Hello, Houston!<\/a> daily newsletter to get local reports like this delivered directly to your inbox.<\/p>\nThe panel is co-chaired by democratic lawmakers State Senator Molly Cook, State Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons, and Colin Bossen, a senior minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston. <\/p>\n
“I encourage all voters, all lawmakers \u2014 anybody who is involved in any way with a public school system including paying taxes into it \u2014 to read this commission\u2019s report,” Cook said. “Now we really do have kind of a one-stop shop and resource for lawmakers, for decision makers, for voters, for taxpayers to really see up close what a takeover looks like.”<\/p>\n
The panel hosted three public listening sessions and held private interviews with people who wished to remain anonymous while sharing their stories. The 81-page report says, under the takeover, HISD has “diminished the curriculum”, “dismantled relationships,” severing bonds between students, teachers, and families, “destroyed democratic governance,” and “degraded financial stewardship.”<\/p>\n
In a statement the district said, Houston ISD\u2019s transformation is delivering measurable results for students and families. The district also shared their own on the district\u2019s improvements during the state intervention.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese improvements reflect the work happening every day in HISD classrooms and the dedication of our teachers, school leaders, and staff,\u201d read the statement. \u201cThe District has also invested more of its resources directly into instruction, expanding opportunities for students, and strengthening the academic foundation that prepares them for success beyond graduation. Our work is not finished, and we will continue raising expectations, strengthening instruction, and preparing every student for the future. \u201c<\/p>\n
In a Texas Senate Education Committee hearing on Tuesday, Miles boasted about the district’s jump in accountability ratings. Since the start of the takeover, dozens of campuses have raised their ratings substantially. Wheatley High School, whose string of failing accountability ratings triggered the takeover, earned its first A accountability rating this year. <\/p>\n
The commission hopes their qualitative assessment of the impacts of the takeover is considered when lawmakers analyze the success of the takeover.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019ve seen a lot about the test scores, accountability ratings, but we hadn\u2019t really had a systematic analysis of people\u2019s lived experiences narrated in their own voices, and that was part of what we were trying to do with this report,” said Jasmine Lee, a member of the commission and a Rice University Ph.D. student researching urban education inequality. <\/p>\n
More than ten years ago, in 2015, the state legislature required the TEA to intervene if a campus failed its accountability ratings five years in a row. Accountability ratings are given yearly to each public school campus by the TEA and largely focus on the students\u2019 STAAR scores. Critics of the accountability ratings have said it’s too narrow a scope to properly assess a school and its students\u2019 success. <\/p>\n
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Bianca Seward\/Houston Public Media<\/p>\n
An attendee to the Houston ISD School Board meeting wears buttons advocating for the end of the takeover. August 2026.<\/p>\n
This school year, there are eight public school districts currently under a state takeover. The report argues that the current threshold for triggering a takeover “unfairly burdens” larger school districts and recommends raising it from a single failing campus to a broader “pattern of underperformance” across a larger portion of the district.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s too easy for [takeovers] to start, and then there\u2019s no clear path to actually ending it,” Cook said. “You end up with a situation very chaotic, very destructive, and very unpleasant for frankly everybody.” <\/p>\n
In August, both education commissioner Mike Morath and Miles said the district appeared on track to exit the takeover “relatively soon.” If Morath \u2014 who currently has the sole authority to end a state intervention \u2014 does allow Houston ISD to begin exiting the takeover, it will kick off a three-year transition. <\/p>\n
The report recommends lawmakers establish a local process for ending state interventions and suggests requiring a local referendum before a takeover can be extended, allowing the community in the district to decide whether it should end or continue. When the state initially took over Houston ISD, the intervention was authorized for two years, and Morath was given the authority to extend it \u2014 which he did in June 2025.<\/p>\n
The panel is also calling for limitations to the powers of the state-appointed superintendent and board of managers. The report asks lawmakers to specify when the unelected officials have full, partial, or no authority. The state-appointed board has also approved decisions that could have lasting effects beyond the takeover. Last year, state-appointed Superintendent Miles sought approval to close or consolidate 12 schools across the district.<\/p>\n
State Senator Cook said she will be refiling her Senate Bill 1764<\/a>, which aimed to address some aspects of the current TEA authority for takeovers of public school districts. <\/p>\nBossen, who co-chaired the commission, said the report shows that state interventions can leave schools in a significantly worse position and adds the accounts the commission collected tell a fuller story of the impacts of the takeover.<\/p>\n
“If you don\u2019t listen to people [then] you\u2019re not really getting the fullness of their stories,” Bossen said. “That\u2019s a big part of what we\u2019ve done is we\u2019ve gotten the fullness of people\u2019s stories and it contradicts a lot of the quantitative data that\u2019s been gathered by the district, and that \u2013 if anything else \u2014 should be a cause for alarm.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lucio Vasquez \/ Houston Public Media Protesters gathered outside of Houston ISD\u2019s headquarters on June 8, 2023, during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":460548,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[163,1182,4045,56,58,1686,142216,54034,57,223,44852],"class_list":["post-460547","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-education","tag-education-news","tag-hisd","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-isd","tag-houston-isd-state-takeover","tag-houston-isd-superintendent-mike-miles","tag-houston-news","tag-news","tag-texas-education-agency-tea"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460547","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=460547"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/460547\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/460548"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=460547"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=460547"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=460547"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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