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health needs. Find out more at MMHPI dot org. Well, hello,
and welcome to the Texas Tribune trip Cast for August eighteen, twenty twenty three.
My name's Matthew Watkins, Managing editor for News at the Tribune, and
this week we're going to be talking about the state's takeover of Houston, ID.
When classes began at Texas's largest school district later this month. They will
be done under the supervision of a school board and superintendent handpicked by the state.
The previous board, which is elected by the voters in the city,
was deposed in June under the authority of a law passed in twenty fifteen that
mandated state takeover if a district or one of its campuses receives failing grades from
the TEA for five consecutive years. In Houston, that was Phyllis Wheatley High
School, which reached that threshold in twenty nineteen. The new superintendent, Mike
Miles, has already been making waves, firing multiple principles and administrators, pursuing
whole sales, systemic changes at dozens of campuses, and perhaps most controversially,
repurposing some libraries into discipline centers. Joining us to discuss this our two reporters
for the nonprofit news site Houston Landing. We have Miranda Dunlap, a staff
writer for The Landing who has written more than twenty stories on this topic.
Came Miranda there. And we have Asher layer Small, who's the reporter for
covering K twelve for The Landing. Hey. Asher, Hey, Maddy,
glad to be here. Yeah, thanks for joining. So Miranda, I
want to start with you. You know, one of the more controversial aspects
of this taker takeover is the rationale behind it. I already mentioned Phyllis Wheatley
the High School is a school that has struggle academically for a long time.
It is also one of just two hundred and seventy six schools in a district
that had a B rating from the TEA when this takeover occurred. But that
being said, the district has slipped in the ratings in the latest scores that
released this week. I'm wondering if you could just sort of kind of lay
the framework here and kind of describe what the academic climate and situation was at
HISD, you know, leading up to this decision in June for the takeover.
Yeah, I think the fact that the district had a B rating has
kind of been a reason why a lot of people have opposed the takeover and
maybe not been in support of it, because, you know, a B
rating is an averagely good rating, and so what we're going to see this
year though, is that it's entirely possible that the district falls back a little
bit and it's a through F rating. The state is kind of like hardening
up and raising some bars through their accountability system that would make it a little
bit harder for HISD to receive that B rating. Again. We had a
story about this, but if HID had the same scores at their schools as
they did last year, the essentially the formula would result in a HI s
C having a C rating this year. Those scores come out in September,
and we saw just a few days ago some star scores came out and the
district fell back a little bit in reading and stayed flat in math, and
that is behind several like light districts across the state who did a little bit
better in growth. So that's kind of where we're at. Don't know for
sure, but it the way it's looking, it's possible that the district could
have a C rating this year. That being said, a lot of the
a lot of the takeover, you know, did some from the scores at
Wheatley High School and their consecutive failing grades. There were some other reasons that
went into that. Specifically, there was a TEA investigation into the board about
misconduct, and the investigations findings was that there was multiple instances of misconduct and
there is a law that if there is a finding of misconduct within the board,
that the Tea can appoint a board. You know, some board members
did say that it was a biased investigation, that those findings weren't you know,
accurate, but regardless, there were findings that they violated Open Meetings Act
or you know, made false statements to investigators during that time. Yeah,
and there's also a third aspect that another another provision of law is that if
the district has a state appointed conservator for more than two years, that the
district that the TA can take over the district and appoint a school board.
Now Hie had a state appointed conservator for six years to kind of remedy some
district issues. So there's it's kind of threefold essentially. Essentially Miranda's getting at
there is that there's several state laws that lay the legal groundwork and legal framework
for why the state was able to take over. There's the consecutive failing grades
which happened at Wheatley, and I think there are a lot of Houston residents
who ask, like, hey, why can the state take over this district
of two hundred and seventy three schools based on the rating of one school.
So that is a state law that went into effect in twenty fifteen, and
then there are a couple other provisions that also allowed the takeover to be triggered,
and that is what has led us to where we are today. Jumping
on the star scores piece, so pretty much there were star scores that came
out this week. They said the state standardized tests and then how those play
into the district's accountability ratings, So like abcd F that comes out later in
September. But I was on a press call with Superintendent Miles earlier this week
and he said, you know, we have to wait and see what's going
to happen with the with the accountability rating, but we're expecting to see How
would you kind of classify the community feeling about the state of the schools,
you know, leading into this, And I know there's been some pushback about
the idea of the state's involvement here and in the kind of extent of the
takeover, But was there a large contingent of a feeling that, you know,
this this board is dysfunctional. There were a lot of kind of public
spats that rolled out. There was there a feeling that schools do need to
turn around? Or was there not much of a clamoring for dramatic change in
the schools leading up to this? I can start. I think it's hard
to say what the general consensus is because it is so mixed. You have
a lot of parents who who have children at these schools that are being you
know, immediately overhauled this year, and a lot of them, you know,
maintain that their schools are great schools. Some of these schools have good,
you know, scores, But then you have a lot of people who
you know, have really grown tired of really the dysfunction of the previous board
and all of the you know, like in fighting that was just so rampant,
and their kind of inability to address these longstanding issues in the district.
So you have, you know, some people who really are proud of their
schools and don't understand why so much change is you know, now falling upon
them. But then you have, you know, people who recognize that a
lot of schools in the district are not doing well and are not serving kids,
and they want change. And you know, maybe some of this is
really uncomfortable to them, but they're more trying to stay positive. It really
is mixed. It's hard to say what the overall feeling is. But but
Miranda and I spend a lot of the summer going to community events that the
superintendent held. So twice a week he would go to a school and kind
of go over his vision for the district and then have give community members a
chance to kind of say their peace or ask him questions. And not at
every school, but at most schools. In most instances, the feedback was
largely negative. There were a lot of people who are really upset about these
changes and feeling like they were losing their you know, their their their voice
in all of this, because they did lose their democratically elected school board.
So we went to I'm thinking of a community meeting at an elementary school called
p Elementary. It's a predominantly Hispanic area where most parents are either Spanish speaking
or bilingual, and so they used to have a bilingual principle who was then
replaced with a non Spanish speaking principle. The parents were really worried about that.
They're concerned about the future of their dual language program. Superintendent Miles said
he would maintain in that program, but he has made changes to allow him
to modify Magnet programs as he sees fit. So there are people who have
a lot of concerns about what's to come. I think to encapsulate it.
A lot of parents I've spoken to feel like they're kind of between a rock
and a hard place because they do acknowledge that there were changes that were needed
in the district, and at the same time, what they're seeing happen to
Houston is sd are not the sort of changes they're looking for, and they
feel like they're boxed out of giving their input because there's no one really to
hold Superintendent Mike Miles accountable other than the TEA, other than the state and
the board. But the board was appointed by the state. So that's that's
what we're hearing from a lot of parents and community members. It's just such
a complicated issue because, of course, the way parents and community members evaluate
their schools is not just by looking at test scores. It's you know,
a whole lot of different things, including the community around the school, their
relationship with the teachers, and the principle and things like that. So hard
to just look at, you know, a TEA report card and decide,
you know, this school is doing well or this school is not doing well.
Let's talk a little bit about Mike Miles here. Though I am a
former Dallas Morning News reporter, I was there when he was overseeing Dallas.
I s d. He was a very he elicited a lot of passion from
both his supporters and his detractors, and I it seems as though the same
thing is going on in Houston right now. Can can you give us a
little bit about his background and the approach he's taking to this to this big
task. Sure. Yeah, I mean I think the word that comes to
mind for me is polarizing. So exactly like you know, exactly how you
said, He's a really polarizing guy. And we've spoken to even you know,
folks at at many points in his tenure. I spoke to someone in
Harrison County too, or in the first the first school district out in Colorado
Springs where he was superintendent, and they told me his legacy continues to be
polarizing. There are people who won't touch certain reforms because they're associated with Mike
Miles, and there are others who are still trying to carry them forward.
Miranda did a good amount of reporting into his most recent stop, which was
leading a charter network called Third Future Charter Schools. So yeah, I can
speak to that better than I can. Yeah, you know, under so
the the charter network that he ran, the way that the rules that were
tied into that we're run are very similar to how HISD schools will run.
It's, you know, his model of how a school should be, and
you know, there's striking similarities. And it was you know, once again,
there were some mixed feelings towards certain policies at schools, and I don't
know, Sorry, I don't know how specific we want to be, But
are you asking more like general or Yeah, let's talk a little bit about
his methods because I think that we'll get into what is going on here in
Houston. I think you know, he has, as you have written,
has has taken on a lot of situations where he has identified specific schools and
kind of proposed or begun to implement wholesale changes. He'd tell us a little
bit about what some of those changes are. What this is looking like at
the ground level. Yeah, there's a lot of changes. I guess the
the broad picture is that there are eighty five schools that are seeing the immediate
changes this year, seeing a complete overhaul. And what that looks like is,
you know, it looks similar to what he's done in the past,
but it will be a very uniform model of how a school will be run.
And with that comes some several very like controversial changes that you've probably heard
about, such as the repurposing of libraries to make quote unquote team centers or
people call them zoom rooms, and kind of this like very tough, no
nonsense approach that comes out in some policies, like you know, elementary middle
schoolers walking single file in the hallways or carrying a traffic cone to the bathroom,
or you know, the jobs of teachers and principles are being effectively re
engineered. So teachers won't be grading papers, teachers won't be making copies.
Someone's gonna be doing all that for them. They'll be using a scripted curriculum.
It's kind of just very can't think of the world, I want to
say, but it's very systematic. And so you know that that has been
controversial. There are a lot of people who are not excited about those changes,
People who you know, more so believed that school should be a very
comforting place where a teacher brings their unique touch and believes in more of like
the holistic education approach. Those those people are upset about this. Some people
that I talked to in Odessa and Midland who went to a school under this
model, you know, we're specifically concerned about the use of the team centers
and felt like, you know, it just gave way for students to be
ejected from class more often and set to a team center where their teacher wouldn't
have to deal with them. So there's a lot of fear and angst not
knowing exactly what this is going to look like, but it is. It
is a model that has been seen before, essentially. Yeah, and I
wanted to give some context too, because these sorts of changes where it's where
the model is much more systematized, is particularly significant in Houston because this is
a school district that has this long history of what's called decentralized you know,
school government or education governance. And what that meant was that principles really had
wide discretion over all sorts of things at their school, including hiring or you
know, budgeting or adding specific programs. And at these eighty five schools that
Mike Miles and his administration are overhauling, that's all changing. So now at
those schools it's very centralized. It's all the same curriculum, it's all the
same teaching style, and so that has that has some people worry. Then
it also has some people who felt like a change was needed excited that someone
is taking account for this. And also I will say, just to be
fair to the to the model that Mike Miles is implementing is the teachers at
several of the schools that he's overhauling. I do have to make a distinction
here because there's twenty eight schools that he targeted and then there's another fifty seven
that opted into the changes. At the twenty eight that he targeted, teachers
are going to get a really significant bump in salary. So somewhere in the
like eighty to nine DK on average per per teacher will be their their annual
salary. And his idea is, these are the schools that have historically struggled
the most in HISD or some of the most. Let's attract at the very
best teachers we can to these schools by paying top dollar. And so that's
what they're doing there. They're trying to professionalize the the job of a teacher
by taking away busy work such as grating quizzes. And you know, we've
heard from a lot of teachers who still say, we don't like this.
This isn't about the money. It's about the fact that we can't We like
to be able to plan our own lessons. We don't want to have a
curriculum that's handed to us. But at the same time, like a raise
is a raise, and that's the idea behind the model. Yeah, it's
so funny to see how much this has played out similarly to what we saw
in Dallas when he was doing this, because I remember those same arguments,
you know, a really big focus on teacher pay, which is not also
you know, not just rewarding good teachers in the district, but also trying
to really incentivize people to enter the profession enjoying the profession that may not have
otherwise because of how much they were paid. But you did still see a
lot of pushback from you know, union groups, teacher groups and things like
that over the issues you're talking about autonomy or even questions of fairness, right
if there were discrepancies between you know, what were deemed the highest performing teachers
in the in the lowest performing teachers. So I'm kind of fascinating to watch
this all play out again. Miranda, what would you what can you say
about the success of these programs in the past. I mean, how did
this work out in Midland in his most recent stock Yeah, I mean on
paper, it was successful, it produced So these schools were in a similar
situation to Hi SC where they either you know, partner gave up control of
these schools, surrendered it to a charter network who could turn it around,
or they would have faced takeover by of the entire district, and so they
opted to partner with Third Futures, and you know, they went from failing
grades too. I believe Midland and Odesks are both be rating at this point.
So you know that that's kind of Superintendent Miles's entire arguments, like this
is uncomfortable. Change is uncomfortable for parents, teachers, students, but it's
gotten the results for him so far. So I think that's you know,
a lot of the reason why Marath has put him up in this position in
hi ST is because of those jumps and scores. Let's plus for a minute
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seven seven five hundred zero one four zero. All right, So I'm ready.
I mean, we've talked a lot about the experience for the teachers and
you know the reaction from the parents. I mean, what is the impact
on the student experience here? Do we even know the answer to that yet?
As you know, I think that is something that you know, we
are committed to trying to figure out. I think a lot of you know,
a lot of what you when you're reporting on education, A lot of
what you've find out about, like what's going on inside the school does come
from parents of young children. But you know, talking to parents and Midland
and Odessa, while there was you know, that growth in those scores,
there was you know, some parents who said it didn't matter to them and
that you know, their children like lost interests in the subjects and you know,
their favorite subjects weren't as fun for them anymore, and to them that
mattered a little bit more so, it's it's a mixed bag, sure,
a lot of complexities and all this go ahead. Ashure, Yeah, well
this was Miranda's story. But but one quote that jumped out to me,
I think was one parent said it felt more militaristic the school, which you
know, Superintendent Miles does have a background in the military. He's someone who
has a really strong vision. Some people see that as a good thing.
Some people see that as a bad thing. But what's undeniable is that these
schools are more system of ties and more regimented. So we have seen a
considerable backlash among politicians in the Houston area around this. Sylvester Turner, the
mayor, really blasting in particular, and some local members of Congress in particular,
the targeting the discipline centers the use of libraries for that center, after
how how is this plane out among the other elected officials there. Sure.
Yeah. So there was a little bit of drama a few weeks ago when
Superintendent Miles and Mayor Turner, we're going back and forth on this library issue.
Mayor Turner started talking about the issue in a city council meeting, and
then at the end of the day, Mike Miles put out a statement saying,
Hey, Mayor Turner, we welcome you to check out our nes schools.
The schools were turning around the schools that will be implementing this library.
Paulicy, we welcome you to come by when school starts, see what it's
all about. And he's kind of repeated this refrain that people don't really understand
what's going to be happening in these team centers, the places where misbehaving students
can be sent to learn via zoom. And so then the next day I
went and grab Mayor Turner at a at a ribbon cutting event he was doing,
and just held the microphone up, asking like, are you going to
take uh su the superintendent up on his offer to come check out these these
team centers, these overhauled schools, And pretty much what he said was like
he he just went off for several minutes. I didn't really get any other
questions in because he clearly had a lot to say about this, but he
was saying, like, this is a gimmick from the superintendent. You know,
he just wants a photo op with me. He could have picked up
the phone and called me if he wanted to, but instead he like put
out this statement that was really here for the press and the way the way
the mayor sees it is the schools that the superintendent is overhauling. These are
predominantly low income schools, and so now these are schools that are going to
have their libraries repurposed. The superintendent has said books will remain on the shelves
and that students can check them out under an honor system. But a lot
of library advocates say that having a dedicated staff member kind of building up that
program of a library is one of the essential parts of actually getting books in
students' hands. So folks really feel like this is cutting down access to reading
in some of the schools that have historically, you know, had lower reading
scores for example, and less access to more resources. The superintendent does counter
like that he is putting a lot of reading programs into approach. There's this
whole science of reading push, which is a whole other issue, And I
can quickly just say, like, pretty much, there were decades in which
the US used a certain type of reading instruction that has now been shown to
be fairly ineffective students the incentive to guess at words rather than learning to sound
them out. And now Houston is moving towards this other model called the science
of reading. So it's a big issue. But the library is really just
like a piece that pulls on people's heartstrings. Like you can picture going into
your school library and pulling a book off the shelf, and there's a lot
of schools now where that will look different. I think very broadly, when
Also when you you know, ask about the elected official response to this in
Houston, I think it's very fair to say that most elected officials in the
city, you know, do view this as an attack on democracy from a
republican statewide government, you know, targeting a democratic city out seeing a democratically
elected school board, you know, handpicked school board brought in, you do
get the sense a lot of elected officials see this as an attempt to control
by a republican state government. And so that is a lot of the discourse
as well, and I think that is the broad sentiment from city leaders.
Yeah, and of course this is something that extends beyond the realm of education,
right I mean, Harris County has seen this with its election administration right
now, recent laws passing, you know, in which the state is kind
of inserting itself more in that realm. We've seen this in policing and a
lot of the different cities, bigger cities in Texas as well, so kind
of fitting into that broader fight. But it's also just interesting to see,
I mean, Miles was selected to lead d I s D by the school
board there, you know, also a democratic controlled city, so the kind
of complian cities there are are interesting to watch as well, and I think
we're seeing just sort of contrasting as as you guys have laid out contrasting kind
of theories as to how education should work, particularly in these big city school
districts where there are a lot of challenges. Right, A lot of the
students that you're teaching are you know, economically disadvantaged, a lot of them,
many come from immigrant communities, many maybe aren't even speaking English as the
first language. And you know, this is not an easy solution for either
either method. One thing I wonder is what y'all are watching as this plays
out in the coming months even years. I mean, how will we how
should we judge this in terms of whether it's a success or not. What
factors should we be looking at? And what factors will y'all be looking at?
Yeah, I think one thing to know is that, you know,
in order for this state takeover to end, no schools can have failing ratings.
So I think that is like for several years. So I think that
is like the most obvious first step is, you know, is this fixing
school ratings? And asher maybe you want to take it away on some of
these other things will be looking at. Sure. Yeah, I mean that
that the no failing schools is one of three exit criteria, and the other
two are that the the school board politics kind of need to be under control,
and then the other is that the district needs to be in compliance on
special education. So all these three things are things that have been problems historically,
but you know, in a on a on a closer time frame,
like we said, star scores came out this week, but there are other
tests that we're watching. There's the NWEA test, there's the Dibbles tests.
These are all nationally normed tests that students in his d will be taking over
the coming months. So I think that's one marker that a lot of people
are looking at. The superintendent has celebrated that they do have fewer vacancies staff
vacancies going into this school year than last year, so that is one important
piece where there will be more students who have a dedicated teacher in front of
them at the beginning of this school year, or there will be fewer students
that are taught by say a substitute or a long term substitute. So that
is a win. But I think there's all sorts of markers that families are
looking at. So when students go back to school in August twenty eight,
there's gonna be many of them that look really different because their staffs were switched
up, were reconstituted, maybe their principle was replaced. At all twenty eight
schools targeted for reforms, all the teachers were required to reapply for their jobs,
So in many cases, the staff composition will look really different, and
I think students are going to have to feel that out of like what's the
new culture on my campus? And we've we've spoken to students who are nervous
about that. They knew what to expect from their school and now things are
different, so they don't really know what to expect come August twenty eight.
So there's there's a lot of markers that we're watching, all right. Well,
Houston Landing dot org is where you can keep track of this. Miranda
and nashuy yalboth done really great work on this, and I appreciate you taking
some time to explain it to us. Thanks for joining us, Thank you
so much. Yeah, thanks for having us, Matthew. Yeah, and
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