Editor’s Note: This article is co-published with ProPublica as part of an initiative to report on state and federal efforts to restrict local control.

No state has taken over as many local public school districts as Texas. Just since 2020, the state education agency has installed its own hand-picked leaders in eight districts. Four of those came this spring. At least another 10 are at risk of takeover, including, as of last week, the Austin Independent School District (ISD). 

And to lead some of these districts, Texas is turning to a cadre of officials with ties to Mike Miles, the man the education agency chose in 2023 to oversee the Houston school district, the state’s largest. Miles is also a close ally of Mike Morath, Texas’ powerful education commissioner.

Already, at least two of these new district leaders have started to adopt policies similar to the contentious reforms Miles has pursued in Houston. He has touted improved test scores under his charge. Houston ISD had no F-rated campuses and fewer D-rated campuses in the state’s latest ratings compared with previous years. But Miles has also sparked widespread protests in response to the district’s rigid adherence to scripted lessons and repetitive testing, the firing of principals and teachers, mass school closures, and the conversion of schools into charters.  

Miles did not respond to requests for comment from the Texas Observer. Houston ISD officials, in a statement to the Observer, said the district did not achieve better ratings by maintaining the status quo but “made difficult decisions” to improve academic performance, noting the majority of its campuses are now rated A or B. 

The school districts whose new leaders have connections to Miles should prepare for “upheaval and chaos,” warned an elected Houston school board member. 

“If anything doesn’t align with improving test scores, it will be taken away,” said Maria Benzon, who was elected in November to the Houston ISD board but is not permitted to serve under the ongoing state takeover. Under Miles, for example, Houston ISD eliminated librarian positions and turned some libraries into what Benzon called “detention centers,” because they are being used, in part, for students with behavioral issues. Morath, the Texas Education Agency (TEA) commissioner, has said the centers are used for more than just punishment. 

Mike Miles in September 2023 in Houston (Karen Warren/Houston Chronicle via AP)

Texas law allows the TEA to take control of districts with multiple failing school ratings or governance issues and to replace their superintendents and elected boards. 

The recent takeovers include Beaumont, Lake Worth, and Connally independent school districts, whose new superintendents worked under Miles when he was superintendent in Dallas ISD; two of them also worked for him in Houston. In Fort Worth ISD, one of the state’s largest districts, the new state-appointed superintendent chose as his second-in-command Daniel Soliz, another person who worked under Miles in Houston ISD. Soliz did not respond to requests for comment for this story. 

At least two of the state’s new superintendent appointees—Sandi Massey, who now helms Beaumont ISD in southeast Texas, and Ena Meyers, TEA’s appointee for Lake Worth ISD, a small district near Fort Worth—also worked for the controversial Colorado-based charter network Third Future Schools, which Miles led prior to becoming superintendent in Houston. In April, the Observer revealed that Miles had an ongoing $120,000 annual consulting contract with the charter network, an arrangement that likely violated a new statewide ban on public school administrators’ moonlighting. After questions from the news organization, Miles canceled the contract. The district said Miles “remains fully focused on leading Houston ISD and delivering results for students.”

Third Future’s charter network is expanding around the state as districts turn campuses over to the nonprofit’s Texas subsidiary, often as a means to delay possible state takeover. The organization did not respond to the Observer’s request for comment.

School district takeovers often involve layoffs, school closures, and an increase in charter schools, as has happened in Houston, said Domingo Morel, an associate professor of political science and public service at New York University, who found Texas has had more district takeovers than any other state since 1989. 

What’s unique to Texas, Morel said, is that the low bar required to take control has led to more takeovers. Since 2015, five consecutive failing state ratings at just one school can trigger a takeover, as occurred in Houston, which has 273 campuses. 

Texas has also made it harder for districts to appeal these seizures. The Legislature passed a law in 2021 that barred districts from using public funds to challenge the education commissioner’s “final and unappealable” decision to take them over. The threshold that defines a failing school was also lowered. Then, in 2025, the state passed another law restricting districts from using public funds to sue the state when challenging its accountability ratings. 

The state “is the player, the referee, the coach, the scorekeeper,” when it comes to rating schools and deciding when to seize control, said Steven Nelson, an associate professor of education policy and leadership at the University of Nevada who’s been studying school takeovers for more than a decade. He said he suspects the TEA-appointed leaders connected to Miles will also focus on standardized testing, which will result in “a narrow curriculum when all is said and done.” 

The acceleration of takeovers, and the state’s increasingly stringent rating system, comes just as Texas rolls out a school voucher program that will, in most cases, award parents $10,000 in state funds to send their children to private schools. State accountability standards do not apply to private schools, where students don’t have to take the standardized tests required in Texas public schools. 

TEA spokesperson Jake Kobersky said the agency does not expect the four school districts that have recently been taken over to adopt the same reforms that Miles implemented in Houston. “During an intervention, state law requires the agency to appoint a new superintendent and a board of managers. All other staffing and operational decisions are made locally by the district,” Kobersky said. 

But last August, Morath told lawmakers other districts “should be copying the changes that we see in Houston.”

Massey, the new superintendent in Beaumont, has also cited the changes in Houston ISD as a blueprint.

“The model that we are implementing here is a very similar model to Houston. And why? Because of the success that Houston has had,” Massey said at a May 21 board meeting, referring to her time working with Miles at Houston ISD, where he selected her to be chief of schools. 

Under Massey, the newly appointed board of managers voted at their first meeting to temporarily suspend a number of policies related to governance and hiring practices, including employees’ rights to present grievances to the board and principals’ ability to approve new hires without district permission. Board of managers member Jeff Wheeler said at the meeting, “We are requesting that they be suspended until the board can move, can more fully evaluate our local policies.”

The board has taken other steps that mirror what happened in Houston after the takeover there: On May 14, the district announced it was cutting 34 positions that support student mental health, and on May 21, it announced a high school would close. 

Massey did not respond to the Observer’s requests for comment about whether she’s following the Houston playbook. Jackie Simien, a spokesperson for Beaumont ISD said, “Massey has worked alongside successful educational leaders with demonstrated results in improving systems, instruction, and student performance.”

Mike Morath in 2018 (Ricardo Brazziell/Austin American-Statesman via AP)

Benzon, the elected Houston ISD board member, said Miles is sidelining parent and teacher voices in her district, and they are leaving in droves as a result. “They are trying to escape the New Education System and Miles’ bad policies,” Benzon added, referring to a program Miles transplanted from his former charter school network that is characterized by scripted lessons and repetitive testing. The Houston Chronicle reported the district “is losing students at an accelerated pace” under the takeover, spurring the district to shutter 12 schools ahead of the next school year. 

In its statement to the Observer, Houston ISD cited a survey of families reporting a “favorable perception” of the district and said it retained many exemplary teachers.

Nelson and Morel said they believe the ultimate objective of any takeover is to disenfranchise local communities. Black and Hispanic students make up the majority of the population at all four of the districts now headed by Miles’ associates.

“It all begins at the school board level to then completely disempower the community,” Morel said.

On April 23, Houston ISD moved to fire a veteran teacher and president of the Houston Education Association teachers union after she protested requirements to comply with Miles’ New Education System. 

Meyers, the new Lake Worth superintendent who at the time was Houston ISD’s deputy chief of strategic initiatives, testified in favor of the teacher’s termination. 

“We do not allow our staff to make decisions about curriculum in a New Education System school or in Houston ISD,” Meyers said, according to a transcript of the hearing. “If they are not following expectations, we would not allow them to stay in HISD as an employee.” 

Since taking over in Lake Worth, Meyers and the board of managers have temporarily suspended board policies related to governance procedures, hiring, and employee assignments and schedules, similar to what Massey and her board did in Beaumont. 

In response to the Observer’s inquiries about replicating Houston ISD’s reforms in her new role, Meyers wrote in an email that “Lake Worth ISD is very different from Houston ISD. We are a district of five schools serving a much smaller community, so our approach must reflect the unique needs of our students, staff, and families.” 

Her email continued, “I believe educators should learn from successful practices wherever they exist.”

As in Beaumont and Lake Worth, the takeover in Fort Worth ISD has been characterized by swift changes. After less than a month under the new leadership, the 68,000-student district has suspended local board governance and hiring policies and has cut dozens of staff positions, including those supporting English-language learners. 

Parent-organizer Zach Leonard said a new instructional model Fort Worth ISD is rolling out in 19 schools, called “Elevate,” is essentially the same as what Miles has done in Houston, an assertion that Fort Worth district spokesperson Tierney Tinnin refuted. 

Leonard, who is organizing with other families to oppose the takeover, noted “scripted slide-by-slide lessons, rigid timed instruction, and ‘demonstrations of learning’ reduced to data points” as similarities between the programs.

“This isn’t education reform,” Leonard said, referring to Miles’ model of learning being transported to Fort Worth. “It’s a franchise being handed to our children without a vote.” 

Do you have a tip related to a state takeover of a Texas school or district? Share it with Josephine Lee at lee@texasobserver.org. 

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Like everyone else, the César Chávez revelations shocked us, maybe more so than others since we had worked with him for almost two decades. 

The stunning news did not just deliver a gut-punch betrayal but also immediate anxiety about the damage that the exposé of his dark side would do to the movement, to all those who, for decades, had worked and given their time and sweat to La Causa, including the United Farm Workers (UFW) organizers killed in California and Florida—the martyrs. 

We cannot ignore César’s influence, leadership, brilliant strategies, and inherent abilities to lead farmworkers. He united people across the country with the grape boycott, his position against violence, and his campaign for pesticide control. 

At the same time, we cannot condone his acts of hurting girls and women. We must acknowledge and reject this abuse. We need to support the victims and condemn the behavior of others in the movement who enabled or engaged in similar conduct. 

Our additional task is to help others, including ourselves, understand the movement and continue to back it. The movement is about people and what people do about justice. It is never about one person, no matter how iconic.

Two of us worked in the fields as children with our families. We know firsthand what the movement is about. We saw our parents’ sacrifices. We still feel those long days under the hot sun and how hard the work was. Bending and stooping all day harms bodies and shortens lives. All this for a pittance of the money that agribusiness and grocery stores reap from the labor. 

Rebecca Flores speaks at the 1979 Texas UFW convention as César Chávez listens. (The University of Texas at San Antonio Special Collections)

The great contradiction is that our society oppresses and mistreats the workers who keep us alive and put food on our tables with abysmal wages and working conditions. As civil rights leader Reverend Jim Lawson famously put it, “plantation capitalism” controls our lives. We are either the oppressed or the oppressors. There is no middle ground. 

Farmworkers in Texas have a history of almost 100 years of rising up when the boot on their neck is too heavy, only to be met by the brutality of the Texas Rangers in collusion with the growers.

They crushed the 1930s wildcat strike of 1,200 onion harvesters in Webb County for higher wages, led by La Asociación de Jornaleros. They did the same in 1966 with the Starr County melon strike to such a grotesque extent that the U.S. Supreme Court rebuked the Rangers for their state-supported brutality against workers and organizers.

The 1966 Starr County workers’ 500-mile march to Austin electrified South Texas and ignited the Chicano movement in Texas. People rallied to join the farm laborers as they marched through the small towns from the Valley to Corpus Christi and then San Antonio. Supporters along the way provided food and nighttime shelter. The march culminated with thousands rallying at the Capitol and demanding a just wage. 

The mid-70s saw another raft of wildcat strikes in fields across the Valley, Presidio, and areas of West Texas. However, Texas, being an anti-union state, hardens state power against the workers, and sufficient funds are not available to sustain an organizing campaign and strikes. There is a saying in the Valley that eight workers are waiting to replace someone terminated from a job. Whether the number is accurate, the reality is true, and the growers use it as a threat.

Those reality checks changed the nature of farmworker organizing in Texas and sent the movement in a different, and successful, direction. The UFW sent Fred Ross, Sr., to train organizers in the Valley. A contemporary of Saul Alinsky of Industrial Areas Foundation fame, Fred trained César and Dolores Huerta in house-meeting organizing to get the farm labor movement up and running in California. 

Fred trained Texas union staff in the art of house meetings and in organizing UFW committees in the colonias. Fred’s training lasted several weeks and turned the UFW into a South Texas powerhouse. In the house meetings, the workers, both men and women, spoke out about the conditions in the fields and became leaders of the union. 

Once organized, the committees began holding annual Valley-wide conventions beginning in 1979. For the workers, this was their first time participating in their own convention and having a voice in their future, rather than someone dictating their future for them. The convocations adopted legislative and organizing priorities for the coming year. 

After years of organizing from the late 70s through the mid-80s, the workers were able to pass legislation, securing workers’ compensation, unemployment benefits, and the right to know about pesticide use in the fields, all crucial protections for farm laborers and from which Texas law had systematically excluded them. Pesticides were especially concerning for pregnant women workers.

Farm labor is the nation’s most dangerous occupation, alternating at times with construction, depending on the time of year. It is seasonal like construction. Nevertheless, farmworkers had none of the protections that construction employees and other laborers had. The separation point was ethnicity—racism. That was our winning argument in court when we sued as part of the organizing campaign.

The local UFW then pressured the health department to require employers to provide portable toilets in the fields, along with drinking water and handwashing facilities. The fact that this effort took place in 1983 reflects the longstanding powerlessness and oppression of farm workers and the Mexican-American community in general. 

Monsignor George Higgins, labor activist and priest, with escort committee and Flores being received by delegates at 1979 convention (The University of Texas at San Antonio Special Collections)

In 1981, the legislature finally banned use of the 24-inch short-handle hoe (el cortito), a backbreaking, cruel holdover from the slave era. The purpose was to keep people bent over to make sure they kept busy weeding and thinning crops. If they stood to stretch, the assumption was they were not working hard enough. El cortito caused debilitating back problems and premature arthritis in workers who had to do stoop labor for long hours. 

These efforts involved intense political organizing, creative litigation, and stalwart legislative efforts by the workers. Crucial allies, like the Texas AFL-CIO, religious leaders, Mexican-American community leaders, and friends in the Legislature, all stepped in to help.

From the late 70s on, organizing in the colonias continued. House meetings yielded a series of lightning picket actions at fields to raise wages. Committees focused on improving conditions in the colonias, where most farmworkers reside. Because of direction from César, Dolores, Fred, and union leaders in South Texas like the Baltazar Saldaña family and Pedro de la Fuente, we worked together to successfully form a long-lasting UFW organization in the Valley.

Another movement change of direction occurred as 1993 approached, when Congress passed NAFTA, which caused even more hand-harvested crops to be relocated to Mexico, where American agribusiness could pay much lower wages and avoid protective laws for workers.

Early in the movement, the idea of a community union began to come into focus. It took hold in 1989 when La Unión del Pueblo Entero (LUPE), a nonprofit community organizing effort, formally became a reality. In 2003, LUPE opened its Texas doors at the farmworkers’ center in San Juan, as successor to the UFW’s farm labor efforts and became a dynamic promoter of justice throughout the Valley.

La Causa continues because people in Texas put their hearts into the movement. Even when it redirects itself from time to time, and even when it must grapple with deep harm caused by a major leader, the movement remains about justice by the people who suffer the most and for the people who suffer the most.

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