Houston's Systematic Mistreatment of Special Needs Children

The Houston Independent School District has an established history of miseducative corruption, which goes back to the glory days of Rod Paige, who made a national reputation with made up graduation and dropout numbers for Houston high schools.  His compelling lies earned him a spot as Secretary of Education for Geo. W. Bush, and since leaving ED to make room for the bovine Margaret Spellings, Paige has been on the prime rib speaking circuit of corporate ed reform.

In 2009, Houston elites brought in corporate ed reformers' poster boy, Supt. Terry Grier, to initiate as many half-baked ideas, child-unfriendly programs, and lucrative deals as possible.  Grier was such a disruption that HISD won Eli Broad's highest honor in 2013.

As a result of some good reporting by the Houston Chronicle, we now find that many of the efficiencies that have been achieved by Grier and his corporate team have resulted from the systematic mistreatment of special needs children. 

Chart below and clip from the most recent article in the Houston Chronicle series:

. . . . Federal officials have approved RTI, with one caveat: Schools cannot require teachers to try RTI before requesting a kid be evaluated for special ed.

That is exactly what has happened in HISD, according to numerous current and former staffers.

"RTI was a huge roadblock," said Renee Tappe, who retired in 2015 after 35 years in special education at HISD. "Every now and again, it would help a kid a little bit, but when you look at the number of kids denied, it's not even close to being worth it."

When delay is no longer possible, several HISD staffers said they have been encouraged to suspend or expel students who act out instead of evaluating them for special ed. A 2015 TEA probe confirmed HISD has done that multiple times, including by charging kids with truancy, according to records obtained by the Chronicle.

The district also has started increasingly serving students with dyslexia in Section 504, a less robust and less accountable program than special ed.

Veteran employees also pointed to the budget cuts as a way that HISD has intentionally lowered special education rates. Officials have cut nearly 600 special ed positions over the past decade, a 40 percent drop that has been even sharper than the dip in students, statistics show. . . .

Terry Grier Makes Houston Schools Awful Enough to Win the Broad Prize

The picture above is of Arne Duncan and Eli Broad having a swell time at Barack Obama's inauguration party in 2008.  The picture below is Arne and Eli in 2013, this time accompanied by the poster boy for CorpEd's model of segregated urban reform schools, Terry Grier.  With his systemwide No Excuses model in place in Houston, Grier has made life so miserable for teachers and students alike that it has earned him this year's Broad Prize for Urban Education.  Last year 700 teachers had quit by January, which, of course, brings in more white corporate missionaries from TFA to replace real teachers.  These new positive psychology-induced Corp Members will fall on their clipboards for the Corporate Cause until they are discarded for a new crop.

The letter excerpted below was posted by Diane Ravitch at her blog in June.  It is from a Houston teacher who has witnessed what is happening to teachers and children in Houston's public schools. 

_________________________

. . . .This letter is about a teacher awakening to the grim political reality of what is deceptively called “education reform.” Her letter should go viral.

She writes:

“This is the sick process education reform has created in big city districts. They just churn through teachers, especially new ones, as fast as they can with no regard to the person’s life, skill set, or qualifications. The harm they do to the students by destabilizing their neighborhood schools cannot be measured. They don’t care if you are a blazing success in the classroom; your teaching certificate is basically meaningless to the administration.

She goes on to add:

” In the student’s mind, a standard classroom teacher is a disposable throwaway. They see no reason to follow the rules, do their homework, or take the exams seriously. They know the teacher will probably get fired, possibly in the middle of the year. They have no respect for their teacher, and no reason to believe their teacher has any ability to discipline or instruct.

“This is the message inner city students have been receiving for over a decade. This is the message reformers convey to the students, the parents, and the taxpayer.

“At new teacher orientation you are led to believe something much different; at the job fair, and in the media, you are told that working for HISD is wonderful, with a fair evaluation system, great pay, and fabulous bonuses.

“Working at HISD is the biggest mistake I have ever made.

“I was warned about education reform. I was told not to do this, and I didn’t listen.

“Honestly, I didn’t even know what “education reform” meant…I thought it was a bunch of talented people swapping ideas about how to best educate the children of poverty. I thought it would be fun, challenging, and engaging. In my ridiculous mind, I could see a group of teachers sharing ideas, lesson plans, and stories. I really believed I was going to learn something positive about public school. I didn’t know it was a scam engineered to deprofessionalize the teaching business, and hand the jobs off to cash strapped ivy leaguers that couldn’t find positions in their fields of study.

“Now I know that people like Michelle Rhee made millions off the backs of the teachers she fired. I know that most of these people have cheated, including some in my own Apollo program. The Atlanta Journal Constitution even did a nationwide study, and can prove mathematically that these districts have failed to educate these students in spite of their “so-called” reforms. This wrong-to-right erasure math is indisputable…

“As for me, I don’t need a study; I can tell everyone about the chaos, the achievement gap, the poverty, the filth, the lies, and the smokescreen.

“It is funny that Arne Duncan (Obama’s Secretary of Education #erasetothetop) came out here and toured Lee HS with my SIO, and he listened to a few talented students, and the police cracked down on the school before his arrival, and they managed to sign up all of the students to some kind of college (mostly 2 year institutions) and convince Arnie that it is a “turnaround success.” But you only have to look at him closely to see he is a Walmart kind of guy. And now we have the privatization of the public trust…we have the Walton Foundation, The Broad Foundation, The Gates Foundation, and countless other vultures, and venture capitalists, including Pearson (the great testing empire), all throwing money to this “teacher witch hunt” fully engaged in the age-old philosophy of “you gotta spend a buck to make a buck.” So, they are making the bucks off of me and my students, and I am helpless to stop them.”

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The Lose-Lose of Value-Added (EVAAS) in Houston

Terry Grier brought with him to Houston a fixation for test scores that he learned in Guilford, NC, where he came under the spell of former adjunct professor and agricultural statistician, Bill Sanders, who created there a vast subsidiary for SAS, Inc. in school testing--the value-added variety.  The Sanders brand, EVAAS, has become so big, in fact, that Sanders has moved from the SAS campus back to Ground Zero in TN, where he got his start and where there are now a half-billion reasons, thanks to RttT, to get EVAAS sewn into the fabric of Test Scores Gone Wild--the Tennessee Version. 

He did the same for his TVAAS brand in the 1980s, when he managed to get his proprietary statistical wizardry added to the Tennessee Code Annotated as THE algorithm to be used for testing kids.  No doubt he is fantasizing about getting it into federal law at this point.

Now it is teachers who are to be evaluated based on the Sanders scheme, and Sanders couldn't care less about what happens when his method is applied to the already shell-shocked urban and rural schools where the explosive effects of test and punish have been amplified by poverty.  When a quality teacher like Jennifer Blessington (story below), who is getting the demanded test score gains and rewards, is fed up, demoralized and leaving the profession in Houston and public schools elsewhere, some would say that what is happening in Houston is a case of unanticipated consequences.  The sad fact is that Grier and the corporate fools who are running Houston ISD see the loss of Blessington as another opportunity for a white TFA missionary to be put in her place at a huge savings in salary and future retirement payouts.   

Here is Grier in a brief clip hawking his EVAAS snake oil at a Board meeting in Houston.  Below it find out the reality from Jennifer Blessington.

I started working for the Houston Independent School District in 2005. Teaching was not my first career, but almost instantly, I knew I had found the job I would do for the rest of my life. The best part? Connecting with kids during those awkward years of early adolescence and helping them learn to think and read critically and write well and creatively. Six years later, my desk at home is covered in earnestly penned, sweet thank-you notes from former students. ("Ever since I started grade 7 English I thought you were the nicest teacher and you were.")

But now, six years later, I am planning to leave HISD and start a new job next year teaching at a private school.

By any measure, I think I am a teacher HISD would want to keep. I've won a few awards, volunteered to participate in district initiatives, and am generally well liked by students, parents and colleagues. I don't put any weight in the Education Value-Added Assessment System, which uses student test data to measure teachers' effectiveness, but EVAAS rates me a highly effective teacher. I've regularly received some of the highest achievement-related bonus payouts on my campus since the program began. My students who fail the state assessments can often be counted on one hand, and the majority earn commended status. I've tried my best to follow the procedures and policies of the district without making waves. While I support some of the union's views, I've never been a member. But under Superintendent Terry Grier, I have seen the culture of HISD change, and not for the better. 

In my opinion, morale is sinking, and if the state budget crisis hadn't squashed hiring by other school systems, I believe even more good teachers and administrators would be leaving. Schools are losing autonomy and are being micromanaged. Focus on testing is unyielding, and new programs and policies are implemented with little warning. Certainly any attempt to gain input from those who will be affected by the changes is window dressing at best. Above all, the district's rhetoric has created an environment where good teachers feel that we're never trusted.

The district's focus on standardized test scores has become so intense, I dream about bubble sheets. In years past, my colleagues and I were allowed to create our own tests to see how our students were doing. After all, we knew our kids best. But this year, despite the consistently strong records of the teachers at my exemplary-rated school, we were mandated to give district-created tests every month. This cut into instruction time with our kids. Sadly, this focusing-on-the-test trend shows little sign of ending. For teachers, EVAAS scores and other end-of-course test data now carry more weight than ever before: In the evaluation system recently passed by the school board, they make up half of each teacher's rating. 

We teachers should be held accountable, and I believe student growth on standardized tests should be part of that accountability. Parents should be able to know whether their child's teacher has demonstrated good instruction. Taxpayers should be able to know whether their dollars are being well spent.

But the public also needs to know that EVAAS figures are misleading for many reasons, and including them in the teacher evaluation system could lead to good teachers being punished. First of all, many teachers earn their EVAAS scores based on a complicated formula that reflects a combination of growth not just on the state test but also on the Stanford Achievement Test. Unfortunately, Texas' state curriculum — which HISD teachers are required to teach, and which our textbooks cover - is not aligned with the Stanford. For example, eighth-grade U.S. history teachers earn their EVAAS scores strictly from the Stanford, which includes questions on world history, anthropology, and sociology - none of which are included in the eighth-grade state curriculum. So what's a teacher supposed to teach?

Even worse, EVAAS data does not help us become better teachers. I challenge you to find one single teacher in the district who can clearly explain how his or her EVAAS scores will help improve what happens in the classroom. I've pored over my EVAAS data and can find little to take away - except for that magic, seemingly random final score that determines my bonus. 

Grier has repeatedly said that there is no time to wait, that Houston's children need reform now. But a sense of urgency cannot be used as an excuse to dismantle and demand without reflecting on the impact of major changes. Schools and parents are still frustrated with his mandatory breakfast-in-the-classroom program, one of several new initiatives implemented with little warning or input from campuses. And don't get me started about Grier's rushed, poorly received audit of the magnet-school program.

A successful superintendent creates a culture that hires innovative, free-thinking principals who are rewarded for taking risks instead of toeing a party line. Bad teachers need to be fired without making good teachers feel endangered and abused. If schools and teachers are successful, ask them what help they need instead of forcing them to change. Train principals to support good teachers and to give them real power in the schools. Most importantly, if you are going to hold teachers accountable for the value added to student achievement, do it with data that we can use to help our kids improve.

I don't envy anyone who tries to lead a large urban school district. The problems are many and complex - the kind of problems that require thoughtful individual solutions, not one-size-fits-all proclamations. My campus, like much of HISD, is full of hard-working, wonderful children and adults, and it desperately needs thoughtful, careful leadership from its school superintendent. 

I thought I would retire from this district, and it's still strange to think I won't be returning next year. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for Terry Grier.

Blessington is a middle school English teacher in HISD.

Read more: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/7574534.html#ixzz1NCi7W6wH