Despite the community’s protests, HISD voted 5-3 last night to close Ryan Middle School at the end of the school year, reports the Houston Chronicle’s Ericka Mellon: “Roughly two dozen speakers — mostly alumni and community activists — blasted the Houston Independent School District over the closure plans, at times nearing tears and shouting from the audience. They called the Ryan closure ‘blatantly discriminatory.’” Ryan’s 263 students, reports Mellon, are the fewest among HISD middle schools; the students will be consolidated about 4 miles away at Cullen Middle School on Scott St. HISD superintendent Terry Grier says that Ryan’s 1958 Elgin St. building might be repurposed into a DeBakey-like health-careers magnet. [Houston Chronicle; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Wikimedia Commons
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11 Comments
Race cards? How utterly predictable.
It has to be very, very difficult to overcome a mass flight of your student body. Once public perceptions are sealed, the school’s reputation is often a done deal, no matter what they do.
Perhaps, ‘black flight’ had a lot to do with it.
Stereotypes exist because they are based in truth. Does the school (the building) make the school ghetto or the people that attend it? The people that insist the school stays open can’t see that they are the ones causing the problem in the first place.
Commonsense, stereotypes exist because shallow know-nothings who have no personal experience working in schools cling to them like they’re gospel. I’ve come to the conclusion that a great deal of what the average person thinks they know about public education is absolutely false. And yes, I do have experience working in schools in this city. Much of what passes for “competition” among our schools is pure window dressing. Kids are driven across town to that supposedly-better school for a host of reasons that have little or nothing to do with academics.
How can we use terms like “blatantly discriminatory” when the HISD is 90%+
non white? Such a tiresome tirade……
Anse, my wife is a teacher at HISD and I’m very familiar of what’s going on there. It’s very simple… a certain community values education very low, the students do not want to do the work and the parents could care less. Since HISD now ties teacher’s bonuses with scores, no good teachers want to work at such schools, only the bottom of the barrel and teachers on professional probation. It’s a self feeding circle.
wow, so you’re saying your wife is a bottom of the barrel teacher? you’ve made your point… but at what cost? :)
Commonsense pretty much has it right.
Nice try, spiteful. My wife is in one of the exemplary schools. When she did her work study program, she was sent to many different schools for a couple of weeks at a time including the at risk schools. On one occasion a 4th grader threw an eraser at her and when the principal contacted the parents, the response was “So?!??”. She tried to coax another one to stand in line and he yelled “You can’t touch me because I’m black and I’ll sue you!”.
The schools that tend to have the highest test scores, best teachers, and best reputations are the ones where the parents have “bought in” to their children’s education. Comment #7 says this in a not so diplomatic way. At places like Garden Oaks Elementary, Harvard Elementary, and Poe ( to name but a few) there are strong parent teacher organizations who fight to keep resources at those schools. Communities that value their children’s education will have the better schools because it is the community that makes the school. On the Charter side of things, KIPP Academy does as well as it does because the parents ( and students) value being there. It’s sad that there are schools that just don’t perform, and are not assets to their communities, but those communities should look in the mirror, because they play a large role in that.
That said, if all the “invested” parents of those kids at Garden Oaks and Harvard send their little darlings to Waltrip and Reagan High Schools when they get older, I would think that those high schools could obtain reputations similar to that of Bellaire and Lamar. If those same parents decide instead to send their kids to private high schools, then we will get more of the same from Waltrip and Reagan.