By 1997 not very many of the teachers who were at the school during its start had remained. Many affluent parents had stopped sending their children to The Rice School, saying that the "integrated" freeform curriculum neglected basic mathematics and reading skills. In August 1997, the Texas Education Agency ranked The Rice School as the sole "Low Performing" school within the Houston Independent School District. Fleck stated that the statistic was "somewhat misleading" since it measured the performances of economically disadvantaged pupils in the Texas Assessment of Academic Skills (TAAS); Fleck said that the ranking was "a major embarrassment for the school district and served to underscore the gap between the children of affluent white parents and minority students that the Rice School was designed to bridge."