The Network for Public Education sponsored a conversation among me, Daniel Santos, and Domingo Morel.
Daniel Santos is an 8th grade social studies teacher in the Houston schools and vice-president of the Houston Federation of Teachers.
Domingo Morel is author of Takeover and the nation’s leading expert on the process by which a state abrogates local control of a school district.
I am a graduate of the Houston public schools.
As background, there are two things you should know:
1. Houston is not a “failing” district. It has a B rating.
2. State law in Texas allows the state to take control of a district if only one of its schools has persistently low scores.
Students, parents, teachers, and elected officials have complained about this abrogation of democracy. Governor Abbott and State Commissioner Mike Morath ignore them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I think the MAGA RINO legislation in Texas that made it possible to take over the Houston public school district, that isn’t failing by any rational standards, is another battle in the war to destroy OUR public schools by MAGA RINO autocratic loving fascists.
It doesn’t matter if those attacks are funded by ALEC members, Gates or Walton, we are also seeing the same attacks on our public education systems from K through college, libraries, and democracy in Florida and a few other red states that have fallen to the MAGA RINOs.
I read one flawed OpEd that argued what DeSantis, Abbott and Sanders are doing is not fascism, but… “Many experts agree that fascism is a mass political movement that emphasizes extreme nationalism, militarism, and the supremacy of both the nation and the single, powerful leader over the individual citizen.”
https://world101.cfr.org/historical-context/world-war/what-fascism#:~:text=What%20does%20fascism%20mean%3F,leader%20over%20the%20individual%20citizen.
After watching the discussion, I think the only viable solution to hostile state takeovers may be from getting the federal government involved. The federal government has a responsibility to protect civil rights. The takeovers in Newark, New Orleans and now Houston are all political attempts to overturn local rule in minority-majority communities. Perhaps now is not the time for this given the composition of the Supreme Court, but we should try to require that cities put the issue up to a public vote before a state takeover. What is happening is that white politicians are forcing state takeovers on minority communities without giving the impacted communities any voice in the process. The racial pattern of this process indicates that race is a motivator, and scores are a smokescreen. This process is neither fair nor just, and it smells of systemic racism.
As far as trying decipher Abbott’s intentions, I think by appointing charter vendors to the board in charge of the state takeover process his intentions are quite clear. He intends to move as many schools as he can into the portfolios of politically connected Texans.
Kids aren’t achieving much in the Houston public schools, but per the criteria of this blog Houston is a successful district. This blog’s criteria: (1) The teachers in Houston are unionized and thus contribute to Randi’s huge salary (2) The local union and its members contribute heavily to Democratic politicians.
What a bizarre post.
Houston is a large diverse urban system whose students are about 79% economically disadvantaged with about one third bilingual. Despite these challenges the district earned a B rating from the TEA. With an average salary of about $56,000, I doubt many teachers are sending lots of money to Randi, especially since Houston was recently rated an expensive city in which to live.
The main point of the discussion is that the state is not justified in taking over the district because only one school is actually in the failing category. The takeover is political. Of course, there is always room for improvement which they could certainly do with more resources.https://schools.texastribune.org/districts/houston-isd/
The state of Texas rates Gouston a B district. That’s excellent for a district that enrolls many low-income students.
Barry— TX is a right-to-work state: in TX, public-sector unions have no collective bargaining rights. The [conservative] Fordham Institute ranks the TEA as the 44th [of 51] weakest state unions.
As for “kids aren’t achieving much in the Houston public schools,” stats necessary to support view; check out retired teacher’s link. Houston’s hisch grad rate is same as national average [84%]. Their average SAT score is 7% below the natl ave [974 vs 1050], but their ave ACT score is 15% above the natl ave [23.6 vs 20.6]. These along with other factors earn them the state’s “B” grade. It is only TX’s outlier 2015 law that allows 1 failing school among HISD’s 276 to trigger state takeover of the whole district.