Houston’s Best Elementary and Middle Schools by STAAR Scores 2025

T.H. Rogers continues its reign as Houston Independent School District (HISD)‘s best elementary and middle school by Texas STAAR test scores. Other top elementary schools include West University, Mandarin Immersion Magnet School (MIMS), Roberts, and River Oaks Elementary.  MIMS is the district’s #3 elementary and #2 middle school. Other top middle schools are Lanier, Briarmeadow Charter, and Pin Oak.

Steep entry requirements nearly guarantee the success of all of these top Houston schools. TH Rogers is HISD’s only vanguard elementary school; therefore, every student must be both gifted and talented plus win the lottery for enrollment. At Mandarin Immersion, every student must study Mandarin Chinese and win the lottery. At West University, Roberts, River Oaks, Horn, Oak Forest, and Travis almost every student is rich.

The STAAR testing results continue to reveal that a student’s family wealth is undeniably the best indicator of a how a school performs. Parents seeking Houston’s best public elementary and middle schools need only follow the money. However, families unable to afford million dollar homes are not without hope. The district’s annual School Choice lottery allows thousands of students to attend schools outside of their zoned neighborhoods, and their chances of getting in are increasingly good at the middle and high school levels.

Texas STAAR Test Grading Levels

The State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) tests are the primary, quantitative measure of academic performance for Texas public schools. All public school students in grades 3-12 take some number of STAAR tests, although the testing is most consistent in grades 3-8. The STAAR is administered every spring in core subjects including reading, writing, mathematics, science, and social studies. The rankings in this article reflect the most recent test results from spring of 2025. Students’ scores are placed into four performance categories:

• Did Not Meet Grade Level – Like an “F” on a regular report card
• Approaches Grade Level – C
• Meets Grade Level – B
• Masters Grade Level – A

“Masters Grade Level” is the highest performance score level that a Texas public school student can achieve and generally represents the top 21% of tested students. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) asserts that students who score in the top two levels, “Meets” or “Masters,” have a more than 60% chance of passing college courses. A Texas public school’s Report Card will always show the percentage of enrolled students who scored in each of the four performance categories.

This ranking looks specifically at the percentage of a school’s students who scored in the highest, “Masters Grade Level” performance category. Because “Masters Grade Level” represents about the top 1/5 of public school students in Texas, any school where more than 21% of students are scoring above this level is outperforming the state average.

Family Income Plays an Outsized Role

The biggest indicator of success on a school’s test scores is the family wealth of its student population. General Academic calculated the weighted R-squared (R²) values between percent of students mastering the STAAR and the percentage of students who qualify for federal free and reduced lunch. R-Squared is a standard statistical measure to determine how predictable a dependent variable (STAAR scores) is simply by looking at the independent variable (family income).

In Texas, a family of four typically qualifies for a reduced price lunch when their household income is below $57,720 (185% above poverty level) or a free lunch when their household income is below $40,560 (130% above poverty). Among all the subject and grade levels we analyzed, middle school reading showed the strongest relationship between poverty level and test mastery. About 78% of the variation in those reading scores can be predicted from the percentage of economically disadvantaged students:

• Elementary School Reading Mastery – .701 R² correlation
• Elementary School Math Mastery – .714
• Middle School Reading Mastery – .782
• Middle School Math Mastery – .299

This seemingly inextricable link between family income and academic results does change over time. Students’ scores in math go up – the R-squared value falls from .714 at elementary school to .299 in middle school. However, student’s scores in reading remain strongly linked to family income – the R-squared value even increases slightly from .701 to .782.

How Income Plays a Role in Student Enrollment 

The top elementary and middle schools fall under these three categories:

1. Vanguard (Ex: TH Rogers)
2. Magnet-Only (MIMS, Pin Oak)
3. and Neighborhood (West University)

Each of these schools have differing requirements for entry, which affects the make up of their student population. Vanguard schools require students to be Gifted and Talented and to apply in order to gain entry.

Magnet-only schools still require students to apply, but they don’t necessarily have to be GT, though this might make them more competitive candidates. It should be noted, however, that some Magnet schools have other requirements for entry, like MIMS, which requires most potential applicants to demonstrate some Mandarin proficiency.

Neighborhood schools don’t require an application process, but rather accept all students who are zoned for that school. If there are extra slots at these schools, students who are not zoned can apply to attend them via the Houston School Choice Lottery. Unsurprisingly, the strongest neighborhood schools are popular among families and parents, and thus often don’t have many spots available for non-zoned students.

[/fusion_text]

Top Houston ISD Elementary Schools by STAAR “Masters” Scores

The best Houston ISD elementary schools are TH Rogers, West University, Mandarin Immersion (MIMS), Roberts Elementary, and River Oaks Elementary. MIMS is the top elementary school by math scores, but their combined average is brought down by relatively low performance in reading, unsurprising given their dual emphasis on both English and Chinese Mandarin. Roberts Elementary had a strong showing on the STAAR test, moving up from 7th place last year with an overall mastery of 54%, to 4th place with 66% mastery.

A surprise this year was Oak Forest. Their rate of economically disadvantaged students was surprisingly small, only 13%, making them the second richest elementary school in HISD, only behind West University. This indicates that the surrounding neighborhoods of Oak Forest have gotten wealthier in recent years, and Oak Forest Elementary’s popularity has gone up with it.

The school has become so popular in fact, that there is no longer any room to accept magnet transfers. This has lowered their percentage of economically disadvantaged students. Now, they have even fewer than River Oaks Elementary, which services the quite wealthy River Oaks neighborhood. River Oaks still accepts magnet transfers, causing their percentage of affluent students to drop and make way for Oak Forest.

Since the STAAR is a peer-normed test in which only about 21% of students will earn the “Masters” designation, any school on this list with higher than 21% is performing better than average. There are at least 61 (39%) Houston ISD elementary and middle schools that are outperforming the Texas state average, which is a significant increase from last year’s 27%.

The table below shows the percent of students scoring at the “Masters” level on the STAAR test in math, reading, and their combined average. Additionally, “Disadvantaged” indicates the percentage of enrollment that qualifies for a free or reduced lunch.

Top Houston ISD Middle Schools by STAAR “Masters” Scores

The best Houston ISD middle schools are TH Rogers, Mandarin Immersion, Lanier, Briarmeadow Charter, Pin Oak, and Project Chrysalis. Of particular note this year is the last school mentioned, Project Chrysalis Middle School, which jumped from 11th place in 2023 at 25% average mastery, to 6th place in 2024 at 42% average mastery. Though they hold the same spot this year, they continued to improve their numbers and gained 5 percentage points in their overall mastery, putting them at 47%.

Twenty middle schools (37%) are performing better than the Texas state average since more than 21% of their students are earning the “Masters” designation. Again, this is a notable jump from last years numbers, where only 15 middle schools (25%) met these criteria.

The table below shows the percent of students scoring at the “Masters” level on the STAAR test in math, reading, and their combined average. Additionally, “Disadvantaged” indicates the percentage of enrollment that qualifies for a free or reduced lunch.

STAAR Scores: Relative to School Success

While family income plays the biggest role in student success when it comes to STAAR results, other factors the district has more control over can also make a meaningful difference.

Project Chrysalis has made headway in their STAAR scores, and a deeper look at their origins makes their climb that much more impressive. Twenty years ago, HISD created Project Chrysalis Middle School to support a group of 25 at-risk youth that might have fallen through the cracks had they attended a traditional middle school. Now, they are one of the top middle schools in Houston, and indeed the state of Texas, thanks to their “project-based curriculum”.

Their reading mastery is especially impressive when considering the fact that 98% of their students are hispanic, many of them first-generation. Because of their popularity, they are at capacity and currently unable to accept magnet transfers.

Project Chrysalis matches Oak Forest for demand, but boasts opposite demographics: mostly economically disadvantaged first-generation students, versus students from more affluent families. This goes to show that personalized learning and an emphasis on academics helps students get ahead.

Unlike Project Chrysalis, Ella J. Baker Montessori is an example of a school with a largely affluent student-base that is under-performing on the STAAR test. As a Montessori school, its curriculum is non-traditional, emphasizing cognitive development at different stages of adolescence and individualized student-learning goals rather than traditional academics. This lack of emphasis on testing likely explains their relatively low STAAR results: while they are #4 in the city by wealth, they rank #10 based on STAAR scores.

Clearly, a school’s particular academic emphasis plays an important role in how student success is actualized. Even in schools where student population tends toward the economically disadvantaged, diligent preparation and a strong academic emphasis can boost student scoring above what we would predict given the school’s demographics.

About the Data

This dataset—which you can download here—was compiled from data pulled from TEA Assessment Research Portal, from the 2024-2025 school year, specifically the Spring 2025 STAAR data. The two data tables represent Grades 3-5 average performance for elementary schools, and Grades 6-8 average performance for middle schools. “Percent Mastery” scores for both Math and Reading represent the total number of students at a school who earned a performance level of “Mastery” in the respective STAAR 3-8 subject, divided by the total number of students at the same school who took the STAAR 3-8 exam for that subject. The “average mastery” column in the tables above is simply the average of the math and reading scores. The data regarding percentage of economically disadvantaged students comes from Children at Risk, and you can download their full spreadsheet here. For an interactive map of Houston-area school districts with schools, visit the TEA’s website.