Mike Miles, superintendent of Houston Independent School District, is shown during a tour of classrooms at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in Houston, Wednesday, May 14, 2025.
Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle
Since the state takeover of Houston ISD in June 2023, the district’s structure and classroom instruction have shifted dramatically.
New academic research is shedding light on the rationale behind those changes — and the language used by state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles to describe them.
In a Thursday presentation at Rice University, doctoral candidates from Pennsylvania State University, Rice and the University of Texas at Austin presented their ongoing research on the takeover based on more than 100 interviews. They explored the use of classrooms and lesson time, the reasoning supporting the takeover and its new policies, and educators’ deteriorating well-being.
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“Superintendent Miles presumes that the teacher turnover is necessary to curate a qualified workforce, a sentiment that’s been echoed in other takeover actors, relying on neoliberal logic of maximizing human capital,” said Rice’s Jasmin Lee.
A school district modeled after the military
Daniel Dawer at UT-Austin examined Miles’ use of military imagery and terminology to reorganize Texas’ largest school district. He found that the “logic of occupation” was implemented in HISD.
Dawer explained that the goal of a military occupation is not to just run a territory, “but transform that territory’s cultural institutions and realign them so that they match up with the values and preferences of the occupying power.”
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Miles, a former Army Ranger officer, was “the key importer of the logic of occupation” into HISD, Dawer said.
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Dawer noted that Miles told the Houston Chronicle editorial board in 2023 that he borrowed organizational systems from the State Department and the military. Miles later reorganized the district into what he called a “unit concept,” dividing much of the central office into geographically defined divisions, each with an area chief. Miles also established a chain of command, which linked the superintendent to campus principals.
HISD principals who attended an early takeover meeting told Dawer that Miles invoked successful militaries when explaining how he would reorganize the district.
Dawer also cited a presentation Miles gave in September 2023, which was full of military imagery, metaphors and concepts. It referenced the commander’s intent, which requires subordinates in the field to align themselves with an operation’s purpose as determined by a commanding officer.
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However, as one principal told Dawer, “the commander’s intent” ideology is at odds with school leadership principles. Another school leader said principals had to wait for orders to trickle down instead of acting with the autonomy they were used to.
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Meeting a ‘fixed’ future
Pennsylvania State University’s Corey Brautigam found that under the takeover, teachers have lost their “discretionary spaces” — moments where a teacher can further students’ learning, care for their class or dive into a spontaneous chat that piques their curiosity.
In HISD, teachers used to have more control of their instruction time and classroom setup, like whether to close a door or turn off fluorescent lights.
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To understand why teachers lost this autonomy, Brautigam examined what he described as an “algorithmic logic.”
Citing examples of Miles’ presentations of his vision for HISD, Brautigam observed how the superintendent used futuristic imagery, called the district’s plan “Destination 2035,” and depicted the future “radically different from the past or the present.”
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Brautigam emphasized that Miles depicts the future as “fixed” and “imminent.”
“It’s already set,” Brautigam said. “2035 is determined, which positions the community, teachers, students as unable to act on the future. They are no longer dreamers, imaginers, visionaries. Instead, the best they can do is prepare for this future that is inevitably coming.”
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Miles’ New Education System emphasizes efficiency, optimizes time on slides and creates pressure to keep lessons moving, Brautigam said.
“And it seems silly, but I think this is an important assertion, that the now-ness of now matters. That children, as children, matter. That the light in the classroom is important,” he said. “Not children as future adults. Not children as future workers. Not children as future producers of test scores.”
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Declining educator well-being
Lee at Rice talked with educators about how the takeover has affected their well-being. Lee said that includes their personal health, years of experience, emotional intelligence, a teacher’s effectiveness, their connection to other educators and organizational culture.
Lee often brought tissues to interviews, which lasted two hours on average. One teacher, motioning to those tissues, told Lee that HISD teachers are “suffering in silence.”
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A University of Houston report published in January showed that despite the number of HISD teachers increasing, the number of teachers retained at the same campus has declined over time. The frequency and percentage of teachers leaving HISD for other districts or public education entirely increased.
Lee found that the district’s new absence policy created health challenges. One teacher believed that educators who used half their paid-time off by February 2024 would be fired. So she missed days at school due to doctor’s appointments leading up to a cancer diagnosis in December 2023. That teacher’s principal interpreted the district’s strict absence policy to refer to full days and avoided writing up the teacher.Â
Another teacher said the takeover intensified his workload so much that he would wake up in the night in a cold sweat, had aches and pains, and even threw up blood. He then quit.
“I argue that the health and well-being of the educator workforce is an important consideration in and of itself, and one that should be taken seriously by policymakers and practitioners making decisions that will affect their employees,” Lee said.
Clarification  (April 17, 6 p.m.): This story has been updated to indicate a teacher was missing days at school for doctor’s appointments, not missing doctor’s appointments.