The Last Reformer: Houston Schools Chief Mike Miles on the Case for Going Bold

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Superintendent Mike Miles wants you to hear the good news from Houston.

The chief of America’s eighth-largest school district was appointed in 2023 by Texas’s education commissioner, who controversially spearheaded a state takeover in response to poor academic performance and allegations of misconduct by local board members. The move, preceded by years of lawsuits, drew immediate protests by local officials.

Their outcry was, perhaps, foreseeable. Full-on takeovers are rare, usually only attempted in chronically struggling districts steeped in managerial problems. Houston Independent School District fit the bill in some respects, with large numbers of schools earning failing grades from the Texas Education Agency, but parents and educators still deplored the loss of autonomy and the appointment of an outsider.

Two years later, the outcry hasn’t quieted completely. Increasingly, however, local and state leaders are pointing to a competing narrative of revamped instructional strategies, swiftly rising student achievement and newfound plaudits from state authorities. According to the release of student evaluation data in June, Houston pupils are catching up with — and, in some subjects, outperforming — their peers across Texas after years of lagging far behind. This year’s scores largely improved upon last year’s, which themselves represented a leap forward from the pre-takeover status quo.

The most energetic evangelist for that progress is Miles, a former Army officer and diplomat turned educator. His trek to Texas from his home state of Colorado has not always been smooth, with a three-year stint as Dallas superintendent ending in 2015 after Miles lost the backing of the local board. Both in that city and at a previous stop in Colorado Springs, he angered some veteran educators by advocating for a switch to a pay-for-performance system that many saw as unfair.

He has pursued a similar course in Houston, along with a package of pedagogical and organizational reforms he dubs the New Education System: a heavy emphasis on coaching and blending curriculum and instruction, along with longer school hours. Since its implementation, the majority of Houston schools run under the NES model have seen major improvements to their state ratings. Critics have called the model top-down and restrictive, but Miles insists it’s about giving teachers the tools they need to succeed in schools enrolling historically underserved minority and low-income students.

In a conversation with The 74’s Kevin Mahnken, Miles argued that wholesale, wide-ranging reforms are the only way to trigger lasting improvement for students. 

“We are providing a proof point that it can be done, and that Black and brown kids challenged by poverty and language barriers can rise to high expectations. Don’t sell them short. Don’t say it’ll take eight years or five years to do it.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Superintendent, how do you interpret these results? Houston clearly saw big test-score gains across a very short span of time.

I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve led other districts and been a consultant in other districts, and I talk to colleagues all the time. These results are unheard of. 

In 2023, 93 schools in the district out of 273 earned an A or B grade. One year later, we were up to 170. These are accountability scores from the state, and the 2024 scores for all the districts in Texas will be released soon. You’re going to see their A’s and B’s stay flat while their D’s and F’s go up. Meanwhile, Houston went from having 121 D- and F-rated schools to 41. It’s not easy to take an F school and turn it around, but we did it in spades in just one year.

Just looking at the schools in the New Education System program: After one year, we went from 53 F-rated schools to nine, and from 55 D-rated schools to 23. When we started, only 11 earned A’s or B’s, and now 87 do. We’re talking about mostly underserved populations of kids. 

Think about what a difference that makes for their academic career and beyond. I challenge you to find an urban district that has seen these kinds of outcomes after just two years.

What does it mean for a school to have a D or F grade? What should parents know about those schools?

If you attend one of those schools, the likelihood of gaining proficiency — being able to read or do math at grade level — is low. Your whole career, you will be haunted by that lack of proficiency because we, your educators, didn’t bring you to grade level. 

“We’re now in a period when there’s hardly any discussion about bold reform. So to answer the question about whether I’m a throwback, the answer is partly yes. But I’ve learned over time.”

Down the road, here’s what these scores really mean: For Black and brown kids in this country, especially those who live in poverty, the system has not lived up to the promise America made to them. We’ve failed, in that sense. Across the country, the achievement gap has not closed in 20 years, and the opportunity gap has not closed. Black and brown poor kids are still mostly in failing schools. It’s like being on two tracks: Kids in well-resourced neighborhoods are on a track, and they can be expected to run one lap in one year’s time, but Black and brown and poor kids are starting 50 yards behind. 

We’ve got a changing world and workplace, and if you can’t read or do math at grade level, your opportunities are going to be proscribed. So when I see data like this, and you ask me what a D or F school is like compared to an A or B? We’re giving these kids, finally, a chance. 

We need to go bold and go big. There was a report earlier this year looking at how many high school graduates in the Houston area earned a livable wage. For the kids who graduated in 2017, the answer was 17%. Seventeen percent. 

What’s the secret, if one exists, to turning that around?

I believe there’s a recognition among superintendents that piecemeal, incremental reform has not worked. One of the things we’ve done too often over the last 30 years is to focus on doing maybe one big, bold thing instead of several. Invariably — because it’s an interconnected system where a lot of issues impact other issues — people have to step back from that one big reform. 

To take one example, if you want to change the way we compensate people, you have to ask whether compensation is going to be tied to an evaluation. And just asking that question suddenly becomes very controversial. Are you going to just give people money? Does the system have the resources for that? Should you get any outcomes from that?

Or say you want high-quality instructional materials. Will teachers use them? Will there be effective training? Do people actually understand the close integration of curriculum and instruction? Our profession is replete with stories of textbooks in boxes, still wrapped, in a teacher’s closet. So that one thing you want to do, which is both very expensive and a good thing, is tied to so many other things that the reform fails.

This brings us to something that’s become a mantra for you: “wholesale systemic transformation.” You invoke it often enough that your subordinates must have nightmares about it. Lots of people say that sort of thing when they take over a school district, but what do you mean by it?

It’s far-reaching, comprehensive reforms across the whole system, all at the same time. That will scare people unless they know what it means. Your image of someone waking up screaming about it at 3:00 a.m. is right for most people, but for us, it’s very clear what it entails. 

“The challenge is that the more change you have, the more pushback there is, and the more status-quo bias gets in the way. You start impacting a lot of vested interests. So you have to have a team that can move quickly.”

So, take instruction. When we talk about transforming instruction, that means a change in curriculum. It means a change in lesson planning. It means a new instructional model. It means a change in how teachers are monitored and coached, including on-the-job coaching. It means that principals have to be instructional leaders, which means that the people who coach principals have to be instructional leaders. It means staffing in a way that gets the best instruction possible — for instance, in the 130 NES schools, there are no substitute teachers.

In other words, it means getting everyone on the same page about what high-quality instruction looks like, and then teaching and coaching the heck out of it. You monitor that, tie it to evaluations, and tie the evaluations to compensation. You’re changing the culture so that people focus on continuous improvement, high expectations, and accountability. And that’s just the start of it.

It sounds like this approach is drawn right from the education reform playbook, which is now mostly ignored. Are you a throwback to that era?

The reform era was 12–18 years ago. At that time, you had people like John Deasy and Dwight Jones and Chris Barbic and Cami Anderson and Michelle Rhee — there were reformers in big districts, and the movement had a lot of fans at that time. I was doing my thing in Harrison and Dallas.

We had a lot of support nationally from the philanthropic community, but there were also political discussions about reform during the debates about Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind. People were more willing to at least try new things. The problem was that there was such pushback and status quo bias, the reformers soon found themselves in the minority. And because they couldn’t change things quickly, their tenure didn’t last the time it would take to really make reforms. 

We’re now in a period when there’s hardly any discussion about bold reform. So to answer the question about whether I’m a throwback, the answer is partly yes. But I’ve learned over time, and one of the things I’ve learned is that you can’t do just one thing at a time; you have to do all these things at the same time. 

The challenge is that the more change you have, the more pushback there is, and the more status-quo bias gets in the way. You start impacting a lot of vested interests. So you have to have a team that can move quickly, and you have to generate proof that the change you’re bringing will actually work. If we’d only had modestly positive results in our first year, I’m not sure it would have been enough to satisfy the entrenched interests. But because we got such huge results, it put wind in our sails and took some out of the sails of the opposition.

So how does this “wholesale, systemic” style work in the context of a particular policy?

I’ll give you an example. Pay-for-performance had some success with Michelle Rhee in Washington, Tom Boasberg in Denver, me in Dallas, and in a couple of other places. It wasn’t done well in most places that tried it — people confused it with incentive pay — and because of that, there was no proof point for the policy.

But in March of 2023, the National Bureau of Economic Research released a paper showing that the pay-for-performance system in Dallas, which is the largest in the nation, actually works well in driving achievement growth. D.C. continues to get kudos for its system, and in Houston, we’re now establishing a system that’s even larger than Dallas. So if it’s done right and done systemically, it can work. 

“Most people recognize that we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done because times are desperate.”

We also have a different instructional model that hasn’t been seen anywhere else. It’s a combination of direct instruction and differentiated instruction, and it serves kids who struggle really well. That’s why our struggling students are growing the fastest in HISD. 

Without getting too technical, this notion of integrating curriculum and instruction is so advanced now that we can take new or inexperienced teachers and get them up to speed right away. We are providing PowerPoints, lesson objectives, demonstrations of learning, mini-quizzes, test material, differentiated assignments; we actually copy those materials for the teacher. If you’re a new teacher, you can still teach effectively because we’re giving you so much support and showing you the key steps. 

That is indeed a rare amount of influence for district leadership to exercise over classroom teaching. The interim results are impressive, but what do you say to teachers who complain about their lessons being scripted and worry that you’re encroaching in some way on their autonomy or professional mastery?

First of all, the lessons aren’t scripted. “You say this, the kids do this, you do that” — it’s not like that. You still have to be an effective teacher because, as we say all the time, curriculum does not teach. 

Just today I was training some of our executive directors, who each have four or five principals under their supervision. We were going over what we call the Great Eight and the Next Eight, which are strategies to improve instruction. Teachers, principals, and executive directors are all taught how to scaffold and when to scaffold. We teach them multiple engagement strategies, but teachers have to know when to use them and when not to use them. There’s a proper way to do a “whip around,” for example, and it’s not right for some situations.

Today we talked about how teachers can take a question or answer from one kid, and instead of teaching that one student, they can expand the discussion to the whole class. That’s not scripted, in that there will be a time and a place to use that technique. 

So do your instructors actually like teaching this way?

Teachers like this, despite what you hear from a handful. Teachers in the 130 NES schools like that they get the curriculum and the resources. They like that they can leave 15 minutes after the last bell and be done. They like the PowerPoints they get, and they can always tweak them. 

The proof is in the pudding. In most of the non-NES schools, they are using our HISD curriculum even though they don’t have to. Teachers ask if they can use it, and the answer is yes: We created it, and it’s free for them to use. So 95 percent of the district schools are using this planned curriculum — in ELA, math, science, social studies, and the art of thinking — because it’s better for them. It’s already tied to the Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills [the state standards], it comes with mini-quizzes, an answer key, and other texts and supplemental materials. I mean, what’s not to like? You don’t have to go on Teachers Pay Teachers and hunt for resources. Even if I’m the most effective teacher, I’ll take the HISD curriculum and make it better. 

There’s a good lesson design model, which is not new to us. You direct-instruct the first part, you gradually release kids, and then you give them multiple opportunities to practice the objective. It’s divided into about 15 or 20 minutes for each part. Now, because we have inexperienced teachers, some of whom will spend 12 or 15 minutes just on the bell work, we’ve got a color-coded lesson deck. I believe the first 15 minutes are bordered in red, the next 15 are bordered in blue, and the last 15 are bordered in green. It’s not an exact science because every class is different, but they generally know that if they’re still in the red after 40 minutes of class time, their pace is way off. 

Do you think this kind of district takeover can be attempted elsewhere, and can its effects be sustained or improved upon? As you mentioned, the stories of backlash from the reform era may have been more numerous than the lasting successes. We haven’t heard much from Michelle Rhee in a while, even if her teacher evaluation system is still in place in Washington.

This is the right question to be asking. Every transformation has to fit the context it takes place in. What we’re doing in Houston probably can’t be replicated exactly in any other place. Having said that, however, a lot of people are looking for an answer. And most people recognize that we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done because times are desperate.

People from all over the country, including Alaska, are calling us to ask how we’re doing this. Boldness is what’s called for, and people are starting to have some hope that big turnarounds can be done. Kids will rise to the level of expectations, and we can narrow the achievement gap. What we’re doing would probably have to be tweaked in another place, but the underlying principle of comprehensive, wholesale reform can absolutely be accomplished. Everybody, whether you’re in a union state or a right-to-work state or whatever, can improve the quality of instruction.

But are most states and school districts even aiming at that goal? Between all the administrative concerns facing superintendents and the various non-academic priorities they have to deal with — absenteeism, social-emotional learning, discipline — teaching and learning can get lost in the shuffle.

Unfortunately, our profession has not really focused on it. We don’t have a lot of principals and superintendents who are instructional leaders because the focus has not been on instruction. In fact, we’ve had this notion that teachers need to be left alone to teach because they’re the experts. The truth of the matter is that effective teachers probably should be left alone to teach, but not everyone is effective. It takes a while to become effective, and even effective teachers can grow.

In this country, underserved populations have gotten the least effective and least experienced teachers. It’s a great shame for our profession, but it’s been an enduring problem. Do we want to leave those teachers alone to teach? No. We want to grow their capacities. We’re having teacher shortages in a lot of places, and particularly in Texas, we’re having to hire non-certified teachers. Fifty percent of new teachers hired in Texas last year were not certified. That’s a lot! 

We need to be able to say, “Effective teachers, do your thing. But everyone else, we need to make sure you’re effective.” To me, the word “effective” only applies if you’re getting outcomes. I’m going to question it unless I see some results. For the vast majority of teachers, we need to guide them and coach them. They need to be coached by principals who know what they’re doing. I’m very sympathetic to a teacher who says, “My principal doesn’t know anything about instruction, so why should he evaluate me?” That’s absolutely fair. But other districts can do what we’ve done here, which is to make sure principals are instructional leaders, raise the quality of instruction, support teachers and raise the level of accountability and expectations.

Can I ask about Houston’s drop in enrollment since 2023, when the takeover began? I’m aware that this decline is part of a bigger, ongoing slide that began before COVID, and that lots of districts are dealing with similar issues. But are you concerned at all that some families are looking elsewhere because they feel these reforms aren’t for them and won’t help their kids?

I’m glad you put the enrollment issue in context. Almost every large, urban district is losing enrollment, even in Texas. In Houston, we’ve had fewer kids being born for a few years now. And we’ve always had transfers from low-performing, D- or F-rated schools to charters, so it wasn’t surprising that people left in our first year. Now we have vouchers, which could also affect us.

Across the nation, since COVID, we also have kids dropping out of school. There are some economic forces at work in that some kids just haven’t seen the value in high school — or at least not value enough to stay. You’re 17 or 18 years old, you could have your senior year, but you can’t read at grade level, and you failed algebra. So you quit to drive for Uber or deliver packages for Amazon. The gig economy is competing for those kids.

All that is happening. But having said that, we are already seeing that the sentiment is changing among our families after only two years. Kids are getting the education they want, and they’re at A- or B-rated schools. One of my executive directors was at her hair dresser, who has a kid in the system. This parent said, “I was against the reforms at first, but my school went from a C to an A, and my kid is happier about doing better in school.” That was echoed by the other people in the shop, that things are changing and kids are getting a better education.

“The problem was that there was such pushback and status quo bias, the reformers soon found themselves in the minority. And because they couldn’t change things quickly, their tenure didn’t last the time it would take to really make reforms.” 

I know, that’s just an anecdote. But there are a lot of those anecdotes. Our sentiment survey shows that people are happy with what’s going on in their schools. I’m engaged in this stuff every day, but most people are not; they care about their kids, their kids’ teachers and the principal. The bigger reforms are nice to hear about every once in a while, but those are their priorities. We think we’ll get enrollment back up when these schools show, consistently, that they are A and B schools.

Some school districts have been able to win back families in a really impressive way. Newark, which was in a lot of trouble, managed to increase enrollment during and after their takeover period. So could this be a marker to judge your successes in Houston?

We’re doing so much better than Newark ever did. The data shows that our underserved populations have narrowed the gap incredibly, have outpaced similar populations across the state, have done well on NAEP and have attended A- and B-rated schools for several years in a row. So yeah, I think we can compete with the charters.

The existing research on state takeovers has shown very mixed results. Success stories have been few, most of those have been rather small, and none have seen the effects you have in Houston. Does your experience here definitively show that takeover can work?

The most important thing is that once you put your team in place, they have to show that they can get outcomes for kids. Once a new team comes in, whether it’s in a takeover context or not, just making piecemeal changes or doing the same things as the old team will make people question what the point is. People should not be happy with a new superintendent or administrative team that just does what’s always been done and doesn’t get a change in outcomes.

Again, this is true whether it’s a takeover or just a regular superintendent and school board. If a district is struggling such that it could be subject to a takeover, then bold, effective reform is the order of the day. We are providing a proof point that it can be done, and that Black and brown kids challenged by poverty and language barriers can rise to high expectations. Don’t sell them short, don’t say it’ll take eight years or five years to do it. We went from 56 F-rated schools to seven, and eventually to zero. That’s making a statement that transformation doesn’t need to take five, six, seven years. It can be done quickly.

There’s no question, there will be challenges in achieving that. There will be capacity issues, leadership issues, public pushback. But those can be managed with good leadership and knowledge of how to get things done.

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