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Hector Bojorquez is IDRA’s Director of Operations and Educational Practice, overseeing IDRA’s numerous projects that provide training and technical assistance to school districts and other education-related agencies. He conceptualized and directs Youth Leadership Now, IDRA’s field-initiated, research-based program funded by the U.S. Department of Education. The project is examining how this asset-based program can transform not just participating students but also whole school communities.

Mr. Bojorquez directed IDRA’s Ready Texas project, funded by the Greater Texas Foundation to study implementation of the 2013 House Bill 5 in Texas to provide education stakeholders critical and timely information about the implications of recent curriculum changes in the state on the college and career readiness of graduates.

In 2020 and 2021, he helped lead IDRA’s quick shift to support educators and families during the COVID-19 pandemic. Within days of school closures, IDRA launched a resource hub, Learning Goes On, with hub for materials, webinars, and other information and resources. Mr. Bojorquez led development of two bilingual tools: Ensuring Equity in Online Learning – Considerations in Response to COVID-19’s Impact on Schooling and Best Practices for Online Instruction in the Wake of COVID-19. As schools prepared to re-open in the fall of 2021, he wrote Ready – Reopen – Reconnect! Proven Strategies for Re-engaging Students Who Need You the Most to describe research-based initiatives to support students.

He is also co-director of IDRA’s Re-energizing Leadership to Achieve Greater Student Success project that is transforming instruction schoolwide using promising practices to strengthen student learning and build school-community collaboration.

He recently served as co-director of the IDRA EAC-South, which built bridges among administrators, teachers, parents, students and community members so that stakeholders could find that common higher ground where all students can benefit regardless of race, sex or national origin. For six years, the IDRA EAC-South was one of four federally-funded centers that provide technical assistance and training at the request of school districts and other responsible governmental agencies to build capacity of local educators to ensure a more equitable learning environment for all students.

Mr. Bojorquez directed a project funded by TG that created an innovative and replicable model of secondary and post-secondary support that provided college success assistance to students, especially first-time-in-college Latino students in Texas who have difficulties navigating IHE processes. He also co-directed IDRA’s i3 program funded by the U.S. Department of Education to spread and document the PTA Comunitario movement across south Texas.

He wrote IDRA’s report, College Bound and Determined, profiling what happens when a school district raises expectations for students instead of lowering them. He examined data and conducted interviews with Pharr-San Juan Alamo ISD superintendent Dr. King, school principals, teachers, counselors and students to explore how PSJA has achieved the kind of success that it has. The report shows how PSJA’s vision and actions, clearly and independently aligned with IDRA’s own vision for change: The Quality Schools Action Framework™. This change theory helps communities and educators assess a school’s conditions and outcomes and identify leverage points for improvement and informing action.

For a number of years, Mr. Bojorquez served as the web specialist and trainer at IDRA. He led integration of technology in providing technical assistance and training to educators. And he developed and enhanced online databases for evaluation; developed products for delivery in a variety of formats, including video, audio, CD and the Internet; and established communication systems with stakeholders.

Mr. Bojorquez has his bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of Texas at Austin and his certification in elementary education: pre-kindergarten through sixth grade, bilingual education and English as a second language.

Mr. Bojorquez led in the development of the IDRA OurSchool portal, a groundbreaking online portal that helps community and school partners examine their school data and plan joint action to improve school holding power. Through this database driven, user-friendly portal, educators and community members can find out how well their high school campus is preparing and graduating students, what factors may be weakening school holding power, and what they can do to address them. Bojorquez directed another project funded by TG to build organizational capacity to disseminate actionable data to communities through IDRA’s OurSchool portal concerning college persistence, developmental courses and success of Texas high school students.

He also developed the technology integration plan for technical assistance through IDRA’s Focusing on Language and Academic Instructional Renewal (FLAIR) model. FLAIR capitalizes on the campus leaders, mobilizing the principal, teachers, librarians and support staff as a force to tailor-make a reading program that is research based and that results in better achievement for all students. Bojorquez led implementation at a pilot campus where teachers are now using technology with their students in the classroom and seeing dramatic results.

Mr. Bojorquez has worked in education for more than 25 years in roles ranging from education specialist for a regional education service center to writing curriculum and training to teaching in a bilingual elementary school classroom.

Media featuring Hector

Texas Senate bill seeks to strip required lessons on people of color and women from ‘critical race theory’ law, by Isabella Zou (Texas Tribune), San Antonio Express-News, July 12, 2021

Texas Senate bill seeks to strip required lessons on people of color and women from ‘critical race theory’ law, by Isabella Zou, Texas Tribune, July 9, 2021

Texas Students of Color Returned to In-Person Learning at Below-Average Rates. Experts Say the Reasons Are Nuanced, by Allyson Waller, Texas Tribune, July 6, 2021