[Photo: Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media]
Mike Miles was a U.S. Army Ranger before he was appointed superintendent of HISD. That experience motivates his unyielding surveillance and micromanagement of teachers, his dedication to timers, the transformation of libraries into prison-like detention halls, and his persistent drilling of standardized test-style questions with disproportionate devotion to data, and none on creativity or critical thinking.
Now he intends to raise soldiers in his image from the children of Cullen Middle School, a declining campus with significant academic deficits and reports of disciplinary mayhem. The student body is 70% Black, 20% Latinx, and a few are white, Asian, or biracial. Half did not meet grade-level standards on the reading segment of the STAAR, about twenty percentage points below the HISD norm. Math scores are worse. Nearly all are economically oppressed. Two-thirds of students are deemed “at-risk” by the Texas Education Agency.
Lt. Col. Louis King, Cullen’s Dean of Cadets, is retired from the U.S. Army. He says he feels a connection (being “not the best kid” himself) with many of the students already enrolled.
The classrooms of this “mini–West Point” are camouflaged and display mannequins in military attire. The obstacle course is identical to...
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