The Texas Education Agency is replacing the elected school boards of the Beaumont, Connally and Lake Worth school districts, Education Commissioner Mike Morath announced Thursday. 

State law allows Morath to either close a campus or appoint new leadership if at least one school in the district receives five consecutive failing grades in Texas’ academic accountability system. Each of the districts met that threshold. 

Pending appeals, the commissioner plans to replace each district’s school board with a state-selected board of managers. Morath will also appoint a conservator with governing authority over current district and campus leaders during the transition, which typically takes several months to complete. 

The education agency will solicit applications from local community members interested in joining each district’s board of managers. Morath will also appoint superintendents to lead the districts. 

The takeovers add to the growing list of districts subject to state interventions, which also includes two of Texas’ largest: Fort Worth and Houston. The Fort Worth school board has said it plans to appeal the commissioner’s decision, which was in October. 

The education agency said in August that five school districts were at of intervention after enduring five consecutive years of unsatisfactory ratings. Since then, it has announced plans to take over four of them: Fort Worth, Lake Worth, Connally and Beaumont. Morath has not said whether he plans to intervene in the fifth district, Wichita Falls. 

Each of the schools that triggered takeovers in the Beaumont, Connally and Lake Worth districts educates a majority Black and Hispanic student population, and the overwhelming majority of their children come from low-income families.

Lake Worth’s Marilyn Miller Language Academy triggered the intervention in that district. In letters informing the districts about the takeovers, Morath noted that during the latest round of accountability ratings, all but one of Lake Worth’s six campuses earned failing grades. Meanwhile, five campuses have received unacceptable ratings for more than a year, while only 22% of students are meeting grade level across all subjects. 

Lake Worth school district leaders were acutely aware of the challenges facing the school district leading up to the takeover, said Superintendent Mark Ramirez, who was hired this year. Ramirez said the district has focused on addressing the challenges facing each campus, which should serve as a foundation for the incoming board of managers to build upon. 

“Our preparation ensures zero instructional loss for our children,” Ramirez said. 

The Connally district had two campuses that met the state’s takeover threshold: Connally Junior High and Connally Elementary. Since the 2022-23 school year, the number of campuses with academically unacceptable scores in the district has doubled, Morath noted. Only 24% of students in the district are meeting grade level. The junior high improved from an F to a D in the most recent ratings. 

In a statement, the Connally district thanked the efforts of Superintendent Jill Bottelberghe in boosting academic performance in recent years but acknowledged the need for improvements. 

“We recognize that there is still work that needs to be done,” the statement said. “It is our hope that the appointed Board of Managers will work to not only improve our district’s academic performance, but also serve our community with the same passion and sincerity as our Board of Trustees has.”

ML King Middle School and Fehl-Price Elementary in the Beaumont district have also endured five consecutive years of failing grades. The commissioner cited data showing that the elementary school has never earned an acceptable rating, while the middle school has gone 11 years without one. The district has seven campuses with unacceptable ratings for more than a year and has not earned an overall acceptable rating since 2019. Thirty percent of students in the district are meeting grade level. 

Thomas Sigee Sr., president of the Beaumont school board, said the district had sought to help its struggling campuses — including by with charter schools — but ultimately could not lift them up to state standards. He questioned why the commissioner opted to take over the entire district instead of shutting down the schools. 

“We could have closed the schools for a year and facilitated those students to other campuses and go forward,” Sigee said. “I didn’t want the takeover because I knew it would spread chaos in our community.” 

If the decision is finalized, it would mark the second time the state has placed the Beaumont district under its oversight. The education agency did so from 2014-2020 due to financial mismanagement. 

Each of the three districts will have opportunities later this month to attend an informal hearing with the commissioner to make their appeals. If Morath stands by his decision to intervene, they can then formally appeal to the State Office of Administrative Hearings. 

Takeovers were once rare in Texas, but they have grown more common in the last decade, thanks to that made it easier for the state to step in after five consecutive F grades. It also expanded the commissioner’s ability to initiate special investigations, which could lead to an intervention. 

That A-F grading system is on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, a standardized exam that lawmakers voted this year to replace in 2027. 

Before 2015, El Paso experienced the only academic takeover in Texas, due to a widespread . Since the law’s passage, the education agency has officially taken over three districts because of low academic performance: Marlin, Shepherd and Houston. 

Morath and state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles believe the Houston ISD intervention was warranted, and they tout as evidence the improved test scores in the two years since it started. Students have improved in every tested subject. None of the district’s campuses received an F on the state’s accountability ratings in the 2024-25 school year, a drastic improvement from the 56 underperforming campuses in 2022-23. 

But the intervention has also run into strong criticism. Teacher departures have . Thousands of students have . And improved test scores have that the district has accomplished its gains, in part, because of a hyperfocus on testing and moving students into less rigorous math and science classes.

Stephen Simpson, Jess Huff and Alex Nguyen contributed to this report.

This first appeared on .

Mike Miles, the superintendent appointed by the state in the summer to turn around the Houston Independent School District, said Saturday he would need the next four to five years to put it on the right path.

“We have to build a culture of high performance,” he said during a Texas Tribune Festival panel. “This is a long-term proposition to change culture. Culture is changed over time.”

He presented himself as single-minded in his goal to improve educational outcomes in Houston ISD, saying he’s acting quickly so students don’t lose more time and he can bring back the democratically-elected school board.

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“I’m trying to do this as fast as we can, but I’m not sure we can do it overnight,” he said.

During the event, Miles said he expects about 70 schools to receive a D or F in the state’s accountability system from an A-F scale, which takes into account state test scores. One of his main tasks at the district’s helm will be to change that: He’s required to ensure none of the schools receive a failing grade in multiple consecutive years.

He also gave himself a deadline to start producing results.

“If we don’t start to see the needle move in two years, you should fire me,” he said. “That’s accountability.”

Miles said lack of accountability is a problem in the educator profession. One of the ways he wants to hold educators accountable is by tying compensation to classroom outcomes. Teacher unions say that’s an unfair and ineffective way to gauge teacher performance since test scores are just a snapshot of what children learn throughout the year and may not reflect their true academic achievement.

Several Houston ISD teachers and community members have criticized him for his “my way or the highway” approach. He doubled down Saturday, saying those working in the district who don’t like his changes can choose to leave.

“If they don’t want to work in that kind of culture, they need to make the decisions that’s right for them,” he said.

Miles has been at the helm of Houston ISD for four months and has wasted no time implementing his vision, facing criticism for the abruptness and rigidity of his plan. Since taking over in June, more than 80 campuses have been placed under his so-called “,” which he describes as an “innovative staffing model that puts the focus on classroom instruction and improved student outcomes.”

The state’s takeover of Houston ISD was in response to years of poor academic outcomes at a single campus in the district, Phillis Wheatley High School; allegations of misconduct against school board members; and the ongoing presence of a conservator who’s been overseeing the district for years. Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath has said state law required his agency to respond by either closing Wheatley or appointing a new board to oversee the district.

Many parents and teachers have criticized the system as a one-size-fits-all approach that doesn’t bode well for students who learn differently. Educators are tasked with following a strict teaching schedule prepared by district leadership in an effort to save them time they usually spend preparing curriculum. Teachers say the district’s plans limit their ability to adapt their lessons and often need to be corrected.

Miles also converted some of Houston ISD’s libraries to discipline areas and reassigned librarians, which drew the ire of several panel attendees who defended libraries as an important part of a child’s development.

But Miles said the bad experiences some attendees described were purely anecdotal and framed them as examples of the “status quo” thinking prevalent in the state’s education system.

“We can’t keep doing the same things,” he said.

This article originally appeared in , a member-supported, nonpartisan newsroom informing and engaging Texans on state politics and policy. Learn more at texastribune.org.

The upcoming takeover of the Houston Independent School District by the Texas Education Agency is a bold action necessitated by a state law requiring that, in the case of persistently underperforming schools, the state intervene either by directly closing the campus or by implementing a temporary, districtwide governance replacement. The state has chosen the latter — a big intervention for a state agency.

There is a lot to be said about the move, the laws that triggered it, and the roles and intent of all those involved. I know this as someone who was on the ground as a teacher in New Orleans before and after Hurricane Katrina, when the state’s Recovery School District was created; as a founding member and former deputy superintendent of Tennessee’s state-run school district; and as a systems innovation consultant who eventually got the full-circle experience of helping support the reunification of the state and local school districts in New Orleans in 2017.

These are each highly scrutinized and studied efforts, and yet the lessons learned don’t deliver a clear roadmap for state intervention.

I’ve learned a lot — from parent power to policy levers — about the potential for a huge impact and unintended consequences when a state intervenes in a district. With the June 1 date set, it is time now to lay the groundwork for a strategy that goes beyond a temporary fix. Those at the state, school and community levels do not need to see eye-to-eye, but they must get below the storm on the surface to create the conditions for success on behalf of the students impacted. Doing so requires shifting relationships and power for parents and students, the system and the broader community. 

The tools to transform schools and reimagine districts lie in how they work, not just what they do. The “how” matters both on an interpersonal level and in how solutions are generated. As the Texas Education Agency develops and prepares to execute its intervention strategy in Houston, here are some lessons learned from previous bold state interventions that I hope can inform this big Texas move in a way that improves schools and the system it operates in, with student and family voices at the center.

Understand the Challenge

Schools are a multigenerational effort and experience. While the state may have access to a wide range of historical data and analytics, the experiences of those in a school community — both within and outside the building — are key to understanding the real and perceived challenges of a persistently struggling school. Understanding challenges requires more than just an academic, curricular or performance lens. State leaders must make time to truly engage with the community, not for a broad listening tour or to share slideshows about the intervention, but to actively hear and empathize with the students, caregivers, community leaders and the school and district staff impacted. This can shine a light on ways that policies and programs designed to help might not make it to the classroom; lift up and engage great talent and partners who possess potential parts of the solution; and learn what “success” and aspirations the broader school community has for its kids. This empathy work is a front-end investment of time. A state team that is impatient for action (usually a positive), can get shortsighted when it comes to understanding the root causes of the challenge and planning to address them effectively. Any strategy that roots itself in analytics without empathy is void of the context needed to successfully and collaboratively implement an intervention strategy.

Move at the Pace of  the Agency’s Capacity

When intervening in a district, state-level leaders must be sure to have the capacity to truly execute their plan. Considerations include ensuring that:

1. The state agency’s team does not take on too many roles too quickly (e.g., school operator, regulator, support provider, coalition builder)
   
2. Implementation scales at a speed that doesn’t outpace the skills and capacity of leadership and local talent, forging of a political constituency or community support
   
3. The state is only one of multiple partners bringing together local talent, various school operators and nonprofit organizations as a coalition to support the intervention with shared purpose and collaboration.

Developing a shared vision for success rooted in the aspirations of the community, via building state-level capacity and local partnerships, can help set and attain clear, sustainable instructional goals.

Create Shared Understanding and Ownership

Elevating student and parent voices is key to unlocking school transformations and systems change throughout and beyond the state’s involvement. Carrots and sticks from the state will not be enough to shift the school and district behaviors and mindsets necessary to sustain any positive changes and impacts that come from the intervention. Those who were in the school community before state intervention must be a key part of determining what elements already in place can be part of a successful transformation of the school. Further, they will help identify needed district-level changes critical to supporting school change and sustaining the work after state intervention ends. This shared ownership must come with the humility to learn from all those in the community, share accountability for walking the walk of systems change in a way that builds authentic relationships and allows diverse perspectives  to be incorporated in the solutions-finding process.

For state intervention to make a real, lasting difference for students and families, the state, school, families and broader community must all work together to find and keep the right people engaged in developing and implementing solutions, and to make adjustments so the district will sustain positive changes. The Texas Education Agency’s existing work to make more strategic, with an emphasis on managing school performance and expanding quality school options; equip them with better data; ensure high-quality instructional materials are in use; and help expand local talent pipelines creates an opportunity to build an intervention approach that combines the best of state strategies with the wisdom of those impacted by state-, district- and school-level decisionmaking.

Transforming chronically struggling schools, which typically reside in marginalized and underinvested communities, is a moral imperative bestowed upon those taking action. Ultimately, it is the opportunities of the students, now and into the future, that will determine the intervention’s success.

The agency from Houston residents who are interested in serving on a board of managers that is expected to take control of the 190,000-student school system no earlier than June 1. Morath is also expected to name a new superintendent to replace Millard House II, who was appointed in June 2021.     

In a letter to district leaders and with the Houston Landing, Morath said he has three priorities for the new leaders he will appoint. He wants the managers, who he said will serve indefinitely, to improve conditions in Houston’s lowest-performing schools — some of which have failed to meet state standards for more than a decade. He wants them to concentrate on the district’s ongoing struggles to provide special education services to students with disabilities. And he said he wants his appointees “ on improving student outcomes, and not something else.” 

“Even with governance challenges, many students are flourishing in Houston ISD schools, due in no small part to the extraordinary work of the district’s teachers and staff,” Morath noted in his letter. “In fact, Houston ISD operates some of the highest-performing schools in the state of Texas. But district procedures have also allowed it to operate schools where the support provided to students is not adequate.”

Besides academic performance, a state investigator’s finding that some members of a previous Houston ISD board had engaged in irregularities was a factor cited by education officials when they first announced they were stepping in in late 2019. A state court put the takeover on hold pending the outcome of a district lawsuit that charged Morath was acting improperly.        

In January, the Texas Supreme Court lifted the injunction, ruling that Morath was complying with the law by intervening. Last week, eight of Houston’s nine elected board members voted not to continue the legal challenge.

“This is certainly not a situation that anybody aspires to when they run for office,” said Sue Deigaard, who was elected to the school board in 2017. “I believe that right now what kids need is for the community to support this district and its ambitions to improve learning outcomes for all students, especially our historically underserved students. And to offer that support no matter who is sitting at the table.” 

A second board member, Kendall Baker, acknowledged the district’s recent struggles to Houston’s ABC affiliate, KTRK. “What has occurred in the past has got us in a little trouble,” he conceded. 

In the weeks that followed the court’s order, local groups led by the Houston Federation of Teachers protested, insisting the takeover was a pretext by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott to “further his public school privatization agenda.”

However, the law requiring Morath to intervene when local leaders would not was a bipartisan creation. Indeed, two current school board members have ties to Democratic state lawmakers who voted in favor of the policy.

Written by a Black Houston Democrat, Rep. Harold Dutton Jr., the 2015 takeover law was intended specifically to prod the district — now the eighth-largest in the nation — to invest in a number of deeply impoverished schools. Because locally elected boards often resist making bold changes, the law requires state education officials to act when one or more schools in a district have earned failing grades on state report cards for more than four consecutive years. 

Under the law, when a school earned a fifth “F” from the state, education officials had to choose one of two actions: Close the program in question or take over the district’s board. In 2017, as the first embattled districts realized they were staring down that deadline, lawmakers created an alternative.

A district could forestall sanctions for two years by turning the failing schools over to a nonprofit partner for a reboot. Because the eligible nonprofits included public charter school networks, and because the partners, which could also include universities and community groups, would control staffing, the teachers union protested.

Houston was supposed to meet the five-year trigger point for state sanctions in 2017. But because of damage from Hurricane Harvey, Morath granted a one-year reprieve. Simultaneously, school board members were supposed to notify the state whether the district would take advantage of the law’s new flexibility by seeking partners to run their lowest-performing schools.

A number of civic organizations had offered proposals to operate specific schools, but the meeting where the possibility was to be considered ended with board members — some of whom wanted to “send a signal” to the state by refusing to choose — deadlocked. At the same time, state investigations found past board members violated open meeting laws and engaged in contracting irregularities. 

Two years later, following another round of “F” grades for struggling schools and damning findings of board misconduct by state investigators, Morath formally notified the Houston district that the state was stripping the elected board of its authority and appointing a board of managers in its place. District leaders sued.

Evidence on the effectiveness of state takeovers of failing school systems is mixed, but the policies being tested in Houston are unique, said Ashley Jochim, a principal at the Center on Reinventing Public Education. Texas law gives Morath’s appointed board of managers the flexibility to take advantage of a number of policies pinpointing specific interventions.

“Having a menu of options allows them to tailor the solutions to the job,” she says. “It’s where they depart from other states.”

Before he was appointed state education commissioner in 2016, Morath spent two terms on the Dallas Independent School District board. There, he championed a combination of school-level reforms — many of them now part of a model known as Accelerating Campus Excellence — that enjoyed some success. He has promoted those tactics as head of the Texas Education Agency, along with efforts that showed promise in other districts, including engaging outside nonprofits to run underperforming schools.

In San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth and other communities where those strategies have borne early fruit, they have enjoyed enough centrist support to fend off the kinds of protests that have racked Houston in recent years. Still, local leaders say Morath would be wise to select a new superintendent who can generate the good will the temporary, appointed leaders will need if their reforms are to succeed.