Kashmere Excessive Faculty is now in its second yr of following Houston Unbiased Faculty District (HISD) Superintendent Mike Miles’ New Training System (NES) curriculum, which he carried out after the 2023 Texas Training Company (TEA) takeover of the college district. Kashmere HS traditionally had low STAAR scores and was recognized as one of many authentic 28 NES faculties.
The NES curriculum depends on time-dependent instruction throughout courses and test-based evaluations. The system now has 130 faculties—45 greater than final yr—underneath its umbrella. It follows a centralized schedule, pre-planned classes, and quizzes. Academics at NES faculties additionally obtain the next wage than lecturers at non-NES campuses.
Brandon Dickerson, now in his fourth yr because the principal of Kashmere HS, says the college has been grappling with declining enrollment, persistent absenteeism, tutorial efficiency, and high quality of instruction. He says the NES curriculum helped enhance college students’ check scores.
“The magic that occurred right here was instruction. We did have double-digit good points in English, Science, and Math,” Dickerson stated. “And that was because of the tutorial mannequin we labored underneath final yr. The mannequin did assist us tackle our educational methodology…The place you come from, your financial standing has nothing to do with our starvation to be taught one thing.”
Enrollment
Declining enrollment has been a problem. This tutorial yr, the college began with 638 college students, down 87 from the prior yr.
Out of those college students, 97.6% (623) come from economically deprived backgrounds, 76.6% (489) are “in danger” of not assembly requirements or dropping out of faculty per state-defined standards, 26.2% (167) are emergent bilingual, and 17.2% (110) college students obtain particular schooling (SPED). The varsity additionally has a minority-majority enrollment, with 50.8% of Black and 47.5% Hispanic/Latino college students.
To deal with the declining enrollment, Dickerson stated the college has undertaken a number of steps — Grads Inside Attain stroll, through which volunteers go to “chronically absent” college students to examine in on them, using a truancy coordinator on campus, who meets with college students throughout lunch to inquire about their absenteeism, a “Motivational Monday,” the place college students join with counselors, and an incentive program referred to as “Ram bucks,” the place college students are rewarded for tutorial efficiency, conduct, following guidelines, sporting correct uniforms and constant class participation.
“When a pupil says, ‘I’m not motivated by something,’ that’s information,” he stated. “We wanna make sure that we give assets to these youngsters which are in want to grasp the error you made isn’t the life it’s important to stay. We gonna do our half to, sooner or later, get you off probation. However while you get off, you’ve gotten a path to go ahead and never go backward.”
Did the NES curriculum end in greater check scores?
Initially, the TEA rated the faculties till 2019. Attributable to COVID-19 in 2020 and a Declared State of Catastrophe in 2021, faculties weren’t rated. In 2022, TEA rated Kashmere HS a “C” however in 2023, TEitA didn’t publish its scores when a number of districts filed a lawsuit towards the company. In consequence, HISD created its personal accountability score system, which mirrored enhancements in a number of faculties. “A” and “B” rated faculties elevated by 82%, from 93 in 2023 to 170 in 2024, whereas “D” and “F” rated faculties fell by almost two-thirds, from 121 faculties in 2023 to 41 in 2024. Within the newest scores, 53 NES campuses acquired an “A” or “B” score.
Kashmere’s general score improved from a “C” (TEA’s scores) to a “B” (HISD’s scores). Nonetheless, pupil efficiency (STAAR check scores, school readiness, and commencement charges) and ‘closing the gaps’ are at a “C,” whereas faculty progress (tutorial progress) is at a “B.”
“We are going to deal with instruction on grade stage, pushing youngsters past, giving youngsters alternatives with differentiation,” Dickerson stated. “That’s been one of many largest misconceptions in schooling. That is my twenty fifth yr [at HISD], and I can guarantee you I’ve seen a change in a shift in the way in which our lecturers are addressed by way of this management.”
Dickerson attributed the development in scores to the LSAE (Learner, Securing, Accelerated, Enriched) mannequin underneath the NES curriculum. This mannequin entails instruction and assignments for third by way of twelfth-grade college students. The 90-minute courses start with Studying Goals and are damaged down into the next:
40-45 minutes of instruction utilizing “A number of Response Methods (MRS)”: These are geared toward holding “college students actively studying, writing, discussing, and taking part all through the lesson.” Throughout this time, principals and assistant principals go to lecture rooms to watch the courses whereas directors present teaching and extra help to lecturers, based on HISD. Whereas timers dictate the progress, lecturers ask college students to learn their solutions out loud or conduct desk talks.
10 minutes of Demonstration of Studying (DOL) or mini quiz: College students are scored on these quizzes.
35 minutes of follow-up instructing: Those that grasp the DOL proceed to “crew facilities” to apply extra superior workouts supervised by studying coaches. The crew facilities have been beforehand HISD libraries. Those that couldn’t grasp the DOL stay within the classroom for a “second educate,” the place lecturers evaluate ideas the scholars want to understand.
“It’s similar to constructing muscle. When you’ve performed it, you retain figuring out, you get higher at it over time and the way they’re used to it,” Dickerson stated. “As soon as they see the outcomes, and we’re celebrating them, it’s water underneath the bridge.”
Academics additionally use the skilled studying communities (PLCs) mannequin to plan “backward,” analyzing DOL information from each blocks of scholars. The PLC then adjusts the instruction for the following group. The PLC can also be a key side of instructor efficiency evaluations.
HISD mother and father and lecturers have been vocally essential of the NES curriculum by way of protests and speeches at board conferences. They cite rigorous pupil and instructor evaluations, frequent modifications in faculties’ management, and the closure of libraries as essentially the most pertinent points the district faces right this moment.
PARENT – Liz Silva, a mother or father of two college students at an NES faculty
“Sounds good on paper” is how she describes the curriculum.
“Their [HISD] present practices hurt college students by prioritizing standardized testing, neglecting particular person wants, and failing to foster holistic growth,” Silva stated. “One important challenge is the dearth of particular person individualized help. NES faculties depend on district-wide, one-size-fits-all worksheet packets that disregard the varied wants of our college students and faculties.”
Throughout a press convention, Silva highlighted college students’ incapability to deal with tutorial pressures and the wants of Gifted and Proficient college students not being met. She stated her little one, a pupil at an NES elementary faculty, has to frequent his faculty’s crew middle solely to be “met with extra packets, bigger packets.”
“He’s annoyed and bored,” Silva stated. “NES faculties place an overemphasis on testing and efficiency metrics. This shifts the main focus away from our college students in significant studying, creativity, essential considering and emotional growth are sidelined to supply data-driven outcomes…I’d guess most mother and father care extra about their college students’ love for studying than their STAAR or MAP scores.”
Silva has noticed that college students and educators at NES faculties are “burnt out from the worksheets.”
TEACHER
A instructor at an NES highschool, who spoke with the Defender on the situation of anonymity, stated the slides that the lecturers have to show from at school have “plenty of errors.”
The instructor added the slides and assignments don’t all the time align with the curriculum.
“What occurs is that they’re not mapped on to the content material or the target they’re purported to be examined on,” the instructor stated. “There are occasions when the lecturers have to alter the slides to be able to match the educational of the DOLs daily.”
The instructor additionally noticed how their college students expertise frustration when their time runs out whereas ending their assignments.
Additionally, lecturers should full each slide given to them inside 90 minutes, the supply stated.
“You must match all of that info into, even when it’s further info into the slides, it’s important to do it inside a 45-minute interval since you get demerits otherwise you get marked down on your rating should you don’t try this throughout the time interval,” the instructor stated. “If you happen to don’t get by way of your entire slides, that’s a foul rating for the instructor.”
This, together with the analysis course of, creates “anxieties” for lecturers, per the instructor, as they correlate immediately with the cash they obtain. Even when a pupil doesn’t perceive an idea, there is no such thing as a additional time to elucidate it to them. In the event that they exceed the time, they’re marked down as nicely. “And that’s once we get frustration from the children as a result of generally they don’t perceive, they usually want extra instructor instruction versus peer instruction,” they stated.
The instructor additionally witnessed lecturers getting panic and anxiousness assaults throughout faculty hours and complained of hypertension owing to the stress of the analysis course of.
“Whenever you begin questioning issues, that’s while you begin seeing lecturers and principals and directors getting fired,” the instructor instructed the Defender. “Whenever you see the principals which are abruptly faraway from campuses, they’ve spoken as much as say, ‘Hey, this isn’t working. We don’t see that that is useful. We’ve got one other means of doing it.’ And if it doesn’t align with the NES mannequin, these individuals [HISD] just about oust it.”
Check scores
Whereas Kashmere HS appears to have improved its efficiency within the STAAR end-of-course (EOC) underneath the NES curriculum for spring 2024, it’s but to be at par with district and state scores.
Biology
In Biology, 42% of the scholars met the grade-level normal within the spring 2024 STAAR EOC.
Algebra I
In Algebra I, 16% of the scholars met the grade-level normal.
English I
In English I, 33% of the scholars met the grade-level normal.
English II
In English II, 32% of the scholars met the grade-level normal.
U.S. Historical past
In U.S. Historical past, 44% of the scholars met the grade-level normal.
