*Darius “Cooks” Williams says some of his high school seniors at Houston‘s Phillis Wheatley High School struggled to read and write during his second day in the classroom. Days later, Wheatley earned an A in Texas’ newly released school accountability ratings.
That contradiction has turned Williams’ emotional viral video into something bigger than another alarming story about American literacy.
Williams, the food personality better known online as Darius Cooks, is listed by Wheatley as a Career and Technical Education teacher. He said he became emotional after giving seniors an exercise requiring them to read two sentences and write one.
“These are 17- and 18-year-old kids, and they couldn’t fill in four words,” Williams told the Houston Chronicle.
But his account is now colliding with competing evidence — and questions about the messenger himself.
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An A-Rated School With Students Who Need Help
Wheatley’s new A matters because this isn’t just any Houston high school.
Years of poor performance at Wheatley helped trigger the state’s 2023 takeover of the Houston Independent School District. The school has since made dramatic gains under state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles.
Asked about Williams’ video, Miles didn’t deny that HISD still has students struggling academically.
“Is that new information?” Miles said, according to FOX 26 Houston.
“I don’t think that’s new information,” he added, describing below-grade-level reading and math as longstanding problems the district has been working to address.
That helps explain how Williams’ experience and Wheatley’s A can coexist. A campus accountability grade reflects schoolwide performance measures and improvement; it doesn’t certify that every student reads or writes at grade level.
Still, the juxtaposition is striking: a school once synonymous with HISD’s academic failure has climbed to an A while its own superintendent acknowledges that serious learning gaps remain.
A Former Wheatley Teacher Pushes Back
Williams’ description of his students isn’t going unchallenged.
Former Wheatley English teacher Traci Wade-Tousant, who says she taught many members of the current senior class, disputed the sweeping impression created by his video.
She described them as “some of THE strongest readers and writers Wheatley has seen in a long time” and said students had completed advanced coursework and college-level writing assignments, Atlanta Black Star reported.
That doesn’t establish that Williams didn’t encounter students who struggled with his assignment. It does mean his experience on Day Two shouldn’t automatically become a diagnosis of Wheatley’s entire senior class.
And the widely shared video itself needs careful description. Williams says he broke down during class, but the viral post shows him recounting what he says happened. EURweb found no reliable evidence establishing that the video was a staged classroom “skit,” as some coverage has characterized it.
Then People Recognized Darius Cooks
Williams entered Wheatley with a public history extending far beyond food videos.
In 2019, the Georgia Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division announced a $145,750 consent judgment involving Williams and Above 701 Inc. to resolve allegations that the company operated an illegal credit-repair business. The agreement included $110,000 in consumer restitution and a civil penalty.
Williams later disputed broader accusations against him, telling Black Enterprise that people were misinterpreting the credit-repair case and denying allegations that he had scammed consumers.
His history doesn’t prove his classroom account is false. Nor does a controversial messenger make literacy problems disappear.
But it does explain why some viewers aren’t willing to accept his viral narrative without scrutiny.
The Real Story Isn’t One Viral Teacher
That’s ultimately where this story lands.
Williams may have encountered students with serious literacy deficits. Wade-Tousant may also be right that reducing Wheatley’s seniors to kids who “can’t read” misrepresents students who have demonstrated far greater ability.
And HISD can legitimately celebrate Wheatley’s extraordinary turnaround while acknowledging that some students remain behind.
Those realities can exist simultaneously.
The most consequential question isn’t whether Darius Cooks deserves to become the face of America’s literacy crisis.
It’s what an A school rating actually tells families when individual students inside that school can still require substantial academic intervention.
Wheatley’s A says something important about how far the once-struggling school has come under HISD’s state-appointed leadership.
Williams’ video — disputed, complicated and delivered by an imperfect messenger — is a reminder that an A doesn’t necessarily mean every child has arrived.
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