Sarah Malik used to think Houston ISD’s Lantrip Elementary School was a great fit for her daughter.
But after the state takeover of the district in June 2023, Malik said the environmental science magnet school in Eastwood, which they loved for the tenured teachers and welcoming community, began to change. Her child’s art teacher was reassigned, and students were discouraged from reading books after finishing their work, she said.
After the school’s principal and several teachers departed in the spring, Malik knew they had to go. Her daughter is now enrolled in The Kipling School, a private campus.
“We were blindsided all year with the changes that were happening,” Malik said.
Malik is one of thousands of parents who pulled their child from HISD this year. Several told the Chronicle they were leaving the district due to the stringent reforms, plummeting morale, principal and teacher departures or cookie-cutter lessons that they said did not account for a child’s individual learning needs during the previous academic year.
“I don’t want to risk another year of her being frustrated with learning,” Malik said.
HISD’s reported “membership,” or the number of students enrolled in the district on a specific day, was about 170,800 on Thursday, down by about 9,000 students, or 5%, compared to the fourth day of school last year, according to district data. The early data, however, does not reflect the official enrollment count of the state’s largest school district.
The district’s official enrollment will not be finalized until Oct. 25, but it appears to be on track to drop below 180,000 students this year. It reported an enrollment of about 184,000 students last year, and budget documents project enrollment to drop to about 179,600 this year, which would be its lowest enrollment in at least a decade.
State-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles said “people have different circumstances” so HISD enrollment will fluctuate for the first few weeks of the school year, which started two weeks earlier than last year. He said during a news conference last week that he is going to see where the dust settles before analyzing enrollment or retention strategies.
“Just like every year, students enroll over the next two or three weeks,” Miles said. “We will have kids coming to school all the way until Labor Day. I wish every kid would come on Aug. 12 or the very first day of school, but that doesn’t happen. The numbers are changing every day … but we feel confident that we’re going to keep growing in our enrollment until September.”
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Virginia Snodgrass Rangel, an associate professor in the University of Houston’s College of Education, said although HISD saw improved performance on the reading and math State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, the culture changes in the district’s schools have driven some students out — and it will be tough to convince them to come back.
“Culture is probably an important reason to consider why families might leave, and I hope that the district can figure out how to ensure a basic level of quality, while also making sure schools continue to be a good place to learn and a good place for teachers and principals to work,” Snodgrass Rangel said.
Similarly to last year, the district’s data shows membership declines are largest within schools in the New Education System program that was implemented last year, although the number of students at non-NES schools has declined as well. The NES model includes standardized curriculum that teachers must follow, extended campus hours, timed lessons and the conversion of libraries to Team Centers.
NES campuses reported an 8% decline in the number of students enrolled on the fourth day, while membership at non-NES campuses decreased by less than 3%. The starkest divide was among middle schools, where NES programs lost about 11% of students compared to less than a 1% decline at non-NES campuses.
The district’s declining enrollment, however, is not new this year, but a yearslong trend faced by several large urban school districts, and it predates the appointment of the board and superintendent to the 274-campus district. Measured every October, enrollment in the last decade peaked in the 2016-17 school year at 216,106.
“I don’t know that HISD is unique overall (in its enrollment decline,) but when you disaggregate these numbers, the numbers are clearly driven by the NES schools, and that suggests that there’s something unique that’s happening in HISD that likely is connected to the reform,” Snodgrass Rangel said.
A precipitous enrollment decline, led by the parents who have the means to take their kids elsewhere, has long been one of my main fears about the effects of the Miles takeover. Turns out that the more you make a place unpleasant to be, the more that people don’t want to be there.
Miles is right about one thing, that the Day One numbers are always lower than the final tally will be. Some number of students do indeed not show up right away, for a variety of reasons. We’ll get a more accurate count in a few weeks. But the fact remains that HISD projected a mild decline in the population, with Miles even speculating that the recent STAAR results might lure some people back. At this point, it would take a miracle to get close to that optimistic assessment.
We may have another year of improved performance on the metrics that Miles was brought in to improve. That would be good, and also bring us a step closer to kicking his ass to the curb. Whatever does happen there, it’s nearly impossible at this point for me to call this experience “successful”, even if it does succeed by its own standard. It’s going to take a long time to undo the damage. I will forever be furious about that.
Worthing HS (my campus) 62 D to 78 C
Yates HS 54 F to 84 B
Kashmere HS 62 to 80
Wheatley HS 65 to 84
all chronically underperforming schools deemed Dropout Factories by johns hopkins. all now well performing campuses. i wonder what will happen when miles is gone and no one wants to keep the changes.