Spare The Rod And Spoil The School District

'Shameful power play': Texas officials move to take over Houston schools https://t.co/KFfIrzsquR

— Raw Story (@RawStory) March 16, 2023

The Texas Education Agency (TEA) is taking over Houston Independent School District, which the article accurate reflects has 276 schools in the city, including 50 high schools.

More of those students are non-white than white.

TEA is an independent state agency, so it's not accurate to say it's part of the "Abbott Administration."  Governor's in Texas don't have "administrations" in the Presidential sense.  But TEA officials are elected to the offices, and the state is solidly red, so....

Is it me, or are white GOP men taking over a lot of stuff run by people who don't look like them? -- Houston schools, Jackson MS courts, Florida universities, etc., etc. https://t.co/nwxDB6fvqK

— Will Bunch (@Will_Bunch) March 15, 2023

Yeah.  There is that, isn't there?

TEA's primary authority to do this is a 2015 law mandating TEA take over any school district that has at least one failing school.  Beatings until morale improves, in other words.  HISD had a "failing" school (by benchmarks set by the state) in 2019, and there the troubles began.  That's actually a story all by itself, because HISD sued TEA to stop the takeover, and the Lege passed a new law which the Texas Supreme Court said mooted HISD's suit, so here we are.

There was also a matter of a lot of screaming and yelling (no, literally; there was video) among school board members which was an embarassment to the district and the city, and caused the firing of the then newly-hired Superintendent of schools (which made HISD an even more attractive employer for teachers and superintendents, hem-hem).  TEA says that, too, is part of the reason for the takeover (although that board no longer sits, and a new superintendent was hired by a new board and is making great strides in improving HISD schools.) The new board and the new Super come crashing to an end in June, when the current school year ends.  What happens next is probably going to look a lot like the "new and improved" water system in Flint, Michigan that wasn't, while an autocrat is in charge.

Interestingly, too: at the time of those school board shouting fests (made great "Bleeding/leading" stuff on local TV news), a very small school district in the Houston area was taken over because it was A) poor, and B) clearly failing its students.  There were rumours even then that TEA might take over HISD (because of the failing school, not because of the failing school board; but the latter was given the blame in the rumors), but it was reported that TEA would be very reluctant to take on such a huge district (the largest in the state by several orders of magnitude).  The problematic school board issues go back to 2018; the attempted takeover dates to 2019.  The HISD lawsuit I mentioned held that effort up until just recently.  So while HISD has changed in 5 years, TEA's determination to run it has not.

As noted in the article, HISD has lost state funding due to "Robin Hood," the state law that "recaptures" local property taxes and redistributes it to "poorer" districts ("poor" meaning lower property values for tax calculation purposes).  Actually that money is barely parceled out to ISD's, and mostly goes into the General Fund because Texas has no state income tax (heaven forbid!) and by Constitution can't have a state property tax (several districts sued over the obvious:  taking local school taxes to Austin to fund state government IS a state property tax.  The Texas Supreme Court discreetly and ludicrously decided it wasn't.  There's lots and lots and LOTS of blame to go around here).  And this session, with a record surplus in the coffers, the idea is to offer ISD's across the state $1000 more per student, but also to allow parents to recover their school taxes and use them to buy private education.  All this will really do is give rich people with kids already in private school a tax rebate school districts can ill afford, but what do the rich people care?  Poorer people will find the tax refund won't pay for a semester's worth of tuition at a decent private school, and bad schools will pop up like mushrooms in Seattle to take their money and cheat their children of anything resembling an education.

So this ain't just about HISD.  But no, these "takeovers," which are all the rage, don't work.  Again, think Flint, Michigan, and how its problems were not solved by the autocrat who took over there.  TEA says one reason they are doing this is the school board.  But:

“Maybe school boards are the least worst option that we have,” said Beth Schueler, a professor at the University of Virginia and one of the study authors.

The reference is to a national study of 35 school takeovers:

“These policies are very harmful to communities in terms of their political power,” said Domingo Morel, a Rutgers University political scientist who has studied and criticized state takeovers. “And then what the state says is going to improve — this research shows it’s not doing that either.” 

The new study focuses on the 35 school districts from across the country that were taken over by states between 2011 and 2016. These takeovers often happened in small cities and the vast majority of affected students were Black or Hispanic and from low-income families.

“At some point you just have to go in a new direction,” an Arkansas state board of education member said in 2015 after voting to take over Little Rock’s schools. 

To find out what happened next, Schueler and coauthor Joshua Bleiberg of Brown University used national test score data to compare districts that were taken over to seemingly similar districts in the same state that retained local control. 

In the first few years of the takeover, the schools generally saw dips in English test scores. By year four, there was no effect one way or the other. In math, there were no clear effects at all. 

“The punchline is, we really don’t see evidence that takeover is benefitting student outcomes, at least in the short term,” said Schueler.

The article notes that the takeover of schools in New Orleans was successful.  But part of that success was an increase in school funding.

Nobody's expecting a healthy increase in school funding in Texas.

Several states in 2021 decided school takeovers weren't the panacea they were sold to be.  Texas tried an experiment with "school vouchers" about 25 years ago that went so badly it may not be repeated again even this year.  But it took that debacle to turn legislators against the idea (even if it's still popular with Dan Patrick and a few others).  It may be a few years yet before we decide punishment is not the best way to improve education.  But then, this is Texas:  we'll try anything rather than spend the money necessary to hire good teachers and give the kids good schools to learn in.  And we'll make sure the blame can never get back to the Legislature that passes all these laws and points to the victims of them as the real problem.