The future of HISD
Got your goat?
Regarding “What’s next for HISD?” (Outlook, Thursday): It is time to stop designating and scapegoating so-called failing schools within the Houston Independent School District and other Texas school districts. Evaluating and comparing schools based on the performance of each schools’ students on standardized tests is a silly and superficial idea.
Take, for example, a school on one end of the HISD spectrum: Carnegie Vanguard High School. The vast majority of students entering this school for the “gifted and talented” could pass all relevant state mandated standardized tests on the first day of 9th grade.
Compare this situation with that of a so-called failing school such as Kashmere High: The vast majority of entering ninth-graders are not well-enough prepared to pass any of these same standardized tests.
The tasks facing different schools within HISD teaching the same grades are vastly different, yet the standard that must be met to avoid a designation of “failing school” is the same.
This is like running a race in which some participants are across the finish line before the race begins, and others have thousands of miles to go. A. J. Freeze, Houston
Time to close
Why in the world would a group of reasonably well-educated people want to keep open a school where students are not learning?
My wife and I raised three children who all attended HISD schools and then went on to graduate from colleges and have had successful careers.
The teachers who instructed them certainly contributed to their successes, but the buildings did little to help in their pursuits of education.
I certainly wouldn’t want any neighborhood school to close just because of a whim by the Texas Education Agency, but if students from that school are not getting their money’s worth, then perhaps it is time to close those schools, send the underperforming teachers on to their next careers and get them out of the education business. Lawrence Keen, Pearland
Poor excuse
Using poverty as the reason for failing schools ignores the fact that our poor kids succeed at schools across town. State Rep. Harold V. Dutton Jr., District 142
Fool board
What a joke. HISD leadership is a disaster. Their self-centered ineptitude has failed the children they are supposed to educate. If ever there was a school board that needs to be taken over and reformed it’s HISD. Their students & parents deserve change. Gov. Greg Abbott, posted on Twitter