El Paso Schools Are Rattled by Scandal of Students Who ‘Disappeared’ at Test Time
By MANNY FERNANDEZ
Published: October 13, 2012
EL PASO — It sounded at first like a familiar story: school administrators, seeking to meet state and federal standards, fraudulently raised students’ scores on crucial exams.
Juan Carlos Llorca/Associated Press
Roger Avalos, a former El Paso student, with his mother, Grisel. He says his principal urged him to drop out of school.
Ruben R Ramirez/EL PASO TIMES, via Associated Press
Lorenzo Garcia, the former superintendent, ran a program known as “the Bowie model” and boasted of his success in raising test scores.
But in the cheating scandal that has shaken the 64,000-student school district in this border city, administrators manipulated more than numbers. They are accused of keeping low-performing students out of classrooms altogether by improperly holding some back, accelerating others and preventing many from showing up for the tests or enrolling in school at all.
It led to a dramatic moment at the federal courthouse this month, when a former schools superintendent, Lorenzo Garcia, was sentenced to prison for his role in orchestrating the testing scandal. But for students and parents, the case