Today's Chronicle has come through for KISD again!  Leah Binkovitz tried to write an article about the dropout rate to make KISD look good.

However, the reporter forgot to define her terms.  Is the "drop out rate" the attrition rate?  or how about the longitudinal drop out rate?  or how about the old drop out rate that was hidden for so many years by the TEA which calculated the number of students "dropping out" as those who left school between the 6th and 7th grades? (Do you know any Katy kid who dropped out when he was twelve years old?  Neither do I.)

Was the reporter trying to make KISD residents feel good about having a lower rate than all those other schools?

I'm not sure where the reporter got her numbers, but if one looks at the number of freshmen at the beginning of the year (2010) which was 4,849 for six high schools, and then looks at how many of those same students are enrolled as seniors on May 15, 2014  which was 4,345, one will find that the REAL drop out rate is 10.4% or 504 students which is pretty high. (That's like all of Katy Elementary School!) This calculation is called the "longitudinal drop out rate"--how many started and how many finished.

Of course many students transfer OUT of the District during the four years of high school, but probably more transfer INTO the District in that four year period if we believe KISD growth/enrollment numbers, so this may be worse than it looks. Others leave to be homeschooled or to go to private schools when they realize they are not getting a very good education in the Katy public schools.  (Ever notice how many private schools there are in our area these days?  That eventuality is market driven.)

Is the Chronicle's 3.3% misleading? It would have helped if the reporter had told us her definition of "drop out rate."

Some students leave to get married, to get their GED, or because they just can't pass those final subjects.

Some of them, in fact a great many of them cannot read because KISD back in the first grade used the whole language method of teaching reading, which doesn't work, instead of using time tested phonics. Hard to graduate from high school when one can't read! There are estimates that at least 40% of KISD graduates are functionally illiterate (they can't read).  I've used that percentage number for several years, and no one from the District has ever offered any objection to it.

The numbers are borne out by the fact that only 79.2 of KISD students even take the SAT or the ACT and of that number only 43.7 score at criterion or above, so one can see that there is a problem.

20.8 percent of KISD seniors don't bother to take the SAT or the ACT because they know they have not learned enough in 12 years to be able to go to even a community college, so why bother with taking college entrance tests?  That is a very sad statistic.  Is this the fact that draws people to Katy ISD and sells houses by the hundreds?  Is this what parents expected when they moved here?

No one ever tells the public the accurate story about KISD--especially not the Chronicle or KHOU!