I have some thoughts about this.
The memos came in one after the other, a laundry list of grievances listing all the ways Federico Hernandez was supposedly failing as principal of Houston ISD’s Middle College High School.
A teacher used Post-It notes rather than index cards during a lesson, according to one complaint from Hernandez’s supervisor. Others allowed students to sit in the back of a classroom or kept a light off during class. Some implemented multiple response strategies, “but not correctly,” read the memo shared with the Houston Chronicle.
Even though the school, which operates on Houston Community College’s Felix Fraga campus, boasts an A-rated academic performance, those were among the infractions that got Hernandez removed from his job less than two months into the school year.
He is one of at least 58 principals who left their schools, involuntarily or otherwise, in 2023 since Superintendent Mike Miles was appointed to his post by the Texas Education Agency on June 1, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of HISD staffing records. After taking into account schools that share a principal, such as Jane Long Academy and Las Americas Newcomer School, or those that recorded multiple changes between June and December, such as Madison High School, the Chronicle confirmed there have been at least 61 leadership changes across 59 campuses.
That means about 1 in 5 HISD campuses saw a leadership change in just seven months, roughly matching the national average over the course of an entire school year.
Hernandez said he gave teachers a little leeway at the small, alternative East End campus that serves students for whom “the traditional high school setting is not an effective model,” according to the school’s website — but his reasoning went unheeded.
“I was trying (to follow the rules) to the best of my ability, but at the same time during all my training to be an educational leader, I was always told that you make decisions with your students’ best interest in mind,” Hernandez said. “Some of those decisions, I was trying to implement, but in a manner that wouldn’t negatively impact the students, because it was already starting to negatively impact them.”
Of the 58 principals who have left their campuses since June, at least 14 did so after the school year started on Aug. 28. At least 16 principals have resigned or retired since Miles took over, and at least eight have been shuffled to other schools or promoted to central office positions.
In the majority of cases, the Chronicle was unable to confirm the exact reason for a principal’s departure through various public records requests over the course of several months. Inconsistencies in HISD’s staffing records make reliable year-to-year comparisons difficult.
[…]
Erica Harbatkin, an education policy expert at Florida State University who studies principal turnover, said it is not unusual for administrators to reassign principals in an attempt to shake up under-performing schools. They typically don’t do so during the school year, though, because principals need time to plan and coordinate their staff, and “coming in after the school year started… obviously undermines some of those strategies.”
Harbatkin said replacing a principal is one of the quickest ways to effect change at a school, for better or worse.
“The theory of action behind more contemporary school turnaround and improvement policy is that these schools are in this pattern of low performance, and they need something to get them out, some sort of big external shock … and one of the ways that happens is through replacing the principal,” Harbatkin said.
If not done carefully, however, principal turnover can lead to negative effects on student achievement, Harbatkin said. Her research found that principal turnover “is associated with lower test scores, school proficiency rates, and teacher retention.”
“When principals turn over teachers tend to turn over as well, and if that turnover is not well-planned, if there’s not good distributed leadership in the school or someone who can step into the role, that’s likely to make those negative effects even larger,” Harbatkin said.
There’s more, so read the rest. My thoughts, in no particular order:
1. HISD appropriately does not comment about any of the principal changes, in general or at specific schools. That’s how it should be in employment matters. It’s also a little frustrating given the overall lack of communication from HISD and Mike Miles during his time here.
2. It’s really unfortunate that we don’t have the data for a baseline comparison. Obviously, some number of principals leave one way or another in the course of a school year. That’s just life. This is as far from a normal school year as it’s possible to get, and yet we can’t tell if there’s a connection with principal turnover. We may not have any idea about this until several years down the line, when we can see what subsequent years, including the post-Miles years, look like.
3. As we know, there has also been a lot of turnovers among the teachers. The Chron noted in a recent editorial that this could be good, if Miles has chased off bad teachers who didn’t think they could keep up with the higher standards, and it could be bad if his model of control and chaos has caused the top performers to seek better options for themselves. There are a lot of factors in play here, but as a general rule I’d say principals leaving schools that have good accountability ratings = not good. As with item #2, we’ll know more later, when it will be too late to react.
4. One detail in this story that made me unhappy was that several principals talked about how hard it has been to enforce all of Miles’ rules, how little leeway they have in helping teachers follow those rules, and how much pressure they feel as a result. I’ve never worked at a school but I have worked in corporate America for a long time, and in my experience that just sounds like bad leadership. It certainly doesn’t sound like an environment in which people will thrive.
5. As I’ve said multiple times before, we may ultimately get the results that Miles is aiming for, but I fear that it will come at a high cost and be unsustainable in the long run. I hope I am wrong about that part.
This is rod Paige and Terry Grier on steroids. Blame the front line troops who are actually trying to teach the students, poise as a tough reformer, and declare victory and leave .
Leave a mess, chaos, a void in experience and a weaker district.