As Bad as They Say?: Three Decades of Teaching in the Bronx

14. Deception, Dismantling, and Demise of Public Education

14 Deception, Dismantling, and Demise of Public Education Oh, what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive.’’ When Walter Scott penned these famous words, could he ever have known that over two hundred years later, he would be describing the destructive forces in education today? In all good conscience , I cannot conclude my book without commenting on and detailing what I believe are ill-conceived, deceptive, fraudulent practices in education today that, although ostensibly attempting to solve educational problems, are, in actuality, impeding, hindering, distorting and even thwarting the very goals we seek to accomplish, namely, a sound education for every student. In 2002, No Child Left Behind became the most dramatic expansion of the federal government’s role in public education since the passage of President Johnson’s Elementary and Secondary Act of 1965, part of Johnson’s war on poverty, another war not won! This spuriously written, defective dictum was inflicted on America by former U.S. education secretary Roderick R. Paige and former President George W. Bush in January 2002. It is essential for you, the reader, to know the history behind this law that is dismantling and demolishing and demoralizing our public education system today. Please read on. When George W. Bush was governor of Texas, from 1995 to 2000, Roderick Paige was the superintendent of Houston, Texas, schools. In 1995, at the end of the first year of Mr. Paige’s tenure as superintendent, 74 percent of tenth-grade students at Houston’s Austin High School failed the Texas math test; however, by 2000–2001, six years later, the year Paige retired, only 1 percent of tenth graders failed—an impressive 107 108 Losing Our Way statistic, right? It was called a miracle and was attributed to Mr. Paige’s policy of using sound business policies and holding principals responsible for results. Furthermore, in 2002, Texas bestowed exemplary status on this very same Austin High School. But here it comes—according to the Washington Post, November 8, 2003, in a report by Michael Dobbs, one year after receiving this exemplary award, Austin High School was downgraded to low-performing—the lowest possible rating.1 So what happened? According to Robert Kimball, the former Houston assistant principal who helped expose the ‘‘Texas miracle fraud,’’ the secret of doing well on tenth-grade tests is not to let the problem kids get to the tenth grade. (Don’t be shocked.) In 2001, Austin High School had 1,160 students in ninth grade, but had only 281 tenth-grade students a year later. Students were held back—almost 900 of them—for failing one course, and some were forced to repeat the courses they already had passed.2 (Easy to get 99 percent passing rate this outrageously deceptive way.) And what lesson did this fraud teach to the almost 900 left-back ninth graders? ‘‘Oh what a tangled web. . . .’’ In addition to this testing fraud, more than a dozen Houston high schools were caught up in a scandal about the reliability of their dropout rates. Sharpstown High School, in Houston, officially reported a 0 percent dropout rate, and Houston received, in 2003, the first $1 million Broad Foundation prize (Broad Foundation is a private philanthropic organization) for being the best urban school district in the United States.3 It was the local television station, KHOU, who uncovered the dropout reporting scandal at Sharpstown High School. Sharpstown administrators had changed the withdrawal codes for at least thirty students to make it appear that no one had dropped out in the 2001–2 year. In reality, 27 percent of Sharpstown students left without graduating. A state audit revealed that most students who left school should have been coded as dropouts, and state officials concede that Sharpstown High School numbers were ‘‘purposefully’’ falsified.4 Katie Haycock, director of the Washington-based Education Trust, a nonprofit group that supports strict accountability standards, said that ‘‘dropout rates are notoriously unreliable in Houston and across America.’’5 (And yet, extremely high stakes are riding on these dropout rates.) It was Mr. Roderick Paige, the superintendent of Houston schools, who had initiated this accountability policy based on what he had learned at the Houston-based American Productivity and Quality Center, which provided training courses for executives of Fortune 500 companies. This Deception, Dismantling, and Demise of Public Education 109 accountability policy, widely practiced in...