Home school stats called into question (how we lie about dropouts in TX)

[sonias]

San Antonio Express News 5/25/10
Home school stats called into question

More than 22,000 Texas secondary students who stopped showing up for class in 2008 were excluded from the state's dropout statistics because administrators said they were being home-schooled, according to Texas Education Agency figures.

But that's where the scrutiny of this growing population seems to end, leaving some experts convinced schools are disguising thousands of middle and high school dropouts in this category.

While home schooling's popularity has increased, TEA figures seem to indicate the rate of growth in Texas' high school population is off the charts: It has nearly tripled in the past decade, including a 24 percent jump in a single year.

"That's just ridiculous," said Brian D. Ray, founder of the National Home Education Research Institute. "It doesn't sound very believable."

Texas' lax documentation and hands-off practices make it impossible to know how many of these students actually are being taught at home. It also opens the door to abuse of the designation, which could help school districts avoid the sanctions that come with high dropout rates, experts said.

Call me skeptical, but this is just Robert Scott and the TEA covering Perry's ass on drop out numbers.

Remember that Robert Scott is Perry's appointment to head the Texas Education Commission. Robert Scott is the nut bag who also passed on the "Race to the Top" Federal grants on the excuse of "too many strings". He would fit nicely on the wing nut branch of the SBOE.

No wonder two thirds of Texans think Texas schools are doing a lousy job. :eyes:

[WolverineDG]

1. Maybe, maybe not

the way Texas counts drop outs is unbelievable & hits districts with many migrant students harder than those that don't.

If a child withdraws during the school year for ANY REASON, they are counted as a drop-out, even if they re-enroll in another district that same school year! That has always blown my mind, because children who leave a school because their parents move are not "drop outs."


Oh well.

dg

[sonias]

2. Are you sure about that?

It seems to me that the 10% drop out rate Texas claims to have is very, very low. I think it is much higher - at least 30%.

I would think that a school district would do as much as it could to show the student re-enrolled in another district to keep its drop out number low. Otherwise they get slammed for it on evaluation for acceptable or unacceptable.

I guess it depends on the school district, though.

:hi:

[montieg]

3. As a school counselor, I assure everyone

that schools don't want dropouts any more than anyone else. Schools are graded in the school report card each year on their "leaver" percentage. Per the state--dropouts are only from jr high. After students move into a ninth grade 'cohort'(the first time they enter the ninth grade in a specific school), then when they leave school--for whatever reason--they are leavers. And schools REALLY want to get a request for records, cause that expunges the child from his/her cohort.

Another way to be a leaver is for the parent to check the student out to home-school him/her. The parent MUST sign a form saying the child will be homeschooled. Administrators are not the arbiter of home schooling---parents are. Sure--there are admins that lie, but they have to falsify a paper trail to do it. And NO admin I know is willing to risk his/her certification.

In short, I think this is a bogus way to address our 'leaver' problem. The issue,IMO, is that once a student moves to another school--legitimately, they go into a gray area. If they then 'leave' that school they are never counted because they were not in that school's cohort.

[sonias]

4. Thanky you for chiming in montieg

I think I understand this better. It does seem like a paper trail loophole. I didn't mean to suggest that the school admins were lying in general about the "leaver" rate. I meant that the system just allowed for kids to disappear from the paper record in a way, that did not track that they actually never returned to school. So I agree that TEA and state what that loophole.

Thank you for your filling in those gaps. Interesting that the term for high school is "leaver" and not "drop out".

:hi:

[montieg]

5. We like the term leaver.....

you know, as in, "leave'er alone!"

This is just one aspect of Texas's screwed up system created by Bush when he was Gov.and continued by Perry and his minions (present Commissioner of Ed). As school counselor I get stuck (along with so many other counselors) as District Testing Coordinator. What I see in our teeny-tiny district (280 students Kinder thru 12th grade) of how much Texas tax revenue goes to NCS Pearson Testing and Fed Ex scares me. We hear tales of the warehouses, forklifts, shrink-wrapped pallets, bob-tail delivery trucks, etc. owned/leased by very large districts (Houston ISD,Dallas, etc.) just to handle the test booklets, and I imagine that if Texans knew how much of their education tax money goes to testing rather than teaching there might be a revolt.

We even have a saying about that: "You don't fatten lambs by weighing them!"