July 13, 2003, 10:10 P.M.
[Ed. note – this is a modification of the July 11, 2003, 5:10 P.M. post]
It turns out that Rod Paige’s “Texas miracle” is nothing more than accounting magic. You will recall that Paige was previously Houston’s Superintendent of Schools and responsible for instituting the changes in that district that serve as the model for No Child Left Behind, the federal government’s intrusion into local control and operation of public schools.
At the heart of Paige’s “school reform program” during his tenure as Houston’s Superintendent was the concept of school accountability. Schools were to be judged based on the performance of students on certain state wide achievement tests. Schools whose students‘ test scores did not improve were designated as “failing” schools. Schools in Texas are judged based on standardized test scores, attendance and dropout rates. Incentives in the form of cash bonuses and other perks are given to teachers and administrators in schools that perform well.
Houston’s high schools looked great in terms of their actual test scores, but they failed to accurately report their rather extraordinary dropout rates. What’s worse, it looks like Houston’s schools have been deliberately underreporting their dropout rates in an obvious attempt to make their schools look better under the standards set by the Texas Department of Education.
A recent audit conducted by the State of Texas found that the Houston School District had failed to report as many as 3,000 students who left 16 middle and high schools. During the 2000-2001 school year (Rod Paige’s last year in the district) Houston schools reported that only 1.5% of its students had dropped out, and this number did not take into consideration students who left the district and did not transfer to other schools. In actuality, large numbers of students who dropped out were simply ignored when reports were made to the state.
As a result of the audit, the ranking of 14 of 16 schools surveyed will be lowered from best to worst according to the state’s standards. Houston is contesting this ranking, but their accounting practices would make Arthur Anderson proud. Diana Jean Schemo, in an article dated July 11, 2003 in the New York Times, reports that
“In a third of Houston's 30 high schools, scores on the standardized exams have risen as enrollment has shrunk. At Austin High, for example, 2,757 students were enrolled in the 1997-1998 school year, when only 65 percent passed the 10th grade math test, an important gauge of school success in Texas. Three years later, 99 percent of students passed the math exam, but enrollment shrank to 2,215 students.”
At the same time, the school reported that dropout figures, another important factor in determining school performance in Texas, had dropped from 4.1% in 1997-98 to 0.3% in 2000-01.
An excessive emphasis on test scores in Texas, rather than on multiple measures of student learning, has resulted in manipulation of dropout data and is creating a culture where at-risk students and students who might not perform well are encouraged to leave school, so that they don’t pull down test results. Houston school officials misreported (i.e., lied about) dropout figures reported to the State, and failed to enter proper codes on student records when students did not return to school. In one instance a Houston high school went from 1,000 freshmen to 300 seniors in four years and reported no dropouts. According to Dr. Robert Kimball, assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, within the Houston District, this was “amazing” given the fact that 74.7% of the population was identified as “at-risk.” Kimball’s comments, reported in the New York Times, come from a letter that Kimball wrote to Sharpstown principal Carol Wichmann warning her that the school was underreporting its dropout figures.
These developments come out in light of tragic stories of Houston students, such as Jerroll Tyler, who was featured in Ms. Schemo’s report, pushed from their schools by administrators bent on getting good grades and bonuses for their schools, and not on teaching kids.
The State of New Hampshire has struggled to come up with an appropriate, comprehensive test that it hopes will adequately measure student performance. The old NHEIAP will be replaced by a new test, which will attempt to take into consideration diverse learning styles, special needs, and the myriad different factors that affect test scores. The City of Laconia is already ahead of the curve in improving overall student performance with programs to improve literacy, assisting non-traditional learners and providing comprehensive in-house special education services. A review of the criteria that improperly lead to the designation of Woodland Heights as a “failing school” will result in a reversal of that determination. We are currently awaiting confirmation that, through the tireless efforts of our administrators, that erroneous finding has been reversed.
Not all school districts in this state are fortunate enough to have programs in place to set them up to meet the challenges of compliance with NCLB. My fear is that what happened in Texas can happen in those districts where pressure to meet the requirements of the law may drive teachers and administrators to leave children who don’t perform well on the test behind. In Houston thousands of at-risk kids simply vanished from school records due to their potential to negatively impact test scores. Not only were students encouraged to drop out, or more accurately, fade away, when they were likely to negatively impact test scores, Houston’s school district subsequently underreported its dropout figures, a measure of school performance under the standards set by the Texas Department of Education. No Child Left Behind will do nothing for at-risk students if the emphasis is solely on standardized test performance -- just ask those 3,000 kids that Rod Paige left behind in Houston.
July 13, 2003, 10:00 P.M.
Judge Charles Campbell of the Texas District Court has ruled that the Texas Department of Public Safety lacked the legal authority to track down Democratic members of the Texas legislature who fled the state to block a vote on a Republican redistricting plan. According to Judge Campbell, Texas law "limits that role of D.P.S. to enforcing the laws protecting the public safety and providing for the prevention and detection of crime." This does not include pursuing elected legislators at the behest of the Speaker of the Texas House of Representatives.
Meanwhile, the federal investigation into the roles of the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Aviation Administration in the search is underway. The federal investigation, being conducted at least partially at the request of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), has yielded some interesting results. The Department of Homeland Security inspector general has issued a rather incomplete report, but apparently the Department of Transportation has issued a more throrough one of the FAA's involvement in the matter and Josh Marshall links to articles in the Washington Post and Dallas Morning News that address the federal reports. One thing is clear, however, initial reports that the feds did not aid the state DPS in its illegal manhunt were, well. . .lies.
July 13, 2003, 9:50 P.M.
Hello. . .is anybody out there? Condoleezza Rice, George Bush and the rest of the administration are casting stones at George Tenet over the Niger uranium business. The problem is, the record clearly indicates that the CIA warned the British off of the Niger uranium purchase information as early as September 2002. What's more, in today's Washington Post, Walter Pincus reports that CIA Director George J. Tenet convinced White House officials to delete a reference to Iraq's trying to buy uranium from Niger from a presidential speech last October. Rice’s own agency was told of the lack of confidence on the part of the CIA in the information long before Bush used it in the State of the Union speech in January. Now high level administration officials are simply lying about who-knew-what-when. The use of the bogus intelligence on Iraq attempting to purchase yellowcake in Niger was intended to help convince Americans that the threat to us from Iraq was immediate. That was a lie, and in my book, a big one. The damage done to U.S. credibility and diplomatic integrity leading up to the invasion of Iraq is getting worse as the world sees that we will do whatever it takes to get our way.
What bothers me most is the air of moral superiority emanating from the White House. They seem to be certain that whatever they think is correct, whatever policy they adopt is right and that those who disagree are simply wrong, or worse, un-American. The result of this zealotry is a sense that accomplishing their goals, stated or not, is paramount. Whatever needs to be done to more forward with the administration’s goals is acceptable to this White House. It doesn’t matter if the means of achieving those goals is to outright lie. Bill Clinton lied about a woman and hurt and embarrassed his family. But he didn’t hurt me. George Bush’s lies are costing lives and are endangering the diplomatic, political and moral credibility of the U.S. Despite this, no one is calling for George Bush’s impeachment. Yet.
