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Mike Miles, the state-appointed new superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, began his tenure in a manner eerily similar to the way he ended a troubled time as head of the Dallas Independent School District. Everyone was asking where he was.
At the first Houston ISD school board meeting, led by a trustee appointed by the Texas Education Agency as part of the state's recent takeover of the school district, many community members were upset that they didn't get to see Miles until the end. Eight years ago, after her tumultuous three years as Dallas ISD's superintendent, Miles did not appear at her final board meeting.
Already, the way Miles is beginning to establish himself in Houston is drawing comparisons to his short-lived stint in Dallas. Within a week of being named superintendent of Houston ISD, the largest school district in Texas, Miles announced an overhaul of some campuses and a reduction in teacher pay to help students who are struggling academically. announced a new program to increase the number of students, a measure similar to the approach taken by his predecessor as superintendent. Gig.
But while his management style laid the foundation for future success in Dallas ISD, it also left behind various scandals, causing veteran educators to leave the district and ultimately leaving the state's standardized test scores nearly flat. It remained as it was.
TEA announced earlier this month that Miles would be placed at the helm of the state's largest school district after years of poor academic performance at the district's single-campus Phillis Wheatley High School. Allegations of misconduct against school board members. and the continued presence of a restorer who has overseen the area for many years. Despite community opposition, the agency is required by state law to intervene and address these issues by taking control of the school board and replacing elected members with temporary handpicked members. It says that there are.
Miles is ordered by the TEA to get the district back on track. Already, the former Dallas ISD superintendent has announced sweeping changes to the 29 schools that have historically hosted some of Houston ISD's lowest-performing students. Wheatley School is one such school.
The schools will be placed under Mr. Miles' so-called “New Education System,” which he described as “an innovative staffing model focused on improving classroom instruction and student outcomes.” He explains.
All teachers and other employees at schools included in the program will be required to reapply for their positions. The average salary for teachers employed at these campuses could reach $95,000 a year, with incentives and stipends based on test results. Such a salary would represent a 61% increase from the average teacher salary in Texas.
Miles said librarians at those schools will also be relocated to other campuses under the program, with staffing priorities being given to those who help students with reading, writing and math, according to the Houston Press. .
To help pay for those higher salaries, Miles plans to cut 200 jobs from the district's government.
“We will continue to align our resources, especially our most talented teachers and principals, to better serve students in underserved communities,” Miles said in a statement. . “We will provide more instructional time for students who need to catch up or for schools that have been falling behind for years.”
Miles did not respond to requests for an interview. He plans to host several community meetings to explain his plans.
Miles' vision and plan to get there is focused on TEA Commissioner Mike Moras and some legislators grading school districts based in part on Texas Academic Assessment test scores. matches the points. Moras himself served on the Dallas school board when Miles was superintendent of Dallas ISD, and he was one of the few school board members who had a good relationship with Miles.
Miles' plans in Houston ISD are similar to the program he started in Dallas before resigning with two years left on his contract. The program, launched after Mr. Miles resigned, gave teachers huge pay bonuses if they raised standardized test scores on some of the highest-need campuses. Some campuses with low ratings saw improvements as part of the program, but once funding dried up and teachers left because they weren't receiving the same pay, their scores dropped again.
Following initial success in Dallas, other school districts across the state have implemented the program.
Miles was also the driving force behind revamping the district's teacher evaluation system. This system was used to calculate teachers' salaries based on a combination of test results, student feedback, and performance, rather than experience. Miles plans to implement a similar teacher evaluation system in Houston.
The city of Dallas still uses this evaluation system, but most of these talented teachers aren't in the schools that need it most, raising questions about its fairness.
Similarly, lawmakers passed the Teacher Incentive Allocation Program in 2019, rewarding teachers with up to six-figure salaries based on student performance. Currently, about 13,000 teachers, or about 4% of the state's educators, are participating in the program.
In Dallas, the program had the support of a majority of the board, including Moras, and then-Mayor Mike Rawlings. But many teachers warned they would leave the district if they were given a raise based solely on a test they took once a year. Miles called his system the strictest in the United States at the time.
David DeMathews, an associate professor of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin who has followed Miles' career, believes testing is important, but wishes Miles didn't focus solely on raising standardized test scores. He said he was there. The move could lead to another teacher exodus as Texas schools struggle to attract and retain teachers.
In Texas, students' STAAR test results are used to score schools on how well they educate children. Although a TEA-commissioned study concluded that the test provides a valid and reliable assessment of student performance, critics of the test argue that the test does not provide a good indication of how well a child knows a subject. He said the high-stakes nature of the deal, rather than the established indicators, puts undue pressure on both sides. Both students and teachers.
“Saying that test scores are the driver of reform is not an effective management tool,” DeMathews said. “Test scores are not very predictive of what will happen to students in the future.”
Scandal after scandal in Dallas
Miles arrived in Dallas in 2012 after a successful stint working in a small school district in Colorado. During his six years in the Harrison School District, he led that school to academic success by applying a teacher evaluation program similar to the one he used in Dallas and is now implementing in Houston.
According to the Dallas Morning News, he spent just three years in Dallas before leaving after failing to negotiate a contract change. He wanted to prohibit school board members from searching for a new superintendent while he completed his final year and wanted access to retention bonuses.
The Morning News described his time in the district as “chaotic,” saying it had brought “chaos” and “controversy.”
His tenure was overshadowed by the selection of his government and the scandals they brought. He hired employees from Colorado and paid them six-figure salaries, more than double his previous salary.
Mr. Miles' chief of staff, Jerome Overton, resigned in the face of federal charges and later pleaded guilty to receiving kickbacks from his previous job with Atlanta Public Schools. Carmen Darvill, Mr. Miles' human resources director, made public instant messages between Mr. Miles and another executive in which they made fun of race, religion, and age and discussed how to fire employees. As a result, he resigned.
Darvill worked in Houston ISD, then under Miles in Dallas, and is now chief operating officer of YES Prep Public Schools, a charter school operating in Houston.
The investigation also found that Dallas ISD Human Resources Executive Director Tonya Sadler Grayson lied about her criminal history, bullied co-workers, and falsified reports submitted to trustees. She was hired during Miles' tenure.
According to the Morning News, Miles himself violated district policy.
In 2012, Dallas city officials found that Miles and other managers violated human resources policies that require hiring people before the position is publicly posted and before the candidate undergoes a criminal background check. .
He also did not have good relationships with many school board members. The Morning News at the time revealed that Miles had secretly helped prepare resignation letters for district employees, but the content praised him but belittled other members, and that there was a conflict between Miles and the board. Friction arose.
At one point, Miles had Dallas police remove Bernadette Nuttall, then a school board member, from a middle school she was visiting. Nuttall had gone to see what was happening at the school after Miles replaced the principal, two assistant principals and 10 teachers. Nuttall's expulsion from the school prompted a district investigation.
Dallas ISD consistently met standards set by the state's accountability system, but there was no significant increase in standardized test scores during Miles' tenure, according to a Dallas Morning News analysis. Only some subject areas saw small increases. For others, test scores decreased slightly. The number of schools in good standing with the state also decreased, and the number of failing schools increased.
While the district saw gains in the math portion of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (most commonly known as the National Report Card), reading scores remained flat. Since Miles took over, the district's NAEP math scores have increased. However, NAEP assessments do not test students according to the state curriculum as STAAR does, but only a representative sample of children.
During Miles' first two years in Dallas, teacher turnover increased from 12% to 22%.
“Miles' approach has caused a lot of controversy in Dallas ISD, which has led to an increased rate of teacher turnover compared to other parts of the state,” DeMathews said. “I hope he learned his lesson in Dallas.”
Disclosure: The University of Texas at Austin provides financial support to The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization funded in part by contributions from members, foundations, and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. See the complete list of them here.
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