What have we gained and lost after three school years of the TEA takeover of HISD? The Chron did a deep dive.
Houston ISD’s state takeover began three years ago, when the Texas Education Agency ousted the elected leadership and appointed Superintendent Mike Miles and a nine-member board of managers to oversee the state’s largest school district.
Miles almost immediately launched the controversial New Education System reform model, which has since expanded to about 130 campuses. The NES model includes a standardized curriculum, less autonomy, higher pay for educators and additional support staff for teachers. Given the extra resources, it costs more per student than other HISD schools.
Under the takeover, HISD’s NES schools have seen dramatic improvement on the state’s A-F accountability ratings and growth on multiple state exams, including the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness.
Some campuses have lost several academic and extracurricular programs as the district has rolled out other initiatives, like Sunrise Centers with free resources for families.
Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of the advocacy group Children at Risk, said the data shows students are performing better in a lot of schools, but recognizes that the changes have been difficult.
“I think the messenger and the way the message is delivered isn’t always the best way, and I think that obviously we would much rather have an elected school board who chooses a superintendent of their own choosing, not one of the state’s, but I think that you’ve seen really nice results,” Sanborn said.
[…]
Miles said on Houston Matters in May that enrollment declines are a national phenomenon, and he attributed losses in NES schools to several reasons, including economic mobility and immigration declines. In the Houston area, Miles said Aldine and Pasadena ISDs had larger percentage enrollment declines compared to HISD.
“NES has been a huge success, and the achievement is undeniable,” Miles said. “(At) the end of the day, parents want their kids to read, write, and do math more. … Kids and families are celebrating what is happening in those schools.”
Multiple parents, however, have told the Chronicle that they’ve pulled their child out of HISD largely due to dissatisfaction with Miles’ changes, including NES, the district’s standardized curriculum, and rising staff turnover.
Jessica Flores, a former HISD parent, said her daughter would regularly come home crying from third grade in Tijerina Elementary School due to stress. Even though it was not a designated NES campus, she said the school followed much of the NES model.
“They had no recreational time,” Flores said. “They were forced to do schoolwork from the moment the bell rang (in the morning) to the moment the bell rang at the end of the day. It was schoolwork, schoolwork, schoolwork, with no break. Just straight working out of packets.”
After watching her daughter’s mental health suffer, Flores hit her “breaking point.” She pulled her out of the classroom at the end of the 2024-25 school year and enrolled her in Pasadena ISD, where she’s thrived. Despite their new 30-minute drive from the East End to Pasadena, Flores said she doesn’t see a circumstance in which she would re-enroll in HISD.
That latter bit is from the section headlined “Student enrollment losses”; the other sections are “Academic improvements”, “Program gains, losses”, and “Teacher turnover”. This is a gift link so I encourage you to read the rest. There have been academic gains, which is both a good thing on its own and a good thing in that it’s necessary to get rid of Mike Miles, but there’s definitely a cost and there’s no guarantee these improvements will be persistent. I certainly have a hard time believing that the NES model will work long-term, and that’s before we talk about introducing a bunch of AI crap into the mix.
I will also note, once again, that a key ingredient to all this is right there in the second paragraph, where it reminds us that the NES model “costs more per student”. I am always amused and annoyed by the seldom-acknowledged fact that the ultimate solution here was to throw more money at the schools that needed it the most. Like, who would have ever thought of that? Especially now, as even the richest school districts across the state are being forced to cut back due to insufficient funding, which is only going to get worse thanks to voucher mania. But at least we’ll still have all the LLM-generated PowerPoint slides we can eat.