Texas Lifts Its Probation on Schools in Houston
By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO, NY TIMES, August 5, 2004

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WASHINGTON, Aug. 4 - Nearly a year after Texas education authorities put Houston's public schools on probation for severely underreporting high school dropouts, the state has lifted the probation and restored the district's ranking, citing progress toward more accurately reporting the numbers of students who quit high school.

Kaye Stripling, Houston's departing superintendent, announced the change at a meeting of administrators on Wednesday. In a statement, Dr. Stripling said the district won back its rating of academically acceptable "because of the hard work of good people all across this district."

The district was placed on probation last August, after a state audit of 16 schools found that 15 had vastly underreported dropout numbers. Of 5,500 students who had left those schools in the 2000-2001 school year, the audit found, some 3,000, or 54 percent, should have been counted as dropouts but were not. Instead, Houston public schools reported a 1.5 percent dropout rate that year. That compares with a dropout rate in many inner cities of more than 50 percent. The audit brought unwelcome scrutiny to the record of Rod Paige, the federal education secretary, who ran the Houston schools as superintendent from 1994 to early 2001. On his watch, Houston's reported dropout rate sharply declined, contributing to its image as an example of the Texas miracle in education. After the audit, the state education commissioner resigned, citing personal reasons, and was replaced in the interim by a close associate of Gov. Rick Perry.

Since then, state officials required Houston to hire an outside consultant to address the way it tracked students who quit school, and assigned a state monitor to oversee their efforts. In a statement, the district said it also retrained school officials to keep better records, and dispatched auditors to check on their performance.