Houston ISD state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is tightening the path to school autonomy by requiring campuses to meet certain academic benchmarks for multiple years and, in some cases, hand over day-to-day operations to outside organizations to gain maximum control.
For years, HISD principals had largely controlled their campuses. But under the state takeover, Miles has reshaped who controls schools, creating levels of autonomy and moving many decisions on classroom instruction and staffing to the central office. The shift has made school independence a tension point, contributing to an exodus of teachers and principal turnover.Miles’ latest changes set new rules on how schools can win some decision-making permissions back or expand it. His idea of tying maximum school autonomy to contracts with outside groups has concerned at least one of HISD’s state-appointed board members.”Conceivably, 80%, 90% of the district could apply (to be run by an outside group),” board vice president Angela Lemond Flowers said Thursday at a meeting. “A board would have to manage innumerable other boards. And so I don’t see how that’s setting us up for success … where does it stop? And have we now then created a monster that a board cannot manage?”Miles said he wants to structure school autonomy so that higher-performing schools have more decision-making power than lower-performing schools.”Schools that have high performance should have more autonomy, and yet that autonomy should be earned,” Miles said.Among the new guidelines, Miles said schools can apply to leave his New Education System of reforms after they earn three consecutive A ratings in the state’s A-F accountability system starting this year. HISD has around 130 schools in NES, which follow a strict instructional model and receive more resources.
Miles said schools’ requests to leave NES “will not be unreasonably denied.”…