Vanguard Magnet

HISD is an open enrollment district of choice, where a family can apply to any school in the district that meets a student's needs.  The School Choice process allows families to choose from hundreds of neighborhood and specialty school options via a single application.  Travis Elementary is a Vanguard Magnet.  Students must be identified to gifted and talented in all areas to be eligible for our lottery.

https://schoolchoice.houstonisd.org/

Phase I  Information:

Lottery – Parents rank options and apply. HISD runs a lottery to determine which students get a seat. Students who do not receive a seat are waitlisted at all schools they ranked higher than the seat they were offered.

Phase I Key Dates:

• 12.09.2025: K-12 Applications open. Parents rank up to 10 choices in the application.
• 02.27.2026: K-12 Applications close
  • All rankings must be submitted and required documents must be uploaded by this date.
• 04.08.2026: Parent Notification Day. Families offered no more than one seat based on lottery results.
• 04.21.2026: Deadline for families to accept seat offered in Phase I.

Phase II Information:

Space Available - Parents may submit applications to add themselves to existing waitlists established during Phase 1.  Current HISD students can no longer apply once this phase closes.
Students may still be offered a seat at a campus if space opens up until the end of Phase 2. At the end of this phase, waitlists are retired.

Phase II Key Dates:

• 04.08.2026: Phase II Opens. Parents select up to 10 choices in the application.
• TBD: K-12 Applications close (all rankings and required documents must be submitted).
• TBD: K-12 Waitlist retires. The waitlist will close.

The Gifted and Talented Department is committed to excellence and equity in education through high-
impact intentional and strategic delivery of personalized instruction that empowers gifted learners to
academically excel through experiences of student, faculty, staff, and community cooperation. We
strive to prepare each gifted learner to maximize critical and creative thinking skills in a positive,
fulfilling and interactive environment.

https://www.houstonisd.org/schools-academics/academics/gifted-talented

GT Testing & Identification

G/T testing is available to all enrolled HISD students, from Pre-K-4 through 12th grade, if they are referred for evaluation by a teacher, a parent, the student, or a district-generated roster. Parents must provide consent for Gifted and Talented evaluations when someone other than themselves makes the referral.  Parent requests will also be accepted for students who plan to enroll in Kindergarten at an HISD Vanguard campus for the 2027-2028 school year. Entering Kindergarten students must currently live in a residence that is zoned to an HISD campus to be eligible to request testing.

In alignment with guidance from the Texas Education Agency and the Texas State Plan for the Education of Gifted/Talented Students, HISD will accept G/T testing requests for:

• Students enrolled in Houston ISD in grades K–12
• Students planning to enroll in Kindergarten at an HISD Vanguard campus for the 2027–2028 school year who currently reside in an HISD attendance zone

Families interested in enrolling in Houston ISD can find step-by-step enrollment information on the student enrollment website.

All assessments are administered during pre-established testing timelines by trained HISD staff at the student's enrolled or zoned (Entering Kindergarten only) HISD campus. The G/T testing administered includes the following:

• Pre-K4/Entering Kindergarten (referral)
• Kindergarten - Twelfth Grade (referral)
• HISD Universal 2nd Grade (district)
• HISD 5th and 8th grade students who score above the 80th percentile on MAP testing in Math or Reading (district)

 

Eligibility determination for the Gifted and Talented (G/T) program is based on the HISD G/T Identification Matrix. HISD uses two separate matrices: one for students applying for Entering Kindergarten and another for those currently in grades K-12.​ 

The identification process relies on a combination of qualitative and quantitative data, utilizing three or more criteria,​ which may include:

• Achievement Tests
• Abilities Tests
• Other Data Measurements

All scores are converted into points according to HISD’s G/T Identification Matrix. Parents will receive written notification regarding the eligibility from the G/T evaluation. Specific dates for the availability of the G/T Identification Matrix are shared once they are finalized.

If a student is evaluated and does not qualify, they will be eligible for reassessment after one calendar school year. 

Visit the Family Information Sessions tab below for more information on test types and identification.

G/T Qualification Categories (K-12 ONLY)

K-12 Qualification Categories:
Both Content Areas (ALL)	1 Content Area (Reading ONLY)	1 Content Area (Math ONLY)
Reading/ELA and Math	Reading/ELA	Math
*Receives services in Math, Science, Reading/ELA, and Social Studies	*Receives services in Reading/ELA and Social Studies	*Receives services in Math and Science

 
* To apply to any Vanguard magnet program, a student must qualify in both Math and Reading.

Testing Requests

The testing request for Gifted and Talented identification during the 2026-2027 school year will begin in August 2026. This process is aligned with the School Choice Application window.

Please see the details below regarding our communication about testing:

How HISD GT Department Communicates
We use several platforms to announce the G/T testing process:

• HISD NOW: The district's official news and communication channel.
• HISD Social Media: Our official Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts.
• Campus Communication: Individual schools share information with their community stakeholders.
• ParentSquare: The district's primary communication platform for families. 
• HISD G/T Website: The main page for our Gifted and Talented program.

The Two-Step Process

To help families, here's a quick overview of the two-step process we use for G/T testing requests:

1. Testing Interest Survey (May): We open a survey in May for parents to express their interest in having their child tested. Parents who complete this survey will receive an email with a direct link to the testing request form as soon as it becomes available. 
2. Testing Request Link (August): The official testing request link will be released in early August and will remain open for approximately three weeks.

Both are available through all the communication channels mentioned above, during the first week of August, featuring the Testing Request Link.

Thinking Routines:

Routines exist in all classrooms; they are the patterns by which we operate and go about the job of learning and working together in a classroom environment. A routine can be thought of as any procedure, process, or pattern of action that is used repeatedly to manage and facilitate the accomplishment of specific goals or tasks. Classrooms have routines that serve to manage student behavior and interactions, to organize the work of learning, and to establish rules for communication and discourse. Classrooms also have routines that structure the way students go about the process of learning. These learning routines can be simple structures, such as reading from a text and answering the questions at the end of the chapter, or they may be designed to promote students' thinking, such as asking students what they know, what they want to know, and what they have learned as part of a unit of study.

https://pz.harvard.edu/at-home-with-pz