Maybe it was inertia, perhaps everyone didn’t get the word, in the best of all suppositions it could be that more people adopted a wait-and-see attitude and decided it was too soon to walk away, but the first day of school for Houston ISD came and went Monday without disaster and in fact, with new Superintendent Mike Miles able to point to an increase in district enrollment.
There were some who welcome the extensive changes hurried into place after the state takeover of HISD after years of disappointing outcomes at many of the schools in one of the largest urban districts in the country.
Which doesn’t mean that there weren’t justifiable concerns a plenty throughout the district among some parents and teachers wary of the more regimented teaching approach and school days loaded with the pressure of doing everything on a certain time schedule both for teachers and students.
Lauren, a mother whose children attend Yates High School and Lockhart Elementary School, said despite her kids’ excitement, she had mixed emotions, unlike past first days and cried after dropping them off at school.
She was concerned about the classroom structure, the rapid timing of lesson plans with routine check-ins every four minutes, and what she referred to as a policy that discouraged the weaker readers from reading aloud in class.
“These educators are going to teach to the best of their ability, but they are also going to fall in line to make sure they don’t lose their job, and that’s a hard position for anybody to be in,” she said. “As a parent, I feel like what do I do because I don’t want to accept this reality. I don’t like it, but what can we do?”
Miles, in his usual fashion, kept busy by first stopping at the transportation terminal on McCarty early and then moving on to tour two schools in the North Forest feeder pattern under his New Education System in the morning before getting an in-person update from a host of worker bees collecting real time situational data around the clock.
In fact, data ruled the day. How many buses are out of service and probably will be harvested for parts after moldering during the pandemic or because a driver or students threw up in them? (more than 20) How many buses missed their scheduled drop-off times and of those, how many didn’t deliver their students in time for those first so important 45 minutes of Delivery of Instruction in every NES and NES-Affiliated schools? (Four were late getting kids to class, another 40 missed their targeted drop off times.) How many schools’ A/C systems were overcome by the heat of the day and did they reach the we’ve-got-to-send-them-home point (none, but Tanglewood had the most problems).
Enrollment reports shifted during the day from more than 189,000 to more than 186,000 but either one was more than the district finished out the last school year with 182,000. According to Miles, about 3,000 kids were enrolled over the weekend which means bus routes and class assignments will be shifting in the next couple of weeks.
At both Shadydale Elementary and Forest Brook Middle the hallways were almost eerily silent even with all the classroom doors open – something which has several critics calling a safety hazard. Miles has dismissed these concerns saying in the event of a shooter these can be closed and locked in a moment. To him it is more important that principals and their assistants can regularly and quickly step into ongoing classes to see what the teachers are doing. And, he added in a late afternoon press conference, exceptions are being made if for instance a class is located right next to a band room.
Maybe it was first day of school jitters, but other than one art class where exuberance was the order of the day, most students were the best-behaved kids ever. Teachers were trying hard but few were apparently (we’re saying this because we don’t know) what Miles would like to see them do in the classrooms.
There were technical problems in the new system and teachers were urged by Miles to fill the awkward spaces with an old school approach of presenting the lesson without the slides behind them. Some had already adopted that, others stood their waiting for a tech to straighten thing out.
Throughout his visits Miles zeroed in on what he called “too much teacher talk” and urged principals in some cases to make sure the students are engaged and answering the questions both in English and math rather than the teacher answering for them.
A veteran teacher at a non-NES school, who requested anonymity, also took issue with the structure and quick pace of the lesson plans, describing them as “bizarre and counterintuitive.”
The teacher said most of her colleagues were exhausted by the end of the day but had to work additional hours once school was over to prepare for the next day. As lesson plans for the first two weeks, new learning objectives and demonstration of learning must be printed and posted in their classrooms.
Additionally, some teachers struggled to get their students to absorb the concepts they were teaching through these lesson plans. The teacher said she spoke with two colleagues – two of the new uncertified hires – one of whom said they could not engage and instruct their students effectively.
Through speaking with the uncertified teacher, the veteran teacher realized that the students needed to grasp how to add or subtract. Still, the uncertified teacher was having to move on because of the required curriculum.
“We are being put in tough positions that don’t set our kids up to succeed. Teachers are having to make choices we can’t make for one another,” the teacher said. “We are having to decide if we will help our students or do the district’s curriculum.”
“I sit in front of my computer screen and try to figure it out,” the teacher said. “I want my kids to learn this concept, so how can I do that where I will not get in trouble?”
Lauren was especially worried because her eight-year-old daughter has dyslexia, which requires accommodations and an IP to be followed. With Superintendent Mike Miles making cuts to the Special Education department, she doubts whether her daughter’s needs will be met under his system.
Asked about the time requirements for students who are supposed to have accommodations, Miles said during the afternoon press conference that those still would be provided. Although it was not clear how that would happen in a day so precisely scheduled out.
One surprise about the much-discussed lesson plans that are delivered to the teachers is that central office is making these up as they go along. The first 14 days are there but after that, the 60 some odd educators assigned to develop the curriculum are going to have to come up with a lot more. Of course this allows for course correction along the way as Miles noted that by putting all the word problems at the end of a worksheet, many students will never get to them, opting instead to make their way through the more comfortable numbers only questions that precede them.
At Shadydale a room of bright shiny red spin bikes sat waiting for students grade 3 and up to take advantage of them. The room used to be a science lab – science will now be done in the classrooms we were told.
The much debated team centers, misidentified as detention centers by some, filled up rapidly as the results of the first day’s first test sent high scorers there to work independently while teachers concentrated on the students who hadn’t done as well on the quiz. At least by the early morning, no students had been sent in because of misbehavior in the classroom.
Books still lined the walls in the team centers and Miles said the only missing element was the librarians. Still to be worked out: whether students can take any of the books home or if they must read them while they’re in the team center once they have finished their other work.
The McCarty bus center, a sad, sad facility with a 3rd world parking lot and incredibly cramped dispatch offices inside had handled service calls since 4 that morning. Miles said better conditions were needed for the district employees there, whose work was helmed by a manager who’d been there 28 years. Over in the bus barn, the manager there said the biggest challenge was keeping personnel. The buses themselves, with after-market A/C units installed on them don’t have the capacity to keep up with the leaks around the windows.
In early afternoon, Miles reported that out of 5,000 classrooms, 75 percent of principals reported “medium to high” quality of instruction. What goes into that subjective assessment – which Miles acknowledged — is anyone’s guess at this point, but in any case that leaves 25 percent of the assessments falling in the low range.
All 517 bus routes had drivers. Still to be worked out: buses that got hemmed in by drivers taking their kids to school themselves.
A secondary teacher at a non-NES high school said Instructors helped each other by texting one another when an administrator or appraiser from the district approached their classrooms.
The secondary teacher said the “constant surveillance” made her feel depressed and that it was ineffective as her students picked up on the MRS strategies and quotas that had to be met.
“It was awkward because I had to do all these MRS strategies, and I knew that the appraiser was counting them to make sure that I was doing enough, and it just all felt like a performance,” the secondary teacher said. “I don’t even know my kids’ names yet, and I didn’t like how that made me feel.”
“I’m having a hard time, and I just don’t know how long I can work under someone who views teaching as a data check. It’s a constant fear hanging above us and over our heads. If we go NES, I will not teach in that environment,” the secondary teacher said. “I think it’s terrible, but aspects of that seem to be bleeding into our work already. If we have autonomy, why are we having to do some of these things?”
Lauren said she felt that having district personnel on day one was Miles’ “show of force” to teachers and families.
When her daughter returned home from school, she talked about how she and her friend thought their class moved fast.
“To see her at eight years old, already taking on the stress of her teacher and knowing that this is a STAAR testing year for them, it raises a couple of red flags for me,” she said.
Lauren said the system Miles is creating seems to siphon out the high-achievers from the lower achievers and focus on those in-between to produce high-performing results for the district.
She said when she was in school, she was an A student all around but struggled in math – and because of how Miles’ curriculum is structured, students like her will likely fall through the cracks.
For his part, Miles gave the first day an overall A-, adding that he’ll be concentrating on the NES and NES-Affiliated schools for the first month before he moves on to observe the other schools. Some visits will be scheduled, others drop-in. Although the probability is high that the teacher warning system will be in high gear and sending out alerts as soon as he touches down at a campus.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
