One, the state took over the largest school district in the state over a single chroniclally underperforming campus. HISD has the probelms of a huge urban district, but the takeover is widely seen as political and disproportionate. He was appointed by the state over the objections of the school board and community. No one in Houston wants him there.
Two, this isn’t about discipline except in that blaming “urban” problems on “those kids” being out of control always plays well to the suburbs.
This is about firing people and creating a culture of fear. Miles hates teachers. He hates principals. He believes anyone who works in public education is a lazy stupid bum. Radical moves like this are designed to make everyone afraid.
This is a guy who will walk into a school on a suprise visit, watch a teacher for 10 minutes, and demand the principal fire them. And it could happen to anyone, because he walked in the door looking to fire someone.
Republicans believe that government can do nothing right. So when they are in charge they prove it by breaking things, even those that were working well.
As opposed to the school board member he tried to have arrested for attending a school-site meeting? I’ve noticed in life that people that have a shared trauma like losing a child, being on the front lines, etc. never talk about it because if you’ve never experienced it you can’t understand and if you have experienced it we know without talking. We call it, “When you’ve been in the shit, you don’t talk about the shit.” I’ve had that exact same experience with other teachers from that district under Miles. No exaggeration.
It’s unclear from the article whether the “converted” libraries will retain their books or not.
Removing librarians (this affects 10% of the district’s schools) has the benefit (to certain officials, anyway) of assuring they won’t be around to encourage kids to read Godless books. That’s the first step down the road to perdition.
They really aren’t worried about that, I promise. Miles sees schools as factories, where every class has a “learning objective” to master each day, and constant common assesents to make sure each kid has learned each objective. He doesn’t see schools as full of people, just numbers. Hes only vaguely aware there are students. He couldn’t give the slightest crap about what they were reading.
Miles is not that kind of political. Part of the reason he’s there may be that the powers that be want to bust up the power structures in Deep-deep blue Houston, but Miles himself is a true belever in the idea that modern public education is a degenerate, useless, impractical institution that exists to perpetuate itself at the taxpayer’s expense. His agenda is to show it wpuld be infinitely better if we just replaced it all with a Khan Academy style assembly line (no hate to Khan. Its nit meant to do that).
Physical books are a pretty small part of what libraries do. Kids gather there. They have access to better tech, even if they are 1:1 with Chromebooks. Printers, cameras, editing software, etc.
Librarians also do a lot more than manage book collections and make recommendations. They maintain subscriptions and ebooks. They organize all kids of groups and activities and after school events.
This all makes perfect sense! Take over the school district, make it as shitty as possible, then people will flock to private schools, et voila - people will be demanding state-funded school vouchers, and the religious schools will flourish!
You sure this isn’t just straight up monetization of what was public education. I’m sure they’re all invested in new private schools. Just make the public system so awful that ‘good’ parents will choose private schools. Segregates society along income lines and creates a permanent underclass. It’s no good being wealthy if there isn’t an underclass to serve you.
Nah, I don’t think they care either way if those folks are educated or not.
What they do care about is (1) not paying for it - there’s no income tax in Texas and the bulk of the relatively high property taxes go to education and (2) not having their kids around the wrong sorts
To a lesser extent there’s also that sizable minority who want a particular sort of education (religious, right wing or whatever). But most seem happy enough with regular public schools in the burbs
One really sad thing about all this is that in my career as a school librarian I’ve known many students who had behavior issues but saw the library as their “happy place”. I’m sure it’s the same way in Houston. This Miles character is in serious need of an old fashioned butt kicking.
That’s too simplistic for me. I’d say that “by 1860, all of those other causes are inextricably entwined with slavery.” Saying it’s all a single issue makes it sound like good guys vs bad guys, and it’s more complicated than that.