Texas's largest school district went from 56 failing campuses to zero and more than doubled its high-performing schools since a controversial 2023 state takeover, as discrimination complaints filed against the Texas Education Agency have failed to match the academic record.
Three years after the Texas Education Agency seized control of Houston's public schools over fierce protests and federal discrimination lawsuits, the numbers tell a story critics did not predict. Houston ISD eliminated every F-rated campus in the district, more than doubled its high-performing schools, and lifted student test scores in 17 of 20 subjects on state exams, according to TEA accountability data and district reports released through mid-2025.
In 2023, the year TEA installed state-appointed Superintendent Mike Miles and a board of managers in place of the elected school board, HISD trailed statewide averages in every tested subject for grades 3 through 8. By spring 2025, the district was outperforming the state in math across most grade levels, according to Houston Public Media, and students in third-grade math, fifth-grade reading, and sixth-grade math each improved by seven percentage points year-over-year. High schoolers showed the sharpest single-year gains, with Algebra I scores climbing 13 points, according to preliminary STAAR results released in June 2025. Biology and Algebra I scores now both exceed the state average.
The campus rating picture is just as striking. In 2023, 56 HISD schools carried an F rating under the state's A-through-F accountability system, and only 93 campuses rated A or B. By the August 2025 ratings, zero schools in the district earned an F, and 197 campuses rated A or B, according to TEA data and reporting by KHOU and Axios Houston. Seventy-four percent of all HISD schools now sit in the top two tiers, up from 35 percent two years ago. Superintendent Miles put the shift plainly: "Not one child in HISD went to a failing school," he said, according to district communications cited by The Center Square.
The gains have also narrowed equity gaps that critics of the takeover once cited as evidence of discriminatory intent. Black students are now 3.5 times more likely to attend an A or B-rated school than they were in 2023, and Hispanic students are 2.5 times more likely, according to analysis by Good Reason Houston, an education advocacy group.
The TEA's 2023 intervention drew immediate legal fire. The Greater Houston Coalition for Justice filed a Title VI complaint alleging the agency had a pattern of targeting minority districts while leaving majority-white districts alone, according to Click2Houston. Houston's teachers union asked a federal judge to block the takeover entirely, arguing it was racially discriminatory. The Texas Observer published an analysis headlined "The State's Houston ISD Takeover is Unfair, Racist, and Wasteful." None of those challenges stopped the intervention, and the academic trajectory since then has undercut the core of their argument.
Texas Monthly raised a more specific methodological question: some of HISD's most dramatic gains, particularly the 17-point rise in Algebra I and 23-point climb in biology over two years, may partly reflect a course-placement shift at New Education System schools that delayed when struggling students sit for those exams. At Deady Middle School, enrollment in eighth-grade algebra dropped sharply after the school joined the NES program, according to Texas Monthly's reporting. District representatives acknowledged the placement changes but told the magazine they were designed to benefit students, not to inflate scores. TEA has not publicly disputed the accountability data.
A January 2026 report from the University of Houston's Institute for Educational Policy Research and Evaluation, titled "Houston ISD Takeover: By the Numbers," documented the tradeoffs: academic indicators climbed while enrollment declined and school closures sparked community protests across the district.
A Model Texas Plans to Expand
TEA Commissioner Mike Morath extended the Houston takeover through June 1, 2027, citing the need to lock in gains. The agency has since moved on Fort Worth ISD, the second-largest district TEA has taken over, with at least one more intervention in progress, according to Texas Standard and ProPublica. Whether those districts follow Houston's academic trajectory, or its enrollment losses and community-relations turbulence, will test how far the model can travel.
For HISD families, the immediate stakes are concrete: a district that sent children to failing schools for years no longer does. What the next accountability ratings reveal, and whether Miles can stabilize enrollment while holding the academic gains, will determine whether Houston becomes a lasting blueprint for state-run school reform or a cautionary tale about the costs of getting there.
