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State Takeovers of Schools Are Not the Answer to Educational Inequality
Too often, they are an instrument of conservative politicians wielded against local communities who find their voices shut out, and the most vulnerable students pay the price.
Aug 10, 2024
The state takeover of Houston Independent School District, the eighth-largest public school system in the United States, is entering its second year.
State-appointed superintendent Mike Miles is celebrating the occasion by touting state test score results that show preliminary improvement in student achievement. Other leaders in education across the country are paying close attention to Miles’ tactics to see if they’re effective enough to implement in their own schools.
Since 1989, over 100 school districts across the U.S. have been subjected to state takeovers, in which the state seizes control of low-performing or financially struggling school districts, replacing their locally elected school boards. This is done with the goal of dramatically improving the district’s academic or financial performance. State takeovers are difficult to neatly describe because they vary from place to place depending on the policies that the state-appointed board and superintendent decide to implement. But they are overwhelmingly ineffective.
Instead of allowing the state to take over our schools, we need to turn to proven solutions like increasing per-pupil spending, which has been shown to address achievement gaps faced by low-income students.
A 2021 study done by researchers from Brown University and the University of Virginia analyzed over 100 state takeovers between 1989 and 2016. It found “no evidence that takeover generates academic benefits.” In fact, it can take years for schools to return to their previous levels of academic achievement after a takeover.
Beyond that, takeovers are emblematic of a worrying trend in education that extends beyond Houston and hurts low-income learners and students of color most.
The study also showed that state takeovers disproportionately target districts with higher concentrations of low-income and nonwhite students, regardless of academic achievement. But another study revealed that majority-Black districts rarely see financial improvement in the years following a takeover.
The Brown study also found that takeovers tend to happen in states with both a Republican governor and a Republican-controlled legislature. This should be really alarming given the fact that those same states are also passing legislation like requiring the 10 Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms and restricting the discussion of race, sex, and gender in schools.
HISD is no different.
As of 2022, almost 80% of HISD students were considered economically disadvantaged, and the overwhelming majority were students of color. Education is supposed to be the great equalizer, but state takeovers exacerbate education inequality for low-income and minority students. Too often in conservative states, they disrupt existing communities and feed students subpar and radicalizing material.
In 2019, out of HISD’s almost 300 campuses, just one school’s repeated failure to meet state standards allowed the Texas Education Agency to take over the entire district. HISD had managed to fight off takeover for four years.
During that time, their academic accountability scores improved. In 2022, the district received a high B, performing better than several other districts in the state, and Phillis Wheatley High School, the 97-year old historically Black campus that had triggered the state takeover law, improved its score to a passing 78.
Last year, the Texas Education Agency took over anyway, appointing a nine-person board of managers and Mike Miles, formerly the very controversial superintendent of Dallas ISD, to transform the Houston public school system.
As a result of the takeover, the Texas Education Agency implemented a scripted curriculum in HISD schools. This past year, Miles had to reassign a group of teachers to review the provided curriculum, which was found to be riddled with errors and inappropriate content, including ChatGPT-sourced material. He also faced backlash after it was revealed that students were being shown videos questioning human-caused climate change from the conservative Prager University Foundation.
Now, the Texas Education Agency is offering all school districts in the state $60 per student to teach a new curriculum that contains extensive biblical references. For students in Texas schools, culture war politics are increasingly invading education, and districts taken over by the state have no choice but to teach its curriculum.
There are several other problems with the HISD takeover: 28 schools faced the most radical reforms this year, and an additional 57 were brought into the new system but didn’t experience some of the larger structural changes.
State requirements for certified teachers, deans, and assistant principals were waived to ease the hiring process, while veteran teachers had to reapply for their positions, with many not offered the chance to return.
A militaristic learning environment was enforced, with teachers forced to rush through timed and scripted lessons and students made to participate approximately once every four minutes. When students had to use the restroom, they had to carry a large traffic cone as a hall pass, which many felt was humiliating and dehumanizing.
Libraries were converted into “team centers” that housed both students who finished their lessons early and students with discipline problems made to watch their lessons virtually, while librarians were let go and, in several cases, shelves emptied.
All of these reforms have led to a budget deficit of almost $200 million for this year and a projected shortfall of over $500 million for next year that Miles is attempting to make up partially through the cutting of special education and wraparound specialists, who help students dealing with homelessness and hunger. Many have questioned the long-term financial feasibility of the takeover.
On August 8, the district’s state-appointed board of managers will decide whether or not to put its proposed $4.4 billion bond, which it says will be put toward renovating facilities and improving school safety, among other promised improvements. Opponents to the takeover, including the American Federation of Teachers, have spoken out against the bond, citing their lack of faith in Miles and embracing the rallying cry “No trust, no bond.”
Meanwhile, Miles seeks to implement a pay-for-performance model, where teacher pay—and continuing employment—will be tied to standardized test scores and evaluations. For now, he’s settled for raising teacher pay, but only for the 28 schools required to follow the new model, and only for those teachers whose grades and subjects are tested on state exams. Furthermore, teachers can only benefit for as long as they manage to stay employed at those schools.
This past year, teacher turnover was almost double its usual rate, as teachers and administrators both opted to resign in protest to the reforms and were not asked back throughout the year.
It is possible that some of Miles’ practices are worth considering, but a year of teacher, parent, and student responses only support the growing body of evidence that show that takeover is not the way to go about it. Protests and student walkouts against the takeover continued until the end of the school year, with community members complaining that their concerns have been repeatedly ignored or dismissed.
We can all acknowledge that educational inequality is a major issue, and change is necessary. But a takeover is not the answer. Too often, it is an instrument of conservative politicians wielded against local communities who find their voices shut out, and the most vulnerable students pay the price.
Instead of allowing the state to take over our schools, we need to turn to proven solutions like increasing per-pupil spending, which has been shown to address achievement gaps faced by low-income students. According to a 2018 Rutgers study, Texas needs to spend $12,000 more per student to bring its poorest students up to national average outcomes.
We owe it to all of our students to find effective and sustainable reforms that center their needs. Education should not be a power struggle. Instead, it should be a way to uplift and empower communities and to help give students the start that they need to succeed in life.
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Florida Isn’t Teaching Its Students About the Climate Crisis Threatening the State’s Survival
Instead, its “education” department has approved a series of right-wing videos from Prager U, which draws much of its funding from some of the country’s biggest frackers.
Aug 15, 2023
On the list of crazy weather records this overheated summer, it’s possible that the single most extreme might have been a 101.1°F temperature measured by an ocean buoy at Manatee Bay in Florida in July. That appears to be the hottest temperature ever measured in the ocean; it’s in a murky and shallow stretch of the Keys, but across the entire Gulf coast temperatures are truly astounding. The average for the Gulf of Mexico this week is more than 88°F , crushing the average for the date across the last three decades by two and a half degrees; God forbid a hurricane gets loose in there any time soon. Coral reef researchers were reporting “100% mortality” at sites in the Keys.
So you would think that as Florida students return to school this fall, studying up on climate change would be a no-brainer—if physics and chemistry usually seem a little abstract, nothing could be more immediate than an ocean running at Jacuzzi temperatures. There’s so many ways you could study it, from the youngest students to high school seniors, and it would bring everything from history to economics alive. Some of it might be sad—I was deeply moved by this Diana Nyad piece about swimming in the ocean she’d known since she was a girl now that it was 100°F. But I was fascinated by her writing—read this one paragraph and think about the different directions a talented teacher could take it:
At age 9, after the Cuban Revolution, I searched the horizon to catch a glimpse of Cuba, this suddenly forbidden island. My mother pointed out across the ocean and said to me: “There. Havana is just across there. It’s so close that you, you little swimmer, you could actually swim there.” Later, after five attempts over 35 years, I finally did make that crossing. But I couldn’t have made that swim last month. In such hot water, the body heat I’d generate from the duress of the effort—a continuous 52 hours and 54 minutes—would quickly lead to overheating and failure. And danger. Hyperthermia would conquer even the strongest of wills.
But that’s not what Florida students will necessarily be studying this year. Instead, the state’s “education” department has approved a series of right-wing videos from Prager U, which draws much of its funding from some of the country’s biggest frackers. And they’re getting their money’s worth: The videos that Prager sends out explain, for instance, that “the planet has heated up and cooled since prehistoric times, even without the burning of fossil fuels.” Which, duh, but this time it’s—as every part of the scientific community agrees—because of the burning of fossil fuels. In one video, a Polish girl tries to explain to her classmates that like solar and wind energy that clean energy is in fact “unreliable, expensive, and difficult to store.” Which is no longer true: it’s now the cheapest power on the planet. By all accounts, Gulf neighbor Texas survived its epic heatwave earlier this summer precisely because it had so much solar and so many batteries hooked to its grid.
It’s not enough to carry water for the fossil fuel industry; the carriers would also like to imagine themselves as brave fighters against Nazism. To call it all shameless barely begins to scratch the surface.
The most obnoxious part of the Prager videos, though, is the preening they engage in. The Polish girl’s grandfather tells her not to worry that her friends think she’s old-fashioned for wanting to stick with coal; he compares her stand with the bravery of the Warsaw uprising. As a narrator explains, “Through her family’s stories, Ania is realizing that fighting oppression is risky and that it always takes courage.”
It’s not enough to carry water for the fossil fuel industry; the carriers would also like to imagine themselves as brave fighters against Nazism. To call it all shameless barely begins to scratch the surface. And the ugliness of it all is really amazing. According to Politico, a PragerU video about a child in Africa features a narrator calmly attacking solar and wind because “their batteries break down and become hazardous waste” and because it’s risky “to rely on things like wind and sunlight, which are not constant.” I have spent a fair amount of time in rural African communities which got power only because cheap solar became available, talking to kids who for the first time ever have light to read by at night. As one father in Cote d’Ivoire told me, “You can feel the effects with their grades now at school.”
But not in Florida’s schools, where anyone who watches this Prager nonsense will emerge dumber than before. And that’s galling, since the Sunshine State, throughout the lifetimes of these students, will need to be making a series of good decisions if it’s going to survive in anything like its present form. Already, for instance, major insurers are pulling out of the state; Newsweek reported that its residents might soon be “uninsurable.” But instead of starting to prepare students for the real world, the state will let them bathe in the warm water of denial.
Happily, there are educators at work in the state, and making a difference. Florida weatherman Jeff Berardelli may be the best example. From his post at WFLA, and across social media, he’s been telling the story of this summer in straightforward and useful terms. He gave an interview recently where he explained his thinking:
My job is to educate people about what I know, right? I live at the intersection between weather and climate, and specifically extreme weather and climate change. That’s my specialty. So, there are certain events that are going to take place and have been taking place that are going to be pretty alarming and I think it’s my job as a scientist, the person who kind of lives at the intersection of both of those things, to put it into context and give people perspective on it.
These are good teaching opportunities, these moments, when extreme things happen, they allow me to kind of educate people on the latest science, the latest studies… the latest facts about how climate change is impacting our extreme weather… My role is to act as both the scientist and also a communicator, because that’s exactly the field that I’m in.
This is not radical thinking, it’s not agenda-driven, it’s not partisan. It’s precisely the kind of teaching we used to take for granted in America.
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What Florida Students Could Learn From PragerU Kids
The state has just approved children’s content from an offshoot of right-wing propaganda organization PragerU, reflecting and potentially accelerating the state’s hard conservative turn.
Jul 28, 2023
A cartoon Booker T. Washington distorting the history of the Civil War. A narrator explaining that embracing climate denialism is akin to participating in the Warsaw Uprising. An instructional video telling girls that conforming to gender stereotypes is a great way to embrace their femininity. A dramatization of the supposedly civilizing, benevolent era of British colonial rule in India.
These are just some of the episodes of PragerU Kids—an offshoot of right-wing propaganda organization PragerU—that Florida has just approved for use in its public school classrooms, reflecting and potentially accelerating the state’s hard conservative turn.
“The state of Florida just announced that we are now becoming an official vendor,” said PragerU CEO Marissa Streit in a video heralding the news. She claimed that schools have “been hijacked by the left” and “used by union bosses” to pursue an agenda “not for our children.”
PragerU’s infiltration of school curriculum comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wages a statewide offensive against public education at every level.
“We are just getting started—additional states are signing up,” Streit added.
In a Meta ad, PragerU Kids highlighted that teachers can use its materials “without repercussions,” signaling that the organization likely fears parents outside of conservative echo chambers could find the videos offensive and inappropriate for the classroom.
PragerU’s infiltration of school curriculum comes as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis wages a statewide offensive against public education at every level. Florida recently adopted new classroom guidelines that mandate teachers tell students that enslaved people “developed skills” that “could be applied for their personal benefit.” Earlier this year, DeSantis staged a hostile takeover of public liberal arts school New College, installing anti-civil rights activist Christopher Rufo on the board of trustees; the college has recently seen a “ridiculously high” number of faculty members leave the school.
Here’s what Florida’s latest salvo against public education actually looks like.
PragerU Kids Curriculum
PragerU Kids videos are a mix of animated and live-action shorts, broken up into different recurring series. Some are more overtly political than others, but the roughly 350 videos on the outlet’s YouTube channel seem largely intended to push a right-wing agenda to one extent or another. Now, any of them could be shown in public school classrooms throughout Florida.
Around the World or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Status Quo
In “Poland: Ania’s Energy Crisis,”—part of PragerU Kids’ “Around the World” series—the titular character learns about climate change in school, only to have her eyes opened by her parents, who are helpfully equipped with decades of climate denialist talking points. Ania soon becomes a denialist herself and is ostracized by her peers, who “barely talk to her any more.”
She finds comfort in history, however, as the video analogizes her situation with one of the most famous antifascist acts of resistance in memory. “Grandfather Jakub tells her about the Warsaw Uprising, when the city’s Jews fought back against the Nazis,” the narrator says.
“Through her family’s stories, Ania is realizing that fighting oppression is risky, and that it always takes courage,” the narrator concludes.
Closer to home, “Los Angeles: Mateo Backs the Blue” is anti-Black Lives Matter, pro-cop propaganda. The video describes a Mexican immigrant family that moved to Los Angeles and had their lives upended by the death of George Floyd, whom the narrator characterizes as “a Black man who resisted arrest.”
“Activists claimed that police were targeting the Black community and purposefully killing unarmed Black men,” the narrator says. “As the false claims of racial targeting spread, so did the anger and violence.”
Mateo develops fondness for his school’s “resource officer”—a euphemism, though one not unique to PragerU Kids—and comes to view the cop as “as a guide, a mentor, and a protector, not how he has seen police characterized in the news, as mean-spirited bullies.”
PragerU Kids has other lessons to teach about the world, often steeped in colonialist apologia and market fundamentalism. In “India: Priya Overcomes Adversity” a narrator explains that under Britain’s colonial rule, “Western influence helped transform the country in many positive ways, but some ancient customs are harder to change than others,” referring to the county’s caste system. The video frames India as a backwards land that benefited from the British, who “spread the influence of Christianity and Western values through India” and “discouraged or even outlawed harmful traditions.” The narrator describes India being “given its independence,” rendering the country the beneficiary of British benevolence, rather than the victor in a struggle to overthrow colonial rule.
The video’s description further reveals the purpose of the narrative—to downplay existing oppression by contrasting it with a distorted version of history. “Young people may think that discrimination is worse than ever, but they'll gain perspective,” the caption promises.
PragerU Kids also finds much to praise in the settler-colonialist state of Israel. In “Israel: Shira Prays for Peace,” the country is presented as “the only country in the Middle East that does not oppress its minority populations.” In fact, multiple human rights organizations and experts have determined that Israel is an apartheid state that systematically oppresses and dispossess Palestinians as a matter of practice and law.
Another entry, “Canada: Marcel Makes a Sacrifice,” is an eight-minute hagiography of the for-profit U.S. health care system, and it repeats the same conservative talking points about the dangers of so-called socialized medicine that have been used for decades.
Leo & Layla: Lessons in Collective Forgetting
Another series sees animated characters Leo and Layla traveling back in time to learn from historical figures. In one episode, the pair discuss slavery with a fictionalized Booker T. Washington.
“I hate that our country had slavery,” Layla says. “Mr. Washington, sometimes do you ever wish you could have lived somewhere else? Like a different country?”
“That’s a great question, and I hate slavery too, but it’s been a reality everywhere in the world,” Washington responds.
The overriding theme of Leo and Layla’s adventures—and PragerU Kids in general—is that schools have made white children feel uncomfortable by teaching them about racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression, and that that anxiety must be alleviated through a rigorous disavowal that the past plays any role in ordering the present.
The fictional Washington then elides the reality of the U.S. Civil War by adopting the passive voice. This flattens the process through which enslaved people freed themselves—alongside the Union Army—into an undifferentiated joint venture of the entire country.
“America was one of the first places on earth to outlaw slavery,” Washington says, getting the timeline completely reversed. “And hundreds of thousands of men gave their lives in a war that resulted in my freedom.”
“When you put it that way, it totally makes sense,” Leo responds.
Washington’s comforting account of history adds up to a conclusion squarely in line with DeSantis’ anti-critical race theory agenda. “Future generations are never responsible for sins of the past,” Washington reassures the children.
“OK I’ll keep doing my best to treat everyone well and won’t feel guilty about historical stuff,” Layla responds, now absolved and innocent.
PragerU Kids’ anti-anti-racism project includes a predictable deradicalization of Martin Luther King Jr., whom Leo and Layla travel to meet.
“My parents… taught me that racism, thinking people are better than or lesser than because of skin color, is wrong and to hate the wrong but never the wrongdoer,” the fictional King tells the kids.
“Wow. That’s so noble,” Layla responds, in an inadvertent but tellingly condescending way.
“My Christian faith directs me to love my neighbors, even when they act in ways I don’t like, and that’s always helped me remain peaceful,” King replies.
Like in the “Around the World” segments, Leo and Layla also have ample opportunities to promote Western chauvinism.
“What’s up with the face?” Layla asks her brother at the beginning of their Christopher Columbus episode. “You look stressed.”
“I’m just doing some research,” Leo responds. “Was today weird for you?”
“Yeah. How’d you guess?” Layla says.
“Columbus Day,” Leo says.
“Or Native American Day, or Indigenous People’s Day—it’s weird, right?” Layla replies.
The kids then discuss how their teachers and peers got into arguments about whether Columbus should have his own holiday.
“The side against Columbus says he was a really mean guy who spread slavery, disease, and violence to people who would’ve been better off if he’d never gone to the new world,” Leo says. “The side for him says he was a really courageous guy who loved exploring, inspired generations, and spread Christianity and Western civilization to people who really benefited from new ways of thinking and doing things.”
When the two kids meet Columbus, he assures them that he was justified in his violence against Indigenous people.
“The place I discovered was beautiful, but it wasn’t exactly a paradise of civilization, and the native people were far from peaceful,” he tells them.
Like the fictional Booker T. Washington, Columbus naturalizes slavery and the slave trade as something that happened everywhere.
“Slavery is as old as time and has taken place in every corner of the world,” Columbus says.
“Well, in our time we view slavery as being evil and terrible,” Layla corrects him.
“Ah. Magnifico! That’s wonderful,” Columbus responds. “I am glad humanity has reached such a time. But you said you’re from 500 years in the future? How can you come here to the 15th century and judge me by your standards from the 21st century?”
As this episode shows, the overriding theme of Leo and Layla’s adventures—and PragerU Kids in general—is that schools have made white children feel uncomfortable by teaching them about racism, colonialism, and other forms of oppression, and that that anxiety must be alleviated through a rigorous disavowal that the past plays any role in ordering the present. If historical wrongs committed by white people in the United States or Europeans must be acknowledged, we must teach that those injustices were undertaken with good intentions. Even more importantly, the past must remain firmly in the past, lest Leo and Layla lose their innocence and be forced to confront continuities of domination.
How To: Instructions in Conformity
Another series, called “How To,” instructs kids on the proper ways to conform to society’s expectations of them, or to repress any unease that results from a sense that power is unequally distributed.
“Most gender stereotypes exist because they reflect the way that men and women are naturally different,” a presenter tells the viewers in “How to Embrace Your Femininity.”
“And those differences aren’t bad,” she continues. “Men and women complement each other and create a well-balanced family and community. So don’t let anybody tell you it’s bad to fit stereotypes.”
In “How to Be a Victor and Not a Victim,” students learn that “people all around the world who have encountered great setbacks have gone on to overcome them, whether it’s poverty, disease, discrimination, or all of it combined.”
That, PragerU Kids says, is the mentality of winners. “Victims on the other hand, don’t believe that personal growth is possible,” the presenter—who, it should be noted here, is Black—instructs the kids.
“Or, even worse, don’t believe it’s needed,” he continues. “Victims are often so busy blaming everything and everyone else for their problems that they don’t stop to think about how their own growth can make things better.”
Other Outlets Chase Dennis Prager’s Model
Other conservative media outlets are attempting to expand their footprint to include children’s programming as well. The Daily Wire, one of the most openly pro-violence and virulently anti-LGBTQ outlets in right-wing media, last year announced a “$100 million commitment to develop entertainment for kids that parents can trust.” Also in 2022, Charlie Kirk launched Turning Point Academy, an affiliate of his extremist-aligned Turning Point USA, which similarly targets elementary school-aged children and defines itself as “an educational movement that exists to glorify God.”
PragerU Kids has a head start on these other outlets, and its curriculum reflects the far-right ideology of Dennis Prager, the organization’s founder. Prager has a long history of making offensive comments, including promoting an anti-gay conspiracy theory about the murder of Matthew Shephard, instructing married women to have sex with their husbands even if they don’t want to, and lamenting that he is socially constrained from using a racist anti-Black slur.
Prager’s recent comments about education are also instructive. “If you see a noose on a college dorm of a Black student, the odds are overwhelming that the noose was put there by a Black student,” Prager said in April 2022.
The goal is to render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world.
“What has any fifth-grader done to have made the world better because he or she is in it?” he asked last September.
Critics tell him, “‘You indoctrinate kids’—which is true,” Prager said this month. “We bring doctrines to children. That’s a very fair statement.”
PragerU Kids is the newest vehicle for that indoctrination, but Prager also seeks to downplay that very project by presenting his curriculum as ideologically neutral, as he illustrated on his radio show in discussing Florida’s adoption of his product.
“To have responsible—it’s not even right-wing, it’s just responsible,” he said, describing PragerU Kids. “Look at our materials.”
Looking at those materials makes PragerU Kids’ mission clear. Discrimination? Oppression? Structural inequality? These forces either don’t exist, or they’re the fault of the individual who hasn’t sufficiently adopted the rise-and-grind mindset that their more successful peers have.
What this all amounts to is painfully obvious, though perhaps not to the Florida children who will be forced to consume this right-wing propaganda while in a public institution. The goal is to render history and its inheritances invisible, inert, and incapable of inspiring young people to seek a more equal and more just world. PragerU Kids is looking to expand that mission to more states. Now it’s the public’s turn to respond.
Sophie Lawton & Jack Wheatley contributed research to this piece.
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