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MasteryPrep Partnership Drives College Readiness Success at El Paso’s Ysleta ISD

  • March 3, 2025

Every month, Richard Couder, Director of Advanced Academics for Ysleta Independent School District in Texas, emails district administrators a report on each school’s number of seniors who are “college-ready” in reading and math on the ACT, SAT, or TSIA2.

Over the last year, it’s safe to say more principals look forward to opening that email—and Couder also enjoys sending it. Why? Because more students are achieving benchmark scores. This results in part from the district’s investment in its MasteryPrep partnership.

“We’ve seen growth on every campus from the previous year. We are trending in the right direction, and we’re going to easily exceed how we performed last year,” Couder says. While the district does a lot to drive college readiness, the implementation of MasteryPrep “has absolutely helped us,” he says.

  • The MasteryPrep Partnership with Ysleta

Ysleta first partnered with MasteryPrep through its University of El Paso-GEAR UP federal grant in 2023, when the district held our high-impact MasteryPrep Boot Camps for students. Noticing early signs of success—and with the grant funds running out the following year—the district decided to invest in the teacher-led MasteryPrep Curriculum for the TSIA2, excited by the prospect of a digital asynchronous platform that directly aligned with its instructional needs. For 2024-2025, the district expanded its resource plans and implementation even further to include both print and digital MasteryPrep offerings.

Overall, the district has implemented our product suite that makes up the Test Prep Solution for the TSIA2, which included Professional Development (for teachers), Practice Testing & Analysis, our Online Course, the MasteryPrep Curriculum, Bell Ringers, and a MasteryPrep Boot Camp (for students).

Elements

Following its TSIA2 program implementation, Ysleta ISD added Solutions for the Digital SAT. MasteryPrep expanded its partnership with the district last November so they could implement a pilot program of Solutions for the ACT to a high school senior class.

This district-wide implementation has helped provide a consistent approach across all district schools.

“The one thing that principals and teachers hate the most is constant flip-flopping between products and services,” Couder says. “Consistency is one of the big things we have achieved. MasteryPrep gives us the most opportunity to integrate both technology and teacher-led classroom instruction.”

  • College Readiness Improves 4 Percentage Points in a Year
Ysleta Independent School District, based in El Paso, Texas, encompasses 52 schools and serves more than 36,000 students, of which about 95% are underserved Hispanic or Latino students.

The district has two main goals for students across its 14 traditional early college high schools, plus its academies: to improve the number of college-ready seniors, and to increase the number of students in Grades 8-11 who meet their benchmarks early so they can dually enroll in college courses.

The district is making progress on these goals:

  • More Students Scoring College-Ready: Ysleta ISD’s percentage of college-ready students in reading and math improved to 28.7% for the Class of 2024 from 24.5% for the Class of 2023.
  • Double-Digit Percentage Point Increases in College Readiness: Three district schools experienced double-digit percentage point increases, such as Valle Verde ECHS, rising to 64.1% for the Class of 2024 from 43.7% for the Class of 2023; Hanks High School, improving to 32.2% from 21.1%; and Bel Air High School, increasing to 28.5% from 18.6%.
  • On Track for Growth in 2025: As Couder mentioned, the district is on track to improve this year from 2024. As of January 2025, the district has already had 25.4% of its Class of 2025 seniors scoring college-ready in reading and math just halfway through the school year, when it had 28.7% scoring college-ready for all last year.

Double-Digit Percentage Point Increases in College Readiness

  • A ‘Teacher-Friendly’ Integration

In selecting MasteryPrep, Couder conferred with several district leaders who said their TSIA2 scores improved following partnerships with MasteryPrep.

Ysleta ISD also wanted to introduce MasteryPrep to the district because students were growing tired of seeing the same repetitive test prep program each year. MasteryPrep provides a “structured game and valuable scripted lessons” for some teachers who may struggle to understand all the ins-and-outs of the TSIA2 test, says Terri Barragan, Advanced Academics Instructional Specialist for Ysleta ISD.

“We hear from some teachers, ‘We don’t know the test,’” Barragan says. “MasteryPrep really did provide a structured game for the teachers; if you don’t know it, use this. And my whole thing was, if you’re going to have a teacher that’s not familiar with ELAR or Math, they could at least use the resource.”

  • Implementing MasteryPrep Into Classrooms and Camps

Every March and October, Ysleta ISD holds a week-long camp focused on TSIA2 prep that includes the MasteryPrep Boot Camp. On Monday and Tuesday, English and Math teachers from Ysleta teach from MasteryPrep. On Wednesday, those students complete the MasteryPrep Boot Camp, taught by one of our expert instructors. On Thursday, they take the TSIA2.

“It’s all part of a structured week of TSIA2 practice, leading up to the actual exam,” Couder says.

MasteryPrep’s resources—including lessons aligned with the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and a “launch pad” connecting our curriculum to the TSIA2 exam—allow teachers to integrate prep into their instruction.

“[MasteryPrep] makes it very easy for teachers to see the connection between their instruction, their content that they have to cover, and the exam that they’re helping kids prepare for,” Couder says.

The school also partners with MasteryPrep to prep students for the digital SAT, with the district paying for juniors to take the test once a year every March. In a 30-minute advisory period from January through test day, students use MasteryPrep materials, including practice testing. The district also integrates SAT practice into its 11th-grade geometry class.

"[MasteryPrep] makes it very easy for teachers to see the connection between their instruction, their content that they have to cover, and the exam that they’re helping kids prepare for."
—Richard Couder, Director of Advanced Academics for Ysleta Independent School District

  • MasteryPrep Across the School Year

Ysleta uses a “distributed testing” model, allowing students to take the TSIA2 throughout the year as they become ready. On a recurring monthly basis, the district holds teacher meetings where they discuss how to not just close learning gaps but also improve the integration of MasteryPrep resources into lessons.

“Everybody’s using the same TSIA2 resources, and everybody’s preparing the same,” Couder says. “We can do district PLCs where everybody’s talking the same language.”

Throughout the school year, the district also holds ultiple MasteryPrep Professional Development sessions for teachers, where they learn test-prep strategies they can incorporate into their instruction. The greatest benefit of these sessions, Couder says: “[MasteryPrep] will structure it the way we need it to be. It’s not this canned PD that you can’t manipulate.”

Barragan also spoke highly of the school’s expert Professional Development instructor, Daniella Hernandez. “She talks to teachers; I mean, she can connect with them.” The school has participated in “office hours” with Daniella and other MasteryPrep experts to answer specific teacher questions.

Despite some initial hesitancy amongst teachers and other educators at Ysleta about turning to an entirely new test prep solution, “We are starting to hear more feedback that, ‘Hey, this is actually working. Our kids are scoring better,” Couder says

  • How Ysleta Celebrates Success

Ysleta has introduced various incentives to encourage students to work hard to score college-ready. As students meet college readiness benchmarks, school principals are holding raffles and giveaways for discounted yearbooks, sports passes, and prom tickets.

“If they’re not motivated by the fact that scoring college-ready is going to keep them from taking remedial courses,” Couder says, “then let’s motivate them with things they care about.”

This year, the school also gave a purple graduation chord to seniors who graduated college-ready in reading and math on the SAT, ACT, or TSIA2.

In general, the school has prioritized college and career readiness in the past four years. And MasteryPrep played an important role in that journey.

“We talk CCMR all the time as a district, which is something that previously we didn’t,” Couder says. “And now we talk about it. We have an entire leadership group about it. We meet about it all the time.”

Unpaid testimonial. Individual results may vary, and testimonials are not claimed to represent typical results. TSIA2 score average and gain data are courtesy of MasteryPrep clients and based on year-over-year test data. All testimonials are real participants, and may not reflect the typical user’s experience, and are not intended to represent or guarantee that anyone will achieve the same or similar results.

Explore MasteryPrep Solutions for Texas Schools and Districts

MasteryPrep offers a range of test-prep programs and service to support students in scoring college-ready on the TSIA2®, STAAR, the ACT®, or the Digital SAT®.
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ACT® is the registered trademark of ACT, Inc. Some items in MasteryPrep programs are the copyrighted content of ACT, Inc. and are reproduced with permission. SAT® is a trademark of the College Board. MasteryPrep LLC has no affiliation with College Board MasteryPrep SAT programs are not approved or endorsed by College Board. The Texas Success Initiative Assessment 2.0 (TSIA2) is an ACCUPLACER® exam, which is a trademark of College Board. MasteryPrep has no affiliation with College Board or the Texas Success Initiative (TSI), and the TSIA2 Mastery program is not approved or endorsed by College Board or the TSI. WorkKeys® is a registered trademark of ACT, Inc. The WorkKeys programs are not approved or endorsed by ACT, Inc.

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