In one of the best starts to a Houston ISD board meeting in recent memory, Houston ISD highlighted the achievements of the record-setting Lamar High School boy’s track team — Ryan Johnson, Bailey Hashmi, Devin Carpenter and Jordan Godfrey — that just set a national record in the 4×400 race, introduced the remarkable 7-year old Zach Teoh who just won the Scripps regional spelling bee and lauded a small select group of teachers and administrators for their service.
What immediately followed were presentations from the administration about how the district believes it is meeting the needs of its students (Sunrise Centers for one) and how the DYAD programs are doing. Speakers to the agenda, instead of going right after the accolades, did not begin until after these reports.
Meanwhile the hearing of the community portion did not start until three hours into the meeting, meaning some of the registered speakers could not stay the course. In both public speaking portions, comments consisted in the main about the New Education System program and its repetitiveness and rigidity and the district’s firing of a number of teachers, which, as several pointed out, came during Teacher Appreciation Week.
Some of these complaints were echoed in a Student Engagement Session held on April 11 with students from 66 schools which had both positive and what the district called “opportunities” results. Board member Rolando Martinez reported on this, saying that students from different campus reported different levels of satisfaction. For example, some said counselors were stretched too thin at campuses that share counselors.
“The challenge is we are a large district It’s not always consistent across the board. some felt like teachers were much more willing to support them, engage in true relationships while others felt like changes across the district had become inflexible, maybe a little too strict,” Martinez told the board.
Students enthusiastically endorsed EMERGE, Dual Credit, OnRamps and CTE partnerships for helping them with getting to college or to jobs. Several said they were better equipped to handle life after high school. And that the district had improved its academic choices.
However the report also noted that students said there were “inconsistencies in access and effectiveness of credit recovery programs. Some students feel they encourage apathy or sipping, while others lack access altogether.”
Students in AP/advanced courses said “multiple response strategies” slowed “real learning opportunities.” Students in special education is grades 4-8 reported “poor accommodations for learning differences.”
Positives were feelings that there have been a stronger sense of connection on campus, boosting morale. At the same time, several talked about teacher burn out, fear of admin check-ins a” and said at times the “new model causes student disengagement, low morale and mental strain.”
In other business, the board unanimously approved making the district-developed curriculum available to all schools for the 2025-26 school year. Only the 130 NES schools have to use that curriculum but Superintendent Mike Miles said 214 campuses will be using it in at least 5 subjects next year at the schools’ request and an additional 41 campuses will use it in 1-4 subjects. This leaves only five campuses not using it at all (other than Early Childhood Centers that don’t use district-developed curriculum).
While the district is stressing this as voluntary to schools not in the NES regimen, critics who do not like this teaching method see this as a slippery slope leading to the installation of the curriculum on every campus. One frequent complaint has been that the district’s curriculum has many errors that require teacher intervention, but Miles said Thursday that this is not true. “It’s not riddled with mistakes,” he said.
The HISD curriculum was developed by HISD to meet 100 percent of the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills (TEKS) and the English Language Proficiency Standards (ELPS). It is aligned with the Texas Education Agency (TEA) instructional materials quality rubrics and grounded in research-based instructional practices. The curriculum reflects HISD’s commitment to tailoring instructional content to the needs of its diverse student population and to the New Education System (NES) instructional model.
This item affirms the HISD curriculum as the official instructional material for NES campuses and for other non-NES Per Unit Allotment (PUA) campuses that choose to implement it. Board approval of the HISD curriculum remains valid for as long as the NES instructional model is in use within the district.
Good news delivered by Chief Academic Officer Kristen Hole was the integration of novels in 3rd through 8th grade. All campuses are reading a novel and next year HISD is looking at a second novel especially in grades 6-10.
