Two years into Houston ISD’s state takeover, state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles touted a major achievement: state ratings showed there were no more F-rated schools in the district.

Some of that jump, however, had little to do with Miles’ sweeping reforms or gains in student test scores. One key factor was HISD’s use of a new, rapidly expanding option in Texas’ accountability system: college-prep courses.

These are not typical courses that can earn students college credit, such as Advanced Placement or dual credit. These are courses, often taken online, that help students catch up on English and math so they don’t have to take remedial classes in college. In the state’s accountability system, schools that enroll students in college-prep courses can earn credit for producing college-ready graduates, which in turn boosts their A-F ratings.

Exclusive data from the Texas Education Agency obtained by the Houston Chronicle shows that without students completing those courses, every high school in Miles’ reform model would have dropped by at least one letter grade in 2025. The district would have had five D-rated and two F-rated high schools – undercutting Miles’ claim of no F-rated campuses.

At schools within Miles’ New Education System – the center of his reforms – students were much more likely to complete college-prep courses. Some students described being enrolled en masse, even when they had already earned college-ready credentials. Several said they rushed through the self-paced coursework, which can take up to a semester, in a few hours. Others said they still had to take remedial classes in college — the very outcome the courses were designed to prevent.

In fact, the TEA concluded in 2025 that virtually all college-prep courses failed to prepare students for college-level academics. Most graduates marked college-ready exclusively through college prep still had to take remedial coursework to pass their first year of college, the TEA found. Because of that finding, the state will no longer count most college-prep courses toward school ratings by 2028.

The findings cast doubt on the academic progress HISD schools have made under Miles since the Texas Education Commissioner ousted the elected school board in 2023 and installed him to lead the state’s largest school district. The apparent gains from college-prep courses — which the state later deemed ineffective — also raise questions about how the accountability system rewards schools.

“We can shove a bunch of students into college-prep courses, but that doesn’t mean that we’re actually doing a whole lot of work to make sure that they get somewhere,” said Jacob Kirksey, an associate professor of education policy at Texas Tech University. “We’ve basically created this fake pathway into college that’s not actually viable.”

The surge in college-prep course completions far outpaced HISD’s improvement on other measures of college readiness. In the first year of the takeover, HISD campuses made modest gains in preparing students for college, with roughly 800 more students meeting the benchmark in the 2023-24 school year than the previous year. But nearly 2,000 graduates that year were marked college ready thanks to those courses.

That’s about one in six graduating students in the district.

One in six students were marked college ready with college-prep courses.

Students can show they are ready for college, career or the military — and earn accountability points for their school — through one of several measures, such as passing an Advanced Placement exam, taking dual credit at a community college or earning an industry-based certification.

College-prep courses are a newer alternative. Texas College Bridge, the state’s largest provider, offers English and math courses at students’ own pace online.

At Booker T. Washington High School, Savion Graves asked why he was placed in the courses when he had already taken Advanced Placement and dual credit courses and earned career-based certifications. Campus staff offered a short response.

“The only explanation was the point (for college, career and military readiness),” said Graves, who graduated in 2025. “I didn’t see the point of it, honestly.”

Washington earned a B in the state’s 2025 ratings. Without college prep, its rating would fall to a D.

“I didn’t see the point of it, honestly.”

Miles and state leaders say that students have made significant gains in reading, writing and math — as shown in their latest STAAR results — which also factor into schools’ A-F ratings.

HISD maintains that its use of Texas College Bridge is in line with other districts and state lawmakers’ original goal.

The district argued it was not “meaningful” to recalculate school ratings by removing a metric recognized by the state. It said in a statement that it “stands by its characterization of the District’s academic progress,” with students showing progress over several college readiness measures over the last three years.

“Those gains reflect the work of students, teachers, principals, and staff across the District and are not dependent on any single accountability measure,” the district said. “HISD remains focused on ensuring every student graduates prepared for college, career, or military service and will continue providing students with multiple pathways to demonstrate readiness and access postsecondary opportunities.”

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Timi Creekmore, the former executive director of Texas College Bridge, has also defended the program as it seeks to regain full state approval, citing an external review that found students who completed the course posted a “very high pass rate” in college courses.

In June, the TEA brought back the provider’s English course alongside a handful of other programs. It did not approve any math courses, however, meaning students will need to earn college readiness through more than college prep alone to earn accountability points.

The approval of its English offering “validates the efficacy of our program,” Texas College Bridge told HISD and other partners in a June statement. “We remain committed to providing you with the most comprehensive college readiness program available.”

The Chronicle interviewed more than 20 current and former HISD students across 10 campuses within Miles’ reform model, all of whom said they had enrolled in Texas College Bridge. Several said the course was easy to rush through and did little to prepare them for college, where some students said they still had to take remedial courses.

“As long as you get it done, that’s all they care about,” said Megan Burnett, who took Texas College Bridge at Worthing High School in the 2025-26 school year.

How college prep can boost ratings

Texas lawmakers created college-prep courses in 2013 in a broader push to move beyond getting students to graduation and ensure they left high school ready for college or the workforce.

The courses became one way schools could earn credit under the state’s A-F accountability ratings in 2017.

Even small increases in students taking college-prep courses can lift a school’s rating. Low accountability ratings, meanwhile, can put entire districts at risk of a state takeover.

“We could give them sort of a leg up,” said David Johnston, HISD’s former executive director for college readiness and now the director of Rice University’s Center for College Readiness. “I just saw how difficult it was for students who take (remedial) courses – a whole semester with no college credit.”

College-prep courses affect every A-F rating component

College-prep course completions skyrocketed after the pandemic when Texas College Bridge emerged. The TEA heavily endorsed the provider’s offerings to help curb learning losses and even offered it to districts in a free four-year trial.

Students who complete Texas College Bridge can skip remedial courses at dozens of colleges and universities, including Texas A&M University and Texas Southern University, giving school districts another incentive to enroll students.

The fastest-growing path to college readiness

In HISD, college prep became the fastest-growing path to college readiness. Between the 2017-18 school year — when the TEA first started publishing accountability grades — and 2023-24, the number of HISD students completing college-prep reading courses grew more than twentyfold. Math completions rose over fourteenfold in the same timeframe.

Meanwhile, the longstanding alternative — the Texas Success Initiative Assessment, a state exam that allows students who pass to enroll in entry-level college courses — lost ground in both subjects.

In HISD, the pressure to lift ratings took on new urgency after the state takeover in 2023. The district can only exit state intervention if no schools earn two consecutive years of D or F ratings, among other criteria.

The district embraced college-prep courses at a dramatic scale, enrolling thousands of seniors — including students who had already met other college readiness benchmarks.

In 2023-24, HISD switched from a partnership with Houston City College to Texas College Bridge, the course promoted by the state.

By that year, college-prep courses became the single most common ways for HISD students to meet the state’s college-readiness requirements. That was especially true at schools in Miles’ New Education System.

College-prep course popularity peaked at NES campuses

Average completion rates for reading and math college-prep courses in the 2023-24 school year

NES (84% math / 88% reading)

NES-aligned (72% math / 65% reading)

Other (37% math / 30% reading)

HISD officials have said the Texas College Bridge’s virtual and self-paced option gave students more flexibility while helping them “avoid costly remedial courses, save time and money, and start college or careers with confidence.”

‘A waste of time’

In all, college-prep credit boosted ratings by at least one letter grade at half of HISD’s high school campuses in 2025. That included every NES campus and almost every NES-aligned campus — both of which enroll higher rates of economically disadvantaged students than the district average.

Wheatley High School — which triggered HISD’s state takeover after several years of failing grades — earned a B rating in 2025. Without college prep, the Fifth Ward high school would have earned a C.

HISD represents a broader regional trend. In a sampling of high schools across 12 other Houston-area districts, state data showed that all but three schools would have earned lower ratings in 2025 without college-prep credit, including campuses in Katy, Cypress-Fairbanks and Conroe. The state has yet to release comprehensive regional data to the Chronicle.

Kirksey at Texas Tech found that students who took college-prep courses were less likely to earn a college degree than those who weren’t considered college ready, suggesting that the courses boost high school ratings without setting students up for success.

Statewide, low-income students were also more likely to take and complete college-prep courses. But the boost in college-prep enrollment has done little to close the gap in college-readiness between those students and their peers, according to an analysis from Rice University’s Houston Education Research Consortium.

The gap between Black and Hispanic students also remained virtually unchanged when compared to state averages.

“As long as you get it done, that’s all they care about.”

Gabriela Sánchez-Soto, who conducted the research at Rice, said it signals the accountability system needs to change to truly reach those students.

“If we are not actually saying explicitly, ‘How are we going to support students who have economic disadvantage? How are we going to support students of color? How are we going to support emergent bilingual students?’ Then the system itself will not necessarily create that just by virtue of existing,” Sánchez-Soto said.

Almost every campus in or aligned with Miles’ reform model reported that the share of students meeting college readiness criteria grew significantly in one school year as college-prep course completions grew. At eight schools, the gains were in the double digits.

But several students at those campuses found the courses had little benefit.

“It doesn’t really dictate the students’ learning. I feel like it’s more rubric than anything else,” said Scottie Miller, who graduated from Northside High School in 2025 and now studies at Prairie View A&M University. “Every single senior was doing it.”

Graves, who graduated from Booker T. Washington High School and has taken automotive classes at Houston City College, remembers rushing through the Texas College Bridge course in a single day — cramming a semester’s worth of learning into a few hours.

“We didn’t want to really do it. So everybody was trying to get it out the way,” Graves said. “They felt like it was a waste of time.”

What HISD plans to do next to prepare students for college

This school year, HISD said it will partner with Texas College Bridge again despite changes to the accountability system.

The provider’s math offering no longer meets state standards for college-readiness in its accountability system for 2026-27, meaning HISD students will no longer be able to earn college-readiness credit from Texas College Bridge alone.

In fact, in a few years, College Bridge and other prep courses may not count toward state ratings at all, forcing districts to find new ways — or lean on traditional ones — to prepare students for college.

“I feel like it’s more rubric than anything else.”

Meanwhile, Miles has remained undeterred about HISD’s academic progress. By 2027, he said every HISD campus will be A- or B-rated, even if it seems like a “moonshot.”

“We’ve made history already,” he said. “We’re going to make it again.”

About the data in this story

The Houston Chronicle obtained data from the Texas Education Agency showing the number of graduates at each campus who met the agency’s college, career and military readiness criteria exclusively or in part through college-preparatory courses in the 2023-24 school year. The data shows each school’s actual 2025 A-F rating as well as the grade it would have received without credit from college-prep courses, according to TEA. The data covers 46 rated Houston ISD high schools and 12 additional Houston-area campuses. The Texas Education Agency has yet to release comprehensive Houston-area data.

The Chronicle also used TEA data to track completion rates at Texas campuses for each CCMR pathway, including college-prep courses and the Texas Success Initiative Assessment, from 2017-18 through 2023-24.

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CreditsReporting by Claire Partain, Caroline Ghisolfi and Megan Menchaca. Data analysis by Caroline Ghisolfi. Design and development by Caroline Ghisolfi. Editing by Laura Isensee. Production by Brady Stone.