One does not have to be taking money for them to be corrupt (morally comes to mind) and as for running a school district then I going with Abbott has being incompetent in being able to do that.
As for the corruption in the HISD, if it was systemic and part of the problem at the ONE school rated insufficient then I might go with that as a reason if I wanted to stretch and make that call.
But this take-over (like the one in Little Rock, AR that I referenced) is for political reasons and nothing else. Abbott doesn’t do anything in his cosplaying as governor unless he thinks it will benefit him.
Mark this post that in five years, there will be more schools in the district with a “failing” grade because of the state’s “leadership.”
This is a TEA move, not Abbott’s. While I very much agree that Abbott does nothing unless he thinks it will benefit his electoral opportunities, this is not one of those things. It’s going to rile up a whole bunch of black and brown parents in Harris County, and that’s an electorate he does not want to rile up.
So Abbott and Morath want to deny proper education to people they consider to be beneath them. Stupid suckers, what are Abbott and Morath going to do when the roles are reversed and its their kids and grand-kids getting a third-rate education?
" After years of demanding a state takeover of the Houston Independent School District, Gov. Greg Abbott is finally getting what he wants politically as he pushes to reshape public schools throughout Texas in a much broader way.
For years, Abbott has called the HISD leadership a joke and a disaster.
“If ever there was a school board that needs to be taken over and reformed it’s HISD,” Abbott said in 2019."
This is something that he’s pushed for and obviously the TEA finally did his bidding. Sounds like he doesn’t care if he pisses of those parents who are POC.
I’m not sure of the status of Charter Schools in Texas, but if TEA is using the perform of ONE HISD school takeover, the move probably invokes using charters as an alternative to failing HISD schools, or vouchers. The problem is the vouchers usually aren’t enough to cover tuition at charter or private schools, so the only people that usually benefit are those that can afford to pay the tuition or the difference. The other problem is charters usually end up in neighborhoods that have good schools to start with. Either way, this takeover sounds like it’s about alternative schools moreso than improving one school.
EDIT Abbott seems to do very well at stupid political moves.
That particular HS is a central point for the black community in that Houston neighborhood. HISD has been rather incompetent in turning it around. A lot of that has to do with infighting within the African-American community - in part because that school is majority minority & there is a reluctance to hold administrators accountable b/c of that status.
For reference, there was another area school district (North Forest ISD) that was abysmally corrupt and incompetent but any push to remedy the situation was met with “that’s racist”… understandable given the long history that the African-American community has had with white administrators shorting black students… but in North Forest’s case, all the administrators were black. Ironically, the state agency - after YEARS of resistance – ordered HISD to annex North Forest. And in the end, students got a better education.
This particular move by the TEA was a power play by Republicans… and HISD fell into the trap. HISD could have closed (temporarily) a single school and dodged that bullet. (Republicans would have had a harder time coming back to bite the apple a second time b/c overall HISD’s scores aren’t bad.)
Houston / Harris County is target #1 for the GOP in Texas. It’s the 4th largest metro in the country. It’s reliably blue and like other urban Texas areas has trended away from the GOP extremes. (Biden won Harris county with 56% of the vote.)
Thank you for the thoughtful analysis. In earlier times and in other circumstances I have seen how your examples of the community resisting outside interference has played out. Sad that none of us seem to be able to get past race.
It can be argued that a similar undercurrent is at play across the entire US. Two wise friends, unbeknownst to each other, suggested over twenty years ago that the nation’s controlling “European whiteness” becoming a minority of the populous would provoke extreme reactions politically and culturally. It very much seems to be happening.
I had wondered the same thing. The first thing that crossed my mind reading the headline is they probably want to accomplish what DeSantis is doing with regard to “cleansing” the schools of any beliefs not aligned with the puritanical State (literally), as in state government.
Lots of people don’t really understand how BIG Houston is…
4th largest (verging on 3rd) metro area in the country
City proper = 670 mi² (larger than Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, Phoenix and San Diego)
If you include the entire metropolitan area, it balloons to 10,062 mi² - bigger than the states of Rhode Island, Delaware, Connecticut, New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Vermont. A drive from Houston Intercontinental Airport (I don’t call it Bush) to NASA Space Center takes about 60 minutes (depending on traffic) and you will have never left the city limits.
HISD is the largest school district, but there are 60 school districts in the metro area.
The “Independent School District” design concept in Texas makes things interesting as well.
I now work for a smaller district in North Texas (25k kids) that contains parts of 4 different cities and spreads across two different county lines. So a lot of blurred lines on “community” and the taxing authority for each district is kept separated from the direct state/city/county control. Which also generates conflict between all of those.
Houston ISD is in TEA “Region 4” and that ends up looking like this:
I’m having trouble finding a map series I had once a link to that showed school district, city/county and congressional district boundaries as toggleable layers. It was interesting to see the overlaps.
