Opt In, Opt Out

As it turns out, he'd decided that on his own months ago. He'd walk toward the bus stop under his mother's watchful eye. He just wouldn't get on, wouldn't go to CEP. He checked himself out, unofficially to be sure, but definitely.

HISD thought he was at CEP, and CEP apparently didn't know where he was. Anthony took full advantage of the giant gap of information between the two and opted out.

Robert Kimball doesn't know Anthony, but he does know numbers. The former assistant principal at Sharpstown High School, who was the first to sound the alarm about that school's bogus dropout figures scandal in 2003, says CEP is a dropout factory that helps almost no one. And he backs up his claim with numbers, numbers he got from HISD itself through repeated Texas Open Records Act requests.

For months now, the University of Houston-Clear Lake professor and retired Army lieutenant colonel has been studying the dropout issue in middle and high schools. In regards to CEP, he focused on a group of 180 HISD students enrolled there in March 2004. He checked their status in March 2006 and September 2006. He found that 90 percent of the high schoolers were not in any HISD high school by September 11, 2006 and that less than 1 percent of the group had graduated. The missing kids were not still in CEP either, he says.

Sixty percent of the middle school students couldn't be found in any HISD high school two years later, he says.

Now, it could be that these students just enrolled in another district, or are happily attending school in another country. Kimball believes that is just wishful thinking. His take: "It is more likely that all these highly at-risk students just dropped out."

CEP started in Houston with all sorts of bright promises. It has two campuses here, one on Beechnut and one on Ferndale. It also opened up schools in Atlanta, Philadelphia and Orlando. Not all the schools it has opened have stayed that way. It used to operate an alternative program for the Dallas ISD, but a new superintendent canceled it in 2002 after he and the school board agreed it was a bad deal. Locally, the Pasadena ISD used CEP's services, but also later dropped its contract.

Since its arrival, CEP has attracted criticism from parents, students and some educators for its heavy reliance on computer programs, its number of uncertified teachers and the HISD habit of assigning kids to CEP for 180 days (the equivalent of an entire school year). For years there have been consistent reports from students and teachers that fighting is a normal part of the CEP school day.

CEP also has had strong supporters: most notably, former HISD Superintendent and former U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige and Houston Federation of Teachers union president Gayle Fallon. Fallon has said repeatedly that there's a need to get the worst of the misbehaving students out of the regular classrooms so other students can learn and so that students and teachers can work in a safe environment. On September 20, both she and Sharon Baker, principal of CEP's Beechnut campus, testified before the state Senate Committee on Education in support of CEP. The principal said that 86 percent of the students who went to CEP returned to their high schools and graduated. CEP has testimonials on file from kids and their parents who say their lives were turned around after going there.

Even teachers who dislike CEP say that just cutting off ties with it won't work; HISD has nothing with which to replace it.

Students get to CEP when they have committed crimes considered too onerous to allow them to stay in their regular school. The idea is that rather than abandoning students who previously would have been tossed out on the streets, the district is caring for them by giving them a second chance.

Finding out what happens at CEP is difficult, especially if you have been critical of it in the past as this paper has. It is not a public entity; it is a private business, and if it doesn't want to answer questions, no one can compel it to. HISD and CEP were each sent a list of questions about the operations at the CEP schools. HISD spokesman Terry Abbott picked out a few questions to answer but said the rest were the responsibility of CEP. He did, however, ask CEP to answer the questions sent it. This occurred after initial calls and a fax to company CEO Randle Richardson at his Nashville office went unanswered.