A Houston superintendent defended a high school’s recent “A” grade from the state after a teacher at the school went viral for posting a video sobbing about his illiterate senior students.
Superintendent Mike Miles of the Houston Independent School District said it’s not “new information” that students are struggling to read and write when he was asked Thursday about Wheatley High School teacher Darius Williams’ troubling, tearful social media post, which made national headlines.
Instead of sounding the alarm, Miles chose to “celebrate” Wheatley High School’s remarkable turnaround by earning an “A” from the Texas Education Agency’s school accountability ratings for the first time in its history — up from an “F” four years ago, KHOU reported.
“I don’t think that’s new information,” he said. “The sentiment, I think we all shared for four years or three years, the sentiment that there are kids who need … support,” he told reporters.
“Four years ago, Wheatley was an ‘F’. There were many more students who could not read at grade level or do math at grade level. That is why we’re here. That’s why this is serious. That’s why we’re doing something about the fact that the students can’t read at grade level,” Miles continued.
“Yes, we’re doing great. I hope we celebrate that. In fact, we’re gonna go to Wheatley tomorrow and celebrate the fact that they have an ‘A’ — because the ‘A’ and these numbers don’t really mean that much unless you think about the kids behind it,” he said.
In the viral video recorded during his lunch hour, Williams said he couldn’t get through the first class of the second day of school before his students’ poor literacy skills overwhelmed him.
“I just finished a three-hour class, and I literally broke down in the middle of class,” Williams said.
Williams, a New Education System (NES) Career and Technical Education (CTE) staffer, said he gave his class of seniors a short, two-paragraph reading assignment and to write a single sentence.
He was floored when they completed the task.
“I basically completed the sentence for them,” he said. “These are 17- and 18-year-old kids, and they couldn’t fill in four words. Four words!” exclaimed Williams, clearly frustrated.
With red eyes and tears streaming down his face, Williams said his students can talk, reason and defend their reasoning, but can’t apply those skills to written text.
“This is only day two, and I have seniors who simply cannot read and seniors who cannot write. They cannot write,” Williams cried out.
The Texas Education Agency’s accountability rating measures what students are learning in each grade and whether they’re ready for the next grade, according to KHOU.
It also rates how well schools prepare students for life beyond high school, be it college, the workforce or the military.
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