As more Texas school districts face the threat of a state takeover, they are turning to a charter network founded by Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles to try to avoid it.
At least seven school districts — Edgewood, Everman, Hempstead, Killeen, San Antonio, Texarkana and Waco ISDs — are moving to partner with Third Future Schools to turn around 12 schools, according to school district board documents and announcements. Wichita Falls ISD is expanding its existing partnership to two additional schools and Midland ISD to one more school.
Those partnerships would add 15 schools to the charter network’s portfolio, doubling its national footprint.
The growth comes as districts across Texas face pressure to improve struggling campuses or risk a state takeover that strips elected school boards of control.
Third Future Schools, based in Colorado, was founded by Miles before Texas appointed him in 2023 to lead Houston ISD following the state’s takeover of the district for low performance at one high school. Now, as more districts face similar consequences tied to repeated low ratings, they are turning to the charter network he built.
At the center of those partnerships is an instructional model Miles has said mirrors the New Education System he implemented in HISD.
“The NES model (and the model used by Third Future Schools) developed by Mike Miles is the only proven instructional methodology that has been able to consistently turn around failing campuses quickly,” Miles co-wrote in a July proposal to improve instruction at International Leadership of Texas, a charter school network.
Like Houston ISD, Third Future Schools uses a structured model that includes 45 minutes of instruction, followed by a daily quiz called a “demonstration of learning,” and a targeted repeat of the lesson for students who don’t understand the material based on that quiz.
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A school district publishes a “call for quality schools” to invite organizations to apply to run campuses, according to guidance from the Texas Education Agency. That callout should include an overview of a partner’s roles and responsibilities, student demographic data and community priorities for the school.
In several cases, Third Future Schools was the only group that applied.
Hempstead, Everman, Waco and Wichita Falls ISDs each said it received a single applicant in response to their calls.
The TEA said Third Future Schools is not the only approved charter management organization for turnaround partnerships. The TEA can offer guidance and resources to navigate the partnership process, the agency said, but the district chooses its operating partner.
[…]
Third Future’s Superintendent Zach Craddock — introduced to San Antonio’s Board of Trustees as “the one turnaround in Texas, that’s approved by the Texas Education Agency” — told the San Antonio school board that Miles “took the TFS instructional model and applied it wholescale in Houston.”
“The way we go about it is a little bit different,” Craddock said in February, without giving additional details.
Craddock said then that Third Future Schools’ network bylaws prohibit its share from exceeding 10% of state money, and 90% of the partnership money goes back to the campus.
Craddock said the district would take 6% to 8% of state revenue. Third Future likes to purchase back transportation, custodial, school nurse and utility services. Funds stay in Texas and each state has a 501(c)(3), with “no commingling of funds,” Craddock said.
Maybe if we had as much insight into Third Future’s books as we do with ISDs’ budgets, so that we knew exactly what they were doing with our tax dollars, I’d feel better about this. Maybe if there were any studies that showed the Third Future/NES way did more than just generate short-term increases in standard test scores, that they led to long-term improvements in learning and achievement, I’d feel better about this. Maybe if there were some alternatives to Third Future that school districts whose backs were up against the wall could explore so that it’s not just the same old thing every time, I’d feel better about this. Maybe if Texas fully funded its public schools, so that we could all believe that the failures were of execution and not socioeconomics and lack of resources, I’d feel better about this. Maybe, maybe, maybe, maybe. In the meantime, it sure is good to be Mike Miles. The Texas Observer has more.
The TEA said Third Future Schools is not the only approved charter management organization for turnaround partnerships. The TEA can offer guidance and resources to navigate the partnership process, the agency said, but the district chooses its operating partner.
I strongly suspect this statement from TEA is dishonest. There appears to be a finger on the scale during the so-called call for quality and districts are being coerced into selecting the agencies preferred vendor.
Anyone claiming they’ve discovered the one and only magic pill to fix chronically underfunded struggling schools is fill of shut, and should not be trusted. It’s a shame there’s no committed investigative journalist looking into this.
@Woah Get those Mario Diaz and Bill Spencer cats from KPRC on it ! Not Amy Davis, she’s too busy taking photos of low hanging electrical wires these days.
Any functioning state government (well, one that doesn’t exist as a pretense for graft) might consider prohibiting this as a conflict of interest?