The Kids Left Behind
The New York Times
August 28, 2003
By BOB HERBERT
He was going to be the education president, and during
the campaign in 2000 he hugged kids from coast to coast, crowing about the education
miracle in Texas and promising to spread the Texas model nationwide.
He said he was a different kind of Republican, a man of honor and
compassion who would look out for the kids.
It was all smoke, of course - photo-ops in a cynical campaign.
You knew it was smoke when the "compassionate"
George W. Bush put Dick Cheney
on the ticket, a former congressman who had voted against
funding for Head Start, against subsidizing school lunches
and against federal aid for
college students.
In other words, against kids.
Next week the Senate will take up the education budget proposed
for next year by the White House and Senate Republicans. From the perspective
of those who are pro-children, it's loaded with bad news. Not only does
the bill fall far short of the photo-op promises Mr. Bush made to provide
funding for programs to improve public education, but it would actually
cut $200 million from the president's very own (and relentlessly touted) No
Child Left Behind Act.
We're talking about a real cut - $200 million less than is being spent
on this already underfunded initiative.
The proposed cuts, according to Congressional officials who have
studied the budget proposal, would eliminate a high school dropout prevention
program, would prevent more than 32,000 children with limited proficiency
in English from participating in federally supported English instruction
programs, would drastically cut high school equivalency and college
assistance for migrant children, and would end the Thurgood Marshall
Scholarship program.
The proposal would also cut more than 20,000 teachers from
professional training programs, despite Mr. Bush's promise that teachers would "get
the training they need to raise educational standards." And it would completely
eliminate training for teachers in computer technology.
Among those who are steaming over the proposal is
Senator Edward Kennedy, one of a number of Democrats
who gave the president the kind of
good-faith, high-profile, bipartisan support that
was crucial to the passage of No Child Left Behind.
Here is what Senator Kennedy will say on the Senate floor next week:
"The bill before us contains harsh and unacceptable cuts to education
that will hurt families, students, schools and teachers throughout the
country. The president and Congress promised to reform and
improve public education . . . but if we pass the legislation before us as is, the
message again to parents and teachers and schools will be, `You're on your own.' "
Senator Kennedy also plans to stress that the president is prone
to making promises that are never kept: "A pattern is emerging. Each year the
president picks a large area to work in a bipartisan fashion and
promise compassion and help. In the past that area has been education.
This year, it is the global AIDS crisis, and we hope that the promised
support will happen. But on education, the promises made consistently have been
broken."
It's hard to believe the president ever intended to adequately
fund the No Child Left Behind Act. Mr. Bush fights ferociously for the things he really
cares about: enormous tax cuts for the wealthy, for example, or launching
a war against Iraq. He has never showed a similar passion for improving
the public schools. The administration tried to cut funding for
the No Child Left Behind Act less than two weeks after the president signed it into
law.
The tax cuts and the ever-increasing costs of the war are
submerging the nation in a sea of red ink, and the hopes of millions of school-age
youngsters are sinking right along with it.
As for the Texas education miracle - more smoke. The largest and most
frequently praised district, Houston, is being monitored by the state after
an audit showed that more than half of the 5,500 students
who left school in the 2000-2001 year should have been counted as dropouts,
but were not.
President Bush was apparently serious about bringing the Texas model
to the nation. He made the superintendent of the Houston school district
the nation's education secretary.
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Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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For Houston Schools, College Claims Exceed Reality
The New York Times
August 28, 2003
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO
HOUSTON - At Jack Yates High School here, students had to make
do without a school library for more than a year. A principal replaced
dozens of experienced teachers with substitutes and uncertified teachers, who cost less.
And yet from 1998 to 2002, Yates High reported that 99 percent to 100 percent
of its graduates planned to attend college.
Across town, Davis High School, where students averaged a combined SAT
score of 791 out of a possible 1600 in 1998, reported that every last one
of its graduates that year planned to go to college.
Sharpstown High School, a high poverty school that falsely claimed
zero dropouts in 2002, also reported in 2001 that 98.4 percent of its graduates
expected to attend college.
"Absolutely, positively, no way," said Larry Blackmon, a Yates parent
and alumnus who knows graduates without the means or plans to go to
college. "You'd get more of an accurate count asking elementary kids if they plan to go to college."
The glowing figures on students who plan to further their education
are part of a broad set of statistics Houston school officials submitted to state
authorities, figures that painted a wildly optimistic picture of what has
been going on in Houston schools over the past few years.
A recent state audit of the Houston schools found vast undercounting
of high school dropouts. The figures on college plans suggest that on yet a
second measure, Houston put forth data that bear small relation to the
hard reality most students face.
The college data, unlike the dropout data, does not affect the Houston
school system's performance rankings. It is used largely for research
purposes. But critics say that like the dropout data, it reflects
a tendency to inflate success by the system that sent Rod Paige, its former
superintendent, to Washington, where, as education secretary, he
is now the nation's top school officer.
At Davis High, for instance, comparison with test scores and
records from the Higher Education Coordinating Board, which tracks students who
enroll in public colleges and universities in Texas, suggested that not
100 percent, but less than half of Davis's 1998 graduates enrolled in the
state's two- or four-year institutions of higher education, which generally
absorb the great majority of college-bound graduates, particularly from
poorer high schools.
In a written statement, Terry Abbott, a spokesman for the Houston school district,
refused to explain the high numbers of students reported to be
planning to go to college and said only that the figures
came from "surveys of students." Requests for interviews with principals and with Kaye
Stripling, the current superintendent, were refused. Dr. Paige also declined to answer questions.
Some former principals in Houston said they did not know
why the data was collected, while others thought, mistakenly, that it was used by
parents shopping for schools for their children. Given the emphasis here on
judging school performance by statistics, principals said, underlings
most likely made up the figures to look good - without fully understanding their use.
"I'm very skeptical of 99 to 100 percent," said Robert F. Worthy,
who stepped down as principal of Yates this spring, after four years. "In fact, I'm
almost certain we didn't have those numbers."
Another former principal, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals,
contended that lower-level administrators inflated their figures in the
hope of attracting the children of active, involved parents. More students
also mean more money from the state. On paper, her school claimed that
almost all of its graduates were headed for college. In fact, the principal said,
most of them "couldn't spell college, let alone attend."
Not all schools submitted numbers that strain credibility, and some
have put forth more modest estimates after years of sky-high claims.
Parent advocacy groups contend that the district's statistics
on college plans - however they are gathered - should rely on some indicator, like
transcripts requested or students taking college entrance exams, to have any meaning.
But George Scott, an online education columnist who has written widely
about Texas, said the soaring numbers were no accident. He said claims
that most students planned to attend college were of a piece with another
claim the state makes - that the majority of Texas high school
graduates are ready for college-level work.
"Why would any self-respecting person allow this to go out
when it's clearly not true?" Mr. Scott said.
To gauge the disparity between the portrait painted by Houston
and the reality graduates face, The New York Times compared the district's figures
on college plans with test scores and state data on college enrollment.
While Yates, for example, said all of its graduates in 2000 planned
to attend college, only a third of its seniors took the state's most popular college
entrance exam, the SAT, reaching a combined average score of 763.
According to the state's Higher Education Coordinating Board, fewer than 50
percent of Yates's graduates that year took any credits at state colleges or universities.
Matthew Rivera, a 1999 graduate of Worthing High School here,
said that most of his classmates probably hoped to attend college. But for many of
them, the encounter with higher education proved brutal.
"Getting into college is not hard at all," Mr. Rivera said.
"Staying in is hard." Mr. Rivera and two of his friends, Worthing classmates,
began college in 1999. Only one graduated this spring.
A look at scores on tests other than the Texas Assessment
of Academic Skills suggests that Mr. Rivera and his friends were not alone in their lack
of preparation.
The year they graduated, the average combined SAT score of
Worthing's seniors was 794. When in the 11th grade, the class of '99 scored in the
bottom 40 percent of students nationally on the Stanford 9 achievement
test in virtually all subjects .
According to state figures, 143 graduates from Worthing's class of
1999 enrolled in public colleges or universities in Texas; 166 did not. That year,
however, Houston reported that 95 percent of Worthing's students planned to go to college.
Mr. Rivera plans to attend vocational courses in radiology this fall,
which he hopes will help him land stable employment at a decent salary. He now
holds down three jobs, one as a waiter.
Ashleigh Blackmon, a graduate of Yates in 2002, said she did not for a
moment believe all her classmates were planning on college but was not
sure her school's claims did any harm.
"It doesn't mean anything, because who cares?" she said, and
then paused. "But it could mean they lie about a lot more of other things."
Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company
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