No Child Left Behind, Instead They Are Tossed Overboard

It turns out the Houston schools have not lived up to their billing. Their amazingly low high school dropout rate was literally unbelievable — the educational equivalent of Enron's accounting results. The school district has found that more than half of the 5,500 students who left in the 2000-1 school year should have been declared dropouts but were not.

Dr. Paige, who has declined to comment on the Houston scandal, can remain silent no longer. He was brought to Washington to provide national educational leadership. With Houston facing a crisis of fiddled data, he owes it to the country to share his thoughts on how this happened and what it means.

Houston is still, by most accounts, one of the nation's better school systems. If it is losing its battle against high school dropouts, it is not alone. All the focus on improving elementary schools over the past decade or two in Texas and elsewhere amounts to little if the students cannot hold on to those gains into high school. Clearly, far more needs to be done nationally, including a fairer distribution of money to urban systems, better teacher training and probably smaller classes.