There can be strange things done in that hot Texan sun.  Magnolia Texas school district isn’t smelling so sweet.  Illinois also scares up that foul smell too often. 

Susan Frederick of Taffie pointed out a letter that the Texas Home School Coalition wrote to the Magnolia ISD registrar about requests for some pieces of paper.  The school district paper quest was for diplomas printed out by the homeschool organization.  Strange, but true. Read on….

THSC Association Letter to Magnolia ISD

June 23, 2008

Ms. Sharon Suprenaut,
Registrar
Magnolia High School
PO Box 428
Magnolia, TX 77353

Dear Ms. Suprenaut:

I am writing in response to five requests, postmarked between May 23 and May 30, 2008, received by our office, from parents from Magnolia, Texas, wishing to order diplomas. While we do provide a printed diploma service for home school families, these requests were unusual in that three of them were in envelopes from Magnolia High School, and all of them requested diplomas with the school name of Magnolia High School. Three of the five even had transcripts from Magnolia ISD, signed by you as the registrar. All of these orders included a letter of withdrawal addressed to Magnolia High School Principal Jeff Springer, dated May 21 or 22, and the forms all listed a graduation date of June 7, 2008.

I can only conclude that these students were not able to pass the TAKS test and, therefore, were not allowed to receive a diploma from Magnolia High School. It would appear that someone at Magnolia High School directed these parents to order a home school diploma from our organization. Since we cannot print a diploma in the name of another school, we have returned these orders with a recommendation that the students pursue a GED.

Sincerely,

Tim Lambert

cc: Mr. Jeff Springer, Principal, Magnolia High School; Mr. Michael Holland, Superintendant, Magnolia ISD; Mr. Robert Scott, Texas Commissioner of Education; State Representative Rob Eissler; State Senator Robert Nichols; State Board of Education member, Barbara Cargill; Texas home schoolers

Good for THSC following up on the requests by calling them out.  Ya gotta love the thoughtfulness of the cc’s.  I surely do.    Document, document, document. 

Cooking the Books on Dropout Numbers: One Newspaper Sees the Scam  San Antonio in 2002:

Fuzzy math or creative bookkeeping, call it what you may, manipulating numbers to show positive bottom lines hurts credibility and camouflages real problems.
That’s true for corporations, and it’s true for the Texas Education Agency.
Those who monitor Texas public schools’ successes and failures have long taken issue with the way the TEA calculates the state’s dropout rate.

Unlike the National Center for Education Statistics, TEA does not count as dropouts students who finish all their required coursework but do not pass the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills required to obtain a diploma.

TEA does not count as a dropout a student withdrawing from school who indicates plans to take a General Education Development test to receive a high school diploma.

Houston’s ‘Zero Dropout’ 2003

Robert Kimball, an assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, sat smack in the middle of the "Texas miracle." His poor, mostly minority high school of 1,650 students had a freshman class of 1,000 that dwindled to fewer than 300 students by senior year. And yet — and this is the miracle — not one dropout to report!

Nor was zero an unusual dropout rate in this school district that both President Bush and Secretary of Education Rod Paige have held up as the national showcase for accountability and the model for the federal No Child Left Behind law. Westside High here had 2,308 students and no reported dropouts; Wheatley High 731 students, no dropouts. A dozen of the city’s poorest schools reported dropout rates under one percent.

The superintendent has frequent meetings with principals. Before they go in, the principals are really, really scared. Panicky. They have to make their numbers." Pressure? Some compare it to working under the old Soviet system of five-year plans.

On the other hand, for principals who make their numbers, it is bonus time. Principals can earn a $5,000 bonus, district administrators up to $20,000. At Sharpstown High alone, Dr. Kimball said, $75,000 in bonus money was issued last year, before the fictitious numbers were exposed.

[Former Federal Dept of Ed Secretary] Dr. Paige’s spokesman, Dan Langan, referred dropout questions to Houston officials, but said that the secretary was proud of the accountability system he established here, that it got results and that principals freely signed those contracts.

If Houston officials were interested in accountability, he said, they would assign him to a high school to monitor the dropout data that he has come to understand so well. Instead, after he blew the whistle on Sharpstown High, he was reassigned, for four months, to sit in a windowless room with no work to do. More recently, he has been serving as the second assistant principal at a primary school, where, he said, he is not really needed. "I expect when my contract is up next January, I’ll be fired," he said. "That’s how it works here."

Why Count Homeschooled or Private Schooled in Dropout Rates?

Encouragement to homeschool calls for federal civil rights lawsuit

Absent 10 days=Homeschooled: Go figure