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HISD - State of Texas to Takeover School District


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6 hours ago, Nivek said:

My wife talked me down and took the lead.  I typed a few paragraphs about being inappropriate, distressing our kid, and provoking anxiety when he is in a difficult enough transition only to witness a fistfight on the first day of school and how that impacted not only our kid but some of his friends (who are not ASD).    My wife wrote the rest up and then contacted everyone she could and attached the syllabus of 2 different teachers to show how anxiety-provoking/hostile the math teacher's syllabus was.   We were in the process of switching teachers when they fucked that up.   The teacher seemed to be oblivious to her own perception and reached out to us.   Our kid came home, having expected a new schedule, but said it was fine and to keep the current one.  The teacher was trying to be nicer and more accommodating.   Some other parents we know reached out as well, but went straight to the principal and the 6th grade dean.  It seems to have worked for them as well.  Everyone is cautiously optimistic.   

 

My son (also ASD) and daughter also witnessed a fight in their first week of 6th grade in AISD.  It was two girls and supposedly resulted in a broken nose and jaw for one of them.   I was upset when I heard about it, but neither kid seemed remotely upset or bothered.  I'm now concerned that we've raised a couple of violence-loving weirdos. :)

I grew up in a rough community in West Texas.  There were fights almost every day, and often I was involved.  I would not let one fight derail you too much.  Things are still so much better than they used to be on this front, and there's no school on earth that doesn't have fights between kids on occasion. 

As for the hostile syllabus, that really sucks and I'm curious to know more about what made it so awful.  I'm glad the teacher tried to make things right.

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12 hours ago, Samson's Wig said:

As a parent of two special needs kids (one with dyslexia and dysgraphia, the other with autism), it fucking infuriates me.  It's especially infuriating in AISD when the main issue is funding, despite paying out the ass in property taxes for education. Fuck those fucking fucks who use kids to score political points.  Texas should be ashamed of itself.

We're fortunate to have the means to get our kids the help they need outside of the school system.  I really feel for those parents who can't.

What's fucked about it is the districts aren't allowed to allocate more money even if they want to. They get in trouble and lose funding if they fund more than 8% of the population.

My oldest is dyslexic and we also did services outside of the district. We had a private CALT do two sessions a week at $120/session for two years. That was painful.

Edited by CooterBrown
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1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

What's fucked about it is the districts aren't allowed to allocate more money even if they want to. They get in trouble and lose funding if they fund more than 8% of the population.

My oldest is dyslexic and we also did services outside of the district. We had a private CALT do two sessions a week at $120/session for two years. That was painful.

What's also fucked (there's a lot of fucking going on) is that "public schools are failing special ed kids" is one of the biggest attack lines coming from anti-public school groups. So they purposely and deliberately underfund SPED, then turn right around and say underserved SPED kids are the reason we need to shut down public education and turn it all over to charters.

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  • 7 months later...
16 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

Just wait until Abbott gets his school vouchers passed

Like hogs at a trough. Tax dollars -> corporatized charter school networks -> political contributions. And the majority of voters will lap it up. Really impressive long con they’ve run. 

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32 minutes ago, tokamak said:

Like hogs at a trough. Tax dollars -> corporatized charter school networks -> political contributions. And the majority of voters will lap it up. Really impressive long con they’ve run. 

I am just glad public school teacher organizations and unions stay out of politics and do not make political contributions to the very politicians they sit at the bargaining table with

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12 minutes ago, Frank Drebin said:

I am just glad public school teacher organizations and unions stay out of politics and do not make political contributions to the very politicians they sit at the bargaining table with

The issues facing Public schools in Texas are due to teachers unions?

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Posted (edited)
13 minutes ago, Frank Drebin said:

The issues facing HISD, the subject of this thread, are due to charter school political donations?

If public tax dollars are going to out-of-state charter schools founded by the current appointed superintendent of HISD, yes. 

Edited by Dahobbs
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11 minutes ago, Frank Drebin said:

HISD has been poorly run for my entire life.  Is there any data on whether results have changed under Miles, be it positive or negative?

Yes. Just go look at the revised performance results HISD reported where almost every single school did worse than previously with even A-rated schools dropping to a C. Apparently Miles rates his own progress as pretty bad. 

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Posted (edited)
18 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Yes. Just go look at the revised performance results HISD reported where almost every single school did worse than previously with even A-rated schools dropping to a C. Apparently Miles rates his own progress as pretty bad. 

A word of caution when looking at school ratings .... COVID caused school ratings to be all over the map and probably inflated scores.  I don't understand 100% of the system, but here's the basic idea:

The state ranks schools in a set of categories.  Pre-COVID, they averaged all categories to get a rating for the school.  School ratings were averaged to get a rating for the district.  So a school could get a F, D, C, B, A in five categories and that would average to a C.  During COVID, "bad" grades were changed to "not rated".  So those same ratings could have changed to NR, NR, C, B, A during COVID for an average of B.  Now, post-COVID, the NR's are being changed back to what they were before so a F, D, C, B, A school is back to a C average.

In extreme cases, schools got a F, F, F, F, A before the pandemic for an F rating, then during COVID got all NR's and one A ... which gave them an "A" rating, and are now back to F, F, F, F, A post-COVID for a brand new "F" rating.  Give it a few years to stabilize but I would not trust any school rating during the pandemic to reflect the real state of a school.

I have seen test scores which show that eco dis populations were really hit hard by COVID and are struggling to recover.

Edited by Texas Jeff
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25 minutes ago, Texas Jeff said:

A word of caution when looking at school ratings .... COVID caused school ratings to be all over the map and probably inflated scores.  I don't understand 100% of the system, but here's the basic idea:

The state ranks schools in a set of categories.  Pre-COVID, they averaged all categories to get a rating for the school.  School ratings were averaged to get a rating for the district.  So a school could get a F, D, C, B, A in five categories and that would average to a C.  During COVID, "bad" grades were changed to "not rated".  So those same ratings could have changed to NR, NR, C, B, A during COVID for an average of B.  Now, post-COVID, the NR's are being changed back to what they were before so a F, D, C, B, A school is back to a C average.

In extreme cases, schools got a F, F, F, F, A before the pandemic for an F rating, then during COVID got all NR's and one A ... which gave them an "A" rating, and are now back to F, F, F, F, A post-COVID for a brand new "F" rating.  Give it a few years to stabilize but I would not trust any school rating during the pandemic to reflect the real state of a school.

I have seen test scores which show that eco dis populations were really hit hard by COVID and are struggling to recover.

Well, I don't think that is what is happening here. Rather, the rating system was changed specifically to make schools look worse to justify more state involvement and more demand for a voucher system. 

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Posted (edited)

The only thing that saved AISD from these money-grubbing cavemen was COVID.  Mike Morath and his fellow fundie pieces of excrement in higher office have a hard-on for AISD, I guess because they love any reason to screw with Austin.  One of our schools was one more F away from being taken over by TEA (which allows the state to take over the entire district) before the pandemic hit.  I'm sure we're back on track for it now, but I haven't been paying attention as closely as I used to.

I'm not sure any of it matters when state education is driven by standardized testing (which is just another way of funneling money to political cronies).  Too many public school teachers check out completely once STAAR testing is done, and who can blame them when it's essentially the only measuring stick used to determine their performance?  Combine that with the fucked up recapture system for funding, and it's amazing Texas isn't further down the list of state education rankings than it is.

Edited by Samson's Wig
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5 hours ago, Frank Drebin said:

I am just glad public school teacher organizations and unions stay out of politics and do not make political contributions to the very politicians they sit at the bargaining table with

I may have missed a memo, but since when do teachers in Texas have the right to collective bargaining?

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Posted (edited)
5 minutes ago, royiv said:

I may have missed a memo, but since when do teachers in Texas have the right to collective bargaining?

They don't, but don't tell Frank Drebin that, he won't believe you because he saw a social media post about schools in another state doing something and thought it automatically applies here.

Edited by atomheartbevo
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32 minutes ago, usmc0331horn said:

Why would any teacher or principal sign on to work there at this point?

Many because they love (loved) their job and the kids and they know Miles is good for at most 3 years... then he quits.  They just have to last 2 more years instead of uprooting their family from a place they love.

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