HOUSTON – Many of the students attending Fleming Middle School said they are feeling the pressure of the New Education System, also known as the NES Model.
This year, Fleming MS was amongst the 28 campuses selected for a reconstitution process under Houston ISD’s new state-appointed superintendent, Mike Miles.
KPRC 2 is embedded inside the campus of Fleming MS to document the new system in a series called “Focus On Fleming.”
The school, which is a microcosm of the district, allows us to give parents, viewers, and onlookers a glimpse into the changes. Fleming students feed into Wheatley High School, where poor academic performance was a driver for the state takeover of the district.
Recently, KPRC 2 spent the day with a group of sixth-grade honor students at Fleming who are navigating through the NES Model, which is much different than the course load they are used to.
For this group, the day begins bright and early at 8:30 a.m. with two 90-minute classes -- math and reading language arts.
The first class, math with Mrs. Lyndsy Mason.
Not only is Mrs. Mason a teacher but she’s also one of Miles’ “teacher experts” who helps the district’s curriculum writers review and modify the lesson plans.
“Mrs. Mason makes class really fun,” honor student Christina Moses said.
Some students said they are navigating the new system okay, but some of their classmates told KPRC 2 the NES campuses are too structured with limited downtime.
“The expectation is that we finish our lesson,” said honor student DeArthur Edwards.
“I feel like we have to be an adult sometimes and I don’t like that,” honor student Chiniyah Williams said.
With the NES model, students follow along with their teachers timed district-prepared PowerPoint instruction, which is followed by a 10-minute, five -question DOL, which stands for Demonstration of Learning, a quiz that test how students understand the information they learned during the lesson. The students who master the DOL are sent to the Team Centers to continue on with another more advanced assignment, while the students who had trouble with the quiz continue learning one-on-one with the teacher.
“I don’t like that 10-minute timer… I don’t. It makes me feel like I’m going to fail, and I don’t like to fail. You can ask my teachers; I cry about that. I don’t like it, Williams said. “They will normally say that it’s not that you’re failing, you just need more time to express yourself in your work.”
“It’s like a scary rollercoaster,” Moses said.
“We didn’t have a timer at my last school, but here, I know that I’m going to finish anyway,” Edwards said. “So, I don’t really have a problem with it.” “But I know other students do.”
One of the main things KPRC 2 noticed while shadowing the cohort, was the lack of interaction students had with one another. While they’re switching classes, during class, and at lunch, much of the day the students are asked to operate at a “level 0,” which essentially means no talking.
“We have to be on level zero in every single class. We go to lunch, and we can’t even be loud in the hallway. Like, y’all expect us to have no talking at all? But they expect us to just do great and just sit there with it. It’s like, we need to get our energy out... at the end of the day, we’re still kids coming out of elementary,” said Williams.
Students are given a thirty-minute lunch break.
“They always tell us, ‘lunchtime is your time to talk,’” Moses said.
“That’s when I get out all of my energy,” Williams said.
The second half of the day moves a bit faster for the students KPRC 2 followed. The classes change from 90 minutes to 60 minutes, and electives are mixed in with the day’s final instruction.
Teachers said they recognize the pressure kids are experiencing in the classroom, and they have worked to squeeze fun activities into the school day to keep their students encouraged, including Viking of the Week celebrations.
Some teachers also said they are concerned with the NES System moving too fast for students in the general population of Fleming MS, some who are already behind their grade level in learning.
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