A Houston ISD teacher at Wheatley High School says he broke down in his own classroom this week after watching several seniors struggle to complete a simple writing exercise on just the second day of classes. Darius Williams, a career and technical education teacher at the historically embattled campus, described the moment in an Instagram video that has drawn attention to a gap between the district's official academic turnaround and what he says he is seeing firsthand with his students.
Williams, who is identified in HISD's staff directory under NES CTE for a non-foundational program of study, said the students in question were 17 and 18 years old and expected to graduate and potentially head to college. According to Click2Houston, he asked students to fill in four words as part of the assignment, and some could not do it. He said the students appeared capable of verbally defending their reasoning but struggled to transfer that reasoning into written material.
“I have seniors who cannot read and cannot write,” Williams said, according to the same report. He added that he did not yet know where the underlying problem originated, noting it was only the second day of the school year. Williams, who wears an HISD lanyard displaying Wheatley in the video, said the experience was enough to make him break down in front of his own class.
A Campus With a High-Stakes History
Wheatley High School is not just any Houston campus. It was the central trigger for the Texas Education Agency's 2023 state takeover of the entire Houston Independent School District, after the school racked up seven consecutive unacceptable academic performance ratings between 2011 and 2019, according to the Texas Tribune. That history has made Wheatley's performance a closely watched barometer for whether the state's unprecedented intervention is actually working.
By that measure, the official numbers tell a story of recovery. Wheatley rose to a B rating in 2024 before earning a C rating in the August 2025 accountability cycle, joining 94% of HISD campuses that scored an A, B, or C grade, per Community Impact. Yet the state has not loosened its grip: the Texas Education Agency extended its takeover of HISD by two additional years through June 1, 2027 despite that districtwide test growth, as reported by K-12 Dive.
Demographics and a Regional Literacy Problem
Wheatley's student body is 96.4% economically disadvantaged and 61.5% Black, according to Texas Education Agency demographic data cited by the Texas Tribune. Those figures sit inside a broader regional pattern documented by the Barbara Bush Houston Literacy Foundation, whose Houston Adult Literacy Blueprint estimates that roughly one in three adults in Harris County, more than a million residents, is functionally illiterate and lacks the basic reading and writing skills needed for daily life and employment.
Williams teaches in a non-foundational CTE program of study, part of a district framework HISD defines as career and technical education designed to give students real-world experience and skills for a chosen career, while preparing them for industry certifications. Some HISD CTE programs also offer dual-credit opportunities that let students earn college credit while still in high school, though it remains unclear whether Williams' specific program includes that option.
Budget Fights and Program Cuts Loom Over CTE
The classroom struggles surfaced as HISD's CTE offerings themselves face scrutiny. In January, the district held public feedback sessions on proposed adjustments and potential cuts to select magnet and CTE programs at several high schools, including Wheatley, according to the Houston Defender. At the same time, HISD has committed to major capital investment in career education elsewhere in the district, entering the procurement phase in July for Southside Launchpad, a $100 million, 215,000-square-foot CTE facility meant to serve nearly 4,000 students across 17 programs of study.
Compensation for teachers like Williams has also been in flux under Superintendent Mike Miles' New Education System model. Starting salaries for certified NES high school teachers rose to as much as $90,000 in 2024 alongside longer daily instruction hours, as Hoodline previously reported. In May, Miles proposed a budget model that would centralize teacher salaries away from campus-controlled budgets and tie future pay to a pay-for-performance evaluation system, while adding a $500 per-student academic need subsidy for NES campuses.
A Model Now Spreading Statewide
The stakes around Wheatley extend beyond Houston. As of June, top HISD administrators and former executives from Miles' charter network, Third Future Schools, have been appointed by the TEA to lead state takeovers in other Texas districts, including Beaumont ISD and Lake Worth ISD, according to the Houston Chronicle. That expansion means the instructional and accountability approach being tested at Wheatley is increasingly shaping how the state intervenes in struggling districts elsewhere.
For now, Williams' account stands as a firsthand classroom counterpoint to the district's improving letter grades. He has not offered an explanation for the gap between his students' verbal reasoning and their writing ability, saying only that it was too early in the year to know where the breakdown was occurring.
