The Texas Education Agency last year launched plans to take over four school districts due to low academic performance, confiscating decision-making power from elected leaders based on state-issued F grades at six campuses.

All six trigger schools share notable similarities.

Between 80% and 97% of their students live in low-income households, far above the state average of 60%.

Black and Hispanic children make up the dominant majority of the student populations, from 88% at Marilyn Miller Language Academy near Lake Worth to almost every child at Fehl-Price Elementary School in Beaumont.

And nearly half of students at each school are on the fringes of dropping out 鈥� including 64% to 92% of kids on five of the six campuses.

罢别虫补蝉鈥� places a momentous decision in the hands of the state鈥檚 education commissioner. When at least one school receives an F for five years in a row, the commissioner must order the campus closed or initiate a state takeover of the entire district, replacing elected school board members with leaders of the education chief鈥檚 choosing.

Commissioner Mike Morath, in his decade as leader of the Texas Education Agency, has ordered two campuses closed: Snyder Junior High and Travis Elementary, both in West Texas. Snyder Junior High, located in the Snyder Independent School District, has since using a new academic framework. The Midland Independent School District with a charter school operator to overhaul Travis Elementary.

Over the same 10-year span, Morath ordered seven district takeovers based on academic performance, concluding that school leaders consistently demonstrated an inability to govern effectively and stood in the way of kids reaching their full potential.

But critics of the accountability system say state takeovers penalize districts based on factors beyond their control. Schools alone cannot solve inequality tied to race and poverty. Yet that inequality, critics say, helps explain why many of the takeover trigger schools in Texas share nearly identical characteristics.

鈥淣ot everybody gets a hot breakfast and Mom taking them to school or putting them on the bus and giving them a kiss on the cheek,鈥� said Jill Bottelberghe, superintendent of the Connally Independent School District.

Morath last year announced his intention to appoint superintendents and replace the school boards of the Fort Worth, Beaumont, Connally, and Lake Worth districts due to five consecutive F grades at . The Beaumont and Connally districts each had two schools that met the takeover threshold.

Morath said the districts鈥� inability 鈥渢o implement effective changes to improve the performance of students鈥� justified his decision. He also cited elevated percentages of children not meeting grade-level expectations across each district, not just at the trigger campuses.

In Fort Worth鈥檚 case 鈥� the second-largest takeover in state history, 鈥� Morath pointed out that districts of similar size and demographics had found ways to produce stronger academic results.

罢别虫补蝉鈥� accountability system measures school performance on an A-F scale. Based largely on the state鈥檚 standardized exam, ratings are intended to measure how well students learn, how students progress academically through the school year, and how schools perform compared to campuses with similar percentages of low-income students.

An F means at least 65% of children at the school tested below grade level.

鈥淕etting an F is really, really hard to do in our system,鈥� said Iris Tian, deputy commissioner of analytics, assessment and reporting for the Texas Education Agency. 鈥淔or a campus to have gotten an F five years in a row, it is a disaster 鈥� it is truly an emergency.鈥�

Low-income schools, including those educating mostly Black and Hispanic students, can thrive in Texas’ A-F system. In the most recent ratings, 382 out of 3,203 high-poverty campuses, or 12%, earned an A, according to a Texas Tribune analysis.

But those campuses were the exception. Schools with high poverty were the least likely to earn an A and the most likely to receive Ds and Fs. Compared to low-poverty schools, those campuses were more than 30 times as likely to receive a D or F.

Similar disparities exist when factoring in race and ethnicity. Majority-Black schools were more than four times as likely as majority-white schools to receive a D or F, while majority-Hispanic schools were more than twice as likely.

Critics of the system argue that the state punishes schools without holding itself accountable, particularly when it comes to providing resources for a public education system that serves 5.5 million children 鈥� most of whom are Hispanic and Black and come from low-income households.

Research points to several strategies for improving outcomes for Black and Hispanic children, including , , and .

In Texas, however, schools spent six years without an increase in the state money they typically devote to salaries and operations, before the Legislature passed in 2025. The state has made it easier for schools to . Districts can no longer . And teachers are in how they can talk about race and gender in the classroom.

Texas also fails to address educational inequality when it focuses attention on testing outcomes at the expense of other in-school factors that impede the academic progress of Black and Hispanic students, said Andrew Hairston, a civil rights attorney who directs the Education Justice Project at Texas Appleseed, an advocacy organization.

Students of color, for example, have faced discipline because their . Some have sat through lessons that . Others have

鈥淲hat good is it to have moderately improved reading levels that come from a state takeover when the children are being called the N-word every day and cannot have a peaceful environment in which they learn and seek to grow?鈥� Hairston said.

Hairston expressed frustration that the accountability system also does not consider the lingering effects of residential segregation, community resistance to integration, or cuts to federal and state resources. That means, he said, Texas is not adequately measuring schools鈥� ability to deliver holistic educational services to the students who need them most.

The best school leaders and education reform efforts take those societal factors into account, said Bob Sanborn, president and CEO of Children at Risk, a research and advocacy organization focused on poverty and inequality.

When that doesn鈥檛 happen, he said, students in need of the most help can end up worse off.

鈥淚f we want our children to be successful in Texas, we have to pay attention to those districts where parents aren’t making as much money, where there’s lower levels of educational attainment,鈥� Sanborn said. 鈥淭hat often translates into immigrant communities, Black and brown communities, and I think people don’t like to talk about that in Texas.鈥�

鈥淢eeting the needs of all students鈥�

The Texas Education Agency insists the A-F system helps districts improve outcomes by 鈥渁ccurately and fairly evaluating school performance.鈥�

鈥淚nequality cannot be addressed by hiding outcomes, but instead, must be addressed by improving them,鈥� agency spokesperson Jake Kobersky said in a statement. 鈥淥ur state鈥檚 legal framework ensures that school leaders remain focused on meeting the needs of all students, regardless of their background.鈥�

In recent letters to school leaders announcing the state鈥檚 intention to intervene in their districts, Morath said unacceptable performance in a single year represents a 鈥渟ignificant academic weakness.鈥� When it continues for multiple years, he wrote, 鈥渢he children in those campuses develop significant academic gaps.鈥�

鈥淲e clearly have a school system that has prevented children from getting the education to which they are morally entitled,鈥� Morath said last year at the University of Texas, where he spoke about the academic takeover in Fort Worth. 鈥淲hat do you do when you have a situation where our locally elected school board has, for really over a decade, been sort of incapable, for whatever reason 鈥� sins of omission, sins of commission 鈥� of giving kids a shot at success in America?鈥�

Bottelberghe, superintendent of the Connally school district, understands why the commissioner often attributes school struggles to governance, saying district leaders in her community did not adequately respond to students鈥� academic shortcomings prior to her appointment in 2023. 

But Bottelberghe also feels state leaders do not fully understand how factors outside of school can hinder academic performance. The state鈥檚 accountability system gives schools some grace by taking into account socioeconomic makeup and measuring academic growth beyond just kids鈥� mastery of content, but she doesn鈥檛 think the system goes far enough.

Bottelberghe鈥檚 Waco-area district includes students who have to wake themselves up in the morning because their parents cannot, athletes who rely on coaches for rides because buses don鈥檛 run early enough, and children who don鈥檛 always know where they鈥檙e going to lay their head at night.

鈥淚t’s very unfortunate that we have so many kids that are in that situation,鈥� Bottelberghe said. 鈥淚 think people lose sight.鈥�

Tian of the Texas Education Agency acknowledges that academics are not the only important factor in education.

But one of the primary goals of the accountability system, she said, is to direct attention to where children need academic support. Schools can have strong internal cultures and positive relationships with their communities, but if they lack rigorous quality instruction, Tian said, 鈥渒ids are not going to be where they need to be.鈥�

鈥淩eally, all the intervention is, is like, 鈥楲et’s try something new because what we’ve been doing for the past few years has not been working.鈥� These kids are not getting what they deserve. And we have to do something different,鈥� Tian said.

鈥淲e felt alone鈥�

State takeovers can severely disrupt community morale, said Kevin Jackson, who provides behavioral support to children at the Disciplinary Alternative Education Program in Beaumont.

More than a decade before the state announced plans to replace its school leaders for academic reasons, the Beaumont district was taken over due to concerns about its financial practices. Jackson, a 25-year veteran of the district and president of the Beaumont Teachers Association, said the previous intervention left educators and students feeling punished for acts they weren鈥檛 responsible for.

鈥淲e felt alone,鈥� Jackson said. 鈥淲e felt like we were put on an island out there by ourselves, because you remove the people that we elected to work with us and protect us and help us create a better district. You removed all of the board and everyone from their positions, and you brought in your own people. And as a result, that didn’t look well, because the people that you brought in weren’t familiar with this area. I don’t believe you were really tuned in to what was really going on here in Beaumont.鈥�

The education agency and supporters of the accountability system often cite the Houston Independent School District as an example of what takeovers can accomplish. 罢别虫补蝉鈥� largest school district educates a population of mostly Black and Hispanic children, while roughly 80% of students come from low-income households.

Since the state takeover in 2023, the Houston school district has seen in test scores. Last school year, it had 鈥� down significantly from before the intervention.

But critics say the takeover also serves as an example of what can happen when leaders emphasize testing metrics over the broader school climate.

Teachers and students have . District leaders have struggled to earn trust, as evidenced by 58% of 450,000 voters aimed at improving school infrastructure. Some Houston residents are skeptical about whether short-term academic success on standardized exams will lead to sustained progress in the years to come.

Education research on offers a wider glimpse at the potential impact on students:

• Takeovers across the U.S. are more likely to occur in districts where students of color and low-income children constitute a majority of the schools鈥� populations.
• Takeovers tend to increase per-student spending and some measures of schools鈥� financial health.
• Takeovers have demonstrated more positive academic effects on districts with large concentrations of Hispanic students but have affected Black students more neutrally or even negatively.
• Takeovers, on average, do not improve test scores.

The Texas Education Agency says comparing academic performance before and after takeovers shows improved governance and higher test scores in nearly all state-operated districts, defying the national trend.

Beth Schueler, an education professor and researcher at Stanford University, said it鈥檚 also important to evaluate simultaneous trends in similarly sized districts not under state control, providing a more reliable measure of a takeover鈥檚 impact.

Still, Schueler noted, conversations about how to best serve the most vulnerable children are common nationwide, with broad agreement that education must focus on what鈥檚 best for children before opinions differ on which policies can best make that happen.

The presence of so many societal constraints leaves an important question for state leaders and local educators: What are reasonable expectations for schools?

鈥淚 don’t think we want to lose sight of the fact that the demographic composition of a school system is the thing that’s going to be the most predictive of variation in performance and outcomes,鈥� Schueler said.

鈥淏ut I do think there’s room for education systems to make a difference, because we’ve seen that they can make a difference,鈥� she added. 鈥淭here’s limits to what they can do, and I think that’s important context. But it’s not as though we should give up, I think, on trying to make more effective education policy.鈥�

Alex Nguyen and Rob Reid contributed to this story.

Disclosure: Texas Appleseed and Texas State Teachers Association have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune’s journalism. Find a complete .

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The upside to these shake-ups, which have been implemented in high-profile districts like Detroit and Philadelphia, is that they can lead to better schools by elevating big problems over the heads of local figures who have failed to solve them. But research released this spring raises questions over whether those purported benefits are actually being realized.

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The study, through Brown University鈥檚 Annenberg Institute for School Reform, detects no evidence that takeovers improve student test scores on average, though its authors point to a wide range of other academic effects resulting from them. Co-author Beth Schueler, a professor of education and public policy at the University of Virginia鈥檚 Curry School of Education, said in an interview that the varying outcomes serve as a warning to state authorities considering takeovers.

鈥淚 don’t think anything about this study suggests that takeover cannot ever improve a district,鈥� Schueler said. 鈥淚 think it just means that leaders should be super-cautious about doing it.鈥�

The substance of the paper focuses on academic indicators, but some sections address the arguments leveled against takeovers on democratic grounds, most vocally by Rutgers University political scientist Domingo Morel. Morel鈥檚 own work has shown that in areas where takeovers have been aggressively implemented, such as in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, they have sometimes alienated residents and disempowered non-white politicians. In spite of those ill effects, a flood of research has shown improved school performance in the city, including higher college attendance.

The case of New Orleans is notably absent from the set of 35 districts studied by Schueler and co-author Joshua Bleiberg, a postdoctoral researcher at Brown. That group is restricted to districts that were subject to takeover between 2011 and 2016, which similarly excludes famous 鈥� and famously contentious 鈥� instances in Detroit, Philadelphia, and Newark, New Jersey. The districts that were subsumed within state control during that period were small by comparison, enrolling an average of just under 4,000 students (though this figure is itself over twice the size of the average non-takeover district).

To compare the results of takeovers in different states Schueler and Bleiberg used the Stanford Education Data Archive, a research tool that indexes all state test scores to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. Changes to scores in each of the 35 takeover districts were then measured against those in similar districts in their respective states that weren鈥檛 under state control.

Their analysis shows that, on average, districts that underwent takeovers did not see improvements on either math or English scores. In fact, scores in a number of districts declined over the first few takeover years, particularly in English. But as the authors argue, that average includes hugely different results from one district to another. Some districts made significant gains after being taken over, others experienced dramatic declines in achievement, and many clustered somewhere in the middle. A few districts saw progress in one subject but not the other.

Even in places where takeovers clearly lifted test scores, Schueler said, radically divergent local environments make it critical to study their lessons individually. Comparing the case of Lawrence, Massachusetts, a majority-Hispanic district whose successes , with New Orleans, an overwhelmingly African American district roughly three times its size, she pointed to major distinctions in state approaches: After the ravages of Katrina, the Recovery School District fired most New Orleans teachers and turned over school management to independent charter organizations. Lawrence did neither but still benefited in the years following its takeover.

鈥淭here are big differences across context and big differences in terms of what leaders did,鈥� Schueler said. 鈥淭hey took two very different routes, and both were able to make big improvements, at least in terms of test score outcomes. So it’s very hard to see patterns in the literature like that.鈥�

鈥楤e in the arena鈥�

Kenneth Wong, a Brown political scientist who has studied state takeovers for decades, said that specificity was key to understanding what choices and contingencies shape them. Calling the new working paper 鈥渞eally helpful in showing the landscape,鈥� he said the next step for students of education reform was to conduct more qualitative examinations of individual districts, which would allow politicians to compare their own school communities to places where takeovers led to improvement.

鈥淔or researchers, we kind of bundle everything 鈥� this is a condensed index of takeovers,鈥� Wong said. 鈥淏ut for policymakers to really benefit from the research, we need to deconstruct that broad bundle of 鈥榮tate takeover鈥� and try to identify the potential effects of certain local conditions.鈥�

Paymon Rouhanifard, who served as superintendent in Camden, New Jersey, after the district was brought under state control in 2013, agreed that takeovers exist on a 鈥減retty broad continuum鈥� in different legal and political environments. Among the ingredients for success, he argued, was clarity about when and under what conditions the intervention would end.

“I think minimally you need 5-8 years, but from the very jump, there has to be transparency around what the road back to local control looks like,鈥� Rouhanifard said. 鈥淚 don’t believe in interventions that have no end in sight, that are about the intervention and just the intervention itself.”

In time, many more examples will be available for study: As Schueler and Bleiberg note, there was an average of roughly six takeovers per year in the period between 2011 and 2016, compared with about four per year in the two decades that preceded it. The most publicized recent takeover has occurred in Wong鈥檚 home city of Providence, which was placed under state control in 2019 after years of academic failure and safety problems. Its initial phases have been rocky, with COVID interrupting its first year and brand-new governors and superintendents taking office since January. Wong predicted that the progress of the effort will become an inescapable factor in the 2022 governor鈥檚 race.

Even while acknowledging the increasing political complexities of takeovers, Wong said that their appeal would likely only grow with time.

鈥淭his shift toward a more executive-oriented reform agenda is not going to go away,鈥� he argued. 鈥淎nd takeover is part of that because it…offers more direct access [to schools],鈥� he said. 鈥淧oliticians can leverage their political capital, political will, to use this instrument because it legitimizes their involvement to address a particular set of problems.鈥�

That makes it important for takeover superintendents to engage constructively with schools and families, Rouhanifard argued. Asked to offer advice to someone leading a school district under state control, he said they should think of themselves as 鈥渢he mayors of their districts.鈥�

鈥淏e in the arena 鈥� the political arena, the community 鈥� and be a face of the work, because the distrust runs centuries deep,鈥� Rouhanifard counseled. 鈥淪o don’t be some technocratic, policy-oriented solution that is happening behind closed doors. You have to humanize it and meet people where they are.”