Dominic Anthony Walsh/Houston Public Media
Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles speaks during an event on Jan. 17, 2024.
Houston ISD recently announced plans to expand its controversial instructional model known as the New Education System, or NES, possibly to nine more schools. In a video statement, a spokesperson for the district said principals voluntarily expressed interest in bringing the education reforms to their schools.
“They see what’s happening at other NES campuses across the district, the gains,” Kasey Bailey, division chief for the west and central sectors of HISD, said in the video. “They know that the NES model comes with a strategic amount of resources that principals and teachers want to benefit from.”
Launched at the start of the Texas Education Agency’s takeover of the district in June 2023, state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles initially implemented the NES model at 85 campuses. It’s now present at more than 130 schools across the district, or roughly half.
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It was originally intended to reform historically low-performing schools, and district officials say it has helped improve standardized test scores. However, NES has also been met with criticism from parents, teachers and the general public because it is associated with high teacher turnover rates and more pronounced enrollment declines compared to the rest of the district.
The model requires teachers to use a district-approved curriculum that features daily timed quizzes – one in each core class: math, sciences, social studies and English-language arts. It places an emphasis on test-based instruction and results in longer school days than campuses not under the NES umbrella.
The district did not answer questions from Houston Public Media about which schools are being considered for an NES expansion or how much it might cost the district to implement the model in additional schools.
It’s not entirely clear how expensive it is to overhaul a school into the New Education System. One specific budget factor is a teacher salary raise. Teachers at NES campuses can make nearly $10,000 more than teachers at non-NES campuses.
The potential NES expansion to help lower-performing schools comes as the state-appointed board of managers recently approved contracts for “1882” partnerships late last month to outsource management of four top-performing high schools. And last fall, the district paired 64 C-and D-rated HISD schools – as determined by the Texas Education Agency’s annual accountability ratings – with businesses and nonprofits to help accomplish the district’s larger goal of all HISD schools earning A or B ratings by 2027.
They are moves that have been met with criticism from the public, who at several school board meetings have complained about the lack of accountability the board of managers has to the families in the district. The board members were appointed as part of the state intervention by the Texas Education Agency, and not elected by voters like trustees.
“One of the advantages of a board of managers is typically because they don’t have the same political influence, they can move much faster,” said Duncan Klussmann, an associate education professor at the University of Houston and a former Spring Branch ISD superintendent. “And I think they realize that and I think they’re trying to put in as much programming as possible as they move forward.
“They move fast,” he added. “They’ve made some aggressive decisions. They put in some reform programming. But if you don’t have the community support for those programs, and the community wanting those things to stay in place, the question is, how long will they stay in place?”
Colleen DeGuzman/Houston Public Media
Houston ISD’s Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center.
“Parents want more”
Elected trustee Placido Gomez said there has been little transparency from the district on the possible NES expansion. Under the state takeover, elected trustees have been sidelined, until at least 2027, for the board of managers. Elected trustees have no voting power and are not privy to inner workings or decisions the board of managers or district administration makes while actively under state control.
Gomez acknowledged the model has led to increased test scores but added, “parents want more.”
“Parents want their kids to test well, but that’s not the only thing they want in their kids’ education and HISD hasn’t paid attention to what those [other] things are,” he said.
He added that, to his understanding, there have been no changes or adjustments to the NES model since it was first implemented in 2023.
“There are parts of the NES system that are really good for kids,” he said, citing higher teacher salaries and a more favorable student-to-staff ratio. “But at the same time, I want to see the district respond more to criticisms of it and adjust based on both staff feedback as well as student and parent feedback.”
Gomez said he has concerns about the widespread expansion of the model, and because it’s so standardized, he said it limits teachers’ ability to be creative with their lesson plans.
“In a fourth-grade classroom with a very wide range of ability level, NES seems to do very well,” Gomez said. “But for a group of students who for the most part have the fundamentals down in reading, math and other academic subjects, I don’t think NES should be the north star for what a good education looks like.”
The system mirrors the model used at the charter school network Miles founded in Colorado, Third Future Schools. The Houston Chronicle reported this week that the network is partnering with seven school districts in Texas, not including HISD, to reform failing schools and avoid a state takeover.
In a report released earlier this year by the University of Houston Institute for Education Policy Research and Evaluation, researchers found that campuses following NES have experienced the largest enrollment losses in the district in recent years. Previous reporting by Houston Public Media found that a high teacher turnover rate has been a feature of the NES model since it was first implemented in Houston.
Klussmann sees NES as an innovative model that uses time, people and resources in different ways. He said the daily quizzes that regroup students based on performance, the approach to student discipline to remove disruptive students from the classroom to continue their work, and the centralized team creating lesson plans are all aspects of the model he’d be interested in as a school administrator.
Klussmann also noted the drawbacks to an instructional model with select goals.
“It’s a very narrow student experience,” Klussmann said. “It’s designed to produce the results that it’s producing – higher state test scores – and because of that and the design of it, it kind of has a narrow student experience. And I think that’s something that we have to keep our eye on.”
It didn’t surprise him that principals were interested in bringing the model to their schools.
“At the end of the day, we’re in Texas and Texas is a high-stakes test results type of environment,” Klussmann said. “Principals have to produce and teachers have to produce and if they see that those test results are going up in the NES schools, they’re going to be influenced to either become an NES school or to use some of those techniques to make sure that they get their test scores up also.”
“These schools are ran like prisons”
Brad Wray is a special teacher at McReynolds Middle School and worries the tightly packed NES schedule deprives students of free moments for social interactions.
“During transition our kids are in straight, silent lines,” Wray said. “They walk straight from one class, escorted by their teachers, straight to the next class. We’re depriving our students of opportunities to build independence and develop accountability and navigate social interactions.”
One of the biggest concerns from Wray about the NES model is the daily timed quizzes required in each core class. After 45 minutes of instruction, students are tasked with answering questions in a quick quiz that then determines how they move forward in the lesson.
“It’s too much testing,” Wray said. “I’ve seen kids crying. I’ve seen kids give up and just put their head down. I’ve seen kids crash out and throw things or other behavior you don’t want to see in the classroom.”
Gomez and Wray both had questions about how the district would fund an expansion of NES, particularly amid enrollment declines that has resulted in years of steady funding losses from the state.
In February, more than a year after Houston voters rejected a $4.4 billion bond proposal by the district, the HISD board voted to close 12 schools, citing the enrollment losses and aging facilities.
“It just blows my mind that they’re considering to expand this model,” Wray said. “It’s no secret that NES campuses are the campuses hit the hardest with enrollment decline, because these schools are ran like prisons.”