HISD: Lesson in deception? (Part I)

06:08 PM CST on Sunday, November 30, 2003

By Anna Werner / 11 News

Click to watch video

HOUSTON -- Did some area high schools boost their TAAS test scores by holding back some of their students? The 11 News Defenders have discovered that some Houston Independent School District high schools might have been involved in a lesson in deception.

When is a test score not what it seems? 11 News found that some HISD high schools that claimed great gains in their state TAAS scores might have been engaged in what some call a legal form of cheating. Making it look like they were doing a better job of teaching students when what they were doing was stopping the weaker ones from taking the test.

Meet Perla Arredondo, a high school dropout who dreams of finishing what she started, but she says that dream may be dying.

“I don’t think if I get my high school diploma, I don’t think I'm going to make it,” says Arredondo.

So why did she leave HISD’s Austin High School?

She says, “They used me and some other kids to make the school look better,” by holding students back to improve the school's tests scores.

“It was all this three years in ninth grade,” says Arredondo. “Because of the test they wouldn’t let us move up.”

“I think it is incomprehensible, unfathomable, that somebody would try to do this,” says Gilbert Moreno, president of the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans (AAMA). “Those kids were pushed out and almost thrown away.”

KHOU-TV High school dropout Perla Arredondo feels her dreams of finishing school may be dying

And Houston community leaders and educators are now saying what happened to Perla Arredondo, happened in many Houston schools.

“We're penalizing kids,” says Moreno, president of the Association for the Advancement of Mexican Americans (AAMA) “we're hurting kids, we're misleading kids. It’s a complete disaster for this city. This city cannot continue like this.”

So what’s going on?

In the past eight years, the Houston Independent School District has claimed some phenomenal gains in their TAAS test scores. But the Defenders discovered students, teachers, even principals who say some HISD high schools got their amazing scores through a method of legal cheating -- a method that allowed them to test only the best students, while putting the others at risk of dropping out. It’s called a classification waiver.

“It’s an abuse of our children and of their promise,” says Linda McNeil from Rice University, “and of the trust they bring us when they come to school.”

11 News’ Anna Werner asked Angela Valenzuela from the University of Texas: “You’re calling it a huge fraud in education?”

“Absolutely,” says Valenzuela.

Both McNeil and Valenzuela are education researchers and colleagues with extensive contacts in many HISD schools and other districts.

They say the problem started with scores … TAAS scores from only one kind of student.

“The principal’s job in the high school level depends on getting scores up,” says McNeil, “[for] kids who are designated 10th graders.”

Why? Because their scores were the only kind the State of Texas used to figure out the school’s all-important approval rating.

But McNeil says some administrators realized that, “if you can keep all your weak kids back, the scores look pretty good.”

And so, enter the classification waiver.

For example, take Austin High School.

In 1998, the school had nearly 900 ninth graders and more than 580 10th graders. The school’s TAAS score?: Only 68 percent of the 10th grade test takers passed the entire test.

And at the time, HISD's student classifications said that a 9th grader only had to have six credits of any class to be promoted to the 10th grade.

But over the summer, Austin High administrators got this waiver of the classification rule approved by the HISD board. Now, besides six credits, if a 9th grader hadn't taken and passed English and algebra and four other classes including courses like science and social studies, they couldn't be a 10th grader. In fact, if they missed or failed only one of these requirements, they would still be a ninth grader.

“They held you back, you didn't get promoted,” says former Austin High employee Sandy, “that was all I could tell them.”

Sandy says many Austin students didn't know they were being held back until they started the new school year.

“The kids that I remember were mad,” says Sandy. “They were waiting to be in the 10th grade, but they weren't able to do anything.”

As a result in 1999, the ninth grade class ballooned to more than 1,200 students, while the 10th grade class size shrunk to 235 sophomores.

And the TAAS score that year?

Now, 86.2 percent of the 10 graders passed the entire test.

But McNeil says, “This pass rate means nothing.”

And Sandy says the new policy was too strict and even good students were being held back.

“It’s only half a credit that they had to miss. It wasn't like they failed all four classes,” says Sandy.

In fact, an HISD document shows the school would eventually report it was holding back more than 60 percent of their ninth graders annually.

And Valenzuela says that has a price.

“If you hold back a student one time, there is a 50 percent chance they will become dropouts,” says Valenzuela. “Fifty percent. If you hold them back twice, that figure shoots up to 90 percent – it’s a virtual certainty.”

And sandy agrees.

“Definitely,” says Sandy. “It is definitely contributing to the dropouts.”

But Austin High wasn't the only HISD school using a waiver.

Madison High was one of the earliest, starting in 1997. And the ninth grade class size went up, while the number of 10th graders plunged and the school leaped from its previous 35 percent TAAS passing rate to a new score of 76 percent.

By 2001, Furr, Sharpstown and at least 13 other HISD high schools were using similar waivers.

And McNeil notes almost all of these schools have a high amount of at-risk kids.

“Teachers would say these waivers are killing our Black kids, these waivers are killing our Latino kids,” says McNeil.

“This is not what America is based on,” says AAMA’s Moreno.

“It’s about giving a kid every opportunity that exists to allow he or her to do something with her life,” says Moreno.

“And you know here we are in the Hispanic community always pushing, stay in school, you can do it,” says Moreno. “Never did I have any clue that this was going on in my own backyard.”

But Moreno says take a look at Perla's Austin High transcript. It confirms she spent three years in the ninth grade. But it also shows that every year Austin failed to give her either enough classes or a crucial class she needed to move up to the 10th grade.

“They didn't want her in the 10th grade,” says Moreno. “They didn't want her taking the TAAS test and possibly hurting their scores and hurting their ratings.”

Both HISD's Superintendent and former district board president Laurie Bricker declined to do an interview with 11 News. Instead the District sent a statement claiming among other things that classification waivers were used to help students do better in high school.

In fact HISD says that Austin, Furr, Sharpstown, and Madison High are graduating a higher percentage of students on time (within a four year period) than in previous years.

But it turns out the District's numbers are very questionable. Why?

First, as reported earlier this year, HISD has claimed in the past that a student graduated when he actually didn't. 11 News found one such student at Sharpstown High last April. HISD's response? Official's claimed they had "made a mistake."

Next, the high school graduating percentages claimed by the District also depend on just how accurately those schools counted their dropouts. Decrease the amount of dropouts and the percentage of graduating students looks bigger and better. This summer, state inspectors found that administrators at Austin, Furr and Sharpstown High Schools had vastly underreported the amount of students dropping out. In fact, the state found more than 200 extra dropouts at Austin High and also at Sharpstown High. As a result, all three schools had their state ratings lowered to "low-performing" and HISD's district-wide rating is now on probation. (Note: Madison High was not audited.)

Now HISD also claims education researcher Linda McNeil of Rice University is a "paid critic" of the Texas accountability system, referring to when she was hired as a consultant in a lawsuit against the state. McNeil says that her role in that case was several years ago, was brief, and was the only time she has done such work.