New HISD Superintendent Terry Grier hits the ground running.
As his first major initiative as Houston ISD chief, Grier is launching a credit-recovery program similar to ones he headed up in San Diego and Greensboro, N.C.
Houston ISD’s new program will add so-called graduation coaches to each high school. Those teachers would oversee credit-recovery computer labs, where struggling students will spend part of their school day redoing classes they failed.
“This will transform education,” Grier said, adding that he expects the new software in these labs to eventually be used for advanced classes, summer school, SAT preparation and Texas Assessment of Knowledge and Skills tutoring.
Reducing the dropout rate is what Grier was hired to do. If he can do that, he’ll be a success here no matter what. I wish them all the best of luck with this.
Throw your support behind Dr. Grier early. His focus will be on your children. Don’t make the mistake was we made in San Diego. As a parent, I regret deeply that we lost him to Houston. We, too, started back and forth in the media, what will he do, what is this idea he has, what is Haberman, – let the man do his job! My experience with him was that he is a smart guy, he knows what he’s doing, he is not a bureaucrat. He is an educator. I’m stuck with the ridiculous flip-flop wearing teachers that say “freaking” in class and hand out worksheets and never never have to worry about passing the 2 year probationary period because the principals don”t know their jobs. Nevertheless, San Diego is my home and I kept trudging on but I shake my head and shake my head because I know what we lost.