Since the state put Mike Mikes (ex-military, Broadie, briefly Superintendent of Dallas ISD) in charge of the Houston Independent School District, Miles has cemented his reputation as a leader who issues orders and doesn’t listen to critics. It’s his way or Mr get out. Many teachers and principals have left rather than comply with his scripted curriculum and mandates.
But, says the Houston Chronicle editorial board, he actually listened and put on hold his intention to fire dozens of principals, including some from Houston’s best schools. It’s worth pausing to remember that the state took control of the entire district because one high school (disproportionately enrolling students with disabilities, ELLs, and high needs) posted low test scores for several consecutive years. Rather than focus on helping that school, the state placed the entire district under the thumb of an autocrat and know-it-all.
Miles is testing out the proposition that the way to “fix” education is by standardization, mandates, data, rigid worship of test scores, and one-man control.
The editorial says:
Late this week, the state-appointed superintendent of Houston ISD did something many thought impossible: he listened.
It took several protests, community outcry and some three hours of overwhelmingly negative public comment during Thursday’s school board meeting, but Mike Miles seems to have heard the message.
The uproar began with the leaked release of a list of 117 principals the district said weren’t performing well enough yet to secure their spot for next year. Several of the principals at top-rated schools were on the list. Parents and students from those campuses showed up in force. Early Friday morning, with the meeting still plodding along, Miles announced that he and the board of managers changed course and said they wouldn’t make any adverse employment decisions this year based off of these proficiency screenings, which broadly measure student achievement with a variety of test data, quality of instruction gathered during spot observations and professionalism judged by a rubric that includes how well principals reinforce “district culture and philosophy.” But, he made clear, he would still use the more comprehensive principal evaluation system approved last fall to make those decisions at the end of the school year.
Miles told us the next day he’d already gotten some emails from anxious community members “saying thank you” for the decision late last week.
“I’m proud of the board who worked so hard to listen,” Miles added.
We’re glad to see Miles pay attention to optics for once. No matter how good his intentions, his reforms won’t succeed long-term without community buy-in. That said, we’re struggling to see how Miles changed his overarching approach on principal evaluations.
Miles never planned to can those 117 principals — in fact, he expected the overwhelming majority of them would return — based on the proficiency screenings but the handful who were already deemed unsatisfactory don’t seem to suddenly be in a different position as best we can tell. Miles insisted those few failing principals not getting asked back didn’t just fail the proficiency screening and that the decision to let them go was based on other input.
“We were looking at all the data for them,” he told us.
And the principals who were told they need to improve, aren’t really in a different position either.
In practice, then, very little seems to have changed for the campus leaders who will still be judged on some of the same metrics, including spot reviews by the district’s so-called independent review teams. Instead, he said the decision was meant to allay some community confusion and ease some anxiety about principal turnover, something he’d been trying to combat since the leaked list was published by the Chronicle ahead of spring break on March 8.
“People have made it a bigger deal than it is,” Miles insisted when he met with the editorial board Wednesday ahead of the school board meeting. “You keep your job if you’re an effective principal,” he said, adding that he expects the majority, at least 80 percent, of the principals to return next year.
What Miles didn’t seem to grasp until he heard from a whole new set of angry parents — not the “usual suspects” who have protested the state takeover from the outset — was how nonsensical his list appeared.
Some of the schools aren’t just top-ranked in the district but in the country. Carnegie. HSPVA. T.H. Rogers. If people had doubts before about Miles’ priorities and evaluation criteria, the inclusion of these high-achieving campuses heightened them. It’s possible a high-performing school can still have a weak leader, just as it’s possible that a low-performing school can have a great one. But the list begged the question.
“You start to wonder what he is evaluating,” a parent with a student at Carnegie told us outside the State of the District event Thursday. She said the school’s principal, long-time veteran Ramon Moss, is an integral piece of the school’s success.
“He’ll be the first to tell you that the success of the school is due to the teachers and students and community even though his leadership is a big reason why the community is there,” she said.
Miles has declined to talk about specific campuses and what landed them on the list. So while this decision might relieve some momentary angst, it doesn’t address the lingering doubts about whether the district’s measures of quality instruction and effectiveness are so narrow they fail to recognize the best educators, a concern that extends well beyond the star campuses.
This principal evaluation chaos is just the latest example of a breakdown of communication and trust.
We don’t disagree with the idea of evaluations or consistent standards across the district. It’s entirely possible that an overall A rating at a campus masks concerning disparities. Or that high-achieving campuses don’t show a ton of growth on standardized tests over the course of a school year.
What concerns us about the entire saga of the principal list is how, whether it’s intentional or not, Miles contributes to fear and uncertainty. He hasn’t effectively communicated his vision to the public or to the people tasked with carrying it out, despite his copious slideshows and sincere efforts to clear up the confusion over principals with follow-up press conferences, statements and even interviews with this board.
Last week, Miles and team showed greater sensitivity to the environment. It’s a good start. But they should make more effort to respond to the substance of the criticisms and not just the volume of them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Two things.
This demonstrates clearly why schools need to be run by a local board who hires a superintendent, rather than one appointed by the state who is accountable to no one.
I am not sure why people associate acting like a horse’s rear with quality administration. True leadership joins people together for a common goal. It is sometimes necessary to act to fix a situation where there is a problem with school leadership, but there are more ways to turn a school around than firing the leader. Or leaders in this case.
Yes, these deformer types are not leaders. They are just assholes. They come in, do a lot of damage, and then fail upward to another gig. This is what happens when decisions are made by an oligarchy.
when all this reforms movement started years ago, I told a CB college that using data from tests as a tool for reform was not just fruitless, but pernicious: it creates more of itself. Until we discard data from our discussion, we will be stuck with people like Mike Miles: all full of egocentric flap doodle.
Time to declare a moratorium on tests until we can find a way to come together for all the kids.
Hear, hear!
A good leader listens to stakeholders and responds to their needs. He or she respects professionals and parents more than data which often fails to capture the full scope of the needs and accomplishments of any school. Miles’ militaristic leadership and punitive mindset are not effective in a public institution that depends on respect, cooperation and collaboration.
Years ago, one of the most competent, most successful publishing professionals I ever knew, Bill Grace, said to a whole-staff meeting, “Publishing has been good to me. I’ve been successful. And I’m going to tell you now the secret to my success. I hired people who knew a lot more than I did and got the hell out of their way.”
Well, it would have been the rare bird who knew more than Bill did. But he was an awesome leader. His last name was entirely appropriate.
The difference is that these “high achieving schools” have parents who can come out and stand up to administrators like Miles. The poor districts’ parents are too busy just scraping by.
true that
Affluent parents are more likely to stand up to bullies like Miles. Some parents who are poorly educated or undocumented will be easily intimidated.
Any data on how many parents in Houston are fed up with the mismanagement and toxic ego, and felt it necessary to move their children to other schools– neighboring district, private, parochial, charter, home, online, whatever?
I’m not talking about the usual anti-social MAGA and God-zombie know-it-alls. No, I wonder what the thoughtful, concerned parents are thinking and planning if their schools continue to be destroyed by the unresponsive insurrectionists stealing their tax money.
Mark,
I have not seen the data you ask for. I do know that affluent whites enrolled their children in public schools until desegregation came about. Now Houston has many private and religious and charter schools,
I just heard a book review/interview on Terry Gross’s “Fresh Air”: On the Move: the Overheating Earth and the Uprooting of America. Among many topics, the author talked about the continued building of houses in inappropriate regions of the US, including Houston’s plans to build 35,000 new houses in the next decade.
The author’s general advice: 1) Watch for insurance companies puling up stakes. 2) Avoid promotions, incentives, and subsidies from local, state and and federal governments. 3) Look for large fresh water areas in the northern half of the continental US; Great Lakes area is #1.
Makes me wonder what the climate future will bring for schools, teachers and parents. Wealthy people moving north? Southern schools with higher and higher numbers of poor families? Bonuses for southern teachers and lower pay for northern teachers? More rich know-it-alls conniving against northern schools and fewer in the south?