Researcher Domingo Morel discovered a trend as he examined state takeovers of schools across the nation.
The state intervenes. Rapid academic gains follow. But over time, student outcomes level off or decline.
“Houston is going to experience the same thing,” Morel said during a March 18 panel at Texas A&M University Law School. “Fort Worth — if this is the path that it goes on — will encounter the same thing.”
What will happen to Fort Worth ISD’s nearly 68,000 students and whether the state’s takeover helps them is the central concern from parents, teachers and business leaders as Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath prepares to appoint a new superintendent and board of managers soon.
Morath ordered the intervention in October over years of low academic performance and a campus that received five consecutive failing academic accountability grades under the Texas’ school rating system.
Interventions often include state-appointed officials replacing locally elected school board members and superintendents to make all calls on curriculum, campuses and cash. The installed leaders’ goal is to bring significant — and quick — academic improvements for students that state officials say local leaders can’t accomplish.
On average, state takeovers do not lead to long-term, sustainable improvements in math or reading, according to a study by the nonpartisan public policy group The Brookings Institution.
However, the researchers emphasized the results of a takeover do not affect all communities in the same way. They found academic reforms beneficial in majority Latino districts, which FWISD is, than in majority Black school systems.
‘Make sure that the change is happening’
Business leaders see Fort Worth’s takeover taking a different trajectory than the one Morel described.
Tom Harris, Frost Prioleau and Mike Coffey shared their observations from a two-hour tour of classes in a Houston elementary school during a late February discussion at Texas Wesleyan University. The Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce organized the early December visit. Harris and Prioleau, as well as Coffey’s wife, are seeking FWISD manager appointments.
They saw children engaged in a regimented learning environment where lessons are timed to the second, the men recalled. Instructional materials are prepared for teachers, they noted.
The strict regiment is paying off as more students attend A and B schools while Houston eliminated failing campuses, they added.
Harris credited the state-appointed leadership — Houston Superintendent Mike Miles, the managers and conservator — for the improvements. Fort Worth’s new appointed leadership will play a similar role, he said.
“Our hope is that that hierarchy will make sure that the change is happening and that we achieve the mission of better academic performance as quickly as we can get there," Harris said.
‘Real learning’
Samantha Stimson, an English teacher at O.D. Wyatt High School, said during the Texas A&M panel that FWISD educators are already seeing Houston-inspired decisions take root in their classrooms.
One-size-fits-all, scripted lessons provided by Fort Worth administrators are supplanting the teacher autonomy that allows for individualized support for children, she said.
The quick pacing of lessons means students with learning gaps, language barriers and lacking foundational skills are being left behind, Stimson said.
“The system demands urgency but denies the conditions for real learning,” Stimson said.
FWISD has tried a scripted learning process before with previous superintendents shifting reading instruction from phonics to whole language and back, former Tarrant County Commissioner Roy Charles Brooks said.
The changes were intended to benefit children, but those improvements did not materialize in STAAR.
“This should be about our children and not about the power games that adults play about who’s going to be in control and how that control is going to be exercised,” Brooks said.
Fort Worth ISD’s stubbornly low academic performance is not a new phenomenon, said Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, executive director of parental advocacy group Parent Shield.
The district has underperformed for more than a decade, yet turnout in local trustee elections and candidate interest in running was low, she said. Dorsey-Hollins doesn’t want to play the blame game. She wants results.
Dorsey-Hollins pointed out that student performance has improved since Superintendent Karen Molinar took charge. However, Morath will appoint a new leader rather than retain Molinar, a nearly 30-year veteran FWISD educator.
“As a parent, we want to see our kids improve,” she said. “It’s not about the adults in the room — it’s about the kids. We want to see growth for our kids, and we have not been seeing that in our current situation.”
The takeover should prompt parents to engage with Fort Worth ISD, Dorsey-Hollins said. But she reminded the audience that parents and the community must stay engaged long after the state relinquishes control back to locally elected trustees.
“We’re going to need passionate people who have been in the know, who know what’s going on to apply for those seats,” Dorsey-Hollins said. “This is how, as a community, we can make sure that we’re staying engaged. Now more than ever, we need it.”
Jacob Sanchez is education editor for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at jacob.sanchez@fortworthreport.org or @_jacob_sanchez.
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