Last week Houston voters defeated a school bond worth $4.4 billion. The bond would have financed rebuilding the district’s school and technology infrastructure. After nearly 6 out of 10 Houstonians voting in the school district’s bond election said no to the bond proposal, analysts pointed to the fact that the vote became more of a referendum on state-appointed school superintendent Mike Miles and his district board of managers than anything else. Miles and the management board took over the Houston district back in June of 2023.
I went back and read an opinion piece Miles wrote for The 74 last month, approximately 30 days before the bond vote. Here are excerpts of what Miles penned in an article titled “In Houston, a Wholesale Transformation Delivers Better Education for Students:”
“In the last few years, school districts across the country have seen significant declines in reading and math, leading to lower test scores. Parents of Black and Latino students, in particular, feel schools are failing their kids, and many young people have stopped attending class altogether. While students struggle, large school districts keep fiddling around the edges with incremental changes that won’t make a difference fast enough.”
“Things are different in the Houston Independent School District. One year into the state intervention in the district, our results show meaningful growth for students and schools because we’ve embraced wholesale systemic transformation.”
“This progress is the result of some innovative practices, but also strategies that education leaders throughout the country already know. The biggest challenge has never been knowing which policies work, but rather summoning the will to do what is right for children, even when the politics are treacherous.”
“Twenty years ago, leaders willing to transform school systems and the lives of their students boldly dotted the national map. But as the politics got tougher, too many educators and elected officials learned the unfortunate lesson that doing what is right for kids doesn’t always lead to reelection or a contract extension. Today, most leaders don’t dare utter the words ‘transformation’ or ‘accountability’ and school systems take a piecemeal approach or abandon any effort to improve instructional quality because it is easier on adults. Never mind that honest-to-God transformation of our schools systems is exactly what students need.”
“In Houston, we’ve embraced transformational change with our New Education System model. What sets it apart from many previous reforms is its wholesale systemic approach. Unlike piecemeal reforms that often falter due to a lack of coherence and sustained focus, NES aims to build a new system from the ground up, ensuring that all components work in unison toward the same goals.”
“In particular, it changes how students are taught and how we approach training and professional development for educators. The model combines instruction with real-time feedback through mini-assessments, ensuring that students who are behind get the extra help they need. At the same time, those who are ahead are continually challenged with multi-disciplinary projects that focus on writing over multiple-choice questions. This allows students to demonstrate critical and creative thinking.”
“Effective teaching is at the core. The district has invested heavily in training principals to be instructional leaders. They conduct spot observations to better understand how to support teachers and then coach them to help improve their instruction. A new, rigorous evaluation system for principals gauges how well they achieve these goals.”
“We have also established leadership academies to train and develop aspiring teachers and principals. This is essential as we work to tackle a shortage of educators. The district hopes to have at least 70 graduates from the Principal Leadership Academy by May 2025.”
…
“After just one year of implementing NES at an initial set of 85 schools, the district has seen significant achievement gains. In grades 4 and 6, students at these schools improved their reading scores by 8 and 10 percentage points, respectively, while high schoolers jumped 10 points in algebra and 7 in English.”
“[The] Coalition for Advancing Student Excellence Houston called these gains unprecedented.”
[It seems the Coalition for Advancing Student Excellence Houston is a type of HISD booster club which plans to aggressively support measures that they deem are good for HISD students while providing constructive feedback to district leadership as needed.]
“Because our professional development and focus on better instruction extends to all schools, our districtwide transformation efforts have had effects even outside the NES model. Across the district, preliminary state accountability data shows that the numbers of A- and B-rated schools increased by 82%, from 93 in 2023 to 170 in 2024. Meanwhile, the number of NES schools achieving an A or B rating skyrocketed 480%, from 11 in 2023 to 53 in 2024, and the number earning a D or F declined from 121 to only 41 during that time period.”
“None of this has been easy. Even when everyone in the community knows things must improve, systemic change can trigger fierce pushback. But no matter how hard it is, students deserve a quality public education. It is up the superintendents, schools board members and elected leaders who have a say over education to deliver it. District leaders can’t afford to abandon large-scale reform to the past. In Houston, we are seeing incredible results. We hope other districts will find inspiration to pick up the tools of transformation and join us.”
A good year? Yes.
Incredible results? Nope.
Based on 2024 Texas standardized test results, here is information Miles doesn’t share in his 74 opinion piece:
66% of students in NES schools do not meet expectations in 3rd grade reading.
65% of students in NES schools do not meet expectations in 3rd grade math.
67% of students in NES schools do not meet expectations in 8th grade reading.
69% of students in NES schools do not meet expectations in 8th grade math.
80% of students in NES schools do not meet expectations in 8th grade science.
In non-NES schools, 2024 standardized test results are better, but not by much:
58% of students in non-NES schools do not meet expectations in 3rd grade reading.
59% of students in non-NES schools do not meet expectations in 3rd grade math.
44% of students in non-NES schools do not meet expectations in 8th grade reading.
68% of students in non-NES schools do not meet expectations in 8th grade math.
58% of students in non-NES schools do not meet expectations in 8th grade science.
Whereas HISD was quick to point out that 2024 achievement growth on the Texas standardized tests were the largest single year growth since this version has been available, the plain fact of the matter is that 2 out of 3 Houston students are not meeting expectations in these newly ordained NES schools, and 6 out of 10 Houston students are not meeting expectations in the non-NES schools.
Houston! You have work to do!
And I’m sorry to say this to Mike Miles, but his “New Education System” isn’t really “new” at all. I worked in the Houston Independent School District from 1984 to 2008.
We did real-time feedback in the 90’s. We called it formative assessment.
We offered extra help to those students who needed it. We called it tutorials.
We focused on writing over multiple choice questions. We called it “writing across the curriculum.”
I myself, along with 5 executive principals and 60 principals, participated in a walk-thru protocol we called “ARE We There Yet,” where we investigated and discussed how well curriculum was “Aligned,” how “Rigorous” was the instruction, and how “Engaged” the young learners were with what they were learning.
We had a principal’s academy.
Here’s the point. Mike Miles’s New Education System really isn’t “new” at all. And I can’t help but thinking that one of the reasons Houston’s bond failed is that enough Houstonians have found out what Dallas found out years ago when they fired Miles as their superintendent –
Along with reading, writing, and problem-solving results, a public schooling leader must focus on bringing along their young learners, their families, and their communities.
As one of my mentors once said, “Scott, if your public doesn’t respect you, then the scores really don’t matter much. You must do both – public trust and academic excellence.
Finally, in a released statement after his bond failed last week, Miles said this:
“We will do our best to keep long-expired heating and cooling systems running, but on very hot or very cold days, we are likely going to have to close campuses to keep students safe.”
I don’t know who suggested Miles write this to the parents (and voters) of HISD, but if Houston wants a future bond to pass, it might be a good idea to refrain from these types of threats moving forward.
Leadership matters!
A Better Path to Learning 
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