[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 those at military bases, except that they are sized for impressionable and excitable 11 to 13-year-olds who wear uni- forms and practice with rifles in militaristic regulation.
Miles told the Chronicle his goal is to improve students’ habits such as showing up on time, interacting with adults courteously, and demonstrating a “level of excellence in both mind, body and spirit … I want it to be run like a rigorous academy.”
Community members are apprehensive about bringing a military academy to the neighbor-
hood since recruitment often targets marginal- ized citizens in low-income populations to more closely achieve
their quotas, which have been unmet for years.
Cullen Middle alumni and current parent Sandra Hicks wishes
HISD would focus on more urgent challenges, like the dearth of bus routes, before spending scarce funds on promoting aspiring warriors.
Other agree, noting that military service-related injuries can persist over a lifetime, obliterating veterans, and their families, and they say the United States is inadequately protecting our service people. The suicide rate for veterans ages 20-24 is estimated at two to four times the national average for civilians, and 20% of the country’s homeless population has previously served in uniform.
