Although state takeovers of school districts have existed in Texas for more than 25 years, the law that triggered the Fort Worth and Lake Worth interventions...
The lawmaker who proposed the state takeover law said he’s glad to see TEA officials take action where the consistently low performance at one campus is a symptom of broader problems.Education Commissioner Mike Morath gives a fist bump to eighth grader Oziel Leyva as he observed a math class at William James Middle School in Fort Worth , August 28, 2025.
Morath is visiting failing schools in Fort Worth ISD and evaluating campus leadership systems, instructional delivery and the rigor of the district’s curriculum as he considers whether to institute a state takeover in the district after multiple years of failing grades.argued it didn’t make sense for state education officials to take over the entire district because of accountability scores at one campus.Texas Education Agency officials take broad action to stabilize struggling districts. State Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, said the agency has shown a pattern of taking over entire districts in cases where the consistently low performance at one campus is a symptom of broader problems.In 2025, Texas education officials announced state takeovers of four school districts as the Texas Education Agency holds local school districts and charter schools accountable for consistently low performance. “Closing the failing school wasn’t going to do anything except sort of spread the weeds around,” Dutton said., are in the early stages of state intervention. In both cases, TEA officials opted to take over the entire district after a single campus received five consecutive F ratings. Education Commissioner Mike Morath said both districts’ problems went beyond a single campus, meaning a district-wide intervention was warranted.. Peter Licata, former superintendent of Broward County Public Schools in Florida, stepped into the district’s top job, taking over forstepped down from his post. Morath had already said he intended to replace Ramirez as a part of that takeover. Morath is expected to name a new superintendent and state-appointed board for the district in the coming weeks. Morath also announced takeovers in Beaumont ISD and Connally ISD last year. The commissioner hasn’t yet announced new leadership for either district. Although state takeovers have existed in Texas for more than 25 years, the law that triggered the Fort Worth and Lake Worth interventions is only about a decade old. During the 2013 legislative session, lawmakers passed a “three strikes” bill targeting under-performing charter schools. Under the bill, the state education commissioner is required to close charter schools after three years of poor academic or financial accountability scores. Two years later, lawmakers began the legislative session looking for ways to enact similar accountability measures for chronically failing traditional public schools. At around the same time, Dutton, the Houston lawmaker, was growing increasingly concerned with the state of public schools in his district. There was a large number of chronically failing schools in the northeast Houston neighborhoods he represents in the Texas House. Worse, he didn’t see any efforts to turn those schools around. State Rep. Harold Dutton, D-Houston, speaks about an amendment he proposed for Senate Bill 2, a school voucher-like proposal at the Texas State Capitol in Austin on April 16, 2025.One of those schools was Phillis Wheatley High School, Dutton’s alma mater. In 2015, the campus in Houston’s Fifth Ward neighborhood received an “improvement required” rating on the state’s accountability scores, indicating the campus failed to meet academic standards. The dropout rate for the class of 2015 was close to 30%.Founded in 1927 and named for the first African American poet, Wheatley High had a reputation for turning out graduates who went on to do great things. Its alumni included a Fulbright Scholar, two members of Congress — Barbara Jordan and Mickey Leland — and a host of professional athletes and jazz musicians. At one point, three of its graduates served in the Texas House of Representatives at the same time. Wheatley always seemed to have to make do with secondhand books and sports equipment during Dutton’s time there, he said. But the school performed well academically, and it offered a wide range of classes — Dutton took Spanish and Latin classes while he was there.Dutton said he contacted Houston ISD board members to talk about what was being done to turn the district’s struggling schools around. After several conversations, he began to see that many of the district’s issues were structural. Like many boards, Houston ISD’s is divided among nine single-member districts, with no members elected at large. At the time, each board member seemed to see it as their responsibility to focus on the needs and concerns of the schools in their areas. That meant no one was looking at the needs of the district as a whole, he said, so under-resourced campuses tended to stay that way.Dutton offered an amendment to a separate school accountability bill requiring the education commissioner to intervene in cases where schools were failing year after year. At the time, the law allowed the education commissioner to take over struggling districts under certain circumstances, replacing elected boards of trustees with a handpicked board of managers. Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Peter Licata, right, speaks during a news conference Tuesday, March 24, 2026. Behind him are, from left, Fort Worth ISD board of managers member Courtney Lewis, board of managers chairman Pete Geren and Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker.Dutton’s amendment required the commissioner to intervene anytime a campus received five failure ratings, either by closing the failing campus or taking over the entire district. The bill had broad bipartisan support. It passed the House, 125-18, and the Senate, 26-5. Gov. Greg Abbott signed it into law June 19, 2015.Dutton said he hoped the takeover provision in the amendment would force school board members to realize that struggling campuses were their responsibility, whether they were in the areas they represented or not. But he never expected to see a district trigger the law, he said. “I never would have thought that a school district would let a campus fail for five consecutive school years,” he said. It was Dutton’s alma mater, Phillis Wheatley High School, that triggered the state’s biggest school takeover. The state took over Houston ISD in 2023 after Wheatley received five consecutive failure ratings.Miguel Solis, president of the nonprofit Commit Partnership and a former Dallas ISD board member, said the new law had its intended effect, at least in some districts. When the law passed in 2015, the district had five campuses that had received four consecutive “improvement required” ratings. Overnight, Dallas ISD became a district on the precipice of state takeover.That threat forced the board to take drastic action that it might not have taken otherwise, Solis said. The board voted to close one of those five schools, in part because of environmental issues, and completely reconstitute the other four. The district flooded those campuses with extra resources. It moved top-tier principals to those schools, offered top-performing teachers more money to teach there, added hours to the school day at the campuses and ramped up assistance for students who had fallen behind. Miguel Solis, president, The Commit Partnership, speaks during a panel forum on April 8, 2025, as he shares the importance of investing in education and the pursuit of strengthening local communities.Within a year, all four campuses had moved out of the “improvement required” category. Today, district leaders talk about those efforts as a key piece of Dallas ISD’s academic turnaround. None of it would have happened without the threat of state intervention, Solis said.The circumstances around Fort Worth ISD’s takeover were unusual. The campus that triggered the takeover, the Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade Center, received its fifth straight F rating as a part of the state’s 2023 accountability ratings. But those ratings were tied up in court until last year, preventing TEA from releasing them or taking action on them. In the meantime, Fort Worth ISD opted to close the campus and merge it with nearby Forest Oak Middle School. When he announced last fall that he planned to take over the district, Education Commissioner Mike Morath said the district’s struggles go beyond a single school. About two thirds of the district’s students can’t read on grade level, state test scores indicate, and 11 schools in the district have received academically unacceptable ratings for three or four consecutive years. Morath has said he wants to see Fort Worth ISD have no campuses with consecutive years of failing grades before he returns the district to local control. During a media call Tuesday afternoon, the commissioner said the state has a responsibility to ensure all students in Fort Worth have access to a high-quality education, no matter their ZIP code. That being said, he said, the takeover won’t be indefinite.“These interventions are designed under state law to be temporary,” he said. “These are meant to be short term redirections so that the school system can better serve the students that are enrolled in the school district.”TEA officials can point to signs that state interventions have led to quick improvement in test scores. In all three districts where the new law triggered a state takeover before last year, STAAR scores climbed. The agency has announced more takeovers since then, including those in Fort Worth and Lake Worth ISDs, but it’s too early to know how those interventions will affect test scores there. It’s also too early to see if those academic gains will last after those districts return to local control. Only one district where the new law triggered a state takeover — Marlin ISD, about 30 miles southeast of Waco — has transitioned back to an elected board. The last of the district’s state-appointed board members rotated off the board in January. Shepherd ISD, north of Houston, began transitioning back to local control in December. That transition process takes two years, with a few state-appointed board members rotating off the board each year and elected trustees taking their place.Zach Leonard, a Fort Worth ISD parent and president of the advocacy group Families Organized Resisting Takeover, said he thinks there are better ways for the state to improve academic achievement at struggling schools than replacing superintendents and locally elected school boards. He pointed to school funding as one major issue. Texas lawmakers sent $8.5 billion in new money to schools last year, but district leaders across the state say that still leaves them well behind the buying power they had before post-pandemic inflation roiled school budgets. Leonard said he’d like to see the state increase school funding enough that districts can catch up. That being said, Leonard said he was encouraged by the announcement of the new board of managers. In conversations he’s had with board members since Tuesday’s announcement, he’s been pleased to hear them all express a commitment to put students first. For now, he said, he’s willing to wait and see what the district’s new leaders do. The DMN Education Lab deepens the coverage and conversation about urgent education issues critical to the future of North Texas.The DMN Education Lab is a community-funded journalism initiative, with support from Bobby and Lottye Lyle, Communities Foundation of Texas, The Dallas Foundation, Dallas Regional Chamber, Deedie Rose, Garrett and Cecilia Boone, Judy and Jim Gibbs, The Meadows Foundation, The Murrell Foundation, Ron and Phyllis Steinhart, Solutions Journalism Network, Southern Methodist University, Sydney Smith Hicks, and the University of Texas at Dallas. The Dallas Morning News retains full editorial control of the Education Lab’s journalism.Silas is the K-12 reporter for The Dallas Morning News' Education Lab. He previously covered Tarrant County schools for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram and worked as news editor at the Dallas Observer. Before coming to Texas, he worked as a reporter and editor at The Oklahoman. He is a Missouri native and a graduate of the University of Missouri.
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