03:46 PM CST on Wednesday, January 7, 2004

60 Minutes II

Houston won nationwide praise over the last few years for doing what other big-city school districts only dream about: school officials claimed they slashed dropout rates and significantly boosted test scores.

Rod Paige, then the Houston school superintendent, got credit for turning around Houston's schools by making principals and administrators accountable for how well their students did.

President Bush liked Paige's approach so much he appointed Paige as the Secretary of Education and used Houston as a model for his "No Child Left Behind" education reform act.

Now, a Houston assistant principal tells Correspondent Dan Rather that school officials deliberately hid the truth to make their districts look good and to earn large cash bonuses for reporting false statistics. Rather's report will be broadcast on 60 Minutes II tonight at 7 p.m.

The 11 News Defenders first brought the dropout controversy to light in an award-winning investigative report in 2003.

Assistant Principal Robert Kimball, in his first in-depth television interview, tells Rather he was startled to learn that the school at which he worked, Sharpstown High School on Houston's West side, reported that not one single student - out of 1700 mostly underprivileged kids - had dropped out of the school in 2001-2002.

"I had been at the high school for three years," says Kimball, "...I had seen many, many students - several hundred a year - go out the door and I knew that they were quitting. They told me they were quitting."

At that time, Houston claimed a citywide dropout rate of 1.5 percent, while many educators and experts estimate Houston's true dropout rate at between 25 and 50 percent. Kimball tells Rather that school officials hid dropouts by classifying or coding them as leaving for acceptable reasons, such as transferring to another school or returning to their native country.

"...The teachers didn't believe it," says Kimball. "They knew it was cooking the books. They told me that. Parents told me that...The superintendent of schools would make the public believe it was one school, but it is in the system, it is in all of Houston."

Kimball's charges were backed up by an audit of half the city's high schools, conducted by the Texas Education Agency, which oversees public schools in the state.

Kimball also tells Rather that school administrators boosted scores on a statewide achievement test that was given to 10th graders by keeping low-potential students from taking the test. Sometimes, he said, students were held back in the ninth grade repeatedly to avoid having them take the test.

Houston school officials told 60 Minutes II that the dropout audit proved outright fraud only at Sharpstown. At the other schools, they contended, the false statistics were caused by confusion about the complex state system for tracking students who leave school. They also deny students were held back to avoid taking the statewide achievement test. They have denounced Kimball as incompetent and transferred him to a primary school.

Paige said Wednesday such findings do not discredit the accountability that is the basis for "No Child Left Behind."

"The one high school you name is one of 300 schools in that school district. The Houston Independent School District is a great school district," Paige said. "Is it a perfect school district? Of course not."