Houston ISD parents and students chastised Superintendent Mike Miles during a Thursday board meeting for championing “data over anecdotes” as justification for his sweeping reforms.
The critics said cherry-picked statistics don’t outweigh their lived experience. Miles has said that data-driven initiatives such as standardized test scores are the only reliable way to measure student improvement, and it’s working: HISD recently announced it has zero F-rated campuses and doubled the number of A- and B-rated schools.
In a mid-September Houston City Council meeting, the state-appointed superintendent doubled down when Mayor Pro Tem Martha Castex-Tatum said she’d heard from residents who don’t believe Miles’ data. Some have accused HISD of manipulating the numbers by pulling strong students from college-prep courses to artificially inflate test scores.
“We’ve been at this for two years,” Miles said at the time. “You can have all the conspiracy theories you want. The fact is the fact and the data comes from TEA, and the people who do believe it are the parents and the kids who are succeeding.”
When a crowd at the council meeting jeered at Miles, the superintendent dismissed the audience as “unprofessional” and said they represented a small number of HISD stakeholders.
Current goals are focused on achievement measured by the STAAR test and College, Career and Military Readiness test and tied to the Measures of Academic Progress assessment given three times a year, said Alison LiVecchi, a strategic innovation leader with HISD.
LiVecchi proposed updating metrics to revise targets and reflect changes within the MAP program and using the current academic year as a “baseline year,” noting that the progress measures would be re-evaluated again in August 2026.
Many parents and students took issue with the changes, with one saying she wasn’t opposed to change; she was opposed to chaos.
Some held signs that said, “Fire the Liar.” When a child referred to Miles as an “evil character,” the crowd applauded and one audience member shouted, “You go, girl!” A woman who tried to translate for one of the speakers was asked to leave because she used profanity after being told the interpreter had to be an HISD employee.
An attendee at the Houston ISD board meeting on Thursday held up a sign that read, “Fire the Liar.” Credit: April Towery
Sixth-grader Edita-Sage Bitner said she didn’t think MAP scores should be used to measure progress.
“We can’t look back to see what we missed or how to improve,” she said. “It just gives us a number. Learning is so much more than that. I may do well on tests but the skills that matter most — creativity, teamwork, problem-solving and communication aren’t measured by MAP or STAAR. Real learning happens through teacher feedback, reflection and meaningful projects, not computer tests.”
Several parents said they felt dismissed by Miles’ public statements that data matters more than anecdotes.
Trey Comstock said an anecdote is the story of one person, but “when hundreds and thousands of people across socioeconomic status and ethnicity tell very similar stories, that is a significant trend in the qualitative data that something powerful, generalizable and, in this case, negative, is happening in our city.”
Other parents complained about families and teachers leaving the district due to “endless worksheets” and unconventional learning methods.
During Thursday’s meeting, Miles highlighted the results of a report in which 9,300 principals and teachers were surveyed anonymously.
“Principals are overwhelmingly in support of the things that we’re doing,” he said. “They understand what we’re doing and the path we’re headed on and principals very favorably think that their work is connected to the district’s plan. They think they’re adding value, and they are.”
The same parents who chastised Miles at the beginning of the meeting scoffed as he reviewed data showing approval ratings well above 90 percent. “It’s not credible,” one woman shouted.
Almost 100 percent of leaders believe that working at HISD has grown their instructional leadership, Miles said.
“Overall, you can see our leaders are well bought-in, they’re well supported and they’re doing the work,” Miles said.
HISD Superintendent Mike Miles said teacher perception about the district is improving. Credit: Houston ISD
When the numbers skewed low, such as 44 percent of teachers saying the district was headed in the right direction, Miles said the response was improving and higher than the national average.
“Teaching is a tough job and it’s probably never going to get easier in this day and age when there’s so much that has to be done to help our kids,” he said.
Durham Elementary School parent Jill Tucker suggested an independent survey of teachers, parents and students.
Durham Elementary School parent Jill Tucker spoke out against HISD’s temporary goal progress measures. Credit: April Towery
“Over the past several months, you’ve heard our story,” she said. “You’ve heard about the chaos that began before the first day of school, the high-performing teachers who were reassigned and the students left behind to substitutes and screens. Teachers have been pushed out of jobs they loved; families left schools they helped build and sustain; children lost stability and connection.”
“Your leadership has created a culture driven by fear and compliance,” Tucker added. “Our stories aren’t isolated incidents but they are districtwide trends, and we are living proof of what your policies have done to our schools.”
Houston ISD Wednesday announced it was exploring a new “Level 5” of autonomy for the best of its high schools which would allow them to set up partnerships with other organizations and form their own management boards.
These partners – non-profits or charters — would manage the principal and the school. Partnerships would operate for a minimum of three years and no more than 10, prior to renewal.
There are asterisks. Only high schools can apply and the change must be approved by the state-appointed Board of Managers. An eligible school must have had an A rating from the Texas Education Agency for the past four years. Also, that the schools “have less than 25% Black-White and Hispanic-White achievement gaps on the ELA and Math STAAR exams.”
So why would HISD want to hand off its most successful schools containing some of its best and brightest, most accomplished students to some other entity?
In a press statement, Superintendent Mike Miles called this “a bold opportunity for Houston ISD’s most successful and innovative school leaders to enjoy a greater level of flexibility, increased resources, and the stability that comes from being managed by their own non-profit board. By enshrining student outcome targets, including achievement gap benchmarks in the performance management contract, HISD will ensure that these schools continue their track-record of serving all students well, while ushering in an era of increased innovation for these schools.”
And elsewhere in the press release: “HISD believes that with increased autonomy, these high schools can continue to innovate while preserving the unique characteristics and programs that make them beloved to their students, families, alumni, staff, and broader community.”
Frequent critics of the Miles administration like Ruth Kravetz of Community Voices for Education interpret the Level 5 offering in an entirely different way.
“They’re doing this to placate the parents.”
What she’s referring to is the increasing outcry from parents at some HISD schools afraid that the New Education System introduced by Miles with its timed instruction and daily testing will come to their schools. They see no need for it in their already successful schools. They don’t want it for their kids.
“This is the off-ramp from NES,” Kravetz says, pointing out that this is only open to a select group of schools and no matter how much other schools and their parents might want to do this, they don’t get a chance to do so.
The district already has seen a drop in enrollment. Parents and other community members continue to show up for the public comment section of board meetings to express their dismay with the changes in teaching methods that go beyond just the 130 schools officially falling under the NES umbrella.
Going farther, Kravetz refers to this as the coming “Balkanization of HISD,” breaking it down into smaller units, independent of the other, and as she sees it, leading to more charters in the district. To be clear, HISD already has in-district charters. The question as she sees it is how many more will there be?
Senate Bill 1882 set up the partnership legislation but the earliest this could happen would be for the 2026-27 school year. Schools that choose this path would receive some extra funding for students, but whether they could sustain themselves with operating costs, HVAC units breaking down, plumbing needs is another question, Kravetz says.
Other questions: would top level, veteran teachers want to make the move to the new charters the schools would become? Or would the schools be filled with even more novice and/or uncertified teachers? Would students and their parents want to move to a charter?
She points to the closure of the highly rated Mount Carmel Academy that was funded by HISD but because of declining enrollment closed in 2024 despite being open since 2009.
HISD makes an absolutely true statement when it says: “Before the state intervention, all of HISD’s 273 schools operated with a great deal of autonomy with very little accountability. This led to grave inequities and the failure to provide high-quality educational opportunities for the vast majority of HISD students.”
What many parents have objected to, however, is the level of centralization in the new HISD, the disappearance of librarians and what they see as an administration bent on securing for high test scores rather than providing a well-rounded education.
In 2022, then Board President Judith Cruz and board member Sue Deigaard unsuccessfully proposed letting any HISD school that wanted to become a charter, do so as long as 60 percent or more of parents agreed to the change. Opponents declared they didn’t want HISD to turn into a charter district and that this would undermine public schools in HISD.
New Orleans, which went all charter after Katrina, was frequently mentioned as a failed experiment.
The difference in this latest proposal is that gaining Level 5 autonomy would be restricted to just a few schools and it would still need to be approved by the Board of Managers.
HISD administrators have already met with principals about this initiative. “Earlier this school year, HISD staff met with the principals of those high schools that meet the high standard for Level 5 autonomy to share information about the initiative, discuss its benefits to the schools, and gauge the school leaders’ initial interest in exploring the process of gaining further autonomy. In turn, eligible school leaders have begun an informal process of engaging their teachers, staff, PTO/PTA leaders, and key stakeholders.”
It should be noted, this highest level of autonomy is far from a sure thing.As the press release noted: “While HISD is in the early stages of exploring increased autonomy with eligible schools, no final decisions have been made by either the District or schools, who we expect to deeply engage with their staff and key stakeholders before moving forward.”
Demetrius Lott has wanted to be a football coach since he was a child. He has a four-year degree in physical education but he’s missing a certificate that would allow him to call plays on the sidelines rather than clean bathrooms at Cypress-Fairbanks ISD’s Ken Pridgeon Stadium under the Friday night lights.
He’s been working as the head custodian at Bleyl Middle School in the Cy-Fair school district for almost 20 years. Last summer, his local American Federation of Teachers union president Nikki Cowart gave Lott a nudge.
“She was such a blessing to me,” Lott said. “She didn’t know I had a degree. She said they had a program that could help me get certified. I was just like, sign me up.”
CFISD is one of just a few districts in Texas that partners with iTeach for a low-cost certification program exclusively for union members. The hope is that once prospective teachers finish their certification, they’ll be hired at Cy-Fair, the union president said.
“I have so many paraprofessionals who would love to become certified teachers and have already dedicated years of service to Cy-Fair,” Cowart said. “They just can’t flippin’ afford it.”
Lott, 47, says he hopes his story will inspire others to take the licensing classes while maintaining non-classroom jobs. He says he daydreams about coaching while he’s working at Bleyl Middle School, mopping floors and emptying trash.
He started his certification program in June and hopes to have his teaching certificate by spring break. He’s already referred to as “Coach” by his fellow union members but is following a rigorous schedule to “do things right” and actually earn the title, he said.
He goes in early every weekday to the middle school for observation hours, works from 3 to 11:30 p.m., and does his online certification coursework in the middle of the night and on weekends. He’s required to attend an in-person, seven-hour certification class one Saturday a month.
But Lott is an exception. Thousands of teachers across Texas are working toward their certification while already teaching in a classroom, something that many parents and students call outrageous. Unlicensed teachers are expected to provide an education when they haven’t yet been certified in the subject matter and aren’t familiar with best practices and classroom protocols.
And if they don’t finish their certification in a two-year time frame, they’ll be fired, creating another empty classroom and leaving the would-be teacher looking for a new career.
More than half of Texas’ new-to-profession teachers are uncertified, and as public education enrollment drops and more teachers resign or are terminated, the likelihood that the people educating local youth aren’t certified has spiked.
For their part, many seeking to become teachers recall fond memories of an educator who believed in them when they were a child. They want to give back and make the world a better place, they say. But public education has changed, seasoned teachers tell the Houston Press.
Last year, Houston ISD reported 2,097 uncertified teachers; the number has since grown to about 2,500, or one in four, according to district data. HISD Superintendent Mike Miles, who is himself uncertified, said at a board meeting last week that 1,700 teachers were uncertified last year.
However, there have been various reports that indicate the number is much higher. Miles said the district experienced some of the highest growth in its history last year, “because the principals and executive directors of instruction help teachers grow quickly.”
The latest available numbers reflect that there were 861 uncertified teachers at Aldine ISD, 202 at Cy-Fair ISD, 111 at Spring Branch ISD, and 73 at Fort Bend ISD during the 2023-24 school year.
Statewide, about 42,103, or 12 percent, of public school teachers are uncertified, according to the Texas Education Agency. The number has steadily climbed since the 2019-2020 school year, when there were 12,908 uncertified teachers statewide.
The number of uncertified teachers has spiked steadily since 2019. Credit: Texas Education Agency
Cameron Campbell served as a head coach and athletic director for the KIPP Houston charter school and now works as an entrepreneur and motivational speaker. Katy ISD, where Campbell’s kids are enrolled, reported no uncertified teachers last school year.
Campbell said he supports having professionals get some classroom experience while they’re working toward certification — particularly those who have already had a career in a trade. A retired engineer teaching Algebra I, a hairstylist teaching cosmetology, or a mechanic teaching shop class could offer a fresh perspective, Campbell said.
“My point of view is probably different from [that of] a lot of progressive political folks,” he said. “I think it’s actually a really healthy thing. I know a ton of retired professional athletes, and most times, the first thing they want to do is go coach at their kids’ school or find a school that needs help and contribute and give back.”
“They’re qualified but not certified,” he added. “You should see the looks on their faces when you tell someone who played in the NFL for 10 years and won a Super Bowl that they can’t coach a seventh-grade C team football team.”
This theory doesn’t appeal to everyone. The advocacy group Raise Your Hand Texas found that students with new uncertified teachers lose about four months of learning in reading and three months in math unless the teacher has previous experience working in a public school. Forty-three percent of first-time, uncertified hires in Texas teach elementary and early education students, according to Raise Your Hand.
More than half of new-to-profession teachers are uncertified. Credit: Texas Education Agency
There’s a lot of talk among seasoned educators about pedagogy — the method and practice of teaching — which comes from classroom experience, said Ruth Kravetz, cofounder of Houston-based Community Voices for Public Education.
Kravetz says teaching is a craft and a skill. “If a lady was cutting hair the year before — not that cutting hair is a bad thing — but it’s completely unconnected to teaching,” that’s cause for concern, she said.
Kravetz added that charter schools disproportionately hire uncertified teachers, which is important to note when comparing Houston ISD data to the statewide numbers — but she’s quick to point out that the uncertified teacher “epidemic” is not a manufactured crisis.
“This is a crisis,” she said. “You’ve got an epidemic of teachers fleeing the field. Why are people leaving in high numbers? Partially COVID, partially pay, and partially because test scores have so narrowed the curriculum and the concept of what constitutes quality instruction. The highest turnover is in the highest-need communities.”
And those longtime teachers are being replaced by uncertified and young, inexperienced teachers, she added.
“Just because you’ve been teaching for 10 years doesn’t mean you’re good but if you are a first-year anything, it means you’re not as good as you can be, and in some cases, you’re really, really bad,” Kravetz said. “It does matter if a high percentage of teachers are uncertified. Some people are extraordinary without credentialing and training. There are naturals.”
“But most people, you have to practice at things to get good at them. Shell [Chemicals] would not survive if one in four of their soap and detergent chemists making the laundry detergent were fresh out of college. There are just things people learn on the ground.”
Texas Tech University professor Jacob Kirksey studied the Lone Star State’s uncertified teacher crisis for a policy brief published last year and updated in April.
“There’s a staggering rise in the employment of uncertified teachers, driven by acute staffing shortages and the flexibility offered by the state’s District of Innovation plans,” Kirksey said in the study. “This reliance on uncertified educators is raising alarms among educators and policymakers alike. Concerns are mounting over whether these teachers, often entering the classroom having never worked in public schools, are equipped to meet the demands of today’s classrooms.”
When Cy-Fair ISD became a District of Innovation in 2024, “it opened up some gray area around non-certified,” allowing the district to pull certified teachers to lead classrooms that cover topics they’re not certified in, Cowart said.
Kirksey’s research shows that uncertified teachers who have already been in a classroom tend to complete low-quality online programs, which have been linked to poor student outcomes. Additionally, students with uncertified new teachers are significantly underdiagnosed for dyslexia and are more absent from school, according to Kirksey’s research.
That’s why Cy-Fair is touting its partnership with iTeach, which helps cover certification costs and puts prospective teachers through a rigorous program that includes instruction techniques before they lead a classroom.
“If you aren’t, at the bare minimum, going through an alternative certification program, I just feel like you’re not getting that pedagogy of classroom management,” Cowart said.
HISD has gotten desperate to fill classrooms since a 2023 state takeover ushered in Superintendent Miles, appointed by TEA Commissioner Mike Morath, and a handpicked board of managers — and ushered out more than 7,000 district employees over a two-year period.
TEA Commissioner Mike Morath appointed Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles in 2023 as part of a state takeover. Credit: Margaret Downing
Teachers have cited low pay, a lack of support, and a punitive environment as their reasons for leaving. Many have lamented the rigid, formulaic teaching models Miles initiated, such as using AI-generated PowerPoint presentations.
Miles said at an October 9 board meeting that the district is in an “age of teacher shortages and lack of certification” for the foreseeable future.
“Just like any other district in Texas and the United States, every large district, we’ll see the need to hire teachers without certification or who have to be working toward certification,” he said. “The reason we’ve been successful even with the number of teachers without certification is that our model is designed to grow teachers quickly. Teachers who have never been in the classroom have to grow quickly in order for their kids to do well.”
Last week, Houston Endowment announced a $450,000 grant to the education nonprofit TNTP to support four Houston-area school districts — Fort Bend, Houston, Humble, and Pasadena ISDs — in implementing plans to increase their number of certified teachers.
“The grant comes at a pivotal moment for Texas schools as more than half of teachers hired statewide in the 2023–24 school year were unlicensed,” Houston Endowment officials said in a press release. “Under House Bill 2, signed into law in June 2025, school districts must reduce their reliance on uncertified teachers in core subjects to no more than 20 percent by the 2026–27 school year, with the cap dropping incrementally to just 5 percent by the 2029-30 school year.”
Where Have All the Teachers Gone?
Houston ISD announced recently that nearly 450 employees were cut or reassigned last month amid enrollment declines. A district spokesperson said at the time that performance and certification were prioritized when the cuts were made, and 160 uncertified teachers lost their jobs.
More than 230 teachers were reassigned to adjust to lower enrollment. At least 28 of those fired were union members working as teacher apprentices, and the Houston Federation of Teachers has said it plans to appeal. The union has also sued the school district for pay bonuses and is planning to go to trial on October 22.
HFT Chief of Staff Corina Ortiz said prospective HISD teachers are “burning the midnight oil,” taking online classes while working full-time jobs and paying thousands out of pocket to get their certification, only to be fired before they can complete it.
“It’s truly distressing to people who just want to come in and help kids. They want to teach kids,” Ortiz said. “It’s a lot of time, it’s a lot of energy and it’s difficult to finish that program. It’s even more difficult now because what we’re finding with this group of young teachers that are uncertified, they have no mentoring. In Mike Miles’ world, it seems like teachers are dispensable and certifications aren’t necessary.”
The union has won a few appeals to have teachers reinstated but the most common outcome is a settlement agreement, Ortiz said. HFT has filed 309 grievances against HISD in the past year.
“Here’s the travesty of it all,” Ortiz said. “These folks come into the profession wanting to be teachers. Because of the experience they’ve had and how negative it’s been, the majority of them decide they don’t want to be anywhere near teaching. My fear is we’re going to lose several generations of kids if education remains in the hands of people who are driven not only by money but by political agendas.”
Cowart, the Cy-Fair union official, said she understands the concern about uncertified teachers. She said she was baffled when she heard at a conference that some districts are hiring “PTO mommies” to teach because they need a body in the front of the room.
The Houston Press spoke to several former Houston ISD teachers who either recently resigned or were fired. They all said it was difficult to work under the Mike Miles administration, and it wasn’t what they’d signed up for when they got into education.
One woman taught French for 14 years in Spring Branch ISD and signed a contract with the Houston school district last year. She was gone by May, claiming she was constantly written up for minor infractions such as leaving the classroom to use the bathroom.
She has untreated anxiety and panic attacks. She no longer has health insurance and she’s looking for employment at small businesses in her Montrose neighborhood.
“I’ll never teach again,” she said.
Librarian Brandie Dowda was fired from Houston ISD two years ago and took a higher-paying job at Katy ISD. HISD has downsized to fewer than 30 librarians throughout the district because “Mike Miles doesn’t believe in libraries,” Dowda said.
“We were kind of the unwanted stepchild,” she said. “It’s highly ironic that the solution to literacy issues is to get rid of libraries and librarians. Make it make sense.”
The district has implied that the teachers who are leaving were not doing a good job, but Dowda says the teachers who are leaving are actually experienced, certified educators who don’t want to teach off AI-generated PowerPoints.
“There are tons of uncertified teachers,” she said. The draw is the potential to make an $80,000 salary, “but they don’t read the fine print,” which Dowda says outlines performance measures that are constantly changing.
“They get fired if they aren’t certified within two years but most of them don’t make it that long,” she said. “Teaching is a really difficult job, even if that’s what you love to do.”
“Honestly, at this point, if the TEA stepped away and we got rid of Mike Miles, and we had an elected board and hired a superintendent with a background in education, it would take at least a decade to repair the damage,” she added. “It’s that bad. They’re scrambling to empty water out of a sinking ship that they poked the holes in.”
According to the Texas Association of School Boards, districts have to notify parents when an unlicensed teacher is overseeing their child’s classroom. HISD parent Kathleen Zinn recently shared an email she wrote to administrators at Lanier Middle School to advise them that her daughter was without an algebra teacher for almost a month.
“Three weeks is ABSURD!” Zinn wrote in the email, for which she didn’t receive an immediate response. “Plus, it does not address or excuse the piss poor job done by [a department director] — telling children to teach themselves. And shaming them for being confused and asking questions. The kids were told that if unable to figure out the work, they (meaning the students) are not Lanier Leaders because they don’t embody the problem-solver IB characteristic. Absolutely shaming and disrespecting these kids. Unacceptable.”
Houston ISD administrators presented data at an October 9 board meeting. Credit: Houston ISD
Another former HISD teacher said she was laid off due to low enrollment at her school but found out days later her position was filled by someone else.
Danielle Cockrell, a certified high school algebra teacher at Cypress Lakes, changed careers after she was laid off from Lucent Technologies in 2002.
“My unemployment ran out and my sister-in-law suggested I start subbing,” she said. Cockrell slid into a paraprofessional role when the position opened up and found herself frequently alone at the front of a classroom because the assigned teacher was often absent. School officials told her that if she was going to do the job, she ought to get the certification.
She got the license and is now vice president of the Cy-Fair AFT union. She says it’s a hard time to be a teacher. The major issues facing teachers in her district are “pay and being respected,” she said. Public education has changed, she added.
“Now we have students who are coming to school, I’m just going to be honest, to sell dope, or because it’s a place where they can have food, or for social aspects,” Cockrell said. “The last thing they’re coming to school for is academics. If you come into education thinking that everything is going to be like it was when you were in school, no. If they’re not flexible enough to understand and work with students who are not like them, they’re going to leave.”
Students want to talk about immigration raids, Trump policies, and Sean “Diddy” Combs, but Cockrell says she directs them back to math. She has some youth in her classes who come to school hungry and thirsty. She buys cases of water at Costco so she can share with students. Before a statewide cell phone ban went into effect this year, Cockrell traded her students a bottle of water if they’d leave their phones on her desk for the duration of the class.
“There are days I would love to go back into corporate, but when you see a student who thought they couldn’t learn, or they finally get the concept, or you see a future in a child, it makes those hard days worth it,” Cockrell said.
She ran into a Cy-Fair graduate while she was out doing Christmas shopping a few years ago. He was enrolled in college and introduced Cockrell to his fiancée.
“I was ready to quit that day. I would rather flip burgers than go back to the classroom,” Cockrell said. But the student told her he’d always remembered that she taught him that when he’s faced with something difficult, he should ask himself, “Is it hard work or is it just a lot of work?”
“I had to let him know that day, because of what he said to me, I went back to work,” she said.
Certification Process
On a recent Friday afternoon at Bleyl Middle School, teachers and Principal Michelle Provo shared how proud they were of their head custodian Lott for working toward his teacher certification.
Provo said Lott doesn’t have much interaction with students because he starts his shift at 3 p.m., but she can tell he’s a natural leader. His eight crew members look up to him and “you can tell they want to make him proud,” Provo said.
“He was out for a couple of days and when he came back he brought us all barbecue,” she said. “He’s gentle but he’s in charge. And don’t get me started on him walking me to my car. If I stay late, he will not let me leave unless he walks me to my car.”
Bleyl Middle School Principal Michelle Provo says she couldn’t be more proud of Demetrius Lott for working toward his teaching certificate. Credit: April Towery
Lott says he just wants to make a difference for young people like his coaches did for him. He played football at Eisenhower High School in Aldine ISD and was a nose guard for the Butte College Roadrunners in the late 1990s. After playing ball at Butte, Lott got his bachelor’s degree in physical education at the University of Marion in North Dakota.
“I played sports all my life and I love being around sports,” Lott said. “I always had the passion to coach. I felt like this [opportunity to get certified] was God telling me, if this is your calling, then I’m going to put you in the right position with the right people to make this happen for you.”
Why don’t more people just do what Lott did and get the certification?
Because the certification process is difficult, it’s expensive, and then the teacher still has to find a job and navigate a career change in an unprecedented public education climate, Lott said.
“I understand the pedagogy part, but it’s a lot of stress and a lot of people are not good test-takers,” Lott said. “I have a couple of friends who went through the program and they just bombed the test like three or four times. They’re terrified to take it again. That forces them to move on to another career. I don’t think it’s fair.”
Uncertified teacher data from the 2024-25 school year. Credit: Screenshot
Lott, who has one child who graduated from Prairie View A&M University and another currently enrolled, said he wants to prepare youth for college.
“My parents never went to college, so it was hard for me to know what the do’s and don’ts were,” he said.
He spent about $2,500 out of pocket for his certification and the iTeach program covered about $2,000.
Cockrell, the Cy-Fair math teacher, did a one-year in-person certification program with Texas Teachers and was employed in a classroom while she was completing her coursework. She spent about $6,000 out of pocket, she said. Some programs don’t take payment until the certified teacher has a job, and the teacher has one year to pay it off, Cockrell said.
“For me, I needed a job and I needed to make more money,” she said. “I had two bachelor’s degrees in business and at that time I just could not get a job anywhere else.”
When Cockrell completed her certification — almost 20 years ago — she was told that those who go through an alternative teaching program last about three years on the job before quitting. Today, about 45 percent of unlicensed teachers in rural communities stay in teaching beyond three years, according to Raise Your Hand Texas.
New people are hired on as teachers whenever the oil and gas business slumps, Cockrell said, but they don’t stick around. Sometimes that’s because they didn’t get the proper training and weren’t prepared for what to expect, she added.
“If you’re in a certification program where you’re learning to work with children of all levels, you’re getting some education, but if you’re a teacher who does not have that support, that is a disservice not only to the children but to the teacher,” Cockrell said. “You might as well just be a long-term sub.”
Lott says his classmates in the iTeach program are secretaries, paraprofessionals, and groundskeepers who are trying to better their lives and need some encouragement and support. The Cy-Fair custodian said he was worried about taking classes since he’s been out of college for 20 years.
“It’s not even about not being able to afford it. It was about the push that Nikki gave me,” Lott said of the union president encouraging him to go for it. “She calls me Coach right now. She more or less inspired me to go ahead and put my best foot forward.”
“I am going to be so overwhelmed, so overjoyed when I finish everything,” he added. “I know where I came from. I told my friends, I might shed a tear.”
Bleyl Middle School head custodian Demetrius Lott is getting his teaching certificate so he can coach high school football. Credit: April Towery
Whether you consider Michelle Williams a heroic whistleblower or a tedious extremist, she was due some respect Thursday night as she got up to address the board with her continuing concerns about the path Houston ISD has taken – knowing that same board was voting to fire her later that night.
Which it did.
For those who don’t know the Houston Education Association union leader’s story, Williams is a frequent, relentless critic of HISD Superintendent Mike Miles, standing up at one board meeting after another to rail at the man and his policies.
This has not gone unnoticed by the man or his administrators.
HISD had an earlier run at her in March 2024 when the veteran teacherwas accused of filming videos at school when she should have been teaching. All of which Williams denied She said she was filming in her off time at home in a special studio setting she’d created to mimic her school setting. The videos were scheduled to go live later. The independent examiner hearing her case recommended she be reinstated and that was that.
Before the start of the 2025-26 school year, Williams was transferred from Shadowbriar Elementary to Benbrook Elementary where her differences with the Miles’ preferred method of teaching became even more pronounced. She locked heads with newly installed Principal Edward Heard, who is enrolled in HISD’s principal training program.
“I had three classes of the lowest English proficiency,” she says. Her classes were with emergent English learners and special ed students.
Faced with what she saw was an impossible mission – requiring third graders who were already a year behind in reading she says – to take rapid fire tests on the grade level material they were presented with, she balked. She asked to be transferred to another school but that went nowhere.
In Martin Luther-like fashion, Williams posted her manifesto on her classroom door. There were some things she would do and some she would not, calling them violations of law and ethics.
“This is more about doing a disservice to children. And it’s educational malpractice,” she said in an interview this week with the Houston Press.
Williams says that the Science of Reading approach – often referred to by Miles – “had been turned into a test prep course which is against the law.” She says she told the assistant principal at the time that the children in her classes could not read the passages the district was giving them. She says after telling the assistant principal that the kids needed to learn how to read in English, she was told “There’s not any time for that.”
“I got mad. I was literally livid,” she says. “So what are we doing here? So I said: ‘Why don’t you just scratch teacher off my badge and put lecturer? Because this is not teaching.”
She says she told Principal Heard what her plans were to teach the children to read concentrating on phonics and phonemic awareness. “They didn’t like it. They didn’t like what I was doing in the class.”
That was just what the district needed. Here was a teacher who was absolutely refusing to follow their directions on how to teach children and charged her with insubordination. Williams was also accused of leaving the campus without telling anyone she was going – something she denies.
She was sent to “home duty” while being paid, as the process of dismissing her wove its way through the bureaucracy.
Most people in other jobs, whether they’re manager or employee can’t quite get their heads around someone repeatedly calling their boss names in public. How in the world did she not expect to be fired? If she didn’t like the job, why didn’t she just quit?
But as one local education guru explained, consider Williams as more of a whistleblower. Tied to a school district in which she’d invested so much time and effort, certain that Miles’ New Education System with its constant barrage of tests and timed responses is destructive to children, Williams couldn’t leave. Denied a transfer to another school, she had to let everyone know the issues she had with the Benbrook administration and on a larger plane, HISD itself.
So instead of one of those many anonymous teachers whose similar experiences have been read out on their behalf by public speakers at so many board meetings –who don’t come forward themselves citing “fear of retaliation” – Williams put herself front and center.
Thursday night she accused the administration, principal and executive directors of unprofessional behavior, saying they “used bullying, intimidation and lies to try to force me to break education law. They’re asking me to make eight-year-olds who can’t even read in English, imagine that, read STAAR passages in English. Why? To sell the lie that Mike Miles’ policies are working. What’s happening at Benbrook is not just wrong. It’s unethical and it’s illegal.”
As for a friendly ear on the board, Williams probably has blown that chance as well. Thursday night in the dwindling seconds she had available in her one-minute of allotted time to address the trustees, she accused Board President Ric Campo of wanting “the children in public schools to be employees.”
Usually, the state-appointed HISD board doesn’t name each of the staff members it is terminating, saying that is an undue burden. But after Williams’ attorney successfully argued to the hearing examiner in her earlier appeal that she has become a public figure, her name was listed in the agenda packet for Thursday night’s meeting.
All of this isn’t quite over, of course. Williams plans to embark on another appeals route, where more charges and counter charges will be made.
It can certainly be argued that Miles’ administration and the HISD school board is simply and justifiably dispensing with a problem teacher who won’t follow what they believe are the best teaching practices that so far have resulted in a significant improvement in student test scores.
In turn, Williams argues that her termination is all about retaliation and a message to other teachers to color within the lines that Miles has drawn.
And, of course, as in many situations, both things can be true.
Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles improved on his performance rating from last year and is being awarded $173,660 in incentive pay for what he did in the 2024-25 school year.
As HISD explained in a statement: “On the Superintendent’s Evaluation Rubric, based on seven goals and constraints, he scored 55 out of 60. On the Superintendent Leadership Rubric, a self-assessment tool, he scored 36 out of 40. Together, those strong results translated into $173,660 in incentive pay out of a possible $190,000.”
The appointed nine-member school board discussed Miles’ pay during executive session at their last board meeting on September 11. The performance bonus is separate from his base pay of $462,000, which means that in all, he’s making $635,660.
According to today’s press release: “The superintendent’s contract provides for a competitive salary in line with other leaders of large Texas districts, along with the opportunity for incentive pay tied to results. As with HISD teachers and principals, this structure ensures performance is evaluated and rewarded at every level of the District.”
Last year, Miles received $126,000 in bonus pay for the 2023-24 school year. This was on top of his $380,000 sala
Never let it be said that Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles hesitates about the big stuff, especially when it leads to a crescendo ending at one of his power point presentations. Tuesday he demonstrated that when he pledged that “By August 2027, all schools in HISD will be A or B-rated.”
As part of what he’s calling The Houston Promise, Miles says the remaining C and D-rated schools (there were no F-rated HISD schools in the state’s latest assessment) will improve to A and B status with a continuation of his approach to education which he says involves rigorous standards and quality teaching.
At a Tuesday afternoon press conference, Miles showed chart after chart tracking the considerable academic progress shown by HISD students on standardized tests in the last two years. He’d covered most of the material in earlier presentations with a few new specifics. But he saved his boldest statement for last by promising that within two years all campuses would be in the top two tiers as assessed by the Texas Education Agency. .
“We went from 93 A and B campuses to 197,” he said. “We have thousands more kids reading at grade level than ever before. We have thousands more kids doing math at grade level than ever before. “
In the 2025 school ratings from the TEA, 18 schools got a D rating and another 50 a C. The number of C-rated schools has stayed pretty much the same over the past three school years, but the number of D-rated schools has significantly decreased. Meanwhile the number of A and B-rated schools significantly increased.
To Miles’ mind (his contingent of detractors do not agree), he has shown the right way to turn a school district around. Asked what strategies other school districts up for possible takeover (Fort Worth ISD a likely candidate) should employ, he repeated his basic mantra of academic rigor and quality instruction.
A Q&A session followed his prepared remarks and in response to one such question, he said that experienced New Education System teachers whose own schools are determined to have excess staff, may be offered positions at the C and D-rated schools this school year.
He also talked about his efforts to enlist a number of community partners to help certain campuses.
Asked to explain what that support would look like, HISD Chief of Public Affairs and Communications Alex Elizondo responded on Miles behalf:
“There are 64 schools that are district-run right now that have a C or D rating. So we’ve asked these organizations, businesses, non-profits, anyone who wants to participate in this to sign up to sponsor a school. What that is is two teacher appreciation lunches, a student celebration and campus cleanup or beautification day — whatever the principal thinks makes the most sense — and a donation that the principal can use at their discretion towards academic needs of students.”
Asked if HISD is going to participate in a pilot program for the development of the new state tests to replace the STAAR as the Texas Legislature voted to do, Miles said “I don’t know if we’ll participate.” He said with the kind of instruction and testing HISD students have now, they will continue to grow (as in the number of them reading and doing math on grade level) and they shouldn’t have any trouble with any new test from the state.
A follow-up question from one reporter — “What happens in 2027 … if the district doesn’t meet that goal of all A and B schools?” — gave Miles a moment’s pause as he considered and rejected his unsaid initial response. But then, collecting his thoughts, he rallied:
“Look, we’ve already made history. That’s No. 1. No.2, this is the biggest goal and and challenge that any urban district has ever made. And if we fall a little short, so what? We already have 197 A and B schools Let’s say we fall five short. We’re going to have 255, 260 A and B schools? That’s incredible. We’re going to call that a win.”
If half of the 2,600 teachers who left Houston ISD in June and July were rated in the bottom two proficiency categories by the district is this a sign that they were bad teachers or that they just couldn’t get with Superintendent Mike Miles’ programs?
Should parents breathe a sigh of relief or in some cases continue to question the policies of the new administration?
And as to why the more highly rated teachers, including those judged to have turned in “exemplary” performances, quit their jobs with HISD, it’s not known. As explained by Jessica Neyman, HISD’s Chief Human Resources Officer at Thursday night’s school board meeting, the Miles administration is continuing the previous practice of leaving it up to the departing employees to ask for an exit interview.
For his part, Miles pointed to his data showing 83 percent of the higher rated teachers staying with the district as evidence that HISD is building a more proficient teacher force. “The higher the instructional proficiency of the teachers, the higher the retention rate.”
The departures were higher than historic numbers, 2,696 compared to 2,000, but he added that 1,400 of those teachers had been told they were being brought in for “file review” in the spring meaning they knew their continued job prospects weren’t stellar. “Most of those teachers decided to resign,” Miles said, before going through that process.
In a power-packed evening there was a bond protest as well.
Photo by Margaret Downing
It was another sometimes raucous and always lengthy board meeting complete with one group protesting the upcoming $4.4 billion bond election and another calling for answers in the aftermath of the August death of 14-year-old Landon Payton at Marshall Middle School while in gym class. Landon’s father Alexis Payton, was joined by state Rep. Christina Morales and FIEL Executive Director Cesar Espinosa among others who stood during the meeting while holding a picture of Landon.
Payton’s family has still not been told of his cause of death, only that he suffered “a medical emergency.” The AED equipment was reportedly not working in his location which has led to an HISD review of AEDs throughout the district and discovering 170 inoperable units that it has said will be repaired. The family still doesn’t know if a working defibrillator would have saved Landon. HISD has said that only medical officials can establish the cause of death.
Later in the public speaking section of the evening, parent Anna Luzutiaga asked everyone to stand to remember the teenager in a moment of silence. While audience members rose, the board members and superintendent did not – which caused an immediate outcry.
Chanting Landon’s name, while continuing to stand, the audience could not be interrupted. One audience member cursed which sparked a reprimand from Board President Audrey Momanaee who said children were watching the meeting from home. When the chanting continued, the board and Miles retreated to a back room right before 6 p.m. before returning at 6:07.
“This board supports the Payton family,” Momanaee said upon their return. She then explained the need for order in school board meetings and repeated that the use of swear words could not be allowed.
An interesting note was struck when Miles discussed the district’s assessment of performance comparing non-certified teachers to certified ones. Data showed that a lower percentage of the non-certified – 42 percent — scored at the proficient and above level, while 66 percent of certified teachers were judged proficient or higher.
In the past, Miles has maintained that teachers should be judged on the job they too, rather than whether they are certified or not. At board meetings there have been continuous complaints from parents, students and educators about the district’s increasing use of non-certified teachers, contending that many of them are ill-equipped to handle a classroom.
Thursday, Miles acknowledged the important factors of experience and training in how effective teachers can be.
He touted an expansion of HISD’s own in-house certification program which allows the uncertified to work toward certification while teaching. He also referred to a Texas Tribune story which reported that districts all over the state are using more uncertified teachers, trying to fill their teacher ranks, calling it the new reality.
“This is a problem statewide and nationally,” Miles said. For the forseeable future if we want to fill all of our positions, we will be hiring teachers who need a certification.”
According to the Texas Education Agency, 40 percent of new hires across the state in 2023-24 were uncertified. At charter schools it was 60 percent. At the same time, Miles reported that there were 8,000 applicants at the district’s job fairs for about 1,000 openings.
Earlier this week, Houston ISD Superintendent F. Mike Miles released his version of school accountability ratings for all the HISD campuses. These aren’t the official Texas Education Agency ratings, because those have been tied up in litigation for 2 years after the TEA Commissioner Mike Morath changed the ratings formula, and it disproportionately hurt some districts and campuses.
The official formula has not been publicly released by the TEA, but Miles claims that he obtained a copy of the legally questionable formula from the TEA. Miles then had his HISD team run the numbers which he released on Monday.
Since the formula isn’t available to the public, we have no way to verify the numbers that Miles released. We also don’t know how much the formula has changed since last year. Like any good math teacher would say: show your work.
Let’s pretend, for a moment, that the TEA ratings system was just and legal, and the numbers Miles released are accurate.
The School at St. George Place had a respectable improvement from a B- to a B+. 1 point from an A. Give Principal Sean McClish a pat on the back when you see him. It won’t be at St. George though because HISD leadership removed him as principal.
Furr High School and Neff Elementary posted huge improvements from D to a B. You’d think Principal Tammie Moran and Principal Amanda Wingard would receive awards at a banquet, but instead HISD leadership removed them both as principal.
Lantrip Elementary pushed hard and went from a B to an A. Can principal Rhonda Schwer expect a bonus in her next paycheck? No, because HISD leadership removed her as principal.
Sharpstown High School was getting hated on all year but now the scores are in so we know how effective their principal really is. Principal TJ Cotter’s campus received an F rating. Termination-happy HISD leadership probably ran him out of town, right? Principal Cotter is still head principal of Sharpstown HS.
Back to reality. It’s in the court’s hands to decide if this rating system is fair. We don’t know if the numbers Miles present are accurate. We don’t know how changes in the formula over the last two years have affected the ratings.
More importantly, we as a society need to decide if rating schools solely based on a multiple choice test is best. Shouldn’t we factor in a school’s ability to meet students’ social emotional needs? Should we factor in student and parent satisfaction? Should we factor in student to certified teacher ratio?
It’s time to stop taking Miles’ and Moraths’ word as gospel and start pressuring them to answer the tough questions and face consequences for their failings.
Brad Wray is a teacher in HISD who currently serves as an elected member of the District Advisory Committee, and has a child enrolled in HISD.
Houston ISD has released a few more details, including the child’s name. of the 14-year-old Marshall Middle School student who became ill during gym class last week and died.
Landon Payton was in P.E. when he became ill in front of his physical education teacher and special ed assistant teacher as well as the rest of his class last Wednesday. Citing privacy and accuracy concerns, Superintendent Mike Miles has been circumspect about releasing any information, although following other news reports, it released the student’s identity.
“He received immediate medical assistance from the Marshall Middle School teachers, the HISD police and medical personal. He also received medical assistance from EMS and ws transferred to the hospital by the EMS team,” Miles said in a Friday statement.
The cause of death is still unknown, Miles has said. Landon’s father, Alexis Payton, went to the school administration building Friday, and questioned whether the nurse knew how to do CPR or use the AED, automated external defibrillator. Others have questioned whether the AED was in working order.
In the statement released this weekend, HISD said that the school district in its preliminary assessment believes “the staff and EMS responded quickly and appropriately.”
Saturday’s HISD release:
Update on the Death of a Marshall Middle School Student
As we have shared, four days ago, HISD was rocked by the death of one of its students while in school. We continue to grieve with the family of Landon Payton and with the Marshall Middle School community. We will continue to do as much as we can to support the family as they go through this tremendously difficult period.
We continue to gather as much information as possible for Landon’s family. Put in the same situation, any person would want to know immediately the reasons for such a tragedy. And we understand that others have an ardent desire to know more as well.
We have been careful not to release partial information or speculation out of respect for the privacy of the student and his family, and also to ensure accuracy.
State and federal law prohibits any district from revealing a student’s personal information. The details shared below reflect that limitation.
Landon experienced a medical emergency in front of the P.E. teacher and special education assistant teacher in the gymnasium. Prior to this incident, teachers did not have any indications that the child was not feeling well. The teachers acted immediately, radioed for the school nurse, and called 911.
The students in P.E. class had been engaged in light physical activity for most of the period and were in “free play” for the last part of the period when the medical emergency occurred. They were asked to sit down while the staff was caring for Landon and then shortly after released from the gymnasium.
Medical officials have not provided the District with a cause of death. The District is not able to determine the cause of death, which can only be established by medical officials.
The nurse who provided medical assistance to Landon is a registered nurse with an active license. Prior to starting with HISD in February 2024, she worked on staff at Harris Health System for 30 years, including service as a cardiac and pulmonary surgery nurse.
The temperature reading in the gym immediately after the incident was 72 degrees. School administration did not raise temperature concerns for any part of the building during the day.
The information above is preliminary and we await further information to fully understand what happened, specifically Landon’s cause of death as determined by a medical professional. From what we have been able to gather, we believe the staff and EMS responded quickly and appropriately. We believe they did everything they could and cared for Landon in a way that any parent would want his or her child cared for in an emergency.
The District will share more information with the community as we are able. In the meantime, our deepest sympathies are with Landon’s family.
Office of Public Affairs and Communications Houston Independent School District
After Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles asked for a moment of silence to recognize the Marshall Middle School student who died this week after a medical emergency, public speakers at Thursday night’s school board meeting lined up with their latest round of complaints most of which had to do with A/C and buses.
Specifically: Poor or missing A/C in the classrooms, a new bus routing system gone awry and the intersection of the district’s two biggest problems according to its call-in centers with the lack of A/C on some of its buses.
Parent Teisha Mayes said several classes at Crockett Elementary, which is a new New Education System school this year, have reached 82 degrees, forcing , for instance, her daughter dance class to move out into the hallways where it is cooler. “During ‘Meet the Teacher’ we saw new spin bikes. Why weren’t these funds used to fix the A/C?”
While Miles tried to focus on the “quality instruction” that he said was taking place from the first day of class this past Monday, even he had to admit that what was going on with the new school bus transportation system contracted with EduLog was inexcusable.
For a superintendent who prides himself on systems and efficiencies, the absolute mess that has resulted from a money-saving consolidation of routes with fewer bus drivers is particularly hard to defend, although he assured those present that the route rollout is getting better each day.
As of Thursday, some parents are still waiting for their children’s bus routes to be assigned. Others received some other child’s information. Some got two sets of route instructions – one right, one wrong. Instructions to parents that their children should get on any bus that comes along just added to the confusion and frustration. And the fact that parents are reporting that some of the buses have no working A/C hasn’t helped matters.
Thanks to being named a District of Innovation, HISD was able to start school two weeks earlier than it had before. But with that comes more weeks of higher temperatures for school kids.
During the first week of school, in some of the schools children were being shuttled to other parts of their buildings as temperatures mounted above the 82 degree mark that Miles has decreed is too hot for students to learn and teachers to teach. He said they start monitoring classrooms when they 78 degrees.
And he pointed out again that many of the district’s schools house aging HVAC systems.
The district’s new defined autonomy policy also came under fire. In it, A and B schools are given far mor leeway on budgets and instruction than the C, D and F-rated schools.
As speaker Lisa Robinson put it: “The defined autonomy policy is separate and unequal. A fourth grader at Pew is bored to tears while reading slide decks while his cousin at River Oaks visits her school library to check out a book of their choice. A freshman at Westbury only reads short passages in English class while her neighbor at Lamar discusses full novels in preparation for college level work.
“A first grader at Longfellow sits in a sterile classroom in the name of ‘limiting distractions’ while his brother at Twain enjoys the benefits of a warm and nurturing space,” she said calling the earned autonomy approach “morally wrong.”
The deletion of librarians and libraries from HISD schools at Miles’ direction continued to be a source of many complaints as well as criticism about the lack of landscaping and mowing at some schools.
Bellaire City Councilwoman Jackie Georgiou questioned HISD’s commitment to her city and compared the grounds maintenance at Bellaire High School to its across the street neighbor Episcopal High School.
“Episcopal High School across the street from Bellaire High School shines like a shining beacon next to the negligence of HISD. It has come to my attention there was no running water on Bellaire High School fields for some time and there were a couple days here recently where classrooms were at 85 degrees or higher. These are health and safety hazards and we are unacceptable.”
Miles, for his part, said he thought academic instruction was far more important than the grounds outside the district’s schools. He once again pointed out that HISD has 274 schools and that after the derecho storm, Hurricane Beryl and the days of rain that followed that it was difficult to tackle everything on all the grounds that needed doing.
But as in other meetings, many students and parents are not excited about Miles’ New Education System with its daily timed testing. And one student was unhappy about being sent to the Team Center for extra worksheets after scoring well on the daily tests and about the requirement in NES schools that elementary students carry orange traffic cones with them when they are going to use the restrooms.
“I have always loved school and I was very excited to start on Monday,” student Laney Piper told the board. “But now I’m not excited anymore because now school feels rushed and not fun. The timers are stressful and distracting and the Team Center is boring and it makes me want to get bad grades on my DOL [Demonstrating of Learning quiz) so I don’t have to go. The bathroom cones are very unsanitary. How do you know if everyone’s washing their hands?”
“The bathroom cones are very unsanitary. How do you know if everyone’s washing their hands?”
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Once again, throughout the meeting public speakers said could not support the $4.4 billion bond proposal the board approved at last week’s meeting because they did not trust Miles and his administration to make good use of the money. The proposal which is the largest bond proposal ever for HISD will go before voters at the November 5 election.
Longtime HISD bond supporter Sheila Whitford says she can’t say yes this time.
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Sheila Whitford told the board she has voted in favor of every HISD bond proposal since 1990. “However currently I do not see a fiscally responsible board. Library books removed from how many schools. Where are the books? Where is the paper trail for these books?
“I want to apologize to the children in Houston schools who need this bond but I will vote no. Our children do not have responsible people handling their money.”
Complaints also continued about the mass exodus of educators from HISD in the past year – said to include some 4,700 teachers. Some left because they did not want to work under Miles’ New Education System requiring daily testing and others because they were given the choice of resigning or being fired. Several speakers alsoobjected to giving Miles and his administration the right to sell off HISD property, saying once sold, the land could never be returned to HISD.
Eighty two degrees. When Houston ISD classrooms hit that mark, that’s when the kids inside are moved to another area of a school, Superintendent Mike Miles said Tuesday. Given the heat outside, that’s the district standard for now, he said.
“We look at 82 degrees to be too hot. Too warm for a kid to concentrate and a teacher to teach well, he said. “We use temperature guns, not just ‘This feels warm.’ We are trying to get schools to a comfortable 73, 74 degrees that’s about what we can do in the summer.,” adding they did not have to close any of the 274 HISD schools Tuesday.
He said there remained about 30 teacher vacancies in the district, explaining that those were for specialized courses such as JROTC and career tech ed positions and special ed certified positions.
A Tuesday visit to HISD’s South Division control center housed in the ample extra space at the Jones Futures Academy showed air conditioning and other facilities problems continued to dominate the call-in reports they were receiving.
The next biggest category? Transportation as the district’s adventure with the software system EduLog continued for a second day. Miles said Tuesday’s tally was much improved from the first when a number of students either didn’t have a route or were given wrong route information.. “Keep in mind, every day, kids enroll and they will enroll for the next three weeks and those kids will not have bus routes and they’ll be asking for bus routes.”
Besides visiting the temporary control center, Miles checked in at Mitchell Elementary and Thomas Middle School primarily to see how each school was adapting to the New Education System of constant testing and extended lessons in reading and math. He was accompanied throughout by South Division Superintendent Imelda De La Guardia. Board of Managers member Paula Mendoza was on two legs of the trip.
Mitchell Elementary clearly benefited from its modern building design making it easy to get with Miles’ program with its open classrooms and a Teams Center easy to access on its first floor. Also because although not an NES school last year, it adopted much of the NES model for 2023-24.
Thomas Middle School, an older school scheduled for $17 million in renovation work if the proposed $4.4 billion November bond election, was last renovated in 1978. wasn’t nearly as spiffy. The proposed up[dates which won’t handle all of the school’s needs will be concentrated on overhauling the school’s HVAC(heating, ventilation and air conditioning) system.
After observing the teaching style in a classroom, Miles would huddle with the school administrators and De La Guardia asking them what they thought was done well and what could use improvement before telling them what he saw. This was done in hushed tones, in the empty hallways away from the classroom in question.
Throughout the tour, Miles emphasized that this is only the second day of school and he saw good enthusiasm and determination from principals and teachers to get with what he has termed wholesale systemic reform.
Thomas Middle has three separate buildings for the grades on campus, with open outdoor areas between them. Asked how a campus like that would be able to adopt the one door entrance model for security reasons, Miles said his administration is proposing that it and other campuses like it will be surrounded by a fence.
In a press conference later in the day, Miles stepped back from his earlier estimate about how many students showed up for school this week. He said he would have accurate numbers later.
Color coordinated T-shirts, songs, more songs, choreography, marching bands and cheerleaders: Wednesday morning was a pull-out-all-the-stops event at Houston ISD’s Delmar Fieldhouse – a concept as big and huge, some would say, as HISD Superintendent Mike Miles’ vision for the district.
The invitation-only event to HISD educators (mostly drawn from campuses that saw at least 5 percentage point gains in math and reading in the last year) had no naysayers jumping up with the “No trust, No Bond” chant common to recent school board meetings and protests. The HISD Board of Managers will vote on whether to go forward with that $4.4 billion bond proposal Thursday night.
No, Wednesday morning was a non-stop pep rally all about celebrating success. The cheer routines weren’t limited to the students on stage as attendees carried their own pompons, flashing lights and dance moves.
The catch phrase hanging in neon lights over the stage —Upstoppable — could apply equally to students in the HISD and to Superintendent Miles and his plans, however much his critics might like to see the superintendent and his policies derailed.
If the preliminary numbers hold and Miles believes they will, then in the space of a year, HISD will have gone from 121 campuses rated D or F down to 41 schools as rated by the Texas Education Agency.
At the same time as there were fewer Ds and Fs, more schools (of course) moved into the A, B and C range. As an HISD press statement noted: “The number of “A” and “B” rated schools increased by 82 percent, from 121 in 2023 to 170 in 2024, while NES [New Education System] campuses, where only 11 schools earned “A” or “B” ratings in 2023 educators and students achieved a remarkable 480% increase, with 53 NES campuses rated “A” or “B” in 2024.”
“Twenty campuses went from an F to a B,” Miles said. “Only a handful in the state went from an F to an A , and they’re all in HISD.”
All these preliminary numbers are based on HISD’s in-house assessment – the Texas Education Agency won’t release the official numbers until August 15 – but Miles says the district used the same methodology as TEA, and does not expect the state’s numbers to differ much if at all from HISD’s findings. The data on individual campuses will be released then as well.
The musical showing off the talents of HISD students and employees.
Photo by Margaret Downing
Even though critics railed against the expense and the spectacle of last year’s musical, Miles, double downed on his bet and signed on for another one this year. This time however, he didn’t appear in the skit performed by HISD students and educators and written by son Anthony Miles, but waited till after the entertainment was over to begin his remarks accompanied by power point graphics.
By the way, the kids were very impressive singing and dancing up a storm. If HISD is going to continue doing these shows at convocation, we suggest they invite artistic directors from Houston’s local theater companies that do a lot of musicals — we’re thinking Stages and Theatre Under the Stars here — because young talent is right here, right now.
Miles began his speech with something he’s said many times before: when he arrived at the district in the summer of 2023, it was “the tale of two systems” with some excellent school sand others that were struggling.
Urban districts across the country have had difficulty closing the achievement gap between the highest performing group of students and those in the lower tiers academically, but in this case, HISD made significant strides in the past year.
He went on to say that it’s not just academics the district should be looking at but the types of skill sets its students are learning particularly for graduates who want to go into the job market right after high school graduation.
Delving into his power point graphics, Miles said that among NES schools, the number of “D” and “F” schools dropped nearly 80 percent – from 63 schools to 14, Miles said.” And 33 F schools to 2. I don’t think you’re going to see that ratio anywhere in the state for this year.”
All of which, Miles offered up, means the district may return to an elected board sooner rather than later (although remember, the transition will take at least three years once it starts as the nine-member appointed board is replaced in three-at-a-time segments). Part of the intervention exit criteria set by the state is that a district cannot have any D or F campuses for multiple years.
While pointing out that numbers aren’t everything, clearly this year’s results help stake out Miles’ claim that — all detractors aside — he knows how to overhaul a school district. And that his New Education System with frequent daily testing is central to that endeavor.
Along with all this good news is the massive departure of teachers and principals who either couldn’t or wouldn’t adapt to Miles’ vision for constant testing as a means of raising the academic levels. Many of these teachers have gone on to be hired by nearby districts. And even after all those departures, that doesn’t mean that every educator in HISD has bought into Miles’ programs.
Students will have a chance to share in the celebration at the end of the first week of school when on Friday, August 16, for 30 minutes to an hour they’ll take a break from their studies to enjoy ice cream or popsicles.
“Even the schools that didn’t do well , some of their students did well, their teachers did well. Celebrate what you can celebrate,” Miles said.
Of course there had to be a mascot somewhere in the crowd.
Photo by Margaret Downing
Teachers arrived at their schools this week. New teachers came last Thursday and Friday with a lot of training, said Sandy Massey HISD chief of leadership and professional development. In like manner, the new principals got extra training for 4-1/2 days. “They also got training alongside all the principals with Mr. Miles and myself. And then we did specialized training for the 130 NES principals, assistant principals and lead teachers.”
In the coming year Science and Art of Thinking classes will move to extended differentiated learning which means they are tested right after a lesson and then split into groups depending on how they scored. The lowest scorers receive further instruction with the teacher.
The New Education System curriculum came under fire last school year when teachers complained the some of the material they were furnished on slides was wrong and that the curriculum writers were racing to get the material out to them. This leveled out a bit later in the year when teachers were brought in to review the lessons before they were sent out en masse.
According to Massey, more than two weeks worth of this year’s lessons are already in the system. More supports are in place for emergent bilingual and special ed students, she said. “There’s a lot more support than ever before in the curriculum. We know it won’t be mistake free but it’ll be as close to mistake free as it’s ever been.”
Of course, Miles is not done tinkering yet. In a pre-convocation interview with him Tuesday he said he didn’t think this year’s summer school worked as well as it should have. He said he thought more teacher training was needed to make sure “that the instruction is as rigorous as during the school year.”
Another work in progress: Still at issue, as Miles acknowledges: is the question of how much autonomy each campus has. He says he has learned that he needs to be absolutely clear in this and to put thing in writing in every instance.
This year science and the Art of Thinking classes will also expand to extra time just as the reading and math classes at NES schools already did this year.
In the aftermath of the damage from Hurricane Beryl, all campuses will be up and running, Miles said, with the exception of Chysalis Middle School which is moving across the parking lot to the Lockwood modulars where the modulars are better.
Miles expects to pay particular attention, and extra visits, to the 45 schools that will join NES ranks this year. Some of them have already adopted aspects of NES. He pointed out, however, that some of the teaching methods like the multiple response strategy are well known in the teaching profession.
While acknowledging that he probably took on more than was wise in the first year in terms of overhauling the district — he picked 28 schools to become the first NES schools but added 57 more after their principals asked to be included — Miles added perhaps unnecessarily: “We’re not dragging our feet. We are totally focused on the kids who are for the most part thriving.”
At a hastily called Zoom meeting Tuesday afternoon, Houston ISD Chief of Public Affairs and Communications Alexandra “Alex” Elizondo answered 15 minutes of questions from the media during which she assured those online that changing bus routes right before the start of school was normal.
She expanded upon the late night announcement Monday in which the district said it would save $3 million consolidating and shortening distances that school choice students are on buses with further transportation efficiencies estimated to save the district a total of $10 million in 2024-25.
By the following school year, she said, “The district hopes to take our transportation costs down from roughly $56 million to $40 million.”
It still remained somewhat confusing — as we wrote yesterday — as to how the district will shorten the time traveling in buses (the average school choice student ride will decrease from 1 hour and 45 minutes to 1 hour and 15 minutes) while providing fewer routes. (508 to a projected 423).
Despite the fewer routes, the number of bus drivers will not be diminished, she said. Also, all special ed students and zoned students will not see their HISD transportation change in any way, Elizondo said.
Echoing the press release that went out Monday, Elizondo said HISD could no longer afford doing what no other area school district is doing in providing lengthy trips across town for a subsection of its student population.
“HISD is the only district in the Houston metro area that transports all of our magnet and specialty school students and all of our students that opt into our school choice program. We are committed to continuing to do that but we have to consolidate routes to make that better for kids, to reduce their ride time and better for the district to save money.”
Calling it a “minor adjustment,” in the HISD staetment yesterday, “Student bus stopes will now be within a three mile radius of the student’s home address. (Previously it was a two mile radius).” This affects about 3,000 students, Elizondo said.
At the same time Elizondo insisted that this was in no way being done to discourage participation in the school choice program, which she says HISD continues to support.
“HISD wants to make sure that every child has the shortest amount of time on the bus as possible and that we’re increasing the efficiency of our transportation system.
“Historically transportation has been a big issue in HISD. It has not been reliable. It has not been efficient.” She said an efficiency report done by Superintendent Mike Miles ‘ administration determined that the district was spending $50 million to transport 9,000 kids each year. “And kids were spending way too long on the bus.”
“Not a lot of kids were on way too many buses going all over the city.”
Buses will be making fewer stops with increased ridership on each bus. “The bus routes before were not well planned.” The bus stops will be at high schools or middle schools or their feeder patternor at a community center or library, for instance, she said.
Parents will be notified about their children’s bus routes by the end of July, Elizondo said, adding that there will be “a couple more” transportation changes to come in the 2024-25 school year.
“This is going to be a hardball situation,” former Texas Rep. Garnet Coleman told Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles and the HISD Board of Managers Thursday night.
He was referring, of course, to passage of a proposed $4.4 billion bond issue when there is a lack of trust among many members of the public about what the new HISD administrative regime is doing. If approved by the board, the bond proposal would be up for a vote on November 5. The district has said the bond would not result in an increase in the tax rate.
Consideration of the bond issue came after a lengthy presentation of STAAR score achievements by Miles and his administrators followed by an almost mind-boggling dive into NWEA scores. Miles was in his element with charts and graphs on his power point explanation, acknowledging early on that how the NWEA scores are calculated is difficult to understand. He plunged ahead anyhow.
In any case it wasn’t until after several hours into the meeting that began at 4 p.m. that the bond presentation began and the Board of Managers began asking detailed questions about how the package was assembled, particularly about the proposal to four Career and Technical Education centers in different sectors of the district, at significant cost.
“I have a lot of questions about the need for a CTE facility in all of our divisions. To me it screams redundancy,” said trustee Cassandra Auzenne Bandy. The administration’s position is that there’s to much travel time for students if there’s only one CTE facility. The report from CAC does recommend that the centers be phased in and delaying to a future bond completing this concept.
Divided into three sections, the bond issue would devote $1.04 billion to safe and healthy campuses (Miles emphasized that fencing for security was needed), $1.07 billion for “future ready” (technical imrpvements for students and teachers) and $2.27 billion to restore many of the schools. The administration has also proposed relocating some low enrollment schools so that two different schools occupy the same campus in either adjacent buildings or one shared building. In some cases this would iinvolve building a new school. Not all trustees are comfortable with this either.
Trustees Adam Rivon and Rolando Martinez questioned what data the district is using to predict the size of these relocated schools with shared campuses.
Plans are to continue expanding pre-K offerings while also admitting that the number of new slots — 800 in the coming year — still falls far short of what the district would like to do for that young population, increasingly recognized as a crucial component to seeing more children reading on grade level by the third grade. The bond would add 4,000 additional 3 pre-K and 4 pre-K seats wwhich according to their calculations would still leave another 25,000 students in that age ground unserved.
“The last bond was in 2012,” Miles said, adding that this was mostly geared toward the district’s high schools. “The last time we made a significant investment in our elementary and middle schools was in 2007 and even then we didn’t meet the needs of all the schools at that time.” He said other Texas districts had spent a lot more money for their facilities in recent years, even districts much smaller than HISD.
Actually Superintendent Mike Miles’ administration says the needs of the district far exceed the $4.1 billion but it was acknowledged that a bond issue of more than $10 billion with an accompanying increase in tax rates would have little likelihood of passing.
Coleman and former HISD Board member Judith Cruz were there as two of the three co-chairs of the Community Advisory Committee and they sat through the entire meeting including the public speakers section in which several people addressing the board concluded their remarks with the “No trust, no bond” chant that has been mantra expressed frequently in recent months.
Coleman asked members of the public to separate their feelings about Miles’ New Education System — known for its daily testing and regimented approach to learning — from the real need HISD students have for newer buildings that are not dealing with mold, leaks and unsafe conditions.
“This initiative is long overdue,” Coleman said. “It’s imperative that the younger students get what they need.” Both he and Cruz said the district is going to have to be transparent in its plans if it is going to get buy-in from the community.
The proposed co-locations of schools, as described by HISD:
· Holland MS, Port Houston ES, and Pleasantville ES (Furr Feeder)– Holland MS and Pleasantville are currently adjacent (separated by a street). This co-location would organize the three schools on the Holland parcel – each with distinct entrances, staff, and programs. There will be transportation needs for the Port Houston community to access the new campus.
· Fleming MS, Isaacs ES (Wheatley Feeder) – Fleming MS and Isaacs are currently two blocks apart and are high FCI campuses, with low utilization. Fleming requires a rebuild, and has a large parcel, which presents the opportunity to co-locate Isaacs on the parcel in an adjoining building.
· Franklin ES, Edison MS (Austin Feeder) – Franklin ES was closed for HVAC upgrades during the 2023-24 academic year and will re-open in August 2024. Edison is located two blocks from Franklin, has high FCI, and is under 50 percent utilization. There is room on the Franklin parcel to build a smaller middle school for Edison.
· Key MS, Kashmere Gardens ES (Kashmere Feeder) – Kashmere Gardens has high FCI (83 percent) and low enrollment (331 students). There is ample room at Key Middle School (41 percent utilization) to accommodate the Kashmere Gardens students, with renovations to ensure the two schools retain their identities. The district will address the transportation needs of the Kashmere Gardens families to ensure access to the new facilities at the Key campus.
· Baylor at Ryan MS, Blackshear ES (Yates Feeder) – Baylor at Ryan is low enrollment (313) and utilization (32 percent). Blackshear Elementary is also low enrollment (301 students) and utilization (55 percent). This co-location combines the two schools at the Ryan campus, with renovations to keep the school communities separate within the space.
· Deady MS, Sanchez ES (Milby Feeder) – Deady is low enrollment (494 students) and low utilization (37 percent). Sanchez is low enrollment (431 students) and poorly sited. There is ample space at Deady to co-locate the Sanchez community, and Deady is more central and convenient to the Sanchez attendance zone.
· Cage ES, Project Chrysalis MS (Austin Feeder) – Cage and Chrysalis are an existing co-location. Cage is recommended for a rebuild, and Project Chrysalis, while small (252 students) is currently a temporary building campus (of poor quality) located adjacent to Cage Elementary. Since Cage will be rebuilt, it is an opportunity to move Project Chrysalis into more permanent structures. This could become a shared building with separate entrances, yet some common amenities and spaces. A complete rebuild with permanent structures for both will allow them to remain at their current site – but in healthier, safer, and more effective learning environments.
Last week, Houston ISD began the process to have Wharton and Helms dual-language schools designated separate and unique campuses and walked back the plans to institute an English-only pre-K at those schools. Amid the general jubilation from parents, there was a wait-a-minute moment.
Because what does that do to families who have been zoned to the schools and want to attend them? Several speakers at the April 11 meeting said they specifically moved into the zoned areas so their children could be sure of a space at those schools. Now, would they have to instead try to find a place through the magnet school application process?
And hadn’t the window for magnet application already closed for the year?.
This week, Houston ISD sent out a notice that should lessen some fears, at least for now. Although the process appears far from settled.
“For families currently attending or zoned families who have already been given a seat at Helms Elementary School or Wharton Dual Language Academy, nothing will change for your student in the 2024-2025 school year, and there will be no English-only pre-k classes at either campus.
“If you have a child enrolled in grades Pre-K – Grade 4 at either Helms ES or Wharton Dual Language Academy, they will automatically re-enroll in the next grade at the same campus.
“If you have a 5th grader at Wharton Dual Language Academy that received a 6th grade seat at Wharton through the school choice application, your student will keep that seat.
“If your family is zoned to attend either Helms Elementary School or Wharton Dual Language Academy but your student does not currently have a seat for the 2024-2025 school year and you would like one, please email the HISD Office of School Choice at [email protected] as soon as possible.”
According to the release from Superintendent Mike Miles’ office:
“The HISD School Choice team and the principals at each campus are working closely together to provide as many seats to zoned families as possible.
“We will reach out again later this week to share information about how you can engage in the process to plan for the long-term future of your campuses. We will be hosting community events in May and creating other opportunities for you to share your thoughts and feedback. Thank you for your continued partnership.”
And here is the letter that was sent out to HISD families interested in pre-K at Wharton and Helms:
“Thank you for your interest in Pre-Kindergarten at Houston Independent School District. This message is about your child’s application to the non-Dual Language (English Only) Pre-K track at Helms Elementary School and/or Wharton Dual Language Academy.
“We have heard from community members about the value that Helms ES and Wharton Dual Language Academy’s rich dual-language education experiences provide to students and families. HISD leaders discussed this feedback with the School Board on April 11th. The Board has approved the proposal to make these campuses separate and unique schools. This change would allow the schools to operate as whole-school dual language campuses without an English only track in Pre-K.
“We want to honor that you applied and were interested in having your student attend Helms ES and/or Wharton Dual Language Academy. Therefore, your non-Dual Language (English only) application will automatically be transitioned into a Dual language English application for the Pre-K lottery unless you notify us that you are not interested in dual-language pre-K by April 22nd. You may log into your School Choice application at any time before 11:59 PM on April 22nd to remove this choice and/or add or change additional choices.
“Please note the following:
“If you previously applied to a Helms or Wharton PreK Dual Language (DL) Spanish or Dual Language (DL) English program, your application will still be considered for a seat in the lottery. If you are zoned to Helms or Wharton and you apply to the Dual Language Pre-K track, you will receive priority in the lottery.
“You may revisit your Pre-K application at any time before April 22nd at https://choosehisd.my.site.com/Apply to add or change schools or programs. For assistance, please contact School Choice via email at [email protected] or via phone at 713-556-6734Monday-Friday from 8AM-5PM.”
The attack of the children. That’s how it started Thursday night and it was like watching a sci-fi horror film when some cute little alien buggers suddenly bare their teeth and try to take a chomp out of the human.
The object of their wrath? Houston ISD Superintendent Mile Miles who sat there through most of the 190 public speakers who came to complain about the dismantling of libraries, who did or did not want Wharton and Helms with their dual language programs to become magnet schools, and relaying even more reports of teachers saying they are planning to leave the district, tired of what they see as a hostile, bullying workplace.
It was another lengthy and packed meeting (the overflow room was filled as well) in which, per usual, complaints about the New Education System with its timed tests and prescribed coursework from Central Office that Miles has brought to HISD. In fact it went on so long (till after midnight) that some of those in it for the long haul ordered in pizza.
“My name is Enrique [Ubiera] and I am in the fifth grade. Please fire Superintendent Miles. Not one decision he has made has been good. He is too focused on test scores but he has never done anything effective about them. You can’t magically learn by taking the same test over and over again. We need to actually do something about the problem. Maybe one reason for the failure is the low budget for most schools. Giving them 12 percent less (projected budget cuts for non-NES school next year) would really do something. Something bad.”
Interwoven through all of this, especially among the adult speakers who followed the children, was the slogan: “No trust, no bond.” (Followed by a few references to “We’re going to burn it down.”) And although the board voted to begin the procedure for a bond election next fall to tackle much needed renovations throughout the district, this had to at least give Board of Managers members pause that they might suffer an embarrassing defeat come November.
Once again, board members did not escape criticism either, mostly of the variety that their usual lockstep compliance with Miles’ policies is not going unnoticed.
Designating Wharton and Helms “special and unique schools” enabling the district to avoid installing an English-only Pre-K in them initially sounded like a bright idea for all, satisfying the demands of parents to keep the Spanish-English dual language programs at those schools. Problem is, as a subsection of parents explained, they’d bought homes in the zoned areas around these schools and their children would no longer be granted automatic admission based on where they lived. Only one person asked that the English-only pre-K be installed, to scant applause.
The librarians issue which has been a red hot subject early in the school year, but died down a bit in recent months, resurfaced with a vengeance at Thursday night’s meeting mainly because with the expansion of no-place-for-librarians NES schools in the coming school year, what was once seen as a discouraging “other” has now become a not in our schools rallying cry.
In addition, reduced school budgets in 2024-25 for non-NES campuses do not forbid but make it more difficult to hold onto the position of a librarian. As residents have come to realize, the effects of NES extend far beyond just those schools with their timed tests and rigidly proscribed course work.
“Hi, my name is Nova [Uribe] and I practically grew up in the school library. April is school library month so let’s celebrate by not removing certified librarians from HISD schools. Mike Miles’ new compensation plan does not include librarians at all,” she said. “Board members, some of you have children, some are even HISD parents. Would you want your children to go to a school without access to books?
“Don’t remove libraries or librarians. Remove Mike Miles.”
Student Ashlyn Morton challenged Miles and the Board. “You may be able to threaten principals and fire our teachers but theee is nothing you can do about the youth
“The youth want a democratic system because this district is no longer here to support us,” “The. youth will burn it down until it is made for us.”
Seven-year-old Olivia spoke about the importance of the book club operated through the library at her school and urged the superintendent to leave her librarian alone. “I’m sorry sir but you picked the wrong city to mess with. This is Houston.”
Students and parents also criticized the reduction in stipends paid to arts and debate coaches, the fact that in HISD teachers of the arts including theater will be paid “less than a first year teacher” as one speaker put it and the way teachers are not accorded the respect they deserve by the administration, according to teachers, parents and students.
“One time when my teacher was teaching me and my classmates we were astonished when a stranger entered our classroom, interrupted our teacher and ordered him to cut the magnetic borders around the material on the bulletin board, fifth-grader Alejandra Ubiera said. “Was the magnetic strip more important than our learning? Not only was this embarrassing to my teacher, it was disrespectful. We deserve better. Please change the system to be more respectful to me and my teachers.”
In one teacher story, relayed by education activist Ruth Kravetz, a student’s baby sibling died recently. The school counselor asked if she could skip the regular Thursday afterschool meeting of teachers to show support for the student and his family at the wake.
The principal denied her request saying “they shouldn’t have scheduled it on a Thursday.”
Not surprisingly gasps were heard around the room.
There were more third party accounts of teachers feeling so depressed, harassed and overwhelmed by the new regime, that they either left their jobs after a few days, quit over the winter break or plan to tell the district they’re gone by June and already have jobs in other districts lined up.
Miles, of course, has said that teachers and other employees who do not want to work in his system should leave, that he doesn’t want people in HISD that are not on board with the significant changes he is making. The question, of course, is how many people will that be after June and if the administration already dealing with an expanded summer school session, will be able to cope with filling spots for the upcoming school year.
Editor’s Note: Superintendent Mike Miles released this statement Friday morning.
“The district wants to clarify prior communication regarding the use of the proficiency screener. The proficiency screener rating will not be used in the evaluation of principals or other campus administrators in any adverse employment decisions for 2023-2024.
“The Superintendent will continue to use instructional data and student achievement data in the exercise of the discretion outlined in board policy DNB (LOCAL): “When relevant to the decision, written evaluations of a professional employee’s performance, as documented to date, and any other information the administration determines to be appropriate shall be considered in decisions affecting contract status.”
Original story
One hundred fifty Houston residents signed up to speak at Thursday night’s Houston ISD board meeting and even with storms moving through the area, most of them showed, carried along by their anger at Superintendent Mike Miles’ principal screenings.
That wasn’t the only thing they were objecting to but everything else was an also-ran to outrage about a list of principals told they were not measuring up. The list was leaked to the Houston Chronicle which published it online but later took it down after Miles threatened to sue and the Chron said it was told some names on the list shouldn’t be there.
The list also included the names of 124 principals told them were doing fine. Miles said earlier in the week that the 117 principals on notice weren’t all going to be fired at the end of the year and that they had the second semester to pick up their game.
But the fact that principals in some of the district’s top schools were in apparent jeopardy finally motivated some parts of the community that had previously been complacent about the changes Miles is installing throughout the district. Changes that affect more schools than just those in his New Education System about to be expanded to 130 campuses in the 2024-25 school year.
The board didn’t get through the lengthy experience unscathed either. Speakers not only railed against the state-appointed Miles, some threatening that they would not support an expected fall bond issue as long as he is superintendent, but repeatedly criticized the board for going along with his policies. or “cashing his checks” as one speaker put it.
Parents and students from the highly regarded Carnegie Vanguard High School turned out in force, to support their principal Ramon Moss and express their disbelief that their school’s principal was on the list.
Several speakers said they’d previously been supportive of what Miles was trying to do, knowing that there was a significant need for change in the low-performing schools in the district. What they really couldn’t understand was why Miles is making it a priority to go after the A and B schools in the district.
Several characterized his management style as being full of “bullying” and “intimidation” which then trickles down to his top lieutenants. Parent Jessica Ross, a former teacher and secondary science curriculum writer for HISD who worked in Kashmere and Wheatley high schools and Thomas Middle school, said:
“I am truly disturbed by the approach of Mike Miles and the board. We are all aware that HISD needed additional support. but this fear based one-size-fits all approach for a district as diverse as HISD is not only in direct contradiction to findings of basic research and pedagogy but a blatant attempt to deconstruct public education but extinguishing the passion, individualism, joy and sense of community and mutual respect that was making these struggling campuses start to excel. Fear is not a oath forward and we need to call this what it is: bullying.”
Jeffrey Fox describing himself as “a parent and I’m angry” decried Miles’ bell curve approach to principal retention, which calls for the lowest 10 percent of principals to be removed every year. He labelled it an arbitrary approach that forces a number of principals to be fired regardless of whether performance goals are achieved.
“This flaw is demonstrated by the fact that leaders at some of the highest performing schools in Houston have been targeted removal. Destabilizing high achieving schools in order to expand the flawed NES regime is a cynical tactic rooted in bad faith. Holding principals accountable for school performance is reasonable but if a school achieves the performance benchmark no matter how many other schools also achieve that benchmark that school’s leadership should not have to fear being fired.
“HISD needs change. But this scheme designed to score political points in Austin at the expense of our children’s education is not the way.”
Christine O’Neal, speaking on behalf of her middle school daughter Tallulah, “I think that its unfair and unethical that my principal be punished for not embracing tactics that weren’t approved by the board in the first place. HISD is in danger if we won’t allow these amazing teachers, principals and staff to continue doing the jobs that they are already excelling at.
“I have completely lost trust in Superintendent Miles. I’m angry and sad and I’m losing hope.”
Several speakers including parent and attorney Al Durrell, questioned whether the principal screenings in which principals were assessed on student test scores and a committee’s drop in visits, were even legal. The board never approved the “proficiency screening” that was added by Miles after previous discussion of how teachers and principals should be evaluated.
The lengthy night meeting was all in keeping with the tone of the day for the superintendent and its board. Earlier in the day, Miles held his State of the District at the Marriott Hotel downtown where protesters gathered outside in the rain and three people interrupted his speech inside and were escorted out of the room.
In the board comments at the end of the lengthy night meeting, only board member Rolando Martinez mentioned the controversy, saying “I want to thank the community members who were here today. It was a long meeting but it’s essential, it’s part of the process. People always ask how do you hold us accountable. This is one measure, one way you hold us accountable so I appreciate the feedback that you all provide and it’s our job to make sure we’re open and communicating with the community so that you clearly understand the decisions and why they’re being made. So thank you for being patient with us today.”
For the rest, it was as if any of the events of the day and what they’d just heard from the public had never happened.
The ESSER funds dealt out by the federal government during the pandemic to prop up public schools are about to be gone leaving Houston ISD and other school districts with a big hole to fill.
Especially if, as in HISD, a lot of the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief money was used to pay salaries rather than the recommended use of the funds which included needed facilities repairs, aiding students’ access to education during the pandemic and supporting the mental health of students.
The people are still with the district; the funding ends as of September 2024. And the district continues to experience enrollment declines which means less money from the state based on average daily attendance.
That’s a problem, HISD Superintendent Mike Miles said at a press conference Tuesday as he outlined the cuts he proposes so that HISD can produce a budget for the 2024-25 school year that leaves a fund balance of at least $800 million — down from his earlier statements that it would be at least $850 million and perhaps $870 million.
“Board members and I have talked and we’re getting feedback from principals. We want to make sure that they feel that cuts to their budgets get won’t be so deep that they can’t run effective schools. And that’s the right attitude to have for a principal,” Miles said.
“So it won’t be that we’re getting rid of all the ESSER funded positions. We’ll still provide curriculum supports. In order to do that we’re going to have to spend more money to make sure that we are bringing you a balanced budget but also one that’s fiscally responsible. In order to do that, we will have to spend a bit more money.
Under the previous administration, the projected fund balance was estimated to drop to $548 million for the next year. ” That’s the size of the challenge. that we’ve got to do,” Miles said.
A draft of the budget, which the administration has been working on since January, will be presented to the state-appointed Board of Managers in May whose members will have to vote on and approve a final version by June to meet state deadlines.
“We’re assuming flat state allocation. We’re assuming we’re not going to get any money in this year We are going to fund the NES model at 130 schools,” Miles said. To counter this, he said there will be a decrease in outside services contracts and central office staff and NES staffs will be “right-sized.”
Tuesday afternoon, the principals in non-New Education System schools got their budget allocation for the 2024-25 school year. principals at what will be 130 NES schools next school year have been relieved of any budget calculation duties; that’s being done for them by the HISD Central Office.
While saying that he intends to keep the cuts away from students and the classrooms and continue to invest in teacher salaries, a key piece of Miles’s plan is his proposal to end the hold harmless status of enrollment and attendance at schools that was in place over the last three years due to the pandemic with its sharp decline in student attendance.
Under hold harmless, schools that lost any number of students were still funded by the district as if those students were still there. Speaking in admittedly wide ballpark figures, Miles estimated that has cost the district $50 million a year over each of the last three years.
Like other districts, HISD gets money from the state based on enrollment and average daily attendance — which means the kids have to be there. “Last three years we’ve been funding the schools … if they lost 100 kids they still got money for those 100 kids that are no longer here.
“We’re at a point that we can’t keep doing that. We’ve got to stop that.”
He proposes to temper this change in policy by capping the loss at 12 percent of budget on each school, meaning, at least initially, that a school with a sizable decrease in its student body won’t see its budget plummet by quite as much in one year.
“We’re trying to ease in.” One school had so many decreases that it would have lost 43 percent of their budget. “But they’re not going to lose 43 percent. They’re going to lose 12,” he said.
In the last year, he said, this amounted to 25 schools who would be losing more than 12 percent of their budget if that cap isn’t approved. Still, as he readily conceded, a 12 percent budget cut is much harder on a small school with a budget of $2 million than a larger school starting with a budget of $10 million.
“Right-sizing” will be applied to NES schools, he said. These are cases where for instance, six teachers were put in place even though the size of the student body called for five. Projections were too high.
Extras that will remain the same include small school subsidy, high school subsidy and magnet school subsidies. However, Miles did not promise this would continue in the future. He once again pledged not to close any small schools — but again, only for this coming school year.
“We could save a lot of money by closing small schools,” he said, but added that at first he wants to see what happens if the district does everything it can to improve those schools first. “Then we can say we’ve done right by the community.”
Just because 117 principals were told right before Spring Break they hadn’t met the most basic proficiency standards at their jobs in Houston ISD doesn’t mean they are going to be fired, HISD Superintendent Mike Miles said at a suddenly called press conference Monday.
They have a whole second semester to work things out and do better on the second proficiency screening, he said at the press conference in which he frequently compared the principals’ efforts to sports teams able to turn their losing seasons around at the midpoint by winning the rest of their games.
The list of 117 principals told they need to improve as well as 124 other principals who were told they’d already met the criteria was obtained and published online by the Houston Chronicle and republished on the Community Voices for Public Education website. On March 9, Miles complained that this was an unauthorized intrusion into personnel matters and Chron editors removed it from their site, saying they’d been told some of the names on it were in error. (Miles declined to say what those errors were on Monday.)
But before the Chron did so, enough people saw (and probably copied) the list. Surprised by the names of principals at some of the top schools in HISD who had not met the first level of proficiency, many parents were both amazed and infuriated. The resulting online discussions and an accompanying letter writing campaign appear to have awakened members of the public who’d previously been little concerned about the changes in HISD this school year.
Perhaps as a result, over this past weekend, several posts on CVPE called for Miles to leave the district (not new) and there were threats that if he’s not gone, the public will not support an expected bond issue in the fall running in the billions of dollars (a call to not support a bond issue because who the superintendent is, that’s new).
When asked at the press conference Monday if he would be willing to sacrifice himself and step down so that the bond issue would have a better job of passing, unsurprisingly the state-appointed Miles declined to do so and said he is going to stay the course and continue the job he was brought in to do. Although the bond issue is far from set, Miles said his priorities are, in order: security issues in the schools, heating and cooling systems in schools, renovations or complete replacement of some of the oldest schools in the district and replacing some of the outdated temporary buildings. He said he trusts that voters would put students first and vote for the expenditures for needed improvements, whatever they think of what he’s doing.
For the screening, principals were judged on quality of instruction by an independent review team and student achievement at their schools. At the end of the year for their evaluations they will also be assessed on their action plan and how they did with special education.
The superintendent complained about how the 117 principals’ performance was described by some media outlets and community forums.
“We never used words like for the second group ‘They didn’t make the cut, they failed. They better shape up, They’ve been put on notice.’ We never said that.” The 117 were told they need to continue to make progress, he said. Seventy to 80 percent are going to be asked to return,” he said.
Miles predicted that 10-20 percent of the 117 principals would end up not having their contracts renewed for the 2024-25 year. That means 80-90 percent of them, even those ones “who don’t have a winning record” will be asked back, Miles said. Principals will continue to be assessed throughout this semester and a second screening will be done at the end of April, beginning of May. They will be notified after May 6, he said.
HISD has 274 principals total but not all were rated — some joined the district after November 1 and some were out on FMLA leave, he said.
(In another data point, Miles also announced that there will be 4,500 teacher positions at the New Education System schools (the superintendent’s new program with timed tests throughout the school day) and that 5,494 HISD teachers had already applied for those slots at what will be 130 NES campuses. That number doesn’t include the teachers from outside the district who may apply for those jobs, he said.)
In justifying his evaluation and screening system, Miles said any real evaluation system looks at the quality of instruction in order to raise the quality of instruction. “You can’t just raise the bar, raise expectations without any data, without any information. And you can’t hold people accountable without giving them that information.” Employees deserve to know exactly where they stand, he said.
“The 117 schools, their principals are making good progress. That’s what we told them. And they just need to continue. We need another semester. We need the second half of the season. Nobody said they’re not going to make it,: he said. “The principals at these high-performing schools, odds are they’re going to have a winning season.”
Whether that assurance comforts any of the parents upset about the status of their principals right now, remains undetermined. But the school board meets again at 5 p.m. this Thursday, March 2 and with an expected long line of public speakers, chances are, we’ll find out.
In a Monday press release that the district was clearly happy to generate, Houston ISD administrators today announced that the majority of their teachers say they are staying for the 2024-25 academic year. How much of that depends upon the higher salaries for teachers at the New Education System schools is anyone’s guess.
Salaries for high school NES teachers, for example, start at $82,816, and go up to $88,816 for a teacher with five or more years of experience, the press release stated. NES schools also receive more support and lesson plans generated by Central Office — something that has received both accolades and complaints.
As part of an annual survey, HISD asks teachers what they plan to do for the next school year. Of the 93 percent of HISD teachers, or 10,230 teachers, who responded this year, 96 percent said they want to continue teaching in HISD. According to HISD this was a higher number of respondents than previous years.
Also, 97 percent of teachers who work at a NES school with its more structured day and constant testing, campus want to stay in the NES. Of the teachers at non-NES schools that will be part of the NES system in the fall, 90 percent want to stay at the same campus.
In addition,14 percent of teachers who work at a non-NES school want to transfer to an NES campus, the district says. Superintendent Mike Miles installed the system at the beginning of this school year at a select number of schools and has greatly expanded it for next year.
“These numbers clearly show our teachers are dedicated to their students and want to be a part of the most important transformation effort in the country,” said Miles. “We’ve said that HISD is building an elite team. As part of the survey, we shared our new Employee Value Proposition that outlines why the District is a uniquely great place to work and what we expect from our employees. The 96 percent of teachers who want to stay in HISD see what we offer that other districts don’t.”
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