E3 Alliance’s Gender Trends in Education report contains data about student achievement across the length of the education pipeline, exploring socio-demographic trends in achievement, as well as both educational and social-emotional metrics that we know ties to later success.

We pay particular attention to differences in student outcomes by gender, as well as race/ethnicity and income status. We analyzed data for the Central Texas region, including Bastrop, Blanco, Caldwell, Hays, Williamson, and Travis counties (for a map of the area see E3 Alliance’s Central Texas Education Profile).

During the 2018-2019 school year the region had 383,495 students enrolled in K-12. Of those students, 51% were boys and 49% were girls. The region is made up of 48% Hispanic students, 34% White students, 8% Black students, 6% Asian students, and 4% students who identify as American Indian, Alaska Native, Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander. 48% of students in the region received free or reduced lunch during the school year, and 52% did not.

We relied primarily on data from The University of Texas Education Research Center (ERC), which includes student records from PK-12 linked to both postsecondary and employment records. This unique data source allows us to understand long-term student trajectories with a great deal of detail. We also incorporated data from the Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPR). Across all data sources, we used the most recent data available for a given metric, which most often included data from the 2018-2019 academic year.

First, we look at metrics that span the entire educational pipeline: Student Demographics, Attendance, and Discipline. We then step through metrics chronologically, beginning with school readiness and then exploring middle school math acceleration, 9th-grade retention, high school math course completion, and high school graduation. Finally, we move to postsecondary metrics, examining direct-to-college enrollment, second-year persistence, and six-year college completion.

Download the complete report.