‘Greater than good’ news at BISD? Not really.

This entry originally appeared in The Beaumont Enterprise.

Remember when the National Center for Educational Achievement recently placed more than half of BISD’s campuses on their “Higher Performing Schools” list? If not, we wrote about it here.

That was the good news.

The “greater than good” news is that – according to Jessie Haynes – the NCEA has, for unknown reasons, had a change of heart and has decided to start handing out Higher Performing School recognitions like sticky candy from a suspicious guy in an unmarked van who wears a trenchcoat in the summertime and likes to hang around playgrounds, muttering to himself.

Yeah. It’s like that.

Jessie recently sent an e-mail to every BISD employee letting them know that now – for entirely unclear and undisclosed reasons – every BISD campus (except for one unnamed school she doesn’t want to talk about) is now listed as a Higher Performing School.

We’re not sure how this happened, but it’s interesting to note that a campus like Austin Middle School – again, according to Jessie – is now on the Higher Performing Schools list, when the NCEA itself lists the campus as not having one single higher performing area.

But there’s even bigger “greater than good” news for southeast Texas. Remember that bit from the BISD press release that stated “…only a handful of other schools in Southeast (Texas) made the prestigious list” – that’s no longer an entirely accurate statement, if we’re going by Jessie’s accounting of things.

By her reckoning, due to the NCEA’s sudden and mysterious generosity, there are now 64 schools on the list in Jefferson County alone. Then there’s another 19 campuses in Hardin County and yet another 23 in Orange County. Suddenly, that “prestigious” list has lost a bit of its prestige.

But not really. In truth, what’s probably happened here is a simple case of BISD confusion.

We think Jessie is just using the wrong part of the NCEA website – the one that lists the College and Career Readiness Charts of every ratable school in the district. The Higher Performing List is a different list. You know, with only Higher Performing Schools on it.

It’s an easy enough mistake to make, even for special assistants who are accredited in public relations.

If you look at the actual list of Higher Performing Schools, BISD still only has sixteen schools listed. (Click here, then type “Beaumont” into the search box located in the top right corner of the chart.)

But hey, let’s not let reality get us down. It’s more fun to play in the land of make believe, where the NCEA is just giving out Participation Awards, all Oprah Winfrey-style. It would be a smart, popularity-building move on the NCEA’s part. After all, only seven people “Like” them on the Facebooks.

“You get a school on the list!”
“And you get a school on the list!”
“And you get a school!”
“And you get a school!”
“And you! And you! And you!”

UPDATE: BISD just released the Winter 2011 edition of the Beaumont InSiDer, which proudly proclaims on its cover that the NCEA has rated 28 of 29 BISD schools as being in the Texas top 10%. However, an article on page 8 of the Insider revises this to the top 12%, and still lists 28 schools. (In the event that BISD’s hosted copy of the Insider gets ‘revised’, we’ve archived the current version here.)

UPDATE #2: After briefly modifying the cover of the Beaumont InSiDer that changed the “top 10%” to “top 12%”, BISD has just removed the entire publication from their website. However, a graphic congratulating BISD for having 28 of 29 school rated in the top 12% remains.

UPDATE #3: Not that long. The graphic has now been removed, as well. And just in time, too. We just got off the phone with Effrain Mercado, Director of Outreach at NCEA/ACT. He confirmed that BISD’s claims of having 28 Higher Performing Schools is incorrect. He explained that the confusion likely came about for the same reasons we assumed earlier, and that Jessie was looking in the wrong place.

He stated that BISD has 16 campuses on the Higher Performing Schools list, which he described as still being a “tremendous accomplishment” for those schools.

So there you have it, folks. We send our congratulations to the 16 schools that made the cut, and our condolences to the 12 schools that got their hopes raised before seeing their dreams dashed all to pieces against the rough and jagged rocks of reality. That’s life, I guess. Maybe it’s time for BISD to start performing their patented “Fact Checks” on their own e-mails.

You know, before they send them out. Or post them to the web. Or print them.

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