Mike Miles said he regretted closing schools on Tuesday last week. Some schools still did not have heat or even running water on Wednesday. Yet, Miles required students at schools without heat to complete their MAP and STAAR practice testing before school was dismissed early. Classroom temperatures as low as 45 ℉ is unfair to children.
Miles views our children as mere data points and is so fixated on test scores that he prioritizes testing over student well-being. Miles is manipulating the public by pretending that his harmful NES program is helping kids. He says he wants to improve STAAR scores “an ambitious 15%,” but this year, this goal is a miniscule 1% growth across almost all student groups. 1% growth per year is actually below average for both HISD and Texas.
It gets worse. Today, in an article that would make Mark Twain proud (remember, lies, damn lies and statistics), Miles told the Houston Chronicle that “the test results show HISD is on the right path” for raising benchmark scores just 1% from the beginning of the year (BOY) to the middle of the year (MOY) MAP tests in most cases.
Is it worth it? Is closing libraries in communities that need us the most, violating Special Education and bilingual laws at every turn, turning classroom instruction into death by powerpoint, gutting homeless services, and huge teacher turnover worth just 1 percentile growth?
This is far less than we should expect after months and months of Miles’ induced test prep. And at what cost, given the dramatic narrowing of the curriculum due to pure test prep.
Fight back. Come to the Town Hall on Wednesday to listen to Department of Education Office of Civil Rights attorneys talk about our rights and an opportunity to share your stories (1 minute each) with OCR representatives. RSVP here
Also coming up,
- On Thursday, listen to HISD High School students talk about how the state takeover is impacting their learning. 5:30-7:00 pm at Third Ward Multi-Service Center, 3611 Ennis. RSVP here.
- Learn how to opt out of STAAR legally so you can fight the over-reliance of high-stakes testing at a February opt out training around town in February. RSVP at houstoncvpe.org/events.
Do you like this page?