Back on July 28, 2026, ABPTL wrote this about Mike Miles, the current state-appointed school superintendent for the Houston Independent School District:
“ABPTL has been hard on Mike Miles, the state-appointed superintendent assigned to lead the Houston Independent School District back in 2023. But now, based on new test data, it seems like Miles’s reforms, a program he calls his New Education System, is working for more kids in more schools.”
Well, not exactly.
After a bit more investigation, it seems Miles and HISD have been “gaming the system” by excluding students from the STAAR tests (the name of Texas’s high-stakes testing regimen) who the district fears might fail the test.
The Texas Observer, an Austin-based news organization with a liberal slant, reported recently:
“When Aubrie was a freshman in the Houston Independent School District, she was assigned to an Algebra I class. On the first day of school, her teacher recognized her talent and moved her into pre-AP Algebra I, where she thrived.”
“Two years later, at the beginning of the last school year, Aubrie was excited to take pre-AP Algebra II. She had always loved math and imagined a bright future in science. But three weeks into the school year, she and nearly 2,000 other juniors across Houston ISD’s 16 New Education System (NES) high schools were abruptly pulled out of Algebra II and placed into a remedial math course called Algebraic Reasoning/Texas College Bridge.”
“This move was not made to help students grow academically. Instead, we believe students were moved into this less rigorous course to artificially inflate campus accountability ratings, at the expense of student learning. Just sitting through the Algebraic Reasoning course and clicking through the online modules increases a school’s A-F rating, even if students never pass the state’s college readiness assessment attached to the class. It’s a loophole that state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is exploiting at an unprecedented scale.”
“Records obtained from the Houston ISD along with publicly available data from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) reveal that the district’s state-appointed superintendent Mike Miles shunted about half of all juniors at NES high schools into this course. At some schools, as many as 70 percent were similarly demoted into less challenging classes.”
“If a student completes the Texas College Bridge online course, the schools is awarded CCMR (college, career, military readiness) credit – even if students don’t pass the Texas Success Initiative exam at the end of the course. In effect, Texas College Bridge is a loophole that allows schools to boost accountability ratings without increasing student readiness.”
Recently, two independent studies found that the Texas College Bridge program did little to prepare students for college, even though a school was given accountability credit based upon students enrolled in the online course.
“Recognizing the glaring problems, TEA recently decided to phase out Texas College Bridge as a CCMR pathway after this year. Yet Miles still chose to exploit this loophole while it existed; it was his last opportunity to boost the district’s accountability ratings in this way.”
“Reporting by the Houston Chronicle uncovered a district-wide scheme to delay biology from 9th to 10th grade at NES high schools except for students taking pre-AP biology. Testing only higher-performing students created the appearance of dramatic gains while avoiding all freshmen were tested on biology. Meanwhile, thousands of NES 9th-graders were diverted into a remedial science course with no STAAR exam, delaying their path to advanced science courses.”
Back at the turn of the century, HISD played similar games with school accountability. Back then, high school principals held students back as 9th graders so they wouldn’t have to take the 10th grade state test. Then, the principals approved accelerating those 9th graders to the 11th grade by assigning summer school and credit-by-exam courses, missing the 10th grade state test altogether.
Walt Haney, then an education professor at Boston College, labeled this stunt as “the Texas Miracle,” a strategy to provide the public with statistical illusions driven by high dropout manipulation and narrowed test preparation. Texas became the laughingstock of the country.
Is Mike Miles executing on his own version of “the Texas Miracle”?
Today, the Houston Chronicle reported that HISD’s use of online courses (the Texas College Bridge program) inflated HISD ratings, and without those online courses, some schools would have received a “F” rating.
In other words, HISD is receiving high accountability ratings, but their ability to prepare their graduates to do well in college, or a career, or the military is lacking.
So, it seems ABPTL erred in late July asking if Mike Miles as the “educational savior” everyone has been waiting for. It seems Miles is like some before him – just a desperate man trying to find a way to manipulate the system – at students’ cost.
One last comment about Houston ISD:
Back in the early part of this century, HISD had around 200,000 students enrolled. This year, on August 10th – the first day of school – Houston reported 150,000 students showing up to their classes. That’s a 25% decrease over a ten-year period.
Maybe Miles and his state-takeover team should focus on getting kids back into Houston schools, instead of figuring out how to game the state’s accountability system.
Friday News Roundup tomorrow. Til then. SVB
A Better Path to Learning 
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