Surprising talk of HISD takeover has roots in ’15 law

Lawmakers stand behind act to help failing schools

The news seemed to come out of nowhere this past week: If about a dozen Houston ISD schools don’t improve by next year, the state will close campuses or take over the district’s operations.

Board trustees scrambled to defend their district in the aftermath of the state’s warning, arguing that progress was already underway. District administrators pledged more resources for the failing campuses. Superintendent Richard Carranza, completing his first year, acknowledged that he only recently learned of the possibility of a state takeover and promised a “robust intervention program.”

But the threat of the state taking over the nation’s seventh-largest school district, as well as other major districts in Texas, has in fact been more than two years in the making. It arises from a law passed in 2015 with huge bipartisan support — including Houston-area Democrats. In interviews this week, legislators stood by their decision to vote in favor of the bill, which passed with about 85 percent support in both chambers.

The goal, legislators said, is not to promote a

“We just want to make people more mindful of how serious the responsibility is to get these things done. It’s the gravity of the problem we are trying to call the attention to.” Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston

state takeover of Houston ISD, but rather to prod local education leaders into addressing long-failing schools.

“We just want to make people more mindful of how serious the responsibility is to get these things done,” said state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, DHouston, whose district borders the city’s longestfailing campus, Kashmere High School. “It’s the gravity of the problem we are trying to call the attention to.”

The legislation reflected a paradigm shift in Texas education, with state legislators sending a message to school boards: fix your worst schools, or lose your power. Some Houston education leaders have argued the law represents an unnecessary state encroachment on local rule. One Houston ISD trustee also suggested the law reflects a larger plan to foist Republican-favored education ideals — charter schools and private school vouchers — on Democratic-controlled urban districts.

For years, the state has given local school districts relatively wide latitude to improve chronically failing schools.

‘Not isolated islands’

Austin-based administrators have intervened in districts with pervasive academic and financial issues, but largely left alone districts with a mix of strong and weak schools. Now, if a single school in a district receives five straight “improvement required” ratings, the Texas Education Agency must close the campus or appoint a board of managers to take over operations of the entire district.

The law puts 46 independent school districts under the gun.

In Houston ISD, 14 district schools must avoid back-to-back negative ratings over the next two years, though district officials maintain they have another year to improve five of those schools. Trustees said they expect a few schools to make the grade and come off the list of failing schools when 2017 scores are released Tuesday.

“Campuses are not isolated islands,” TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said in August 2016. “They operate within school systems, and often the system as a whole isn’t set up to support real performance improvement in that individual campus. In this case, system-level interventions are necessary.”

Trustees push back

As local school districts begin to feel the law’s brunt, trustees in the 210,000-student Houston ISD are pushing back. They argue the law is too draconian, potentially punishing Houston for having even one chronically failing school when 270 others have met state standards in recent years. They also say the law improperly wrests power away from locally elected officials.

“This is a precedent to dismantle public education, and it’s not just a local trend,” said Houston ISD Trustee Rhonda SkillernJones. “It’s coming from the culture in this country around using the last pot of public money for private profit.”

But when legislators passed the bill in 2015, there was broad support across both parties.

State Rep. Harold Dutton Jr., a Houston Democrat, sponsored the legislation after getting fed up with the lack of progress at campuses like Kashmere High, which has received seven straight “improvement required” ratings. His bill received unanimous support in the House Public Education Committee, which included three other Democrats.

Neither the Texas Association of School Boards nor Houston ISD officials publicly opposed the bill, though district officials say they lodged their opposition in private conversations with legislators and state leaders. The bill also included a now-popular designation known as “Districts of Innovation” that gave local leaders more flexibility in scheduling and other areas.

State Rep. Alma Allen, who worked in Houston ISD for 39 years as an elementary-school teacher and principal, said she initially saw the legislation as “a takeover of the public school system, particularly HISD.” But the Houston Democrat voted for the 2015 bill, saying that if the threat of takeover made the school board pay attention to low-performing schools in communities of color, then so be it.

“You don’t get this deep in trouble overnight. This has been a long time coming, and a longtime period of neglect for minority schools, particularly in minority communities,” she said. “You have had time to make a difference.”

In executing the law, legislators have found a willing partner in Morath, a reform-minded educator and former Dallas ISD trustee. Morath has embraced the ethos that local school board members must be held accountable for chronically failing schools, even if other campuses are posting positive results.

“It changes our focus from the campus level to the absolute top, where I think it needs to be: on school boards and superintendents,” Morath said in August 2016.

The agency has declined to comment since issuing the warning to Houston ISD this week.

Response unclear

It remains unclear how state education officials will respond if any chronically failing schools gets an “improvement required” rating in 2017 and 2018. They have not said which option — campus shutdowns or a state takeover of operations — they would employ if forced to choose in 2018. The agency did signal this week its willingness to bend slightly, offering a third option: converting schools into “in-district” charters.

Rep. Thompson said she doesn’t want the state to take over school-district operations or close campuses. She views the law as “more of a warning” to local leaders designed to spur action.

“Here’s the hammer, and if you don’t correct these things and start trying to get them taken care of, then the next move is going to be this” law, Thompson said.

Improvement seen

But the threat of state takeover has rattled some Houston leaders, who fear the unintended consequences of outside intervention.

“Houston has a deep reserve of smart people and resources, all of which can be leveraged to provide HISD with the support it needs to solve its own problems,” said Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, a former state legislator.

Last April, Carranza announced an ambitious campus turnaround plan at 32 Houston ISD schools called “Achieve 180.”

Huey German-Wilson, who helped draft Kashmere High School’s campus turnaround plan in 2016, said administrators are finally making progress there. The school’s leadership is stable after long stretches of turnover, with Principal Nancy Blackwell entering her third year. And additional resources are starting to pour in, many of which are aimed at addressing students’ emotional and behavioral needs.

“Now that we’re finally seeing a marked improvement, you’re telling us it’s great that you improved, but it might be too late?” German-Wilson said. “We don’t need another change, and we certainly don’t want to see another change.”