Kashmere High School - History

History

Kashmere High School opened in 1957 at 4000 North Kelley Street. In 1968 Kashmere moved to a new campus at 6900 Wileyvale Road and the North Kelley campus became Key Middle School.

Kashmere, with Jack Yates High School and Sam Houston High School, are the three high schools in Houston ISD which were consistently low-performing in test scores from 2001 to 2004. Because of this problem, there were movements to have the state or another organization take over the schools for a period so the test scores will be at acceptable levels. While Yates got an acceptable rating in 2005, Sam Houston and Kashmere continued to get unacceptable ratings. In August 2006 the school learned that it again was getting an unacceptable rating from the Texas Education Agency. When the Houston ISD administration threatened closure if another "unacceptable" rating came the following year, the local community protested. In summer 2007, Abelardo Saavedra, the superintendent of HISD, formally requested that all of the schools under consideration for closing due to academic performance should stay open. Kashmere received an acceptable rating in 2007 because the Texas Education Agency has a provision allowing for a school to receive an acceptable rating even if the school fails in some of its criteria as long as the failures are within five points of the passing rate.

In 2007 a Johns Hopkins University/Associated Press study referred to Kashmere as a "dropout factory," meaning that at least 40% of an entering freshman class does not make it to their senior year. During that year 58% of children zoned to Kashmere chose to attend a different Houston ISD school.