The Texas Education Agency announced it would take over four more school districts this year, doubling the number of districts currently under a state takeover.
School districts face potential state intervention if one of their schools receives five straight failing ratings in the state’s annual A-F system.
The Houston Chronicle built an online tracker to show which districts are under state control and which are at risk of being taken over.
Megan Menchaca, who covers education for the Chronicle, said takeovers can happen in any part of the state.
“We have Houston ISD, the largest school district in the state of Texas, with about 169,000 students, to Lake Worth ISD with about 3,000 students,” she said. “Both of those districts starting in the upcoming school year will be in the same situation because they had a campus that earned consecutive failing ratings and nothing according to the TEA was done sufficiently to address that school.”
This system of state takeovers based on the accountability rating of one campus was put in place by a state law in 2015, according to Chronicle reporter Ashley Soebroto.
“There are various school districts that are on the list for at-risk. So that looks like Austin ISD, that also looks like Spring ISD in the Houston area,” Soebroto said. “And that’s because they have either one campus or multiple campuses that have at least four years of failing — consecutive failing — accountability ratings. And so just a single campus can trigger a takeover. And once they reach that five-year mark, that essentially triggers the law.”
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For districts at risk of a takeover, Soebroto said there are a few ways out of it. One is to close the campus in question.
“The second option is entering an 1882 partnership, which is essentially where the district hands over the school operation of one of their struggling campuses to, say, a charter network or a nonprofit,” she said. “Something like that gives a two-year pause on that campus’s accountability rating and they can also receive funding from the state. And so that gives the district a little bit of wiggle room to work on improving that school.”
Menchaca said we will know which districts are eligible for state takeover when the state releases the annual accountability ratings.
“Some of these districts are already taking action. They’re converting these schools into an SB 1882 partnership. They’re moving to close the school,” she said. “But it will be important to see if the school districts that didn’t take that action or are hoping to improve the campus themselves based on academic reforms internally, if that is enough to keep the school from qualifying for a state takeover.”
Once a school district is taken over by the state, there is not a uniform list of things that might change, according to Soebroto.
“When looking at examples like Houston ISD, there have been a lot of curriculum changes, there’s a lot of upheaval, a lot of changes in staffing and how long school days are and everything like that,” she said. “When it comes to what it takes to get local autonomy back, that really is dependent on each school district. In Houston ISD, obviously improving academic performance is one of the criteria, but it’s also (increasing) special education compliance to federal and state laws.”
Menchaca said one important impact of the state takeover is the loss of local input by the community, who under normal circumstances has the chance to vote in school board members that make these kinds of decisions.
“In Houston ISD, the largest school district in Texas — one of the largest in the nation — the community members no longer have the ability to elect their local school board leaders or remove them from office if they are unhappy with their performance,” she said.
“We’ve seen in Houston, more people leaving the districts, both students and parents, but also teachers… You ask about outcomes. Outcomes aren’t necessarily what students are scoring on the STAAR test, but how students are feeling and families are feeling about the state of their district.”
