Panel Led by Houston Democrats Faults the HISD Takeover as the District Cites Rising Ratings

A citizen commission co-chaired by two Democratic state lawmakers has released an 81-page report criticizing the Texas Education Agency's takeover of Houston ISD and urging the Legislature to make state takeovers harder to start and easier to end, the Texas Gazette reported. The report, titled "Diminished, Degraded, and Destroyed," was released October 8 by the Citizens Commission on the HISD Takeover. The 14-member panel is co-chaired by state Senator Molly Cook and state Representative Lauren Ashley Simmons, both Houston Democrats, along with Colin Bossen, senior minister at the First Unitarian Universalist Church of Houston. The commission formed itself and was not sanctioned by the state; its report is neither a government audit nor a court ruling, and it carries no official authority.

The panel said it spent a year gathering more than 100 accounts from students, teachers and residents. It argues the takeover narrowed the curriculum toward testing, broke up relationships among students, teachers and families, ended local democratic governance and weakened financial oversight. According to the report, about 4,700 of HISD's nearly 11,000 teachers left during the first year of the takeover and about 3,100 more left in the 2024-25 school year - figures that count departures for any reason, including resignations and retirements. The report also says nearly half of the teachers hired since the takeover were uncertified, and that roughly one in four HISD teachers lacked certification at the start of the 2025-26 school year. On spending, it points to an August 2023 vote by the state-appointed Board of Managers that raised the superintendent's authority to approve purchases without a board vote from $100,000 to $1 million, and to the district's August 2023 employee convocation at NRG Center, which it says cost nearly $470,000, including more than $212,000 for a musical starring Superintendent Mike Miles that was written and produced by his son. The commission acknowledged HISD had financial and governance problems before the state stepped in. "It's too easy for [takeovers] to start, and then there's no clear path to actually ending it," Cook said, according to Houston Public Media.

HISD rejected the report's picture. "HISD transformation is delivering measurable results for students and families," the district said, according to KHOU. The district told KHOU its number of A- and B-rated campuses has more than doubled in three years, reaching 205 in 2026, and that achievement gaps between student groups are narrowing. At a Texas Senate Education Committee hearing the same week, lawmakers heard that the number of HISD campuses with failing ratings fell from 56 to five over three years, and Wheatley High School, whose string of failing ratings triggered the takeover, earned its first A rating this year, according to Houston Public Media.

The TEA took control of HISD on June 1, 2023. Education Commissioner Mike Morath replaced the elected board with appointed managers and named Miles superintendent under a 2015 state law that requires intervention when a campus fails its accountability rating five years in a row. The takeover was first authorized for two years, and Morath extended it in June 2025. In August, Morath and Miles both said the district appeared on track to exit the takeover "relatively soon"; Morath alone has the authority to end the intervention, and an exit would begin a three-year transition. The commission recommends raising the threshold for a takeover from a single failing campus to a broader pattern of underperformance, setting clear limits on the powers of appointed boards and superintendents, and creating a local path, such as a referendum, for ending or extending an intervention. Cook said she will refile Senate Bill 1764, which would change the TEA's takeover authority, when the Legislature convenes in January 2027. The proposals have not become law, and the report does not by itself change any district policy.