New Study Shows Texas Tests Contribute to Lower Grad Rates

[Bob Schaeffer <bobschaeffer@earthlink.net>]

Rice University News Office
February 14, 2007

As graduation rates go down, school ratings go up
New study shows the negative implications of No Child Left Behind

A new study by researchers at Rice University and the University of 
Texas-Austin finds that Texas' public school accountability system, the 
model for the national No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), directly 
contributes to lower graduation rates. Each year Texas public high 
schools lose at least 135,000 youth prior to graduation -- a 
disproportionate number of whom are African-American, Latino and 
English-as-a-second-language (ESL) students. 

By analyzing data from more than 271,000 students, the study found that 
60 percent of African-American students, 75 percent of Latino students 
and 80 percent of ESL students did not graduate within five years. The 
researchers found an overall graduation rate of only 33 percent. 

"High-stakes, test-based accountability doesn't lead to school 
improvement or equitable educational possibilities," said Linda 
McSpadden McNeil, director of the Center for Education at Rice 
University. "It leads to avoidable losses of students. Inherently the 
system creates a dilemma for principals: comply or educate. 
Unfortunately, we found that compliance means losing students."

The study shows as schools came under the accountability system, which 
uses student test scores to rate schools and reward or discipline 
principals, massive numbers of students left the school system. The exit 
of low-achieving students created the appearance of rising test scores 
and of a narrowing of the achievement gap between white and minority 
students, thus increasing the schools' ratings.

This study has serious implications for the nation's schools under the 
NCLB law. It finds that the higher the stakes and the longer such an 
accountability system governs schools, the more school personnel view 
students not as children to educate but as potential liabilities or 
assets for their school's performance indicators, their own careers or 
their school's funding.

The study shows a strong relationship between the increasing number of 
dropouts and school's rising accountability ratings, finding that:

-    Losses of low-achieving students help raise school ratings under 
the accountability system.

-    The accountability system allows principals to hold back students 
who are deemed at risk of reducing the school's scores; many students 
retained this way end up dropping out.

-    The test scores grouped by race single out the low-achieving 
students in these subgroups as potential liabilities to the school 
ratings, increasing incentives for school administrators to allow those 
students to quietly exit the system.

-    The accountability system's zero-tolerance rules for attendance and 
behavior, which put youth into the court system for minor offenses and 
absences, alienate students and increase the likelihood they will drop out.

The discrepancy between the official dropout rates, in the 2 to 3 
percent range, and the actual rates can be attributed to the state's 
method of counting, which does not include students who drop out of 
school for reasons such as pregnancy or incarceration or declare intent 
to take the GED sometime in the future.

The study analyzes student-level data of 271,000 students in one of 
Texas' large urban districts over a seven-year period. It also includes 
analysis of the policy and its implementation, extensive observations in 
high schools in that district and interviews with students, teachers, 
administrators and students who left school without graduating.

The study has been published in the peer-reviewed policy journal 
"Educational Policy Analysis Archives" and is the first research to 
track the impact of high-stakes accountability on students, employing 
individual student-level data over a multiyear period. The executive 
summary is available at Rice University's Center for Education, 
http://centerforeducation.rice.edu/. The study can be viewed at 
http://epaa.asu.edu/epaa/v16n3/.