Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles was as bright and bubbly as the colorful balloon archway he stood in front of at Hilliard Elementary School Monday as he unveiled preliminary accountability results for individual schools in the district.
“The district has not always, especially in the last several years, provided the best education possible for our students for whatever reasons,” Miles said. “So one year later when you get good results it just warms my heart because it means more kids have a fighting chance now at having the best education possible.”
The Texas Education Agency hasn’t been allowed to issue its official ratings thanks to ongoing legal disputes involving school districts that believe the new rating system is unfair. But, following the same methodology according to Miles, HISD came up with its own assessments. The annual Texas STAAR test plays a large part in computing these assessments along with graduation rates and college, career and military readiness outcomes. Schools are also judged on whether they are closing achievement gaps among student groups. .
HISD released the overall ratings two weeks ago and Miles repeated some of those statistics Monday. The district moved from 121 campuses rated D or F down to 41 schools. His New Education Schools with their daily testing moved from only 11 schools with A or B ratings in 2023 to 53 NES campuses scoring an A or B.
Monday was the day that parents, teachers and students found out how each school had scored. Hilliard was one of the schools making a remarkable improvement, in its case from an F to an A.
“NES had 63 D and F schools last year,” Miles said. That moved to 14 this year.
There were a minority of lower scoring schools that either did not improve or whose ratings actually dropped. Miles acknowledged this but said this should not take away from the widespread progress that was made.
“In any given year there’s going to be a little bit of movement up and down. That happens everywhere, especially in a district this size. So there’s a tidal wave of movement from the lower performing D and F, C to here.”
He ascribed the schools that either dropped or were low performing to them not following his much repeated precepts for what makes for good education. Needed are: “An instructional modal that works really well. It’s high quality instructional materials. A really strong curriculum. It’s the quality of instruction in the classroom every day. It’s staff capacity. the ability of the staff to deliver or implement high quality instruction. It’s leadership. A person who can not only help grow instruction but inspire the staff. Then culture, a culture of continuous improvement.”
“Twenty campuses went from an F to a B,” Miles said. “Only a handful in the state went from an F to an A , and they’re all in HISD.”
North Division Superintendent Orlando Riddick, who had the largest percentage of NES schools in his division last year, also spoke to the group, talking about what the North Forest area in particular had to do to start to turn things around academically.
“This work is hard. This work is daunting but it’s not impossible. I interviewed every principal sitting in this room right here and spoke to the challenge they had in front of them. That there are people who have turned their back on your school. There are people who in essence called your baby ugly. And if you’re okay with that, this is not the place for you. You have to be willing to fight every day, every moment.
“This journey started in the North Forest community in 2012. In 2011 a decision was made that the brand that the district carried was academically unacceptable. It was decided than that Houston ISD would take this district on. And annex it as part of its area. That work was done and schools still carried academically unacceptable, not rated or a D or an F.”
Employing the NES tactics of daily testing and expanded hours in math and reading, Riddick said they were able to see improvements.
“We did not change the community. We did not change the kids. We did not change zip codes. We got to work and principals leaned in to that place. You’re sitting where kids for multiple years have carried an F in a for. Kids left here with that as a label.” North Forest High School is now a B moved up from a D, Forest Brook Middle School is 1 point away from an A with an 89. Shadydale Elementary went from an F to a B.
In any event, here are the preliminary accountability ratings from HISD:
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2024.
