The Micromanagement of Teachers in HISD Is Like Nothing I've Ever Seen
In this video, Dr. Justin Baeder discusses the extreme level of teacher micromanagement under Houston ISD's current leadership.
Key Takeaways
- Unprecedented micromanagement - HISD's approach goes far beyond normal accountability into territory that treats teachers as unskilled workers
- This drives teachers away - Extreme micromanagement accelerates teacher turnover at a time when the district can least afford it
- Trust produces better results - Research consistently shows that teacher autonomy within clear expectations produces better outcomes than rigid control
Transcript
What on earth is going on with the micromanagement in Houston Independent School District?
I saw this post making the rounds.
Maybe you've seen this from an AP teacher in HISD.
Just so many requirements, so many new rules, and most notably to me, a new spot observation form.
You can go back and pause the video if you want to read all of that.
But teachers are being supervised and micromanaged in ways that I think are really unprecedented.
And I wanted to zoom in on this spot observation form.
Look at this.
This is a 10 point scale.
I'm assuming that this is to be used for a quick observation, not even a full period.
But if I zoom in even more, take a look at some of these expectations that teachers are scored on.
Right toward the middle here, students are required to read, write, discuss, and think the entire lesson.
And down here, MRS is used every four minutes throughout the entire lesson.
MRS is multiple response strategies.
And another acronym you'll see on this form is DOL, demonstration of learning.
and that, of course, needs to be aligned to the curriculum map and scored and completed independently by students.
What is going on here?
The DOL, as best I can tell, started out as an objective for the lesson.
You should have a learning target, success criteria, pretty normal things, having an objective for the lesson.
But what I've seen so far seems to indicate that the DOL is basically a worksheet packet.
That every period, every subject, students have to do a worksheet that is called their DOL.
They have to answer these questions.
You can find some examples on Twitter where students are being asked to fill out these packets every single period.
And teachers are saying it's taking a huge amount of paper and a huge amount of time just to copy these.
And then we have to score them all.
And then we have to basically teach with these things.
And there's even a timer.
A digital timer has to be used and...
keep the lesson on pace with that digital timer.
The level of micromanagement here is just astounding to me.
I want to give you a heads up about what we can expect to happen when a district micromanages like this.
People put up with micromanagement until they don't.
The people who are sticking around are going to put up with this until they don't.
A lot of people have already left HISD, make no mistake about that.
It's very clear that resignations are a big issue and are going to continue to be a big issue what do we do we really think will happen if we continue to micromanage people this way if we score them based on a brief visit by somebody who may not even work in their school if people just come in and observe you teaching and score you based on a couple of minutes in your classroom would you work under those conditions i think most of us would say no i mean maybe i'll put up with a little bit of this and we'll just kind of see if the The temperature cools off a little bit.
But if this is the plan for improving Houston Independent School District, this is the stupidest plan I have ever seen.
Because if you want to improve a district, if you want to improve a school, if you want to improve a classroom, you do it by investing in people and by believing in people and trusting people to be professionals.
And micromanagement is the opposite of that.
This nonsense of scoring people and making all these rules and telling them what to do every moment of every day and making them keep a timer on the screen like this micromanagement is the opposite of what you do to trust and empower professionals so if you are in hisd please feel free to send me a private message i've got my messages turned on here on tick tock i'd love to hear from you i'll keep you anonymous let me know what's actually happening on the ground in houston but if any other districts are trying to learn from what's going on in Houston, please do the opposite of what Houston is doing here with this level of micromanagement of their teachers, because it is not going to go well.
It is just going to make people leave.
And even if they have to take a pay cut, they will do it.
Let me know what you think.