-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Interesting piece
Date: Fri, 11 Aug 2000 07:35:30 -0500
From: rob.tierney@ubc.ca (Rob Tierney)
To: KGoodman@U.ARIZONA.EDU, ygoodman@U.ARIZONA.EDU
Study paints unflattering picture of Bush's record on education
By ELI J. LAKE
WASHINGTON, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- A forthcoming study of the Texas education
system raises serious questions about George W. Bush's
education record as governor, charging that Bush programs have failed to
reverse the staggering number of minority students who are dropping
out of high school - a contention Texas education officials deny.
The study is likely to fuel controversy about Bush's record on
education, a key issue in the November presidential election.
Walter Haney, a professor at Boston College, has spent the past two
years investigating the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills, the
lynchpin of Governor Bush's education plan for the Lone Star State.
TAAS, as it is known, has received widespread praise in education policy
circles as one of the most successful academic standards-based reform
programs in the country. This week, the Bush campaign was touting a
Rand Study that found Texas minorities were particular beneficiaries of
the governor's education policies.
But Haney argues that these gains are overshadowed by attrition of
black and Latino students in Texas high schools. His research found that
the proportion of these students finishing high school has hovered
between 60 and 65 percent in Texas from 1991, when TAAS was
implemented, through 1999.
These numbers are well below the national average. According to the
National Center for Education Statistics, 67 percent of Hispanics and 82
percent of African-Americans had completed high school within the
graduation age range for 1997, the last year national statistics were
taken.
"As far as I understand, this problem existed before Bush became
governor. But it seems to me that Bush has done absolutely nothing to
address this problem, and under his administration the state has been
allowed to continue reporting false and misleading statistics on drop
out
rates in Texas," Haney said.
The Texas Education Agency took issue with Haney's work however,
noting that Haney's study measures graduation in four-year increments.
"Haney's methodology is not the most accurate way to look at either
completion rates or dropout rates because we know that, unfortunately, a
number of students repeat the ninth grade. Naturally, these students
have not graduated from high school four years later," agency
spokeswoman Debbie Graves Ratcliffe said.
She added that many students who would appear in Haney's study as
dropouts may have switched schools. "Texas has a very mobile student
population," she said. The TEA's statistics found that for 1998, 86
percent of blacks and 87 percent of Hispanics were completing high
school.
The Bush campaign stressed that any dropouts are a problem for Texas and
the state is trying to address the problem.
"We recognize that dropouts present a challenge to our state and our
schools and even one student falling through the cracks is
unacceptable," said Ray Sullivan, a spokesman for the Bush campaign.
Haney's research also finds that Texas students in general have a 30
percent dropout rate, more than double the national average of 14
percent. The Texas dropout rate is particularly off the mark of the goal
set by the National Education Goals Panel, founded under President
Bush, of 10 percent.
Potentially most politically damaging, is Haney's suggestion that
Bush's education policies in Texas create a situation that keep the
dropout
rate high - and potentially make it worse. These policies are a model
for the GOP's education program, a key element of its efforts to reach
out
to minority and swing voters.
Under Bush's education plan, the Texas education agency measures
student achievement in each school against a statewide standard, and
failing schools face a panoply of sanctions and rewards based on how
their students measure up to it within a year. Bush does not propose a
national standard, for which states would comply, but rather that states
must develop their own standards system as a precondition for receiving
federal money.
His plan gives the states the option of applying sanctions against
schools that do not meet their state's standards, up to and including
"exit
vouchers," plans that give a portion of public money set aside for the
school to parents as vouchers for private school.
Haney suggests that one reason many minorities are dropping out of
Texas high schools is because teachers, keen to have their schools
measure up to the state wide standards, are holding back underachieving
minority students. Haney says that Texas dropout numbers are so
high because many minorities are being left behind in the ninth grade.
"Between 25 and 30 percent of black and Latino students were denied
promotion in the late 1990s," Haney said. "It appears that when
students are denied promotion and have to repeat grade nine you
dramatically increase the probability that they will drop out of
school." Haney
goes so far as to blame the sanctions of the TAAS for the drop out
rates. "I think some schools may be encouraging kids to drop out.
Because
the high schools are evaluated and sanctioned in terms of the percent of
kids passing the grade 10 test," Haney said, adding that he has
analyzed teacher surveys which support this contention.
While Ratcliffe grants Haney that many Texas ninth-graders are held
back, 17.8 percent to be exact, and more minority students are retained
in ninth grade than their white peers, she strenuously disagrees that
students are held back because of the state's sanctions against low
performing schools. "That is a ridiculous accusation. That's a pretty
callous accusation that educators and parents would work in cahoots to
keep students from graduating from high school. We've looked into this,
and we're just not finding evidence that it's happening."
Ratcliffe said the state's investigations found that many students are
left behind in the ninth grade because students have not accumulated
the credits needed to pass the ninth grade. Furthermore she says that
schools are evaluated in Texas by a combination of TAAS scores,
attendance rates and dropout rates. "If schools were forcing a lot of
kids out the door because they didn't think they could pass the TAAS
test,
they would still get hammered on their accountability rating because of
the dropout rate."
But Haney counters that the dropout rates are severely underestimated
by the state. "Texas has been cooking the books on dropout rates,
this is not just my opinion." Texas does not count students who pass
high school equivalency exams, for example, as dropouts. Nor does the
state count students who have completed course requirements, but failed
the TAAS graduation test which prevented them from graduating. In
1996, the state's inspector general found that the official statistics
on dropouts in Texas covered less than half of the actual dropouts --
those
who left school without graduating. In 1998 Democratic lawmakers
introduced and passed through the state Senate, legislation to require
the
state education bureaucrats to collect dropout data based on any
students who leave school without graduating. The legislation passed the
state Senate but stalled in the House in the 1999 session and was not
approved.
"There are a lot of different ways to calculate the drop out rates and
still not be identical," Ratcliffe said. "One is not necessarily better
than the
other."
Critics charge another effect of the TAAS has been the apparent
incentive the testing regime gives to teachers to falsify results of the
state-wide tests. In the last two years, cheating scandals have launched
investigations in Austin and Houston, where newspaper reports found
teachers were actually correcting wrong answers for students before
submitting the tests back to the state education agency. Allegations
also
were made in Dallas.
Even Republicans admit that these so called high stakes tests creates
an incentive for schools to take any measures necessary to insure
passing marks on the state wide tests.
"Anything that brings significant rewards or punishments brings
temptation to finagle or cheat. In sports people will take steroids
because the
rewards are substantial, we police that by giving athletes drug tests,"
said Chester Finn Jr., a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a
former assistant secretary of education under President Reagan. Finn,
however, points out that these problems are not unique to Texas. "Most
states have a way to go, there was a problem with implementation in
Texas, as there have been in a lot of other places," he said.
The TAAS also requires that students pass a basic skills test as a
condition of graduation. Haney as well as other critics argue that this
requirement, started under Gov. Anne Richards, is a factor that has
contributed to Texas dropout rates since 1991.
A coalition of Mexican American organizations sued the state over its
standards in 1998 claiming that the TAAS high school graduation test
was discriminatory against Hispanics, based on the discrepancy in White
and Hispanic scores on the test. The Federal District Court for Western
Texas, found that while the test had an adverse impact on minorities, it
was within the rights of the state to require it as a precondition for
graduation. Judge Edward Prado wrote in his 1999 ruling, "The court
finds that whether one looks at cumulative or single administration
results,
the disparity between minority and majority pass rates on the TAAS test
must give pause to anyone looking at the numbers."
Ratcliffe said, "There is a disparity between the scores of white and
minority students but Texas is doing the best job in the country of
closing
that achievement gap." Sullivan also said that Texas was taking a
number of steps to address the dropout problem. "Texas is doing a better
job at tracking students particularly in the K-12 range, in 1998 we
implemented a 'leaver' system to track students who leave school for any
reason, that will help us identify and address any potential drop out
problems."
But not all analysts see the dropout problem in Texas as a reason to
abandon Bush' education plan. Amy Wilkins, a policy analyst for the
Education Trust, a Washington, DC based education think tank, put it
this way. "It's not a perfect record, but on balance it's positive, yes
he has
this dropout problem but there are states where they are keeping kids in
school and teaching them nothing."
Robert J. Tierney, Dean
Faculty of Education
The University of British Columbia
2125 Main Mall
Vancouver, B.C., V6T 1Z4
Tel: (604) 822-5211 Fax: (604) 822-6501
E-mail: rob.tierney@ubc.ca
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