VISITED WESLEY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL:

In 1996, I was having a hard time putting up with Leonard Merrell as the "new" superintendent.  He did not like being governed by the Katy ISD school board, and he especially didn't like any of my questions and mostly he refused to answer them.

In my opinion his idea of running the school district was to do what he wanted to do, and to hell with the Board!

One of the things I wanted the Board to do was visit Wesley Elementary School, a Houston ISD school in Acres Home. He refused to organize a trip for us or recommend to the Board that visiting this school was a good idea.  In the meantime, he had carted a bunch of administrators and me around the state to listen to leftist ideas about education. (On one trip, I had been ill, but I took my medicine so that I could go to Dallas.  When we got there and had to sit in a rather warm room and listen to their malarkey, I just fell asleep.  It embarrassed the others, but I thought it was a perfect statement of how I felt about the stupidity of what they were saying!)

Wesley at the time had as its principal, Thaddeus Lott.  Mr. Lott understood that math and reading were not being learned by the students in his school, and so he looked to Saxon math and phonics to fix the problem at his school.

Those programs were very successful, to say the least.  The problem that was encountered was that what Mr. Lott understood to be successful ran counter to the prevailing leadership in HISD and the State of Texas.  No one wanted students to be successful. No money in that.  No future in that for those in control.  So those people thwarted Mr. Lott at every turn.  His success breached their certainty and mindless beliefs for a while, but eventually they wore him down. 

George Scott, then with the Tax Research Association, had made it his business to proclaim to the world what was happening at Wesley with it's mostly black inner city and very poor students.  When those students made better grades than half the elementary schools in Katy ISD on the TAAS test, we had a field day telling everyone.

I wanted the Board members to go to this school and see what these students could do.  If one recalls, George Scott, and three of the board members [Stanley Thompson, Ken Burton and me] had invited John Saxon to a KISD board meeting where he offered to provide Saxon math textbooks for one high school and one junior high for free!  Our board didn't even have the courtesy to say thank you for the offer and for his effort to fly himself down here from Oklahoma to make the presentation! 

In the fall of 1995, I went to Wesley to see for myself what they were doing.  I talked fellow board member Jim Brasier into going with me. 

What we saw were kindergarten students who, by the end of the 10th week of school, could read a recent copy of The Houston Chronicle newspaper.  Nothing beats proof!

Their math performance was also extraordinary.  But, as I said, success wasn't in the vernacular of the socialists who were creating the ruination of our public schools.  The rest of the Board didn't even want to hear about it.

Just thought all of you should know that. MM