Booker T. Washington Principal Carlos R. Phillips II says his work is cut out for him—to understand the needs of a complex student demographic and provide quality education.
Phillips, who has been at the helm of Washington HS since 2015, begins the day with a morning huddle every morning from 7:30 to 8:00 a.m., during which he reviews his team’s objectives for the day, deadlines, and teacher attendance “every skill” is being covered. During the 90 minutes of instruction, he hops in during classes to monitor the workflow.
He said funds are crucial in schools like these. The district’s $4.4 billion bond proposal allotted $680,000 to Washington HS for security upgrades. While legal constraints prevented him from commenting on the bond failure, Phillips maintained a measured response, focusing instead on what he could control: providing safety, consistency, and quality education for students. The school would keep “moving in the right direction” to educate students in an environment “conducive to their learning.”
“We let the community make the decisions of which they feel best,” he said. “And as educators, we’re gonna do what WE need to do, from the time our building opens to the time our build building closes.”
Enrollment: by the numbers
The school year started with 837 students, 40 fewer than the year before.
Out of these students, 98% (820) come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, 71.6% (599) are “at risk” of not meeting standards or dropping out of school per state-defined criteria, 27% (226) are emergent bilingual, and 15.5% (130) students receive special education (SPED). The school also has a minority-majority enrollment, with 46.8% of Black and 49.6% Hispanic/Latino students.
In the current academic year, 481 students transferred out of Booker T. Washington HS to other schools, out of which 383 moved to other schools within HISD and 98 moved to other ISDs and charter schools. Conversely, 90 students enrolled in.
“Sometimes they’re going through various things outside the school,” he said. “Keeping that line of communication open with my students is the top priority with me as well as my community. The biggest thing is to make sure those students when they walk through this door and they’re able to graduate, they can be successful. They enter the community and they can also give back.”
Phillips says the goal is to increase enrollment numbers through referrals via “word of mouth,…painting our own narrative of the great things that we’re doing here at Washington” and conducting outreach through its STEM magnet programs.
“We continue to build on that, from our high altitude rockets, from our drones, and also to the international focus that we have,” he said.
Washington HS also experiences chronic absenteeism among students, a trait found in other NES schools. A report from Good Reason Houston says NES students were twice as likely to be “chronically absent” than non-NES students and that 50% of Black students in those schools missed at least 10% of school days in 2022. Moreover, absenteeism in HISD rose from 2020 to 2022, especially in NES schools, growing from 14% in 2020 to 40% in 2022.
Phillips said the school is aware of this pressing concern and monitors transit movements and when students arrive at the school. The school also collaborates with the Family and Community Engagement (FACE) department and wraparound services to find the root cause of students not attending classes, he said.
“One of my biggest things in the morning is to shake every kid’s hand in the morning time when I get here, go to every classroom so I can kind of put my eyes on the kids,” he said, adding he asks them directly why they missed morning classes. “I keep that personal approach. ‘I haven’t seen you in a couple of days. Where have you been? Do you have any specific needs?’ And then we give those students the particular support systems on our campus to make sure the kids are in a well state of mind.”
How is the school faring?
The challenges ahead for Washington HS are palpable. Overall, the school received a “D” grade in HISD’s own projected accountability ratings, but its score increased from 51 in the 2022-23 school year to 68 in 2023-24. It also received the following grades:
- Student Achievement: D
- School Progress: D
- Closing the gaps: D
Phillips considers the grades a “minor setback,” but he trusts the New Education System (NES) to yield better results this year. He observed that the time teachers took to adjust to the curriculum contributed to the low grades.
“The data did not trend in our favor as far as getting all the results that we wanted,” he said. “But at the end of the day, we, we still had success stories. Our staff is more competent in what the expectations are. They know exactly what they’re signing up for, and they’re executing those.”
He says he remains optimistic about the year ahead, with “audacious goals.” By using data to analyze areas the school needs to improve on, he feels Booker T. Washington is on the “cusp of meeting that C.”
A deep-dive into the NES curriculum
A year into the NES system, schools are grappling with “lots of mistakes,” a teacher at an NES school told the Defender on the condition of anonymity because they fear retaliation from the district. The slides they teach from in their class contain errors, they added.
According to the teacher, school days are long and difficult for teachers and students alike. For students in the third through twelfth grades, Math and English classes last 90 minutes. They begin with a five-minute exercise on what they learned in the previous lesson, then a Learning Objective on what they should be able to complete at the end of the lesson, followed by a 40-45 minute instruction time using Multiple Response Strategies (MRS). This is followed by a 10-minute Demonstration of Learning (DOL) or mini quiz.
Those who master the DOL, including students at the S2 (Secured), A (Accelerated), and (E) Enriched levels, are required to go to the Team Center for the last 35 minutes of the class where they are guided by learning coaches.
The remaining students who are at the L (learner) and S1 (securing) levels stay back in the classroom to work with the teacher and the teacher apprentice. Here, teachers are expected to re-teach the concepts taught earlier.
Students in grades three through 10 also take Art of Thinking three times a week. This class, which is focused on critical thinking and problem-solving, equips students “to process the large volume of information they receive through daily conversations, social media, and other digital channels.”
“Some students get annoyed because a lot of times they don’t have enough time for the instructional period because the PowerPoint or the slide deck for the lesson, they want you to cover every single slide in that 45 minutes,” they said. “You’re [the teacher] supposed to be able to take consideration for all misconceptions of the student and fit all of that information within 45 minutes because otherwise you get marked down.”
In other words, if the teacher fails to complete this task within 45 minutes, the evaluator gives them a low score on their timing and “pacing.”
They’re scored by the evaluator. So the appraisers come in, that’s normally the administration, like the, um, assistant principals, the principal, and then they also have, um, the district staff that comes and evaluates them
“They’re gonna look at the clock and make certain that during this time you’re doing DOL, during this time you’re doing the instruction, during this time you’re doing additional instruction,” the teacher explained. “If you don’t, if you’re not on the appropriate activity for the specific time that’s been allotted, the teacher gets a bad score.”
Phillips says one of the “beauties” of the NES curriculum, which also focuses on standardized testing and other time-dependent methods of instruction to train students, is the presence of multiple people in the classroom to cater to students. This, at times, includes a teacher of record, an apprentice teacher, a learning coach, and a co-teacher or a SPED support teacher, according to a teacher at an NES school.
“There are so many boots on the ground in that classroom where we can support our students versus that one classroom with one teacher,” Phillips said. “One of the good things about teaching is you have that uniqueness and delivering your own type of lesson, but when you want to be specific, when you want to have goals directed on improving a targeted area, keeping everybody in that same pathway with that same recipe and let them do the model accordingly. It’s more governed by how you want those results to improve.”
He added that the school receives data, designs instruction, trains teachers, and expects student outcomes based on it.
“Then once we get through the day, I meet with my students and converse with them, checking on them to make sure that their best needs are also captured,” Phillips said. “We also conduct aggressive monitoring, so when you’re looking for what students are doing, this is what teachers can also use as a guide to make sure that the work is already prepared.”
Inside the classrooms, timers accompany the instruction.
“The past year the timer was just a constant thing the kids always heard. They had to get adjusted to that. But this year it’s just a way of life, they’re used to the timers,” Phillips said.
In the background, a teacher kept track of the time while students worked out a Math problem. “I am not going to wait, this is a simple transaction…30 seconds!” she said.
The class sizes are smaller this year, too, and all have two instructors.
“They both know the lesson, and now all our students are prepared,” Phillips said.
Pointing toward a teacher at the back of the class, he identified an instructor who was a teacher apprentice last year but “moved up” to the role of a teacher.
“So keeping that model consistent across the board, having the appropriate people in place is gonna make sure that the kids continuously learn,” Phillips explained. “But also, you’re building a skill set and a pedagogy for the staff members that you have.”
In English II, the teacher set a timer for eight minutes and asked students students to read a few paragraphs and answer three questions. She instructed the students to share their answers when the time was up.
Then, she went around the room to monitor the students’ work with a clipboard.
“If she finds any areas, she immediately adjusts on what areas need to be corrected so the students can be successful,” Phillips told the Defender while the teacher made the rounds.
A lady with a portable timer visits one class after another to let the instructors know when they should move on to the next pace level since there are no bells to indicate this.
Administrators are also present in the classrooms to observe the classes and give feedback, which is then reviewed by Phillips and the executive director. Teachers receive feedback based on these reports.
The district’s parents and teachers have consistently criticized the NES model of instruction. A persistent concern is teacher and principal turnover.
“It distresses me to hear the high number of families that have left HISD schools and the very high number of excellent teachers and administrators who have left the district, either quitting in frustration that their freedom to teach is being undermined by a rigid system of remote learning or being forced out for not parroting NES doctrine,” said Lydia Luz. “Why would an unelected superintendent, the board of managers responsible for the largest school system in Texas and the eighth largest in the US?”
Michelle Williams, president of the Houston Education Association, said the student outcomes the district publishes do not reflect the impact the NES curriculum has on the students.
“The NES system being implemented within HISD, we’re seeing a disturbing trend where neither our teachers or students are given time nor the res resources necessary for success,” she said.
What lies ahead for Booker T. Washington
Phillips has his hands full at the moment. Vincent Grayson, the head boys basketball coach at the school who served in HISD for nearly 20 years, was charged with organizing a teacher-certification cheating scheme that allowed at least 200 unqualified teachers to work in local school districts.
Despite the bad press that impacted students, he says it is his priority to make the school a place of learning.
In the short term, he wants to “do what’s asked” of the school.
“I wanna make sure that each day we are looking at the data, looking at the student performance, that we’re looking the skillset set of our teachers to make sure that we are going in the right direction,” Phillips said.
He also aims to increase post-graduation success in the fields the students choose. He is, however, concerned about bringing the students back to the school and ensuring they graduate. In the Class of 2021, 65.7% of students at Washington HS received their high school diplomas on time or earlier. Meanwhile, the dropout rate for students in grades 9-12 was 9.1% during that school year.
“You have a high mobility rate in these areas,” Phillips said. “Keeping them here for those four years, that’s one of those things that is kind of beyond our control. We wanna make sure we get those kids out within four years.”
