The seismic changes seen by Monsiváis’ son and the 180,000-plus students throughout HISD this school year are the result of the most dramatic state takeover of a school district in American history, a grand experiment that could reshape public education across Texas and the nation.
In stunningly swift fashion, HISD’s state-appointed superintendent and school board have redesigned teaching and learning across the district, sought to tie teacher pay more closely to student test scores, boosted some teacher salaries by tens of thousands of dollars and slashed spending on many non-classroom expenses.
The changes in HISD rival some of the most significant shake-ups to a public school system ever, yet they’ve received minimal national media attention to date.
Still, district leaders, citing private conversations with researchers and superintendents, said education leaders throughout the U.S. are following the HISD efforts to see whether they may be worth replicating. Adding to the intrigue: Texas lawmakers have looked in recent years to policies used by HISD’s new superintendent, former Dallas Independent School District chief Mike Miles, as inspiration for statewide legislation.
“I think people are watching and waiting,” HISD Board Secretary Angela Lemond Flowers said. “We’re stepping out there big, and it’s important because we are a big district and we have lots of students that we need to make sure we’re serving better. Not in the next generation. Not in five years. Like, immediately.”
Miles, the chief architect of HISD’s new blueprint, has pointed to early successes — including strong improvement in state test scores this year — as evidence that his model works where others have failed. For decades, Black and Latino children in urban school districts like Houston have trailed well behind wealthier and white students in school.
Miles’ critics, however, have blasted his approach as an unproven, unwanted siege on the district orchestrated by Texas Republicans. They cite high teacher turnover headed into the next school year and long-term questions about the affordability of Miles’ plans as indicators the effort may be doomed.
Regardless of whether the HISD intervention becomes a shining success, a historic failure or something in between, it could help answer one of the most pressing questions in education: Can a large, urban public school district dramatically raise student achievement and shrink decades-old performance gaps, ultimately helping to close America’s class divide?
I think you know what my level of doubt is at this point, so I won’t belabor this. It occurs to me just how effing funny it is to see the solution that Miles has presented is basically “spend a bunch more money per student” – I mean, after so many years of being told that throwing money at the problem is not the right answer, even I almost missed the obvious point that Miles is throwing a ton of money at the problem. He’s doing it in an entirely unsustainable way, of course, because the state has been unwilling and unable to sustain public school budgets, which like everything else have been affected by cost increases. He’s also been singularly unwilling to name that problem, for fear of disturbing his overlords or something, I have no idea. But if one result of all this is that the Lege ponies up a shitload more money for school districts like HISD so they can all get the Full Mike Miles Experience, I’ll have to admit that this all had some value to it. And then I will promptly expire from lack of oxygen as I am convulsed in bitter laughter.
By the way, just curious here, has anyone else noticed that Miles has made his current budget work in part by shifting a bunch of money from the already-successful non-NES schools to the NES schools? If the key to the NES schools’ success is the increase in funding they have received, then doesn’t that foretell worse outcomes for those non-NES schools? Are we going to be happy if there’s a commensurate number of schools dropping from A and B ratings to C as there are schools moving up from D and F to C? I’ll leave the socialism jokes to someone whose brain isn’t already falling out of his ears.
Whether this turns into a sustainable experiment or not, we’ll need more than a year or two’s data to know. The story helpfully drops a Michelle Rhee reference for those of us old enough to remember the turn of the 2010s. And before we even get to next year’s STAAR results, we still have to ensure that HISD’s enrollment doesn’t drop by some double-digit percentage, as parents who have the means to not have to deal with Mike Miles’ bullshit hit the exits, and we have to ensure that enough teachers with something resembling a qualification show up to run the scripts. I sure hope we get something positive out of this mess, because it’s been a whole lot of chaos and disruption so far. But as I said up front, I remain skeptical.
Re: “…the result of the most dramatic state takeover of a school district in American history.”
The Most Dramatic based on what, the number of students in the district ? Certainly not dramatic in the sense that no one saw it coming.
Re: “Whether this turns into a sustainable experiment or not, we’ll need more than a year or two’s data to know.” I would agree, time will tell. Certainly doesn’t stop local bloggers from railing against said experiment every chance they get.
Hyperbole is alive and well in American journalism.