Summary
Jessup Elementary is a PK-4 school in Houston, TX, serving 326 students within the Pasadena Independent School District (Isd), where over 96% of students qualify for free or reduced lunch, reflecting a community with very high economic need. Despite a favorable student-to-teacher ratio of 9.8:1 and per-pupil spending of $11,989, the school has persistently struggled academically, ranking in the 10th percentile among Texas elementary schools—a position it has held for nearly a decade. This is a stark contrast to nearby schools like Laura Welch Bush Elementary (80th percentile) and Deanda Elementary (76th percentile), which achieve high performance despite serving similarly high-poverty populations, suggesting that Jessup’s challenges are tied to internal school factors rather than the neighborhood alone.
A critical area of concern is 3rd grade mathematics, where only 20.78% of Jessup students were proficient in the most recent school year—the lowest among all nearby schools and well below the district average of 36.57% and state average of 44.33%. However, there is a notable bright spot: in 4th Grade Math (STAAR Spanish), 50% of students were proficient, outperforming the district (45.71%) and significantly exceeding the state average (29.41%), indicating that the school’s bilingual math program may be a model worth expanding. Additionally, performance for specific student groups has been highly volatile, with African American students dropping from the 73rd percentile in 2023-2024 to the 4th percentile in 2025-2026, and male students falling from the 53rd to the 11th percentile, pointing to a lack of consistent, evidence-based instructional strategies.
An interesting comparison is with Beta Academy, a charter school located just 0.4 miles away on the same road, serving similar demographics but achieving a 32nd percentile ranking. Beta Academy significantly outperforms Jessup in 3rd Grade Reading (57.33% vs. 29.63%), demonstrating that different instructional models can yield better results in the same area. This “resource paradox”—where Jessup invests more per student and has smaller class sizes than higher-performing neighbors like Laura Welch Bush Elementary (13.2:1 ratio)—underscores that the school’s struggle is not about a lack of resources, but about how effectively they are deployed to address the specific needs of its student body.
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