A Citizen Panel Calls the HISD Takeover 'Diminished, Degraded, and Destroyed.' The District Answers With 205 A- and B-Rated Campuses.

HOUSTON - A citizen commission co-chaired by two Democratic state lawmakers from Houston 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 report, titled 'Diminished, Degraded, and Destroyed' and released October 8 by the Citizens Commission on the HISD Takeover, argues that under state control the district narrowed its curriculum toward testing, broke up relationships among students, teachers and families, ended local democratic governance and weakened financial oversight. The 14-member panel - co-chaired by state Sen. Molly Cook, state Rep. Lauren Ashley Simmons and the Rev. Colin Bossen - formed itself, is not sanctioned by the state, and its report, as local coverage has noted, is neither a government audit nor a court ruling and carries no official authority.

The report's evidence is a year of listening: more than 100 accounts from students, teachers and residents. It says about 4,700 of HISD's nearly 11,000 teachers left during the takeover's first year and about 3,100 more left in 2024-25 - figures that count every departure, including resignations and retirements, not firings alone - and that nearly half the teachers hired since the takeover were uncertified, with roughly one in four HISD teachers lacking certification at the start of 2025-26. On spending, it points to the state-appointed Board of Managers' August 2023 vote raising the superintendent's authority to approve purchases without a board vote from $100,000 to $1 million, and to an August 2023 employee convocation at NRG Center 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. 'It's too easy for [takeovers] to start, and then there's no clear path to actually ending it,' Cook said.

The district answered with its scoreboard. 'HISD transformation is delivering measurable results for students and families,' the district said, reporting that its A- and B-rated campuses have more than doubled in three years to 205 in 2026, that achievement gaps between student groups are narrowing, and that campuses with failing ratings fell from 56 to five over three years. Wheatley High School, whose string of failing ratings triggered the takeover in the first place, earned its first A rating this year. The takeover itself began June 1, 2023, when Education Commissioner Mike Morath replaced the elected board with appointed managers and named Miles superintendent under a 2015 state law; Morath extended it in June 2025, and in August both he and Miles said the district appeared on track to exit 'relatively soon' - an exit only Morath can order, and one that would begin a three-year transition. Cook says she will refile Senate Bill 1764, which would change the state's takeover authority, when the Legislature convenes in January 2027. The report alone changes no district policy; the argument now moves to Austin.