|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Thousands of Houston ISD families can expect their schools to look drastically different next year, as the district adds as many as 40 new campuses to Superintendent Mike Miles’ overhaul program in 2024-25, officials announced Tuesday.
For those campuses, plus the 85 schools that already were part of Miles’ “New Education System,” next year’s operations will include the now-familiar package of changes that have divided the HISD community, including new staffing models and fast-paced lessons — but with one key difference.
All 2024-25 NES schools will undergo what Miles called “proficiency screening,” meaning they will use an evaluation system to sort teachers by their performance level at the end of this school year. Teachers who fall into the bottom 15 percent of scores district wide will not be allowed to work at their campuses next school year and may seek employment at other schools in HISD, Miles said in an interview with the Houston Landing.
Other components of the NES program will carry over. Campuses will receive additional teaching assistants and special education staff, classrooms will follow rigid lesson plans with learning checks every few minutes and students will take daily quizzes in core subjects. Teachers at NES schools will continue to earn, on average, $10,000 to $20,000 more than their peers at other schools in the district, Miles said.
“NES is doing what it was intended to do, which is provide the supports for kids who are underserved and kids who are behind academically and move them forward,” Miles said.
The announcement marks a major update in the rollout of Miles’ plans for Texas’ largest school district. When Miles was installed by Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath last June amid sanctions against HISD, he promised to overhaul 150 schools by 2030. Despite vocal opposition from some families and staff, he already has unfurled plans to expand the program to as many as 125.
It also comes a day after the HISD community received its first concrete datapoint on student learning at overhauled schools — numbers that appear to endorse the promise of Miles’ program.
Third- through eighth-graders at NES schools learned roughly 25 percent faster in reading and 50 percent faster in math than their peers at non-NES schools, according to results from a standardized test students took last week that HISD provided to the Landing. Miles said he was pleased with the scores, particularly for historically underserved students.
“For Black and Hispanic kids, if they were in an NES school, they did much better than a Black kid in a non-NES school and better than a Hispanic kid in a non-NES school,” Miles said. “That shows that the supports are there for academic achievement.”
Which schools are joining NES?
The 26 lowest performing HISD schools not already in Miles’ “New Education System” — including Sharpstown, Northside and Westbury high schools — will be required to join the overhaul program, based on last year’s state tests. Up to 14 more schools that scored low also may join the NES model if campus leaders choose to do so, HISD said.
HISD used last year’s STAAR scores, the state’s primary standardized test taken by most students, to decide which schools would be added. Texas’ school accountability ratings, which typically assign each campus an A-F rating each year, have been delayed this year due to legal battles over a new, stricter scoring system. HISD calculated the scores each of its schools would have received had the grades been released.
Schools that would have received an F or low D rating will be required to join the NES system, HISD said. Additionally, 24 schools that received a higher D rating will have the option to participate in the overhaul program. School leaders must decide to join by Feb. 7, HISD said. The district said it can accommodate up to 14 of those schools.
This year, HISD has had a distinction between NES schools, which were the 28 campuses Miles picked for transformation, and NES-aligned schools, the 57 campuses that opted into the overhaul model. NES-aligned teachers do not earn the boosted salaries their NES colleagues receive. That distinction will disappear in 2024-25, and all staff will be paid the full salary, Miles said.
Miles said his team has sketched out the likely costs of the changes, but declined to provide an estimate, saying there still were outstanding factors that could affect the bottom line.
This year, with teachers from only 28 schools earning elevated salaries, the NES program is expected to cost HISD roughly an additional $100 million, Miles previously estimated. He has said he will close the district’s current quarter-billion-dollar deficit next year, despite the added expenses, but has not detailed the cuts to balance the spending community members should expect.
“I can tell you this, we know we can afford what we’re going to do,” Miles said.
Additionally, in a departure from this year, Miles’ administration is not selecting which schools to transform based on feeder patterns. Next year’s new NES schools are based entirely on their projected achievement rankings, not the high school they feed into. Miles said he made that decision because adding full feeder patterns would “capture a whole bunch of schools that don’t need the NES program.”
What exactly is ‘proficiency screening?’
Next year’s NES schools — potentially close to half of HISD — will implement a performance evaluation technique that long has been feared by many teachers.
At the end of this year, teachers will receive an effectiveness rating based on their classroom observations, students’ standardized test scores and assessments from principals, Miles said. That rating will land each teacher into one of seven levels of effectiveness.
For teachers at next year’s NES schools, the bottom two rating levels, “Unsatisfactory” and “Progressing I,” will result in them being removed from their position. Teachers who receive the next level, “Progressing II,” may stay or be asked to leave at principals’ discretion, Miles said.
“I want (teachers) not to panic,” Miles said.
He said most teachers will score above the level at which their position is in jeopardy. However, his administration is applying a predetermined distribution to the scores, such that 15 percent of teachers districtwide will receive scores at the lowest two levels and another 25 percent will score at the “Progressing II” level.
Teachers and union leaders have criticized the model since Miles first introduced it in the fall, arguing the bell curve-like system will force educators to compete against colleagues and discourage collaboration.
Miles has defended the target distribution, saying it is necessary to prevent score inflation.
NES teachers that score below the cutoff and those who object to the NES practices can seek jobs at other HISD schools or outside the district, Miles said.
“Not everybody’s going to want to be in an NES school,” he said. “My guess is that many of them will want to stay. But no question, there'll be some that don't and those teachers will be allowed to get a job in the rest of the district.”
Asher Lehrer-Small covers Houston ISD for the Landing and would love to hear your tips, questions and story ideas. Reach him at asher@houstonlanding.org.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print.
