Eating Houston Crow

I’ve been critical of Mike Moses, current superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, in the past. But now, I think it’s time to eat a little crow.

In July, The 74 reported that,

“Superintendent Mike Miles wants you to hear the good news from Houston.”

“The chief of America’s eighth-largest school district was appointed in 2023 by Texas’s education commissioner, who controversially spearheaded a state takeover in response to poor academic performance and allegations of misconduct of local board members. The move, preceded by years of lawsuits, drew immediate protests by local officials.”

“Their outcry was, perhaps, foreseeable. Full-on takeovers are rare, usually only attempted in chronically struggling districts steeped in managerial problems. Houston Independent School District fit the bill in some respects, with large numbers of schools earning failing grades from the Texas Education Agency, but parents and educators still deplored the loss of autonomy and the appointment of an outsider.”

“Two years later, the outcry hasn’t quieted completely. Increasingly, however, local and state leaders are pointing to a competing narrative of revamped instructional strategies, swiftly rising student achievement and newfound plaudits from state authorities. According to the release of student evaluation data in June, Houston pupils are catching up with – and, in some subjects, outperforming – their peers across Texas after years of lagging far behind. This year’s scores largely improved upon last year’s, which themselves represented a leap forward from the pre-takeover status quo.”

“The most energetic evangelist for that progress is Miles, a former Army officer and diplomat turned educator. His trek to Texas from his home state of Colorado has not always been smooth, with a three-year stint as Dallas superintendent ending in 2015 after Miles lost the backing of the local board. Both in that city and at a previous stop in Colorado Springs, he angered some veteran educators by advocating for a switch to a pay-for-performance system that many saw as unfair.”

“He has pursued a similar course in Houston, along with a package of pedagogical and organizational reforms he dubs the New Education System: a heavy emphasis on coaching and blending curriculum and instruction, along with longer school hours. Since its implementation, the majority of Houston schools run under the NES model have seen major improvements to their state ratings. Critics have called the model top-down and restrictive, but Miles insists it’s about giving teachers the tools they need to succeed in schools enrolling historically underserved minority and low-income students.”

…

Here is a sampling of Miles’s quotes regarding Houston’s progress over the past two years:

“I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve led other districts and been a consultant in other districts, and I talk to colleagues all the time. These results are unheard of.”

“In 2023, 93 schools in the district out of 273 earned an A or B grade. One year later, we were up to 170. These are accountability scores from the state, and the 2024 scores for all the districts in Texas will be released soon. You’re going to see their A’s and B’s stay flat while their D’s and F’s go up. Meanwhile, Houston went from having 121 D- and F-rated schools to 41. It’s not easy to take an F school and turn it around, but we did it in spades in just one year.”

“Just looking at the schools in the New Education System program: After one year, we went form 53 F-rated schools to 23. When we started, only 11 earned A’s or B’s, and now 87 do. We’re talking about mostly underserved populations of kids.”

“Think about what a difference that makes for their academic career and beyond. I challenge you to find an urban district that has seen these kinds of outcomes after just two years.”

The news in Houston is good when you look at how their schools are being rated by the state’s grading system. But a closer look at standardized test results for HISD tells the district, and the state, that there is still work to be done.

Although all grades 3 thru 8 show math improvement in the STAAR test (Texas’s state test), none of those grades show that more than half of testers “meet expectations.” Reading scores are stronger grade 3 thru 8, but still no grade surpasses 56 percent of students earning “meets expectations.”

So, I’m willing to eat a little crow today and say “good start” to Houston’s math and reading results over the past two years. But eating the “big crow” remains for another day and another year.

I’ll (we’ll) be watching.

Til tomorrow. SVB