The Rice School

The Rice School (Spanish: La Escuela Rice) is a K-8 school (the school serves grades kindergarten through 8) in Houston, Texas. Rice is a part of the Houston Independent School District (HISD).

The Rice School is an HISD magnet school for a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM), serving grades Kindergarten - 8th grade. The Rice School is a part of a collaboration between Houston ISD and Rice University.

Students living near Rice are not zoned to Rice, as Rice is an all-magnet school. Individuals living near Rice are zoned to either Twain or Roberts elementary schools and Pershing Middle School.

The Rice School is located east of the Braeswood Place neighborhood. It is across from the City of West University Place Sewage Plant^{[citation needed]} and Animal Pound, which itself is located in the Houston city limits. The school was named after William Marsh Rice, the founder of Rice University.

Joan Raymond, then the superintendent of HISD, envisioned The Rice School as a way to relieve overcrowding at West University Elementary School, to stem the decrease of White and affluent students, and to gap the performance division between affluent White students and low income minority students. The Rice School was originally planned as a regular zoned school with an attendance boundary. In 1989, as "Operation Renewal," a school construction program, progressed, Raymond thought about how to lure West University Elementary School-zoned parents away from West University Elementary; she decided that a partnership with Rice University would allow this to happen. Rice's education department had no experience teaching younger students, so the laboratory school was made into a K-8. Tim Fleck of the Houston Press stated that the Rice University label "sold like Lacoste." The district planned to find a site for the school; plans to put the school on Brompton Road failed, and an attempt to buy land at Bissonnet Street at Newcastle Drive in the City of Bellaire failed since City of Bellaire officials and parents living in Bellaire complained when they learned that they would not be zoned to the new school while losing what Fleck described as "a prime chunk of taxable property." Raymond settled on a site on North Braeswood Drive, fulfilling what Fleck described as "minimal expectations."

The concept was sold to the school board. Don McAdams, an HISD school board member who had supported the development of the Rice School from the time of conception to the approval by the school board, said that the board members wanted concessions specific to their districts, and the school's racial quotas were devised so that the school served the entire school district to satisfy the demands. Fleck said that The Rice School's concept "mushroomed into an incredibly complex educational experiment that aspired to be all things to all parties with an interest in its success." The intention was to attract students from the West University Place area by the promotion of the school's ties to Rice University, the presence of, in Fleck's words, "more computers than a private school," [sic] and the grouping of classes into clusters; in the clusters students would progress at their own rates and tutor one another. Residents of lower income inner city neighborhoods were to be attracted to Rice as a way to have their children avoid neighborhood schools with violent incidents. Rice University was to benefit from additional ties to the Houston community and having educational theories demonstrated in practice. According to McAdams, many people, especially West University Place residents, believed that the school would have selected gifted and talented admissions because of the association with Rice University. In 1997 McAdams retrospectively said "there were high expectations -- admittedly unreasonable expectations."

The school opened in August 1994. Kaye Stripling was the first principal. Circa January 1995 Stripling left her position as she received a promotion, and Sharon Koonce, previously at Oak Forest Elementary, replaced her.

About 1,280 students from Kindergarten through 6th grade were enrolled when the school opened. Over 7,169 students applied for 1,275 slots, and half of the students previously attended overcrowded schools in the West University Place area. Fewer than 15 students who were offered admission declined the offer. Many teachers at Rice came from other Houston ISD schools. The elementary school grades had about 50% White Americans, and 25% each Hispanic Americans and Black Americans. The middle school grades had about 33% each of White, Black, and Hispanic students. Of all Rice students, 11% were Asian Americans. The students lived all across the City of Houston. Initially the school organized students from Kindergarten through 2nd grade into one cluster, 3rd through 5th grades in another cluster, and the middle school grades in another cluster. According to McAdams, many parties felt unsatisfied by the outcome of the student placement lottery. Eight student placements per grade level were reserved for dependents of Rice University employees. McAdams wrote that this caused controversy. McAdams stated that because students not previously enrolled in HISD were allowed to enter into the Rice lottery if they were entering Kindergarten or the 6th grade, area private school parents were unsatisfied. In addition, he stated that "Parents in an older, affluent community" immediately to the school's east had no dedicated entry into the lottery system so they were also unsatisfied. Furthermore he stated that principals of area schools perceived the Rice School to receiving extra resources, making them unsatisfied. Also, according to McAdams, Rice was taking more students from nearby area neighborhood schools than anticipated had angered leaders of those schools. McAdams added that "there were charges that the lottery was fixed and so-and-so got in because of backroom influence."