Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of the trib Cast for December sixteenth. My name is Eleanor Klibanoff, as always law and politics reporter at the Texas Tribune. We are not joined today by Matthew Watkins, who had to go out of town, but we are joined by two very special guests from the Tribunes Education team. We are joined by Jaden Edison Jayden welcome.
Back, thank you, glad to be here.
And Snaejda Welcome. I think for the first time to the trip gust second. Second, Oh, did you.
Do the episode on Star Test?
I did, which, As we were just discussing before this, Matthew was always pushing to an episode on Star Test. And I've said this on this podcast before. I think every reporter, every person in this world should be allowed to choose a couple of topics that they don't care about. Otherwise there's too much to care about. And I decided a while ago for me that was gonna be Star Tests. I don't have children. I was like, I care about schools, I care about school takeovers, I care about all of
this Star Test. I'm just gonna check out on And so Matthew did that episode while I was out of the country, and.
Then thoughts pro yeah, you know, it is what it is.
Schedule to get away, but apparently not for long enough.
I come back and this is what I get, you know, four months later, penalized by having to talk about school ratings and is.
A big part of the.
Yeah you know, spoiler alert.
We are here today to talk about school takeovers and sort of state intervention on school districts, which we had talked about as an episode of the Trip cast to do before the end of the year, and then we thought, well, there's so much news happening, we'll like put it off and do it early next year.
And then the Text Education Agency said, not so fast.
We're gonnd never mind, marry Christmas.
We're gonna take over a couple more districts. We're going to put it back in the news. And so really glad you guys are able to join us to help us understand you know what this all means.
Sure, glad to be here.
So it's been a bumpy year for Texas school districts. You know, We've had a number of districts, particularly the last couple of weeks, facing state takeovers. We've got others that are, you know, dealing with sort of riple effects of still being under state scrutiny or being sort of on the precipice of it. The whole system of how we measure schools and how they're doing and how students are doing and testing and all of that has been under a lot of uncertainty. You know, most recently.
People have read about this.
It's probably because last week the text Education Agency announced they were taking over the Beaumont, Connolly and Lakeworth school districts. We throw this term around a lot, right, like state takeover of a school district, Jayden. What does that mean?
Yeah, in simple terms, I would think of it as shifting control of a school district from local control, which we know a lot of people in Texas and nationally really care about, to state control. And so under the Texas context, a state takeover otherwise referred to by the Texas Education Agency as an intervention. Right, they'll actually pushed back on the term takeover, but it's a national term
using education, so it's not exclusive to Texas. But nonetheless, you know, state law allows the Education Commissioner if there's a case where a school district has at least one campus that receives excuse me, five consecutive failing grades in
the state's academic accountability system. It basically triggers, you know, a decision by the commissioner either close the campus or replace the local school district with what's known as a board of managers, which are basically state appointed, So those are going to be appointed by the commissioner, and many of these cases too, it's a new superintendent as well, and also what's as a conservator, which basically, you know, that role you know, has a lot of authority to
really make sure that during the transition. Beyond that, you know, elected school board members and others are doing what they need to do to to basically comply with whatever the academic turn around plan is. So again, it's it's it's more nuanced than just quote unquote takeover. But I think, you know, in simple terms, the shift from local control to state control, you know, of the governance of the district.
I think what Jayden is saying is really key here because education for has so long been really decisions that have been made at a local level. It's primarily been driven by local decisions created by a local made by a local school board and that is elected by the
community that they are meant to serve. And so what we're having is increasingly so the Texas Education Agency Commissioner come in and out that entire democratically elected school board and appoint his peace ball who are making then decisions about communities across the state. So we're seeing more of an influence of like this, the state coming in and making decisions about how classrooms are run and how how students are being taught.
And I think if people feel like, well, this is like feels like this is happening a lot more recently, Like this certainly was like not something I knew about like growing up. I mean, this is some a relatively new phenomenon, right. The legislature empowered the Text Education Agency to take over districts or to sort of step in when a school is continually failing in twenty fifteen. Soon after that, Mike Marath became the Text Education Agency Commissioner.
You know who is Marath?
And like, what sort of role has he played in this these recent takeovers that we've seen.
Yeah, so a couple things too. I would note that you're right that in twenty fifteen, you know, a new state law kind of created the scenario that we're talking about now with you know, either closing the campus or you know, initiate a full you know scale takeover or I should know before that though, you know, the Education Agency actually you know, they provided data dating back as far as two thousand, right that that kind of tracks that you know, formerly a lot of these kind of
interventions and takeovers, which is also the case nationally as well. So they've more so been related to like financial challenges, physical challenges, and so what we've seen, you know, since the twenty fifteen law is a shift to more of those takeovers being about academic academic poor academic performance, right, you know, by the district. And so we've seen that in places like Houston more recently obviously in Fort Worthing then obviously the three that we're talking about here. But yeah,
I mean talk about Education Commissioner Mike Marath. You know, he's a really interesting guy. He's very you know, I always think he's very data centered, and he's a systems guy. Right, he's an entrepreneur, you know. Background, right, he was a member of the Dallas Sized d school Board before he became the Education Commissioner and so you have to almost
look at it from his perspective. He looks at things through the lens of systems, right, and you know, when you're in the business world, you're thinking about, well, if something isn't happening, you know, what's the reason for that? And a lot of times, you know, the Commission's going to point the governments. Right, He's going to look at, you know, what are the trends that we're seeing in the district. You know, you know, maybe it is one
campus that triggers the intervention. But if you actually if you read his letters, he kind of talks about some of the you know, longer term trends, like, for example, if you have a district that has multiple years of failing campuses or you know has seen you know, various struggles and whatnot. You know, he's been very clear in his letters and his messaging to the districts that he sees that as a failure of the school boards and
leadership and so interesting dynamic there. And again there's a lot a lot of people don't necessarily see it the same way. There is new wants to that, but that is kind of who he is and how he how he's looking at it and how he's articulated his reasoning for feeling like these interventions are necessary.
Yeah. I think folks in Marat's camps, we think of them as like pro accountability. They'll say, you know, at a certain point, there needs to be a threshold for if a school is not if students are not performing well enough on tests, it means that they do not have the skills that they need to succeed later on in life, and so the school is not serving those
students at least in that way. And so there needs to be a certain threshold where we decide, you know, a school is not doing a school district is not doing enough, or they need help, and the state is positioned with its resources to come in and provide that like extra support. But that threshold you mentioned the twenty fifteen law that really changed, and so now we've decided five five failing ratings at one campus is enough for
a whole district to be taken over. I think some of the controversy is, you know, it is one it is one campus, and so when you have these giant school districts, we're seeing some of our biggest school districts in Texas being taken over Houston and Fort Worth. There's there's questions coming up about like should one school alone be enough for an entire district to lose all its local control?
Right, I mean, you guys heard about this in as just like one example of like the Beaumont district which was recently now is facing takeover.
I guess they have a chance to appeal. There's like a lot of steps yeah.
There, yeah, you know, they have two school districts. I mean, Beaumont a decent sized city, They've got two schools. I should say that I had five years of failing grades. You know, the elementary school that they're looking at has never earned an acceptable rating. The middle school has gone eleven years without one. The president of the school board said, you know, they were working on it. They're trying to
like improve this. It's a process they you know. He says sort of like, well, why are we taking over the whole school district instead of shutting down those two campuses. It does sound like, I mean, generally speaking, the board would have the authority to shut down that those campuses. They're sort of saying, well, we're working on it. We're trying to like fix these I mean, I think it is like under parents are like, I don't want my
kid to go to a failing school. I don't want my kid to like you know, how how do people sort of talk about balancing this need for like like you said, we do need school to be performing with like the whole district needs to be taken over just sort of ameliorate maybe problems at a couple of schools.
You know, I wouldn't know one thing, you know, I think this whole conversation, you know, I mentioned earlier that there is nuance to it because I think on the flip side of where the commissioner is coming from is you look at the reality of education and educating children. It's really hard, right. It's not like a business per se, right, where you know, kids are not a commodity, right, It's like, you know, you need time and investment in things of
those nature, things of that nature. And if you look at the characteristics actually of the three schools that were taken over, and we've also seen this, you know, trend wise and also in Fort Worth and in Houston, these are districts with significantly high numbers of students who come from lower income households right free or reduced lunch, which
is an indicator of poverty in the state. And you know at the federal level as well, these are districts that have a majority Black and Hispanic student populations as well. And so what that makes me think automatically as a reporter, I come in, I start thinking about, Okay, we know that, you know, poverty has an impact on how students perform. Right. You look at the remarks from the from the Beaumont
you know school board member. He mentioned, for example, you know we need more family engagement, right, that could help us kind of fix this issue. Okay, you look at family engagement. Let's let's unpack that a little bit, right, Like, you know, if you have a family, for example, and we know these existing Texas families who work multiple jobs, right and may not have the ability to sit at home after school and read to their child or you know, to do the things that also have proven to boost
academic performance. Then is that necessarily a failure of the school district or is it is it a collective kind of effort, you know, collaboration between family, the school, you know,
community resources, things of that nature. And so that's why I say it's a little bit more nuanced I think when we talk about this, and this is why these are controversial nationally, right, I mean, look at I was actually before our conversation just refreshing myself on some of the national date on this, and it was really interesting because you know, there was a study I think it was looking at like thirty five takeovers between like sometime in the twenty tens, and it was shown on average
to not really boost you know, academic achievement in math and reading, but also it had shown kind of harmful effects,
particularly on majority black school districts. And it's not in the same thing when it comes to fiscal challenges for majority black school districts, not necessarily the same for other groups, right, And so it's just so much more nuance when we talk about education and say, how I let you chime in, but it's just interesting to me, like when we talk about these oftentimes it's about you hear people talk about governance and you know they try to compare districts of
similar kind of demographic makeups. But again, education is just so nuanced, and every why a kid is not achieving, it's not always necessarily because of the district or a teacher. Maybe it is, but it's just more nuanced than that.
And just for context, we talked a little bit about Beaumont. So all of the four school districts that have been taken over this year, at the school, the one campus that triggered that takeover, the campuses that triggered those takeovers, we're all serving predominantly black and brown students, and we're in predominantly low income areas, and so it's you know, we if is it's a question of like is a
takeover a one size fits all solution? Like can we really use that as a measure to go into communities, especially when we now have this pattern of these are communities that tend to have less resources, or maybe these are communities that are just are struggling to serve their students for different reasons. That all contribute that show up in the academic results, but there are bigger root.
Causes, which I think goes to this broader question right that the state has been grappling with. I think nationally we've been grappling with this right for a long time, which is like, how do you measure how a school is performing? And often that comes to how do you measure how like a student is learning. But as we were choking aout before, like a big part of this is the Star test, right, Like how do we measure
I don't know. I send my kid to first grade and I want them to be ready to go to second grade.
How do I know if they're doing that?
And then more importantly, I want to move to a school district where if my kid goes into first grade, they'll be leaving, you know, ready to do second grade. Like how do I assess if a district is good or performing? Which seems to your point, like on the system's front, like so straightforward, right, just like we'll test them all, tell us if they're if they're doing well or not. It is so much more complicated than that, snayha.
Can you tell us a little bit about like this battle over accountability ratings?
Yeah, I think when we talk about school accountability and the accountability system, it's really a question of how do we measure like whether schools are successful and serving as students and what does it mean to truly serve serve students? And I think to your point, alan Or like testing
is kind of the easiest metric. You have a standardized test, you can apply it to all students, and I think there is legitimacy to that, and you want students to have those like math and reading skills that they need to go on to be ready for college, to get the jobs that they want to get that are high paying and will help them create the life that they
want after they leave the school systems. But there's other metrics too, right, like things like social emotional well being, like how students are are like showing up to class mentally, like their mental health, how that's doing, and all that is way harder to measure, right there's no standardized metric for that, and so then it becomes this complicated thing.
And so I think there's really been a push in Texas to think about other measures that go beyond testing in our accountability system, and the state is kind of
right now. The legislature has directed them to sort of explore some of that, but we haven't seen that really fully implement implemented in the accountability system like as it stands right now, even with the legislation that passed this past legislative session, standardized testing is still the major major metric, and that was the standardized test, even though it is being overhauled.
We have to see.
It still remains to be seen in the effects that will have. But that is a widely unpopular test because of the pressure it puts on students, because some people don't feel like it's a good metric of how students are doing.
And just to and also to add to that over the story earlier this year, looking at the fort Worth takeover specifically, and you know how the Star Test, you know, plays an outsize role and really determining you know, the academic accountabilit system plays it. It's a huge factor in it, right, and it was a testing I went back and looked at some of the statements from lawmakers, right, and there seem to be consensus, right, that belief that the Star
test had set students up to fail. Right, not my words, right, the words of actual lawmakers who who voted to phase out this test by twenty twenty seven. And so I think a lot of that belief too. You mentioned the unpopularity of the test. It's not just so much the Start test as it is like the culture of you know, kind of high stakes testing right where it's like, you know, what is to your point, what is the goal of education? Right?
Is it to teach students critical thinking skills or is it to you know, get them to achieve on tests, right, And some people may argue where those things are kind of you know, tied together, but there are other people who see it differently, and so it's just a but it goes back to talk about conversations between local and
state control, right. It's going to vary about community. There are some communities who may think that, you know, standardized testing is the way they want student performance to be measured. And then you have other communities elsewhere who think it's more nuanced, right, like who they want to make sure that their kids are you know, well rounded people who are not just exceptional students, but exceptional people in the world.
We hear that a lot too, And I remember that from a story I did some months ago, and so just more once. And I think locally, community by community is going to vary in terms of what values people hold about education.
I spent some time in a neighborhood in Austin that was really like, it's a predominantly refugee immigrant community and they aren't Austin isn't facing it takeover yet. But this one school, this one middle school, along with a couple others in the Austin school district is close to that back threshold. They're at about FLOORA now, and the parents were devastated that, you know, the district was considering shutting
them down. They were fighting to stay open. They knew that their kids weren't performing well on the standardized test, but they said they were telling me, hey, this is not a fair metric. Our kids. English is their first language. They can't even really like understand this test that they're taking. And also like we show up every day, we are really engaged in the teachers are serving our students in
a way that is different than just a test. They feel well, the students feel welcome, they feel safe, they're older that graduated from that middle school went on to do be successful. And so it was this this disconnect where you know, they were feeling this this school district in the state, they were feeling this pressure coming down on them saying the school is not doing good enough. But it was the community that was saying, actually, we think they are doing a great job. We don't want
leadership to change. So you do see these these tensions come into play.
Yeah, I mean it makes sense, right, Like if you have a district or a specific school that's serving you know, children who you know, maybe are English language learners or
their parents or English language learners. Like, you know, you're just dealing with a different set of challenges or you know, like you said, a district that is you know, children are showing up hungry, they're showing up, you know, like they're having housing instability, they're dealing with like all of these challenges to say, like, well, how do they perform on this test versus you know, these kids who are maybe like their parents are reading to them from a
very young age, they you know, maybe are able to have you know, more robust sort of before they come to school, more robust education, Like they're shown up with all the best tools and everything, Like how do we put those next to each other and say, well, that's enough for us to take over. But then you know, it's like this is the sort of inherent tension the
state certainly is grappling with. And to your point, like legislators, it seems like really are grappling with this, right Like there's I think we sometimes you know, give our legislators a hard time for like some times just like throwing up their hands at these complicated issues or not like digging in on them to find like a reasonable solution. It does sound like where we are now is everyone sort of agreeing at least with the testing, we need a better solution.
We don't know what that is.
I mean, are there any examples that either guys have encountered like nationally or things you're hearing from lawmakers and experts on like how should we be measuring schools?
Is there any good model for this?
You know, it's interesting the first thing that comes to mind when you ask the question, aside from there's been really good reporting from places like Text Monthly and others that have kind of gone locally and looked at how you know, there's like coalitions of districts in the state that are kind of wrestling with this very issue and topic and really trying to find ways to be more innovative, innovative with their kind of local accountability you know, indicators
and things of that nature. But you know, I would actually go to the state school voucher program because it's it's an interesting place to start. And the reason I say that is because nationally, right and we've seen this more as these programs have grown in side obviously Texas is you know, huge in this in this conversation now is we've seen more and more of a shift over the years from hey, we shouldn't be measuring the success of these programs by standardized testing. We should be looking
at measures like parents satisfaction. You know, we should be looking at you know, at trip that's actually more recently. You know, one of the ed choice representatives, you know, huge you know, uh, you know, school valuer, school choice kind of supporter, you know, he he cited like high school graduation rates and things of that nature. Right, metrics that really go beyond kind of testing infrastructure and puts it more in the hands of like parents and families
and what they feel is most important. You compare and contrast that, though, to the most recent legislative session, where you've had people to say, hey, when it comes to accountability, you've you've agreed through policy that we should be taking
a more holistic view of this. Right, we should be considering more things like what do local communities feel about feel about their schools, because that's the way we're going to measure the success of this program in particular, right that we're investing at the start of one billion dollars and probably more to come after that, But we're not
seeing the same with public schools. And the interesting part is, too, if you actually talk to vout your advocates ESA advocates, they'll actually tell you that they agree that public schools are held to a standard that they feel is unfair.
Right.
I've had that conversation with folks you know, in that camp before who said they agree with that, and so it's to me it's just really interesting because it just shows there may be a little bit of a contradiction there, at least in the odds of people who who think that again, the local control and accountability component is important, But then you look at you know, programs, you know elsewhere, almost like.
If you're if we were to design a school accountability system from scratch, which in some ways we're doing with the voucher system, wouldn't look anything like how we hold public schools accountable. It sounds like you're sort of saying so far at least, yeah.
And what lawmakers are saying is, hey, let parents decide.
Yeah, which works better for private education than public right, But.
When you have I think the difference here is that now you know, the state is putting its own funding behind it, right, So there is a I think there's expectation of accountability from you know, advocates when you think about, you know, how do we know our return on investment?
Yeah?
You know, so I don't know if you had anything too.
I think, I mean what we saw this legislative session is that tension came up, right, like why are we holding private schools to different standards than than our public schools? And but but there was discussion. But when it came to actually the legislation, lawmakers weren't in the end willing to really do an entire revision of the accountability system. They said, hey, Tea, you should look into different metrics.
Some for example, we're like workforce training, like our students complaining CTE classes, that kind of thing, but like pre K participation, so they're exploring it, but it's not quite the same. We're not seeing those things really being weaved into the accountability system.
That's interesting.
I mean, I know, say, how you do a lot of reporting on sort of and like pathways to employment that maybe are not like did you get a four point zero GPA, get a twenty four hundred on your SAT and get rolled at Harvard, right, It's like, we
don't need that for every student. We need students to learn to become airplane mechanics, We need them to learn to become you know, all kinds of things like does the current accountability system take into account schools that are doing good job preparing students for the workforce that maybe doesn't need like the same metric that show up on testing.
In short, no, because it is so depends on this standardized testing system. And I think you could argue that those like stem jobs that don't require a college degree, they still need you to be have those like critical math skills or science skills to really succeed in those roles. But we're not really thinking deeply about beyond the standardized test, and so we're for as long as we're not doing that, we're not really thinking about the student in a in a real holistic way and education issue.
And then they'll probably they'll probably say, well, you know, if you look at ourccountability system, we also look at things like colleging, career, you know, military rats, things that don't nature. But again back to sney House point, you know star test is king, right, the standardized test is King. When you look at the system, right and kind of what's what's the what's the measure the most heavily? If that makes sense, and.
It does make sense, just like human nature wise it until we have something better. You know, everyone can say all the livelong day that they don't think this our test is a good metric, but those results come out, you know, it's business as usual, right, Well, if we do have this, and what are we gonna not look
at it? You know, like and so I think as long as that is there, it's like becomes the metric, even if everyone is saying, what we don't think it's a great metric, but it's a metric that we have.
I also Jenden mentioned there is a metric in the accountability system that is smaller. The call it what we call the college and career readiness benchmark. But when I talk to school leaders, they're saying it's become sort of cared and sticks. So in order to meet that benchmark, maybe you need students, a certain number of students or a percentage of your students to be enrolled in like
career readiness classes. But that's sort of like once you have that incentive, you can just funnel students into like a word document class where you master word documents. But it's not actually the same thing as making sure that they're successful or have options for them for our career. That's not college, right.
I mean it almost seems again human nature that if you create a metric, people will go to great lengths to meet that metric, even if it's sort of you know, like and also we'll teach them what they need to know, but also like we need this many.
Kids to apply for college, like we uh.
When I was in high school, my high school had a one hundred percent college acceptance rate that they were like very dedicated to keeping, which meant every student had to, in addition to applying to all the colleges that they wanted to apply to, had to apply to like a safety school they absolutely could get into, so that like nobody was going to sort of slip through the cracks of like, oh I just didn't end up getting in anywhere.
And it's like I remember a kid wanted to go to culinary school and they were like, all good, you also have to be accepted to a four year college because we need to maintain this one hundred percent four year college acceptance rate and it's like, you know, inevitable that if you create a metric, people will schools will go to great odds, great lengths to meet that.
Yeah, you know, it reminds me to we were talking about this, and I kind of hinted at earlier, right when we were talking about some of the demographic makeups of like the schools and things of that nature. Right, these are this whole conversation keeps me up at night. But you know, I've thought about this a lot recently.
It's like, you know, the commissioner, you know, commission of Marath has often talked about, yeah, like he sees these systemic failures that are obviously disapportionately affecting you know, black
and brown students, right. And to me, you know, the interesting kind of nuance to that is like if you look, you know, obviously we know that academic achievement like nationally and gap and academic achievement gaps, things of that nature, Right, we understand kind of what that looks like and how it again disproportionately you know, harms or you know, more negative results for our black and brown students. But where the commissioner maybe does have a point when you talk
about systemic you know issues. Right, If you look at discipline data, right, which I've done more recently, like dating back to maybe maybe like seven, eight, eight or nine, something like that, every single year you have black and brown students, who are particularly black students, right, are overrepresented and out of school suspensions and in school suspensions any discipline category of metric you can think of, they're overrepresented in those things.
Right.
You read anecdotally stories like in barbaracill I ISD. You know there was a student the huge kind of court battle where you know, basically you know he had his hair a certain way and you know the district wasn't favorable for that violated their dress code, and you know
he wasn't able to go to school. Right, The question I often have, Right, those things have legitimate effects on you know, how students see themselves in school, right, which also has a trickle down effect to academic achievement and like how students perform. And so certainly there's a conversation that we had, right. It's like, certainly, you know, you can talk all day and debate, you know, should we be looking at academic achievement and things of those nature?
You know, excuse me not not looking at academic achievement, but looking at like standardized testing and things that nature
to measure student performance. But to be fair, there are things that school districts systemically when it comes to educating the most vulnerable kids, right, obstacles that, to be honest with you, when you look at the data, they certainly have to overcome because I don't know if you can come, you know, to any you know, to the commissioner, to the reporter and say inherently that if you look at discipline, you know, individually, these sets of students are just more
problem that. It's just not that's just not how it works. And so certainly there are systemic issues when it comes to creating an educational environment where these kids can thrive, and that's something that between the state, local communities, and at the district level are going to have to figure out.
And I think it's also a question of resources. And the way our educational system is set up is schools that are in poor communities are working with fewer resources, and so that is a challenge when you're trying to get students who are like high need, maybe aren't getting don't have food at home, and are coming to school with more needs that they need the school to then meet, but the school is working with fewer resources. And then you want them to go and show up to the
test and passed with fine colors. That's complicated. And I someone like Commissioner Marath will say, you know, there are bright spots. He'll point to specific places in south districts in South Texas that have maybe limited resources or it is like a high percentage of students who are economically disadvantaged and they're still able to perform well. And so I mean we need to look into why exactly that is. But on a whole, those are those are bright spots,
those are outliers. On a whole, we are seeing still seeing this trend of you know, when you have fewer resources, when you are in poor communities, it's students are performing performing worse on these tests. And you can imagine for all the all the reasons that we've talked about.
Yeah, I mean, it definitely seems like it's all like so intertwined that it's you know, I don't envy the people who do have to create policy around this, because it's like very hard to fix one piece without sort of fixing the whole thing. For these districts that are sort of staring down either potentially a takeover they've been sort of informed about this, or the ones, like you said Austin, some others that are really on the precipice here.
I want to sort of look back at Houston ID, which has been under over for a couple of years, and what has been.
The impact of that. I mean, how have we seen that play out?
Like what do these districts sort of have to look forward to in terms of how that might go.
Houston ICY is fascinating. I mean it is such a The way the takeover has played out is has been incredibly controversial. On one hand, I mean, you have a whole coalition of community members that have come in just kind of formulated and organized just around fighting back against Mike Marath, which is Mike Miles. Excuse me, which.
Is the why do they have such a.
Miles is the state appointed superintendent, like Marath the commissioner.
But Mike Miles the commissioner that Marath appointed.
I mean, it's.
Just a word tongue tis straight there.
But if we're facing we're going to get other state appointed superintendents, Let's try to use some different one request.
But yes, let me try it. But Mike Miles is the superintendent that the commissioner appointed, and so he's just had a really controversial approach. On one hand, you have this coalition of community members that have really fought against this, but then you also have these state lawmakers that have really lauded him and applauded him and said, you know, what Superintendent Miles is doing should be emulated across the state.
So I really think because of that those tensions, we really need to be paying attention to what is happening in Houston as really a possible forecast for what could be happening what we could see having a ripple effect
across Texas. And so you know there has been to answer your question, Elner, there has been a big jump in improvement in test course right, Like we had no f ratings this fifty host in Houston, ID I mean to go from fifty six underperforming to zero that is no one can argue with what a jump an improvement that is on the metrics, right, And so we're seeing test scores improve across every subject. But I think the question community members are asking is that what costs?
Right, Like we've.
Seen teachers leave and droves. We've seen students pull enroll in droves. There's been a question of like how much can we really gain from or gather from these improvements and test scores when we know some students are being held backgrades in math and science. So it's really this tension that's happening right now. It's like, Okay, we are seeing test test gains, but is testing to come back to really is it the end all be all?
Yeah? And what what state of point is? Superintendent Mike Miles has implemented the I'm glad I got there, right, Sure, Mike Miles, as you know, so basically, you know the basis of what he's doing there is through this reform system on the new new education system, right, they refer to it as as locally right and so so some of the features of that which people maybe have read about, right, like you know, daily quizzes, you know, kind of scripted
you know, curriculum where teachers are you know, are held to that and make sure that everybody's kind of aligned across the board, you know, creating kind of team centers in part for discipline, but also for you know, if you need to pull you know, kids out of class because they're not caught up on a certain lesson. You know, the class moves on, will pull the kid out and try to get them caught up right, some of those features.
And I think the way people have described it locally is more of kind of a what I've seen, right is more of like a people say, like a militaristic approach to education, right, and so some of the trade off, and we talk to people locally, it's like, Okay, we're seeing these gains, but to same house point, you know, at what costs? And some researchers too, you know, more recently,
I was speaking with a researcher in North Texas. You know, they're also thinking about to what extent, you know, and just for background in the enrollment losses that we're seeing, So enrollments technically up across the state, but every community is like different, and so Houston, you know, it's seeing, you know, dramatic drops in enrollment. But what's kind of raised the alarm of local reporters and researchers is that the enrollment drops are more profound in the schools where
those reforms are most targeted. And so the question becomes to what extent. You know, we're seeing a lot of teacher and student turnover. From a student turnover standpoint, you know how much of that factors into some of the changes, significant gains and the outcomes that we're seeing, right, you know, historically if you look at some of these, you know,
some of these, you know, similar scenarios. I remember reading a book a while back and the author was talking about how maybe it was in New York, California, one major school is nonethelesson. They were talking about how the local community was concerned that demography right change, the significant changes in enrollment, changes in student populations to what are you testing the same children who maybe before have been struggling and therefore were you know, you know, maybe part
of why test scores have been lower. Again, I'm not saying that that's the case, but I'm just saying that Houston is a very fascinating case that because there's just so much nuance, and there's a lot of information and things that we honestly probably won't even know until years from now, when when it's all said and done and we can look back and say, Okay, what actually happened, what worked and what didn't?
What do we know about where those I mean, the kids were disenrolling, where are they going?
Yeah, that's a great question, you know locally, and I want to give a hug shout out to the local reporters that the Houston Chronicles, they've done some really good stuff on this, you know, anecdotally speaking, we know through local reporting, right that there have been families that have just pulled their kids out of those schools because they didn't like the takeover and enrolled them in other places.
But that's also a big question more right, Like you know saying and I've talked about this before too, it's like where are you have to assume, right if you're seeing se have some of those kids dropped out of school all together? Like where? So there is a lot of nuances that the commissioner has been asked about that
I know by none other than Evan Smith, right. I was at a recent a recent deal there, and he was asked about the teacher turnover and you know, drops and enrollment, and it really didn't seem to be kind of a clear cohesive understanding to like what actually is happening there as it pertains to those particular changes in you know, change at the district level, But certainly things that I think the local reporters, you know, everybody's kind of thinking about, and as we kind of move forward
and continue to kind of measure, you know, what the success or lack there of, or wherever people look at it, what that looks like.
I especially wonder about that, given that the cuts that have been made is too services like wrap around services like supporting students experiencing homelessness. So then all these things you can imagine are sort of coming together. So it's just a it's a good question, I think all the reporters folks are asking right now.
Yeah, I mean, certainly, it doesn't tell like these are families that are like necessarily in a position to say like, oh, let's move to a wealthier district to get our kid into a better school, or let's you know, get our kiden rolled in a private school.
Maybe. I mean it sounds like maybe some of them are.
But that's a privilege too, right, to be able to just say say like, oh, yeah, so.
That's really really interesting. And I mean I think, like you said, it'll be years of sort of unpacking you know what worked, And doesn't it sound like we'll ever get a definitive like that was right or wrong.
It's just sort of like there were probably some gains and probably at some costs.
And it'll depend yeah, it'll depend on kind of local values, right, because you have a lot of parents there locally who for like, takeover isn't what's best for them. But if you look at a place like Fort Worth, you have families who are kind of welcome and get a little bit not saying that's the consensus or anything, but you've seen, you know, families who say, hey, maybe this is what's best for the district. And so, you know, really fascinating there.
But again let's go back to that local kind of community component.
And it is interesting, I mean that Houston is the sort of best example we have so far because like what a behemoth like. It's like, you know, if we had like a small rural district where you could say, like this is our laboratory for seeing it like Houston just a larger school district I assume than many states have in terms of enrollment in uh just one of the biggest in the countries. Just what what a place to start this, you know, this effort.
And one last thought too, I wonder if you I don't know if you have thoughts on this, but like, if the goal list systemic reform, but ultimately what's going to happen wants to take over, it ultimately ends because they will end at some point you shift back to local control, you know, elected school board members and the superintendent. You know, is it that they're going to just continue what Mike Miles or these other stated pointed superintendents are doing or
there are there going to implement their own vision? And like, if the goal systemic reform long term, how do you ensure if there are changes made by this administration, that it's going to carry on to the next There's no way you can guarantee.
That, especially if the community is sort of throwing their hands in saying I don't we don't agree with this. Yeah, So it is really fascinating. And I also think about, you know, the process of the state takeover. The TEA will say, you know, the school districts have a chance to fight it, to preempt it. But when you reach this like four failing grades, five failing grades, threshore, I really, I really wonder do schools really have a fighting chance
to stave off control? They have an option where they can enter a partnership with their charter school and that buys them a little bit more time. But Beaumat did do that, and a number of the schools did do that. But then and then you also have this option to maybe you shut down the school before before the tea
comes in. But then in a lot of these instances, Fort Worth and a bunch of these school districts that are being taken over, they did shut down to school and TA came and said, hey, that actually still wasn't enough. You hit the threshold. So it doesn't matter if the school is shut down, We're still going to come over and take over the entire district. So you really wonder, like how much like how much of the local say is really coming to play here?
I mean junior connentsort brings me to my final question, which is like, how does a district get out of state takeover.
We've seen that happen, yeah, so it's super interesting. So basically what we know is is we can look at
the case of Houston. Right, the commissioners set wasn't maybe a handful of say three maybe I'm missing a couple, but generally speaking, a handful of kind of parameters that the district needs to meet to begin a transition, but ultimately, like there is kind of a you know, a cutoff so far in the Houston's case, for example, we know that it will extend at least through twenty twenty seven, and at that point, and it started in twenty twenty three,
so twenty twenty seven, and at that point the commission actually has to begin the transition back to local control, which is also a very incremental process. Right, It's like, you know, only a certain you know, maybe a certain number of school board members come back at first, and like it's very so it's not like it's going to end in twenty twenty seven, So it's going to be gradually kind of phased out back into the hands of kind of the local school board. And obviously they could
choose one thing that's interesting. I don't again, we don't know if this is going to happen. A local school board could decide to say, hey, we like the stateing point of superintendent, we can keep them around. That's also a possibility. I don't know how likely that is, but certainly something that could happen as well.
Yeah, it's just an interesting sort of I mean, and Obviously, as we alluded to at the beginning, there's so much like tension between state and local control that has nothing to do with school performance and has a lot to do with you know, cities and particularly like these more politically blue leaning cities feeling you know, the sort of pressure of the red leaning state government that like underpins a lot of this, and also like this is a
thing that people really really care about, right, Like it We've we talked about this a lot of the Tribune. We have like a school Explorer's page on our website that is like consistently our most clicked.
Page and probably refresh.
Yeah, but it's like people is probably the thing people care about the most, right is like where what schools are performing, is how they make decisions about where they live, It's how they make decisions about how they want to spend their money, what they want to invest in, you know, all those kind of things.
And I think, you know, the.
State obviously feels that pressure, these local communities feel that press. Sure, and it sounds like this is just like the tool they've settled on for now to sort of execute on the state's vision at least of how to improve that.
And to be clear. Right. This is also one of those issues that really doesn't isn't divided neatly along like partisan lines, like when you talk about like takeovers like nationally, and if you look at twenty fifteen law, it was Harold Dunnen who's the one who who basically was responsible for the trigger. You know that that came into it, and you know, a lot of his frustration have been with you know, looking at he's predominantly black and brown
schools in his community in Houston. He's like, you know, even if you give districts, you know, resources, from his standpoint, he's like, we're still not seeing what we need to see. Right, you look at you can look at discipline, right, you can, you know, we know what impact for example, something that's simple term wise, like as teacher diversity is and how that how students who have teachers who look like them and reflect their experiences like that actually has shown to
also have positive effects on academic outcomes. Right. His question was is like, what are districts doing with the controllables? Right, Like, no circumstance is going to be perfect, but when you do have certain resources in the power to do things, what are you changing? And so I'm only bringing that up as an example of the show. It's not just a Republican thing, right, And just to.
Add, like a conservative value along conservative value has been less governance, right and central and local control and so shift.
A little bit in recent years with the in Texas specificity, yes, but certainly like local control and less government. And yeah, just I think a lot of people are concerned about, you know, are we doing enough for black and brown students? And like you said, that doesn't necessarily cut across it cuts across party lines in interesting ways.
And the commissioners acknowledged to these debates as well. During his discussion with Evan, you know, he he kind of acknowledged that, you know, some of the opposition maybe the fort work and things of the nature. He talked about how, you know, hey, those are valid points and those are
things that I have to consider ultimately. You know, he articulates that he feels like he's doing what was best for students, and that's going to depend on the person their background, with their values are how they look at education.
Right, It's a little bit like who is best possession to really do what's best and meet these needs of the students and you're seeing that in local folks saying, hey, this is our community, we know these students, we know these families. And then the state saying, while we have the resources, we have the tools and the academic knowledge that we can come in and really a point who we need to to really meet these like very specific needs.
So well, I mean it's a very complicated thing, but I appreciate you guys sort of breaking that down and your ongoing coverage on you know what does seem to at least be a recent uptick in you know takeovers. That was Snaeja Day and Jaden Edison. You can find their work at the Texas Tribune or at Texastribune dot org.
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