When Aubrie was a freshman in the Houston Independent School District (ISD), she was assigned to an Algebra I class. On the first day of school, her teacher recognized her talent and moved her into pre-AP Algebra I, where she thrived.

Two years later, at the beginning of the last school year, Aubrie was excited to take pre-AP Algebra II. She had always loved math and imagined a bright future in science. But three weeks into the school year, she and nearly 2,000 other juniors across Houston ISD’s 16 New Education System (NES) high schools were abruptly pulled out of Algebra II and placed into a remedial math course called Algebraic Reasoning/Texas College Bridge.

This move was not made to help students grow academically. Instead, we believe students were moved into this less rigorous course to artificially inflate campus accountability ratings, at the expense of student learning. Just sitting through the Algebraic Reasoning course and clicking through the online modules increases a school’s A-F rating, even if students never pass the state’s college readiness assessment attached to the class. It’s a loophole that state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles is exploiting at an unprecedented scale.

Records obtained from the Houston ISD along with publicly available data from the Texas Education Agency (TEA) reveal that the district’s state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles shunted about half of all juniors at NES high schools into this course. At some schools, as many as 70 percent of juniors were similarly demoted into less challenging classes.

NES high schools are all located in under-resourced, predominantly Black and Latino neighborhoods, which have borne the brunt of the state’s destructive takeover policies. By comparison, less than 5 percent of all juniors at non-NES high schools in more affluent communities, including Debakey, Carnegie Vanguard, Challenge, HAIS, Heights, HSPVA, and Lamar, were placed in this remedial course.

A “bridge” course may make sense for struggling seniors. For juniors who are only halfway through high school, it can stop a student’s academic trajectory in its tracks.

After being moved into Algebraic Reasoning, Aubrie asked her counselor to move her back into Algebra II. “If pre-AP was full,” she said, “I’ll take any Algebra II class; just get me out of this remedial class. I already know fractions, decimals, and percents.” 

She just wanted to take Algebra II. Most students in the United States take Algebra II or a more advanced math course by their junior year. 

The counselor said her hands were tied. Miles’ policy required all NES juniors who were not certain to earn the college, career, and military-readiness (CCMR) credit used in school accountability ratings to be removed from Algebra II. 

After weeks of pleading, Aubrie’s mother and community advocates got involved. Eventually, a state senator offered to intervene. Only then was Aubrie allowed into Algebra II.

To understand why Miles pushed so many juniors into Algebraic Reasoning, it helps to look at how the state calculates campus CCMR scores, which are a key component of high school accountability ratings. 

Students typically earn CCMR credit by passing an AP exam, finishing dual-credit courses. completing an industry certification, or by passing the Texas Success Initiative Assessment exam or its equivalent.

However, there is an alternative, less rigorous way for schools to earn these credits: Texas College Bridge, an online program designed primarily for seniors who need additional support before college.  

If a student completes the Texas College Bridge online course, the school is awarded CCMR credit–even if students don’t pass the Texas Success Initiative exam at the end of the course. In effect, Texas College Bridge is a loophole that allows schools to boost accountability ratings without increasing student readiness. 

Houston ISD’s Algebraic Reasoning class uses Texas College Bridge despite research overwhelmingly showing it does little to prepare students for college. In November 2025, Rice University’s Kinder Institute for Urban Research concluded that these courses are not strong predictors of college success and may give students a false sense of college readiness. 

Another study by Good Reason Houston found that when students enrolled in these courses, their chances of completing a college degree declined.

Recognizing the glaring problems, TEA recently decided to phase out Texas College Bridge as a CCMR pathway after this year. Yet Miles still chose to exploit this loophole while it existed; it was his last opportunity to boost the district’s accountability ratings in this way. 

Because Aubrie’s school served low-income students like her, Miles treated her as a disposable widget in a way that would never have been accepted at a middle-class or affluent school. 

Fortunately, Aubrie was able to return to Algebra II. But most students do not have a parent advocate, a community organizer, and a state senator fighting for them. Thousands of other Houston students were not given that chance. They now will have to wait until their senior year to take Algebra II, if they take it at all. 

The problem goes beyond replacing Algebra II with the more remedial Algebraic Reasoning. At least four NES high schools—Furr, North Forest, Sharpstown, and Wisdom—eliminated AP Calculus and AP Statistics after the state takeover. Students at those schools lost proven pathways to college success.

The Texas College Bridge shell game was not an isolated incident. Texas Monthly reported last year that Miles cut 8th-grade Algebra I enrollment by more than half at 10 NES middle schools, eliminating the course at five of them. Hundreds of high-achieving students were instead placed into on-level math, artificially boosting scores on the 8th-grade STAAR math test. This happened despite overwhelming evidence that taking Algebra I in 8th grade is a key predictor of attending and graduating from college. 

Reporting by the Houston Chronicle uncovered a district-wide scheme to delay biology from 9th to 10th grade at NES high schools except for students taking Pre-AP biology. Testing only higher-performing students created the appearance of dramatic gains while avoiding a fair comparison to prior years, when nearly all freshmen were tested on biology. Meanwhile, thousands of NES 9th-graders were diverted into a remedial science course with no STAAR exam, delaying their path to advanced science courses. 

Some were the same students who would later lose access to Algebra II as juniors. Aubrie’s school was not an NES campus during her freshman year, but other NES students lost access to Biology as freshmen and then to Algebra II as juniors. That creates a compounding loss of opportunity that could shut the door on STEM careers for thousands of Houston students.

Miles repeatedly claims that the transformation of Houston ISD that has occurred under his leadership represents “the largest overall growth in reading and math in Texas history.”

But his actions tell another story of lowered expectations, delayed coursework, and reduced opportunity for thousands of Houston students, especially in Black and Latino communities. That is the real legacy of this takeover. So much for Miles’ “Houston Miracle.” 

The post The ‘Houston Miracle’ Shell Game appeared first on The Texas Observer.

The sexual assault of children. The catcalling and income discrimination your sister faces. The struggles your granddad has connecting emotionally. These are topics explored in gender and sexuality studies classes. 

But following Florida, universities in the Lone Star State, including the University of North Texas, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, University of Texas, and now the University of Houston (UH), where I have taught in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program for a decade, are eliminating such classroom spaces.

Starting this month, according to a surprise July 7 memo, UH will remove Introduction to Women’s Studies and Introduction to LGBT Studies as courses that students may elect to take to fulfill Texas’ “language, culture, philosophy” requirement. That means they will no longer be options in the 42-credit state-mandated core curriculum for a four-year degree, with categories ranging from communication, history, life and physical science, and creative arts. All told, UH is set to remove roughly 100 courses, including Introduction to Global Climate Change and Black Liberation Theology.

At UH, the introductory courses in gender and sexuality are popular: 700 students enroll each semester, with business, education, pre-med, psychology, and other majors represented. Students, for example, might learn that some interpretations of the Bible (the word “homosexuality” first entered the collection of ancient texts we call the Bible in 1946) find no conflict with some women marrying another woman and some men marrying another man. Along with all classes, these courses provide a breadth of foundational knowledge and prepare students to engage civically, professionally, and personally.  

An important value of being in the core is that it gives students a kind of permission to embrace curiosity and explore various subjects. Removing important classes sends a message that studying such is inappropriate. And if introductory gender and sexuality classes no longer count toward graduation requirements, enrollment will plummet. The reason UH is making this change isn’t because the classes fail to provide meaningful education. It’s because UH has overinterpreted current law, as have other universities across Texas. 

Institutions especially point to Senate Bill 37. Enacted in 2025, the law prohibits faculty senates, creates a state-level office where people can file complaints if they believe a university has violated state law, and shifts control of the curriculum from educators to the university’s board of regents. Regents at public universities in Texas are appointed by the governor, currently Republican Greg Abbott, for their economic and political clout. They are not educators. Because draft versions of SB 37 included language that would have prohibited conversations about sex and race and because it’s anticipated that lawmakers will resurrect such restrictions in the coming session, administrators hope that anticipatory obedience will satisfy a Texas Legislature that is often hostile toward education.

This all flies against what our state celebrates: small government and personal freedom. We say that people should be able to form their own opinions. This right to form one’s own opinion should extend to a student’s opinion that studying gender and sexuality, variables that impact everyone, is worth their investment. And while some are quick to judge the younger generations as being coddled and sensitive, these same people want to censor conversations about gender and sexuality. 

Testimonial data supports that gender and sexuality studies courses are impactful. On an anonymous evaluation for my Introduction to LGBT Studies class an enrollee shared, “Students felt safe sharing their identities, experiences, and perspectives. The course offered a strong foundation in LGBTQ history, theory, and contemporary issues. … Overall, the class created a space that was intellectually engaging, socially aware, and personally meaningful.”

Gracie Rivera, who is now a UH alumni in graduate school studying library science, wrote to me sharing: “As a Latina woman, Introduction to Women’s Studies, Introduction to LGBT Studies, and Intersectionalities and Disability Studies gave me the confidence to advocate for myself—including successfully negotiating a $4 per hour raise at work and helping close my gender pay gap.”

After teaching 73 class sections of Introduction to Women’s Studies and Introduction to LGBT Studies, I can attest that they are life changing for students and professors alike. Until recently when some politicians started targeting transgender people and ignoring the complexities of biology, these classroom spaces weren’t controversial. These classes encourage students to be who they want to be, whether that’s having children, modifying their body with tattoos, or striving to be the first woman president.

Andrew Joseph Pegoda, Ph.D. teaches at the University of Houston and is a member of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors. This op-ed reflects Pegoda’s ideas as a private individual.

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