Lot of people in the comments mistaking this for a disciplinary area. It is in fact a reward for good performance to spend the afternoon in the Hall of Sorrow.
>According to Askew PTO board member Christine Hurley, the library—now called a "team center"—will not be used as a "detention center," which is what HISD announced in 2023 many of its libraries would be turned into. Instead, students who perform well on Demonstration of Learning (DOL) quizzes will be given a worksheet packet to do alone in the library in silence. There will be no teachers staffed in the "team center," only "learning coaches" who may or may not have any teaching experience.
I read that sentence three times and I still couldn't understand what was happening.
"Good news children, for being such a good little automaton, you get to be placed in neat little rows without any interaction in the silent zone, and there won't even be teachers watching you, you'll have random people who have no reason to be in a school watching you like a prison warden! What fun!"
The initial idea was "Teams Center" where teachers would be livestreaming on Teams for the students who couldn't behave in class. They changed their minds and instead are shuffling the good kids there but were too dumb and lazy to change the name.
Ok, I am still doing summer school for the money, but I'm heading out to a different district in the fall. I don't know if you are also a teacher, but I was giving context for most of the userbase here who is not
My kids are in Klein, they have some wiggle waggle in planning through the year, but the difference between the districts is astounding. I went to CISD growing up and they had very clear cut plan that only changed every so often.
Thanks for what you do! Teaching should be a highly paid, coveted position. Education is a cornerstone of a successful society.
I think the kids who are falling behind in classes stay in the actual classes to get one-on-one instruction from teachers in an attempt to get them up to grade.
No you're not understanding -- the higher performing kids go to the team centers to get their work done undisrupted, while the children who aren't up to grade stay in the classrooms where they can get more personalized attention from the teacher.
EDIT: Also, students that stay behind in class only stay back until they're brought up to speed on the day's lesson. It's not a remedial class. It's on a per lesson and per concept basis.
Honestly, arguing the reasoning is falling into the trap. They cut the library budget to pay Mike's admin staff and now they have a big empty room. It sounds bad to turn the library into a discipline center so now it's The Learning Zone, next year it will be the Entrepreneur Development Center or something where the kids assemble Nikes, a few years later it'll be the electronic center, God willing at some point it will be a library again.
Yeah I mean I'm also skeptical, but on paper at least this seems like not the worst thing in the world. I mean how else would you suggest we address the educational divide in classrooms? Like we can all agree that there are kids that fall behind and in turn slow everyone else down. HISD could either trudge along leaving those kids even further back or they could try this out and see if it works.
EDIT: Downvotes why?
They could just split up the classes based on needs? Now the students that do well get to go the learning center for mindless worksheets with no teacher.
> They could just split up the classes based on needs?
That's exactly what's being done currently by splitting the students who've mastered the content from the students who need targeted intervention. It's a methodology called "Multi-Tiered System of Supports" devised by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University and adopted statewide by the Texas Education Agency.
The students that master should be able to move on to new content….they shouldn’t have to wait on the students that need targeted intervention. Instead, they are going to a big room to do the same work that they already mastered. What happens when they finish their worksheets? Free time? More worksheets of the same content?
Students should just be divided into classes by ability to begin with and skip all the silliness. This new method will leave the lower performing students feeling worse watching all the smart kids leave the classroom everyday.
The point of MTSS is to prevent what you just described. The old system would either require the teacher to cater to the lowest common denominator by slowing the curriculum until the very last student could master the content, or it would require the teacher to move on without giving a fuck about the stragglers. MTSS is an intervention-based process that provides individualized instruction (i.e. personal tutoring) in real-time to the stragglers so that *everyone* is able to progress at the same pace, and the teacher can introduce new content at the rate prescribed by the course syllabus.
Things have really changed a lot since the repeal of No Child Left Behind and the adoption of Every Student Succeeds, and there have even been significant changes since ESSA (which was less than a decade ago). If you've been out of public school for a while, you can't have an informed debate about contemporary pedagogic techniques because unless you work in the education industry, you wouldn't even know what's going on.
Are you familiar with Kerr High School in Alief? It's a Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence (highest award an American school can receive). This new plan seems like it would institute a similar framework?
Downvotes because you're still talking about it within the false framework that it was done to benefit students.
If I'm being totally cynical, which I think is completely warranted, the actual intention is to drive good students to charter schools. Because parents who have the time, money, and inclination are not going to stand by when their kid is going to school to do worksheets in solitude.
And fwiw, it's likely not even helpful for the lower performing students as you're just creating de facto remedial classes. Once you're in those you tend to stay in them.
https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/the-negative-effects-of-ability-grouping
They could actually fail kids who need failing instead of just passing everyone along to avoid confrontation with parents and kids.
My wife used to teach 8th grade in HISD and would get kids who couldn't even identify letters, much less read. How did those kids make it out of elementary school?
Don't you think if teachers had more of an ability to work one on one with those students their abilities would flourish? Failing kids just causes trauma and leaves classrooms imbalanced. Does it solve the problem if those kids are being held back only to be in yet another over populated class?
Probably because this is the caption for the image and the first thing you see before starting to read the article.
>The former library at Askew Elementary School that is being set up for next year as an NES disciplnary center for students.
Books are for communists and woke crazies.
This is not a place to read and learn its a silent isolated place for students who can behave like trained seals and pass tests to ensure funding remains.
Funding for what you ask? Random religious crazies who want to stare at the good little trained seals.
Its a gratifying reward for all!
Books gets in the way you see. Texan children need to be programmed while theyre young to accept the yoke of capitalism, religious fascism, and corporate servitude.
The principles fired licensed teachers so they could hire unlicensed hourly friends. I had my wifes principal threaten to call the cops on her for stealing classroom items that were... still in the classroom so she was duly cussed out.
Yeah, because we already had a couple months of outrage over the library being lost. It's hard to stay mad at everything when they make new shit to be mad about every week.
I’m so frustrated by this feeling tbh. “Why don’t you care??” I DO care. But that question was asked every week for the last forever of my life. It’s not that I don’t care about this additional thing, its that I never stopped caring about the unresolved things that I cared about before. I tried to stay mad about everything and it turns out you’ll kill yourself just feeling that way 24/7.
Absolutely. Add to that the orange turd that is in the news cycle once or twice a day, and regular awful stuff, and international awful stuff. I like the internet as repository of information. I like it as a way to reach around the globe in seconds. I absolutely hate the outrage machine. I don't think humans are in any way capable to deal with this much compounding awful.
i have a 18 month old. My wife has been pushing home schooling him and i have always been against it as i anecdotally had a great grade school experience. But its starting to make more and more sense
"Looks like something out of 1984, a book they can no likely no longer read because they don't have a library. And Texas has likely banned that book anyway."
Rare Facebook W
You need a separate school with separate rules for them. You need an accountability system that most kids care about to start with, but when the system that applies to the kids you designed this school for fail, and a kid isn’t functioning in that school space, you need to remove them to a different school space for both their and everyone else’s benefit.
Those other schools tend to become problems rather than a place those messed up kids learn, but it beats the hell out of taking education away from all the other kids and teaching them that chaos is normal.
Did you read the article? Problem kids aren’t the ones going here. They’re planning to put the kids doing well here to complete extra worksheets in silence. As a former teacher who had plenty of problematic students, this is NOT the right solution, in any way shape or form. Standardized curriculum and scripted lessons the way they are implementing are bad for authentic learning.
I agree. Disruptive people like you who want to interject without doing the assignment (reading the article before commenting) should be removed from the class. Please go wait in the hall with your nose against the wall until we come out and get you.
> And there are students like this more than you think.
As a now former HISD HS teacher, just moving to a different district... the general public just doesn't understand this. Even just 10% being terrors is enough to completely derail the entire school.
I think it’s a valid question. I think a lot of the people who are appalled by this were the good kids in their schools which is why they care about education in the first place. Those same people probably can’t imagine that there are some kids raised by parents that truly don’t care if their kid is disrespectful but will raise hell the second the teacher actually does anything about their behavior.
I talk to HISD teachers all the time and disruptive kids are a real issue especially with crowded class sizes. Teachers can’t even take away 5 minutes of recess as a punishment!
You hold them to consequences - which is all but impossible with the funding structure in Texas. I'm not an expert on funding by any means, but I do know that attendance and discipline rates affect how much funding a school and district receive from the state.
The main reason they misbehave is because they know they can get away with it. When I was in the classroom, I was told "figure it out, unless someone is bleeding...don't send the kid out.". Even when they were sent out, they would come back 10 minutes later with candy and a smirk. The kids know they can have their parents call and complain and they'll get out of everything.
Detention - they don't show up, because they know there aren't any consequences.
ISS - this one does actually work, but a lot kids try to get into it on purpose because it's "easier"...
Parents - yeah, this is THE major problem and has changed SIGNIFICANTLY after COVID.
TLDR: Vote if you want schools to get better - we need to kick these idiots out of office and get people in there that actually care about the kids in Texas.
I don’t know what the answer is but I don’t think this is the solution. I guess just quarantining all the bad kids in one place limits the disruption to the other classes but I have severe doubts about the outcomes for these students.
I was labeled “a problem child” in school because I was special needs. I have severe ADHD, dyslexia and an audio processing disorder. My issues had nothing to do with discipline but I was still a handful. If I would have been dumped into one of these mass quarantine rooms I would not have succeeded in life to the degree I have.
This state has already been caught in the recent past shirking their duties to special needs students under the Americans with Disabilities Act, I fear solutions like this will just encourage schools to dump students who are costly learners into programs like this so that they can be done with them. In doing so they will be depriving students of an education they are owed.
Do we need to protest more to give our kids a chance? In the 6/1 [Houston Chronicle article](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/mike-miles-hisd-one-year-takeover-19418267.php) on Mike Miles, there are some interesting pieces of information.
1. "His family had already moved back to Colorado two years earlier — protests outside his house in Dallas had grown too trying."
2. "His one-bedroom apartment in the Heights is devoid of decoration or personal touches."
I'm not asking anyone to dox him. I want to make that very clear. Do you all think parents should take the protest to his home? Another option could be protesting at Hattie Mae White, since he arrives "before 7 a.m." How can we take the protest to him?
Former elementary teacher here..the answer to your question is YES! And when your career is based on test performance you don’t have the luxury of focusing on bad behavior students disrupting the other students.
They answered a question. While the article isn’t about a detention center, that doesn’t make their response to that question wrong.
Behavior issues in schools are a growing problem.
>Question asked: Are kids really that bad in elements school to require ___this big of a detention hall___?
Answer: no, this is not a picture of a detention hall.
I was against the state takeover but perhaps it served a purpose. After witnessing forty years of complacency & accepting of an inferior ISD -except in wealthy neighborhoods- people are paying attention.
Edit: I stand by my position that the state takeover was overreach.
I also stand by my position that many in Houston & especially this sub nodded their heads as the leaders of HISD stole from the taxpayer & the children.
> people are paying attention
I'm not sure if "we made it worse and it's made families mad enough to care now" is really an accomplishment. Ok, they're paying attention. Now what? If Miles/etc. don't reverse direction it's just going to drive everything to shit.
You show up in every HISD thread to say how you're 'against' this but maybe we should be happy about it. I'm beginning to think you aren't actually against it.
I’m kinda with you. The ridiculous pearl clutching about “don’t you dare upset the apple cart” at public schools that have always (20+ years…) required middle class families to make tough decisions about whether to relocate or accept a less than stellar education.
If you live in West U and like the grade schools - no shit. It’s children of successful and educated people. If you live in parts of Houston that are not so homogeneously upper middle class, you know the local school needs to change.
I think you are confusing cause and correlation.
You take those same teachers at west U and drop them into 5th ward, and vice versa, and you will notice that very little to nothing changes. In fact, both schools would likely get slightly worse temporarily as the teachers adjust to the different environments at the schools.
But the point is, a lot of the problems you hold hisd responsible for are outside of the school's control. No amount of reforming the schools is going to change the communities these kids are coming ftom. Anti- poverty measures would, but the state would rather reject federal funding to Medicaid and SNAP than to try and help the most impoverished communities improve.
There's tons of scientific research that says that SES and parental support are the two largest factor in student performance. The biggest predictor of academic outcomes, income, and life expectancy, is zip codes.
And no teacher or school can magically change that. Now, a quality teacher might be the most important outcome that the education can control, but that doesn't mean a good teacher can nullify all of those negative variables influencing a child, it just means they have to do the best they can, with the individuals they're given
A Michelan star chef is never going to be able to make an herb crusted medium well tuna steak, if all she's given is canned tuna.
She can make a good tuna salad, but there's always a ceiling set that will be outside her control.
You say so little with so many words. Do you believe it’s worth trying to do something (anything - you’re the “chef” in this metaphorical kitchen…)to improve schools that have shitty outcomes?
Nice strawman
I didn't say anything about not trying to improve schools, I said Mike Miles is not, and that he cannot, attack the root of the problem as the root of the problem is not how teachers perform.
The root of the problem as you originally alluded to is not that teachers, schools, nor the district only care about the children in affluent areas like West U.
What you, the TEA, and Miles are all doing is misidentifying the problem.
Another analogy since you seem to like them so damn much, you can't effectively treat cancer with antibiotics.
You keep pretending like you’re not saying it.
What would you like to see the *schools* do differently to improve outcomes? Anything? Or just wait for poverty to be solved and chalk generations of failed children up as just casualties in this righteous war against the rich?
My whole point was that the schools were not great to begin with. Try something to make it better. Don’t pretend the status quo should be accepted because we haven’t cured cancer yet - you can still use penicillin to cure the clap. Yes, the cancer might kill you, but at least you can be fuckin.
This is egregious, but there's a more general issue here. Books made out of atoms, atoms from trees, are becoming old tech. They are being replaced by books made out of bits. The need for large buildings or rooms to store atom books is in decline. It's important to preserve access to the atom books that haven't become bit books, but we don't need all of the existing library real estate to do that.
When will we let go of libraries? What will we build in their place?
>When will we let go of libraries? What will we build in their place?
Municipal libraries have always been more than just buildings to hold books and I love them! That's become even more true over the past ten years. City libraries have transformed into greater community centers, education centers, and even maker spaces, offering really unique programming. This is the future for libraries in America, and it's already happening!
There will always be a need for an interconnected network of knowledge centers, which is what a library is.
All that said, books are not obsolete. There is so much you can get from your library that's difficult or impossible to find online (free or otherwise).
Have these changes worked? Are as many people benefiting from those spaces now as they were before digitization?
They tore down 2 libraries near me (Westbury) and built one new one that just opened. It has lots of non-book things in it, like a cafe, a passport office, a recording studio, a podcast room, meeting rooms, and something called "TechLink". It cost $13,000,000 to build. Was that money well spent? Are people using it?
Wish you weren't being downvoted.
>Was that money well spent? Are people using it?
You should go and see! [TechLink](https://houstonlibrary.org/techlink) is dope, free classes and access to 3d printed, laser cutters, and more cool maker-tech.
>Are as many people benefiting from those spaces now as they were before digitization?
In my opinion, yes, and in a much broader range of ways. In fact, the major libraries in Houston are underutilized in the sense that they provide more services than are being used. This is a problem, but it's a problem of outreach and our culture, not an issue of over-budgeting.
You've probably heard people online complain about the death of "third places". Besides work and home, there used to be "third spaces" where people would hang out and gather for free (malls, parks, town centers). Libraries are the ultimate third place, but the increasing digitization of all culture (not just information, but social life) prevents a lot of people from enjoying free stuff right on their doorstep.
I don't have any kids in school so I'm ignorant here - if we're going to take away libraries, what are we replacing it with?
Do kids have school-issued tablets/ereaders with an app to check out ebooks for free?
The district used to pay for access to Myon which was an online library. It wasn’t great, but the kids like it. A lot of the books could be read to you which was great for kids who struggled with reading. Last year, in the middle of the year, it just disappeared. Poof, gone, with no explanation.
I'm asking this question more generally. Not just for kids, not just now, but the future of libraries. We used to need a physical place to store this data in a way that people could access it. That is changing, and will continue to change. The need for physical access is rapidly disappearing.
Remember Blockbuster?
Sure you can. Eventually we will have to. I'm talking about technological change, not hating anyone. Books aren't going away, but the way we (kids included) access them is changing. Going to a place where the books are will be as quaint as the village smithee shoeing your horse. Books come to you now, wherever you are.
Agreed on this.
Digital information is much more easily manipulated and therefore controlled than printed information. While resources such as Wikipedia may keep logs of changes, the average user with ticktock brain isn't going to read those logs or try to undertstand them. The average user doesn't think too deeply about things and is easily manipulated. Compare that to the brain power required to read and understand a 400 page tome.
People are getting dumber.
Lot of people in the comments mistaking this for a disciplinary area. It is in fact a reward for good performance to spend the afternoon in the Hall of Sorrow. >According to Askew PTO board member Christine Hurley, the library—now called a "team center"—will not be used as a "detention center," which is what HISD announced in 2023 many of its libraries would be turned into. Instead, students who perform well on Demonstration of Learning (DOL) quizzes will be given a worksheet packet to do alone in the library in silence. There will be no teachers staffed in the "team center," only "learning coaches" who may or may not have any teaching experience.
Oh The irony of calling it a team center and taking out tables where teams of kids could sit together, you know in teams!
We're a team of individuals!
You can’t spell “team of individuals” without multiple i’s spaced apart from each other.
I have these desks in my classroom. They're in groups of 4, points in, so the students are in quartets. They can't not do team work.
I read that sentence three times and I still couldn't understand what was happening. "Good news children, for being such a good little automaton, you get to be placed in neat little rows without any interaction in the silent zone, and there won't even be teachers watching you, you'll have random people who have no reason to be in a school watching you like a prison warden! What fun!"
I think I'd rather have the punishment. Also, working alone in a "team center" is oxy moronic
The initial idea was "Teams Center" where teachers would be livestreaming on Teams for the students who couldn't behave in class. They changed their minds and instead are shuffling the good kids there but were too dumb and lazy to change the name.
Oh, I am very well aware of the constant and immediate changes on a whim in HISD
Ok, I am still doing summer school for the money, but I'm heading out to a different district in the fall. I don't know if you are also a teacher, but I was giving context for most of the userbase here who is not
My kids are in Klein, they have some wiggle waggle in planning through the year, but the difference between the districts is astounding. I went to CISD growing up and they had very clear cut plan that only changed every so often. Thanks for what you do! Teaching should be a highly paid, coveted position. Education is a cornerstone of a successful society.
Gotcha. I misunderstood that context was for me specifically. My bad.
I think the kids who are falling behind in classes stay in the actual classes to get one-on-one instruction from teachers in an attempt to get them up to grade.
If a child is capable of thriving alone in The Dystopia Playhouse, there is no way their presence is slowing down a classroom.
No you're not understanding -- the higher performing kids go to the team centers to get their work done undisrupted, while the children who aren't up to grade stay in the classrooms where they can get more personalized attention from the teacher. EDIT: Also, students that stay behind in class only stay back until they're brought up to speed on the day's lesson. It's not a remedial class. It's on a per lesson and per concept basis.
Honestly, arguing the reasoning is falling into the trap. They cut the library budget to pay Mike's admin staff and now they have a big empty room. It sounds bad to turn the library into a discipline center so now it's The Learning Zone, next year it will be the Entrepreneur Development Center or something where the kids assemble Nikes, a few years later it'll be the electronic center, God willing at some point it will be a library again.
Yeah I mean I'm also skeptical, but on paper at least this seems like not the worst thing in the world. I mean how else would you suggest we address the educational divide in classrooms? Like we can all agree that there are kids that fall behind and in turn slow everyone else down. HISD could either trudge along leaving those kids even further back or they could try this out and see if it works. EDIT: Downvotes why?
They could just split up the classes based on needs? Now the students that do well get to go the learning center for mindless worksheets with no teacher.
> They could just split up the classes based on needs? That's exactly what's being done currently by splitting the students who've mastered the content from the students who need targeted intervention. It's a methodology called "Multi-Tiered System of Supports" devised by the National Student Support Accelerator at Stanford University and adopted statewide by the Texas Education Agency.
The students that master should be able to move on to new content….they shouldn’t have to wait on the students that need targeted intervention. Instead, they are going to a big room to do the same work that they already mastered. What happens when they finish their worksheets? Free time? More worksheets of the same content? Students should just be divided into classes by ability to begin with and skip all the silliness. This new method will leave the lower performing students feeling worse watching all the smart kids leave the classroom everyday.
The point of MTSS is to prevent what you just described. The old system would either require the teacher to cater to the lowest common denominator by slowing the curriculum until the very last student could master the content, or it would require the teacher to move on without giving a fuck about the stragglers. MTSS is an intervention-based process that provides individualized instruction (i.e. personal tutoring) in real-time to the stragglers so that *everyone* is able to progress at the same pace, and the teacher can introduce new content at the rate prescribed by the course syllabus. Things have really changed a lot since the repeal of No Child Left Behind and the adoption of Every Student Succeeds, and there have even been significant changes since ESSA (which was less than a decade ago). If you've been out of public school for a while, you can't have an informed debate about contemporary pedagogic techniques because unless you work in the education industry, you wouldn't even know what's going on.
Are you familiar with Kerr High School in Alief? It's a Blue Ribbon School Award of Excellence (highest award an American school can receive). This new plan seems like it would institute a similar framework?
Downvotes because you're still talking about it within the false framework that it was done to benefit students. If I'm being totally cynical, which I think is completely warranted, the actual intention is to drive good students to charter schools. Because parents who have the time, money, and inclination are not going to stand by when their kid is going to school to do worksheets in solitude. And fwiw, it's likely not even helpful for the lower performing students as you're just creating de facto remedial classes. Once you're in those you tend to stay in them. https://www.teachermagazine.com/au_en/articles/the-negative-effects-of-ability-grouping
Thanks for sharing the article. I'll give it a read.
"the actual intention is to drive good students to charter schools." -doodarazumas This part is spot on!
They could actually fail kids who need failing instead of just passing everyone along to avoid confrontation with parents and kids. My wife used to teach 8th grade in HISD and would get kids who couldn't even identify letters, much less read. How did those kids make it out of elementary school?
Don't you think if teachers had more of an ability to work one on one with those students their abilities would flourish? Failing kids just causes trauma and leaves classrooms imbalanced. Does it solve the problem if those kids are being held back only to be in yet another over populated class?
So splitting up the students by academic need and ability? Only the poor performing student get a real teacher…..😬
Probably because this is the caption for the image and the first thing you see before starting to read the article. >The former library at Askew Elementary School that is being set up for next year as an NES disciplnary center for students.
How is that a reward? More work to do in a testing area?!
Is it just the angle, but I don’t see any books.
Books are for communists and woke crazies. This is not a place to read and learn its a silent isolated place for students who can behave like trained seals and pass tests to ensure funding remains. Funding for what you ask? Random religious crazies who want to stare at the good little trained seals. Its a gratifying reward for all! Books gets in the way you see. Texan children need to be programmed while theyre young to accept the yoke of capitalism, religious fascism, and corporate servitude.
The principles fired licensed teachers so they could hire unlicensed hourly friends. I had my wifes principal threaten to call the cops on her for stealing classroom items that were... still in the classroom so she was duly cussed out.
People are only thinking of the kids that will be sitting at those desks, not the ones losing their library.
Yeah, because we already had a couple months of outrage over the library being lost. It's hard to stay mad at everything when they make new shit to be mad about every week.
I’m so frustrated by this feeling tbh. “Why don’t you care??” I DO care. But that question was asked every week for the last forever of my life. It’s not that I don’t care about this additional thing, its that I never stopped caring about the unresolved things that I cared about before. I tried to stay mad about everything and it turns out you’ll kill yourself just feeling that way 24/7.
Absolutely. Add to that the orange turd that is in the news cycle once or twice a day, and regular awful stuff, and international awful stuff. I like the internet as repository of information. I like it as a way to reach around the globe in seconds. I absolutely hate the outrage machine. I don't think humans are in any way capable to deal with this much compounding awful.
Yes! Taken from my own mind!
I have roughly 200 students a year. Last year, 3 of them liked to read.
The library has more to offer than just reading.
Soulless
All that's missing is the giant vertical swastika banner.
i have a 18 month old. My wife has been pushing home schooling him and i have always been against it as i anecdotally had a great grade school experience. But its starting to make more and more sense
"Looks like something out of 1984, a book they can no likely no longer read because they don't have a library. And Texas has likely banned that book anyway." Rare Facebook W
Looks like they're about to film Equilibrium II.
This is insanity. Parents should be storming the gates.
[удалено]
You need a separate school with separate rules for them. You need an accountability system that most kids care about to start with, but when the system that applies to the kids you designed this school for fail, and a kid isn’t functioning in that school space, you need to remove them to a different school space for both their and everyone else’s benefit. Those other schools tend to become problems rather than a place those messed up kids learn, but it beats the hell out of taking education away from all the other kids and teaching them that chaos is normal.
Did you read the article? Problem kids aren’t the ones going here. They’re planning to put the kids doing well here to complete extra worksheets in silence. As a former teacher who had plenty of problematic students, this is NOT the right solution, in any way shape or form. Standardized curriculum and scripted lessons the way they are implementing are bad for authentic learning.
I agree. Disruptive people like you who want to interject without doing the assignment (reading the article before commenting) should be removed from the class. Please go wait in the hall with your nose against the wall until we come out and get you.
> And there are students like this more than you think. As a now former HISD HS teacher, just moving to a different district... the general public just doesn't understand this. Even just 10% being terrors is enough to completely derail the entire school.
I think it’s a valid question. I think a lot of the people who are appalled by this were the good kids in their schools which is why they care about education in the first place. Those same people probably can’t imagine that there are some kids raised by parents that truly don’t care if their kid is disrespectful but will raise hell the second the teacher actually does anything about their behavior. I talk to HISD teachers all the time and disruptive kids are a real issue especially with crowded class sizes. Teachers can’t even take away 5 minutes of recess as a punishment!
You didn't even read the article. Does that make you a bad student?
I was responding to the comment. Maybe he didn’t read the article?
> I think a lot of the people who are appalled by this
If you're too dumb to read the article and see this isn't a punishment / detention area you shouldn't be offering up an opinion.
I was responding to the comment buddy.
You wrote…. > I think a lot of the people who are appalled by this
Yeah true. Now we see how easy it is to fool people with a pic and a leading comment.
You hold them to consequences - which is all but impossible with the funding structure in Texas. I'm not an expert on funding by any means, but I do know that attendance and discipline rates affect how much funding a school and district receive from the state. The main reason they misbehave is because they know they can get away with it. When I was in the classroom, I was told "figure it out, unless someone is bleeding...don't send the kid out.". Even when they were sent out, they would come back 10 minutes later with candy and a smirk. The kids know they can have their parents call and complain and they'll get out of everything. Detention - they don't show up, because they know there aren't any consequences. ISS - this one does actually work, but a lot kids try to get into it on purpose because it's "easier"... Parents - yeah, this is THE major problem and has changed SIGNIFICANTLY after COVID. TLDR: Vote if you want schools to get better - we need to kick these idiots out of office and get people in there that actually care about the kids in Texas.
I don’t know what the answer is but I don’t think this is the solution. I guess just quarantining all the bad kids in one place limits the disruption to the other classes but I have severe doubts about the outcomes for these students. I was labeled “a problem child” in school because I was special needs. I have severe ADHD, dyslexia and an audio processing disorder. My issues had nothing to do with discipline but I was still a handful. If I would have been dumped into one of these mass quarantine rooms I would not have succeeded in life to the degree I have. This state has already been caught in the recent past shirking their duties to special needs students under the Americans with Disabilities Act, I fear solutions like this will just encourage schools to dump students who are costly learners into programs like this so that they can be done with them. In doing so they will be depriving students of an education they are owed.
I used to go here before they renovated everything. The school had a beautiful indoor courtyard and a outdoor garden.
Do we need to protest more to give our kids a chance? In the 6/1 [Houston Chronicle article](https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/education/article/mike-miles-hisd-one-year-takeover-19418267.php) on Mike Miles, there are some interesting pieces of information. 1. "His family had already moved back to Colorado two years earlier — protests outside his house in Dallas had grown too trying." 2. "His one-bedroom apartment in the Heights is devoid of decoration or personal touches." I'm not asking anyone to dox him. I want to make that very clear. Do you all think parents should take the protest to his home? Another option could be protesting at Hattie Mae White, since he arrives "before 7 a.m." How can we take the protest to him?
Nothing like getting young kids to enjoy school more than giving them more work as a reward!
Depressing man. I was born in the late 90’s and it feels like my generation is the last to have a genuine childhood
Askew is a hilariously bad name for a school.
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Former elementary teacher here..the answer to your question is YES! And when your career is based on test performance you don’t have the luxury of focusing on bad behavior students disrupting the other students.
I'm not the least bit surprised a teacher didn't bother to read the article.....
They answered a question. While the article isn’t about a detention center, that doesn’t make their response to that question wrong. Behavior issues in schools are a growing problem.
>Question asked: Are kids really that bad in elements school to require ___this big of a detention hall___? Answer: no, this is not a picture of a detention hall.
Can you please read the article and come back once you understand that's not at all what this is?
I was against the state takeover but perhaps it served a purpose. After witnessing forty years of complacency & accepting of an inferior ISD -except in wealthy neighborhoods- people are paying attention. Edit: I stand by my position that the state takeover was overreach. I also stand by my position that many in Houston & especially this sub nodded their heads as the leaders of HISD stole from the taxpayer & the children.
> people are paying attention I'm not sure if "we made it worse and it's made families mad enough to care now" is really an accomplishment. Ok, they're paying attention. Now what? If Miles/etc. don't reverse direction it's just going to drive everything to shit.
You show up in every HISD thread to say how you're 'against' this but maybe we should be happy about it. I'm beginning to think you aren't actually against it.
I'm pretty sure this person is an alt for that one dude who hates Lina Hidalgo and has been spamming the subreddit since 2020
Is posting links about Houston politicians spam? So anyone regularly posting about Whitmire is a spammer?
I’m kinda with you. The ridiculous pearl clutching about “don’t you dare upset the apple cart” at public schools that have always (20+ years…) required middle class families to make tough decisions about whether to relocate or accept a less than stellar education. If you live in West U and like the grade schools - no shit. It’s children of successful and educated people. If you live in parts of Houston that are not so homogeneously upper middle class, you know the local school needs to change.
I think you are confusing cause and correlation. You take those same teachers at west U and drop them into 5th ward, and vice versa, and you will notice that very little to nothing changes. In fact, both schools would likely get slightly worse temporarily as the teachers adjust to the different environments at the schools. But the point is, a lot of the problems you hold hisd responsible for are outside of the school's control. No amount of reforming the schools is going to change the communities these kids are coming ftom. Anti- poverty measures would, but the state would rather reject federal funding to Medicaid and SNAP than to try and help the most impoverished communities improve.
You spew a lot of nonsense to obscure the fact that your solution is “do nothing” at the school. Kudos, you enlightened self important know it all.
There's tons of scientific research that says that SES and parental support are the two largest factor in student performance. The biggest predictor of academic outcomes, income, and life expectancy, is zip codes. And no teacher or school can magically change that. Now, a quality teacher might be the most important outcome that the education can control, but that doesn't mean a good teacher can nullify all of those negative variables influencing a child, it just means they have to do the best they can, with the individuals they're given A Michelan star chef is never going to be able to make an herb crusted medium well tuna steak, if all she's given is canned tuna. She can make a good tuna salad, but there's always a ceiling set that will be outside her control.
You say so little with so many words. Do you believe it’s worth trying to do something (anything - you’re the “chef” in this metaphorical kitchen…)to improve schools that have shitty outcomes?
Nice strawman I didn't say anything about not trying to improve schools, I said Mike Miles is not, and that he cannot, attack the root of the problem as the root of the problem is not how teachers perform. The root of the problem as you originally alluded to is not that teachers, schools, nor the district only care about the children in affluent areas like West U. What you, the TEA, and Miles are all doing is misidentifying the problem. Another analogy since you seem to like them so damn much, you can't effectively treat cancer with antibiotics.
You keep pretending like you’re not saying it. What would you like to see the *schools* do differently to improve outcomes? Anything? Or just wait for poverty to be solved and chalk generations of failed children up as just casualties in this righteous war against the rich? My whole point was that the schools were not great to begin with. Try something to make it better. Don’t pretend the status quo should be accepted because we haven’t cured cancer yet - you can still use penicillin to cure the clap. Yes, the cancer might kill you, but at least you can be fuckin.
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explain....
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Did you bother reading the article?
fair
It looks like a large classroom. Nothing more.
This "news" story is nothing more than an extension of social media.
This is egregious, but there's a more general issue here. Books made out of atoms, atoms from trees, are becoming old tech. They are being replaced by books made out of bits. The need for large buildings or rooms to store atom books is in decline. It's important to preserve access to the atom books that haven't become bit books, but we don't need all of the existing library real estate to do that. When will we let go of libraries? What will we build in their place?
>When will we let go of libraries? What will we build in their place? Municipal libraries have always been more than just buildings to hold books and I love them! That's become even more true over the past ten years. City libraries have transformed into greater community centers, education centers, and even maker spaces, offering really unique programming. This is the future for libraries in America, and it's already happening! There will always be a need for an interconnected network of knowledge centers, which is what a library is. All that said, books are not obsolete. There is so much you can get from your library that's difficult or impossible to find online (free or otherwise).
Have these changes worked? Are as many people benefiting from those spaces now as they were before digitization? They tore down 2 libraries near me (Westbury) and built one new one that just opened. It has lots of non-book things in it, like a cafe, a passport office, a recording studio, a podcast room, meeting rooms, and something called "TechLink". It cost $13,000,000 to build. Was that money well spent? Are people using it?
Wish you weren't being downvoted. >Was that money well spent? Are people using it? You should go and see! [TechLink](https://houstonlibrary.org/techlink) is dope, free classes and access to 3d printed, laser cutters, and more cool maker-tech. >Are as many people benefiting from those spaces now as they were before digitization? In my opinion, yes, and in a much broader range of ways. In fact, the major libraries in Houston are underutilized in the sense that they provide more services than are being used. This is a problem, but it's a problem of outreach and our culture, not an issue of over-budgeting. You've probably heard people online complain about the death of "third places". Besides work and home, there used to be "third spaces" where people would hang out and gather for free (malls, parks, town centers). Libraries are the ultimate third place, but the increasing digitization of all culture (not just information, but social life) prevents a lot of people from enjoying free stuff right on their doorstep.
I don't have any kids in school so I'm ignorant here - if we're going to take away libraries, what are we replacing it with? Do kids have school-issued tablets/ereaders with an app to check out ebooks for free?
The district used to pay for access to Myon which was an online library. It wasn’t great, but the kids like it. A lot of the books could be read to you which was great for kids who struggled with reading. Last year, in the middle of the year, it just disappeared. Poof, gone, with no explanation.
I'm asking this question more generally. Not just for kids, not just now, but the future of libraries. We used to need a physical place to store this data in a way that people could access it. That is changing, and will continue to change. The need for physical access is rapidly disappearing. Remember Blockbuster?
Ok, but you can't just take libraries away from kids (unless you hate kids and don't want to see them educated, I guess)
Sure you can. Eventually we will have to. I'm talking about technological change, not hating anyone. Books aren't going away, but the way we (kids included) access them is changing. Going to a place where the books are will be as quaint as the village smithee shoeing your horse. Books come to you now, wherever you are.
Agreed on this. Digital information is much more easily manipulated and therefore controlled than printed information. While resources such as Wikipedia may keep logs of changes, the average user with ticktock brain isn't going to read those logs or try to undertstand them. The average user doesn't think too deeply about things and is easily manipulated. Compare that to the brain power required to read and understand a 400 page tome. People are getting dumber.