Hearing They Hear Not, Neither Do They Understand

Seeing see not; and hearing they hear not, neither do they understand.—Matthew 13:13

Remember how we worked all last summer and fall to elect three new school board members?  And the main reason, as with many school districts across the country, was the pushing of racist Critical Race Theory ideas in our schools? Well, now’s the time for the payoff/fallout. On Monday was the first down-to-business school board work meeting (formal board meeting happened Thursday night; more on that later). In Monday’s meeting, board members talked about the equity audit that the previous board signed a resolution to do and then spent money on. Results are back, and a presentation was given at that work meeting.

I have not been able to see the results, beyond the presentation, which was scant on details. I did find the presentation, which I believe was given last April to the previous board prior to their ordering the audit. [I found it here, but could not pass along the link itself, because it has been moved, but clicking on the link downloaded the file for me to look at.) And I found this article, which is informative but pretty much devoid of data. During the meeting the public didn’t get to see the details. And even board members didn’t seem to have access to the raw data and methodology, which was glossed over in the presentation. That was a real problem for several board members, particularly the data-driven ones: new members Scott Henry and Luke Scanlon and board president Tom Jackson. (I’m noting Jackson in particular, because he had no problem expressing these flaws in the study Monday night, but seemed indifferent to them on Thursday night.)

But here’s one of the problems of our times: you can say something benign and well-reasoned, and someone will take offense and claim you said something that you didn’t.

That problem has hit Scott Henry this week, following his comments on Monday. He even made the front page of the Houston Chronicle. Harris County Judge (administrator) Lina Hidalgo passed along her uninformed assessment that he said black teachers cause low graduation rates in Houston’s humongous, scandal-ridden, downtown school district, Houston ISD (independent school district).

from Houston Chronicle, January 13, 2022, pp. A-1 and A-6

Did he say that? No. Did he say something that a reasonable person would construe to mean that? No. But there were a lot of unreasonable people at Thursday’s formal board meeting. Hidalgo held court (er, a press conference) out front, surrounded by news media and a crowd of sign holders letting us know that black teachers were good people—something no one had disputed. Hidalgo never came inside for the meeting, where she would have been given a forum to speak; it was all about the media for her.

But the room was packed inside. I got there a mere ten minutes early and signed up to speak, just in case. The system has always been that, during public comments, up to 10 people, chosen randomly from those who sign up, get to speak for 2 minutes each on topics related to the agenda. And then 10 people (also chosen randomly from those signed up) can speak during community comment time with the same limitations. Usually that’s where we get to speak. But since the equity audit was on the agenda, that’s what I signed up to speak on. And they changed the rules as of this meeting. As many as signed up were allowed to speak. I was next to last in that public comment segment. I didn’t count; I’m guessing around 30 spoke. The meeting started at 6:00. Public comment began shortly afterward. I spoke about 8:30, I think. You can look it up, but I feel awkward about how I looked and sounded on camera, so I’m not linking to the spot. Two minutes isn’t long enough to accomplish much of a point, but I was there as moral support.

Anyway, what turned out to be a minority of us came to support Scott Henry from the pitchfork wielders who were calling for him to resign over his “racist” comments.

CFISD Board Member Scott Henry, at work meeting January 10, 2022
screenshot from here

Here’s the troublesome segment, about 10 minutes into his 12 minutes of comment:

Scott Henry: You mentioned talking about people that look like us, and things, which I would like to remind people: our teachers are our most important asset within our district. I love our teachers. I love what they do for us every day. My kiddo loves her teachers. But I looked online. You were talking earlier about people that look like us. And we have such a hard time getting teachers. I know it’s such a hard job. You have a hard job getting teachers. Very hard. People just don’t want to be teachers anymore. I get that. It’s hard. But Cy-Fair has, what, 13% black teachers. I know you mentioned that earlier. Do you know what the statewide average is for black teachers?

Audit Results Presenter: Not at this moment, sir.

Scott Henry: 10%. I looked it up. The statewide average for black teachers is 10%. Houston ISD, which y’all used as the shining example—you know what their average number, percentage of black teachers is? 36%. I looked that up. You know what their dropout rate is? 4% I don’t want to be 4%. I don’t want to be HISD. I want to be a shining example. I want to be the district standard. I want to be the place, the premium place where people go to be. And, quite frankly, we have a limited budget with limited resources. We have a great place. And let’s don’t mess it up for everyone else.

I highlighted the part the media quoted. He was following up on an earlier part of his comments, referring to one recommendation of the equity audit asserting that Cy-Fair ISD needed to increase the percentage of black teachers, because students need to see someone who looks like them as their teacher in order to improve discipline problem and graduation rates. And the audit referred to Houston ISD as a glowing example in this regard. 

You can see there is nothing in his comments saying anything bad about black teachers. He’s pointing out that we’re already above the state average, and that’s a good thing. But their recommendation—especially when they hold up Houston ISD as their “glowing example”—doesn’t indicate that following this recommendation would lead to better outcomes.

So what he’s saying is, we shouldn’t use race as the basis for our hiring; it won’t get us the results we want, namely fewer discipline problems (talked about earlier) and lower dropout rates. His 4% number was a misspeak, by the way; HISD’s rate is considerably higher than that, and is higher than Cy-Fair’s, despite their higher percentage of black teachers, which was the point. By the way, he was also called out for denigrating another school district. But that's not what he was doing; HISD needs no help doing that. What Scott Henry is doing is pointing out the flaws in the audit report, which multiple times held up HISD as the model to follow.

Incidentally, no one at the Monday meeting gasped or exclaimed audibly when he said this. No one was appalled. But someone apparently found it useful enough to twist, to stir up the thousands who weren't there Monday and probably still haven't heard his whole comments.

The offended hordes at the meeting heard: “I hate black teachers. We should fire them. Black teachers cause higher dropout rates.” You can listen to the public comments for yourself. I’m not exaggerating. They were calling for his lynching—OK, bad choice of metaphors; literally they called for him to resign or be fired for that horrible thing he said, which showed how racist he is. That horrible message was, as you can see, “Let’s not be racist.”

It’s strange how we can be in the same room, hearing the same words, and hear completely different things—opposite things. Someone said, derisively, “And then you’ll celebrate Martin Luther King on Monday….” Oddly, MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech offers the hope that we can judge people on the content of their character instead of the color of their skin—just as Scott Henry had suggested for our hiring of teachers. The actual racists refer to the idea of a colorblind society as being white supremacist and are in the process of canceling MLK. That’s how skewed they are.

Here’s the problem with an equity audit: equity, in CRT-speak, means equal outcomes. What they are looking for are things that look unbalanced for one race in particular, and then they attribute the cause as being systemic racism. And then they make recommendations that will install contracts with their prescribed vendors to stir up more such “evidence.” It’s a racket. We taxpayers get stuck with the bill for putting CRT in our schools—even after the legislature outlawed that this past session.

In Monday’s meeting, board member Julie Hinaman tried to clear up misconceptions about the meaning of the word equity, in defense of their calling for the audit last year. She gave this definition:

Educational equity is about ensuring all students are successful. It’s about removing barriers to student success. It’s about working to close the achievement gaps. So, it’s about two things: resources—do all students have the resources that they need to be successful? And are we removing barriers that are preventing them from being successful?

series of slides in the presentation given to the Board prior to doing the equity audit,
given by Dr. Roger Cleveland of Millennium Learning Concepts,
from presentation found here

I’m not against ensuring that all students have the resources they need to succeed. That should be an obvious funding priority. But I think we need to be more precise about removing the barriers preventing their success. One of the biggest barriers is a dysfunctional family situation, and schools are not the solution to that problem; they are pretty much no more than pressure on a gaping wound in those cases. New board member Luke Scanlon had pointed out that some students literally have survival as a goal. Just live through another day.

Sometimes that disadvantage looks like a socioeconomic problem—families that don’t make enough money lead to students with worse outcomes. But when you look deeper, you see that the problem isn’t just money; that’s a symptom. The problem is broken homes, no father in the home, unstable situations at home.

Sometimes that problem looks like a racial problem. But when you look at the data, you find that black children are more likely to be born out of wedlock and more likely to live with a single parent. That is not caused by white racism against blacks in our schools; it isn’t solvable by eliminating every particle of racism.

If schools have a role, it could be teaching the importance of following the formula for rising above poverty in America: stay in school through high school, get a job, wait until marriage for sex, wait until marriage to have children. That formula works for every race in our society. If we’re failing to pass along that basic fact, we’re doing a disservice.

But, while it’s arguable that Great Society policies have led to more fatherless homes in the black demographic, the barrier isn’t caused by “systemic racism” among the population in Cy-Fair ISD.

When we have a problem with black students being 19% of the school population but 40% of the discipline problems, measured as suspensions, that doesn’t mean we should discipline the individual troublemakers less because of their race; it might mean that we need to discipline them more. Or find better discipline approaches. Saying, “Oh, they’re black and therefore disadvantaged, so let’s let them get away with whatever they want,” is telling them the rules don’t apply to them. That’s not a good thing to teach them. Luke Scanlon suggested that, from his experience, holding them accountable, in meaningful ways, gets them to be higher achievers. I’d say giving in to their tyranny-because-of-color not only harms the remaining students, it harms them even more.

So, we can recognize some students lack what other students have at home. But we shouldn’t be handicapping those fortunate students just so we can close up an achievement gap. The problem is not that there is a gap that should be closed; the problem is that there are children who are achieving less than they could, and we need to look at ways to bring them up.

Imagine a solution where we end up doing something that helps the lower achievers that also happens to help high achievers, the gap won’t close. But the real objective would be met—getting each child closer to potential. Focusing on closing the gap is like climbing a ladder that’s up against the wrong wall.

I don’t know what the board is going to do about the equity audit and its recommendations. Hopefully our new board members will stand strong against this actual racist infiltration, which is what we elected them to do. And maybe they’ll be able to sway some of the others. An angry horde calling you racist—and staking out your home and sending death threats to you and your family (yes, those things happened this week to Scott Henry)—is a scary thing to stand up to. This is what we elected them to do.

We’re praying they can do it. Literally, many friends together prayed at a certain hour today (and also continually) to lift up Scott Henry. May God protect him—and any others in this battle of ideas that is affecting our next generation in the schools.