None actually claimed a dog ate their homework.

But the Texas schools that appealed their subpar state ratings this year offered up a remarkable variety of explanations and excuses – some sensible, others more notable for their creativity.

Schools blamed their performance on everything from an errant fire alarm to a student going into labor – and, in one case, parent sabotage.

“There are certainly some appeals that we think have very little merit,” said Criss Cloudt, the associate commissioner for accountability at the Texas Education Agency. “But we look at each one closely.”

In all, 160 schools or districts appealed their ratings this year – a fraction of the more than 9,000 ratings TEA hands out annually. The agency approved 62 appeals, often moving a school one rung up the ratings ladder: unacceptable, acceptable, recognized and exemplary. The Dallas Morning News obtained copies of each district’s appeals letter and the agency’s yea-or-nay response.

The state ratings system is based largely on the TAKS test scores of specific subgroups such as black, Hispanic, white and low-income students. A school must produce a given passing rate in each group to earn a certain rating.

Every year, hundreds of schools fall just a few students short of the bar. And many start searching for ways to massage the numbers. […]

Read More… from TEA gets excuses, excuses; State finds merit in 62 school rating appeals, creativity in others

Dallas Catholic school students will get a day off Feb. 7 – and not for an early Ash Wednesday.

Schools will shut down so students and teachers can go to Austin for a rally in favor of school vouchers, which use public dollars to send students to private and religious schools. Other Catholic schools around the state are joining the effort.

The move is a sign that new leaders in the Catholic Church – which would probably be the biggest beneficiary of any voucher program – plan to be much more active in lobbying the Legislature than in previous years.

“There are a couple new archbishops,” said Charles LeBlanc, the Dallas Diocese’s director of schools. “We have a new director of the Texas Catholic Conference. And I’m impressed with the energy.”

Vouchers have been a controversial topic for the last several legislative sessions.

Supporters say they allow children to escape failing public schools and give parents choices. Opponents say they take money away from public schools that need it and threaten the separation of church and state.

“The vast majority of Texas parents, Catholic or otherwise, send their children to public schools and want those public schools to be supported by the Legislature, not robbed by a voucher scheme,” said Kathy Miller, president of the Texas Freedom Network, a group that opposes vouchers. […]

Read More… from Catholic schools to close for rally; Dallas Diocese giving students, teachers a day to lobby for vouchers

Nearly 600 Texas public schools have been cleared of suspicions of cheating, state officials said Thursday, leaving 105 other schools still under investigation.

Texas Education Agency officials cited the clearing of 592 schools as evidence of the integrity of the state’s influential testing system.

“It is imperative that Texans trust our test results and have confidence that they are valid and reliable,” Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley said in a prepared statement.

But some question the thoroughness of the agency’s investigation, which relied heavily on self-reported questionnaires filled out by school officials a year and a half after the 2005 tests in question.

“I don’t know how accurate a set of responses you’re going to get from sending people a questionnaire,” said Jason Stephens, an assistant professor at the University of Connecticut who studies cheating. “That might be expedient, but if there is something going on, nobody’s going to go out and admit that.”

The investigation stems from a report produced in May by Caveon, a test-security firm. It analyzed schools’ scores on the 2005 Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills and tried to determine which schools had unusual patterns that could suggest cheating.

The report flagged 700 schools for a variety of reasons, including scores that jumped too quickly, answer sheets with too many erasures and students whose answer patterns suggested they might have copied off a classmate. […]

Read More… from Cheating inquiry clears 592 schools; State’s use of campus self-reporting in TAKS investigation questioned

Barely a year after receiving a clean bill of health, the North Texas charter schools run by the Belknap family are in trouble again.

State education officials are investigating allegations of financial impropriety, employees are being laid off to cut costs, and the schools are at risk of state intervention. Officials say the schools should be able to finish out the school year; beyond that is less clear.

“We don’t know how bad things are because they don’t have a good set of books,” said Karen Case, a former Texas Education Agency official who was hired by the schools Tuesday as the new part-time superintendent. “But they are in serious financial trouble.”

The Belknap family operates A+ Academy and Inspired Vision Academy, both in southeastern Dallas. Together they enroll more than 1,500 students, some of whom attended the recently shuttered Wilmer-Hutchins school district.

The family previously ran Rylie Faith Family Academy, but state officials closed that school in 2003 after years of low test scores.

Don and Karen Lewis Belknap, the schools’ co-founders, did not return phone calls seeking comment.

Charter schools are public schools funded with state taxpayer dollars but without the traditional governance structure of an elected school board. They have proved controversial because many are run by people with little experience in education or management. Academic performance in many charter schools is poor, and state oversight is limited. Laws can make it hard for the state to close even schools with serious financial and academic problems.

Since opening in 1999, the Belknap schools have received well over $38 million in state funds. […]

Read More… from Family’s schools failing again; 2 SE Dallas charters in financial trouble, at risk of state intervention

For fifth-graders having trouble with the TAKS test, everything comes down to a familiar factor: Location, location, location.

Texas’ law against social promotion is supposed to set uniform standards, requiring students to pass both the math and reading TAKS to be promoted to the sixth grade. But districts are given wide leeway in deciding who actually gets held back, and – according to newly released data from 2005, the most recent available – they use it in vastly different ways.

For instance, the Klein school district in suburban Houston promoted 98.5 percent of its fifth-graders who had failed the TAKS reading test repeatedly. Wichita Falls schools, in contrast, promoted just 4.8 percent.

Austin ISD promoted 90 percent of its fifth-graders who repeatedly failed the TAKS math test. But the Georgetown district – a 20-minute drive away – promoted only 20 percent.

“There seems to be a lot of variation in the way people interpret the law,” said Dawson Orr, Wichita Falls’ superintendent.

Despite their divergent results, officials in several districts said they are working within the law, which leaves the final decision about promotion to the child’s parents and educators.

In all, Texas schools ended up promoting about 70 percent of its worst-performing fifth-graders through a tool known as the grade placement committee.

“Our parents very much want to see their children move on and have those upper-grade experiences,” said Holly Hughes, assistant superintendent for elementary education in Clear Creek ISD near Houston. “We work hard with each family to determine what’s best for each child.” […]

Read More… from Kids fail TAKS, still pass; Districts vary widely on promoting 5th-graders who flunked test

One of the concepts newspaper readers sometimes have trouble with is the divide between the editorial staff and the news staff.

The folks who write our editorials, on the fourth floor here at The Dallas Morning News, are good people. But they don’t have any say in what I write, and I don’t have any say in what they write.

It won’t surprise you that we sometimes disagree. So excuse me while I get out my bone-picking tools.

In an editorial last week, they addressed a big issue: How to keep more of Texas high school students in school and marching toward graduation. Texas has a lot of dropouts every year – depending on how you do the math, more than any other state. Lots of those are Hispanic kids with poor English skills.

The editorial board’s first recommendation: The Legislature should give more money to schools so they can hire more bilingual teachers and cut class sizes.

The logic seems impeccable: A teacher can do a better job with 18 students than she can with 30. So shrink classes and you end up with better results, right?

Unfortunately – no matter how well intentioned the idea – I suspect that going on a hiring spree wouldn’t have the impact some hope for. […]

Read More… from COLUMN: Getting real on dropouts; Mass hirings alone won’t fix problem; invest in a strong staff

You probably didn’t notice, but Texas schools just celebrated a big holiday.

I doubt anyone brought cupcakes to class, but Oct. 27 looms large in principals’ offices and the halls of administration buildings.

That’s because the last Friday in October is New Kids Stop Mattering Day – the day after which any new students enrolling at your school won’t be counted in next spring’s TAKS scores.

It’s a holiday that makes life easier for teachers and principals wishing for higher test scores. But it also hurts thousands of Texas kids.

Jennifer Booher-Jennings is a Columbia graduate student whose research I’ve written about before. She studies how poorly constructed testing systems can leave some kids without the attention they deserve.

Last year I wrote in this space about her study of a Texas elementary school, where teachers gave enormous help to kids at risk of falling just a few points short of passing TAKS. That’s good.

But that extra help came at the expense of weaker kids – kids who might not pass even with more tutoring and teacher time invested. They were being written off as hopeless – at age 8.

That’s bad. It’s bad because it ignores what would be best for kids – helping the weakest at least as much those on the bubble – and instead does what’s best for the adults. Namely, it boosts a school’s passing rate by going after only the low-hanging fruit. […]

Read More… from COLUMN: Is TAKS approach fair? Weakest kids written off while schools focus on state accountability

Sometimes the best service the media can provide is a simple message.

Stay calm. Things aren’t that bad.

Whenever newspapers and the networks report on a school shooting – much less a mini-spree of them – the temptation is to think that the world is spiraling out of control.

The cable news networks start frothing for ratings. Up go the on-screen graphics – open-ended fear-mongering like “Is your child in danger?”

Self-appointed school-security experts – looking to make a buck as consultants – start e-mailing reporters about the urgent threat to America’s children.

And legislators, eager for five minutes with Nancy Grace, start overreacting and throwing around dumb ideas.

Everybody wins – except for anyone who wants to point out the truth. Which is that violence in schools has plummeted over the past decade.

It may be hard to think about that when your TV shows a line of Amish buggies rolling in a funeral procession – or when the country has three school shootings in a week’s time. But it’s the truth.

By just about every measure, school violence has been falling steadily since the early 1990s. Federal statistics say incidents of serious school violence were twice as common in 1994 as they were in 2004. […]

Read More… from COLUMN: Don’t believe the hype about violence at schools