Despite months of community protests, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced last week that it would begin the process of taking over Fort Worth Independent School District, Texas’ ninth largest school district with 68,000 students. The move marks the second-largest district to be taken over by the state, next to the highly controversial takeover of Houston ISD in 2023, and is part of an increasing trend of state intervention into locally controlled public education systems.
In a letter to district leaders, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath said he planned to appoint a superintendent, a conservator, and a new board of managers, thereby deposing the currently elected school board, after the appeal process ends on October 30.
After long legal delays over state accountability ratings, the Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade received its fifth consecutive failing rating for the 2022-23 school year in April this year, triggering a state law that empowers TEA to take over an entire school district if a singular school receives a failing mark for five years in a row. In 2020, the district handed the campus to the nonprofit Texas Wesleyan University Leadership Academy Network, as part of another state law that incentivizes privatization of struggling campuses to avoid takeover.
When the school still received failing ratings after two school years, Fort Worth ISD (FWISD) closed the campus in 2023 to avoid state sanctions. But, according to Morath’s letter, the closure occurred after the school had already earned its fifth consecutive failing rating and “did not address the district’s underlying systemic deficiencies that caused the chronic underperformance.” The campus population, like the rest of the school district, was composed predominantly of low-income students of color: 96 percent were economically disadvantaged and 60 percent were Hispanic.
“In light of the district’s current and historic data, district level intervention is needed to improve overall performance for the students of Fort Worth ISD,” Morath wrote in the letter. According to recent reporting by the Texas Observer, over the past 15 years TEA has taken over 13 school districts with mixed results—some have seen improvements while others haven’t. For instance, the agency left Beaumont and Edgewood ISD with more failing schools after both state takeovers officially ended in 2020.
FWISD board members wrote in a statement that TEA’s announcement came when the district was seeing academic gains. “Over the past year, our Board and Administration have worked tirelessly to strengthen instruction and accelerate student outcomes, said Board President Roxanne Martinez. “Our elected Board is in the best position to drive the sustainable improvements the Commissioner seeks.”
Zach Leonard, a parent with children attending FWISD who’s been organizing community members against the takeover, told the Texas Observer that they’ll continue to resist: “An appointed board of managers is beholden not to local citizens. They’re beholden to Mike Morath and ultimately, Greg Abbott.” Leonard said parents are worried FWISD could go through the same tumult that Houston ISD has experienced since 2023, when TEA took over the district and appointed the controversial ex-Dallas ISD superintendent Mike Miles to lead the district.
Miles has been touting improved academic ratings at Houston ISD (HISD) since he took charge: The district received no F rated campuses and fewer D rated campuses in the state’s latest ratings. But critics warn Miles’ proclaimed success has come at the expense of its schools’ leadership, teachers, and students.
Reports from the Houston Chronicle and Texas Monthly have revealed that Miles inflated STAAR scores by excluding students at struggling schools from advanced math and science courses and delaying participation in those STAAR exams by a year.
Parents, students, and teachers in HISD have all complained of how classroom learning has turned exclusively into test-prep: libraries have been replaced with disciplinary centers, science labs with worksheets, essay writing with multiple choice tests, and reading whole books with reading passages from the STAAR test. Each district-scripted lesson ends with a 5-minute multiple choice quiz.
“It’s not a sustainable model for the future. It’s not true education. It’s just test prep,” Leonard said.
According to the Chronicle’s analyses, Miles’ reforms have led to the exodus of 177 principals at 156 campuses and 5,600 teachers from across the district. A quarter of teachers teaching in HISD this school year are uncertified, compared to 20 percent the previous year. Student enrollment in the district is also falling. From the 2022-23 school year before the takeover to the current one, student enrollment has fallen 10 percent—from almost 190,000 to 170,000.
TEA can restore local control of the district after the failing school meets state standards for two consecutive years, but it is not required to do so. Although HISD’s Wheatley High School—the campus that triggered the initial takeover—received a B the past two school years, TEA announced this past June that it would extend the takeover until June 2027 “to allow the district to build on its progress.” More changes are coming in the 2026-27 school year. Miles has recently announced the district will close up to 10 schools and turn its magnet high schools into charter schools.
The state takeover in Fort Worth could be followed by others in Beaumont, Connally, Wichita Falls, and Lake Worth ISDs, which all received a fifth consecutive failing grade at one of its schools after the 2024-25 school year.
“It’s not just a Fort Worth ISD or Houston ISD issue. This is a statewide issue,” Leonard said.
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