How the Chron turns good news into bad news

Last week, as part of a news round up, the Chron printed a blurb about HISD seeking class-size waivers from the state. See if you can spot something a bit odd:

Class-size waiver requests increase

HISD will appeal to the Texas Education Agency this week for permission to exceed maximum class-size standards for 659 classes, from kindergarten through fourth grade, with more than 22 students.

That's up slightly from the district's low of 641 waivers in 2004, but down dramatically from the more than 1,500 waivers that the state approved in 1999.

This is 2006, and the request is 659. That's up from 2004's request of 641.

Er, what happened to 2005? How many waiver requests were there last year? You know, the most recent year to make a comparison.

Well, a little info from HISD's press office tells us that in 2005, 933 waivers were requested. Now why didn't the writer use that number? Why did the writer go back two years to say that HISD's waiver request had increased? Common sense says one might use last year's number as the benchmark, or even list a whole bunch of years, like this:

2006: 659
2005: 933
2004: 641
2003: 672
2001: 1334
2000: 1319
1999: 1508
1998: 1380
1997: 1244

Well. Now 659 looks like an improving trend, doesn't it? And the Chron's headline looks very strange.

Posted by Anne Linehan @ 10/16/06 08:28 PM | Houston Chronicle | Technorati | Sphere | Comments (4)

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