Chron's HISD story is very misleading (updated)
If you read the story in today's Chronicle about HISD reducing high school graduation requirements for math and science, and the story made you mad -- STOP!
First of all, look who wrote the story -- Jason Spencer. That should send up warning flags. I know it did for me. So before I panicked -- after all, how could the superintendent who is aggressively trying to reform HISD take a big step backward? -- I decided to see if there's more to the story.
There is. According to HISD spokesman Terry Abbott, HISD is not lowering the number of credits required to graduate. Here is what Abbott told me:
What we are proposing to do is simply what Spring Branch and Cy Fair and Austin and virtually every other school district is Texas does, and that is give a middle school kid credit if he takes a high-school level course in middle school.
This policy does NOT affect the number of credits needed to graduate. An HISD student still must have three high-school level math credits, for instance, to graduate.
In fact, here's the very LAST paragraph of the story:
Dallas requires three years of science and math in high school. Cy-Fair requires three years of high school math, but allows students to earn science credit in middle school. Austin school officials are thinking of changing their policy that now allows students to graduate with just two years of math and science in high school.
HISD is not lowering requirements. If a middle school student takes a high school level class while in middle school, the course can be counted for high school credit. And, interestingly, it's the same policy that many other Texas school districts have, including Spring Branch, Cy-Fair and Austin.
I await Spencer's story castigating those districts for this policy.
Also, Dr. Saavedra's proposal takes HISD back to the requirements that were in place in 2001. The story says that the current policy was enacted in conjunction with TAKS testing.
And all readers should know by now that if the Chronicle has a story about HISD, they should read it with a grain of salt.
UPDATE: Terry Abbott has forwarded me the letter he sent to the Chronicle, protesting Spencer's story. I will post it in the extended entry.
I have to protest Jason’s story today entitled “HISD may alter math-science requirement.” The way in which the story is presented misleads readers.
I have spent most of the morning fielding calls from parents, and going on talk radio to talk to callers, who were confused by the Chronicle story this morning. Caller after caller believed after reading the Chronicle story that HISD was reducing the requirements to graduate.
As you know, Dr. Saavedra’s proposal is to simply go back to previous policy in HISD, and the policy used in probably most other Texas school districts, and allow middle school students who take high school-level math courses to get credit for them.
It’s easy to understand how parents and talk show listeners could have been misled by the Chronicle story. The link to the online version of the story right now says “Plan allows graduation with no math, science after second year.” That certainly makes it sound like HISD has reduced the number of credits a student has to earn to graduate. In fact it’s difficult to find in the story the correct context to understand that the number of credits children need to graduate isn’t changing. The story seems designed to give readers the impression that we are eliminating credits from the graduation requirement. That isn’t true.
In fact, a Chronicle reader has to go all the way to the next to last paragraph of the Chronicle story to read that other school districts like Cy-Fair and Austin have the same type policies. Only if a reader made it all the way to the bottom of the story would the reader get any idea that HISD is proposing only to approach the issue in the same way as other Texas school districts.
The lead paragraph says: “Houston ISD students could earn high school diplomas without taking a single math or science class after their sophomore year under a proposal that is drawing criticism from some national education experts.” That certainly could lead readers to believe that we had reduced the number of credits required for graduation.
The fifth paragraph says “The decision is even more curious, some education experts said, given the fact that more than two-thirds of HISD's 2004 graduates who enrolled in local community colleges last fall were required to take remedial courses.” Yet the Chronicle story failed to report that other local school districts, with the same rules allowing middle school students to get credit for high school-level classes, had similar percentages of students needing remedial courses in college. Your own story in September 2004 said “Sixteen local school districts sent 6,552 newly graduated students to the Houston Community College System and the North Harris Montgomery College District this fall. Sixty-four percent of them, or 4,217, are taking high school-level courses, according to the colleges.” Many of those school districts no doubt have similar policies which allow students to get credit for high school-level courses in middle school. We know at very least that Cy-Fair and Spring Branch do. And yet today’s story singles out only HISD as having students who needed remediation in college. Again, that seems designed to mislead readers.
We must continue to protest what we think is unfair coverage of HISD.
Sincerely,
Terry Abbott
Press Secretary
HISD
Posted by Anne Linehan @ 05/12/05 04:34 PM | Print |
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