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"Mirage" — page
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od Paige's
Houston achievements and business style didn't go unnoticed
by then-governor George W. Bush. Indeed, when Gov.
Bush was looking for a pulpit from which to preach his
education policy in 1994, he chose Paige's Wesley
Elementary in Houston's
Acres Homes community, one of three schools there with
heavy low-income enrollment but good scores. The scores
were unusual enough to warrant several investigations
but none showed enough evidence of coordinated cheating
and Wesley became the conservatives' education model, proving
that poverty and lack of funding were not obstacles if
the right management was in place. But don't cash that
Wesley check yet. It might not be worth the paper it's
printed on. Keep reading.
Furthering the Paige legacy were record
performances in student attendance. In his last year as
superintendent, HISD boasted a 1 percent
dropout rate,
unheard of in urban America, and good enough to earn him
the role of U.S. Secretary of Education and choir master
for No Child Left Behind. The only problem was that before
his four-year tenure in Washington ended, the thread
in the "emperor's
clothes" began to unravel and finally collapse around
his knees as he tried to slip out of the Beltway while
Bush began his second term with a new Secretary of Education.
Portraying teachers as 'terrorists'
But all that would come after he'd launched
into a major promotion of the signature program of Bush's
first term, No Child Left Behind. The
Education Secretary is normally the "point man" for
presidents when it comes to education bills, lobbying Congress,
the media, and the American people for passage. Paige turned
out to be a major liability in this area, with neither
the quickness nor depth of predecessors like Bill
Bennett, Lamar Alexander, and Dick Riley.
Dr. Rod Paige
What Paige ended up doing was offending
more people than he impressed, getting into a cat-fight
with the National Education Association (NEA)
by likening them to both Southern governors blocking the
integration doorway and "terrorists" because
they refused to offer wholesale endorsements of NCLB. The
NEA response was so embarrassing to the administration
that he was forced to apologize, but not before it provoked
questions about his management style and the clarity of
his thinking.
Meanwhile, his business style, as well
as his experiences in Houston, had taught him that a good
public relations team could overcome a wealth of imperfections
in a product — at least for a while. After all, didn't
Wesley's scores bring both George W. Bush and Oprah
Winfrey to Houston?
As for strategies,
there was little need to convince the country's upper-class
of the need to reform the schools since most of them
either had their children in elite private schools or
high achieving suburban schools. It was the lower echelons,
the people whose children were not achieving, families
that most likely would be affected by school choice and
charter schools. These were the people who needed convincing.
But how to reach them with the administration's message
if they weren't regular viewers of C-SPAN?
rue, it's always difficult to
get the "liberal" media
to give a conservative agenda some air time but producers,
liberal or otherwise, do feel compelled to balance their
programs with representatives from both sides of the issue,
especially if such "crossfire" adds a little
heat to the program. The challenge was to find a conservative "guest" who
could be relied upon to consistently push the program.
To accomplish that, Paige's people quietly paid the Ketchum public
relations firm $1 million in tax dollars to promote the
program with minorities. A quarter of that amount would
be directed to one man, Armstrong
Williams, a conservative
black media pundit sometimes found guesting on CNN, NBC,
CNBC, and other media outlets, along with his duties as
a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services.
Armstrong
Williams
Armstrong's contract with the Department
of Education called for him to regularly endorse NCLB throughout
his media appearances, and include opportunities for Paige
himself to appear in behalf of the act. Simply put, "Here's
$240,000 and a contract to insure you slant your coverage
our way. And by the way, let's keep it a secret." Such
an arrangement in government purchasing departments is
called "bribery," and in the entertainment industry
it's called "payola," both of which sometimes
bring jail terms.
When Williams admitted the arrangement
to USA Today in January of 2005, the Ed. Department
refused to admit they'd done anything illegal, even though
the Government Accountability Office, Congress' nonpartisan
investigative arm, had recently cited the Health and Human
Services Department and the Office of National Drug Control
Policy for illegally doing much the same thing with video
productions masquerading as "news" segments intended
to mislead viewers into thinking they were watching unbiased
reporting. Paige's department knew exactly what it was
doing. They went after an untrained, low-level media type
who might not recognize the ethical boundary lines. They
offered no "bribes" to the likes of Maureen
Dowd, Ted Koppel, George Will, or Charlie
Rose, veteran news
people and commentators adept at decoding ethical behavior.
Instead, they picked inexperienced and unsuspecting
Armstrong Williams.
one debacle after another—reads like
Iraq
Although a little slow on the uptake,
Williams proved to be more forthright than his employers:
He eventually admitted to being culpable in misleading
both his audiences and his employers with the arrangement.
(Tribune Company immediately fired him. and nearly all
the others backed away from him as if he were a skunk in
church.) It took Ketchum almost two weeks to unearth its
conscience and admit its mistake, "We
should have recognized the potential issues in working
with a communications firm operated by a commentator," the
agency said in a statement. "This work did not comply
with the guidelines of our agency and our industry." Their
admission came in the wake of PR industry condemnations
that called the arrangement "pay for play" public
relations, a reference to "payola" arrangements,
something yet another government agency was investigating.
"The Department of Education spent
almost a quarter of a million dollars paying off someone
already on their side."
One week later, the White House found
its voice in the matter, and President Bush condemned the
practice in a press conference, shortly after the news
broke that a second person had been named in the government "payola
sweepstakes," Maggie Gallagher, a conservative marriage
expert with a $21,500 contract with the Department of Health
and Human Services who failed to disclose such while testifying
and writing on her field.
One day later, yet another "paid
source" surfaced:
Mike McManus, a syndicated weekly columnist
in about 30 papers and marriage expert, admitted he was
paid $4,000 by Department of Health and Human
Services/Children and Families. McManus also has
a non-profit group, Marriage Savers, which was paid $49,000
by a group on the receiving end of Health and Human Services
grants "to teach
similar principles to unwed couples who are having children."
By dollar comparison, the Education Department's
ethical malfunction was more than 10 times worse than that
of Health and Human Services. The ineptitude was further
demonstrated when it picked Williams, a self-proclaimed "principled
voice for conservatives and Christian values in America's
public debates" and advocate for the No Child Left
Behind Act. As Andrew J. Rotherham, director of education
policy at the Progressive Policy Institute, noted in a
New York Times op-ed piece:
"If Mr. Williams was a proponent
of the law, then . . . the Department of Education spent
almost a quarter of a million dollars paying off someone
already on their side. Ethics notwithstanding, this is
a stunningly inefficient use of public dollars — every
bit as redundant as paying football fans to watch the
Super Bowl."
Inspector
General's findings on Williams case
In April 2005, the U.S. Department of
Education Inspector General Jack Higgins completed his
investigation of the Armstrong Williams case, a report
requested by Congress's committee on education and the
workforce. While no illegalities were uncovered, it cited
top education department officials, including Rod Paige,
for "poor management decisions" and
lack of proper oversight, all of which produced the following
results:
"As a result, the department
paid for work that most likely did not reach its intended
audience and paid for deliverables that were never received."
The investigation
also mentioned that the department membership was far
from unanimous in support of the contract, with two high
ranking members bringing their concerns about its inappropriateness
to the White House. Nothing came of that contact.
The response of the new Secretary of Education,
Margaret Spellings, to the report was a promise to tighten
accountability on future contracts, although department
culpability was diminished by her statement to reporters: "The
people who were responsible for this contract [Rod Paige]
and these events are no longer here."
( The
entire Inspector General's report can be found at: www.ed.gov/about/offices
/list/oig/a19f0007.html. Additional information can be
found in "Buying of News by Bush's Aides Is Ruled
Illegal" by Robert Pear, The
New York Times, Oct.
1, 2005.)
Paige-ing through Houston ISD
The Williams' debacle didn't occur until
the waning hours of Paige's time in Washington. Long before
that, Houston ISD's idyllic story began to unravel. A retired
Army lieutenant colonel, Robert Kimball, had come across
some incongruous attendance records at Sharpstown
High School in Houston during 2003. A school that
had boasted a "zero" dropout rate had only 300 left for senior
year after starting with 1,000 freshmen. Not surprisingly,
the majority of the missing 700 were from low-income families
and had low scores, scores that would have dragged down
Houston's academic scores. With them out of both the classroom
and the scoring computation, Houston's scores would "miraculously" rise.
Such was the mind set created during
Paige's tenure in Houston, when Kimball brought the "dropout" figures
to the attention of HISD officials (after having brought
numerous other issues to the attention of Paige and his
successor), he was told to mind his own business. After
he handed the paperwork to a local television station,
HISD transferred him to an elementary school where, he
told Teacher Magazine in 2004, "his pay grade was
bumped down and his duties consisted mainly of putting
traffic cones in front of the school, alphabetizing lunch
cards, and occasionally moving furniture."
hen the story broke nationally
in July 2003 and dragged Paige reluctantly back into the
Houston school mix, Kimball was suing HISD for their discriminatory
procedures against him (with Enron's
Sherron Watkins in
the same town, how could HISD be unaware of "whistleblower" laws
protecting someone like Kimball?) The district and Kimball
settled out of court with the latter collecting $90,000
and an honorary discharge from HISD with a neutral job
reference. (Kimball now teaches full time at the University
of Houston-Clear Lake, working with aspiring school principals.
While six HISD employees were reprimanded, only one—a
young campus computer "techie" — was hung
out to dry for more than two years. Charged with entering
the false data that "cleaned up" the Sharpstown
dropout numbers, he was eventually vindicated after three
years when the Houston district attorney dropped all charges.)
With all the possible culprits in HISD's scandal pile,
the DA Houston eventually did manage to indict someone — a low
ranking employee — leaving the top district administrators intact
and shameless, only to have to drop all the charges against
the single employee at the las minute. Here's how the
Houston Chronicle reported i
Ex-HISD worker in dropout scandal cleared before trial
County admits it can't prove case, drops felony count
Harris County prosecutors dropped their case Wednesday against a former
Houston ISD employee accused of falsifying Sharpstown High School's
dropout records, saying new details would make proving their case difficult.
Two days before a jury was to be selected in the case against Kenneth
Cuadra, Assistant District Attorney Terese Buess asked state District
Judge Brock Thomas to dismiss the felony charge of tampering with a
government document.
"Our analysis concluded that it would be impossible to rebut Cuadra's
defenses," Buess said in a statement.
The development closes the chapter on the "Texas miracle," where
six Houston Independent School District employees were reprimanded for
underreporting at least 3,000 dropouts districtwide. Cuadra, the only
person criminally charged in connection with the scandal, was accused
of removing the names of 30 students — mostly Hispanic freshmen
and sophomores — from Sharpstown High School's dropout report.
Prosecutors will not seek any other charges.
"The statute of limitations ran out last October. ... It's over," Buess
said.
Cuadra, 33, could have faced up to 20 years in prison if convicted.
He sold his home to help pay legal fees that have accumulated since
his indictment a year ago.
"We're just so grateful," Cuadra said late Wednesday. "Mission
accomplished."
—By JENNIFER RADCLIFFE, Nov. 2, 2006,
Houston Chronicle
With "60 Minutes II," The
New York Times, and The Washington
Post on the scene, along with
the state auditors from Austin, more than just the dropout
figures came under scrutiny. In the wake of HISD winning
the first "Broad Prize for Urban Education," investigative
journalists found the district had for years skewed its
accounting procedures to look cleaner and tidier than they
were. For example, when reporting its campus crime figures
to the state, HISD reported 761 cases, somehow missing
2,330 cases (including the rape of a disabled 17-year-old
in a wheelchair). Each high school was expected to note
how many of its students would attend college, and many
reported as much as 100 percent. Pretty impressive, until
reporters found the number should be less than 50 percent
in many instances. But the 100 percent sure was good PR.
'Playing games' at HISD
Although begging off a "60 Minutes
II" appearance
under the excuse that he was no longer superintendent in
Houston, Paige eventually announced that the Houston problems
were not his responsibility but were the isolated work
of a few individuals, and the whole commotion smacked of
people who wanted to smear the fine attributes of No Child
Left Behind. This time he was restrained enough not to
liken CBS, The Washington Post, and The
New York Times to Al Quaeda.
The scent in Houston's dirty laundry
pile, however, was drawing increasingly close to its
departed superintendent. While investigating the Houston "miracle" numbers, The
New York Times' Winerip found the corporate
approach established by Paige still influenced HISD. For
example, his investigation showed that in January 2003,
just before the dropout scandal broke, Houston
Deputy Superintendent Dr. Abe Saavadra, announced
the "mandates" for
2003. "The district-wide student attendance rate will
increase from 94.6 percent to 95 percent. The district-wide
annual dropout rate will decrease from 1.5 percent to 1.3
percent." Goals and directives had been set. Ignore
them at your own peril. (In 2005, Saavadra, now the new
superintendent, signed a report to the state that cited
HISD's dropout in 2003 as being "0.9 percent." To
paraphrase Casey Stengel's question to
the totally inept 1962 Mets, "Can't anybody in HISD
headquarters add or subtract?" (Stengel's original
query was: "Can't
anybody here play this game?" HISD, of course, knows
about playing games; it was the numbers that threw
them.)
As Kimball told Winerip, "They
want the data to look wonderful and exciting. They don't
tell you how to do it; they just say, 'Do it.' . . .
You need to understand the atmosphere in Houston. People
are afraid. The superintendent has frequent meetings
with principals. Before they go in, the principals are
really, really scared. Panicky. They have to make their
numbers."
'Just fix the numbers!'
When corporations
(or school districts) fail to meet the financial numbers
they promise Wall Street, the stock falls and so can
the CEO. The same thing often happens to superintendents
and principals in school districts. Not all executives,
however, are willing to go down in honest style. While
Houston's miracle scores were falling apart, executives
at two of the nation's largest corporations, WorldCom
and HealthSouth, were being indicted left and right for
financial fraud. Two years after Kimball made his remarks
to The New York Times, testimony in the WorldCom and
HealthSouth trials in the same week was eerily reminiscent:
In the WorldCom trial, its former
controller testified that when expenses came in higher
than expected, the CFO "refused to accept the
fact that the numbers were what they were" and "told
me that obviously we had made a drastic mistake," and
to "take them back and fix them."
In the HealthSouth trial, where
15 executives had already pleaded guilty, the former
CFO testified that when he reported the company's
numbers would not meet Wall Street expectations,
his CEO said, "We are not going to report those
numbers. Go back and fix it."
SOURCE: "Former WorldCom
Executive Says Ebbers Offered Apology," Associated
Press, The New York Times, p. C5, Jan 28, 2005;
and "Former HealthSouth Executive Denies Orders
to Break Law," Associated Press, The
New York Times,
p. C5, Jan. 28, 2005.
Shortly after the state auditors finished
decoding HISD's records, 15 of its 16 "exemplary" high
schools lost their "exemplary" ratings, and Paige's
successor announced the district's dropout rate to be 30
to 40 percent, and retired a few months later.
And like HISD's accounting figures, Paige's
estimates of a "few" culprits proved to be just
as faulty. That came when an investigative team for The
Dallas Morning News published their findings for the mandated
Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills (TAKS). While
the Bush administration was busy pointing to Texas as an "education
miracle" where some students spend as much as one
month of the instructional year in testing, another aspect
worth emulating with NCLB, The Morning
News' team was pouring
over the last few years' worth of scores from 7,700 public
schools. And they found miracles, students who went from
either the bottom to the top, or the top to the bottom,
and all between 2003 and 2004. But was it cheating?
Not that cheating only happens in the HISD classroom
Houston Chronicle columnist Rick
Casey covers Texas issues
as well as any columnist in America. His wit and cut-to-the-bone
approach are a throwback to the young Mike Royko and Jimmy
Breslin.
Here's his introduction to a column on Houston
ISD cheating
at the administrative level. (The entire column is available
online at www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/metropolitan/casey/3492258.html)
TAKS quiz: A tale of two districts
I have been able to obtain one of the essay questions
from next year's 11th-grade TAKS test. I think it will
quell the concerns of those who think these tests are too
easy.
Here it is:
"A high-ranking official in a hypothetical school
district we'll call Spring Branch was charged with lying
on his résumé. He made up a university
and had it issue him a master's degree.
"He pleaded guilty and was
given probation.
"At a hypothetical district
we'll call Houston ISD, a high-ranking official connived
to hire his boss' son by requesting that a position created
for him not be posted.
"The son was found to have
a criminal record for felony theft, despite lying about
it on his application, and therefore could not be hired.
"So the official skirted contracting
regulations in order to funnel more than $60,000 in consulting
contracts to the boss' son in one year. The boss denied
knowing her son had been hired, though her assistant
stamped the mother's signature to the contracts and Mom
was copied on e-mails when payment problems arose.
"A school district investigation
concluded that the state contracting laws had been violated,
though no 'clear evidence of intent' had been established.
"Nobody was charged.
"Question: Why was the administrator
at Spring Branch charged but nobody in Houston ISD?"
As teachers are increasingly
evaluated and/or paid on the basis of student performance,
a by-product of NCLB, growing numbers are balking at
the setup. Since research clearly shows it is largely "home
and family" conditions that determine student scores,
why should the teacher be held accountable for low test
scores instead of parents? The end result is a wave of
disenchanted teachers — young and old — that
has swollen the departure rate from faculties across
America, as this New York Times excerpt explains.
With Turnover High, Schools Fight for Teachers
By SAM DILLON
GREENSBORO, N.C. — The
retirement of thousands of baby boomer teachers coupled
with the departure of younger teachers frustrated by
the stress of working in low-performing schools is
fueling a crisis in teacher turnover that is costing
school districts substantial amounts of money as they
scramble to fill their ranks for the fall term.
Superintendents and recruiters across the nation say
the challenge of putting a qualified teacher in every
classroom is heightened in subjects like math and science
and is a particular struggle in high-poverty schools,
where the turnover is highest. Thousands of classes in
such schools have opened with substitute teachers in
recent years.
Here in Guilford County, N.C.,
turnover had become so severe in some high-poverty
schools that principals were hiring new teachers for
nearly every class, every term. To staff its neediest
schools before classes start on Aug. 28, recruiters
have been advertising nationwide, organizing teacher
fairs and offering one of the nation’s
largest recruitment bonuses, $10,000 to instructors
who sign up to teach Algebra I.
“We had schools where we didn’t have a single
certified math teacher,” said Terry Grier, the
schools superintendent. “We needed an incentive,
because we couldn’t convince teachers to go to
these schools without one.”
. . .
Officials in New York, which
has the nation’s
largest school system, said they had recruited about
5,000 new teachers by mid-August, attracting those
certified in math, science and special education with
a housing incentive that can include $5,000 for a down
payment.
. . .
Some educators say it is the confluence of such retirements
with the departure of disillusioned young teachers that
is creating the challenge. In addition, higher salaries
in the business world and more opportunities for women
are drawing away from the field recruits who might in
another era have proved to be talented teachers with
strong academic backgrounds.
“The problem is not mainly with retirement,” said
Thomas G. Carroll, the president of the National Commission
on Teaching and America’s Future. “Our
teacher preparation system can accommodate the retirement
rate. The problem is that our schools are like a bucket
with holes in the bottom, and we keep pouring in teachers.”
The commission has calculated
that these days nearly a third of all new teachers
leave the profession after just three years, and that
after five years almost half are gone — a higher
turnover rate than in the past.
All the coming and going of young
teachers is tremendously disruptive, especially to
schools in poor neighborhoods where teacher turnover
is highest and students’ needs
are greatest.
— Excerpted from The
New York Times,
August 27, 2007, p. 1.
"With Turnover High, Schools Fight for Teachers,"
by Sam Dillon
Footnotes and
documentation on the above material, as well as an earlier
in-depth look
at the these issues, can be found here at Miracle
One and Miracle Two.
All
essays, articles on No Child Left Behind, see More
NCLB.
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