Domingo Morel is a professor of political science at Rutgers University who has studied school takeovers across the nation. He is the author of Takeover: Race, Education, and American Democracy.
It is a manufactured crisis. It is a theft of political power, and it is based on race.
If the state of Texas had its way, the state would be in the process of taking overthe Houston Independent School District.
But a judge temporarily blocked the takeover on Jan. 8, with the issue now set to be decided at a trial in June.
The ruling temporarily spares Houston’s public school system from joining a list of over 100 school districts in the nation that have experienced similar state takeovers during the past 30 years.
The list includes New York City, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, New Orleans, Baltimore, Oakland and Newark. Houston is the largest school district in Texas and the seventh largest in the U.S.
While the state of Texas claims the planned takeover is about school improvement, my research on state takeovers of school districts suggests that the Houston takeover, like others, is influenced by racism and political power.
States fail to deliver
State governments have used takeovers since the late 1980s to intervene in school districts they have identified as in need of improvement. While state administrations promise that takeovers will improve school systems, 30 years of evidence shows that state takeovers do not meet the states’ promised expectations. For instance, a recent report called Michigan’s 15-year management of the Detroit schools a “costly mistake” because the takeover was not able to address the school system’s major challenges, which included adequately funding the school district.
But while the takeovers don’t deliver promised results, as I show in my book, they do have significant negative political and economic consequences for communities, which overwhelmingly are communities of color. These negative consequences often include the removal of locally elected school boards. They also involve decreases in teachers and staff and the loss of local control of schools.
Despite the highly problematic history of state takeovers, states have justified the takeovers on the grounds that the entire school district is in need of improvement. However, this is not the case for the Houston takeover because by the state’s own standards, the Houston school system is not failing.
By the state’s own standards, the Houston Independent School District is not failing!
Although the state has given the Houston Independent School District a B rating, it plans to take over the Houston schools because one school, Wheatley High School, has not met state standards for seven years. According to state law, the state can take over a school district or close a school if it fails to meet standards for five years.
The Houston Independent School District has 280 schools. The district serves over 200,000 students. It employs roughly 12,000 teachers. Wheatley High School serves roughly 800 students and has roughly 50 teachers.
So why would a state take over a school district that has earned a B rating from the state? And why base the takeover on the performance of one school that represents fewer than 1% of the district’s student and teaching population?
The takeover is nothing more or less than a bald-faced attempt to strip political power from black and Hispanic communities.
No one believes that software developer Mike Morath (the current state commissioner) has a single idea about how to improve Wheatley or any other school. He has never been a teacher, a principal, or a superintendent. He is there to carry out the rightwing agenda of Governor Gregg Abbott.
Count on it. This is a bald-faced power grab.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
State takeovers are generally a response by the state to overturn home rule under the guise of “improvement.” No state takeovers have resulted in improved outcomes for students. The takeovers are generally tool of white state administrations that are often unhappy about the racial composition of the local school board. In the case of Houston, the school board ” has four Latinos, three African Americans, one Asian and one white. ” It is clear that the actual motive for the takeover is racial bias. What legitimate metric would allow a school district with a B rating to be seized by the state? While I am not a fan of these ratings, the B rating makes the claim of blatant racism more legitimate. We need to figure out a way to fight back against the racist tactics of privatizers that continually attack a minority majority community’s right to authentic, equitable public schools. We need to stop the practice of placing poor minority students into profit generating, separate and unequal schools, perhaps through the courts.
GREAT first sentence: takeovers a response by the state to overturn home rule under the guise of ‘improvement’
SICKENING.
This is an excellent article but it is erroneous in that NYC schools have never been taken over by the state; at least in living memory. We do have mayoral control, which like state control is flawed because it lacks checks and balances.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.