1. Mike Miles gave a pretty good end-of-year speech yesterday in which he trumpeted DISD’s 84 percent graduation rate but made clear the reforms he has put in place are just getting started. You can read the DMN recap, which consigns the big, broad aspects of Miles’ 2014-15 plan — primarily an emphasis on early childhood, choice schools, and personalized learning — to a few sentences at the end. You can then, if you like, read the ridiculous comments that follow. Just for entertainment’s sake.
2. A new study — filed under the heading “Everything You Thought You Knew About Running a School Is Probably Wrong” — details the problems with using suspensions as the only mean to deal with troubled kids. From the post: “[The study] offers a comprehensive perspective on the phenomenon that activist organizations have termed the “school-to-prison pipeline,” in which students who suspended or expelled for a discretionary violation is three times more likely to come into contact with the juvenile justice system, according to data from the ACLU.” Worth a read.
3. Place 6 school board candidate Joyce Foreman did not show yesterday for her scheduled radio debate on KHVN (Heaven 97) with her opponent, Bertha Whatley. (See first Facebook post.) Not a surprise. Foreman is basically just running on an anti-Miles campaign, and that’s hard to talk about for a full hour.
