Where Are Those Kids?

Katy Citizen Watchdog$

We’re Taxpayers. It’s Our Money.

Where Are Those Kids Anyway?

The Katy Independent School District has long maintained that their drop out rate is extremely low--around 0.2 percent most of the time.

How could any of us refute that assertion when the numbers that have been presented over the years seemed to support the school district even though the numbers never seemed to be realistic?

In her press release announcing her candidacy for Position 1 on the Katy School Board, Cynthia Blackman stated that one of her main concerns is the "high drop out rate" of KISD students.

The Katy Times was quick to insert within her announcement that the school district in fact has a very low drop out rate.

Katy Citizen Watchdog Co-Founder, Kevin Tatum, asked through open records for information regarding the drop out rate for Katy ISD, and received this reply:

“The dropout rate for KISD for the years requested is below, in section 1. The information for both 2004-05 and 2003-04 appears together in the 2006 accountability rating, which was copied from the Academic Excellence Indicator System (AEIS) report, which is accessible on the TEA web site. You can find that report at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/aeis/2006/district.srch.html The raw number of dropouts for 2005-06 is highlighted in yellow on page 3 of the attached Public Education Information Management System (PEIMS) Student Data Review for 05/06. This data has been submitted to the TEA, and the dropout rate will be generated and reported on the AEIS report when it comes out. The AEIS reports come out 2 years after the fact (in other words, the 2006 AEIS report is based on the data from 2004/05.)

In Section 2, I have copied the formula for calculating the dropout rates. These are copied from the 2005 and 2006 Accountability Manuals, which are found on the TEA web site at http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/2006/manual and http://www.tea.state.tx.us/perfreport/account/2005/manual While the two pages are identical for practical purposes, there were small changes to the wording, so I include them both here. My understanding is that the formula for the 2005-06 school year is essentially the same as for 2004/05.”

Please note that the dropout rate is not calculated from total enrollment, but from grades 7 and 8 who were in attendance at any time during the school year.

Amazingly it appears that the dropout rate for students is based upon the dropout rate between the number of students in the 7th grade one year and the number of students in the 8th grade the next year!

Read that sentence again.

It would appear that the Texas Education Agency has been providing school districts with a manipulation scheme that allows them to lie to the public about the reality of the drop out situation!

Anyone know of a Katy ISD twelve year old (seventh grader) who would be so bold as to walk out his front door and show up at the school registrar's office and say, "I'm dropping out today"?

Where would he go? What would his parents have to say about that? How could he get a job and support himself?

The answer is of course Katy ISD seventh graders are not "dropping out." The TEA might as well have used the first and the second graders for their baseline standard.

Students usually drop out when they are sixteen, can get a job, or perhaps when someone older offers to marry them and take care of them and/or they think they can somehow make it in the world on their own.

Regardless of this convoluted calculation of who is in our schools and who has fled the coop, let's look at real numbers.

Using the school years 2002-2003 for the number of ninth grade students and the years 2005-2006 for the number of twelfth grade students who remained (Source: AEIS report of the TEA):

9th grade students: Katy - 916, Taylor - 698, Mayde Creek - 996, Cinco Ranch - 830, Morton Ranch - -0– and Seven Lakes - -0-.

12th grade students (and these aren't even graduates which would be a smaller number, just students who made it to the 12th grade): Katy - 703, Taylor - 668, Mayde Creek - 692, Cinco Ranch - 873, Morton Ranch - 1 and Seven Lakes - -0-.

Adding up these numbers one gets 3,440 students attending school in the 2002-2003 school year, and 2,937 of those students still around in the 12th grade in 2005-2006. That would be 503 fewer students who made it to school three years later.

To compound the issue recall that our school district grows by huge numbers every year (just ask the superintendent and all the local building contractors) and so it would appear that at the same time they were losing 15% of the 2002-2003 class in just three years, Katy ISD went from having 39,278 students at the end of 2003 to having 47,808 students at the end of 2006 or an additional 8,330 students (or 21%), so there were probably more who "dropped out" but they were compensated for by many move-ins.

The other manipulative factor can be seen in the table below which enumerates the multiplicity of reasons for being and not being labeled as a drop out. This list makes it impossible to get a handle on who is called a "leaver" or a "drop out" or not included in these definitions at all. That's by design. The more they can confuse the public, the easier it is to deceive them!

The kicker in all of this manipulation of numbers is that in order to be an TEA “Exemplary” school or school district, the drop out rate must be 0.2% or less. For “Recognized” status the drop out rate has to be 0.7% or less. For an “Academically Acceptable” status, the drop out rate must be 1% or less.

So my questions are, if our drop out rate is really 15% (or somewhere between 0.2% and 15%), what does that make us? Are we really "Recognized" or are we perhaps "Clearly Unacceptable"?

Who will answer these very good questions? Where is our school board and why haven't they been questioning this matter for years? Where is the local press, and why don't they investigate? And who is going to do anything about it? The fact that, at the least, over 500 students left, for whatever reason, between the 9th grade and the 12th grade is reason for someone's concern. I'm not convinced that even using the rather permissive reasons below, that anyone could reduce a 15% missing rate down to an explainable 0.2%!

So far we only have one school board candidate who recognizes that there's even a problem.

Reasons why someone can be classified as a dropout:

Leaver Codes. Districts are required to report the status of all students who were enrolled in grades 7 - 12 in the district during the prior school year. Students either continue to be enrolled in the district or they leave the district. If students leave the district, the district reports a leaver reason for each student. Only students reported with selected PEIMS leaver codes (those with no asterisk in the table on the next page) are defined as dropouts. Students who leave due to reasons identified with an asterisk are not counted as dropouts.

Table 29: Leaver Codes

Code Translation Category of Leaver

01* Graduated Completed High School Program

02 Pursue Job/Job Training Employment

03* Died Other

04 Join the Military Employment

08 Pregnancy Family

09 Marriage Family

10 Alcohol/Other Drug Abuse Problem Other

14 Age Academic Performance

15 Homeless or Non-Permanent Resident Family

16* Return to Home Country Other

19* Failed Exit TAAS or TAKS/Met Grad Req. Completed High School Program

21* Official Transfer to other Texas District Moved to Other Educational Setting

22* Alt Pgm - Working Toward Diploma/Cert. Moved to Other Educational Setting

24* College, Pursue Degree Moved to Other Educational Setting

30* Enter Health Care Facility Other

31* Completed GED Completed High School Program

60* Home Schooling Moved to Other Educational Setting

61* Incarcerated Outside District Other

63* Graduated-Returned-Left Again Completed High School Program

64* GED-Returned-Left Again Completed High School Program

66* Removed - Child Protective Services Family

72* Court Ordered Alternative Program Moved to Other Educational Setting

78* Expelled, Cannot Return Withdrawn by School District

79 Expelled, Can Return, Has Not Withdrawn by School District

80* Enroll In Other Texas Public School Moved to Other Educational Setting

81* Enroll In Texas Private School Moved to Other Educational Setting

82* Enroll in School Outside Texas Moved to Other Educational Setting

83* Administrative Withdrawal Withdrawn by School District

84 Academic Performance Academic Performance

99 Other (Unknown or Not Listed) Other

* Codes with asterisks are not counted as dropouts in determining the 2006 state accountability ratings.

· Excluded Records. TEA performs an automated check against other state data sources to locate reported dropouts in other educational settings. Districts and campuses are held accountable for their official dropouts, that is, those reported dropouts whose records are not excluded by this automated check. The automated check at the state level removes dropout records from the count if they:

· received a GED certificate and appear on the Agency's GED file as of March of the year of the PEIMS submission;

· are found in attendance or enrollment in another public school district;

· are ADA ineligible;

· were reported by more than one district and last district attended can't be determined.

· graduated from a Texas public school; or

· were previously counted as a dropout.

· Campus of Accountability. The vast majority of leavers are assigned to the campuses they were attending when they left the Texas public school system. However, a student being served at a Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP), a Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program (JJAEP), or a registered Alternative Education Program (AEP) for less than 85 days is assigned to a "campus of accountability." Campus of accountability may be reported by the district or may be determined by the agency based on PEIMS attendance records reported for the prior year. A detailed table showing assignment in specific situations may be found in the section of the PEIMS Data Standards describing the student demographic data (Record Type 101).

· District of Accountability. In certain cases, TEA attributes dropouts across district boundaries to a district different from the reporting district, such as:

· A district that has a privately operated residential treatment center (RTC) within its geographic boundaries is not held accountable for students who drop out if they are from outside the district and were served at the center for fewer than 85 days.

· A district that has a registered pre-adjudication detention center or post-adjudication correctional facility within its geographic boundaries is not held accountable for students who drop out if they are from outside the district.

TEA is able to attribute the dropouts to the appropriate sending campus and district by using student attribution codes and attendance data collected through PEIMS.

Mary McGarr, Katy Citizen Watchdog$

Date: 05/03/2007