The Texas Education Agency announced a new conservator last week to oversee Houston ISD’s school board governance and student academic outcomes.
Under state law, the TEA can appoint conservators to oversee the operations of a school district and support campuses that fail to meet the state’s academic performance standards.
This is just one of many updates on Houston ISD that reporters at the Houston Chronicle have been closely following. Megan Menchaca, who covers education at the Chronicle, said this conservatorship dates back to 2016.
“The TEA first appointed a conservator to oversee Houston back in 2016, due to student outcomes at Kashmere High School that were failing to meet standards at the school and was repeatedly earning failing ratings on its annual accountability scores,” she said. “And then (the state) implemented more conservators overseeing just special education services. The agency currently has three conservators, and this was all before the state takeover.”
The state takeover in 2023 entailed a state-appointed board of managers and a state-appointed superintendent.
“This new conservator is basically the check on the board,” Menchaca said. “They are responsible largely to make sure the state-appointed board is doing a good job running the district, doing a good job improving student outcomes, getting these low-performing schools back up to the standards that the state expects.”
The conservator is Anastasia Anderson and she is a former teacher, principal, and administrator, Menchaca said.
“She used to oversee this program called EMERGE, which supports students in low-income communities and helps low-income students graduate and go on to achieve success in the workforce,” she said. “The reaction we’ve seen from the community is like, well, ‘we don’t really want a conservator, but if we have to have one, we like that this person has local roots.'”
» GET MORE NEWS FROM AROUND THE STATE: Sign up for Texas Standard’s weekly newsletters
The state-appointed superintendent, Mike Miles, also recently received a report card for his first year on the job.
“Out of a score of 100, he got a 66.7,” Menchaca said. “He lost several points for not meeting expectations on the percentage of students who were supposed to get a passing score on the Reading STAAR test. He also lost points for different things, including not having great communication with the community, not prioritizing a positive culture in the district.”
Despite these concerns, the district did see improved test scores for mid-year assessments called the MAP Test, which stands for “measure of academic progress.”
“These students did well on these scores and they have continued to do well on other tests,” Menchaca said. “But there is some concern in the community about how the district is getting there, if it’s at the cost of rising teacher turnover, lower student enrollment, increased budget deficits.”
The district will still be under state takeover until at least June 2027.
“That’s when the TEA is expected to review the state takeover and decide, ‘are we ready to transition back to an elected board or do we want to continue the current status of things for another two years?’” Menchaca said. “If that transition starts, it wouldn’t be like the state snaps its fingers and the district gets a completely elected board, new superintendent. There would be a staggered replacement of appointed board members with elected board members.
What the district is looking at is, ‘are we going to be able to continue our growth on staff scores and get the number of campuses earning failing ratings down?’ So right now, there’s about 40 schools out of 270 that are earning failing ratings. And the district wants to get that to closer to ten.”
