That's how Arturo Monsiváis described life this year for his fifth-grade son, who attends Houston ISD's Raul Martinez Elementary School. Teachers raced through rapid-fire lessons. Students plugged away at daily quizzes. Administrators banned children from chatting in the hallways.
Still, district leaders, citing private conversations with researchers and superintendents, said education leaders throughout the U.S. are following the HISD efforts to see whether they may be worth replicating. Adding to the intrigue: Texas lawmakers have looked in recent years to policies used by HISD's new superintendent, former Dallas Independent School District chief Mike Miles, as inspiration for statewide legislation.
But in 2019, HISD allowed one campus, Wheatley High School in Greater Fifth Ward, to receive a seventh straight failing grade from the state. Wheatley's scores triggered a Texas law - authored in 2015 by a Houston-area Democrat fed up with years of poor outcomes at some HISD schools - that gave Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath the right to replace the district's school board.
The group argued that instilling a "no-excuses" attitude toward student achievement and partially tying teacher pay to test score growth could dramatically improve American education. Miles implemented a similar playbook during his three-year stint leading Dallas ISD, an approach that helped improve student test scores but contributed to a near-doubling of the district's teacher turnover rate.
"I think you can say pretty clearly that has been working well," Miles said when the scores came out.But other indicators could spell trouble for Miles' administration in year two and beyond. They also passed a law that allowed long-struggling campuses to skirt closure by replicating a turnaround plan Miles implemented in Dallas. Participating schools have to provide high levels of feedback on instruction, extend school hours and offer incentives for top-rated teachers and principals.his Houston work is "not a test case" for statewide policy. More recently, however, he alluded to the possibility of his model being implemented more widely.
Miles' policies, coupled with his bulldozer style of leadership, have prompted family protests and student walkouts throughout his first year. Typically, more than 100 community membersduring school board meetings. In one particularly heated exchange from June, a district administrator repeatedly yelled "scoreboard" at a group of jeering audience members while pointing to a screen displaying student test scores.
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