Thomas Jefferson Elementary School, nestled in the Timbergrove neighborhood of Houston, just north of downtown, enrolls some 340 students — 96% of whom are low-income and roughly a third of whom are just learning to speak English. 

Since the pandemic, student achievement has been hard to come by, during the 2020-21 school year, when 77% of students were below grade level in reading and 86% in math. And while scores rebounded some over the years, they were low enough during the 2023-24 school year to earn the campus a “D” rating on the state’s accountability system. 

That same year, the state took over operations of the Houston Independent School District, appointing a new hard-charging and controversial superintendent, Mike Miles, who, among many other things, has overseen the replacement of dozens of principals and put a premium on educators who deliver results. 

“We work really hard to make sure that we hire the correct people for the job,” said Jefferson Elementary Principal Claudia Florez, who Miles hired for that role the same year. “Teaching is not for everyone.”

“We make sure that people truly understand what it is that they’re getting themselves into,” she added. “When I meet with my teachers, I’m very clear with the expectations I have for them.”

In return, Florez promises to support her educators with the resources, planning time and professional development required to meet the needs of every child that walks through the front door. That’s why she wasn’t surprised when the Texas Education Agency released district and school ratings in August for the 2024-25 school year and saw that Jefferson had turned its “D” rating into an “A.”

As it turned out, Jefferson was just one of 20 schools in Houston that made that leap, signaling something even bigger may be afoot. In fact, Houston ISD went from having 121 “D” and “F” rated schools in 2022-23 to having 18 “D” schools last year and none rated as failing — meaning three-quarters of the district’s schools are now rated “A” or “B.” Fifty schools earned a “C” rating.

The results whisper of a new trajectory for achievement. Houston ISD — the 176,000-student school district where 90% are students of color, 78% are low-income and nearly 40% are learning English — earned a “B” in the state’s much anticipated accountability rating system, up from a “C” last year.

Yet as is often the case, the back-slapping and glad-handing that typically follows a sudden catapult in academic achievement, especially on the heels of a state takeover, has been undercut in equal measure by critics who say the improvements are too good to be true. They say the changes come at a steep price to the community and question their staying power.

After the release of the ratings, Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath and Houston ISD Superintendent Mike Miles touted the findings as evidence that the state takeover is working. And what better place to announce such progress than Jefferson Elementary itself.

“These historic outcomes are the result of wholesale systemic reform,” said Miles. “Two years ago, it was hard to believe that this could happen.”

“It doesn’t happen normally,” he added. “It would be hard for someone who isn’t steeped in data … to understand or believe that the transformation is getting these results.”

To be sure, state takeovers are inherently controversial no matter where in the country they occur — often garnering criticism from parents, teachers and local community members concerned that state-appointed district and school leaders are quick to implement drastic policy changes at the expense of local families. Many residents feel these top-down reforms aimed at improvement happen to them rather than alongside them. 

In Houston, the reception was no different. But the takeover of Texas’ largest district — and one of the largest in the U.S. — has garnered outsized attention due to its scale. The Texas Education Agency announced last week the , the second-largest takeover in Texas history, as just 34 percent of students across all grades and subjects are performing at grade-level on state exams and 20 campuses have been labeled “academically unacceptable” multiple years in a row.

As part of the Houston takeover, Miles targeted roughly one-third of its schools for wholesale reform rather than incremental changes sometimes seen in other state takeovers. In doing so, he prioritized funding to boost the quality of instruction and school building leadership, including having the most effective teachers instruct the lowest-performing kids; boosting teacher professional development; elevating the role of principals to coach teachers; hiring instructional executive directors to train principals; and attempting to institute performance pay. 

But at the Houston City Council’s economic development committee meeting in September, Miles was booed by parents in the crowd and grilled by council members about teacher turnover, principal displacement and a drop in enrollment. Fanning the flames of discontent, Miles had recently secured a $173,660 bonus — news that came on the heels of an included in a new five-year contract that increases his annual base salary to $462,000.

Miles pushed back on the accusations, calling them “conspiracy theories,” and asking naysayers to examine the data. 

“We do a disservice to teachers and kids when you hear the nonsense. It’s a disservice when there is a lack of professionalism and poo-pooing the results of teachers who work really hard.”

But the data that Miles is asking his critics to focus on also raises some questions, said Rachel White, professor of education leadership and policy at the University of Texas, Austin, and founder of The Superintendent Lab, a hub for data and research on school district leadership. 

Among them, between 2022-23 and 2024-25 the district experienced a 17% increase in the number of students identified as having a disability, but the number of state alternative assessments taken by Houston ISD students increased by 39% — more than double. Meaning, essentially, that there was a greater increase in students taking the alternative assessment than students who would qualify for that assessment. White noted that “these may be appropriate educational decisions — particularly since one reason for Houston ISD’s takeover was special education program-related failures. Nonetheless, it is important to keep an eye on shifts in who is taking assessments, and which assessments.” 

Moreover, the number of beginning teachers increased from 7% to 12% over the last three years — an unusually large shift for such a short time span, and a trend opposite that of the state, which saw a decline in beginner teachers from 10% to 7% — while the proportion of veteran teachers also sank.

Contacted by ����Ӱ��, district officials in Houston declined to comment on questions surrounding the data.

“This is not unique to Texas,” White said. “Accountability systems tell us some things, but they don’t tell us everything. And, while this absolutely may not be the case here, we’ve seen in prior research, accountability systems can be gamed. There are ways to shift things in order to get exactly what the accountability system wants.” 

Indeed, perhaps just as controversial as that state takeover is the state’s accountability rating system itself, which has been delayed twice by lawsuits filed by dozens of districts accusing the state education agency of using retroactive and shifting standards, overemphasizing standardized testing, treating districts with high poverty rates unfairly, and lacking transparency in its scoring methods.

“We don’t trust the validity of the scoring,” said Jackie Andersen, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. “We’re comparing apples to oranges in terms of the tests that were administered and are being compared to one another. It’s data manipulation, plain and simple. He’s saying, ‘Everything is good, the scores are up!’ But we’re not looking at the same students, we’re not looking at the same tests, we’re not even looking at the same criteria for passing year to year.” Her criticism was of the Houston Chronicle.

“The whole thing is bogus,” she added. “In any other administration, if a school had gone from an F rating to an A rating, they would have been investigated. And probably the principal and everybody in the school would have been terminated because that’s impossible. Come on now. Something is not right.”

In the case of Jefferson Elementary, for example, it received an “A” rating overall despite receiving a “C” on , or a 77 out of 100 based on whether students are meeting expectations on the state assessment. In fact, just 59% of students at Jefferson are at grade-level in reading and 51% in math. That’s hardly an “A,” but the overall rating is reflective of the progress made. And during the 2023-24 school year, Jefferson earned an “F” in student achievement.  

One item that could mitigate the case against the doubters is that Houston has shown gains on other tests, including the National Assessment of Educational Progress and . The district can also point to the fact that chronic absenteeism dropped seven percentage points from the previous academic year, to 20%. And perhaps most importantly, improvements are especially concentrated in historically underserved areas that enroll primarily Black and Hispanic students from low-income families.

“We want Houston to be successful, because every one of these kids deserves a great education and one that’s going to prepare them for life,” White said. “…But we also have to be thinking about the broader system, and not just this short-term potential increase in accountability ratings. What does this look like in the long-term for the district in terms of stability of its principals and its teachers, as well as students’ love for learning and desire to continue to learn after they don’t have to do it just to get a good grade on a test?”

Looking ahead, the terms of the takeover are set to continue at least , the Texas Education Agency announced over the summer. Miles said that it’s a necessary move to ensure the longevity of improvements made and reduce the risk of the district reverting to past practices after the state hands over leadership to an elected board.

Next up on the docket for Miles: Cementing a policy priority even more controversial than school ratings, he wants to link teacher compensation to effectiveness, launching the “largest in the nation.”

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of schools in Houston ISD that received A and B ratings.  Nearly three-quarters of the district’s schools received those top scores.

The chief of America’s eighth-largest school district was appointed in 2023 by Texas’s education commissioner, who controversially spearheaded a state takeover in response to poor academic performance and allegations of misconduct by local board members. The move, preceded by years of lawsuits, drew by local officials.

Their outcry was, perhaps, foreseeable. Full-on takeovers are rare, usually only attempted in chronically struggling districts steeped in managerial problems. Houston Independent School District fit the bill in some respects, with large numbers of schools from the Texas Education Agency, but parents and educators still deplored the loss of autonomy and the appointment of an outsider.

Two years later, the outcry hasn’t quieted completely. Increasingly, however, local and state leaders are pointing to a competing narrative of revamped instructional strategies, and newfound plaudits from state authorities. According to the release of student evaluation data in June, Houston pupils are catching up with — and, in some subjects, — their peers across Texas after years of lagging far behind. This year’s scores largely improved upon last year’s, which themselves represented a leap forward from the pre-takeover status quo.

The most energetic evangelist for that progress is Miles, a turned educator. His trek to Texas from his home state of Colorado has not always been smooth, with a three-year stint as Dallas superintendent after Miles lost the backing of the local board. Both in that city and at a previous stop , he by advocating for a switch to a pay-for-performance system that many saw as unfair.

He has pursued a in Houston, along with a package of pedagogical and organizational reforms he dubs the : a heavy emphasis on coaching and blending curriculum and instruction, along with longer school hours. Since its implementation, the majority of Houston schools run under the NES model have seen major improvements to their state ratings. Critics have called the model top-down and restrictive, but Miles insists it’s about giving teachers the tools they need to succeed in schools enrolling historically underserved minority and low-income students.

In a conversation with ����Ӱ��’s Kevin Mahnken, Miles argued that wholesale, wide-ranging reforms are the only way to trigger lasting improvement for students. 

“We are providing a proof point that it can be done, and that Black and brown kids challenged by poverty and language barriers can rise to high expectations. Don’t sell them short. Don’t say it’ll take eight years or five years to do it.”

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Superintendent, how do you interpret these results? Houston clearly saw big test-score gains across a very short span of time.

I’ve been around for a long time. I’ve led other districts and been a consultant in other districts, and I talk to colleagues all the time. These results are unheard of. 

In 2023, 93 schools in the district out of 273 earned an A or B grade. One year later, we were up to 170. These are accountability scores from the state, and the 2024 scores for all the districts in Texas will be released soon. You’re going to see their A’s and B’s stay flat while their D’s and F’s go up. Meanwhile, Houston went from having 121 D- and F-rated schools to 41. It’s not easy to take an F school and turn it around, but we did it in spades in just one year.

Just looking at the schools in the New Education System program: After one year, we went from 53 F-rated schools to nine, and from 55 D-rated schools to 23. When we started, only 11 earned A’s or B’s, and now 87 do. We’re talking about mostly underserved populations of kids. 

Think about what a difference that makes for their academic career and beyond. I challenge you to find an urban district that has seen these kinds of outcomes after just two years.

What does it mean for a school to have a D or F grade? What should parents know about those schools?

If you attend one of those schools, the likelihood of gaining proficiency — being able to read or do math at grade level — is low. Your whole career, you will be haunted by that lack of proficiency because we, your educators, didn’t bring you to grade level. 

Down the road, here’s what these scores really mean: For Black and brown kids in this country, especially those who live in poverty, the system has not lived up to the promise America made to them. We’ve failed, in that sense. Across the country, the achievement gap has not closed in 20 years, and the opportunity gap has not closed. Black and brown poor kids are still mostly in failing schools. It’s like being on two tracks: Kids in well-resourced neighborhoods are on a track, and they can be expected to run one lap in one year’s time, but Black and brown and poor kids are starting 50 yards behind. 

We’ve got a changing world and workplace, and if you can’t read or do math at grade level, your opportunities are going to be proscribed. So when I see data like this, and you ask me what a D or F school is like compared to an A or B? We’re giving these kids, finally, a chance. 

We need to go bold and go big. There was earlier this year looking at how many high school graduates in the Houston area earned a livable wage. For the kids who graduated in 2017, the answer was 17%. Seventeen percent. 

What’s the secret, if one exists, to turning that around?

I believe there’s a recognition among superintendents that piecemeal, incremental reform has not worked. One of the things we’ve done too often over the last 30 years is to focus on doing maybe one big, bold thing instead of several. Invariably — because it’s an interconnected system where a lot of issues impact other issues — people have to step back from that one big reform. 

To take one example, if you want to change the way we compensate people, you have to ask whether compensation is going to be tied to an evaluation. And just asking that question suddenly becomes very controversial. Are you going to just give people money? Does the system have the resources for that? Should you get any outcomes from that?

Or say you want high-quality instructional materials. Will teachers use them? Will there be effective training? Do people actually understand the close integration of curriculum and instruction? Our profession is replete with stories of textbooks in boxes, still wrapped, in a teacher’s closet. So that one thing you want to do, which is both very expensive and a good thing, is tied to so many other things that the reform fails.

This brings us to something that’s become a mantra for you: “wholesale systemic transformation.” You invoke it often enough that your subordinates must have nightmares about it. Lots of people say that sort of thing when they take over a school district, but what do you mean by it?

It’s far-reaching, comprehensive reforms across the whole system, all at the same time. That will scare people unless they know what it means. Your image of someone waking up screaming about it at 3:00 a.m. is right for most people, but for us, it’s very clear what it entails. 

So, take instruction. When we talk about transforming instruction, that means a change in curriculum. It means a change in lesson planning. It means a new instructional model. It means a change in how teachers are monitored and coached, including on-the-job coaching. It means that principals have to be instructional leaders, which means that the people who coach principals have to be instructional leaders. It means staffing in a way that gets the best instruction possible — for instance, in the 130 NES schools, there are .

In other words, it means getting everyone on the same page about what high-quality instruction looks like, and then teaching and coaching the heck out of it. You monitor that, tie it to evaluations, and tie the evaluations to compensation. You’re changing the culture so that people focus on continuous improvement, high expectations, and accountability. And that’s just the start of it.

It sounds like this approach is drawn right from the education reform playbook, which is now mostly ignored. Are you a throwback to that era?

The reform era was 12–18 years ago. At that time, you had people like John Deasy and Dwight Jones and Chris Barbic and Cami Anderson and Michelle Rhee — there were reformers in big districts, and the movement had a lot of fans at that time. I was doing my thing in Harrison and Dallas.

We had a lot of support nationally from the philanthropic community, but there were also political discussions about reform during the debates about Race to the Top and No Child Left Behind. People were more willing to at least try new things. The problem was that there was such pushback and status quo bias, the reformers soon found themselves in the minority. And because they couldn’t change things quickly, their tenure didn’t last the time it would take to really make reforms. 

We’re now in a period when there’s hardly any discussion about bold reform. So to answer the question about whether I’m a throwback, the answer is partly yes. But I’ve learned over time, and one of the things I’ve learned is that you can’t do just one thing at a time; you have to do all these things at the same time. 

The challenge is that the more change you have, the more pushback there is, and the more status-quo bias gets in the way. You start impacting a lot of vested interests. So you have to have a team that can move quickly, and you have to generate proof that the change you’re bringing will actually work. If we’d only had modestly positive results in our first year, I’m not sure it would have been enough to satisfy the entrenched interests. But because we got such huge results, it put wind in our sails and took some out of the sails of the opposition.

So how does this “wholesale, systemic” style work in the context of a particular policy?

I’ll give you an example. Pay-for-performance had some success with Michelle Rhee , Tom Boasberg in Denver, me , and in a couple of other places. It wasn’t done well in most places that tried it — people confused it with incentive pay — and because of that, there was no proof point for the policy.

But in March of 2023, the National Bureau of Economic Research showing that the pay-for-performance system in Dallas, which is the largest in the nation, actually works well in driving achievement growth. D.C. continues to get kudos for its system, and in Houston, we’re now establishing a system that’s even larger than Dallas. So if it’s done right and done systemically, it can work. 

We also have a that hasn’t been seen anywhere else. It’s a combination of direct instruction and differentiated instruction, and it serves kids who struggle really well. That’s why our struggling students are growing the fastest in HISD. 

Without getting too technical, this notion of integrating curriculum and instruction is so advanced now that we can take new or inexperienced teachers and get them up to speed right away. We are providing PowerPoints, lesson objectives, demonstrations of learning, mini-quizzes, test material, differentiated assignments; we actually copy those materials for the teacher. If you’re a new teacher, you can still teach effectively because we’re giving you so much support and showing you the key steps. 

That is indeed a rare amount of influence for district leadership to exercise over classroom teaching. The interim results are impressive, but what do you say to teachers who complain about their lessons being scripted and worry that you’re encroaching in some way on their autonomy or professional mastery?

First of all, the lessons aren’t scripted. “You say this, the kids do this, you do that” — it’s not like that. You still have to be an effective teacher because, as we say all the time, curriculum does not teach. 

Just today I was training some of our executive directors, who each have four or five principals under their supervision. We were going over what we call the Great Eight and the Next Eight, which are strategies to improve instruction. Teachers, principals, and executive directors are all taught how to scaffold and when to scaffold. We teach them multiple engagement strategies, but teachers have to know when to use them and when not to use them. There’s a proper way to do for example, and it’s not right for some situations.

Today we talked about how teachers can take a question or answer from one kid, and instead of teaching that one student, they can expand the discussion to the whole class. That’s not scripted, in that there will be a time and a place to use that technique. 

So do your instructors actually like teaching this way?

Teachers like this, despite what you hear from a handful. Teachers in the 130 NES schools like that they get the curriculum and the resources. They like that they can leave 15 minutes after the last bell and be done. They like the PowerPoints they get, and they can always tweak them. 

The proof is in the pudding. In most of the non-NES schools, they are using our HISD curriculum even though they don’t have to. Teachers ask if they can use it, and the answer is yes: We created it, and it’s free for them to use. So 95 percent of the district schools are using this planned curriculum — in ELA, math, science, social studies, and the art of thinking — because it’s better for them. It’s already tied to the [the state standards], it comes with mini-quizzes, an answer key, and other texts and supplemental materials. I mean, what’s not to like? You don’t have to go on and hunt for resources. Even if I’m the most effective teacher, I’ll take the HISD curriculum and make it better. 

There’s a good lesson design model, which is not new to us. You direct-instruct the first part, you gradually release kids, and then you give them multiple opportunities to practice the objective. It’s divided into about 15 or 20 minutes for each part. Now, because we have inexperienced teachers, some of whom will spend 12 or 15 minutes just on the bell work, we’ve got a color-coded lesson deck. I believe the first 15 minutes are bordered in red, the next 15 are bordered in blue, and the last 15 are bordered in green. It’s not an exact science because every class is different, but they generally know that if they’re still in the red after 40 minutes of class time, their pace is way off. 

Do you think this kind of district takeover can be attempted elsewhere, and can its effects be sustained or improved upon? As you mentioned, the stories of backlash from the reform era may have been more numerous than the lasting successes. We haven’t heard much from Michelle Rhee in a while, even if her teacher evaluation system is still in place in Washington.

This is the right question to be asking. Every transformation has to fit the context it takes place in. What we’re doing in Houston probably can’t be replicated exactly in any other place. Having said that, however, a lot of people are looking for an answer. And most people recognize that we can’t keep doing what we’ve always done because times are desperate.

People from all over the country, including Alaska, are calling us to ask how we’re doing this. Boldness is what’s called for, and people are starting to have some hope that big turnarounds can be done. Kids will rise to the level of expectations, and we can narrow the achievement gap. What we’re doing would probably have to be tweaked in another place, but the underlying principle of comprehensive, wholesale reform can absolutely be accomplished. Everybody, whether you’re in a union state or a right-to-work state or whatever, can improve the quality of instruction.

But are most states and school districts even aiming at that goal? Between all the administrative concerns facing superintendents and the various non-academic priorities they have to deal with — absenteeism, social-emotional learning, discipline — teaching and learning can get lost in the shuffle.

Unfortunately, our profession has not really focused on it. We don’t have a lot of principals and superintendents who are instructional leaders because the focus has not been on instruction. In fact, we’ve had this notion that teachers need to be left alone to teach because they’re the experts. The truth of the matter is that effective teachers probably should be left alone to teach, but not everyone is effective. It takes a while to become effective, and even effective teachers can grow.

In this country, underserved populations have gotten the least effective and least experienced teachers. It’s a great shame for our profession, but it’s been an enduring problem. Do we want to leave those teachers alone to teach? No. We want to grow their capacities. We’re having teacher shortages in a lot of places, and particularly in Texas, we’re having to hire non-certified teachers. hired in Texas last year were not certified. That’s a lot! 

We need to be able to say, “Effective teachers, do your thing. But everyone else, we need to make sure you’re effective.” To me, the word “effective” only applies if you’re getting outcomes. I’m going to question it unless I see some results. For the vast majority of teachers, we need to guide them and coach them. They need to be coached by principals who know what they’re doing. I’m very sympathetic to a teacher who says, “My principal doesn’t know anything about instruction, so why should he evaluate me?” That’s absolutely fair. But other districts can do what we’ve done here, which is to make sure principals are instructional leaders, raise the quality of instruction, support teachers and raise the level of accountability and expectations.

Can I ask about Houston’s since 2023, when the takeover began? I’m aware that this decline is part of a bigger, ongoing slide that began before COVID, and that lots of districts are dealing with similar issues. But are you concerned at all that some families are looking elsewhere because they feel these reforms aren’t for them and won’t help their kids?

I’m glad you put the enrollment issue in context. Almost every large, urban district is losing enrollment, even in Texas. In Houston, we’ve had fewer kids being born for a few years now. And we’ve always had transfers from low-performing, D- or F-rated schools to charters, so it wasn’t surprising that people left in our first year. Now we have vouchers, which could also affect us.

Across the nation, since COVID, we also have kids dropping out of school. There are some economic forces at work in that some kids just haven’t seen the value in high school — or at least not value enough to stay. You’re 17 or 18 years old, you could have your senior year, but you can’t read at grade level, and you failed algebra. So you quit to drive for Uber or deliver packages for Amazon. The gig economy is competing for those kids.

All that is happening. But having said that, we are already seeing that the sentiment is changing among our families after only two years. Kids are getting the education they want, and they’re at A- or B-rated schools. One of my executive directors was at her hair dresser, who has a kid in the system. This parent said, “I was against the reforms at first, but my school went from a C to an A, and my kid is happier about doing better in school.” That was echoed by the other people in the shop, that things are changing and kids are getting a better education.

I know, that’s just an anecdote. But there are a lot of those anecdotes. Our sentiment survey shows that people are happy with what’s going on in their schools. I’m engaged in this stuff every day, but most people are not; they care about their kids, their kids’ teachers and the principal. The bigger reforms are nice to hear about every once in a while, but those are their priorities. We think we’ll get enrollment back up when these schools show, consistently, that they are A and B schools.

Some school districts have been able to win back families in a really impressive way. Newark, which was in a lot of trouble, during and after their takeover period. So could this be a marker to judge your successes in Houston?

We’re doing so much better than Newark ever did. The data shows that our underserved populations have narrowed the gap incredibly, have outpaced similar populations across the state, have done well on NAEP and have attended A- and B-rated schools for several years in a row. So yeah, I think we can compete with the charters.

The existing research on state takeovers has shown very mixed results. Success stories have been few, most of those have been rather small, and none have seen the effects you have in Houston. Does your experience here definitively show that takeover can work?

The most important thing is that once you put your team in place, they have to show that they can get outcomes for kids. Once a new team comes in, whether it’s in a takeover context or not, just making piecemeal changes or doing the same things as the old team will make people question what the point is. People should not be happy with a new superintendent or administrative team that just does what’s always been done and doesn’t get a change in outcomes.

Again, this is true whether it’s a takeover or just a regular superintendent and school board. If a district is struggling such that it could be subject to a takeover, then bold, effective reform is the order of the day. We are providing a proof point that it can be done, and that Black and brown kids challenged by poverty and language barriers can rise to high expectations. Don’t sell them short, don’t say it’ll take eight years or five years to do it. We went from 56 F-rated schools to seven, and eventually to zero. That’s making a statement that transformation doesn’t need to take five, six, seven years. It can be done quickly.

There’s no question, there will be challenges in achieving that. There will be capacity issues, leadership issues, public pushback. But those can be managed with good leadership and knowledge of how to get things done.

Mayor Michelle Wu warned that the most dire option, a state takeover, would be “counterproductive” at a time when she is trying to elevate district management, including reaching a tentative agreement with the Boston school bus driver’s union to reform a school transportation system that has been .

“No one is better equipped to accelerate the progress Boston has made than our Boston Public Schools communities,” she said at Tuesday’s meeting of the state board.

Wu was part of a stream of politicians, teachers, and parents who offered more than an hour of public commentary opposing a takeover and arguing that Boston should be given the opportunity to solve its academic and organizational problems. The meeting came a day after the state released a 188-page report outlining systemic problems facing the district and calling for “immediate” action on behalf of its nearly 46,000 students.

Massachusetts Education Commissioner Jeffrey Riley didn’t show his hand on the subject of a takeover Tuesday, but called the audit’s revelations “extremely disheartening,” with structural improvements needed across six dimensions: safety, transportation, special education, English learners, data transparency, and facilities.

“There are just a myriad of problems here, many of them emanating from a bloated central office that is often incapable of performing the most basic functions,” he said.

State law stipulates that such an audit must be completed before a takeover, known locally as receivership, can proceed. pointed to a district office plagued by rapid turnover; inadequate services for English learners and special needs students; and what it called “a pattern of inaccurate or misleading data reporting” on issues as disparate as graduation rates, bus routes, and bathroom renovations. 

Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz — a Boston Democrat currently waging a progressive campaign for governor — addressed the board members as a former classroom teacher and current public school parent, evoking the difficulties of previous receiverships attempted in other Massachusetts cities.

“What I urge you to do today is to keep working in partnership with Boston to hasten improvements for BPS students rather than erode parent voice and local democracy by triggering receivership,” Chang-Diaz argued. “We have new leadership in our mayor and will soon have a new superintendent….They deserve a chance at bat.”

With the report now in public view, the next steps will be taken by Mayor Wu, who has already met with both Riley and Massachusetts Gov. Charlie Baker to discuss a possible collaboration with Boston Public Schools that could initiate needed reforms while stopping short of full receivership. Riley said he hoped to have a “statement of assurances” from the mayor around the need for improvements in key functions — particularly transportation and data reporting — within “a week or so.” 

Matt Hills, a director at a private equity firm who is so far the only board member to have publicly supported receivership, advocated for a decision to be reached quickly, proposing that “if God was superintendent, God would need receivership to be effective here.”

After the statement aroused angry murmuring among audience members, he continued.

“When is enough enough? When are you prepared to act?”