Improving Schools – The Texas Way

A long time ago I was taught by a mentor that earning high test scores for your school wasn’t enough to keep your job as a campus principal. In addition to solid test scores, you had to take care of your learner community – students, parents, and teachers. This was advice that served me well, both as a practitioner and an advisor.

It seems Texas and its Texas Education Agency, responsible for K-12 education in the Lone Star State, never learned that lesson. They seem to focus on test scores only. Witness their current policy that says that one low-performing school – based on that school’s test scores – can trigger a state takeover.

As The Texas Tribune reported recently (1/27/26),

“The Texas Education Agency last year launched plans to take over four school districts due to low academic performance, confiscating decision-making power from elected leaders based on state-issued F grades at six campuses.”

“All six trigger schools share notable similarities.”

“Between 80% and 97% of their students live in low-income households, far above the state average of 60%.”

“Black and Hispanic children make up the dominant majority of the student populations, from 88% at Marilyn Miller Language Academy near Lake Worth to almost every child at Fehl-Price Elementary School in Beaumont.”

“And nearly half of students at each school are on the fringes of dropping out – including 64% to 92% of kids on five of the six campuses.”

“Texas’ 2015 school accountability law places a momentous decision in the hands of the state’s education commissioner. When at least one school receives an F for five years in a row, the commissioner must order the campus closed or initiate a state takeover of the entire district, replacing elected school board members with leaders of the education chief’s choosing.”

ABPTL believes in accountability and high test scores – for all kids. But the State of Texas needs to look at their state takeover practices – beginning with the Houston Independent School District in June of 2023. Although Houston ISD has seen test scores increase, the district has lost thousands of young learners and hundreds of adult learning leaders due to the chaos caused by the takeover. Instead of focusing on specific neighborhoods that needed additional support, while offering a different type of learning model for struggling learners, the Texas Education Agency decided to disrupt teaching and learning throughout Houston, whether a school needed support or not.

In the end, districts like Houston might see improved test scores over the long-term, but the loss of students and teachers could be disastrous to communities moving forward.

High academic performance and strong community support – these must occur together in order to call yourself a successful school. It seems Texas hasn’t learned that lesson – yet.

Texas’s response to struggling campuses is to achieve high test scores in reading and math. They care about little else.

“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

When asked about the Houston takeover back in 2023, ABPTL answered this way –

“Unless the Houston Independent School District learns to introduce different learning models to improve certain neighborhood schools, kids enrolled in those schools will continue to under-perform. But, there is no doubt that Houston ISD has struggled fixing their schools – all of their schools – there is one institution less able to fix things than Houston and other districts suffering with low-performing schools. And that would be the State of Texas and the Texas Education Agency.”

Let’s see if we got that right.

Til tomorrow. SVB