By Richard Cohen

Thursday, September 4, 2003; Page A21

Back when I was an education reporter, a colleague and I dropped in unannounced at a Washington high school. We talked with some teachers and were told that on a typical day only a quarter of their students were in class -- a different 25 percent every day. Then we talked with the principal and were told that the school had pretty close to 100 percent attendance. When we told her what her teachers had said, she calmly showed us her records -- virtually no absentees.

This startling example of Marxist bookkeeping (Chico Marx, in the movie "Duck Soup": "Who are you gonna believe, me or your own eyes?") has now been duplicated in Houston, the hometown of funny numbers. As with Enron, the city's school system has kept a set of books that has absolutely nothing to do with reality. Some high schools reported absolutely no -- that's zero -- dropouts. That these schools were in impoverished areas made the figures either preposterous or a miracle. The school system -- not to mention George Bush -- preferred to see a miracle.

The so-called Texas Miracle is precisely why Rod Paige was named secretary of education. He was Houston's school superintendent before joining the Bush administration, and was chosen, the president said, because Paige knew that "accountability is the true foundation of education reform." Paige had the numbers.

But some of the numbers were bogus. Worse, they were plain unbelievable. Schools simply concocted numbers to please headquarters. Dropout rates went down to zero; every high school student was heading off to college, even those in schools where most of the students failed to take the SATs or, when they did, scored dismally. Everything in Houston worked perfectly. The records said so.

To these revelations, Paige has responded with detailed silence. Bush, too, has said nothing. Up to now, Houston has been Exhibit A in Bush's "No Child Left Behind" program, which it now seems is a slogan supported by a statistical shell game (find the dropout). "The secretary stands by his record of accomplishment in Texas," Paige's spokesman has said. Bravo! But what's the record?

Questionable, for sure. But a larger question revolves around the whole notion of schools emulating some sort of business model. Teachers and principals are held accountable, as if they were middle managers or executives. Schools themselves are rated as if they were branch offices or manufacturing plants and told to compete with one another for students. Tests are given, records are kept and so-called failing schools are sometimes closed. Some of this is good. There are plenty of bad teachers, principals and superintendents. But the business model collapses because schools have little control over their raw material -- the kids. It's just plain folly to demand that a school, where a kid spends part of the day, be held accountable for what happens the rest of the day. Poverty -- its culture, its effects -- is what molds too many kids.

The doleful statistics that really matter are produced even before a kid gets to school. Low-income minority children are already four months behind the national average in reading and math scores by the time they arrive in kindergarten. By the 12th grade, they're four years behind. There are many reasons for this -- too much TV time, too few books in the home, the father's taken a hike, the mother doesn't read to her kids -- but none of these factors is the fault of the schools. In fact, just as schools are being held more and more accountable, preschool programs in many states are being cut back.

Before you maniacal e-mailers out there hit "send," let me state that I don't believe that more funding is the sole answer to what ails America's schools. Some dismal school systems are pretty lavishly funded. But surely, as in anything else, you get what you pay for. Teachers make lousy money. Like social workers and others who are asked to sweep up after the breakage has occurred, they too often get blamed for someone else's mess.

During the Vietnam War, an insistent Pentagon wanted to measure progress statistically -- by enemy body counts, in particular. So they were made up. A stalemate in the field was being won on paper. Something like that happened in Houston. In this way -- to paraphrase President Bush -- no child was being left behind. But many of these kids were way behind -- and had been since the very day they set foot in the schools. If we insist on perfect attendance and universally high test scores, we'll get them -- miracles, much like any others. We'll just have to take it on faith.

cohenr@washpost.com