Thousands more Under second-year Superintendent Mike Miles, whose reform of the district has resulted in early test score gains but increased teacher turnover, students in Houston ISD are being taught by teachers who have never taught in a classroom.
According to district data, the percentage of first-year teachers in HISD has nearly doubled, rising from around 6% before Miles’ arrival to 12% at the beginning of the school year. By hiring more first-year teachers, Miles administration intends to defy historical trends that indicate inexperienced teachers frequently struggle with classroom management, lesson planning, and teaching ideas.
Following state sanctions against the district, Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath appointed Miles and a substitute school board to lead HISD in mid-2023, which led to the surge in first-year teachers. About one-third of HISD teachers resigned during the 2023–24 school year or left the district this past summer as a result of Miles’ numerous changes to classrooms and school operations, which infuriated educators throughout the district.
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According to district records, Miles’ reliance on inexperienced teachers started during his first year of school, when the number of first-year teachers increased from roughly 550 to 1,050. District data from September indicates that around 1,300 of HISD’s 10,625 instructors are in their first year this year.
“We will always have first-year teachers in the education field, and we want first-year teachers,” stated Ena Meyers, HISD’s deputy chief of strategic initiatives. We hope that people will be drawn to teaching and choose to become teachers.
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Many educators with experience in classroom management and instruction delivery departed after learning that Miles’ redesign of dozens of HISD campuses required them to teach more scripted lessons, according to Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, the district’s largest teachers union.
Under Miles system, many lessons are made at the district s central office and handed down to educators at long-struggling schools, who are expected to follow a teaching system that involves checking for students understanding every four minutes or so. Some better-performing institutions give their teachers more autonomy in the classroom.
Since our teachers—who are real educators with professional certifications—left in large numbers, it is no surprise that we have a large number of (first-year) teachers, Anderson said.
In 2023–2024, almost 9% of Texas instructors had never taught in a classroom. Data for the current academic year is not yet available.
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Researchers have generally found that first-year teachers have thelowest positive impact on student learning, on average, though they often improve quickly within a few years.
In HISD, first-yearteachers historically receivedsome of the worst annual performance ratings. From 2019 to 2021, about 25 percent of first-year educators were graded needs improvement, compared to slightly less than 10 percent of teachers with classroom experience. District officials have not publicly released performance ratings by years of experience, though a September presentation by Miles showed uncertified teachers who are more likely to be in their first year scored worse than certified teachers.
Still, HISD s increase in first-year teachers last school year did not coincide with a drop in standardized test scores. HISD produced some of thebiggest gains in the regionon the state s primary standardized exams, known as STAAR, though it s unclear what impact first-year teachers had on the results. Student discipline rates alsoremained largely stablein Miles first year.
Traditionally, first-year teachers enter the profession with high expectations and energy, though their impact on students often doesn t match their excitement, said Thomas Guskey, a professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky s College of Education.
They re working really hard and putting in lots of hours, and if they re not seeing evidence of the kind of influence that they would like to have, it just becomes a really challenging endeavor, Guskey said. Those first couple of years are really difficult for most beginning teachers.
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Guskey added that two factors support from principals and a sense of trust within the school are major influences on the success of first-year teachers.
If a beginning teacher is having difficulty, they have to believe that there s a culture of trust in this school, that they can share those difficulties with their teaching colleagues and get help, rather than I ve got to stay back in my classroom and do this on my own, Guskey said.
In HISD, Meyers said the district is committed to making first-year teachers instructional leaders alongside their principals and assistant principals.
They re getting support and coaching and mentoring, not just from a teacher that s next door to them or down the hall, but they re getting the instructional support from their campus leadership, she said.
But Anderson said the union is hearing different accounts from its members, with some experienced teachers reporting that they re not working as closely with new educators.
If you re not going to actually get into those classrooms and show them, and most of them are brand new, what do you expect? Anderson said.
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Houston ISD relying more on teachers with no classroom experience
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