Audit: Principal ordered grades changed
HISD doesn’t say if Westbury High chief will be punished
A Houston ISD audit report released Tuesday found that the Westbury High School principal ordered course grades changed for more than two dozen students who earned lower than a B.
Superintendent Terry Grier’s administration is reviewing the report to determine any next steps, given that Texas law makes clear that grades should not be falsified.
A district statement did not say whether the principal, Jason Catchings, would face consequences.
“HISD takes seriously its responsibility to protect the integrity of the student academic grading process,” the Houston Independent School District said in a statement Tuesday evening.
The audit confirmed that a long-term substitute teacher at Westbury High School assigned failing grades to most students in an elective course for a recent six-week period, yet Catchings ordered the grades for 26 of 30 students changed to an 80, or a B.
According to the audit, Catchings questioned the validity of the low grades — some were in the single digits — and said there was not a certified teacher assigned to the course who could confirm them.
“The Principal stated he assigned the grades in question as he did not believe students should be penalized as a result of the matter,” the audit report said.
Catchings, who became principal of Westbury this school year after serving as principal of HISD’s Scarborough High School, could not be reached for comment.
State law says that grades issued by a classroom teacher are “final and may not be changed unless the grade is arbitrary, er-
roneous, or not consistent with the school district grading policy.” It also says that teachers cannot be required to assign a minimum grade to a student “without regard to the student’s quality of work.”
Community activist Gerry Monroe reported the gradechanging allegations to HISD’s internal auditor in late April, the report said. Monroe, who leads a group of concerned parents and alumni in the Houston area, had obtained a copy of a class roster that included students’ grades and a handwritten note at the bottom. The note said that a school clerk had talked to Catchings and that “All students grade (sic) should be 80 and above. Change grade to 80 if grade is below 80.”
The report from Chief Auditor Richard Patton’s office said a copy of the audit was being forwarded to HISD’s police department “to determine if any criminal implications exist.”
In addition to the gradechanging allegations, the class roster made public contained students’ names and grades, which typically are confidential.
HISD school board president Rhonda Skillern-Jones said any disciplinary action is left up to Grier’s administration.
“As a board member, I don’t have a say in what the corrective action should be, but I don’t believe that people who put our kids’ achievement at risk should be a part of our system,” SkillernJones said.
She said she has not heard allegations that grade-changing is systemic in the state’s largest school district but added that the internal auditor planned to produce a follow-up report about protecting the integrity of grades across HISD.
Board member Wanda Adams, who represents Westbury High, said Catchings has been a “great principal,” though she does not believe the grades
should have been changed. She said she wants the district to investigate further to see whether higher-level administrators may bear some responsibility.
“Yes, I do support the findings in the audit, and we’re going to have to do something about it,” she said. “But I don’t know what that is.”
District officials have not said what will happen to the students’ grades that are in question and whether the students will have to do additional work.
In high school, grades are especially important because they factor into students’ final gradepoint averages and class rank, which can determine college admissions and scholarships.
Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers union, said the long-term substitute told her she maintained a detailed accounting of students’ grades. Even though the grades were low, Fallon said, a principal cannot order them changed solely for that reason.
“Now that’s an honest report out of HISD,” Fallon said of the audit.
“Now, what are they going to do about it? If that was a teacher, they’d be fired. I can guarantee you.”
Westbury staff report that the substitute whose grades were in question had been in the classroom since January.
The audit did not identify the substitute teacher or her class.