New School Gets Credit For Cutting HISD Crime

Crime on the Houston Independent School District campuses has declined markedly so far this academic year.

And officials largely credit the drop to the August opening of a new private school that contracted with HISD to educate some of the district's worst behavioral problems.

The school, called the Houston School for Accelerated Learning, is located in a renovated Wal-Mart on the corner of Fondren and Beechnut.

About 400 HISD students, all at least two years behind in their studies, attend the school, which is run by Community Education Partners. The group also runs a separate facility in the same building for criminal offenders who have been expelled but are returned to a school funded by the Harris County Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program.

Speaking at a news conference at the school, Superintendent Rod Paige said the district's crime statistics are making "quantum leaps in the right direction."

Overall, he said, violent crime has dropped 23 percent through October, and arrests are down about 20 percent.

By relocating students with academic and behavioral problems to the private school, Paige said the climate in the district's high school and middle school classrooms has improved dramatically.

"I think we made a good decision," Paige said. "We did the right thing, and people are benefiting."

Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, said she is not surprised that crime has dropped since the school opened. "We're having teachers call to say, 'I am so grateful that that school exists,'" Fallon said.

The school offers students an individualized educational program that includes work with textbooks, computers and videos. The school, according to its contract, guarantees that every student will advance two grade levels in reading and math for every grade level they are behind.

Three teachers are assigned to each classroom of 24 students and to reduce distractions, female students are placed in separate classrooms from male students.

"These kids are smart kids," said John Danielson, Vice President of Community Education Partners. "It's not that they can't learn. It's that they have to be taught differently."

Not all of the students at the school are considered discipline problems but all are behind academically. On the average, 12th-graders at the school are reading at about fifth-grade level. Nearly all the students have had to repeat at least one grade at some point in their education.

Danielson said the school's philosophy is based on the premise that students often become discipline problems when they are struggling academically. Consequently, the school concentrates its resources on basic instruction rather than therapy to deal with psychological problems.

"We believe all these children can learn, and we don't focus so much on what brought them here," Danielson said. "We focus on where they are going, and we think that is based on academics."

University of Houston education Professor Wilford Weber isn't so sure, however, that a heavy academic focus -- without the more costly therapy programs -- can truly turn troubled students around.

He believes the reverse of Danielson -- that students at first exhibit discipline problems and then fall academically behind.

Weber recently chaired a task force that examined HISD's discipline programs and recommended that HISD invest more heavily in preventive measures during the elementary school years rather than remedial measures in middle and high school. For one thing, he said, there are too few counselors in elementary schools.

"For every 17-year-old that sticks up a fast-food place or a Stop-N-Go, there is a second-grade teacher somewhere who says, 'I knew that kid was going to be in trouble,'" he said.

Still, Weber said he is not surprised that the opening of the new alternative school has had a big impact on HISD's crime statistics.

"I would say that anytime you can get kids who are troublemakers out of the classroom, out of the building, out of the hall, out of the cafeteria, off the playground, off the bus, you are going to have fewer instances of vandalism, theft, rape, you name it," he said. "It just stands to reason."

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