Thomas Jefferson Elementary School, nestled in the Timbergrove neighborhood of Houston, just north of downtown, enrolls some 340 students — 96% of whom are low-income and roughly a third of whom are just learning to speak English.
Since the pandemic, student achievement has been hard to come by, hitting rock bottom during the 2020-21 school year, when 77% of students were below grade level in reading and 86% in math. And while scores rebounded some over the years, they were low enough during the 2023-24 school year to earn the campus a “D” rating on the state’s accountability system.