>"It was Enron accounting," said Joseph Rodriguez,
...
> "We go from 1,000 Freshman to less than 300 Seniors with no
> dropouts," Dr. Kimball wrote. "Amazing!"
...
> The audit which recommended lowering the ranking of 14 of
> the 16 schools from the best to the worst, has been a
> stunning blow to the Houston school system, the largest and
> most celebrated district in Texas. Last year, the city won a
> $1 million prize as best urban district in the country, from
> the Broad Foundation, which is based in Los Angeles.
>
> The city has also been a pillar of the so-called Texas
> miracle in education, whose emphasis on grading school
> performance became the model for the rest of the country
> under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. It was largely
> on the strength of his success here that Rod Paige,
> Houston's former superintendent, followed George W. Bush
> east to become secretary of education.