An unusually high share of teachers left Houston ISD over the summer, but new data from the district show educators who received low evaluations drove a large share of the exodus.
About 83 percent of HISD teachers rated “proficient” or higher on the district’s formal evaluation tool stayed with HISD, while 51 percent of those rated “developing” or “improvement needed” left this summer, according to data shared by the district Thursday.
Roughly 2,700 teachers left the district in June and July, equivalent to about a quarter of the district’s 2023-24 teaching force, district officials said. About 950 other teachers resigned during the school year.
The numbers suggest the hard-charging approach of state-appointed HISD Superintendent Mike Miles, who has repeatedly told teachers they can leave the district if they don’t agree with his methods, may be playing out as he intended: Keeping top-performing instructors in classrooms while pushing out less-effective ones.
“Over time, what you’d like to see is your more effective teachers retained and your less effective teachers are the ones who leave,” Miles said Thursday during a school board meeting. “Over time, you’ll see a more and more effective teaching force in HISD.”