No state has taken over local public school districts like Texas. Since 2020, the Texas Education Agency has installed its own hand-picked leaders in eight school districts. Four of them came this spring. As of last week, at least 10 more schools were at risk of takeover, including the Austin Independent School District.
And Texas is turning to a cadre of officials with ties to Mike Miles, the Education Department’s pick to oversee the state’s largest Houston school district in 2023, to lead some of those districts. Miles is also a close ally of Texas’ powerful education commissioner, Mike Moras.
Already, at least two of these new district leaders have begun adopting policies similar to the controversial reforms Mr. Miles has pushed in Houston. He has touted that test scores have improved under his supervision. In the state’s latest evaluation, Houston ISD has no campuses with an F rating and fewer campuses with a D rating compared to the previous year. But Mr. Miles also sparked widespread protests over the district’s strict adherence to scripted instruction and repeated testing, the firing of principals and teachers, mass school closures, and conversion of schools to charter schools.
Miles did not respond to requests for comment from the Texas Observer. Houston ISD officials said in a statement to the Observer that the district “made the difficult decision” to improve academic performance rather than maintain the status quo and earn a better rating, noting that the majority of campuses currently have A or B grades.
Those school districts whose new leaders have ties to Miles should prepare for “chaos and chaos,” the Houston elected school board warned.
“If something doesn’t align with improving test scores, it will be stripped,” said Maria Benson, who was elected to the Houston ISD board in November but is not allowed to serve under the ongoing state takeover. For example, under the Miles administration, Houston ISD eliminated librarianships and turned some libraries into what Benson calls “jail centers.” This is because it is partially used for students with behavioral problems. TEA Commissioner Moras said the center is used for more than just punishment.
Texas law allows the TEA to take control of school districts with multiple school evaluations or governance issues, and to replace superintendents and elected boards.
Recent acquisitions include Beaumont, Lake Worth and Connally independent school districts, whose new superintendents worked under Miles when he was superintendent of Dallas ISD. Two of them also worked for him in Houston. At Fort Worth ISD, one of the state’s largest districts, the new state-appointed superintendent selected Daniel Soliz, who worked under Miles at Houston ISD, as second in command. Soliz did not respond to requests for comment on this story.
Texas Education Agency Secretary Mike Moras attends a conference at Harmony Hills Elementary School in San Antonio in 2025. The pace of takeover of state school districts accelerated during Mr. Moras’ tenure as commissioner. Scott Stephen Ball of the Texas Tribune
At least two of the state’s new superintendents, Sandy Massey, who currently leads Beaumont ISD in southeast Texas, and Ena Myers, the TEA appointee for Lake Worth ISD, a small district near Fort Worth, also worked for Third Future Schools, a controversial Colorado-based charter network that Miles led before becoming Houston’s superintendent. In April, the Observer revealed that Miles had an ongoing $120,000-a-year consulting contract with the charter network, an arrangement that would likely violate a new statewide ban on moonlighting public school administrators. After questions from the press, Miles terminated his contract. The district said Miles “remains fully focused on leading Houston ISD and delivering results for our students.”
Third Future’s charter network is expanding across the state as school districts hand over campuses to the nonprofit’s Texas subsidiary, in many cases as a way to delay a potential takeover. The nonprofit organization did not respond to Observer’s request for comment.
Domingo Morrell, an associate professor of political science and public service at New York University, said school district takeovers are often accompanied by layoffs, school closures and an increase in charter schools, as happened in Houston, and Texas has had more school district takeovers than any other state since 1989.
What’s unique about Texas is that the bar required to gain control is low, leading to more takeovers, Morrell said. Five consecutive failed state assessments at just one school can trigger a takeover, as has happened in Houston, which has 273 campuses since 2015.
Texas also makes it difficult for districts to appeal these foreclosures. In 2021, the Legislature passed a law barring school districts from using public funds to challenge “final and non-appealable” decisions by school boards. The standards for defining failing schools have also been lowered. And in 2025, the state passed another law restricting school districts from using public funds to sue the state when challenging accountability assessments.
Steven Nelson, an associate professor of educational policy and leadership at the University of Nevada who has studied school takeovers for more than a decade, said states are “the players, the referees, the coaches and the scorekeepers” when it comes to rating schools and deciding when to take the lead. He said TEA-appointed leaders associated with Miles would also focus on standardized testing, which would “ultimately result in a narrower curriculum.”
The accelerating takeover and the state’s increasingly strict evaluation system have led Texas to roll out a school voucher program that, in most cases, gives parents $10,000 in state funds to send their children to private schools. The state’s accountability standards do not apply to private schools, and students are not required to take the standardized tests required in Texas public schools.
TEA spokesman Jake Koversky said the agency does not expect the four recently acquired school districts to adopt the same reforms that Miles implemented in Houston. “During the intervention, state law requires officials to appoint a new board of superintendents and administrators. All other staffing and operational decisions will be made locally by the school district,” Kobelski said.
But last August, Moras told lawmakers that other districts “should emulate the changes we’re seeing in Houston.”
Massey, Beaumont’s new superintendent, also points to Houston ISD’s changes as a blueprint.
“The model we have in place here is a very similar model to Houston. And why? Because Houston is successful,” Massey said at the May 21 board meeting, referring to her time working with Miles in Houston ISD, where he selected her to be superintendent.
Speakers address Beaumont school board. By Daniel Villasana, ProPublica People applaud when Massey speaks at a school board meeting. ProPublica’s Daniel Villasana
At its first meeting, the newly appointed board of administrators under Massey voted to temporarily suspend a number of policies regarding governance and employment practices, including the right of employees to file complaints with the board and the ability of principals to approve new hires without the district’s permission. “We are requesting that the board suspend its activities until the board is relocated and can more fully evaluate local policies,” board member Jeff Wheeler said at the meeting.
The board is taking other steps that mirror what happened after the takeover in Houston. On May 14, the district announced it would eliminate 34 student mental health support positions, and on May 21 it announced it would close the high school.
Massey did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment on whether he was following Houston’s strategy. “Mr. Massey has a proven track record of working with successful educational leaders to improve systems, instruction and student achievement,” Beaumont ISD spokeswoman Jackie Simien said in a statement.
Students protest the state’s takeover of Houston ISD in 2023. By Douglas Sweet Jr., Texas Tribune The late Sylvester Turner, then mayor of Houston, speaks at a 2023 press conference about taking over Houston ISD. Joseph Bui, Texas Tribune
Benzon, who was elected to the Houston ISD board, said Miles has ignored the voices of parents and teachers in the district, resulting in parents and teachers leaving in droves. “They’re trying to escape a new education system and Miles’ bad policies,” Benson added, referring to a program Miles transplanted from a former charter school network that features scripted lessons and repetitive testing. The Houston Chronicle reported that the district was “losing students at an accelerated pace” under the takeover, which resulted in the district closing 12 schools ahead of the next school year.
In a statement to the Observer, Houston ISD cited a family survey that reported “favorable perceptions” of the district and said it employs many exemplary teachers.
Nelson and Morrell said they believe the ultimate purpose of the takeover is to disenfranchise local communities. Currently, black and Hispanic students make up the majority of the population in all four school districts that Miles’ colleagues lead.
“It all starts at the school board level and then it completely disempowers the community,” Morrell said.
On April 23, Houston ISD moved to fire a veteran teacher and president of the Houston Education Association Teachers Union for protesting Miles’ demands for compliance with the new education system.
Myers, Lake Worth’s new superintendent and Houston ISD’s deputy director of strategic initiatives at the time, testified that he supported firing the teacher.
“I do not authorize staff to make decisions about the curriculum for New Education System schools or Houston ISD,” Meyers said, according to the hearing transcript. “If they do not follow expectations, we will not allow them to remain at HISD as employees.”
Since taking office at Lake Worth, Ms. Myers and the executive committee have suspended the board’s policies regarding governance procedures, hiring, and employee assignments and schedules, similar to what Ms. Massey and her board did at Beaumont.
In response to an Observer question about replicating Houston ISD’s reforms in his new role, Myers wrote in an email, “Lake Worth ISD is very different from Houston ISD. We are a five-school district and serve a much smaller community, so our approach must reflect the unique needs of our students, staff, and families.”
Her email continued: “We believe that educators should learn from successful practices that exist everywhere.”
As with Beaumont and Lake Worth, the Fort Worth ISD acquisition is characterized by rapid change. Less than a month into the new leadership, the 68,000-student district suspended local board governance and hiring policies and cut dozens of staff positions, including those who support English learners.
Parent organizer Zach Leonard said the new instructional model Fort Worth ISD is rolling out in 19 schools, called “Elevate,” is essentially the same as what Miles did in Houston, but district spokeswoman Tierney Tinnin disputed that.
Leonard, along with other parents in his organization, note similarities between the programs, including “scripted, slide-by-slide lessons, rigorous timed instruction, and ‘learning demonstrations’ reduced to data points.”
“This is not education reform,” Leonard said, referring to the Miles learning model being brought to Fort Worth. “This is about the franchise being handed to kids without a vote.”
