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Council of the Great City Schools Offers Spin on the New York Times Article About Houston

Ohanian Comment: Check out the affiliation of the writer. Then check out that organization. It's a case of follow the money, follow the influence. This tidbit from Paige's official biography when he was appointed Secretary of Education will help you get started: Secretary Paige has been active on the Education Commission of the States, as well as the Council of the Great City Schools, which bestowed on him its Richard R. Green Award as the outstanding urban educator of 1999. Do you think the Council of the Great City Schools wants to admit they were wrong--and take the award back? An editorial in the Houston Chronicle, following this piece, offers a different view.

The Houston public schools are rapidly becoming the most dissected and fought-over piece of educational territory in the nation. And the fight is important because it speaks to the reforms that other major city school systems are borrowing from Houston; the nature of the Texas Miracle; the foundation on which No Child Left Behind was built; and the underlying credibility of the Bush administration.

But The New York Times hasn't done the public any favors in its recent story on Houston's academic performance. The implication is that Houston's improvements were illusory. The public might like to know, however, that The Times didn't get the story right.

First, The Times conducted an independent analysis of the district's state and local test scores, an admirable undertaking. The analysis tries to make something of the fact that Houston's progress on the Stanford Achievement Test -- 9th Edition (SAT-9) is slower than its progress on the TAAS. These two tests are as different as apples and cord wood. They both measure reading and math, but are built to do different things. The TAAS was tailored to measure student performance on the state's instructional standards and curriculum. The SAT-9 is a broader survey of reading and math skills. The first tells parents how their children do on what Texas says is important; the second tells parents how their children do compared to other children across the country. Houston's instructional program is pegged to the first, not the second.

Second, the Houston schools administer the SAT-9 voluntarily to see how the district stacks up against its counterparts nationwide. Texas doesn't hold anyone accountable for the results, however. The Los Angeles schools, which The Times used to compare Houston, also take the SAT-9 -- but California required it and used the scores to hold people responsible statewide under No Child Left Behind. In other words, the SAT-9 counted as part of the state accountability system for Los Angeles, but it didn't count in the same way for Houston, where TAAS was used instead.

Third, if one wanted to assess HISD's progress, it would have used a number of measures, not just one. Likewise, when one wants to know how the economy is doing, one doesn't look at just the Standards & Poors. One uses the Dow, the NASDC, the Russell 500, inventory levels, unemployment rates and the like. The same is true when looking at schools. One should look at a variety of measures, not just the one that bolsters one's arguments, something the nation's paper of record should have known.

The truth is that the Houston schools have made important gains in student achievement and narrowed racially identifiable achievement gaps, particularly in the elementary grades. An analysis done by MDRC, a respected New York City-based research firm, showed that Houston's reading and math scores improved on both the TAAS and the SAT-9 between 1998 and 2001. The improvements held up no matter how one looked at the scores.

Had the district not improved, it wouldn't have generated The New York Times headline, "New York and Houston Lead Urban School Districts in Study," when the results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress came out in July. The results on the nation's report card -- the toughest test in the land -- showed that African-American students, for instance, were reading better in Houston than they were anywhere else in the nation. That isn't illusory.

If the purpose of the article was to undercut No Child Left Behind, then it should have taken on NCLB. If the purpose was to say that high school gains are slow, then it could have gone anywhere in the country. And if the purpose was to undercut the Bush administration, it should have had the brass to do it directly. Instead, the article does little but to raise questions about journalistic objectivity.

The Houston schools would be the first to say that they still have a lot of work to do to bring their students to the level that everyone wants. That is true of every major city school system in the nation.

But, the fact of the matter is that Houston was no miracle. It was hard work. And it was real.

Casserly is executive director of the Council of the Great City Schools, a coalition of 60 of the nation's largest urban public school systems, based in Washington, D.C.

Heat on HISD Should Drive Further Achievement
Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle

It's no wonder the country has Houston public schools under a microscope. President Bush, of Texas, and Rod Paige, his secretary of education who is formerly superintendent of Houston schools, regularly extol the district's gains in student achievement and point to HISD as the model for No Child Left Behind, Bush's dramatic education reform policy.

But the kneejerk defense we've seen coming out of the district, while understandable, is disheartening. Rather than flinch under the sting of national criticism, district officials must continue to strive for honest assessment and real accountability.

In working toward passage of No Child Left behind, Bush and Paige regularly touted public school accountability measures Texas lawmakers instituted during Bush's tenure as governor, the major planks of which called for regularly raising the bar on academic standards and measuring achievement against those standards with a statewide basic skills test.

HISD demonstrated fairly consistent gains on the test, the now-discontinued Texas Assessment of Academic Skills. In his tenure as superintendent, Paige, and now current district chief Kaye Stripling trumpeted those gains, all the while acknowledging how much further Houston students had to go. The two made public pledges to work toward more improvement.

And, to be fair, the district voluntarily went the further step of also measuring its students in the national norm-referenced "Stanford Achievement Test," to get a better idea of how HISD was doing compared with others around the country.

Trustees recognized as early as 1997 that other states were leapfrogging over HISD achievements and accountability goals and that multiple measurements, including a national comparison test, were in order.

In 1998, HISD made performance on the Stanford test part of its effort to halt social promotions.

The results of the various testings speak for themselves.

In fact, TAAS results in Houston never showed that student performance on the whole was adequate -- or even acceptable. The TAAS, now replaced by the slightly more challenging Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills, was a test of minimum basic skills.

The bar for passage on the state tests was set intentionally low, with the expectation that it would rise over time and in conjunction with other school reforms, like an improved statewide curriculum.

Recent national news reports comparing academic gains on the TAAS to performance on the Stanford exam show a disturbing disconnect between the two. Relative to students outside Texas, Houston pupils had improved only marginally or had static or, in some cases, diminished performance.

As disappointing as that analysis is, it should surprise no one. Bush and even some HISD officials might be guilty of overselling Houston's performance by not pointing out Houston students' standing relative to the national average. But this is not a slam-dunk indictment of education policies based on standardized testing and accountability.

Knowing how Houston students measure up to their peers nationally, including understanding where weaknesses must be corrected, is a first, necessary step to making real improvements in education.

That is why HISD's virtually automatic defense of its relatively low scores is so disheartening. When HISD administrators claim, as one did in a published report this week, that district students performed well in light of its large population of poor and minority students, it signals to the public that HISD has yet to fully grasp that it is as responsible for educating the least advantaged in its classrooms as it is for the well-fed, well-shod and well-prepared youngsters.

Likewise, Rob Mosbacher, incoming chairman of the Greater Houston Partnership and a longtime advocate for public education, called the media criticism a politically driven slap at Bush. Mosbacher unquestionably is committed to making Houston schools better. But he would do well to take a different tack here.

There's no shame in the headway Houston schools have made so far, and no reason to take offense when the nation takes a closer look. Rather, HISD has a strong case to make that it has charted a sensible course of reforms, and will continue to monitor its progress and be accountable to students, the community and taxpayers.

The bottom line is that HISD has made some impressive progress, especially compared to other, similar, urban school districts around the country. The bottom line also is that it still has a very long way to go and too many children are still getting too poor an education -- or are dropping out along the way.

Anybody surprised by that either hasn't been paying close attention or is an unreconstructed apologist for mediocrity.

— Michael Casserly, Ex. Dir. Council of the Great City Schools
Setting N.Y. Times straight on HISD story
Houston Chronicle
2003-12-05
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/editorial/outlook/2271130

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