Off the Kuff

From Lisa Falkenberg’s latest:

For months, I had written about other schools within Houston ISD, scrutinizing superintendent Mike Miles’ reforms in the state’s takeover, his closure of libraries and sidelining of storybooks, all the while harboring some relief that my own three kids’ campuses had been somewhat insulated from the changes.

Until this year, that is, when the district’s instability, fluctuating expectations and teacher exodus hurt my kid, too.

Some like to pretend that Miles’ move-fast-and-break-things approach is only affecting students at the poorest-performing schools for whom any change must be better than what they had. That’s not true. The Houston Chronicle has reported that aspects of Miles’ controversial curriculum or instructional model have seeped into virtually all of HISD’s 274 campuses.

That includes some of the highest-performing schools that never needed academic rehabilitation in the first place. These are schools for which families sweat lottery admissions to gain entry, and some even buy houses or rent apartments just to be zoned to them.

My middle child attends one of these, an “A”-rated Vanguard campus for advanced students that we entered through a lottery. When I tell people what’s happening there, some don’t believe me. I can’t blame them. Miles’ effect on HISD’s best schools isn’t what grabs headlines.

Still, here’s a glimpse of what we’ve seen. I’m not naming the school because my goal isn’t to have this column tied permanently to the campus name in Google searches. It’s to open eyes.

A week or two before that conversation with my daughter in the car, she told me she feared her English teacher would quit because district observers were prodding him about his lackluster use of whiteboards and response cards — key tools in Miles’ New Education System.

The observers even handed out their own worksheet packets, she said, as the teacher stood by and watched. By October 24, an administrator informed parents that the teacher had submitted his resignation.

I couldn’t understand why the district was meddling with a good school that supposedly had autonomy. Miles has argued that even some top schools need NES methods because achievement gaps persist. That’s apparently not the case at my daughter’s school, which earned high marks in achievement, progress and closing gaps.

Miles’ methods — top-down management, strictly controlled curriculum, frenetic pace and high-stakes quizzes — appear to have led to some testing gains in schools where students were severely behind. HISD has gone from 56 “F” campuses to zero. That does seem like progress.

But Miles’ charter-like approach is less effective with advanced students, such as those attending Vanguard or International Baccalaureate programs known for rigorous, often individualized and project-based curriculum that go far beyond worksheet packets.

Miles’ strict protocols have driven away thousands of teachers at all levels of talent and tenure. In the 2024-25 school year, one in three teachers didn’t return, nearly double the state’s rate. This school year alone, more than 30 of the 73 teachers at my daughter’s school have left, double the annual average of the first two years of the takeover, according to Chronicle reporting and district records I obtained through a public information request.

Miles argues that high teacher turnover isn’t a problem. He says HISD retains around 90% of exemplary teachers. But most teachers we lost at “A” schools were clearly doing something right. The problem is that Miles defines “exemplary” in part by obedience to his program.

[…]

This middle school, to which I sent both my girls, is still excellent in many ways.

It has some dedicated, truly inspiring teachers who are hanging on. It’s a racially and ethnically diverse campus that offers rigor to smart kids from all kinds of neighborhoods. It molds bright minds into award-winning debaters, dancers and leaders. It still provides some high-quality instruction to kids whose families can’t afford private school or prefer a public school for their child.

For a long time, it was a shining example of what a public school could be.

I thought the point of this takeover was to make more of those. Not fewer.

Pretty much all of my younger daughter’s teachers at the A-rated Houston Academy for International Studies left between her junior and senior years, having had their fill of Miles’ bullshit even though that school was outside the cursed NES framework. Miles’ mandate was to turn around the academically struggling schools, but his insistence on meddling everywhere else has infuriated me from the beginning. I get to be relieved that my kids graduated before most of the worst of it came along, but I’m still mad as hell for everyone else.

Meanwhile, in Other Things No One Asked Mike Miles To Do:

After the state took over Houston ISD and ousted its elected board, state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles quickly introduced his New Education System, which overhauled curriculum and instruction within dozens of low-performing schools.

Three years in, the largest school district in Texas is preparing to launch the next evolution of the controversial reform model, with a new name: Future 2 schools. Miles has described it as his “next stage in changing the American public education system.”

The campuses will maintain the NES academic curriculum while adding seminars and activities focused on preparing students for an “AI-enabled world” by teaching skills like critical thinking and collaboration, according to the district.

HISD first planned a pilot with two campuses for next school year. But now nine schools will become Future 2 and serve students in pre-K through eighth grade. The district plans to convert up to 100 NES campuses — or nearly all — to the model by July 2031. Miles told Houston Public Media that the district would also consider incorporating the model at some non-NES campuses that “want to do this.”

Daniel Ernst, the interim chief artificial intelligence strategist at Texas Woman’s University, said it “sounds great on paper” to prepare students for a world with artificial intelligence, and it makes sense to teach students topics like moral reasoning. However, he’s concerned how fast the district plans to scale the latest version of its reform model.

“I’m in favor of being a little bit more patient,” Ernst said. “They were initially piloting it in two schools, and now it’s expanded to nine. My first reaction was, ‘Why not see what it looks like in the two schools first before scaling it up right away?’”

Because that’s not how Mike Miles operates. Lisa Falkenberg’s “move fast and break things” description of him is accurate. I’ve said my piece on this, so let me just note that if we had reason to trust Mike Miles, we might be willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and see what taking a more aggressive view might look like. There’s no reason to trust him. Also, too, every corporate-mandated AI training I’ve taken in the past two years has emphasized that as AI changes rapidly, training curricula gets outdated quickly as well. That’s another reason to slow the roll a bit, to allow for more flexibility as changes need to be made. Both of these are gift links, so read them all.

And as noted before, the Mike Miles Experience is coming to a district near you.

No state has taken over as many local public school districts as Texas. Just since 2020, the state education agency has installed its own hand-picked leaders in eight districts. Four of those came this spring. At least another 10 are at risk of takeover, including, as of last week, the Austin Independent School District (ISD).

And to lead some of these districts, Texas is turning to a cadre of officials with ties to Mike Miles, the man the education agency chose in 2023 to oversee the Houston school district, the state’s largest. Miles is also a close ally of Mike Morath, Texas’ powerful education commissioner.

Already, at least two of these new district leaders have started to adopt policies similar to the contentious reforms Miles has pursued in Houston. He has touted improved test scores under his charge. Houston ISD had no F-rated campuses and fewer D-rated campuses in the state’s latest ratings compared with previous years. But Miles has also sparked widespread protests in response to the district’s rigid adherence to scripted lessons and repetitive testing, the firing of principals and teachers, mass school closures, and the conversion of schools into charters.

[…]

The recent takeovers include Beaumont, Lake Worth, and Connally independent school districts, whose new superintendents worked under Miles when he was superintendent in Dallas ISD; two of them also worked for him in Houston. In Fort Worth ISD, one of the state’s largest districts, the new state-appointed superintendent chose as his second-in-command Daniel Soliz, another person who worked under Miles in Houston ISD. Soliz did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

At least two of the state’s new superintendent appointees—Sandi Massey, who now helms Beaumont ISD in southeast Texas, and Ena Meyers, TEA’s appointee for Lake Worth ISD, a small district near Fort Worth—also worked for the controversial Colorado-based charter network Third Future Schools, which Miles led prior to becoming superintendent in Houston. In April, the Observer revealed that Miles had an ongoing $120,000 annual consulting contract with the charter network, an arrangement that likely violated a new statewide ban on public school administrators’ moonlighting. After questions from the news organization, Miles canceled the contract. The district said Miles “remains fully focused on leading Houston ISD and delivering results for students.”

Third Future’s charter network is expanding around the state as districts turn campuses over to the nonprofit’s Texas subsidiary, often as a means to delay possible state takeover. The organization did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment.

School district takeovers often involve layoffs, school closures, and an increase in charter schools, as has happened in Houston, said Domingo Morel, an associate professor of political science and public service at New York University, who found Texas has had more district takeovers than any other state since 1989.

What’s unique to Texas, Morel said, is that the low bar required to take control has led to more takeovers. Since 2015, five consecutive failing state ratings at just one school can trigger a takeover, as occurred in Houston, which has 273 campuses.

Texas has also made it harder for districts to appeal these seizures. The Legislature passed a law in 2021 that barred districts from using public funds to challenge the education commissioner’s “final and unappealable” decision to take them over. The threshold that defines a failing school was also lowered. Then, in 2025, the state passed another law restricting districts from using public funds to sue the state when challenging its accountability ratings.

The state “is the player, the referee, the coach, the scorekeeper,” when it comes to rating schools and deciding when to seize control, said Steven Nelson, an associate professor of education policy and leadership at the University of Nevada who’s been studying school takeovers for more than a decade. He said he suspects the TEA-appointed leaders connected to Miles will also focus on standardized testing, which will result in “a narrow curriculum when all is said and done.”

Fort Worth ISD parents have started to organize in response, and I would expect the others to follow. I wish them all the best.