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Texas: When Billionaires Fund the News….

By dianeravitch
January 22, 2024 //
6

This story by Michael Hardy was published by the Texas Monthly. It goes to the heart of serious problems in today’s journalism: is the Internet destroying the audience for daily newspapers? Can daily newspapers survive? The Baltimore Sun was just purchased by the rightwing Sinclair Network, which already owns a large number of local radio stations. Can newspapers be independent when they are owned by billionaires with a political agenda?

Billionaire Jeff Bezos bought The Washington Post but he doesn’t seem to have imposed his political views on the newspaper. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch famously bought The New York Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Fox News. He has pushed his properties to match his politics.

The Los Angeles Times was purchased by a billionaire doctor, Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, in 2018. He has not imposed his politics, but he has ordered drastic layoffs in newsroom personnel, which led to a one-day walkout last Friday by the newsroom guild, the first such work stoppage in the newspaper’s 142-year history. The pending layoffs would be the third round of cuts since June.

This is not a good sign for the health of our democracy.

The death of major newspapers over the past few decades has created “news deserts,” regions where there are no newspapers. It is more important than ever to support local journalism, which provide the sole source of information about local events, school board elections and meetings, elections, and local government.

Into the gap comes a new form of journalism, the nonprofit newspaper. Most such enterprises are supported by subscribers, advertisers, and foundation gifts. I support the Mississippi Free Press, which does an amazing job of covering news in the state. I also support the Texas Observer, which is a low-budget newspaper whose scrappy staff is known for investigative journalism. (I also subscribe to The Texas Tribune and The Texas Monthly).

In some cases, even the nonprofits depend on billionaires to keep them afloat. As this story shows, relying on billionaires can be hazardous. In some cases, their gifts come with long strings attached.

In a recent issue of The Texas Monthly, Michael Hardy reported what happened to a new nonprofit journal called the Houston Landung.

In its mission statement, the nonprofit Houston Landing describes itself as an “independent, nonpartisan news organization devoted to public service journalism,” one that “offer[s] solutions to pressing problems” and “holds the powerful accountable.” Its stories are free to read, and its website runs no ads or clickbait. Its vision of an independent, well-funded outlet built on rigorous investigative reporting attracted some of the city’s brightest journalism stars after its soft launch two years ago with financial backing from the philanthropic American Journalism Project and Houston billionaires John Arnold and Richard Kinder.

Among its first hires were Houston Chronicle investigations editor Mizanur Rahman, who became the Landing’s editor in chief (and helped write the mission statement), and the Chronicle’s Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter Alex Stuckey, who became the Landing’s top investigative journalist. Rahman and Stuckey helped build a newsroom of about thirty editors, reporters, photographers, and web designers that routinely punched above its weight, producing major stories about an epidemic of deaths in Harris County jails and a plague of stopped trains in Houston’s East End. Since the website’s official debut in June, it has regularly scooped the competition—including Texas Monthly—on stories ranging from the state takeover of Houston ISD to predatory lending at the Colony Ridge development north of Houston.

The Landing’s success made it all the more shocking when, on Monday morning, Rahman and Stuckey were summarily fired by CEO Peter Bhatia, a fifty-year newspaper veteran and former Detroit Free Press editor in chief who had been in the job for less than a year. Bhatia is longtime friends with Landing board member Jeff Cohen, a senior advisor at Houston philanthropy organization Arnold Ventures—a major funder of the Landing—and a former Chronicle editor in chief. The six-member board of directors appears to have brought Bhatia in to shake things up at the website. (None of the Landing’s six board members agreed to interview requests for this story; the author of this story worked briefly under Cohen at the Chronicle in 2017 and did sporadic freelance copy writing for the Arnold Ventures website from 2019 to 2020.)

“Over recent months I’ve become concerned about whether or not we were fully engaged in the process of being effective in the digital spaces,” Bhatia told Texas Monthly this week. “We’ve been putting out a newspaper on a website. There’s been some really good journalism and some high-impact stuff, for sure. But after a lot of conversations with Mizanur, I reached the conclusion that we had to make a change if we’re going to be as effective as we can in the digital space.” A document prepared for the November meeting of the Landing’s board and obtained by Texas Monthly showed that the site exceeded its 2023 goal for annual page views (1.5 million) and was within striking distance of its goal for unique visitors (1 million). For comparison, the nonprofit San Antonio Report, founded in 2012, claims 500,000 monthly page views.

Stuckey told Texas Monthly that she was blindsided by her firing. Just two weeks earlier, she had received a glowing performance review and a 3 percent pay raise. In a recording of Monday’s termination meeting provided by Stuckey, Bhatia can be heard saying he has “enormous respect for you as a journalist . . . you are an investigative reporter of the highest level.” But, he explains, there is no place for her in the “comprehensive reset” he believes is necessary at the Landing.

“If you had ever come to me and said, ‘I want you to revamp how you do stories,’ I would have done that in a heartbeat,” Stuckey tells him.

“It’s not my job to do that,” Bhatia replies. “It’s the editor’s job.”

“So I’m getting cut off at the knees because you felt that Mizanur didn’t do that?”

“Well, you can jump to that conclusion.”

At the end of the meeting, human resources director Susie Hermsen offered Stuckey three months of severance pay if she signed a nondisparagement agreement. Stuckey refused. “I believe in transparency,” she can be heard saying in the recording. “This is insanity, and I am absolutely not signing anything.”

The Landing’s newsroom was similarly dumbfounded by the firings. Much of the staff converged upon the organization’s sixth-floor office, in Houston’s Montrose neighborhood, on Monday to show solidarity with Rahman and Stuckey. Later, the staff wrote a collective letter to the Landing’s board of directors warning of “significant damage to employee retention and recruitment” and predicting that “the optics of such a massive restructuring during a moment of forward momentum will hurt our fundraising and financial efforts.”

Bhatia acknowledged that the newsroom was in open revolt against his leadership. “I have no illusion that some people are going to leave over this, and I respect that,” he told Texas Monthly. The Landing’s managing editor, John Tedesco, will temporarily take over for Rahman while Bhatia leads a search for a new editor in chief. Tedesco told me that he disagrees with the decision to fire Rahman and Stuckey and fears that “this turmoil will cause our best and brightest journalists to look for the nearest exit ramp.”

The Landing is one of dozens of local nonprofit newsrooms that have sprung up around the country in the past couple of decades. Often funded by a combination of wealthy donors, foundation grants, NPR-style membership drives, and paid events, these nonprofits have been touted as a supplement or even a replacement for declining local newspapers. But some observers worry that such publications are beholden to the whims of their billionaire patrons. (Texas Monthly is a for-profit magazine whose chairman is Houston billionaire Randa Duncan Williams.)

Where did the staff go wrong? Did they write anything critical of charter schools (billionaire John Arnold has poured many millions into promoting charters)? Or did they praise pensions for public service workers (another of Mr. Arnold’s pet peeves)? Or was it something that stepped on the toes of the other billionaire funder, Mr. Kinder? The publication was launched with $20 million, so it would not have been a financial issue.

This is what Thomas Jefferson said about the importance of a free press:

Jefferson believed that a free press was necessary to keep government in check. He wrote that if he had to choose between “a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter”:

The people are the only censors of their governors: and even their errors will tend to keep these to the true principles of their institution. To punish these errors too severely would be to suppress the only safeguard of the public liberty. The way to prevent these irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs thro’ the channel of the public papers, & to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter. But I should mean that every man should receive those papers & be capable of reading them.

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Democracy, Ethics, Freedom of the Press, Funding, Houston, Texas

Houston: Teachers of Special Ed and Bilingual Ed Object to Standardized Curriculum

By dianeravitch
October 31, 2023 //
15

In Houston, the backlash against the authoritarianism of state-imposed superintendent Mike Miles continues to grow. Teachers of special education and bilingual education don’t like the standardized curriculum.

If I’m focused on what’s happening in Houston, there are two reasons:

1. I’m a graduate of the Houston Independent School District, and I don’t like to see it under siege by a know-nothing Governor and his puppet state superintendent.

2. This state takeover demonstrates the utter bankruptcy of state takeovers. It was concocted out of whole cloth, on the claim that one school in the entire district was “failing.” Before the takeover, that school—Wheatley High School—received a higher score (based on state tests) and was no longer “failing,” but the state took over the entire district anyway. So Houston is a national example of the vapidness of “education reform,” meaning non-educators like Miles, Governor Abbott, and State Chief Mike Morath telling professional educators how to do their jobs.

Anna Bauman of The Houston Chronicle writes:

A cornerstone of the New Education System introduced by Superintendent Mike Miles is a highly specific and rigorous instructional model.

As many students and teachers know by now, the system includes a standardized curriculum provided by the district, frequent classroom observations and grade level materials. Each day, teachers in core classes provide direct instruction for 45 minutes, give students a timed quiz and then split the children into groups based on their understanding of the lesson, with struggling learners getting more help from their teacher.

Miles says the model is meant to improve academic achievement, especially among student populations whose standardized test scores often lag behind their peers, and has disputed any claims that the system fails to accommodate the diverse needs of students.

In conversations over recent weeks, however, seven teachers at five different schools told me they are struggling to meet the needs of children with disabilities or emergent bilingual studentsbecause the model is too rigid, fast-paced and inflexible to provide accommodations for these learners.

For example, one teacher at an NES-aligned campus told me she cannot realistically give students extra time, a common accommodation for special education students, on the timed Demonstration of Learning. If she lags behind schedule, administrators will enter her classroom and demand: “Why aren’t we where we’re supposed to be?”

A teacher at Las Americas Newcomer School, home to many refugee and immigrant students, said district officials instructed educators to remove alphabet posters from their classrooms and limit the use of dictionaries, which many non-native English speakers rely on during class.

“Many of them, it’s their first year being in school. They don’t know the language. I have a classroom with at times four different languages spoken. And we’re forced to do the same slides and the same work as a regular, general education school,” the teacher said.

Only time will tell whether the new system will boost academic achievement as Miles intends, but for now, teachers are speaking out because they are concerned about doing what is right for their most vulnerable students.

“When I go home at night, I want to know when I put my head down on my pillow that I did the best I could by my kids,” said Brian Tucker, a special education teacher at Sugar Grove Academy.

You can read more in-depth about these issues in separate stories published this week about special education students and English language learners.

 

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Education Industry, Education Reform, English Language Learners, Extremism, Failure, Houston, Special Education, Stupid, Teachers, Texas

Houston: Principal of a High-Performing School Removed; Parents and Students Baffled

By dianeravitch
October 27, 2023 //
2

The chaos continues in the Houston school district, under the addled leadership of Mike Miles, the state-appointed superintendent. Another principal was pushed out, along with several staff members. No reason was given. Several hundred teens and parents demonstrated outside the school to protest the sudden dismissals of tested school leaders.

Sam Gonzalez Kelly wrote in The Houston Chronicle:

Families and staff at Eastwood Academy High School were informed Tuesday that their principal and several other staff members were pulled from the East End school after an investigation by the district into “incidents at the campus.”

Principal Ana Aguilar’s removal was announced in an automated phone call from HISD Central Division Superintendent Luz Martinez, who said that the change was being made to “ensure a high-quality education environment.” A district spokesman added in a statement that “HISD takes student safety in our schools very seriously,” and that Aguilar and other staffers were removed “after an investigation into incidents at the campus.”

Ana Aguilar

An assistant principal, a counselor and a librarian were also relieved of their duties, according to one teacher at Eastwood, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. An HISD spokesman declined to elaborate on the “incidents” in question or provide further comment.

The news immediately sent waves of outrage and confusion rippling through the tight-knit Eastwood community, whose members were unaware of any incidents that would spark their principal’s removal. Aguilar did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

“It’s very frustrating, Eastwood is a wonderful school,” said Miranda Gonzales, a parent of an Eastwood student. “There’s no reason for the principal to be removed, Eastwood isn’t (in Miles’ New Education System). It’s ridiculous, it’s insanity and none of us know what’s going on.”

Eastwood, a school of fewer than 400 students in Houston’s East End, received an A rating from the Texas Education Agency on its latest evaluations. Aguilar joined the campus in 2022 after spending three years as principal at Robinson Elementary School, where she won a First Year Principal of the Year Award at what was an Achieve 180 campus in the east region of the district.

Aguilar’s removal is the latest in a string of shakeups at HISD schools, where at least nine other principals have been replaced without much in the way of explanation given to families or staff. The principal at Middle College High School at Houston Community College’s Felix Fraga campus, also in HISD’s Central Division, was removed less than a week ago. The principal at Cage Elementary and Project Chrysalis Middle School, many of whose students go on to attend Eastwood Academy, was replaced during the first week of school this year.

Yesterday the new Miles leadership removed the principal of Wisdom High School and most of its top administrators. Wisdom’s students are mostly non-English-speakers.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Disruption, Ethics, Houston, State Takeover, Texas

A “Culture of Fear” Does Not Encourage Great Teachers or Successful Students

By dianeravitch
October 25, 2023 //
8

Michael McDonough retired last year after more than 30 years as a teacher, principal and administrator in the Houston Independent School District. He has spoken to many of his former colleagues, and they have described a “culture of fear” created by state-imposed Superintendent Mike Miles. McDonough is speaking out because he is free to do so. He can’t be fired. This article appeared in The Houston Chrinicle.

McDonough writes:

For over 30 years, I served the Houston Independent School District in a variety of capacities, including teacher, coach and administrator. I worked as a secondary principal for 18 years across three different campuses — Pin Oak Middle School, and Westside and Bellaire High Schools — and was recognized for excellence in leadership multiple times. I retired from HISD last year, before the state takeover, after a public disagreement with the previous administration.

I still care deeply, though, for the district and its students and teachers. As a resident of the district, I had hoped for the best with our new superintendent, Mike Miles. But that’s not what I’m seeing.

One of the most important leadership lessons I’ve learned is that an organization is in trouble when its most passionate people grow quiet. Through my conversations with former HISD colleagues, it has become clear to me that under Miles, a culture of fear prevents them from speaking up about valid concerns…

The current state of the district is not sustainable. In addition to HISD’s documented financial challenges, it’s short on an even more critical commodity: human capital. Similar to other districts, we simply do not have enough great people.

You can’t fire your way to improvement, and causing employees to flee isn’t much better. Instead, we should commit our scarce resources toward growing and strengthening our best people, and make our decisions based on what serves them. That is the surest path to excellence and a high-performance culture.

Experience has taught me that to keep our best people, a fair salary is a must. But that’s not enough. The leader we need now must understand all the facets of a high-performance culture, one that empowers teachers to create a safe, inclusive, and supportive environment for students. This same high-performance culture provides spaces for teachers to experiment, innovate, and reflect on their practice so they can continue to develop. The current administration’s one-size-fits-all approach fails in each of these areas.

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Curriculum, Disruption, Fake, Houston, State Takeover, Students, Teachers, Texas

Houston Hires AP Physics Teacher for Students Teaching Themselves

By dianeravitch
October 19, 2023 //
2

One day after getting bad press in The Houston Chronicle, Superintendent Mike Miles decided to lift his hiring freeze. This allowed hiring a teacher for a physics class where students were teaching each other in the absence of a teacher.

AP Physics students at the DeBakey High School for Health Professions had a new teacher Wednesday, after Houston ISD lifted a hiring freeze that had kept the position vacant since the start of the school year, forcing students to teach themselves college-level science.

The new teacher was hired on Friday, a day after Superintendent Mike Miles said the district was nearly finished with a staffing audit that led them to ask schools to limit hiring, according to an HISD spokesman. Students said they learned about the appointment Wednesday morning and had their first class with the teacher that same day. 

“She seems super nice and (like) a very good teacher,” said senior Zain Kundi, who led a student petition to fill the vacancy, via text message. “She was able to teach us more in 40 minutes than the last eight weeks of us (teaching ourselves)…”

At DeBakey, students and parents were told the hiring freeze was the reason why the school couldn’t fill the AP Physics position, which was left vacant after administrators allegedly tried to foist the responsibility upon a standard physics teacher, who took an extended leave of absence in protest.

Students were left to teach themselves advanced physics for nearly two months, with some students being pulled out of other classes to teach their peers. The school’s Parent Teacher Organization eventually stepped in and enlisted qualified volunteers to provide virtual lessons and tutoring.

Categories Curriculum, Houston, State Takeover, Teachers, Texas

Texas: State Commissioner Cracked Down on Houston While Ignoring Low-Performing Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2023 //
5

The Texas Tribune reports on the blatant hypocrisy of State Commissioner of Educatuon Mike Morath. He used a sledgehammer on the Houston Independent School District because of one low-rated school (whose rating improved before Morath acted). But he allows failing charter schools to expand with no corrective action. His heart belongs to Governor Greg Abbott and the charter industry. His hostility to public schools, attended by 90% of Texas students, is obvious. The takeover of HISD was vengeful and partisan, motivated by politics, not the well-being of students.

The story was written by Kiah Collier and Dan Keenahill on behalf of THE TEXAS TRIBUNE AND PROPUBLICA.

In June, Texas Commissioner of Education Mike embarked on the largest school takeover in recent history, firing the governing board and the superintendent of the Houston Independent School District after one of its more than 270 schools failed to meet state educational standards for seven consecutive years.

Though the state gave Houston’s Wheatley High School a passing score the last time it assigned ratings, Morath charged ahead, saying he had an obligation under the law to either close the campus or replace the board. He chose the latter.

Drastic intervention was required at Houston ISD not just because of chronic low performance, he said, but because of the state’s continued appointment of a conservator, a person who acts as a manager for troubled districts, to ensure academic improvements.

When it comes to charter school networks that don’t meet academic standards, however, Morath has been more generous.

Since taking office more than seven years ago, Morath has repeatedly given charters permission to expand, allowing them to serve thousands more students, even when they haven’t met academic performance requirements. On at least 17 occasions, Morath has waived expansion requirements for charter networks that had too many failing campuses to qualify, according to a ProPublica and Texas Tribune analysis of state records. The state’s top education official also has approved five other waivers in cases where the charter had a combination of failing schools and campuses that were not rated because they either only served high-risk populations or had students too young to be tested.

Only three such performance waivers had been granted prior to Morath, who declined numerous requests for comment. They had all come from his immediate predecessor, according to the Texas Education Agency.

One campus that opened because of a waiver from Morath is Eastex-Jensen Neighborhood School, which is just 6 miles north of Wheatley High School. Opened in 2019, Eastex didn’t receive grades for its first two years because the state paused all school ratings due to the adverse impacts of the pandemic. In 2022, the last time the state scored schools, Eastex received a 48 out of 100, which is considered failing under the state’s accountability system. The state, however, spared campuses that received low grades from being penalized for poor performance that year.

“The hypocrisy here seems overwhelming,” said Kevin Welner, an education policy professor at the University of Colorado Boulder. “This is the same education commissioner who justified taking over the entire Houston school district based largely on one school’s old academic ratings.”

Open the link to read more about Mike Morath’s hypocrisy. Texas Republicans are determined to turn the state into a playground for edupreneurs. If only the parents of public school students voted against them, they would all be out of office. Governor Abbott and his appointees take instructions from the evangelical billionaires, Farris Wilks and Tim Dunn.

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, Corruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Houston, Hypocrisy, Privatization, Texas

Houston: Mike Miles Removes Another Principal

By dianeravitch
October 11, 2023 //
2

Mike Miles, the state-appointed superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, was given control of the district despite his poor track record in Dallas. Nonetheless, he intends to remake the district. He imposed a set of mandates that he called the “New Education System.” At first, he was supposed to reform 28 schools. Then another 85 schools joined his program voluntarily. 190 schools are supposed to be left alone.

Miles has ruled with a heavy hand. A few days ago, he removed a principal from a B-rated school and installed an “apprentice,” an inexperienced one as a temporary replacement.

Anna Bauman of the Houston Chronicle reported:

District officials have removed another principal from a Houston ISD campus, this time pulling the top leader from Jane Long Academy and Las Americas Middle School in southwest Houston.

Myra Castle-Bell, an educator of more than two decades, will no longer serve as principal of the schools located on the same campus in Sharpstown, according to an HISD spokesperson. Castle-Bell chose to align both schools with the New Education System, a reform model created by state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles, when given the option over the summer.

The district shared the news last week in a message sent to families and staff at the schools, informing them that Courtney Riley, a principal apprentice, will lead the campus while HISD searches for a permanent replacement.

“We know these changes can feel disruptive, but we are committed to ensuring every student at both schools gets access to excellent instruction every day,” the district said in the message. “We’ll update you as soon as we have selected a new Principal and thank you for your continued partnership.”

Riley is a member of the HISD Principal Academy, a program introduced this year by Miles geared toward preparing future principals through a year-long, paid residency model.

Long Academy is a B-rated school serving more than 800 students in middle and high school, according to the most recent state data. Las Americas is a newcomer campus that caters to recent immigrant and refugee children who typically have little or no English language proficiency or formal education.

Other schools whose principals have been reassigned in recent months include Francis Scott Key Middle School, Stevens Elementary, Garcia Elementary, Cage Elementary/Project Chrysalis Middle School, and Sharpstown, Worthing and Yates high schools. Additionally, the district appointed new principals at 11 schools in June through the re-hiring process required at NES schools.

HISD provided no explanation for the removal of Castle-Bell or any other principal, saying it cannot comment on personnel matters. Castle-Bell has been reassigned to a new position as Division Support Administrator for the West Division, according to HISD.

Miles is following the Broad Academy “reform” playbook. Disrupt as much as possible. Keep everyone on edge. Create an “academy” to train new principals, bypassing the traditional route of rising through the ranks and serving a genuine apprenticeship for 3-5 years as an assistant principal. NYC had a “Leadership Academy” doing exactly what Miles is doing now; it failed and was eventually closed down.

Categories Broad Foundation, Houston, Texas

Houston: Teachers and Parents Say that Mike Miles’ System Is Seeping into Their Schools

By dianeravitch
October 7, 2023 //
9

Governor Greg Abbott and his State Commissioner Mike Morath hand-picked Mike Miles as Houston’s superintendent, based on the alleged failure of one school, Wheatley High School. In fact, Wheatley had made significant progress and was no longer a “failing” school, and HISD was a B-rated district.

Nonetheless, the state took control of HISD, ousted the elected board and a well-qualified superintendent. Mike Miles took control with a puppet board, charged with “fixing” 28 schools. The 28 quickly turned into 85 schools, all required to submit to Miles’ authoritarian “New Education System.” He pledged to leave the district’s other 190 schools alone. Miles has never been a teacher or a principal. His tenure as superintendent in Dallas was cut short after multiple controversies.

Now, teachers and parents in HISD are alarmed to see Miles’ NES overflowing into schools that were not mandated to adopt it and did not volunteer to adopt it.

Houston ISD English teacher Karen Calhoun enjoyed short-lived relief this summer when her principal at Askew Elementary School opted not to join the dozens of campuses getting overhauled by the district’s new superintendent, Mike Miles.

Despite the decision, Calhoun has watched in recent weeks as her beloved school seemed to morph into a version of the turnaround initiative, known as the “New Education System,” that she hoped to avoid.

Less than a week before classes began, Askew’s principal told reading and math teachers they had to use the same curriculums as NES schools, Calhoun said. The principal also directed all staff to check that students understood the lesson every four minutes or so using “multiple response strategies” — the same techniques that teachers at NES schools are required to use, Calhoun said.

The orders deflated the spirits of many teachers at Askew, a B-rated campus on Houston’s west side, she said.

“The bulk of our teachers have taught 10-plus years. So that means that everybody in that room pretty much knows what they’re doing,” Calhoun said. “You can do multiple strategies in a lesson, but it’s authentic, it’s not mandated. It’s not like, ‘Every three minutes you have to do something. Every four minutes you have to do something.’”

One month into HISD’s school year, significant curriculum and instructional changes have crept into campuses that were supposed to be exempt from Miles’ overhaul, teachers and families at 15 non-NES schools told the Houston Landing in recent weeks. The new practices appear to contradict comments made earlier this summer by Miles, who said he planned to largely leave most schools to operate as they were while he transformed 85 other campuses under the NES umbrella.

In interviews, the educators and parents said many of the changes they’re seeing include elements initially advertised as only for NES schools. Thirteen of their 15 schools scored A or B ratings under the state’s academic accountability system in 2022.

For teachers, the new requirements include removing classroom decor, writing daily lesson objectives on whiteboards at the front of the classroom and repeatedly incorporating the every-four-minute learning checks into their lessons.

In addition, principals leading nearly two-thirds of non-NES schools are choosing to use new reading and math curriculums, Amplify and Eureka, that are mandated in the overhauled campuses, HISD officials confirmed Thursday. Educators at those schools must use the teaching practices recommended by the curriculum providers, such as a daily quiz, called a Demonstration of Learning.

“It sure does feel like NES,” said Melissa Yarborough, an English teacher at the non-NES Navarro Middle School, who now has to use the new curriculum after her principal chose to adopt it this year. “If you don’t get to that Demonstration of Learning by the time you’re supposed to get to it, then that administrator is going to be telling you your pacing is wrong.”

Categories Accountability, Administrators, superintendents, Corporate Reform, Curriculum, Disruption, Houston

Houston: The Canary in the Coal Mine

By dianeravitch
September 29, 2023 //
14

Nick Covington and Chris McNutt of the Human Restoration Project warn that everyone should pay attention to what is happening in Houston. The state takeover of a B-rated majority black-and-brown district demonstrates how far a rightwing governor will go to crush democracy and dissent.

They write:

Houston Independent School District, the largest school district in Texas, is at the center of a controversial state takeover by the Texas Education Agency. After working its way through the legal system for several years, last winter the Texas Supreme Court greenlit the replacement of district superintendent and the locally elected board of trustees by the head of the TEA, appointed directly by the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott. And last month, school was back in session under the newly appointed superintendent, Mike Miles – former US State Department ambassador, charter school CEO, and scandal-ridden Dallas ISD superintendent – amid dozens of pedagogical and policy changes that left teachers, parents, and students confused, frustrated, and afraid.

In an effort to return “back to basics” and reinforce content knowledge to bolster test scores, the district has fundamentally transformed how educators can operate their classrooms in many schools across the district. Despite receiving an acceptable “B” score on the Texas School Report Card, New superintendent Miles stated in a recent district meeting, “We have a proficiency problem, we in HISD have not been able to close [the reading] gap for over 20 years.”

Among the most troubling changes is a strict “multiple-response strategy” where teachers must adhere to a four-minute timer to pause instruction and assess students for understanding – an intervention with seemingly no pedagogical justification. These strategies are paired with heavily scripted activities that are centered on drill and kill: repeat information over and over to memorize content. There has also been an increase in invasive admin walkthroughs to check for compliance with the scripted methods, which teachers and students have described as a distraction from learning. Teachers are required to keep a webcam on in their classroom at all times and their door must remain open. Defending these changes, Miles stated:

“Every classroom has a webcam and a Zoom link, and it’s on 24/7, if a kid is disruptive, we pull that student out of class. We put them in what we call a team center, and they’re being monitored by a learning coach, and they Zoom right back into the class they get pulled from.”

‍Libraries in many schools have been transformed into disciplinary spaces where students are housed for infractions and receive instruction over Zoom. As a result, classrooms are recorded and broadcast at all times. The Houston Education Association and Houston Community Voices for Public Ed have done incredible work documenting dissenting voices. These policies mirror those found in “no excuses” charter schools that police, monitor, and dehumanize students to raise test scores at any cost.

A veteran Houston ISD teacher, who asked to remain anonymous due to fear of administrative backlash, reached out to back up these claims, describing the impact these reforms have had on teachers and students:

‍…I left to teach at a Title 1 Houston ISD campus, so I’m getting the luxury to watch this mess unfold, and I assure you, there’s definitely ‘something rotten in Denmark” with what’s happening to us.

My school is not NES nor NES-aligned, but Miles has carved his path in such a way that we’re being evaluated multiple times a day, being forced to follow this horrible curriculum in a lesson cycle that as far as my research has found–has no pedagogical roots. It’s literally drill and kill. Apparently this is a trend or something. Miles is something else and when you Google him or any of the administrations around him calling the shots, you’ll not see any pedigree of education, but multi-millionaire board members whose backgrounds are in gentrification projects and such.

I’m exhausted by the end of the day. Texas teachers are evaluated all the same, using the T-Tess system–well except us now. Their move to push through that District of Innovation leads me to believe they simply want to weed anyone who was part of the old system out. It absolutely feels like he’s pushing to make us all quit. We were notified that although we’re given 10 sick days for the year, if we’ve taken 4 days leave by November or so, we will be terminated. We had an impromptu faculty meeting and had to sign that we’d gotten notification of this. Plus that we’ll be evaluated different.

Before the takeover, HISD was told to shape up or that’s the end of the line. We scored a “B” as a district in the last ratings and still are being taken over. The Abbot/Morath/Miles steamroller is moving right along.

Being a District of Innovation will be the coup de gras for us, really. He wants to add weeks to the school year, he’s already firing any teachers who simply ask questions, and he’s even gaming the system in many ways to ensure that he’ll have “results.” Special Education? Accommodations? Support structures for at-risk students? All gutted. It’s hard to believe this stuff is legal.

I’m stressed and miserable. It’s hard to believe some of the insane stories about his demands–but I assure you they are true. Teaching with doors open, such a security risk. Stuff like no snack time in elementary if it’s not tied to a Texas standard. I at least teach…But we all were forced to watch an hour or so musical he put on that would rival anything out of North Korea.

At this pace and the way things are going, I just can’t sustain it. I can’t stand seeing such a grift ruin education as it’s doing. We definitely had issues as a district but this can’t be the best solution. I’ll try to make it this year, but I’m beginning to apply elsewhere. My students were often successful at the state test, but it’s a crazy world when I teach…and am afraid to ask to take a class day to show my students the library and have them check out books. It’s nuts.

Of course please don’t use my name or anything that might come back to bite me… As Miles promised in his introduction to us that “he’d find out whose spreading dissent and act” and by most accounts that’s exactly what’s been occurring.

‍Parents and community members have flooded school board meetings with accounts from teachers who are similarly afraid to speak out, for fear of losing their jobs, as teachers who question the changes have been labeled “insubordinate” and had their jobs threatened. Parents have also spoken publicly about how the changes have affected their own children, as one mother recounted to the board before having her mic cut-off:

“For the last week, I’ve had a kid that cries every morning and every evening. Crying not to go to school, and beginning not to go in the morning. She says school’s boring, she’s not learning, and she’d rather be homeschooled at this point…She’s miserable. Her confidence is plummeting, and she’s starting to lose her joy for learning.”

‍At a board meeting on September 14th, a 12-year-old HISD student delivered prepared remarks about the disruptive timers, distracting admin walkthroughs, and palpable teacher stress. The board cut her mic, too:

“Due to the new open door policy, I and many other students have a hard time concentrating due to the many distractions in the hallways. Isn’t it your first priority to have kids in HISD like me learn? Students should be in a place they want to go to inst- (mic is cut off)”

Please open the link and finish reading. Miles apparently wants to turn HISD into a “no-excuses” district.

Categories Accountability, Corporate Reform, Cruelty, Curriculum, Democracy, Discipline, Disruption, Education Industry, Extremism, Failure, Houston, State Takeover, Students, Teachers and Teaching, Texas

Houston: Rice University Marching Band Parodies Mike Miles in Half-Time Show

By dianeravitch
September 18, 2023 //
10

Doggone it, I love this generation of kids that’s entering adulthood. They care about the environment, they don’t like to see the strong picking on the weak, they protest on behalf of just causes.

Latest example: the Rice University marching band parodied State-imposed Superintendent Mike Miles in the half-time show, and they portrayed him as Dr. Evil. They picked up on all Miles’ gaffes, from turning libraries into discipline centers to staging a musical production starting himself to belittling teachers.

Megan Menchacha of the Houston Chronicle writes:

Rice University’s marching band mocked state-appointed Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles during their halftime show at Saturday’s football game against Texas Southern University.

The small band, known as The Mob, performed a brief “Austin Powers”-themed show characterizing Miles as Dr. Evil — the main antagonist of the popular movie series. The show criticizes Miles’ removal of librarians at around 85 HISD schools and his song-and-dance skit during the district’s annual convocation ceremony.

“Ever since taking over the Houston school board, Dr. Evil has been working on his plan to brainwash his new army of mini-me’s,” the student announcer says to begin the show. “Watch as he fires the teachers and principals to institute total control.”

HISD hasn’t yet responded to a request for comment on the performance. Over the weekend, Miles posted on Linkedin: “There is so much misinformation that it would be hard for even serious people to know what is going on in the Houston school district.”

Ethan Goore, a co-executive producer of the show, said The Mob aims to use their platform to try and address injustices in society through their performances. He said the band chose an “Austin Powers” theme partially because Miles’ name sounds similar to Mike Myers, the actor who plays Dr. Evil in the movie series.

“We’ve been hearing a lot from teachers that we know and parents who have kids in the HISD system that they are not completely satisfied with what’s going on currently, and that they wanted there to be more awareness about the issue,” said Goore, a junior at Rice. “That’s really where we jump in, and the way that we do it is through our halftime shows.”

The show, titled “Mob-stin Powers: The Superintendent Who Fired Me,” opens with students forming an “H” on the field and playing “Evil Ways.” One band member, playing Miles, lightly bonks another band member on the head with a screw-shaped sign saying “Fired” and the student falls on the field.

The next segment of the show references Miles’ move to remove school librarians and repurpose libraries into “Team Centers, where students at 85 New Education System and NES-aligned HISD schools are sent if they’ve mastered certain lessons or if they misbehave.

“I always thought of libraries as a pretty important part of my schooling, so when I found out about new policies on libraries and what Mike Miles has been doing about them, I thought that would be an important part to put in their show just because of how shocking it is,” Goore said.

Categories Accountability, Houston, Humor, State Takeover
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