Major Diss

You may think the TEA’s takeover of the Fort Worth school district is not your fight. To you, FWISD is just another urban school district that can’t or won’t educate its mostly poor and minority students. In these pages, I’ve strongly criticized the district when I thought it deserved it. As a former FWISD teacher for 18 years, I, along with my colleagues, always found much to complain about, but none of us wished for this. The TEA’s takeover has nothing to do with improving the lives of our young people and making their education better. It has to do with power and politics.

This takeover fits the precise definition of government overreach by our Republican-dominated state government. The radical action of taking over a school district and disenfranchising its voters should happen only in extreme circumstances, when a district is not improving and is so dysfunctional, it won’t. And none of the above is true of Fort Worth ISD. The sole reason the TEA gave for the takeover is the five consecutive F grades by the Leadership Academy at Forest Oak Sixth Grade. While technically, the state has the right to take over FWISD, it shouldn’t. In Texas’ ninth-largest school district, with 68,000 students and more than 120 schools, one school’s failure should never lead to this nuclear option.

For the past few years, Fort Worth ISD has bent over backward to work with the state. In 2020, it allowed the Texas Wesleyan University Leadership Academy Network to take over Forest Oak because of a state law that encourages privatization of failing campuses to avoid takeover. After two years of that, there was no improvement, so to avoid state sanctions, FWISD closed the school back in 2023.

Besides bending over backward for the state, including approving this past September a Bible-based curriculum, Fort Worth ISD has shown quite a bit of improvement over the past few years despite our state government’s unconstitutional refusal to fund it adequately while it still deals with the aftermath of COVID learning loss. In 2023, the district was given a D, but in 2024 and continuing in 2025, it received C ratings. In 2025, A-rated schools increased by 70%, and F-rated schools dropped from 31 to 11. Sure, FWISD still needs to improve, but it has shown that it is up to that task.

The TEA and the state of Texas are not neutral parties. Our Republican-dominated state government has worked for years to undermine public schools and teachers. During COVID, they complained about a totally fictitious Critical Race Theory being foisted on students. They encouraged moral panics about all things trans and books with words in them. Teachers and administrators, who were working during COVID — one of the most difficult times ever — had to bear the brunt of parents angry over made-up BS. Then the governor held an increase in teacher pay hostage for him to get his voucher scheme passed, which will end up defunding public education.

And the TEA is no technocratic savior of our public schools. Its record in takeovers is nothing to brag about. For example, Edgewood ISD and Beaumont ended up with more failing schools after the state took them over. The TEA has lately trumpeted Houston ISD’s improvement in scores after a 2023 takeover, but The Houston Chronicle and Texas Monthly have reported that the TEA inflated those scores to make itself look better.

Our state education Commissar Mike Morath — who warned teachers not to sully the name of Christian Nationalist Saint Charlie Kirk or else — is all in on taking over school districts, but, according to a ProPublica study, he looks the other way when it comes to charter schools: “On at least 17 occasions, Morath has waived expansion requirements for charter networks that had too many failing campuses to qualify.”

So, the fact that Morath encourages charters while actively undermining Texas public education should be no surprise. Defunding and delegitimizing public education have been long-term projects of the radical, anti-government Republican head honchos in this state.  They want to defund public schools to sell them to their cronies.

This uncalled for and radical takeover is not designed to help Fort Worth ISD schools. It will lead, as it has in Houston, to an exodus of students and teachers, and I can safely predict area charter schools, whose failures are being ignored by TEA, will see their enrollments boom.

We must fight back. Fort Worth is being disrespected by a corrupt Republican state government. Even in this radically gerrymandered state, where the GOP works overtime to take away our vote, we who can need to vote these bought-and-paid-for haters out. We need a state government that cares about public education, teachers, administrators, students, and average Texans, not just its mega-rich donors.

 

This column reflects the opinions and fact-gathering of the author(s) and only the author(s) and not the Fort Worth Weekly. To submit a column, please email Editor Anthony Mariani at Anthony@FWWeekly.com. He will gently edit it for clarity and concision.

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