A Floridian who briefly led one of the nation’s largest school districts will captain Fort Worth ISD while it is under state control.

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath appointed longtime Florida educator Peter B. Licata as FWISD’s new leader. Licata, who served as Broward County Public Schools superintendent for less than a year, is now charged with driving rapid academic gains for FWISD’s nearly 68,000 students.

He is Fort Worth’s fourth superintendent in as many years and comes to a district facing similar challenges he faced in Florida.

Alongside the new superintendent, Morath named nine managers who essentially replaced the district’s locally elected trustees. The managers assume governing authority over the district’s nearly $1 billion budget, buildings and what children learn.

Licata served as superintendent of the 236,263-student Broward County Public Schools for 10 months starting in 2023. He resigned and stepped away from day-to-day leadership over health concerns.

Licata spent nearly three decades working in Florida schools, primarily in Palm Beach County, where he rose from classroom teacher and coach to principal and district leader.

After taking the Broward job, he described his approach to equal opportunity as ensuring students receive additional support without lowering academic expectations.

“You can’t raise the floor by lowering the ceiling,” he said in .

Broward students saw modest increases in proficiency rates during Licata’s tenure during the 2023-24 school year. His superintendency occurred alongside  that measures progress at the beginning, middle and end of the year.

Palm Beach saw its proficiency rates stay relatively flat between 2015 and 2023 — the time he was in central administration, according to data from the Florida Department of Education.

He served as that district’s regional superintendent overseeing dozens of schools and was part of the leadership focused on improving academic outcomes across a large, diverse student population. Palm Beach County Schools serves roughly 185,000 students.

Hispanic students make up 38.5% of Palm Beach’s enrollment, while Black students make up 28.1% and white students 27%.

Broward County’s enrollment was nearly 40% Latino, 38% Black and 15% white.

Nearly two-thirds of Fort Worth ISD students are Latino, with Black students at 18.6% and white students at 11.3%.

English language learners comprise 18.2% of the Palm Beach district and 14% in Broward. In Fort Worth, they account for 42% of students.

Nearly 4 in 5 FWISD students are from low-income families. Just over half of Broward students are low income, while Palm Beach has 66%.

Licata emphasized student achievement in public statements throughout his career, often pointing to measurable goals — such as improving district academic accountability ratings and expanding access to advanced coursework.

Fort Worth ISD has been on a downward academic trajectory since 2016, when 57% of students were proficient across all subjects — and within striking distance of the state’s rate. In 2025, 34% of students were proficient across all subjects, a 4 percentage-point gain from the previous year.

Licata holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Miami, a master’s degree from Barry University and a doctorate in global leadership from Lynn University.

His tenure in Broward County was short and unfolded in a district already dealing with instability.

The Broward School Board hired him in summer 2023 after a national search, looking for steadier leadership in a district that had cycled through superintendents and public conflict in the years before his arrival.

Board members approved a three-year contract with a $350,000 base salary and up to $20,000 in performance bonuses tied to academics and progress on the school system’s long-delayed bond program.

His contract negotiations drew public debate. Broward board members rejected Licata’s request for a higher bar to remove him without cause, kept the termination threshold at a simple majority and required him to move from Palm Beach County into Broward.

Licata took over the nation’s sixth-largest school district promising to help Broward regain an A rating from the state and bring steadier leadership to the system.

Less than a year later, in April 2024, he announced his retirement, citing health reasons. He said he reached the decision after discussions with his doctors, his wife and his four adult children.

After Licata announced his plans, the Broward trustees voted the same day to replace him immediately with a deputy superintendent. The speed of that transition drew scrutiny in South Florida as some felt the move was staged and others criticized the lack of transparency, .

Trustees ultimately rejected a consulting arrangement with Licata and reduced his salary for his final weeks before his employment ended July 1, 2024.

His exit came as Broward was dealing with possible campus closures tied to long-term enrollment declines, charter school funding disputes and broader questions about district governance and finances, .

His appointment in Fort Worth comes at a similar moment of transition.

Morath ordered the takeover of Fort Worth ISD in October after one campus received five consecutive failing academic ratings under the state’s accountability system.

As superintendent, Licata will lead the district under state oversight, working alongside the managers and conservator appointed by the commissioner.

That role carries significant authority — and pressure.

The new superintendent is tasked with improving academic outcomes across Fort Worth schools, where reading and math performance have lagged behind state averages for years.

Licata steps into a district where roughly one-third of students read on grade level and slightly more than a quarter meet expectations in math, according to recent state testing data.

Fort Worth ISD faces much uncertainty as parents, teachers and community leaders raise concerns over potential employee turnover, changes to instruction and the loss of local control as the state assumes authority over the district.

At the same time, some education and business leaders say the state intervention could bring needed urgency and focus to improving student outcomes.

Licata has not previously worked in Texas schools.

Jacob Sanchez is education editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or .

Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or .

A record five Texas school districts are now at risk of the state replacing their democratically-elected school board with the latest release of school performance ratings.

Connally, Lake Worth, Beaumont, Wichita Falls and Fort Worth school districts have all amassed five consecutive failing grades at one or more of its campuses, the threshold to trigger state action, a Texas Education Agency spokesperson confirmed with The Texas Tribune on Friday.

TEA Commissioner Mike Morath has made no decisions yet on the future of these districts, the spokesperson said. The state could also order the underperforming schools to shut down instead of replacing school district boards.

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The state has replaced a district’s school board and superintendent with a board of managers about 10 times since 2000.

The record high number of districts at risk of sanctions comes from three years’ worth of ratings released this year — for the 2023-24 school year and the 2024-25 school year on Friday and in April.

A ruling from a state appeals court last month cleared the state to make the scores public, overturning a lower court decision that had tied the state’s hands from releasing ratings for years. A similar ruling from the same high court freed the state to release ratings for the 2022-23 school year in the spring.

Connally ISD’s Connally Elementary School and Lake Worth ISD’s Marilyn Miller Language Academy reached the threshold for state sanctions when ratings were released for the most recent school year.

After years of underperformance at Kirby Middle School, Wichita Falls ISD closed the campus and . That alone won’t be enough to stop TEA from stepping in.

At Fort Worth ISD, Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade shut down before TEA released its fifth F rating. District leaders initially believed they weren’t at risk of a takeover but Morath said in a letter the closure . A district spokesperson has told they intend to appeal the rating.

Schools have an option to enter a partnership with a charter school network to avoid state sanctions. Beaumont ISD entered such a partnership with Third Future Schools for one of its struggling campuses, Fehl Price Elementary. For its second struggling campus, Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, the board of trustees in 2024.

The Beaumont school district has faced state intervention before. About a decade ago, the state stepped in after a series of financial scandals. The districts only regained local control in 2020.

Most recently, TEA took over control of Houston ISD, the largest district in the state. Its state-appointed superintendent Mike Miles has had a controversial tenure — boasting that came at the cost of and .

The Texas Tribune partners with Open Campus on education pathways coverage.

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

Providence will get its schools back from state control, Rhode Island’s education commissioner promised Thursday night. Just not right now.

Angélica Infante-Green, commissioner of the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE), supplied her as to whether the state takeover of Providence’s public schools, which started in November 2019, should continue, at a of the Rhode Island Council on Elementary and Secondary Education.

“RIDE does not intend — and I wanna repeat that — does not intend to keep the district forever,” Infante-Green told the council.

But the state does want to hold the district close a little longer: Infante-Green advised that the council extend the state intervention through Oct.15, 2027, and it was unanimously approved by the council.

Infante-Green indicated that there was also a chance local control could return before the end of the three year period, if there’s sufficient progress in student proficiency and other stakeholders’ willingness to work in tandem with RIDE. That didn’t mollify the Providence School Board, the mayor’s office or the City Council, all of whom noted their disappointment in statements following the meeting. 

A premature end to the takeover extension would require council approval, the council’s chair Patricia DiCenso confirmed to reporters after the meeting. But it would not necessitate that the district fulfills everything outlined in the state’s “turnaround action plan” — the guiding set of metrics used to evaluate the takeover’s success. 

During the meeting, a pair of old wooden chairs helped Infante-Green illustrate why the state takeover of Providence public schools isn’t ready to end. 

She motioned to the scratched, chipped and dented seats, which were staged against a wall in an education department conference room. The councilors spun around to look. The chairs once belonged to the auditorium in Providence’s , which first underwent state intervention back in the 2000s and initially saw gains in problem areas before within a few years.

The chairs are normally stationed outside the commissioner’s office — a reminder, she said, of the need to see things through for students.

“It reminds me that we cannot fail them yet again,” Infante-Green said. “The importance of the symbolism of Hope High School is the cautionary example of what happens when the state leaves too early.”

State control not unique

When Infante-Green , the day two progress reports on the takeover were released, she said that all three options — end, continue or revise the takeover — were “still on the table.” 

showed post-pandemic progress in Providence schools compared to similar districts in other New England states. But anyone who read , from education consulting firm SchoolWorks, might have surmised that the school system is nowhere near reaching its turnaround goals.

One example: In the 2022-2023 school year, eighth-graders’ math proficiency was at 6%, which was one percentage point lower than the pre-takeover baseline numbers from 2018. The turnaround action plan wanted 50% proficiency in math by 2026.

In five years, the Providence takeover has drawn much media and legislative attention — including a study commission led by Sen. Sam Zurier, a Providence Democrat and education committee member who often reminisces fondly at state house meetings about his own time in Providence schools. The commission’s in May, concluded that a more lasting solution for the Providence takeover could derive inspiration from other states, like the in Massachusetts that nullified “the threat of an imminent state takeover” with new arrangements for collective bargaining and shared governance of schools.

As Zurier’s commission found, history indeed repeats, and the Providence takeover is . State control has been tested to varied results in school districts big and small. The state of Texas took over in 2023, a big experiment given that the district serves over 194,000 students, a lot more than Providence’s approximately 22,000 students. came under state control in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, and the city has since transitioned to a distinct model of charter-only education. Even in Rhode Island, Providence’s neighbor Central Falls has had its schools under state control for . The Providence Public Schools building on Westminster Street is where the Providence School Board meets. But the board’s powers have been delimited since the state takeover in 2019, rendering some of their actions — like an Aug. 21, 2024, resolution to end the takeover — statutorily toothless. (Alexander Castro/Rhode Island Current)

Underperformance and funding tend to underline the decision to seize control of a municipal school district. Subpar education in Providence was a salient argument in the that predated the takeover: “The great majority of students are not learning on, or even near, grade level,” the report stated.

Rhode Island’s annual proficiency assessments for third- and eighth-grade students will be released this fall, but the recent SchoolWorks data suggests that underperformance is still the norm. 

Tepid reception to takeover

Before the council voted on the commissioner’s recommendation, chair DiCenso pointed to funding as the foremost challenge.

“When this district went into control, they were listed as the worst in the country,” DiCenso said. “And I don’t think it was the families’ fault. I don’t think it was the children’s fault. I don’t think it was the teachers’ fault. I look back at 17 years, or at least 10-plus years, of level funding, no funding from this city to say ‘We believe in our schools.’”

“We just can’t pretend that it’s all about what’s happening at the building level and at the district level,” DiCenso said.

Michael Grey, who chairs the state Board of Education, seemed content with the turnaround plan’s potential for accountability.

“I also think that this is incumbent upon the commissioner, because the weight of this is on her, statutorily, and on us as advisers to be the one that makes the call,” Grey said.

That contrasted the opinion of the Providence School Board, who voted unanimously last Thursday to pass a resolution urging the commissioner to end the takeover — a motion as symbolic as the chairs outside Infante-Green’s office, given that the state takeover has stripped away most of the municipal body’s powers. 

“I have felt, and I think I can speak for some of my board members, completely powerless,” said board member Anjel Newmann last week. “And if we feel powerless, how do our students and families feel? … No shade to the commissioner [but] I want to see the district come back to a community, into a collective, and not be subject to one person’s veto power.”

School board President Erlin Rogel reaffirmed that viewpoint in an email Thursday after the council vote, and called the continued takeover “disappointing” — a sentiment shared by Providence Mayor Brett Smiley and City Council President Rachel Miller.

“We have also heard from families, teachers and our own city departments that there is still a lot of room for improvement in fostering a climate of collaboration and community that is required to move the district forward on a timeline that our students deserve,” Smiley and Miller offered in a joint statement Thursday, and added that they were “disappointed by the recommendation.”

Speaking to reporters after the meeting, Infante-Green characterized her decision as a positive one for Providence students and families.

“This is about supporting the district in a way that could not happen,” she said. “That is the bottom line. I think we all know that mayor after mayor after mayor has tried. I think this mayor’s putting some processes in place, but there’s a lot of work that still needs to happen.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

By the time Providence public school students go back to class on Sept. 3, Rhode Island’s education commissioner may have chosen whether to end, continue, or reconfigure the state takeover of their schools five years ago.

A from consulting firm SchoolWorks on the 2019 action that handed control of the capital city’s underperforming schools over to the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE) could help guide Commissioner of Education Angélica Infante-Green in making her decision.

“I have not ruled out any options,” Infante-Green said Friday morning. “I’m letting the process play out.”

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Infante-Green shared and summarized the findings in a letter to the Providence Public Schools District (PPSD) community before taking questions from reporters at RIDE’s main offices in downtown Providence.

“This is about 30, 35, years of struggle for this district, and it’s not going to be fixed overnight,” Infante-Green told reporters. “We talk about it as a big ship with a little rudder … in a hurricane. That’s how it was happening during the pandemic.”

Math and English test scores from the 2022-2023 school year show just how far the district has to go to achieve the academic goals prescribed in its “.” For example, among eighth-graders, only 6% were at grade level in math, and 15% were proficient in English Language Arts (ELA).

Compared to the 2018, pre-takeover baseline, eighth-graders’ math proficiency dropped one percentage point. The turnaround action plan called for 50% proficiency in math and 63% in ELA for eighth-graders by the 2026 school year.

Victor Morente, a RIDE spokesperson, told reporters the commissioned report — with its $120,600 sticker price — is a statutory of the takeover process. The Crowley Act, codified in state law in 1997, allowed state education officials to exercise administrative powers over Providence’s underperforming schools.

“There has been progress in the hurricane, in the pandemic,” Infante-Green said.

SchoolWorks students, families, teachers and leadership across schools, the district, Mayor Brett Smiley’s office and Providence City Councilors about how well the plan has fared. The research team also visited schools and reviewed documents from some of the many stakeholders involved: RIDE, Providence Public Schools Department, the city and its school board.

“City Council members, School Committee members, and community members reported a need for improved collaboration, communication, and transparency between municipal entities including RIDE, the School Committee, and PPSD,” the report reads.

Absent from that list is the state’s Council on Elementary and Secondary Education, to whom Infante-Green could supply her decision at their next meeting on Aug. 29. The commissioner is also set to attend the Providence school board’s .

Another report released Friday from Harvard Graduate School for Education’s Center for Education Policy Research didn’t cost the state anything, but is part of a series of assessments being done for various school districts on the impacts of pandemic learning loss. The report compares the state’s recent school reforms to similar districts in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

“Although the results suggest Providence is moving in the right direction, especially in ELA [English Language Arts], it is too early to draw conclusions about the efficacy of the Providence reform efforts,” the Harvard report noted. “The pandemic disrupted schooling in the Spring of 2020, just months after the state take-over. We only have two years of reliable student assessments post-pandemic (and a single year change in annual scores) by which to judge.”

‘A lot of material’

The plight of Providence schools has been on people’s minds, with a recent legislative study commission led by Sen. Sam Zurier, a Providence Democrat, attempting to suss out what can be done about the at-times awkward coupling of municipal and state-level leadership.

Asked to comment on the pair of reports Friday afternoon, Zurier told Rhode Island Current that they contain “a lot of material,” and he’d be reviewing them over the weekend.

Zurier’s reticence to comment too quickly is understandable: At a combined 89 letter-sized pages, the two reports are not light reading. Even the authors of the Harvard University report concluded that they were working with data perhaps that lacks definite shape.

Erlin Rogel, president of the Providence School Board, didn’t need as much time to assess the new report.

“RIDE commissioning a progress report is like a student filling in their own report card,” Rogel wrote in an emailed statement sent to news outlets, claiming the agency has “roundly rejected” the school board’s attempts to be included in the decision-making process.

Rogel also argued that the report’s assertion that the school board does not act cohesively, and even lacks a “shared vision for governance,” echoes “RIDE’s belief that the Board exists to silently rubber stamp their agenda.”

“I am no longer surprised by RIDE’s rejection of attempts to hold the agency accountable to the people, but I am deeply concerned by their lack of self awareness,” wrote Rogel, who did not immediately reply Friday afternoon to a request to answer follow-up questions.

But the SchoolWorks report does voice some of the board’s concerns: “School committee members also stated that they are not consistently engaged by the Superintendent or senior leaders from PPSD regarding programmatic changes, nor are they engaged in an advisory capacity regarding analysis of student outcomes.”

The report does not evaluate individual job performances or personnel — like that of Infante-Green, or of Providence Superintendent Javier Moñtanez, who recently signed a three-year contract extension with the district. A copy of the contract was not immediately available Friday afternoon.

“The report is evaluating the system,” Infante-Green told reporters, pointing to the report’s drill down into metrics and standards as markers of the superintendent’s work.

According to the , the firm has worked with education officials in Colorado, Chicago, Louisiana and Massachusetts. Kim Perron, president of Schoolworks, said in an email that the company would not be providing any comments, and directed questions to RIDE.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Rhode Island Current maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janine L. Weisman for questions: info@rhodeislandcurrent.com. Follow Rhode Island Current on and .

In a city renowned for its colleges and universities, Boston Public Schools earned its own acclaim in recent years as an innovative, fast-improving hub of K-12 excellence. Situated in the birthplace of American public education, and combining generous funding with a thriving charter school sector, the district was held up for over a decade as a model of urban education reform. 

But as the 2021-2022 school year draws to a close, those past accolades seem as distant as the days of Horace Mann. Amid plummeting enrollment, persistent achievement gaps, and a nasty COVID hangover, Boston faces perhaps the greatest educational crisis since its scarring experience with desegregation in the 1970s. And in the weeks to come, the city may lose more than its national luster.

In March, Massachusetts Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley of the state of the district. Both local and national experts wondered openly whether the review, which follows a , was the first step toward a complete takeover of the region’s largest school district. In the months since, of bad press has done nothing to quiet speculation.

The audit, released Monday, provided the latest sign that state authorities are strongly considering action. Despite making improvements in a few areas, the reviewers found, “the district has failed to effectively serve its most vulnerable students, carry out basic operational functions, and address systemic barriers to providing an equitable, quality education.” The situation called for “immediate improvement,” they concluded.

The prospect of receivership (as takeovers are known locally) is hardly unprecedented in Massachusetts, which allows its education department greater latitude to reshape failing school districts than most state authorities elsewhere. But the structural problems facing Boston cast doubt on whether such an effort can be successful.

For three decades, the district has operated substantially under mayoral control, and newly elected Mayor Michelle Wu has already made clear her opposition to state intervention. Republican Gov. Charlie Baker — an education reform ally whose tenure has seen several takeovers — will soon be leaving office, likely to make way for a Democratic successor with sharply different views.

Wu told the that she met with Baker and Riley Friday and that they are still working on an agreement “that will set the district up for success.”

“A lot of what is in the review matches with what our school communities and administrators have been calling for, in how urgently we need to focus on BPS and our young people, and in the need for strong, effective leadership,” she said.

Cara Candal, a senior fellow at , said it was ambiguous whether Riley was leaning toward receivership or a somewhat less drastic approach. While significant obstacles existed, she said the recently completed review demonstrated that “kids aren’t learning, and many are unsafe in school.”

Candal, who calling a takeover Boston’s “best hope” for revival, said her takeaway was that things were “as bad as expected in some places and worse in others. In my opinion, the report underscores that the state needs to move with some urgency to provide BPS with the structures, support, and accountability necessary to effect change … There is a window for the state to act now, and I hope it will.” 

Ultimately, the audit called for “bold, student-centered decision-making and strong execution” to reverse what it described as the district’s “entrenched dysfunction.” What that means in practice is difficult to predict. The Massachusetts Board of Elementary and Secondary Education is expected to deal with the report’s findings at its regular meeting on Tuesday morning.

But Ross Wilson, executive director of the Boston-based Shah Family Foundation, said Massachusetts should consider multiple options for intervention instead of duplicating the takeovers of major districts that have taken place in other states.

“Our state and city have the opportunity to do things differently,” Wilson argued in an email. “We should think creatively, collaboratively, and with urgency about the support and accountability necessary to serve the students of Boston.”

‘A steady stream of negative reports’

Few share Wilson’s historical perspective on the highs and lows of Boston Public Schools. A former kindergarten teacher, school principal, and central office administrator, he finished his career with the district in 2017 as deputy superintendent.

That long tenure gave him an inside look at Boston’s ascent in the late-1990s and 2000s as a district known for continuity and rising performance. The schools were overseen for over a decade by Superintendent Tom Payzant, who placed and enjoyed a strong partnership with the city’s similarly long-serving mayor, Tom Menino. By the end of his tenure, Payzant was frequently named as one of America’s best schools chiefs, and the district the prestigious Broad Prize for excellence in urban education. As measured by the National Assessment of Academic Progress, the academic growth of Boston students that of students in other major districts during this time.

The momentum carried on for several years after Payzant’s departure but eventually began to stall. A major culprit was churn: Including interim appointments, Boston has named four superintendents since 2012. Fast turnover has also extended to the bureaucracy — between 2016 and 2019, the district, and less than 12 percent stayed in the same role — and even to the mayor-appointed school committee, which over the last few years.

Wilson remembered that the strategy for governing both traditional K-12 schools and their more autonomous counterparts (the district operates over 20 “pilot schools” that enjoy greater flexibility in hiring, setting budgets, and choosing curriculum) had “shifted from superintendent to superintendent,” leading to “overall confusion.”

The result of Commissioner Riley’s first review was a highly critical document that pointed to “staggering” rates of student absenteeism; in all, close to one-in-three Boston students attended schools that ranked in the bottom 10 percent across the state. In response, the city joined in a “memorandum of understanding” with Riley’s state education department in March 2020, pledging to turn around achievement in underperforming schools, diversify its workforce, and revamp its oft-troubled system of school transportation. 

But the memorandum went into effect at almost the exact same time that the city’s schools first closed due to COVID-19, not to reopen for fully in-person learning for over a year. As in most of the country, test scores tumbled dramatically during the pandemic. Since students returned to classes, however, Boston has also been plagued by constant bad press, including several of against school employees; at a K-8 school that the school committee voted to close; and that has left the district nearly 20 percent smaller than it when it won the Broad Prize. 

In February, Superintendent Brenda Cassellius that she would resign in June after three tumultuous years. In a letter to the school community, the Globe reported Monday, she vowed to push forward needed changes but acknowledged that “this work will require increasing staffing, operational support, and other resources, including a more robust collaboration with City departments, to ensure that we are prepared to meet all of our students’ needs.”

Paul Reville, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education who formerly served as the Massachusetts Secretary of Education, said that the search for a new superintendent came at a distinctly unpropitious moment. 

“We’re trying to attract a new superintendent at a time when we’re on the heels of two superintendencies that did not end well,” observed Reville, who receivership. “We’re facing the threat of a state takeover, we’ve got a steady stream of negative reports on the performance of the school system, and the governance system is shifting. So you might be a superintendent working for a new boss in two years.”

Top on the list of responsibilities for the next superintendent will be dealing with a daunting set of problems laid out in the state audit. Among them:

• While one-in-five local students take part in special education, that area of services “remains in disarray” two years after the 2020 review found them to be sorely wanting. Education of English learners was also highlighted for particular criticism.
• Boston is not meeting minimal standards for the delivery of essential district services, including school transportation. Late or uncovered bus routes are “significantly disrupting education for tens of thousands of students each month,” the authors wrote.
• Even the grievances identified in the audit may understate the extent of the problems because of a “pattern of inaccurate or misleading data reporting by the district.” BPS officials inflated the number of buses arriving on time, inaccurately reported the number of school bathrooms it had renovated, and possibly displayed incorrect student enrollment and withdrawal data on its public website.

Skepticism on takeovers

But if the problems facing Boston are significant, it’s not clear that receivership is the remedy.

Takeovers are among the most contentious school improvement strategies available to states. Even when launched in cities where schools have struggled to serve students for many years, they often sideline elected boards and offend both teachers and families by abrogating local control. Some scholars contend that by alienating voters — disproportionately those of color in cities like Boston — from governance of their own institutions, takeovers do more civic harm than educational good. 

What’s more, evidence of their effectiveness is somewhat scant. A 2021 study of takeovers initiated in dozens of mid-sized school districts found that, on average, they yielded no positive outcomes on test scores; in fact, the disruption of the move led to further struggles in some communities.

Reville argued that the recent history of district takeovers suggested that most states lacked the capacity or the legal scope to pursue them effectively. 

“I think our legislation gives the state more tools and more power than is the case virtually anywhere else in the country, so if you got a chance to do it, it would be in Massachusetts,” he said. “Still and all, I think the evidence from past experience suggests more modest expectations about state takeover.”

Much of the Massachusetts debate will center on the existing takeovers launched over the last decade in the long-scuffling districts of Southbridge, Holyoke, and Lawrence. None of the three school systems have yet regained control over their school systems, and all still rank among the lowest-performing in the state. Still, initial test results included in the 2021 analysis found that reading test scores had improved somewhat in both Holyoke and Lawrence. Receivership in the latter city was personally overseen by none other than Riley, whose appointment as state schools commissioner was predicated partly on the results he achieved in Lawrence.

“Although nationally we don’t have great evidence that this is a key way to improve academic achievement, it does seem like Massachusetts has a stronger track record in this area than other states at using receivership toward the ends of improving achievement,” said study coauthor Beth Schueler, a professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia.

Because of the relatively narrow time period under observation, that paper excluded the takeovers of schools in New Orleans and Newark, where student outcomes improved sizably while under state control. But in those cases, a principal tactic of improvement was the expansion of high-performing charter school networks, which came to enroll sizable portions of K-12 students across both cities. Boston is similarly home to in the country, but a statewide cap on new charter schools prevents their expansion.

“As much as I would love to say to Boston families, immediately, ‘We’re going to knock down district boundaries and make choice available to you,’ that’s not going to happen in Massachusetts,” the Pioneer Institute’s Candal said. “I think there are lessons to be learned, but we’re not going to be a Newark or a New Orleans because the other stakeholders in the state won’t allow it.”

A ticking electoral clock

The dynamics of receivership in Boston would differ from prior takeovers in at least one other aspect: Authority would be flowing away from a newly elevated leader with an unblemished record, and toward a state government that is headed for the exits.

Wu, both the first woman and first non-white person elected as Boston mayor, won the Democratic Party’s nomination in 2021 with for the district’s future. In office for just four months, she has already proposed her own “Green New Deal”: a $2 billion investment in school renovation and construction. With Superintendent Cassellius stepping down, she will soon help select BPS’s next leader, the most crucial decision facing the district in the coming months.

Wu’s outsize influence over local schools means that if receivership comes, it will be at the expense of a well-known and highly popular figure rather than the obscure members of a local school board. Wu has already demonstrated her awareness of that advantage by , alongside the head of the Boston Teachers Union, to warn against the possibility of receivership.

In a statement responding to the audit, Boston Teachers Union President Jessica Tang called the timing of the release “suspect, rushed, and ill-advised,” alleging that the state report was marred by unspecified factual errors.

“This is an opportunistic attempt to overcommit the state past the current governor’s tenure to a hostile, unhealthy and burdensome relationship with the city by bullying the new mayor into an untenable, undemocratic, and patronizing arrangement,” Tang said.

In response to the unified pushback, Schueler said she wondered how politics might influence a takeover’s effectiveness.

“Proponents of takeover often point to school board dysfunction as the source of all the problems. What do they see as the source of the problem in Boston, and is that problem going to go away with takeover? It’s not getting rid of the board in this case.”

Receivership is almost always dreaded in local communities, but in Boston, there is another wrinkle: Even while electing Wu last fall, voters also demanding a return to elected school board members. Such a move would also inevitably limit the powers of the new mayor, who has said she favors a hybrid committee including both elected and appointed members. 

Will Austin, a former charter school leader who now serves as the CEO of the nonprofit , argued that while popular opinion might be firmly set against the appointment of a state receiver, state law was unambiguous in delineating Commissioner Riley’s powers to act in struggling school districts — of which Boston is undeniably one. 

“The statute and regulations are clear and blunt,” Austin said. “ A vote by the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education decides this — nothing else.”

But the relevant actors also face a ticking clock. In November, the state’s deep-blue electorate will choose a new governor; it is widely expected that Gov. Baker, a two-term Republican, will be succeeded by a progressive Democrat cut approximately from Wu’s cloth. Whoever that person is — Attorney General Maura Healey appears to be — will have little interest in being accused of disenfranchising Wu and the voters of Boston. So while an opportunity exists to set a receivership in motion, it could disappear before long. 

In the meantime, the district continues its reemergence from the COVID era. With to be the next superintendent, Wu and the school committee could race to make a hire before the state reaches a consensus.

In response to the newly released review, Reville said the situation demanded close cooperation between Boston and the state.

“​​The report reiterates and describes problems that have persisted for a long time. The conversation needs to shift now from diagnosis to prescription. Neither the state nor the city is likely to be able to go it alone. The best chance for a remedy is a robust partnership between state and local leaders…and the political will to overcome resistance to change.”

Two years after then-Gov. Gina Raimondo announced a sweeping takeover of Providence Public Schools, citing widespread academic failure and frequently unsafe learning conditions, the city’s powerful teachers’ union is demanding a new contract and a return to local control. At the same time, state authorities are deadlocked over whether to hasten or restrict the growth of local charter schools.

The multi-pronged conflict has already scrambled traditional partisan allegiances in one of the bluest states in the country. Democrats in the legislature, including members of the leadership, a three-year moratorium on new charter schools out of the state Senate in February. The bill is still being considered in the House, though Gov. Daniel McKee — a longtime school choice advocate who ascended from the lieutenant governorship when Raimondo was tapped to become U.S. Secretary of Commerce — has already promised to veto it. And with McKee angling to fend off Democratic rivals and win a term of his own in 2022, he’ll need to walk the line between wooing urban charter supporters and alienating organized labor. Finding that delicate balance is the same challenge facing the national party, whose policy towards charter schools has been in flux for a decade.

Local pollster Joe Fleming, who has advised McKee in previous elections, said in an interview that he expected voters to judge the governor mostly by his performance in guiding Rhode Island through the vaccination and reopening process, noting that the massive infusion of federal funds from the American Rescue Plan had put him in an enviable position. But he could also face further dissension in his own ranks.

“Obviously, the General Assembly knows that if they pass it, it’s going to be vetoed by the governor,” Fleming said. “At that point, it becomes more of a political decision if they have the votes to override a veto and if they want to go that route. But the unions are really pushing the moratorium, and there are a lot of union-affiliated people in the General Assembly.”

Maureen Moakley, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Rhode Island, said the state’s past and present governors have been notable in pushing for systemic school reform. But the collision of labor woes and the campaign calendar ensure that a treacherous situation is already “coming to a head,” she added.

“It’s a small state — we don’t even have counties — and if enough people get behind [reform], it’s manageable. But a lot of people don’t want to mess with the unions, which are a large part of their base. And I think it’s going to be a dilemma for McKee because he’s not going to want to run against teachers.”

The takeover

The current standoff began in 2019, when Raimondo announced that schools in Providence would undergo a state takeover and adhere to new, ambitious performance goals. Angélica Infante-Green, the newly appointed state commissioner of schools, would lead the transformation.

It was a move that many believed was necessary. K-12 schools in Providence — not only Rhode Island’s capital, but also its largest city by far — had been among the state’s lowest-performing for decades, with only a fraction of the district’s students ranking as proficient in English or math. The move was made after the release of a damning report by investigators from Johns Hopkins University, which was commissioned by Raimondo and Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza the district’s disastrous performance on state tests.

“The state decided to take a more drastic action to fix a problem that’s been going on for generations,” said Kenneth Wong, a professor of education policy at Brown University. “It’s controversial, but there’s some key, diverse stakeholders out there that have…gotten frustrated with the pace of improvement.”

But the best-laid plans of the new regime, which began in November of that year, were almost immediately shredded by COVID-19. Almost instantly, the ambitions for improvement needed to coexist with a transition to online learning that would see of the district’s students fall into chronic absenteeism. In a fateful decision, Raimondo pushed forward with one of the most aggressive reopening policies in the country — a strategy that won her in national media, but also led to to return to virtual learning when cases started to rise before the holidays.

Labor unrest posed a separate challenge. Even before the 2020-21 school year began, the local teachers’ contract expired. Because of the takeover, the Providence Teachers’ Union entered negotiations with Infante-Green and new Providence Superintendent Harrison Peters. Months later, the opposing sides have not reached an agreement. In fact, according to Boston Globe reporter Dan McGowan, they actually , using as a mediator to shuttle proposals back and forth.

Relations between the union and education authorities had already deteriorated by late March, when the district to nearly 300 of its employees. In response, the union overwhelmingly passed a vote of no confidence in Peters and Infante-Green, and organization head Maribeth Calabro, a longtime veteran of reform battles, of lying and manipulating the public. (Calabro did not respond to a request for comment.)

In a joint statement to ����Ӱ��, Infante-Green and Peters reiterated for the two sides to settle the terms of the new contract through public negotiations if necessary, arguing that more educational progress had been made since the state-led reform began than in the decade previous.

“When the Johns Hopkins report was released less than two years ago, PTU leadership stood with us in calling for change,” the statement reads. “When the state intervention began a year and a half ago, PTU leadership stood with us in calling for change. We know that the current union contract is broken. We also know that it’s easy to support change when it’s just an idea.”

The takeover, which is projected to last at least five years, doesn’t appear to have lost much political steam. Several leading contenders to become mayor of Providence — Elorza, unable to seek a third term, is a run against McKee for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination — they favor continuing the takeover as long as is necessary.

The University of Rhode Island’s Moakley added that the dissatisfaction with the performance of schools across the state is shared by families, especially those in Rhode Island’s diverse cities, and has driven many to look for alternatives.

“There’s also tremendous dissonance coming from minority communities,” she said. “They’ve become empowered over the past decade, and their question is, ‘Are you going to fix these schools? Because in the meantime, my kid is going to be in and out.’ And so many are backing the charter school movement.”

Charter unrest

The formation of a new pro-charter advocacy organization, Stop the Wait, is perhaps a reflection of that unrest. The 501(c)(4), which says it has already attracted over 400 parent members, is to state legislators in a furious attempt to block the proposed charter moratorium.

Stop the Wait board president Janie Segui Rodriguez, an employee at the Achievement First charter network and an experienced activist, helped found the group a city council election in her hometown of Pawtucket by just two votes last year. She said that while the situation in Providence schools has gained national attention, other cities across the state are in desperate need of better options.

“No one talks about Pawtucket, they’re always talking about Providence,” Rodriguiez said.
“But the schools here are no better. I live like two minutes from Providence, and this has been happening for generations.”

As the 2019-20 school year was beginning, over 10,000 families for 1,800 available charter school seats across the state. In his own review of state academic data, Wong said he’d found that third- and fifth-graders at Rhode Island charter schools had outperformed their peers at traditional public schools in both math and English test scores. Still, he noted, the scope of the sector — just 32 charters educating about 10,000 students — was quite limited compared with bigger states and cities.

“In the scheme of things, we’re not talking about New Orleans, or Chicago, or Washington, D.C. This is fewer than 10 percent of kids statewide who are actually going to charter schools.”

Whether that remains the case is still to be determined. In December, at the urging of Infante-Green, members of the state Council on Elementary and Secondary Education a sizable scaling-up of existing Providence charter schools while also accepting proposals from three new charter operators. If enacted, the expansion would create almost 6,000 new charter seats by the end of the decade. Almost immediately, however, the Democratic House speaker called for a “” in further growth, potentially including the schools already approved.

The idea was echoed by other senior Democrats in the legislature, that such swift expansion would destabilize the finances of traditional public schools in the short-term, costing them as much as $90 million. It was a case that proved persuasive to members of the state Senate, which passed a three-year moratorium on charter expansion ; just one Democrat voted against the bill, which is in the state House of Representatives.

That potentially puts McKee in an awkward position. He had made his reputation in part by successfully advocating for the introduction of the “,” a type of charter established by municipal leaders and run through nonprofits. In the first major offensive of his governorship, he has against a moratorium and pledged to veto it if the House sends it to his desk.

If that threat hangs over the state House as it considers the moratorium legislation, so does the possibility of a backlash from voters. A of 650 Rhode Islanders commissioned by Stop the Wait found that 53 percent favored the further expansion of the state’s charter sector. , this one conducted by Roger Williams University’s Latino Policy Institute, found that large majorities of Latino parents in Providence also backed expansion.

If House Democrats defy McKee in passing the proposal, the governor will have six business days to decide whether to veto. It would take only 60 percent of members to override, and judging from the huge margins that supported the moratorium in the Senate, that is an obstacle that could be overcome. But doing so would put Democratic members in open revolt against a Democratic governor at the onset of a long campaign season that will determine the state’s political leadership for years to come.

In the meantime, Rodriguez said her group had been inundated with donations and offers of support, and that she was in talks with potential funders at both the local and national levels. But she said she was unsure of whether the favorable response she’s seen will translate into political action, either now or in elections next year.

“It’s actually been shocking to me how many people, behind closed doors, support charter schools. But I don’t know if it’s their make-or-break issue where they’ll break from a candidate, because it’s not impacting their children.”