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BRIEF: A second audit of Houston schools went a step closer to confirming what the district already knew - or in this case didn't know - how many dropouts it has and where they all disappeared to. The results, commissioned by the Houston Independent School Board and released at Thursday night's meeting, didn't even consider the Texas Education Agency's finding that as many as four out of 10 HISD students didn't stick around to graduate in 2000-2001. Rather, it concentrated on why the district did such a poor job of counting them in the first place. The verdict: Extremely shoddy record keeping had left 10 of HISD's 36 high schools at high-risk of miscounting dropouts, while about one-in-four of those who did get counted seemingly vanished without a trace. Like TEA, Null Lairson Certified Public Accountants stopped short of calling the consistently inconsistent tallies intentional. In Texas, a low dropout rate can lead to cash bonuses for administrators, while a high one can result in loss of accreditation. Mike Reed, KPFT News, Houston. E-mail Mike Reed at miker0130@yahoo.com .
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