Houston Public Media is launching The Takeover, a podcast about power and public education, on Friday, May 3.
Tap here to listen to the trailer and subscribe to the podcast.
The first season is based on 18 months of on-the-ground, neighborhood-level reporting, featuring educators, students and parents as they grapple with sweeping changes to their schools. We also pose tough questions to policymakers, including the state-installed leaders of Houston ISD, and we shine a light behind the scenes. We explore how they gained control over the largest public school system in Texas, and we try to unpack the reasons top-down, test-based accountability remains a driving force in our state and national public education policy. In addition to our emphasis on community-level voices, the podcast features conversations with more than a dozen education experts with a broad range of insights, shedding light on research even as they often fail to reach a complete consensus.
And last, but certainly not least: our theme music, “Kash Register,” is performed by Houston ISD students. The track comes from the Kashmere Stage Band, led by the late, great “Prof” Conrad Johnson in the 1960s and ‘70s. We’re using those tracks courtesy of Now Again Records and Johnson’s family.
Trailer of ‘Thunder Soul’, a documentary about Houston’s storied Kashmere High School Stage Band in the 1970s.
Here are three revelations from our reporting for The Takeover:
The lawmaker who made the takeover possible has repeatedly made a false claim as a central justification
A lot of Democratic officials have blasted the state takeover of Houston ISD, framing the issue as an escalation in the power struggle between the blue city and the red state.
“This is about Austin and the leadership in Austin wanting to run the local units of government,” said Sylvester Turner, Houston’s former mayor, last year.
When they were state lawmakers, Turner and the current mayor, John Whitmire, both voted for the law that made the takeover possible — House Bill 1842, which passed with an overwhelming majority in 2015.
The part of the law that included the takeover provision was authored and pushed by Representative Harold Dutton, another Democrat from Houston.
Among his primary justifications, Dutton repeatedly pointed to the supposed absence of a certified math teacher at Kashmere High School in Northeast Houston.
He’s made the claim multiple times, including in the opinion pages of the Houston Chronicle, where Dutton wrote: “Simply put, Kashmere High School had not had the benefit of a certified math teacher in more than 10 years. Now there were certainly certified math teachers in HISD. Why none at Kashmere? Because fixing Kashmere was not on the agenda of the entire HISD board, my amendment to HB 1842 was born.”
When Dutton sat down with us, he expanded the assertion: “Kashmere didn’t have a certified math teacher in some 15, 20 years.”
It’s a big claim. We subjected it to fact-checking.
When we submitted an open records request, Houston ISD told us the district couldn’t find any responsive records showing staff rosters at Kashmere from 1995 to 2015. This is normal; government entities often don’t hold onto records for a long time.
Eventually, we found Manoj Chainani. He worked as a math teacher at Kashmere High School from 2007 through 2010. He was certified.
We confirmed Chainani’s years of service at Kashmere through another open records request to Houston ISD and his certification by checking the state education registry.
Chainani agreed, to a point, with Dutton’s broader perspective that the Houston ISD school board failed to provide adequate resources to Kashmere and other high-poverty schools.
“When I was there, the principal, Charlotte Parker — she did her best to get resources for Kashmere, and she got more than anybody before her,” Chainani said. “But it’s never enough, especially if you have students that are way behind.”
Dutton has not responded to our finding. In an interview earlier this year, he said he had only one regret about the law, which allows the Texas Education Agency to take over an entire school district if even one campus falls short of academic standards for five years. He wished the takeover provision was harsher.
“I would have made it three years instead of five,” Dutton said. “Because I think therein lies our obligation to the children and these children’s future.
“Some people said, well you know that is pretty harsh, Harold,” he said. “I said, well look at it this way. If CPS, Child Protective Services comes to your house, and you’ve got five kids, and you’ve been mistreating one of them, they don’t let any kid stay. They take all of the kids. I said, that’s what I think this is, this is child abuse — not to educate, not to fix these schools that are failing, consistently failing.”
On average, the more than 850 Houston ISD teachers who resigned since early August had 10 years of classroom experience. NES schools, on average, slipped back slightly in terms of average teacher experience, but those schools are receiving more resources than before
Some Houston ISD teachers are open to the reforms implemented by state-installed superintendent Mike Miles.
Donnie Walker worked through several reform efforts at Wheatley High School before the takeover happened, and he was rehired over the summer after Miles forced him and teachers at 27 other schools to reapply for their jobs as part of the New Education System (NES) turnaround model.
Before the school year started, Walked urged his colleagues to “stop the infighting and come together and make it work.”
With only a month left before classes wrap up, he said he plans to return.
“Once I got involved with it, once I understood the paradigm, what they wanted and what they expected from us, it got kinda easier … so I had no issues so far with it,” Walker said in an interview earlier this month.
We obtained two datasets through a public records request — one shows how many years of experience teachers in the first 28 NES schools had as of April last year. The second set shows the same information for this year.
There are 275 more teachers in the 28 NES schools, including more educators across almost every bracket of experience — except for those with three or more decades in the classroom.
While significant resources are flowing to NES schools, more teachers across the district are leaving their schools.
As we first reported in January, the resignation rate is about twice as much as in the past two school years. At the time, Miles told us the spike isn’t surprising. He’s repeatedly emphasized that teachers need to make a choice to be in a “high-performance culture.”
“Everything seems to be premised on the assumption that all of the problems in schools are teachers’ fault,” said Melissa Yarborough, who resigned in January. “I can’t speak for every teacher, but I can speak for me and the teachers I know at my school. We have very high expectations of our kids, and we work our asses off to try to get them to reach those expectations. And it is a huge insult to act like we don’t.”
According to additional records we obtained, more than 850 educators resigned from August through the end of March. On average, they had about a decade of classroom experience.
“When new systems are put in place, it’s a point of inflection,” said Cathy Horn, dean of the College of Education at the University of Houston.
“When you have substantial turnover, for whatever reason, you want to consider as an organization, as a leadership group, what’s motivating that,” Horn said. “Where’s that pushing and pulling on what you are prioritizing to execute towards a mission, a goal that you’ve set for yourself and the organization?”
Gabriela Sánchez-Soto is a research scientist with the Houston Education Research Consortium at Rice University’s Kinder Institute.
In her research on a range of teacher characteristics in Houston ISD from 2018 through 2020, she found that in schools with more experienced teachers, more Hispanic students passed math tests, the probability that Black and Hispanic students were chronically absent was lower, and there was a lower rate of discipline referrals for Black and Hispanic students.
She emphasized the research wasn’t able to make a definitive causal link; instead, it observed a correlation. In other words, it’s unclear if having more experienced teachers was the main driver of the more positive outcomes in schools with predominantly Black and Latino student populations.
“The complicated thing is also that sometimes those are the contexts where you find other correlates,” Sánchez-Soto said. “So, things like poverty and economic disadvantage and historic underinvestment, and so it’s almost like a very weird paradox where you’re hoping that these highly qualified or culturally competent teachers support a student body that has so much more else going on.”
For the first time, a former administrator from Mike Miles’ charter school network is speaking out
Before the Texas Education Agency installed Mike Miles as superintendent of Houston ISD, he founded and ran a charter school network focused on turning around low-performing campuses. Third Future Schools (TFS) touts an impressive track record of student growth as measured by state academic standards, and the network has successfully lifted multiple Texas schools out of failing status under the state’s accountability system.
Miles sent Houston ISD principals to Odessa and Midland over the summer, when they toured Third Future schools, including Ector College Prep. The TFS model is nearly identical to the New Education System launched last year in Houston ISD.
Dawn Miller worked as a teacher at Ector College Prep in Odessa before being promoted to assistant principal at Sam Houston Elementary, which is also a TFS campus in nearby Midland.
“I was a very fast-paced teacher, so (the TFS instructional model) kind of complemented the style that I’ve taught, so I initially thought it was great,” Miller said.
After the promotion to assistant principal in Midland, she stayed involved in Odessa’s public schools as a trustee on the Ector County ISD school board.
“I was on the board in Ector County Independent School District, and I worked in Midland,” she said. “That is how there was no conflict because I was in two different districts.”
Over time, she became more skeptical — especially as she noticed what Third Future deemphasizes to focus on academic growth in math and reading.
“As those kids get to middle school and high school, it becomes very important — extracurriculars, fine arts, things of that nature that do not exist in the TFS plan,” Miller said. “What I do find as the challenge, what I do find as the all that’s good isn’t great, is you’re only doing that.”
TFS, like the NES system in Houston, includes the Dyad Program. It uses hourly, non-certified contractors to provide enrichment activities, from yoga to martial arts. In Miller’s eyes, it’s not enough.
“We have a right and left brain for a reason, right?” Miller continued. “Innately, we were designed to be as artistic as we are analytical. It is because that is how we thrive.”
In December, at the recommendation of the ECISD superintendent, the school board voted to not continue the district’s partnership with Third Future Schools. It was a near-unanimous vote, with only Miller abstaining due to the fact that Third Future Schools was her employer.
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No other ECISD board members responded to our inquiries about Miller’s comments.
In a written statement, ECISD said the TFS partnership was intended “to find support for turning around a struggling campus.”
“The intention from the start was to eventually take it back under district supervision,” ECISD’s statement continued. “ECISD leaders are appreciative of all the work done by Third Future Schools on behalf of the Ector students and families, and are now excited to bring that school back under ECISD leadership. Our District is very different today than it was four years ago. We have clear evidence of academic growth across all grade levels, including middle schools where we have historically struggled. We are excited about the future of Ector Middle School.”
Miller was terminated in February. She believes it was retaliation, and she’s considering litigation. She’s also submitted a complaint to the TEA about the network’s practices.
Third Future Schools did not directly comment on Miller’s claims.
“At Third Future Schools, we understand the importance of feedback and continuously strive to enhance our educational approach,” the charter network wrote in a response to our inquiry about Miller’s comments. “Our personalized learning model, curriculum, and student outcomes are all shaped by data-driven insights. We meticulously analyze this data to identify areas for improvement, ensuring that we provide the best possible education for our students. We believe in transparency and accountability, which is why we let our results speak for themselves. Our commitment to excellence is reflected in the achievements of our students and the positive impact we make in their lives.”
In a written statement, Midland ISD said it “values the partnership with Third Future Schools and the work they are doing at Lamar Elementary and Sam Houston Collegiate Preparatory Elementary in Midland.”
“In the upcoming years, as contracts with Third Future Schools in Midland ISD expire, as with any other partnership agreement, the district will evaluate the renewal of these based on the effectiveness of the school, along with the track record of successful student outcomes and the state accountability system, the MISD statement continued. “MISD regularly collects data for students transitioning between campuses. Should concerns be identified, whether at a Third Future campus or otherwise, the district is prepared to address these quickly. Other contract negotiations considered include enrollment processes and services the partner requires of the district.”
State-installed superintendent Mike Miles declined our interview requests for the podcast.
