HISD teacher says takeover is hurting students
Since I started teaching seven months ago at Sharpstown High School, more than 30 teachers and staff have left. The vast majority resigned or were fired by Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles and his administration.
HISD is marketing their New Education System (NES) reforms as necessary, studentcentered, and working toward what they call “Destination 2035.” I don’t believe that change is necessarily a bad thing. But the changes that have come as a result of the takeover are harming our schools and schoolchildren.
I was hired as a first-year high school chemistry teacher at Sharpstown, having just graduated from Texas A&M’s Biology Honors program. My parents were born in other countries, so I felt called to teach at Sharpstown, a welcoming school with a large immigrant student population. It’s estimated that Sharpstown students speak 60 different languages, and over half are classified as emergent bilingual/English learners.
Many are refugees from wartorn nations. In a school where over 80% of the students qualify for free and reduced lunch, some are raising their brothers and sisters without adult support. I felt a strong connection to them. When I interviewed for the job in summer, I knew about the Texas Education Agency’s takeover of HISD, but the interviewers told me that Sharpstown High School would be largely unaffected. It was not on the list of several dozen NES schools, and had not opted in to the reforms.
I was excited to join a teaching community with a built-in structure for collaboration, and with diversity of thought among an incredibly passionate teaching staff. I was excited to learn about teaching from veteran educators.
But a month before school began, the principal who hired and interviewed me was “reas
signed,” along with several other principals in the district. By the first day of school, four out of the five people who interviewed me no longer worked at the school.
Sharpstown’s new principal was handpicked by the brandnew takeover superintendent. A widely circulated audio recording allegedly shows that principal screaming at students for violating new policies — doing things like wearing Crocs or using cellphones or earbuds. That’s not effective leadership.
The top-down pressure from district policies also trickles down to the teachers and students. I’ve heard administrators scream at and threaten students in the hallways.
The Houston Federation of Teachers had to file a grievance to HISD regarding a policy that banned students from going to the restroom during instruction. No matter what their origins, all students deserve to be treated with dignity. At my school and so many others in HISD, they are not getting it.
Before the takeover, it was rare for HISD teachers to leave mid-year. Now Sharpstown’s rate of teacher turnover is even higher than the district-wide teacher turnover so far this year. Among the teachers and staff who have left or been fired from Sharpstown since I started, one had worked at the school since the year I was born. So many special education teachers have been fired or quit that my students have not had in-class special education support since October.
Some of the new teachers have lasted less than a week. The students are so accustomed to a revolving door of substitute teachers that when I was sick one day, the students assumed I had been fired. As they walked into my class the next day, they were surprised to see that I was still their teacher. This cannot be considered a healthy learning environment.
I have attended numerous professional development workshops held by HISD’s new administration on how to implement our new, error-ridden curriculum. The scripted curriculum that the school district forces on teachers does not begin to cover the needs of the kids in our school. I have been told we cannot translate anything, including instructions, into another language. That means that I am explicitly forbidden from providing accommodations that would help the students learn, even though we are often told to “differentiate.”
Teachers are often evaluated daily and chastised for everything, from not forcing students to respond with a multiple response strategy (MRS) every four minutes to playing classical music in class or even for reviewing the day before a test or on final exams.
A teacher at my school was actually removed after he played chess with his students after everyone had finished their final exams.
Since the state takeover, Sharpstown High School resembles a prison more than a school.
In every single decision I make as a new teacher, I ask myself whether what I’m doing is morally correct. Of one thing I am certain: HISD schoolchildren need more adults standing up for them.
Editor’s note: According to an HISD spokesperson, 100% of Sharpstown High School’s special education positions have now been filled. HISD also says that its NES curriculum officially encourages “strategic translation” for English Language Learners.