The Houston public school classroom might have looked like any other, if not for an unusual feature on the whiteboard: A countdown timer.
The teacher leading the English lesson allowed her fourth graders “10 more seconds to log in” for tech problems. Then she asked the class to read a passage to determine the author’s motivations, set the timer to one minute, and called out at the 25- and 15-second marks. Students took 30 seconds to share answers with a partner before their daily 10-minute quiz.
The regimented structure is part of a strict new schooling model that nearly half of the 274 schools in the Houston Independent School District have been forced to adopt.
Educators are required to adhere closely to the curriculum. District officials visit schools several times a week to observe classes and ensure that teachers are following the new protocols. Strict behavior policies are enforced. Students must sometimes carry orange traffic cones to the bathroom, instead of the traditional hall passes, as part of an effort to prevent disorder.
These ideas are not all new, but the scale, pace and force of change in Houston stands among the starkest in modern American education.
Halfway through the second school year that the new model has been in use, officials argue that it is paying off. The number of schools in Houston that were rated D or F by the state dropped to 41 from 121. Math and reading scores on state standardized tests have risen. The overall gains were “largest single-year growth in the district’s history,” district officials said.
The Houston schools did not make overall gains in reading last year on a federal exam that is considered the gold standard — but it did avoid the national slide in achievement in the subject.
Still, the overhaul has also been deeply polarizing, infuriating many people in a district where more than 80 percent of the students are Black or Hispanic. A fierce movement of parents and teachers argue that the new model’s emphasis on test preparation damages students’ desire to learn. They have criticized the removal of novels from English lessons, and have complained that the closure of libraries is harmful to disadvantaged children.
Houston’s experience recalls previous efforts to overhaul struggling school systems in other cities: A hard-charging, high-octane leader arrives demanding change, and residents accuse the new leader of bulldozing beloved programs and shrugging off criticism.
But the situation in Houston also stands apart from other cities. The school system has been taken over by the state, which appointed all new leadership. As a result, the transformation of classroom life is overlaid with a political tug of war between the conservative Republicans who run the state and the Democratic city leaders fighting for local control.
In November, voters rejected a new bond to pay for improvements to Houston school facilities after Democrats, who usually support such measures, framed the vote as a referendum on the state-imposed school leadership.
At the center of the changes and the controversy is Mike Miles, an unyielding superintendent installed by the Republican administration of Gov. Greg Abbott.
Mr. Miles, a former Army Ranger, short-time Dallas superintendent and founder of a charter school network, has become a lightning rod in Houston. He described the school system he took over as antiquated and backward, and argued that “incremental, piecemeal reform” would fail to meet the moment.
“People talk about equity all the time, and then don’t do a damn thing about it,” Mr. Miles said. “One year doesn’t make a trend. But we’ve shown that the model already works, especially for kids who are behind.”
Onlookers and local residents say that for all his ambition, the superintendent has built up too much animosity to keep the momentum going — and that his model is doomed to flame out, as others have before.
“This is not an education,” said Liz Silva, whose third-grade son attends an arts magnet school in Houston under the new model. “My kid’s miserable.”
A ‘New Education System’
The model, now in use at 130 schools in Houston, uses a fixed structure for students in grades three through 12. It was first introduced at a small number of schools that were performing poorly; more schools were added later or joined voluntarily.
The curriculum was designed by the district. Math and English teachers spend about 45 minutes on instruction for each lesson, followed by a quiz.
Students find out immediately how they did on the quiz, and then are split into two groups. Those who score well leave the classroom for independent or paired work, under the eyes of uncertified learning coaches. The rest stay behind to go over the concepts they missed. The district calls it the “New Education System.”
During visits to two schools this winter, hallways and classrooms were almost always orderly; disruptive students are removed from the classroom. Posters with school test score data hung on the walls.
Mr. Miles regularly visits schools himself to observe teachers.
On one visit, Mr. Miles asked frequently for more student participation, telling a principal, “I would’ve liked to see a little bit more of that pair and share.” The superintendent even offered a note on the air temperature in classrooms: It was a little chilly, he said.
At Hilliard Elementary School, where the timed English lesson took place, more than 97 percent of students come from economically disadvantaged households. Under the new system, the state rating for the school jumped to A from F in a single year.
The principal, Erika Kimble, called the progress “mind-blowing,” but she worries about maintaining it. “As tough as last year was, it’s easier to get there and harder to stay there,” she said.
There have been stumbles. At another school, Thompson Elementary, fourth grade students pointed out that a district-made slide included an incorrect solution for a math problem.
Teachers and administrators appeared to still be adapting to the demands for efficiency. One of Mr. Miles’s top deputies, for example, noticed that a math teacher moved to giving students their daily quiz five minutes early, when she “could have done two more problems” in that time instead.
At Hilliard, when two fifth graders reached the same right math answer by different methods, their teacher reminded students that geometry problems can often be solved in several ways. Then she quickly moved on, in an effort to stay on schedule.
Amy Poerschke, a district official who supervises Ms. Kimble and watched the lesson, later suggested that the teacher might have paused to explore the idea. “That could have turned into a ‘Turn and talk to your neighbor: Why are they both right?’” Ms. Poerschke said.
Ms. Kimble replied that the new system’s time strictures sometimes made it tough to do that: “What does that wiggle room look like?”
‘At what cost?’
The New Education System is all the more contentious because of how the takeover came about.
In 2015, a local lawmaker, Harold V. Dutton Jr., spearheaded passage of a new law allowing the state to wrest control of school districts from local officials based on consistently poor performance at a single school. Mr. Dutton hoped the law would lead to changes at struggling Houston public schools like Wheatley High, where he was once a student. Its consistent F ratings from the state eventually led to the takeover.
Though a Republican-led state government now runs the schools in the state’s largest Democratic stronghold, Mr. Dutton — a Democrat — said he had no regrets.
The shake-up, he argued, was just what the district needed to force improvements in schools that had languished for too long. “The biggest thing that’s working, which people are complaining about, is just change itself,” he said in an interview.
The backlash was immediate. There were legal challenges to the takeover. Large protests assembled at the district’s headquarters. Yard signs popped up, and can still be seen around Houston, with the message “Go Away Miles.”
State officials removed dozens of school administrators and hundreds of educators; many more left voluntarily. The district is also in the process of adopting a pay-for-performance system for teachers and principals, a contentious practice to reward them financially for improving student achievement, among other things, rather than on the basis of seniority. Houston’s would be the largest public school system in the country to do so.
It is part of a playbook for Mr. Miles, who has brought similar salary systems — and his militarylike approach — to other districts. He oversaw a sustained rise in test scores in a small Colorado district, but his short stint in Dallas led to mixed results and a large jump in teacher turnover.
Education experts see strengths in elements of Mr. Miles’s Houston plan, like adding new aides to help manage classrooms. Some experts said that uncomfortable conversations about how to evaluate, compensate and retain effective teachers are essential for school improvement.
Toni Templeton, a senior research scientist at the University of Houston’s Education Research Center, said she was concerned that the long-term gains may be limited to a small cohort of lower-performing children. And she cautioned that state and district-level changes to testing practices could complicate the picture of progress.
“I expect to see some improvement,” Dr. Templeton said. “‘At what cost?’ is my question.”
Other state takeovers of school districts have rarely led to long-term gains in achievement.
One longtime high school teacher in Houston said she had never faced a more taxing school year, including during the pandemic. A middle-school English teacher said she was so convinced that the new practices would hurt children that she felt compelled to resign. Several parents in interviews lamented the lost time in the school day for building social and emotional skills.
“Children are saying that school is a prison,” said Michelle Williams, president of the Houston Education Association, a teacher’s union with about 200 members. “They hate it,” she said.
Local anger was evident on Election Day, when voters were asked to approve a much-needed $4.4 billion bond to improve the crumbling infrastructure at many local schools. The measure failed by 58 percent to 42 percent.
“Our schools need investment,” said Molly Cook, a Democratic state senator from Houston. “But if we can’t trust the leadership, then we simply cannot trust them with $4.4 billion.”
Some teachers and parents are concerned that the overhaul will drive families away from the public schools. The district’s enrollment has been on the decline since 2016, but schools in the New Education System saw larger drops last year than others did.
Seen from the outside, Houston is “one of the most fascinating stories in education,” said Jonathan Collins, an assistant professor at Teachers College who studied another state takeover, in Providence.
But if the new school leaders underestimate the importance of community buy-in, he added, Houston’s effort end up like others that ultimately fell apart
Even the Houston superintendent acknowledged that the success of the New Education System will not hinge on test results alone.
“It has to have people who want to keep it,” Mr. Miles said.
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