We all remember the "Texas Miracle" that President George W. Bush touted as the future of education in the United States: simply put, testing plus accountability equals drastically decreased dropout rates and drastically improved achievement. We also remember that the pilot program's success was due in large part to Rod Paige's leadership of the Houston Independent School District, which was adapted to school districts all over Texas, and held up as a model for the national No Child Left Behind Act. Everyone was most impressed by the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS) test results demonstrating significant, overnight increases in achievement and reductions in the achievement gaps between whites and students of color. Even more dramatic was the decline in dropout rates, which were quickly reduced to close to zero percent. Surely the real problem in American education was the lack of accountability: hold districts, schools, administrators and teachers responsible, and all our achievement problems will vanish.
It was not necessary to consider this:
If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
More below the fold...
Of course, by the time George W. Bush and his Secretary of Education, Rod Paige, were pushing NCLB through the rubber-stamping Congress, evidence had already started to accumulate that there was something not quite right about the Texas implementation of high-stakes testing and iron-fist accountability. In particular, in stark contrast to the TAAS results, the National Assessment of Education Progress (the national test mandated by congress, also known as "The Nation's Report Card") results demonstrated the exact opposite of what TAAS showed: there were no significant gains in achievement, and the achievement gap was getting worse--much worse.
Never one to worry about investigating details or facts, George W. Bush pushed ahead with high-stakes testing and iron-fisted accountability, and quickly got NCLB passed and signed into law. It was only later that the details started to emerge. By 2004, it started to become clear that the reason TAAS scores were so much better than NEAP scores, and the reason the TAAS scores showed a much reduced achievement gap, was quite simple: students of color were not actually taking the test. How do we know? It's quite simple: Robert Kimball, an assistant principal at Sharpstown High School in Houston told us all about it on 60 Minutes II.
It turns out that among the 1,700 students at Shaprstown High in 2001-2--most of whom were under-privileged immigrants--not a single one ever dropped out. In fact, the school records said so. "Too good to be true!" you say? Well, yes, so good it isn't true. When Kimball began to investigate, he quickly realized that in fact, 463 students had left the school that year, many of them dropping out. And it wasn't just Sharpstown High: the entire Houston Independent School District that year reported an astounding 1.5% dropout rate. Something was definitely really, really wrong with the numbers in the exact school district that Rod Paige was running at the time, and later held up as a model for the nation's NCLBA.
Of course, Rod Paige and his apologists quickly tried to characterize the problem as being limited to the one school, claiming it was simply one bad principal who was cooking the books, and the district's actual dropout rate was 1.5%.
"But the teachers didn't believe it. They knew it was cooking the books. They told me that. Parents told me that," says Kimball. "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."
Of course, when actual data were collected, it turns out the dropout rate was, indeed, slightly higher than 1.5%:
Investigators checked half of the city's regular high schools. They reviewed the records of nearly 5,500 students who left those schools, and checked how the schools explained it. They found that almost 3,000 students should have been, but weren't, coded as dropouts. The audit substantiated Kimball's allegations.
It's important to remember:
Those low dropout rates – in Houston and all of Texas - were one of the accomplishments then-Texas Gov. George Bush cited when he campaigned to become the "Education President."
At that time, Paige was running Houston's schools, and he had instituted a policy of holding principals accountable for how their students did. Principals worked under one-year contracts, and each year, the school district set strict goals in areas like dropout rates and test scores.
Principals who met the goals got cash bonuses of up to $5,000, and other perks. Those who fell short were transferred, demoted or forced out.
So, by 2004, as NCLB was well on its way to gearing up to full speed, it was becoming quite clear that the carrot-and-stick model upon which George W. "The Education President" Bush had based his entire education reform program had some serious, serious problems. But surely it wasn't the carrot-and-stick model itself, it was simply one or maybe a few schools and/or principals cooking the books. It was an isolated case or two. There's nothing to see here. Let's just move along.
But now comes another study, "Avoidable Losses: High-Stakes Accountability and the Dropout Crisis", by Linda McSpadden McNeil, Eileen Coppola, Judy Radigan and Julian Vasquez Heilig (Education Policy Analysis Archives, Volume 16, Number 3). This is one of the best studies I have ever seen on this type of topic, fantastic in both scope and detail. From the abstract:
In the state of Texas, whose standardized, high-stakes test-based accountability system became the model for the nation’s most comprehensive federal education policy, more than 135,000 youth are lost from the state’s high schools every year. Dropout rates are highest for African American and Latino youth, more than 60% for the students we followed. Findings from this study, which included analysis of the accountability policy in operation in high-poverty high schools in a major urban district, analysis of student-level data for more than 271,000 students in that district over a seven-year period under this policy, and extensive ethnographic analysis of life in schools under the policy, show that the state’s high-stakes accountability system has a direct impact on the severity of the dropout problem. The study carries great significance for national education policy because its findings show that disaggregation of student scores by race does not lead to greater equity, but in fact puts our most vulnerable youth, the poor, the English language learners, and African American and Latino children, at risk of being pushed out of their schools so the school ratings can show "measurable improvement." High-stakes, test-based accountability leads not to equitable educational possibilities for youth, but to avoidable losses of these students from our schools.
That's right: in Texas, the model program upon which No Child Left Behind rests, leaves 135,000 students behind. And not just behind, but dropped out.
This study does not limit itself to looking at school level statistics. Instead, it focuses on actual students--271,000 of them--to see exactly what happened to them, and why.
So, what happened to them and why did it happen to them? The study is way too interesting and detailed for me to summarize all of the findings adequately, but a quick summary gives the high points. However, this is such a fantastic piece of work, I highly recommend reading it through in its entirety.
Texas' testing for high school occurred in tenth grade. The results of this test determined whether the students eventually graduated, the rating of the school, and whether teachers and principals kept their jobs. Due to the accountability, these tests were clearly high-stakes tests, and schools and principals were willing to take serious steps to improve test scores. During the time period of the study, schools could apply for a waiver that permitted them to
hold back as a 9th grader any student who had failed even one semester of a core 9th grade course (English, math, science, social studies), regardless of the number of credits successfully passed. When administrators used this waiver to hold a child in 9th grade, retention excluded that student from the administration of the 10th grade TAAS test, the test on which the school ratings and the principal’s job security depended.
Initially only a few schools obtained waivers, but as time went on, and schools without waivers fell behind schools with waivers, principals were forced to obtain waivers or face being terminated. Once a school obtained a waiver, ninth graders who would not perform well on the tenth grade exams were held behind. When repeating ninth grade, they tended to get stuck there--for example, it often was unclear what had to be done to progress, or remedial help was typically unavailable--resulting in many students being held behind over and over again. Unable to escape the waiver-induced clutch of the ninth grade, being left behind by their social peers, and being looked down upon by administrators, teachers and other students, these forgotten students dropped out in large numbers. And when they dropped out, the schools did not record them as having dropped out, so they did not have to be reported as having dropped out. This was a win-win for everyone--except, of course, the students. But the TAAS did not measure these effects, the TAAS only measured how well the students who did progress to the tenth grade (and even then, it was simply the bulk numbers that actually counted).
Moreover, what students, exactly, were being left behind? African American and Latino students. So the African American and Latino students who weren't left behind, the ones who were passed on to tenth grade to take the TAAS test, did better than before, when African American and Latino students were not held back. As a result, their test scores increased, giving the appearance that they were closing the gap. That's right: the gap was being closed by holding back the weaker students until they dropped out.
It is interesting to go back to the 60 Minutes II report:
Kimball took his findings about Sharpstown High to CBS affiliate KHOU-TV, which first reported the dropout scandal.
Then, he went to State Rep. Rick Noriega. In Noriega's largely Hispanic, mostly poor district, many kids start high school, but never finish.
"In my district in particular, where I have many of my high schools, 1,000 ninth-grade students, yet only approx 300 or so will walk the stage four years later and receive a diploma. A big question should go off in people's heads, where are the other students?" says Noriega, who asked the state to find out.
Note what Noriega is saying: high schools in his district have 1,000 ninth graders, but only 300 seniors. This study explains why: many, if not most, had been held back, but had not yet dropped out.
This study did not include the Houston Independent School district, so that its results counter the argument that the similar findings in Houston were an isolated incident. Indeed, this study specifically identifies the actual culprit: the high-stakes accountability mechanism itself. This is why this study is completely relevant to NCLB: while there have been changes to the exactly how testing and accountability are implemented, the same flawed mechanism addressed in this study continues to drive NCLB.
And that is why No Child Left Behind must be...left behind.