Mike Miles

The Showdown at Dade

What happens when you mix a reforming (and hard-headed) superintendent, a pissed-off trustee and a South Dallas middle school on the brink? Chaos.

Miles/Nutall Thing Is About Turf and Who Runs DISD, Her or Him.

Talk about mixed feelings this morning. On the one hand thanks to a youthful experience I would rather not recount here in colorful detail, I know exactly how Dallas school board member Bernadette Nutall feels about getting rousted by the cops earlier this week in a Dallas school building. My heart ... More >>

DISD's Mike Miles Says School Finance Ruling Is a Call for Legislators to Fix a Broken System

Last week's ruling by a state judge in Austin reaffirming that Texas' method of financing public schools is unconstitutional gives the Legislature a chance to repair a "resource gap" that's failing a growing population of impoverished children, Dallas school Superintendent Mike Miles says. On Thurs ... More >>

Lots More to Come in Saga of Suspended School District Sleuth

The Dallas Morning News has an editorial this morning suggesting that the Dallas school district put a top internal investigator on leave last month to cover something up. The editorial is a development of some good writing Mike Hashimoto has been doing on the paper's opinion blog, and, for once, I ... More >>

Lower SAT Scores Disprove Allegations Against DISD's Mike Miles, Which Were Nuts Anyway

Good piece yesterday by Matt Haag on The Dallas Morning News education blog reporting that fewer public school seniors received at least a 990 score -- that's the number that means a student is "college ready" -- on the SAT exam, reflecting school Superintendent Mike Miles' push to have more kids t ... More >>

Ousted Fort Worth Superintendent's Parachute Is Really Golden Even by Dallas ISD Standards

There's plenty of money to be made in public education. You just need to be in the right job to make it. And once you're in that job, it helps if you can get fired. Take Walter Dansby. The former superintendent of the Fort Worth Independent School District, Dansby resigned Monday, leaving with a go ... More >>

A Cease Fire at DISD

DISD Brings in Consultant to Tell Mike Miles, School Board How to Get Along

Now that the bogeyman of home rule has transformed some of Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles' fiercest outside critics into his ardent supporters, the time seems ripe to formally mend fences with the school board. Easier said than done. Though things have calmed in recent months, Miles' relation ... More >>

Teachers Union Set to Do a U-Turn and Endorse DISD Trustee Miguel Solis

Alliance-AFT, a Dallas teachers union that was making robo-calls a year ago to get Dallas school Superintendent Mike Miles fired, is about to endorse one of his strongest supporters for re-election to the school board. The union will inform members Friday that it has endorsed Miguel Solis for the P ... More >>

Dallas ISD Home-Rule Debate Has Been Great for Mike Miles

You know the debate over public schools in Dallas has gone squirrely when retired teacher and education activist advocate Bill Betzen stands before the City Council and offers implicit approval of Mike Miles' tenure as DISD superintendent. Betzen, speaking in advance of a council discussion on the ... More >>

Morning News Reports on Teacher Morale, Turns Half-empty Glass Upside Down

Yikes. My Invasion of the Body Snatchers dreams are back. Need to stock up on Benadryl. But, wait: did you notice a story in The Dallas Morning News a couple weeks ago saying barely half of Dallas school system employees think the school district is headed in the right direction and quoting a schoo ... More >>

Ex-DISD Chief of Staff to Admit to Kickback Scheme, Probably Regrets Sending Himself Those Incriminating Emails

It's been a while since we had occasion to skewer Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles for a personnel move. Jennifer Sprague, the overpaid and underqualified strategy maven; Miles saboteur Rebecca Rodriguez; chief of staff and FBI target Jerome Oberwetter -- they are all long gone. But now that Ob ... More >>

Teachers Leaving DISD: How Do We Know When That's a Bad Thing?

Odd little contretemps in recent weeks on the pages of our city's only daily newspaper: On December 4, education writer Matt Haag had a story in the The Dallas Morning News under the headline, "Dallas ISD teachers left at high rate in Superintendent Mike Miles' first year," purporting to show that D ... More >>

Mike Miles and the Bad Annual Review Issue: More Bullshit from The Dallas Morning News

Right away let me say: no one is more troubled than I am by my own knee-jerkism concerning Dallas superintendent of schools Mike Miles. How the hell did I ever find myself in the role of predictably apoplectic apologist for a public official? Please, somebody free me from my own alliteration! But n ... More >>

In the New School Reform Debate, Old Words Fail Us

The school reform debate has a way of flipping the words liberal and conservative around like pinballs, but somewhere running deep beneath the surface is a new orientation that needs new words. North of the line are people united in the belief that children from the most brutal circumstances are jus ... More >>

Mike Miles Keeps His Job, Gets Firm Slap on the Wrist

The robocalls from Alliance AFT; the misleading mailers hastily called up at the last minute by God (and a Houston PR firm) only knows; the scathing "research paper" by arch-nemesis Don Williams; the chastisements of John Wiley Price, they all failed to convince Dallas ISD's Board of Trustees. On Mo ... More >>

Mike Miles Gets 90 Days to Grow Up, Dallas Gets 25 Years

In the wee hours of today, maybe a dozen of us media people, half a dozen teachers union officials and another half dozen bitter-enders sat waiting in a semi-darkened auditorium at school headquarters while the school board was in "executive session" -- a closed-door meeting in another part of the b ... More >>

Mike Miles Gave a Long Somber Statement Last Night to the DISD Board. Lew Blackburn Came Back at Him.

Late last night the Dallas school board carried out an hours-long closed-door session where they listened to an investigative report into alleged policy violations by school Superintendent Mike Miles. The report by attorney Paul Coggins cleared Miles of all of the legal and policy violations of whic ... More >>

Paul Coggins' Report on the DISD Mess Has Just Enough Fiction to Screw Mike Miles

Superintendent Mike Miles didn't write the letter. Mike Miles didn't tell Kevin Smelker to write the letter. Mike Miles didn't edit the letter. The narrative painted by Paul Coggins in his recent investigative report to the Dallas school board is a fiction. Last week former U.S. Attorney Coggins ga ... More >>

Coggins Report: How Ex-TV Reporter Rebecca Rodriguez's Screw-Up at DISD Became Mike Miles' Biggest Headache

Naughty little secret I will share with you from my own craft, the news business. In my line of work it is by no means unheard of for a reporter who is about to get sacked to suddenly invent an untrue story to the effect of, "They're trying to silence me." In other words, "They're only firing me be ... More >>

Mike Miles Is Selling His House

When Mike Miles announced a month ago that his wife and son were headed back to Colorado Springs, the question of whether Miles himself would soon join them was unavoidable. It would at least have been understandable given the shellacking he's endured over the past year and a half. But Miles swore, ... More >>

Hey, Mayor Mike: The School Thing Is Way Worse than a Simple Question of Personalities

Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings wants the Dallas school board to fish or cut bait on the school superintendent. "We need the school board to decide whether Mike Miles is going to be our superintendent of schools," Rawlings says in today's Dallas Morning News. "If a majority says that we don't want him ... More >>

You Know Paul Coggins' Probe of Mike Miles Is Going Nowhere When Reporters Call Me

Let me offer a disclaimer at the top. Part of what I am about to tell you here about the investigation of Dallas school Superintendent Mike Miles is tea-leaf-reading. I happen to think I'm pretty good at reading the tea in this area. But tea leaves are tea leaves. Some of what I am about to say do ... More >>

What is That Awful Smell Coming off the Pages of The Dallas Morning News Today?

Wow. What a bunch of junk in the The Dallas Morning News this morning about Rene Martinez, The LeMaster Group and Dallas school Superintendent Mike Miles. The whole school reform story in Dallas just gets more weird with every passing day. But should that surprise us? Remember: Dallas County Commi ... More >>

Brett Shipp Piled On Mike Miles Last Night, Because the Miles Haters Are Getting Nervous

Last night on WFAA Channel 8, reporter Brett Shipp aired a one-on-one interview with a retired Dallas business executive living in Santa Fe saying that Dallas schools chief Mike Miles needs to be whacked. I'm not accusing Shipp or the former businessman, J. McDonald Williams, of expressing anything ... More >>

Now DISD Investigators Are Calling Out District Employees for "Criticizing" Subordinates

Last night, WFAA's Brett Shipp released the latest in what's becoming a series of investigative pieces on the administration of Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles. "For the third time in less that two months, a DISD internal investigation has uncovered alleged wrongdoing by a top district adminis ... More >>

Mike Miles Bans Teachers from Driving School Buses, Further Endearing Himself to DISD's Rank-and-File

Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles hasn't done a great job of endearing himself to teachers during his first year and a half on the job. Much of this was to be expected, preordained by Miles' reputation as a hard-charging reformer bent on implementing a controversial pay-for-performance plan and c ... More >>

Dallas ISD Superintendent Mike Miles' Family is Moving Back to Colorado

When Mike Miles arrived at Dallas ISD, he brought his family with him. He and his wife bought a house in Northwest Dallas, and his son enrolled at Marsh Middle School. Now the family's having second thoughts. The Morning News' Matthew Haag broke the news this morning: Miles informed his top staff ... More >>

The New Accusations Against Mike Miles Are Serious, But They Don't Tell Us Anything We Don't Already Know

Typically, a $219,700 contract aimed at boosting parent engagement would sail past Dallas ISD's Board of Trustees with barely a murmur. It represents, after all, a vanishingly small speck of the district's $1.2 billion budget, and its goal -- getting parents involved in their children's education -- ... More >>

Charges Against DISD's Mike Miles: More Bullying Bullshit?

Which event are we talking about here? Individual Dallas school board members -- job-defenders who are sworn enemies of the ongoing school reform program -- violate normal process to release an internal school district report highly critical of Dallas Superintendent Mike Miles. Before folks have tim ... More >>

Running from DISD

Why are Superintendent Mike Miles' top staffers decamping? Blame the school board.

After Scoring Two Wins Against John Wiley Price & Co., Mike Miles Looks Like a Contender

Two big ifs. If you don't happen to be employed by the Dallas school district. If you are not a member of the African-American old-guard elected leadership in southern Dallas with strong personal ties to certain school district employees. If neither of those categories applies to you, then you may n ... More >>

Who's to Blame for all Those Top Defections at DISD? Not Mike Miles.

Lots of news the last two weeks about people fleeing the "cabinet" of Dallas school Superintendent Mike Miles, a reference to his executive team. It so happens I have been pursuing a story in that area, which I will convey in full in a column in the paper next week. But I can't keep my mouth shut ab ... More >>

Two More of Mike Miles' Cabinet Members Are Leaving Dallas ISD

The announcement dispatched by Dallas ISD a few minutes ago about the restructuring of Superintendent Mike Miles' top staff describes it as "a reorganization of the district's academic operations" that will give four current mid-level administrators a chance to prove themselves at the top. Miles is ... More >>

Can We Pump the Brakes Before We Send Yet Another Dallas ISD Superintendent Packing?

In terms of the way we treat school superintendents in Dallas, we're kind of like the spoiled rich lady who fires her housekeepers one after another, then asks, "What on earth is wrong with the housekeepers of this world?" I can't even count how many times in the last month I have heard somebody sa ... More >>

Last Night's Vote in Dallas ISD Was a Win for Mike Miles and a Loss for John Wiley Price

Look, life is not football. It's more important. I do get that. But, sorry. At a certain point in last night's Dallas ISD board meeting, a big scoreboard flashed in my mind. MIKE MILES, 7. JOHN WILEY PRICE, 0. Very, very superficial of me, I know. But, hey, I am not the one who set it up this way. ... More >>

Dallas ISD Trustees Voted to Fire Two Principals and Hundreds of Teachers Tonight

In a key win for the district's embattled administration, Dallas Independent School District trustees voted tonight to fire two principals and as many as 400 teachers, over the often heated objections of employees and activists. It was the culmination of months of debate and protests over Superinte ... More >>

John Wiley Price Seems to Be Calling For the Crucifixion of "Fake Jesus" Mike Miles

John Wiley Price first inserted himself into the debate over school reform in Dallas ISD when he showed up at a November board meeting to lambast Superintendent Mike Miles' heavy-handed attempts to enact change. His specific complaint then was the departure of longtime administrator Shirley Ison-New ... More >>

DISD Principals and Trustees Have Another Month to Prepare for Battle with Mike Miles

Up to 50 Dallas ISD schools could have a changing of the guard next year, as principals announce their resignation or retirement. Superintendent Mike Miles has placed heavy emphasis on principal reform, including replacing those who underperform. But around a dozen principals are not going quietly ... More >>

Score One for Mike Miles

DISD's new super claimed he was targeted by a board witch hunt. He's right.

Dallas ISD Is Looking to Put More Police Officers in Schools

In the wake of last month's shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School and the subsequent proposal by local state Representative Jason Villalba to arm specially trained teachers, DISD spokesman Jon Dahlander dismissed the idea that Dallas teachers will soon be roaming the halls packing heat. He did l ... More >>

Mike Miles Calls the DISD Audit that Criticized His Top Hires a "Witch Hunt"

Six months into his tenure at DISD, it's now official: Superintendent Mike Miles is hellbent on squandering whatever good will he was granted upon his arrival. Case in point was his news conference Wednesday to more fully address findings in a recent internal audit concluding that he and top staff h ... More >>

Dallas Teachers No Longer Have to Work That Extra 45 Minutes -- For Now

Way back in January, over the objections of just about everyone affected, the Dallas ISD Board of Trustees tacked a mandatory 45 minutes onto every teacher's workday. How the teachers used the time would be up to principals. Not surprisingly, the decision sparked considerable resentment among teach ... More >>

John Wiley Price Chastises Superintendent Mike Miles: "This is No Way to Run a District"

John Wiley Price is not a fan of DISD superintendent Mike Miles. He made that much clear when he appeared before the yesterday's board briefing to chide Miles on his first few months with the district. "My problem is, this district seems to be in terror, and this is no way to run a district," Price ... More >>

Scratch That: DISD Teachers Love Superintendent Mike Miles

It wasn't so long ago that it seemed the relationship between DISD teachers and superintendent Mike Miles had gone sour. They bristled at Miles' reformist rhetoric, with its implication that steering the district in the right direction will require the heads of a lot of long-time educators. They did ... More >>

Dallas Teachers Are Mad They Won't Get Paid Extra for Parent Conferences. Should They?

Dallas ISD's teachers are feeling beaten down, their union rep told me this morning: "Physically, emotionally and financially." The latest blow, she said: no longer getting paid for time they spend at after-school conferences with parents. The News' Matthew Haag had the story last night: DISD teach ... More >>

Dirty Schools and Bad Teachers: Mike Miles Delivers His Assessment of DISD

You already knew that Mike Miles, DISD's new superintendent, isn't one to mince words. That was, after all, part of the thinking in hiring him: that a straight-talking, pull-no-punches leader could transform DISD from an improving but still struggling urban district into one of the country's finest. ... More >>

Dallas ISD Will Bus 18,000 Employees for Convocation, and Teachers Are Pissed

Last week, Superintendent Mike Miles proposed giving teachers $750 in incentive pay for the coming school year. "Last year, we asked the teachers for a lot," Miles said, per the Morning News. "We asked the teachers to extend the number of minutes that they are teaching, and to increase the number of ... More >>

Meet DISD's Other Mike Miles, The 9-Year-Old Basketball Prodigy

I have a Google Alert set up for Mike Miles, e.g. DISD's new superintendent, so that whenever his name is mentioned on the Interwebs, I get an email. The past couple of weeks, though, the inbox has been flooded not with news of the Marine-turned-school reformer but with a 9-year-old who, I am told, ... More >>

Mike Miles, In First Official Day As DISD Superintendent, Likes Graduation-Rate Trend, Was a Little Embarrassed By Those Billboards

Given his high profile over the past few months and some much-publicized decisions, you'd be forgiven for thinking that Mike Miles has actually been DISD's superintendent. Which he has, of course, but not officially and not full-time until Monday, when he took the reins in earnest. It was a busy da ... More >>