9486 in the collection
Reassigned Houston Administrator Tells Parents to Question the District
Ohanian Note:: This courageous administrator who already blew the whistle on Houston's push-out policy, gives remarkable advice to parents: Question the district before blaming kids for failure.
When Jose fails TAKS, has HISD failed him?
Robert Kimball
It's testing time again in Texas. More than 200,000 students have begun the TAKS and Stanford tests in the Houston Independent School District. To many students, these tests will determine if they will graduate this summer and qualify to attend a college, or find a job requiring a diploma. However, to parents, it will mean the end of a very long 13-year effort to help their loved ones succeed in obtaining a high school diploma and pursuing the American dream.
Unfortunately, there will be many disappointed parents and students when graduation day arrives. Considering last year's results on the Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and a dropout rate the superintendent now estimates may be as high as 40 percent, perhaps half of the students currently in the ninth grade who expect to graduate after completing course requirements will not be able to earn diplomas from HISD.
HISD's explanation for a much anticipated low-passing rate on the TAKS will be that the students failed because they could not meet the standards. However, parents should consider HISD's performance before they hold their children accountable for failing to graduate. Last year, 21 of HISD's 27 high schools were rated as low-performing by the Texas Education Agency. How can a school system expect students to obtain a high school diploma when almost 80 percent of its high schools cannot achieve minimum standards established by the state?
Two weeks ago, in a State of the Schools speech, Superintendent Kaye Stripling reported that HISD is a great school system and HISD remains one of the best urban school systems in the nation. If this is an accurate statement, why is HISD's enrollment not keeping up with the population explosion in Houston? Why are families from all ethnic groups moving outside of the HISD boundaries? Although the city of Houston gained approximately 250,000 in the past six years, the total enrollment for all of HISD increased by 722 students between 1997-2003. This small enrollment increase in six years for a city with 2 million people suggests that HISD is fast losing its customers.
In spite of this reduced enrollment, the budget for HISD has reached $1.3 billion a year, which does not include approximately $2 billion of bond funds approved by voters. If we considered this a business, as Secretary of Education Rod Paige advises, then we must accept the fact that it costs taxpayers about $150,000 for each student who graduates from high school in HISD. In 2002, HISD had an enrollment of approximately 212,000 students, but it graduated less than 8,000 students! Those who support school vouchers present a strong case when considering the costs of public education in HISD and its dismal record of low-performing high schools.
As TAKS test results become known, families who elect to send their students to HISD should become more involved in learning why 21 of 27 high schools are low-performing and what is going to be done to improve them. Hispanics should question why an exemplary high school with a graduation rate of more than 95 percent has only 15 percent of its student body representing the Hispanic community. They should also question why 70 percent of students at the Community Education Partners, or CEP, alternative school are Hispanics and ask how they can help change this discriminatory practice.
The Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization, reported last week that HISD's class of 2001 graduation rate for Hispanics was 34.7 percent, while in the Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District the graduation rate was 79.5 percent. CFISD, like HISD, serves the Houston community but has proven to be much more successful. When graduation day arrives in two months, HISD should explain to its students' families and the community why it graduates so few high school students in the fourth-largest city in America.
Recently, at the State of the Schools speech, the district acknowledged that there are too many dropouts and that this has a major effect on the graduation rate. The district's traditional practice of appointing graduation study committees or holding summits has not, and will not, work because they do not result in decisions. Decisions must be made now to implement a high school equivalency program in HISD.
Pushing students out of high school because they will bring down the attendance and passing rate of TAKS test and therefore damage the image of the district must stop immediately. If the district implemented the Dallas Independent School District's dropout recovery program, it would increase the graduation rate significantly. It's time for HISD to help José and thousands of other high school students to graduate on time and to prepare to enter college, if that is a student's goal.
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Kimball, was an assistant principal at Sharpstown High School from 2000 to August 2003. After bringing suspect dropout figures at Sharpstown to the attention of Houston Independent School district officials, he was reassigned to an HISD elementary school with the title of assistant principal.
— Robert Kimball
When Jose fails TAKS, has HISD failed him?
Houston Chronicle
2004-03-04
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/editorial/outlook/2432177
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