Michael Harriot Profile picture
Writer, board-certified wypipologist, last real Negus alive. BlackAF History/Drapetomaniax podcast/theGrio…At the SAME DAMN TIME. Never reneged; Never will.

Jan 13, 2022, 14 tweets

First of all, he’s right Houston ISD has a higher dropout rate than Cypress Fairbanks ISD. It’s true when you compare any poor school district with a school district with a bunch of richer people. It’s not because of race, it’s because of poverty.

CyFair ain’t even that white, it’s just a lot wealthier. But when you look at the median income of people who live in the school district, they make WAAY more than people who live in Houston ISD. Even the Black people there make $20k on average more than the average Black Texan

Now compare Houston ISD, where white people are the ONLY group above the median income for Texas. Now, this doesn’t exactly prove that economics affect education, we’ll get to that, because there’s something else you should know:

Houston ISD ain’t doing that bad.

You might wonder why a racist on the school board would choose dropout rates as a metric. The number of dropouts are really the ONLY metric that’s related to economic. Why didn’t he choose college readiness, reading or math?

Oh wait… here’s why:

That’s right, The school with all those negro teachers OUTPERFORMS the school with the white teachers. But wait…

Again, CyFair isn’t very white…just rich.

The schools are only 23% white but 60+% of the teachers are white— whiter than the state avg. How’d they do that?

Not only do Houston ISD’s teachers a better teachers reflect the student body,But those nonwhite teachers are also kicking CYFair’s ass. Now you might think “kicking ass” is hyperbole. After all, CyFair has a lot of smart AP & IB students who pass the tests compared to HoustonISD

But here is where they make it look like the white schools are doing better. At CyFair, only 21% of students even participate in the advanced level curriculum vs Houston , where black kids take the AP/IB exam at higher rates than the white kids statewide.

CYFair’s pass rate is higher because they restrict who can take the test. This happens at a lot of schools who want to manipulate the system. They block black kids from taking advanced courses, which makes it look like white kids are smarter. edtrust.org/press-release/…

And here’s another thing about Houston’s Black and Hispanic teachers… They’re paid less than CYFair’s teachers. A 2nd year teacher in CyFair makes the same salary as a 15-year veteran in Houston

But that’s not the worst part:

The Houston teachers DO MORE WORK!

Their average class size is higher which means they grade more papers, look after more students and deal with more parents.

The Black teachers teach MORE kids for less money in a poorer district & get better results than the rich, white dist.

But here is the absolute bonkers part of this story, look at the poverty. Look at the risk factors. The Black students are literally outperforming the white school’s reading scores WITH STUDENTS WHO DON’T UNDERSTAND ENGLISH !

AND the racist guy who is making this comment about Black teachers knows this. You can’t find the dropout rate for a school unless you find the college readiness scores & other data. He INTENTIONALLY cherry-picked the racist part. You wanna know why?

He knows the truth. But he also knows that all the people at that meeting are gonna take what he says as fact. To them, he just PROVED why those black teachers ain’t shit. Dropout rates—literally the ONE THING a fucking teacher can’t control—a student who isn’t there.

Now I could easily say that white peoples are too dumb to understand facts and science, which is how they get snookered into believing in 3-letter boogeymen like CRT or BLM. But that wouldn’t be fair…

Maybe they just had a lot of white teachers

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