This is really funny. To meet state standards, school districts are outsourcing teaching/management of schools. Why have school districts at all? This report is from Wichita Falls Hirschi Middle School.

Interesting, I had not heard about this program. Sounds like they are better than the school, and the citizens save money.

That video is pretty shocking once they start interview the union and old hands.

Is everybody in that school district obese?

Wow, who woulda thought having accountability would work?

This is the way. Get the idiots who don't want students to learn out of there (all the TEA idiots). Students aren't there to socialize, do sports, etc. They are there to learn.

Until parents, students, teachers, districts, etc realize this, education will continue to suck.

A_Gang_Ag_06 said:

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Is everybody in that school district obese?

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Go to any poor district where almost 100% of the kids are on free/reduced lunches…..

so the ones pointing out that the grades slipped after the contract expired in the other school district...Why didn't they adopt what was working to maintain the growth they saw?

My wife is a principal and is a pretty staunch advocate for public education. We disagree on a decent bit about the subject. I had never heard about this, so I called her and was surprised to hear that she is completely behind it. I was optimistically skeptical about it but after talking to her, I'm on board.

Burrus86 said:

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I live in Wichita Falls, and I enjoy the daily Karen rants on social media with regard to this company forcing these kids to learn. If momma had spent less time *****ing on social media and more time holding her kid accountable, the school district would not have had to resort to this method.

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I'm sure the Karens would prefer more time be spent teaching trans rights and encouraging kids to consider chopadickoffameeez and addadicktomeez.

Is this, in essence, a way to get around the teachers' union?

My sister in law was in education for a long time up in PA rising to Principal and school district administrator. Then a private company (I think it was Edison something) offered her a well paying job to move to Hawaii to fulfill a contract with the state to consult with their education authorities to improve classroom instruction and teaching effectiveness.


She had the proven ideas and methods but experienced a lot of pushback when she went out into the field to individual schools throughout the islands. Why? She was a blonde Haole. Some cultures just cannot be helped because they don't want to be.

Sooooo..... we have a new administration that is focused on doing their duty to justify their financial payments by employing a new crop of well paid teaching staff that can be inferred to be both motivated and highly educated/experienced themselves? And it demonstrably works backed by data?

Figures the unions would be hating against it and the last dude just proved the point that it probably should be permanent.

Also, shout out to Ector jr high! Was a trash school in the late 90's and figures they would need the help from a third party. Also, same for Midland. Permian Basin well represented here!

What a surprise. American Federation of Teachers doesn't like this. Why? Because they are only concerned with letting teachers that don't do a good job, keep teaching.

Burdizzo said:

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KingofHazor said:

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The success of that company in raising test scores is an indictment on our public schools.

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We need more people to recognize this problem.

Back when I was fresh out of school in the early-90s I used to be a regular at the Capital City A&M Club lunches. One meeting we had a muckety-muck from A&M come speak. I think it was Provost or Dean of the College of Science. The topic came around to Mr. Bill. For those that don't remember him, Mr. Bill ran a tutoring service helping kids pass chemistry and calculus . He was making a killing. This guy from A&M said the university should embe embarrassed that a guy like Mr. Bill made a living because it meant A&M failed at its job.

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Yep, Fadi at A+ did the same thing in the 2000s. That dude made a killing off chemistry students.

Defund public schools.

KingofHazor said:

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Is this, in essence, a way to get around the teachers' union?

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Four things:

1) Get around Teachers Unions that prevent the firing of good teachers.

2) Get around bloated administrative staffs at schools. There are so many administrators that are focused on creating positive reports for grants / funding, that, if you eliminate the lot of them, you save the school money.

3) Get around the parents who keep pushing for disability crutches for their kids. School districts won't fight this because they lack the cajones to fight in court. A private company could eliminate that problem. If your school gets a reputation for going to court, a lot fewer parents will ask for unneeded help.

4) Require disclosure of citizenship status to enroll. You probably have to enroll the student whether they are a citizen or not, but, there is not a law (yet) preventing you from asking them to DISCLOSE their citizenship status. This will scare away 90% of illegals, which will reduce discipline problems enormously, and also help free up staff that is usually stuck in special ed.

5) Profit.

Burdizzo said:

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KingofHazor said:

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The success of that company in raising test scores is an indictment on our public schools.

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We need more people to recognize this problem.

Back when I was fresh out of school in the early-90s I used to be a regular at the Capital City A&M Club lunches. One meeting we had a muckety-muck from A&M come speak. I think it was Provost or Dean of the College of Science. The topic came around to Mr. Bill. For those that don't remember him, Mr. Bill ran a tutoring service helping kids pass chemistry and calculus . He was making a killing. This guy from A&M said the university should embe embarrassed that a guy like Mr. Bill made a living because it meant A&M failed at its job.

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Know several professors that if adequately teaching their students were even in their top three priorities, I would keel over in shock.

Being a T1 research school can be a double-edged sword.

Can also confirm that the tutoring services still make a killing and are overbooked every single semester as of five years ago.

Burrus86 said:

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I live in Wichita Falls, and I enjoy the daily Karen rants on social media with regard to this company forcing these kids to learn. If momma had spent less time *****ing on social media and more time holding her kid accountable, the school district would not have had to resort to this method.

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I would say that 95% of the time, the success rate of a school district is directly driven by the "quality of parent(s)" rate of the kids in that district. I have a cousin who used to teach Kindergarten in a crappy ETX district and it's amazing how many kids show up at 5 years old not knowing their shapes yet. The reality of our society is that less than half of parents care about their kids. In many cases, the parents are nowhere to be found, these kids are being raised by grandparents.

Maroon Elephant said:

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Burrus86 said:

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I live in Wichita Falls, and I enjoy the daily Karen rants on social media with regard to this company forcing these kids to learn. If momma had spent less time *****ing on social media and more time holding her kid accountable, the school district would not have had to resort to this method.

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I would say that 95% of the time, the success rate of a school district is directly driven by the "quality of parent(s)" rate of the kids in that district. I have a cousin who used to teach Kindergarten in a crappy ETX district and it's amazing how many kids show up at 5 years old not knowing their shapes yet. The reality of our society is that less than half of parents care about their kids. In many cases, the parents are nowhere to be found, these kids are being raised by grandparents.

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At my last and final teaching position teaching middle school, 100% of the "problem"' students were either drug babies or being raised by their grandparents.

Several things that can be said about this but to avoid going all over the place I'll stick to the most important point only.

Third Future, the contracted entity, proves what WE all already know that DISCIPLINE leads to better learning. What was Third Future's secret to eduction? Structured Discipline.

At the end of the video, Michael Hinojosa, a former Dallas ISD superintendent, questioned if Third Future's involvement is a permanent or temporary fix but used a school in Odessa, TX as the proof for his concern. In 2019 the school was rated an F then rose to a B in 2022, 2023, and 2024 when Third Future was contracted to teach then slid back down to a D in 2025 after Third Future left. Now who could have ever guessed if you removed discipline from the process that kid's ability to learn would regress?

how backwards does your mind have to be to say "we made a change, and during the course of that change, results improved, but when we removed the change, the results digressed" and then take that as a logic to question the value of the change....

same with the guy who said we shouldn't send money out of the district for better test results...
wrong... you should send every penny out of the district if the results are better for the kids...

Something that I wish the segment had shown is what was the cost to run the school before the outside gig was brought in and what were the all-in costs to run it with the outside company? I know they spoke to what they were paying the company monthly but I'm betting that was just one piece of the budget line.

Reason number one billion why we home school

I don't have the fix to public ed. My wife is not a career teacher. She spent much of her career in private industry, but decided she was tired of complaining about school without being willing to get on the ground floor and serving. She's in year 3. We are not a "public school advocate" by any means. I think her teaching has given us a unique perspective and has greatly increased my personal empathy for teachers. I am probably wrong on a lot of things here, but this is my perspective just hearing some of the things that go on.

Lost in the idea of "individualized" education and accommodations is the reality that this model is highly inefficient and breaks down with a subpar teacher who doesn't care or a kid with ****ty parents who don't care. Kids with parents who don't care eventually become a student who doesn't care, and all accountability gets lost.

Accommodations and not fully separating kids who are not even close to being on grade level is a disservice to all parties. Accommodation creep across students is absolutely ridiculous. One of my wife's math classes has half of the kids on some kind of plan, several kids with multiple accommodations (ranging from 5-15 types). This is the reality of the bull **** on the ground within a small district. Parents gets appeased in these meetings that the school is doing something by adding more to their menu of assistance types. I look at this and see situations where some kids are being robbed of the chance to truly struggle through something that is hard.

A small subset of kids are sucking up resources. I'm not sure that is inherently wrong, it is probably precisely the type of kid who requires more specific help, but the model being utilized is not working and inefficient. We have kids across the state with a similar learning disability or problem, but we think thousands of schools districts with thousands of different teaching styles are going to execute the education for these specific types of learners best? How does that make sense?

You're pretty spot on and those issues exist across all public school settings. For those that want these issues fixed you need to point your cannon at the federal government and the state government. Regardless of party affiliation, those two institutions stuck their noses under the tent and have walked an entire parade of idiocy right smack dab into the middle of the classrooms. Individual school districts, for the most part, don't have the flexibility to fix their own problems.

• If a school district wants to expel a kid for anything less than a second degree felony, they can't (state law).
• If a school district wants to consolidate most/all of their kids that fall under learning disabilities into a single classroom, allowing those that don't have the learning disability to operate more freely, they (for the most part) can't (federal restrictions).
• If your district is doing exceptionally well managing their budget and wants to lower their property tax levels significantly, they usually can't (state compression restrictions).

There's a triangle aspect to having a successful classroom/education dynamic: the three key aspects are the parents, the teacher, and the student. If one of those three is a mess, but the other two are strong, you can usually still have a modicum of success. But if two of the three don't care, you're screwed.

From an administrative standpoint, our school districts have become way too large, in my view. That results is too many $$$ going towards that rather than actual classroom improvement.

Stive said:

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Something that I wish the segment had shown is what was the cost to run the school before the outside gig was brought in and what were the all-in costs to run it with the outside company? I know they spoke to what they were paying the company monthly but I'm betting that was just one piece of the budget line.

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Maybe a good estimate would be basic allotment per student multiplied by enrollment. So, let's say $6k x 400-500 students, roughly $2.4m - $3m annually to educate kids. They reported to paying a bit over $300k/month.

Stive said:

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Something that I wish the segment had shown is what was the cost to run the school before the outside gig was brought in and what were the all-in costs to run it with the outside company? I know they spoke to what they were paying the company monthly but I'm betting that was just one piece of the budget line.

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$375,000 a month for Hirschi Middle School alone.

Didn't know DISD has almost 1300 H1B Visa holders.

The Collective said:

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Stive said:

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Something that I wish the segment had shown is what was the cost to run the school before the outside gig was brought in and what were the all-in costs to run it with the outside company? I know they spoke to what they were paying the company monthly but I'm betting that was just one piece of the budget line.

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Maybe a good estimate would be basic allotment per student multiplied by enrollment. So, let's say $6k x 400-500 students, roughly $2.4m - $3m annually to educate kids. They reported to paying a bit over $300k/month.

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Right. But I'm also betting a lot of their campus costs were still there (support staff, debt, utilities, etc) even when bringing in this outside group.

So if the $300k/month was there instead of 200k that it usually cost to pay their teachers that were replaced (just guessing and making a point...I have no clue what it cost them) , you're looking at a $1.2MM budget requirement increase for that campus. How many of the people here would be fine with a property tax increase reflective of that number across all school districts in Texas if it gave each group a significantly higher chance for success? In virtually every thread on F16 that includes public education as a topic, some will claim that increasing the dollars into a school is a total waste. A few others claim that "if only the public school had an increase in cash flow to hire the best teachers possible, then they'd stand a chance".

Here's a (seemingly) good example of paying a lot of money to an outside business, but the results are pretty good. Pretty intriguing data point.