Steven Yoder writes in the Hechinger Report about the state takeover of the Houston Independent School District and the dismal record of state takeovers.
Houstonians see the takeover as the vengeful punishment of a Democratic district by a mean-spirited Republican governor. Takeovers typically don’t improve academic performance. They stifle the democratic voices of Black and brown citizens. Given the research, it’s the silencing of democracy that is the purpose of takeovers.
Yoder writes:
On June 1, the TEA took over Houston’s school district, removing the superintendent and elected board. Critics say it’s an effort by a Republican governor to impose his preferred policies, including more charter schools, on the state’s largest city, whose mayor is a Democrat and whose population is two-thirds Black or Hispanic. In other districts where state-appointed boards have taken over, academic outcomes haven’t improved. Now red-state governors increasingly use the takeovers to undermine the political power of cities, particularly those governed by Black and Hispanic leaders, according to some education experts.
The state took over HISD because one school—Wheatley High School—had been failing for years. But before the takeover, Wheatley improved its test scores, and no school in HISD was failing. But the state took control of the state’s largest district anyway.
At least three studies have found that takeovers don’t increase academic achievement. The latest, a May 2021 working paper by researchers from Brown University and the University of Virginia, looked at all 35 state takeovers between 2011 and 2016. “On average, we find no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits,” the researchers concluded.
Takeovers are premised in part on the idea that improving school board governance improves test scores. But the 2021 paper concluded that may be wrong: “These results do not provide support for the theory that school board governance is the primary cause of low academic performance in struggling school districts,” the researchers wrote.
Why did Governor Abbott and State Commissioner insist on taking control of HISD? Because they could. Because they are vengeful and arrogant. Because they know nothing about research. Because it’s amusing for a hard-right conservative like Abbott to grind down a district that didn’t vote for him. Because Mike Morath was never an educator and knows nothing about how to improve schools.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Software developers have all the credentials to be in charge of an entire state’s education system,” said no education expert ever.
School boards are generally not directly responsible for the academic performance of students any more than teachers are. Students’ academic performance correlates to family wealth, and children spend more time with family than they do in school. It is unfair to blame a school board for a school’s low scores on bubble tests. If Houston’s board had been so incompetent, it is unlikely that Texas TEA have awarded the schools with a B rating.
School takeovers are power plays that have been used in cities and states by leaders from both parties. Democrats have stepped away from this practice recently, but GOP leaders are using their power to target Black and Brown majority districts that vote against their policies. It has never worked, and it is often a precursor to mass privatization, which is one of the key goals of the GOP.
DeSantis has written an opinion piece for the ‘USA Today’ newspapers. If he is elected, he intends expand school choice nationally.
You know what also has a really poor track record? Removing the ability to run for office in local counties and parishes, the steppingstones. Jim Crow is back with a vengeance.
What I have witnessed from state takeovers is that they are no more than bureaucratic bullying with an agenda to look like they are taking action while having no intent to actually improve the school. The evidence of this is overwhelming.
Domingo Morel’s book Takeover dissects the elimination of elected school boards and see it both as a way to remove a stepping stone for political power from Black and Brown communities, and to diminish public education.
Here in Boston, we lost our elected school committee in 1993. Two years ago, we mounted a grassroots campaign to restore an elected board, and were victorious, garnering almost 80% of the vote. At the same time, we elected a progressive mayor, Michelle Wu. A vote of the city council upheld the ballot initiative and sent it off to the mayor for her signature, the next step being approval from the state legislature. (Boston is the only one of 351 cities and towns without an elected board, though state takeovers in 4 towns have diluted their power.) The mayor, disappointingly, vetoed the measure.
Wu fought back against the state when it moved to takeover Boston a year ago, and DESE backed off. So I do trust Wu to do the right thing by our public schools – not something I would say of her two predecessors – but I don’t have faith that the same will be true of whoever comes after her. Boston’s school committee should be in the hands of Boston’s residents.