Inflated school attendance spark refund push in Texas

Texas officials want a refund for millions of tax dollars from schools that allegedly inflated attendance records, part of a national problem of absenteeism at schools operated by for-profit corporations.Seven charter schools have more than $16 million in debts to the Texas Education Agency for allegedly inaccurate and inflated attendance reports, debts the state may never recoup. The state wrote off another $9 million in debts after 20 charter schools went out of business.There is a national trend of states hiring companies to operate special "dropout-recovery" programs for students who are failing in the regular public schools. In most states, but not in Texas, these special schools are paid per student enrolled, not for how many students actually attend class."In the mid-1980s, Texas decided that attendance is important to achieving good performance in school," said Lisa Dawn-Fisher, deputy associate commissioner for school finance at the Texas Education Agency. "We only pay on the basis of warm bodies in the seats, so that the kids are receiving instruction. It is not enough just to enroll kids, but to actually teach them."A 2003 study by the U.S. Department of Education found that the average absenteeism rate in Texas was just 4.9 percent, the lowest for any state. Texas authorities said absenteeism recently has dropped to about 4 percent, still the nation's best. But absenteeism averages about 9 percent in Texas' charter high schools, according to the Scripps Howard study.Texas has aggressively sought refunds from charter schools, including $8 million for attendance claims at Houston's Gulf Shores Academy (GSA), where absenteeism averaged 30 percent every day during the 2004-2005 school year."GSA reported students as having graduated, then listed those same students as still enrolled in the following academic year," the Texas Education Agency said in a lawsuit. "Almost since it began operating, GSA has failed to maintain necessary student attendance and financial records."Texas state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, a lawyer who represents Gulf Shores Academy officials, said many charter schools in Texas have a difficult time learning how to enter attendance information into the state's complex computer system."All of these charter schools are required to file through the Public Education Information Management System," Dutton said. "Most traditional schools have full-time people who enter the data. But charter schools are stuck with doing this with just a part-time person. So the data are not correct."Dawn-Fisher at the Texas Education Agency agreed that training could be part of the problem."There could be some devious intentions here," she said. "There could be some misunderstanding. I do see the need for some more training and technical assistance for charter-school holders, especially on the business side of the house -- their documentation requirements, what they need to be keeping track of."But the fate of Gulf Shores became even less certain in March when principal Linda Johnson and her daughter, school employee Marian Johnson, were charged with felony counts of tampering with a government record after allegedly accepting $150 from undercover agents to document a class credit so a fictitious child could graduate from high school.Dutton said he believes the case stemmed from the cutthroat competition between national chains of charter schools to sign up "at-risk" high-school dropouts in the Houston area."There are people who are going after their (Gulf Shores') students," Dutton said. "There are national organizations whose sole purpose is to make money off of these kids. I'm talking about the for-profit companies who run the charter schools for at-risk kids and who are in bed with a lot of the local school boards."It was just one of several criminal and civil cases that have been brought against charter-school officials in Texas. Among them:-- Baptist minister Harold W. Wilcox and three family members were indicted in 2004 for defrauding the state and federal government of $3.3 million through fraudulent attendance records at the Prepared Table Charter School in Houston. Wilcox died before trial, but his relatives pleaded guilty and got jail sentences.-- Dolores Hillyer, former chief executive officer of Austin's Texas Academy of Excellence, was indicted last year for misspending charter-school funds for personal health care and private automobiles. She pleaded guilty in June and was placed on 10 years' probation. The school still owes the state about $1.8 million.-- The Renaissance Charter School of Irving and its affiliate, Heritage Academy of Dallas, were shut down in 2000 after state officials said the schools' erroneous attendance records caused a misallocation of $4.5 million. The Texas attorney general's office early this year obtained a court order barring Renaissance founder Donald L. Jones and two other employees from working in the state's charter-school system or from receiving state and federal grants."There have been a few bad actors that really have big problems," Dawn-Fisher said.How for-profit charter schools are paid may influence their truancy rates. NonPublic Educational Services Inc. of Salem, Mass., operates six Richard Milburn Academy schools in Texas and three academies in Florida. Absenteeism at Richard Milburn Academies averages 26 percent in Florida and 17 percent in Texas. Texas, unlike Florida and most states, pays charter schools on the basis of actual attendance, not enrollment.Local Florida school boards have closed three other Milburn Academy centers for a variety of performance issues and, in all three cases, for complaints about poor attendance."We are focusing on the at-risk kids," Robert H. Crosby, company founder. "I like to say we've focused on the bottom of the barrel. I'm not taking the easy road on this. I have a total mission in life to help kids who are at risk. After all, I was an at-risk kid once myself.""If you are a nonprofit group, you can do no wrong. But if you are for-profit, then you can do nothing right," Crosby said. "There is a bias against for-profits in education."Crosby was asked whether the method of funding influences attendance."That's an interesting hypothesis. But that's for someone else to look at, not me," Crosby said. "In Florida, we are paid by enrollment, but so is every other school. Texas is one of the few states that pay by attendance. Most of the states pay by enrollment, fortunately."(E-mail Thomas Hargrove at hargrovet(at)shns.com. Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)