Imagine no lesson plans, no grading papers at night after dinner, no phone calls to parents once the day’s lessons are over, no fighting a losing battle with the copier machine. Just a day of teaching to students.
“What we can do is do what hospitals do for their doctors. Doctors don’t prep the room, they don’t prep the materials, they don’t take the blood pressure or heart rate. They just come in, have somebody else put their gloves on for them and then they do their thing. That’s their skill. That’s why they get paid what they get paid. We want you to do that,” Acting Superintendent Mike Miles told a group of prospective Houston ISD teachers at this past Saturday’s job fair, speaking about working at the district’s highest risk schools.
Staged at Lamar High School, the job fair brought in a room full of prospects perhaps attracted by the higher salaries Miles has promised to institute and not immediately scared off by what looks like a more rigorous evaluation system both for principals and teachers. Excellence, Miles has made clear, should be rewarded with higher salaries and extra stipends.
Of course, what constitutes “excellence” is a fairly subjective undertaking — even when mathematical or scientific standards are employed, Most everyone doesn’t want it to be just student test scores, but beyond that, what are some of the criteria?
In his approach, Miles has a methodology that signals heavy respect for what good teachers can do, while at the same time relieving those teachers of some of the duties such as lesson plans that they might not want to let go.
“We’re going to treat you like professionals. You come into the room and you teach like a champion,” he told the crowd. “You are the surgeons, You are the person who understands the question behind the question. You understand the pacing, you understand the rigor. You understand each kid’s needs.”
“You come into the room and you teach like a champion,”
Initially, Miles said, this unique approach will be implemented at only the so-called NES (New Education System) schools, the ones in the North Forest, Wheatley and Kashmere feeder patterns. Eventually and with enough funding, he hopes to expand to all HISD schools.
While urging the prospective applicants to consider the NES schools which come with their own special rigor, Miles also made clear that “All of the district needs your help.”
After going through the possible pay ranges which he said mean the average teacher is going to be paid “well over $95,000” at NES schools when incentives and stipends are thrown in, Miles zeroed in on individual categories. Reading is the highest paid subject, he said, followed by math and science. “Because our kids need to be able. to read. Many of our kids are behind. NES is going be tough First year we’re moving fast; we’re helping kids.”
What this requires is a different kind of commitment, one that sounds like they’ll need to put their cell phones in a drawer.
“You are engaging all kids. You are in front of kids at least six hours a day. You’re not sitting at your desk looking at texts or emails or whatever. You are in the moment every day,” he said. “So we’re going to take a lot of stuff off your plate. Discipline is taken off your plate, power point is taken off your plate, quizzes, lesson plans, making copies.”
Instead, “teacher apprentices” who are working toward their certification to learn the job will take on many of these duties along with other support personnel.
“When teachers leave at 4:15, you’re done. You don’t have any lessons plans to make, you don’t have any parents phone calls to make, you don’t have any papers to grade, you’re done. Over time we’re going to do this for the rest of our HISD schools. We want better work life balance for all of our teachers.”
Teachers will be able to tweak their lesson plans but especially in the reading area Miles said they need to closely follow what the superintendent calls a very strong, researched-based course of study.
The Houston Press met with Miles for a few minutes after he released the educators to a gymnasium filled with representative from various schools.
We met in a Lamar High storage closet where a table and chairs had been shoehorned in and as has been usual with media interviews in his initial week on the job, it was another ready-set-go rapid fire session, not leaving a lot of time for musing.
There are 29 NES schools in the Wheatley, Kashmere and North Forest feeder patterns. Of these 29, one school is a temporary placement alternative education program which will receive similar supports, but they will be implemented and measured differently due to the unique nature of that program. Miles has announce the librarians at those schools will be moved out, something that has been criticized by the public.
So, what does he have against librarians and are the students at the 29 NES schools being punished for some reason because they won’t have any at those schools as Miles has decided?
“We have a staffing model focused on helping kids read, write, do math and science in year 2035 competencies. So we’re finding the staffers who can do that. I’m not saying librarians don’t have a role in the district. I’m not saying that librarians aren’t great. I’m saying that we are prioritizing reading, writing, math, science and year 2035 competencies,” Miles responded, adding that the librarians at those schools are being offered jobs at other HISD schools.
Asked about critics who say that while he was superintendent in Dallas ISD — he left the district in 2015 with two years to go on his contract after asking for and not receiving changes to his contract — that test scores actually declined and that thousands of teachers left under his tenure, he responded that “People can say all kinds of things and do.
“There was an increase of of teachers who left or were not renewed after the first year of the teacher evaluation report. But the other side of that coin is, the teachers who were proficient or higher had the lower leave rate. We had a great retention rate of teachers who were proficient or higher. It was designed to keep the teachers who were proficient or higher.”
Saying “I look at data all the time. We ask people to look at evidence and facts,” Miles suggested reading the March 2023 report by the National Bureau of Economic Research. Self-described as a “private, non-profit, non-partisan organization dedicated to conducting economic research” its researchers studied the Dallas incentive pay system that DISD installed after Miles left. Entitled “Attracting and Retaining Highly Effective Educators in Hard-to-Staff Schools” the system called ACE (Accelerating Campus Excellence) is very similar to what Miles is proposing to do in Houston in the NES schools..
According to that study, when the ACE program was in place, the paper’s authors found it resulted in an increase in student achievement. But when the stipends – which Miles has built into his HISD plan – were dropped, so did test scores and a large number of highly effective teachers left.
The research found was that as those who were in the ACE program at least two years rather than one, did better.. Additional variables considered included a small increase in instructional time, a requirement to adopt data-driven instruction, funds for school uniforms and enhanced professional development, according to the study’s findings.
While incentive programs like this have been used more and more in the United States, there still remains a lot of controversy about the use of a merit pay system for teachers and principals that relies on student test scores. The study acknowledged this citing several other locations where a system like that has not seen improved test scores. And whether such a system can scale up to a district as a whole is also questionable both for the expense and the ability to sustain that financial support over time.
As noted in Dallas: “When the stipends paid to ACE 1 educators were largely removed following the achievement increases, turnover jumped among the most effective teachers and test scores fell substantially.”
In his principal training sessions, Miles said he has encouraged principals to put a standing desk in the hallway “so they’re visible and present.” They’ve also been told they should be in each classroom once a day and usually multiple times, coaching along the way — something that will be welcomed by some teachers and seen as an annoying intrusion by others.
It’s not on his to-do list right now, but Miles said he’s be interested in talking to Teach For America at some point. The program which has been in and out at HISD, fast tracks recent non-education graduates (usually with high grades from prestigious universities) into classrooms across the country. Criticisms include the low percentage of TFA teachers who stay in the profession beyond two years and the observation that many TFA graduates use it for its networking abilities to help[ them seek public office. Referencing the teacher shortage that has hit many districts, Miles said simply “We have to think about different avenues to bring teachers in.”
Perhaps the biggest question facing the superintendent and board most immediately is how they have their first workshop on the 2023-24 budget this Thursday and then pass a budget the following Thursday in a process that usually takes months for a board to track through.
“The short answer is: We’re going to take the budget that is already there as the base. Most of it will be the budget that already exists today. The budget that the last board put together,” Miles said..
“We can’t overhaul the budget in two weeks. That probably won’t make sense. So we’re not. But there are things we are going to address and those things that we are going to address will be at the work session,” he said.
The last board meeting featured so many accusations and declarations from the audience floor that it was almost impossible to hear what board members were saying. Many of those in attendance still reject the notion that anything good will come of the state taking over their district as the Texas Education Agency and its appointees have done.
Miles complimented the board members for their demeanor during the testy meeting, calling them “very professional and courageous. They were calm. They just continued to do work. Which I thought was admirable.”
Whether the audience will listen to the discussion, or drown out those details, is still anyone’s guess. But with this much at stake, a little quiet time might be in order.
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This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
