behavioral support, inflating the charter’s success rates.
“They market that every kid gets accepted and goes to college, and in a perfect world, that seems right,” said McAllen ISD Board President Marco Suarez, whose district lost about 2,000 students living within its boundaries to IDEA. “But who’s going to work on our cars and airplanes? Who’s going to teach the people who aren’t going to college?”
Despite the backlash, much of which has come from staunch supporters of traditional public schools, IDEA boasted a waiting list of nearly 40,000 children last August. The charter reported receiving nearly twice as many applications as seats available for its first Houston schools.
IDEA plans to ask the Texas Education Agency to increase its enrollment cap to 100,000 — though Torkelson does not expect to stop there.
“Our big, long-term vision — and this might take several generations of leaders — is we can be the largest, high-performing school system in the United States of America,” Torkelson said.
Disillusioned by poor academic achievement they witnessed while teaching together in the Rio
Grande Valley, Gama and Torkelson founded IDEA in 2000. The Teach For America alumni, both in their mid-20s at the time, sought to create a more demanding environment for children living in poverty.
“The premise behind the IDEA Academy is simple,” IDEA’s founders wrote in their charter application. “If students are to read and write better and develop improved math skills, they need to attend school longer, take more challenging courses, and work harder.”
After earning approval, IDEA slowly expanded in the Valley over the next decade, refining its organizational structure.
The charter’s leaders implemented a centralized model with a regimented curriculum. They provided frequent feedback and performance pay to educators. They strictly enforced academic and behavioral standards for children, requiring them to take at least 11 Advanced Placement classes in high school.
“Ideally, if I walk into a classroom at IDEA Weslaco and see second-grade math, and then I go down the street to IDEA Donna and walk into second-grade math, they’re using the same curriculum and on the same lesson and giving the same assessment,”
Gama said.
IDEA began rapidly expanding in the 2010s, installing an accountability-driven ethos to ensure consistent results. Underscoring the point, the district’s academic, organizational and growth goals are printed on large posters and plastered on walls throughout all district facilities — including bathroom stalls.
The structure frustrates some educators, IDEA leaders acknowledge. The standardized curriculum leaves little room for freelancing — staff are expected to work long hours and the emphasis on student performance data clashes with a growing resistance to standardized testing.
IDEA officials argue the rigidity and extended school hours consistently produce strong results. The organization now operates 91 Texas schools, with 43 in the Rio Grande Valley, 24 in San Antonio, 14 in Austin, six in El Paso and four in Fort Worth.
‘Setting the example’
By virtually any measure, IDEA ranks among the best-scoring districts serving predominantly Hispanic and lower-income children.
About 54 percent of IDEA students were considered on grade level in math and reading, compared to roughly 40 percent of students from similar backgrounds, according to state standardized tests.
The district’s Class of 2018 graduation rate ranked second-highest among all Texas districts serving at least 10,000 students.
In recent years, nearly 90 percent of graduates enrolled in a Texas college or university, about 30 percentage points higher than the state average for all students.
“Something I’ve always thought about is setting the example for my younger siblings,” said IDEA College Prep Donna senior Melanie Medrano, the oldest of three children. “To go to college, to do what I want for myself, to have an education — I want them to see that and want that as much as I do.”
IDEA’s results have coincided with an educational revival in the Rio Grande Valley, once considered one of the state’s lowest-performing regions. All 14 of IDEA’s neighboring districts serving at least 10,000 students earned A or B grades last year under the state’s academic accountability system. Several reported some the state’s highest math and reading test scores among poor children.
Still, skeptics remain.
Critics have hypothesized that IDEA’s college-bound focus attracts students who already are more likely to academically prosper, claims partially backed by enrollment data. IDEA served fewer at-risk students and children receiving special education services in 2018-19 than other large Texas districts with similar ethnic and economic demographics.
Some education observers also assert IDEA forces out lower-performing and misbehaving students.
“If someone has a behavior issue, they can make you leave,” said Suarez, the McAllen ISD board president. “Here, you don’t have the luxury of saying, ‘You’re misbehaving, go find another school.’ ”
Available data, however, do not strongly support those claims.
According to IDEA, nearly 90 percent of students return to the district after each school year. The network’s relatively low student mobility rates — a state-reported measure of how many children leave a school midyear — suggest student ousters are rare. State data also show IDEA reported fewer than 10 expulsions and a far-below-average suspension rate in 2018-19.
The charter clash
With IDEA poised to arrive in the Houston area, local districts are bracing for competition over students — and the funding that follows them.
In Spring ISD, staff are emphasizing the district’s increasing number of school choice programs and trumpeting extracurricular offerings IDEA does not have, such as football.
“I do think we’ve been a little more aware and active making sure our families know about all the different options,” Spring ISD Chief Communications Officer Tiffany Dunne-Oldfield said. “It’s been a good thing, because we hear from parents that they didn’t know about all of them.”
Houston ISD officials last year launched a marketing campaign and partnered with the University of Houston to research reasons why families leave the district — a reaction to small enrollment declines partially fueled by charter growth.
The competition will become more fierce as IDEA continues to expand with the help of federal and philanthropic dollars.
The U.S. Department of Education awarded a five-year, $117 million federal grant in 2019 to assist IDEA’s expansion, with an estimated $9 million dedicated to its Houston foray. Some of the nation’s wealthiest charter school supporters — the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Walton Family Foundation, and Laura and John Arnold Foundation, among others — and regional nonprofits also have poured tens of millions of dollars into the charter and its private offshoot, IPS Enterprises.
“We’re going to grow to meet the demand as quickly as we can,” Torkelson said, “but as slow as we must to make sure we’re preserving what makes IDEA special.”
“We exist to provide a high-quality, rigorous, college-preparatory education to kids.” Jo Ann Gama, co-founder and superintendent of IDEA Public Schools