HISD takeover comes amid Abbott’s education reforms
Governor’s push is shaping the legacy of his third term
After years of demanding a state takeover of the Houston Independent School District, Gov. Greg Abbott is finally getting what he wants politically as he pushes to reshape public schools throughout Texas in a much broader way.
For years, Abbott has called the HISD leadership a joke and a disaster.
“If ever there was a school board that needs to be taken over and reformed it's HISD,” Abbott said back in 2019.
The Texas Education Agency announced it would start the takeover Wednesday morning.
“There has been a longtime failure by HISD and the victims of the failure are the students,” Abbott said on Wednesday shortly after the decision was announced.
While the timing is somewhat coincidental because it was delayed by years of legal and legislative battles, the TEA'S move comes as Abbott, a Republican, is expending significant political capital on a list of education reforms. If he is successful, those reforms will be a significant part of his legacy as he serves his third term in the governor's mansion.
Abbott has traveled the state in campaign-like fashion for months blasting school curricula as liberal indoctrination and vowing to give parents more access to what children are being taught. He's also promising the most aggressive push Texas has seen for private school vouchers to allow parents to use state tax dollars toward private school tuition or homeschooling.
“We must reform curriculum, get kids back to the basics of learning, and we must empower parents,” Abbott said last month in his State of the State address, a theme he's carried through more than a half dozen speeches around the state since.
This is all coming just two years after Abbott called a string of special sessions to demand more restrictions on how teachers talk about racism and slavery in public schools.
The takeover of HISD has been in the works for years, but the timing makes it seem like another phase of Abbott's plan for public education reforms and his years-long battle with Houston and Harris County on a wide range of political issues, said Mark P. Jones, a professor in the Department of Political Science at Rice University.
“It’s now been caught up in this broader movement,” Jones said.
For as much as Republicans in Texas like to promote themselves as conservative leaders, they’ve been behind other Gop-dominated states on issues such as attacking liberal themes in classrooms and enacting school vouchers.
“I think that’s something Gov. Abbott wants to rectify,” Jones said.
Critics of the takeover see it as part of a bigger movement as well, one that will demonize public schools and divert funds away from them.
‘You’re next’
“This is not just about Houston . ... This is the state of Texas. You’re next,” Rep. Alma Allen, a Houston Democrat, said at a teacher rally this week. “It’s a movement to take over all of public education.”
Abbott on Wednesday pushed back at criticism that the takeover at HISD is somehow related to his school choice campaign and other parental empowerment efforts.
“All that is completely separate from what is happening with HISD,” Abbott said. “This is going to be done in a way that ensures that it will be set on a course so that HISD will no longer
be failing their students.”
State Sen. Borris Miles, a Houston Democrat, is among those frustrated the takeover is happening despite HISD making changes for the better and seemingly headed in the right direction. After last school year, the education agency gave the district a “B” grade overall.
“The grades have improved,” Miles said. “The situation has improved. The board has improved. The superintendent is doing a fantastic job. I don’t think TEA has the legal or moral right to take it over right now.”
Miles said if the state wants to improve student performance, it should be putting more money and resources into the district, not beginning a takeover that creates uncertainty and confusion for parents and students.
On the other hand, state Rep. Harold Dutton, D-houston, who wrote legislation that allows TEA to take over failing school districts, says the state has the right to step in after years of HISD’S struggles to improve conditions at Wheatley High School, the school whose long-term academic woes triggered the TEA takeover effort.
“HISD has failed to do right by students at Kashmere and Wheatley high schools, and it’s failing to adequately serve many more kids in northeast Houston,” Dutton said in an oped published in the Houston
Chronicle.
He’s not alone. State Sen. Paul Bettencourt, R-houston, has also been working on the issue for years and helped passed the legislation to set the parameters for the takeover. Bettencourt pushed back against criticism that appointing new leaders at HISD is part of any larger Republican political quest.
“The problem is that the focus of the management team is not on the education of kids,” Bettencourt said.
Still, Jones said the recent history of the Legislature is giving rise to the idea that Houston and Harris County are once against being used as a political foil for Texas Republicans. In the last few years, GOP leaders and Abbott specifically have frequently criticized Harris County and Houston for everything from crime to judicial reform to how they run elections.
It’s a confrontation that has grown as Republicans view Harris County as a growing problem at the ballot box. In 2014, every statewide GOP candidate including Abbott won the county. Last year, every single statewide Republican lost the county by a wide margin.
Jones said if it weren’t a school district in Houston, he’s not sure Republican leaders would be nearly as aggressive as they have been.