The charter school model has worked in Texas more often than it has failed. Between 1995, when lawmakers passed the enabling legislation, and November 2024, the state granted 350 open-enrollment charters. About 190 are still active.
Of the charters that closed, most voluntarily surrendered their charters or consolidated with affiliated schools. By this time last year, the state had revoked 39 charters.
Oak Cliff Faith Family Academy, perhaps best known today for its championship basketball teams, is one of the 39 that had its original charter revoked. In 2014, the Texas Education Agency warned the school it faced closure because it had missed financial requirements in 2012 and academic goals in 2013 and 2014. The state’s “three-strikes” law required the education commissioner to revoke its charter.
Faith Family’s leadership saved the school by appealing to the TEA and asking to merge with a sister school operating under a separate charter. Michael Williams, the education commissioner at the time, approved the plan and the Oak Cliff campus remained open.
Opinion
A decade later, the situation is repeating itself. The same superintendent, Mollie Purcell Mozley, leads the district. In 2024-25, for the third straight year, Oak Cliff Faith Family received an overall rating of F. (Its sister school in Waxahachie received a D.) It has appealed its grade.
In an August letter posted on the school’s website, Mozley said school staff reviewed its performance data and believed it deserved a C rating last year. The state is expected to release its final decision in December.
Faith Family officials did not return calls for comment this week. But the school’s academic shortcomings are only one of its troubling aspects.
This newspaper has reported extensively about its high school girls and boys basketball programs. A stunning 18 female players transferred to the school in 2024, after it hired a top state coach. The University Interscholastic League’s state executive committee then banned the team from postseason play and issued two-year suspensions to three coaches for recruiting violations. As a result, the school left the UIL and now models its basketball programs after sports prep schools.
Then there’s the issue of pay. The two Faith Family campuses enroll about 3,000 students in total. Almost all are economically disadvantaged. In September, The Texas Tribune reported that Mozley’s annual compensation reached a peak of $560,000 in recent years. A 2021 tax return showed three other district leaders earned more than $200,000 that year.
By comparison, Dallas ISD superintendent Stephanie Elizalde, who leads a district of 134,000 students, received a raise last year for a base salary of $375,000. DISD has an overall B rating.
Good charter schools offer families choices. Oak Cliff Faith Family Academy has a long, well-documented history of academic underachievement and troubling governance. This time, we hope the state’s three-strikes-and-you’re-out rule sticks.
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