Under Miles, the district is implementing a New Education System (NES) reform program, where teachers are directed to teach based on provided curriculum and scripted lessons with their pay tied to standardized test score performances, and proficiency screenings to retain their jobs at NES schools.
In February, an education professor at the University of Houston suspended teaching a course in protest of the rigid lesson requirements in HISD that he said made it impossible for his students to complete their assignments.
By next school year, 130 schools in Houston will be under the NES program.
[…]
From August through early January, 633 teachers resigned from HISD, according to information obtained by Houston Public Media through a public records request. During the same time period in the 2022-23 school year, 331 teachers quit. The year before, only 309 resigned.
An elementary school teacher at a non-NES school in Houston who requested to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation criticized the teacher evaluations that are being implemented by the district.
“They use this made-up evaluation system to make it look like these teachers aren’t good,” they said. “It makes no sense that money is being spent on coming after certain teachers and using attorneys for the district to make sure teachers lose in whatever way possible.”
Change is hard… But has the smell of ulterior motives. Just like a big business that might want to clean out the ranks a little .. taking away some previous nice things or changing some policy like requiring office days 3 days a week instead of 2…
Sure it’s likely the best talent will leave but since when have school districts had incentives to keep the best teachers? They brute force their referendums through eventually regardless of how the product is mistreated.
I must be missing something here. Why would they object to teaching a scripted curriculum with clear intent to improve student standardized test score performance? If imparting knowledge to littles isn’t your purpose as a teacher then you’re just a grossly overpaid baby-sitter. I should think that clear, objective performance metrics would be a feature rather than a flaw.
We all have to meet performance standards of one kind or another. I understand that not everyone desires to be among the best at whatever they do for their money, but why on earth would you object to having to meet basic minimum standards?
it’s likely the best talent will leave
Really?
Houston’s schools were among the worst performers in the country, which is why the State took over and implemented this program. The “teachers” object because the curriculum does not allow them to hammer DEI into the math class, or to groom the little darlings any more under the guise of ‘sex ed’, nor to insert the Howard Zinn “history” into the mix.
Whatever Houston loses is not “the best.” They are insurrectionists.
I would have loved it if a teacher would have thrown “A People’s History of the United States” into a curriculum. I didn’t read it until after college. Great book.
And this isn’t the teacher’s fault in the slightest. And no changing of the curriculum is going to significantly improve the test scores. This comes down to the parents. If the parents are not involved and pushing their kids to perform at school, then it doesn’t matter what the teacher does.
Teachers aren’t leaving because they can’t teach DEI or CRT or any other right-wing boogeyman. They are leaving because they know the standard curriculum won’t work either. And if they don’t have the freedom to try other ways to engage students, it is worthless. So if they are tying your evaluation and raises to any sort of testing, I would bail as well in that environment.
JV, I would say that the liberal boogeyman is the parents. Despite taking all power from the parents for in school decisions, you and liberals thrust all responsibility on parents for the 0-4 hours of homework that teachers might send home with students. Of course for me, ‘boogeyman’ is a term for political enemies that each party makes up about the other side so it does not have the same connotation that you use it in. I don’t really blame either parents or teachers for that. I think there are more conservatives who see behind the curtain, but I will also allow that the liberals have a heavier curtain and have been taught that their position is more virtuous so they like the mud that they wallow in more.
I will also say that the complete banning of any discipline in schools is a much greater problem than the parents. My parents worked from pretty much 6:30am to 6:30pm 5 days a week. I finished my homework at school 90% of the time with no parent pushing. It was just expected. Now between neutered or disinterested teachers and weenie or disinterested parents there is no accountability for kids anymore. Teachers and parents have been programmed to blame each other along political lines and the kids are left to go forward, backward, left or right with no or continually conflicting guidelines, just another group of political losers. Both parties of Government want the citizenry at war with each other on as many topics as possible so that their actions are ignored and on this one kids pay for it on every level.
I do not believe that teachers of students with a 60% or higher fail rate can really believe in the system they are in right now, but they do believe that no good answer could come from the right. Too bad, a little thought from outside the academia bubble would probably help a lot right now. Just another example of the ‘Party with the open minds’ closemindedness. And closemindedness is a big feature in brainwashing (brain-numbing if you prefer), no thinking allowed.
I am open to a lot of suggestions for schools and districts that are not meeting the minimum requirements. Teachers don’t trust the right because for 20+ years they have been trying to remove funding from public education and moving it to private schools, and more recently calling them groomers (sound familiar?). I think that cutting down on administration salaries would be a good thing. But other than that, I have not heard a single suggestion from the right now how they can improve PUBLIC schools.
I think you are wrong in saying that parents have been taken out of the education decisions. They were never really IN it, but now they think that they know how (and what) to teach better than teachers. There is a lack of discipline of students in schools. But honestly, what do you expect teachers to do. It isn’t their job to discipline students for behavior and it never has been. It is their job to TEACH. If a student is acting out, remove them and send them home. Parents have to be handling that 100%.
Homework is seemingly decreasing from what I can tell these days. Not only do parents NOT want to be responsible, but teachers probably don’t want to have to grade them. Most of the parents I talk to around my kid’s age seem to agree that their kids have less homework than when we were younger. Anecdotal, but a varied sample between public, private, and parochial schools that family friend’s send their kids to in the Milwaukee area.
Unfortunately, the worst hit schools are usually in the poorest area. It becomes a vicious cycle for multiple reasons. Uneducated parents not seeing the value in education. Or maybe they work 2nd shift and are not around as much. Or external influences that see crime as a quicker way to make a living.
I have not heard a single suggestion from the right now how they can improve PUBLIC schools.
In Milwaukee, specifically, here’s the best way to improve PUBLIC schools: CLOSE THEM.
>I have not heard a single suggestion from the right now how they can improve PUBLIC schools.
I have not heard a single suggestion “that isn’t against my bias” from the right now how they can improve PUBLIC schools.
Fixed that statement for you jv. Proof? Look at what you call “right-wing boogymen”… CRT and DEI. Reversing course on those IS an improvement, you’re just intolerant of that because you “know better” than other kids parents somehow.
More proof? How about the left-wing Boogeymen.. teaching children that Jesus Loves Them. Family Values is another one.
You’ve never heard a single suggestion – you’re so ful of left fed hate you ironically don’t see how evident it is in what you type here. But go ahead and keep pointing out what you perceive is others wrongs around here, you doofus.
>I have not heard a single suggestion from the right now how they can improve PUBLIC schools
Remember Roberta Darling? State senator? White woman from the sticks who offered help for decades? All she received for her effort was abuse. The mission of Milwaukee Public Schools ceased being about education long ago. They cycle through superintendents that they ignore until they resign in utter frustration. What they want is to be better compensated for perpetuating their dysfunction. And they continue to get away with it because voters in Milwaukee demand nothing more.
And they continue to get away with it because voters in Milwaukee demand nothing more.
Yah, AND because Roberta Darling spent extra humpty-millions on them, too. She might have been a nice woman, but she did NOT get the picture.
>Teachers don’t trust the right because for 20+ years they have been trying to remove funding from public education and moving it to private schools…
Could that possibly be the best thing? Is any American public school system in a liberal majority area doing a good enough job that they should continue being funded at the level they are funded? (the question is largely a generalization in that yes, if you dig deep enough or go small enough or have the right local donors I am sure we could find one or even a dozen such successful liberal majority area schools, my question is for the 95%, not the 5%) Additional money has not had any positive effects in the last 20-30 years, yet money and new biased curricula are the only solutions offered by the left, the controllers of public education. School choice has seemed to have positive effects, another movement blocked by the left at every turn. And most unfortunately, it doesn’t matter what teachers think either. They could all vote for any positive change from the right or left, but if the money doesn’t flow as well through Government and school administration hands, and/or it does not raise the left believing chumps who will keep them in power, it will not be accepted.
>I think you are wrong in saying that parents have been taken out of the education decisions. They were never really IN it, but now they think that they know how (and what) to teach better than teachers.
Maybe that is partly the case, but I think you have the cause and effect backwards there. Parents know what truly sucks with a little education and so they feel it is now necessary to give some input when the schools go off the rails with all of the goofy math trying to be taught in addition to CRT or DEI, or a dozen other acronyms, the openly encouraged LGBTQ clubs, but outlawed religious clubs. Black history month covers 11.1% of the school year for 12.5% of the entire population. No Latino history month for 18% of the population and 11.1% is spent on women in history month for over 50% of the population. Everything is skewed to promote a political agenda instead of teaching kids reading, writing, world changing history or arithmetic, but they learn the complete history of peanuts.
Parents now care about curriculum because it is only serving (badly) roughly half the population and can be downright offensive in its biases to the other half.
>It isn’t their job to discipline students for behavior and it never has been.
Well, not for the last 30 years, but never? Beep! Wrong, thanks for playing. Send them home? Please do, but PUBLIC schools rarely do that and that is because they would lose control and funding for that child. And parents would need to be informed about necessary discipline and can’t kick them out of schools in any case, schools have that disciplinary power (which you just said they don’t have), but that is only part of that story and I know we’ll badly disagree on it so I won’t bother going any further.
>Homework is seemingly decreasing from what I can tell these days. Not only do parents NOT want to be responsible, but teachers probably don’t want to have to grade them.
Wait, you just said it is their job to TEACH, but hopefully you are agreeing that they don’t, or at least that they do it so poorly that even low minimums are not met.
>Unfortunately, the worst hit schools are usually in the poorest area. It becomes a vicious cycle for multiple reasons.
I sort of agree. And those poorest areas you refer to with the poorest performances are all inner city neighborhoods controlled by the same liberal public education schemers and Democratic politicians who just keep asking for more money while putting more bias and less education into their curricula.
Public education cannot succeed while it is a badly politically biased institution. This means that as long as only liberals and Democrats control it, it cannot possibly succeed unless we move to an official single party system of Government. Like it or hate it, without input from the hated right, you will not get a quality public school system by your little lefty selves and the right will be obligated to find other avenues of education for their families. You may not have noticed, but the right suggestions have continually been simply pointed at just getting their children out of a liberally biased education. Their suggestions are not pointed at those poorest areas because they are liberal hotbeds. They are willing to bring everyone else along, but getting their kids a decent education is their #1 priority. The poorest areas have liberal city Governments, liberal teaching institutions and scads of money being thrown at them. If libs can’t un-fuck their own constituent’s educations, why is it incumbent on the right to do it? They are already providing half the money to the ‘ caring experts’. All they are really looking for is for their children’s education to NOT follow the liberal hotbeds.
If libs can’t un-fuck their own constituent’s educations, why is it incumbent on the right to do it?
^ THIS ^
Oops, another discussion that jv has to un-fuck himself from. Poor jv.