When the Texas Education Agency took over the Houston Independent School District in 2023 — firing its elected board and installing a state-appointed superintendent — critics screamed racism, filed federal civil rights complaints, and predicted disaster. Three years later, the test scores are in, and the data has delivered a verdict the critics cannot explain away.
Across all elementary and middle school grades, Houston students have shown substantial and sustained improvements in reading and math on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness since the Texas Education Agency assumed control. High school students made year-over-year gains from 2023 through 2026 in algebra, English, biology, and U.S. history, meaningfully narrowing the performance gap between HISD and statewide averages. Most strikingly, the number of A- and B-rated campuses across the district more than doubled — jumping from 93 to 197. The number of D-rated schools has dropped to just 18, and there are now zero F-rated campuses in a district that once had over 120 combined D and F campuses.
"When you have kids who are that far behind in reading and math, we came in with a high sense of urgency." — HISD Superintendent Mike Miles
Superintendent Miles implemented the New Education System — a centralized curriculum model that emphasizes structured lessons, critical thinking, and what the district calls "Team Centers," where high-performing students advance to independent, accelerated work once they demonstrate mastery of daily material. The ACLU of Texas, the Houston NAACP, and LULAC filed a federal civil rights complaint arguing that the takeover stripped voting power from communities of color. Their position was that the intervention had nothing to do with education and everything to do with political control. Three years of upward academic data trends make that argument increasingly difficult to sustain.
Governor Greg Abbott's press secretary told Fox News Digital that the results vindicate the accountability model the state imposed. A separate family sentiment survey conducted in late 2025 found that 90% of HISD families now view the district favorably — with the largest gains in the category of whether the district is heading in the right direction. The Texas Education Agency has extended the intervention through June 2027, citing the progress made while noting that sustained improvement across all schools will take more time.
The Houston ISD takeover followed a Texas Education Agency investigation that found years of corruption, board misconduct, and mismanagement in the district. Former board members and officials were convicted of bribery, extortion, and kickbacks. The district had also seen consistent enrollment decline in the years before the takeover, a trend that has continued — though at a slower pace — since the intervention began.
The Houston story is a conservative lesson in what accountability actually looks like when applied with conviction. Local control is not a sacred right when locally elected officials are failing children for years while protecting their own power. The students of Houston — the vast majority of whom are Black and Hispanic — deserved schools that worked, not a school board that filed federal complaints to avoid accountability. The results speak for themselves. Sometimes the adults in the room have to step in and do what the local bureaucrats refused to do for decades.