TEA must get things right in HISD takeover

It’s one thing to say Houston ISD has failed the children of Wheatley High School and other chronically low-performing campuses. No question of that.

It’s another thing to say the state can do any better. Its track record in such takeovers is spotty. Its motivations, given the politics of the far right-aligned Republicans running this state, are suspect. And many details of the Houston takeover are unknown.

Research tells us that takeovers rarely help and can sometimes make things worse. As the Chronicle’s Anna Bauman reported, a 2021 study from the University of Virginia and Brown University, the first cross-state comparison of its kind, examined all state takeovers from 2011-2016 and overall, found “no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits.”

Still, if this takeover must happen — and Texas Education Agency announced Wednesday that it is indeed happening — we want it to work. Houston’s schoolchildren don’t have time for another failure. There’s no re-do for high school; these are precious years that even the most cynical politician shouldn’t endeavor to squander. Hear us on that, Governor Abbott.

Our skepticism and worry for the schoolchildren in the path of this takeover are tempered by other things: curiosity about how this experiment will work and even a glimmer of hope about what it could accomplish if TEA’s commissioner, Mike Morath, keeps his word to put kids first.

It won’t stand a chance, though, if there’s not some measure of buy-in from kids, parents and the greater Houston community. Right now, there seems to be largely outrage and fear. Trust, if it comes at all, will require transparency and integrity from Morath and the district’s new leaders.

So, how will we know if this takeover is really about improving schools and the future of Houston’s schoolchildren? Three things:

Leadership: Who will lead the district?

Morath said the next superintendent to lead the 187,000-student district would be appointed in the summer but the name of the person is less important than his or her qualifications and character. Ideally the person would have knowledge of Houston or at least Texas. Most important, though, is experience running a large district and overseeing a successful turnaround. The next HISD leader should be reform-minded but not for reform’s sake. Morath has acknowledged that much is working well in the state’s largest district and many kids are “flourishing,” as he told The Houston Landing’s Jacob Carpenter. The next leader should build on that and endeavor to scale it up across the district so that more kids can know the rigor and high expectations of a Carnegie Vanguard High School, the expertise of a Michael E. DeBakey High School for Health Professions and the inspiration of a Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts.

As for the board of managers expected to replace HISD’s elected board of trustees in June, we implore Abbott to keep the cronies to a minimum. The state should appoint a good mix of educators, parents, business leaders — all of them ideally from the Houston area. They should have a stake in the results but be free of conflicts that could compromise their judgment. We’re glad to see that Morath, in his interview with The Landing, encouraged “people of integrity and wisdom” who are “interested in supporting kids, who truly love kids” to apply “soon” at the TEA website for positions on the board. When this takeover was initially announced in 2019, a diverse group of nearly 250 people applied to serve on the board of managers and some underwent training. In the three years since, the process was paused by lawsuits. TEA is beginning anew, but not from scratch, given the pool of volunteers who have raised their hands to help.

Strategy: Is the plan based on evidence or politics?

We know what works in education, and no, it’s not merely more money, smaller class sizes or even parental involvement. Those things can help but only in certain contexts, as Amanda Ripley wrote in her 2013 bestseller “The Smartest Kids in the World: and how they got that way.” Generally, the ingredients to quality public education, according to research, are higher standards, better trained, supported and paid teachers to implement the higher standards, plus accountability to ensure that they do. The state, via the new leaders chosen, will have the space to innovate and perhaps make bold decisions that would normally be politically unpopular if an elected board were still calling the shots. But the guiding star must be best practices. What has truly been proven to work, not just in this country, but in other nations where student performance far outpaces our own. Schemes such as vouchers, for instance, are politically motivated and the results are at best mixed and at worst detrimental to learning and goals of equity and integration. In this takeover of historic proportion, it will be tempting for the governor to make a splash and vie for national headlines by turning HISD into a Petri dish for Republican education dogma: privatization, parochialism, library and classroom censorship, teaching to the test. Houston ISD students don’t need schemes. They need support and solutions based on science. Their futures are on the line. No politicking, Governor Abbott. No worst instincts. Only best practices. We agree with Morath when he said that he would prefer the board leading HISD “do not have ideological blinders, one way or the other” and we hope he’s true to his word when he says, “There’s not any specific agenda other than what is in the best interest of kids.”

Houston’s schoolchildren don’t have time for another failure.

End game: This takeover should lead to reform, not purgatory.

There’s a reason “independent” appears in the names of districts across this state. We believe, as do many Texans, that local public school should be run locally, by elected leaders accountable to the public. The TEA must outline a clear plan of action and a timeline to get the work done promptly. Morath told The Landing that he doesn’t expect state control over HISD to last longer than the typical two to six years. But how will we know when the problems that triggered this takeover are solved? It should be clear to all based on clearly defined standards and benchmarks that TEA sets for gauging success. The state agency has already articulated some of these: no campus should receive a D or F state rating for multiple years, the district’s special education program must comply with federal and state requirements, and, more generally, more time during school board meetings should be devoted to discussing student outcomes versus discussing administrative factors, the Chronicle reported. More specificity is needed but these terms seem relatively modest and doable.

More than anything, HISD needs leaders — and, to be clear, we believe outgoing Superintendent Millard House II meets this description — who are in this for the students, not for themselves, and who believe kids — even poor kids — can succeed if given the right support.

Truth be told, the State of Texas hasn’t provided adequate support to public schools for decades. Here’s a chance to do something right. The nation will be watching, and the rest of us, too. But no one will experience the challenges and the consequences of this action — for better or worse — like the kids in the classrooms at Wheatley, Kashmere and other struggling HISD campuses. They can’t afford another failure.