This is an excellent analysis of the Houston dropout scandal. I can't see either why a data-tech person would change the numbers on his own. What would have been HIS investment in the system in doing so??? It strikes me as quite untenable that he would have done this when HE'S not the one who's accountability in this system. In any case, he appears to be in deep trouble, particularly in the absence of a paper trail. No, he shouldn't have cheated, by neither should he be the fall guy, paying for the sins not only of his superiors, but also of a system that creates perverse incentives to cheat, genreally.
-Angela
Oct. 8, 2005, 7:29PM
by RICK CASEY / Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle
I guess we should be glad the district attorney's office persuaded a grand jury to indict Ken Cuadra on Friday.
He's the clerk at Sharpstown High School who is alleged to have doctored records to indicate that the school had no dropouts.
If he did the crime, he should do the time, right?
And it's good, I suppose, to make an example of a public employee who cheats in order to keep others from doing it.
Maybe he deserves a felony on his record and up to 10 years in prison, as the law provides.
Still, if voters were ever foolish enough to elect me district attorney, I don't think I would have sought this indictment.
Even if the evidence were overwhelming that he did it.
I was unable Friday to reach either Terese Buess, the special crimes prosecutor who presented the case to the grand jury, or her boss, DA Chuck Rosenthal.
Maybe they have their reasons for seeking the indictment shortly before the three-year statute of limitations runs out.
Here's why, absent any more information, I wouldn't.
I can't figure out why Cuadra would doctor the records unless one of his bosses wanted him to.
Bosses got credit
A lowly bank clerk might make funny numbers to embezzle money.
But Cuadra was a computer-network technician at a school. If he went into the computer and made dropouts disappear — and there's considerable evidence he did — it's not like it put money in his pocket.
He didn't even get credit for improving the school's performance any more than the janitors or cafeteria workers.
It was teachers and administrators who got the credit. Administrators had bonuses tied to such matters, although the dropout rate was just one of a large number of factors, 14 for the principal, for example.
Cuadra's bosses received no bonuses that year. The school, filled with low-income students, did not meet enough criteria.
According to a report by the prominent law firm Rusty Hardin & Associates, which was hired by the school district to investigate the matter, Cuadra had told a varying succession of stories to different people.
'You are great!'
On the advice of his lawyer, Cuadra did not talk to Hardin's staff. Anything he said to them could be turned over to prosecutors (as their report eventually was), and they could not offer him immunity or any other deal as a prosecutor could.
Cuadra has said he was asked to cook the books on dropouts by his superiors, but Hardin's staff could find no evidence of it.
If they told him to do it only in verbal instructions with no witnesses present, which is quite possible, then Texas law makes it impossible to convict the superiors of the crime.
Unlike laws of the federal government and many states, Texas law says if two people are involved in a crime, you can't convict one solely on the testimony of the other.
So unless Cuadra had e-mail or other documents showing he was told to alter the records, he had nothing to offer the district attorney.
There are, however, plenty of e-mail messages and documents showing the pleasure of his superiors at the patently unrealistic numbers Cuadra was producing.
One example: On Oct. 25, 2000, Cuadra sent a dropout roster to two bosses showing only three dropouts. One of them returned the memo with a note: "You are great!"
By 2002, Cuadra made dropouts disappear altogether, going from 30 on Oct. 22 to zero on Oct. 23. The number is so ridiculous that it raised flags both among faculty and in the HISD central office. Yet his bosses made no serious inquiry.
They might as well have been told that all their students had made perfect scores on TAKS and figured that the Genius Fairy had visited all the kids.
The sober Hardin report concluded that "it was completely unrealistic to believe the high school had no dropouts to report for the 2001-02 year."
The report went on: "Despite their doubts regarding the accuracy of the dropout information, none of the administrators did anything to confirm for themselves that the data transmission to the Texas Education Agency was supported by research and proper documentation. None of the administrators did anything to stop it."
So at the very least, Cuadra worked in a leadership culture that more than tacitly celebrated the unreality he is alleged to have created.
Some of his superiors were punished, as was Cuadra. He was docked two weeks' pay and reprimanded. He was publicly humiliated, and he resigned.
Now, three years after the action and two years after the controversy erupted, he and only he is indicted.
The district attorney's office certainly has the power to do that. But should they?
Based on what we know, I say if they can't indict the higher-ups, leave the disgraced underling be.
You can write to Rick Casey at P.O. Box 4260, Houston, TX 77210, or e-mail him at rick.casey@chron.com.
http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/casey/3387551
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