HISD Under Mike Miles Is Assessing Teachers and Students to Death

what's going on and what's going wrong in HISD.

You may have heard that the state of Texas took over Houston Independent School District, the largest in the state, and appointed Superintendent Mike Miles, who has a long reputation for leading by fear and put a lot of unpopular things in place in Dallas when he was superintendent there.

And he's repeating a lot of those same mistakes in Houston.

And if I could summarize a couple of them under the heading of just assessing people to death, I think that summarizes a lot of what I'm hearing from teachers.

And dozens of teachers have messaged me sharing what's going on in their schools.

I want to share a little bit of what they have shared with me confidentially.

Now, first of all, administrators are expected to spend 80% of their time in classrooms and do between 20 and 30 spot observations per week, which is just an incredibly excessive amount of time in classrooms and an excessive number of observations to do and i'm a big fan as far as i know i'm the number one fan of getting getting administrators into classrooms i'm the author of now we're talking 21 days to high performance instructional leadership and i'm the sponsor of national walkthrough day this tuesday september 5th so i believe absolutely in getting administrators into classrooms But this is not how you do it.

This is not what needs to be done.

It's just too in excess and it's too evaluative, too punitive.

And teachers are reporting that they are getting visits not just once a week or even once per day, but several spot observations per day.

And one person even said they got four in one period, which is just ridiculous.

I mean, this is just completely ridiculous.

out of control to be assessing teachers this frequently and this harshly.

And a lot of the stuff on the form is not really even observable in a quick walkthrough.

And just the pacing is ridiculous.

The intensity of the assessment is ridiculous.

And that's not just true for administrators and teachers.

It's also true for students.

You may have seen the acronym DOL, demonstration of learning.

And these are basically quizzes that students are given every single day.

And it takes this idea that's a good thing about formative assessment, right?

I think we would all agree formative assessment is a good thing.

It's great to check for understanding and know how your students are doing and be able to make adjustments for your next lesson.

But take a look at this example that one teacher shared on Twitter.

This is one that you could probably find yourself because it's public.

This is not just a check of understanding.

This is a full-on test prep coursework.

quiz, the kind of thing that you would do for a unit test.

And teachers are being required to give these every single day after maybe 30 to 35 minutes of instruction.

And students are graded on these.

And then there's another one for tomorrow.

So this kind of nonstop intensive assessment really seems out of control to me.

And even within a lesson, Teachers are being told that they have to check for understanding every four minutes with something called MRS, multiple response strategies.

And the four minutes is not just a general guideline like, hey, try to check for students' understanding as you go along.

No, it is a very specific requirement that principals are enforcing with stopwatches.

People are literally going around with clipboards and stopwatches and making sure that teachers use these MRS strategies every four minutes to monitor student understanding.

And Again, sounds like a good thing, but when you take it to such an extreme, it just gets ridiculous.

Because think about the instructional activities that you do in your classroom.

Some of them need to last more than four minutes.

Some activities take more than four minutes.

And if you're constantly interrupting your own instruction with assessment, the assessment no longer helps.

It no longer makes things better.

It starts to get in the way.

And I think whether we're talking about the DOLs, the quizzes, or whether we're talking about the spot assessments, the observation forms that administrators are filling out, when you assess people to death like this, you stop making things better and you start making things worse.

And people know that it is making things worse and they're forced to put up with this excess of assessment in the name of improvement.

But what I really think it is, is improvement theater.

We're doing all of this for show to look good, to generate data that can make us look good or that can make teachers and principals look bad so that their firing can be justified.

So I'm really not on board with what's going on in Houston.

If you are in HISD and would like to share with me what your perspective is, please feel free to message me.

I've got my messages open and I've heard from dozens of people, but I'm very concerned about what's going on under Mike Miles' leadership And I think we really need to keep in mind that any good thing taken to an extreme can become a bad thing.

Let me know what you think.