Inappropriate reading assignment ends up in HISD 8th-grade classrooms

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- A school handout meant to be distributed to eighth-grade students as a reading assignment has Houston ISD teachers sounding an alarm.

ABC13 is told this isn't the only mistake to make it to the classroom, but it is one of the more troubling.

The text is a portion of "Gather Together In My Name" by Maya Angelou. The excerpt, meant for eighth graders, is being questioned as it depicts a scene between a man and a woman in a hotel room.

The passage is about a woman deciding if she wants to be intimate with a man and mentions drinking whiskey and passion, among other mature topics.

"How are you going to justify this to a parent?" Corina Ortiz, with the Houston Federation of Teachers Union, asked.

Ortiz said while this is an egregious example of errors making their way to the classroom, there have been countless factual and content errors being caught by teachers.

"We have teachers that have called and said of the curriculum that they sent me for this week is wrong. I have to go back and make adjustments and make it correct so that way when I put it on my board, it's going to come out looking like it's professional and it's correct," Ortiz said.

Ortiz said teachers are now having to spend precious time reviewing, correcting, and rewriting materials so students get accurate and appropriate resources.

"It goes into the night. It's not a day anymore, it goes into the night," Ortiz said.

Ortiz blames errors like this on HISD Superintendent Mike Miles' decision to make cuts in the curriculum department and says the federation has offered their help in this area.

"We have offered help from our (American) Federation of Teachers Union. We have offered to bring in specialists to come in and help and assist with curriculum, assist with anything we can, and the answer was a matter of fact, 'No,'" Ortiz said.

ABC13 reached out to HISD about this text, and the district sent the following statement:

"Let me begin by assuring parents and families that the curriculum and lessons given to our students will be age-appropriate and meet the high standards that I set when I was appointed in June. The issue with the 8th-grade curriculum was discovered, corrected, and all campuses have been directed to ensure the right lessons are shared with children tomorrow. While the issue was identified and corrected before it impacted students or instruction, this does not meet the standards I set for the HISD team, and it does not meet and it does not meet the commitment we made to our educators and students. I have directed the Chief Academic Officer to review all the systems and processes related to curriculum creation to ensure that inappropriate content never gets to classrooms. In addition, I have already began taking steps to strengthen our curriculum development and review process. We are paying a team of HISD teacher experts from each grade level and content area to review curriculum half-time. They will make our lessons better and I'm grateful they will be joining the team. Next, we will be reaching out to engage our teachers district-wide and in our divisions to get feedback on our curricular resources we provide. This will help us strengthen lessons, catch errors more quickly so teachers don't have to, and give teachers the support we promised them."

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