“ELEVATE” in Name, Austerity in Practice: Contextualizing the TEA takeover of Texas Public School Districts

Aug 12

Leading up to and following the illegal dissolution of the USSR in 1991 and the momentary retreat of socialism, the capitalist class of many nations, and especially that of the United States, had started to repeal concessions made to the working class to stave off the eruption of proletarian revolution. With public education now on the chopping block, a concise, albeit cursory, analysis is in order if we are to understand the current trajectory of schooling in Texas.

According to Roger A. Freeman, a leading neoliberal economist and former advisor to Ronald Reagan, “[the United States is] in danger of producing an educated proletariat… We have to be selective on who we allow to go through (higher education). If not, we will have a large number of highly trained and unemployed people.”[1] The danger was that of a militant and united working class movement, embryos of which were to be found in the many New Left organizations sprouting out of the Civil Rights movement in the United States, as well as in the many liberation struggles going on worldwide.

Having taken this advice to heart, Reagan oversaw the beginning of “cuts to state funding of public colleges,” increasing tuition and “[placing] a growing burden on students –– limiting access to higher education as Freeman proposed”[2] — a burden borne disproportionately by the American proletariat, especially working women, racial and ethnic populations, and marginalized gender and sexual minorities.[3] The next few decades of neoliberal economic policies shows us that once capital has run out of markets and resources to exploit, and as the rate of profit continues to fall, the ruling bourgeois class will then cannibalize its own state apparatus as a means of overcoming crises, at the cost of further eroding the material conditions of workers and further expanding the fragility of the capitalist economic system, leading to more more extensive and destructive crises. In short: austerity.

At the turn of the century, President George W. Bush continued the further erosion of any semblance of an education system in this country with the passing of the No Child Left Behind law (NCLB). Under the guise of bettering educational outcomes of students, this bill did two things that lay the groundwork for our current situation in Texas: 1) increased the importance of standardized testing, and 2) set the precedent for the public funding of Charter School and Private School under the guise of “Parent Choice” via the use of vouchers.[4] [5] The former created an over reliance on testing scores as a means of determining student outcome, leading to education continuing to focus on testing outcomes rather than actual educational outcomes. The latter, while keeping in line with the application of Title I, “also provided Mr. Bush with political insulation against the contention that he was somehow taking something away from students by taking money away from their schools.” [6]

The NCLB law was soon followed by President Barack Obama’s Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). While rolling back much of the federal enforcement found in the NCLB, leaving much of the standards and enforcement up to the states themselves, the ESSA requires states to step in if schools continue to fail with their own plan, allowing them to take over the school, fire the principal, or turn the school into a charter.[7] Whether Democrat or Republican, parties that share the same class interest, that of the bourgeoisie, will align when it comes to furthering the power of capital, even if methods may differ.

Texas soon followed suit, passing House Bill 1842 in 2015, allowing the State, more specifically the TEA, to either close down the school or replace the elected board of a district. Not only that, but in 2017, the Texas Senate passed Senate Bill 1882, which allows school districts to “temporarily” hand over the low-performing schools to a nonprofit or charter school, which then receives more money per student.[8]

As if to add insult to injury, come 2025, Texas Governor Gregg Abbott signed into law the $1 Billion School of Choice Voucher Bill. This bill allows the siphoning of public funds from the public sector straight into the private one, by allowing students who attend an accredited private school to receive $10,000 per year, students with disabilities $30,000 per year, and home-schooled students $2,000 a year.[11] Money that could have otherwise gone into strengthening and bettering the public education system many families rely on instead went to lining the pockets of capitalists like Jeff Yass, who has a vested interest in running and funding charter and private schools through his Susquehanna Foundation, who back in 2023 donated $6 million to Abbott and $500k to a pro-voucher super PAC.[12]

According to an investigation done by the Houston Chronicle, district takeovers - like those in Houston, Fort Worth, and soon Austin[13] - are “significantly more likely to occur in districts with higher concentrations of low-income learners and students of color” and, coincidentally, “districts that have a larger charter school sector.”[10] A 2021 study on state takeovers across the United States since the late 1980s also shows "no evidence that led to academic improvements,” with scores actually dropping in the first few years.[9] The first target of these new policies in 2023 was to be Houston ISD, and instantly, members of the community raised concerns over the proposed policies that involved the implementation of poor curriculum, reduction of special education services, a heavier focus on standardized testing, and school closures. For those in Fort Worth ISD, these concerns would become all too familiar.

As of March 2026, Fort Worth ISD has been under the control of the TEA appointed “Board of Managers," led by one Peter B. Licata and consisting primarily of attorneys & lawyers, a “serial entrepreneur,” a former US military secretary, the president of a bank, the CEO of Simpli.fi tech company, and, to top it all off, a McDonald’s franchise business partner (don’t laugh!).[14] As of the time of writing, this new “Board of Managers” has managed to accomplish quite a few things, such as voting to close the International Newcomer Academy, the district's only school dedicated to serving immigrant and refugee students, a vote which followed a reduction of positions in an already struggling English Language learners department, let alone the already massive cuts made to the Special Education programs.[15] [16] [17] In preparation for their proposed “ELEVATE” campuses, i.e., those campuses identified as underperforming, the Board of Managers have restructured leadership across the selected schools, selecting Principles and others willing to fall in line with their demands. If an educator is to return to their position for the following school year, they must also reapply for said position at these Elevate campuses.[18] Massive leadership and staff turnover since the appointment of the Board of Managers has already started to creep into many campuses district-wide, even those not designated as “underperforming,”[19] as the Board fails to inspire confidence in many of those that would consider FWISD a place worth teaching at, leaving many feeling undervalued and overworked. As of July 17, as many as 1000 teachers have resigned since the state's takeover![20] One cannot fathom trying to run a school understaffed and overworked, but that’s exactly what the appointed board has set out to do.

While many educators find themselves at a loss for what to do, or how to move forward in an education system that doesn’t respect them as workers, and doesn’t take into account their input, many are left grasping for the electoral box as a means of escaping the cycle of austerity. As shown above, it matters not whether liberal or conservative politicians are at the helm of this sinking ship, nor what the stated goal of an educational reform pledges itself to be when the results speak of under-funding and a paucity in actual educational outcomes for children, already left behind by an educational system ready to churn them out to the world, barely able to read at a 6th grade level, and now lacking critical thinking skills due to the increasing use of AI both as a means of completing assignments and as way to offloading mental load. This cycle of underfunding and underperformance of the public sector will continue as long as we allow capitalists to continue exploiting our labor and cannibalizing our welfare in the process. Only by combating the source of capital’s influence on society, by expropriating the expropriators, by doing away with the property relations that allows them to privatize anything and everything within their grasp, and with wage-labor, and with capital's ability to appropriate the value it creates as private property; in essence, only by converting the state of all things into the common property of all, will capital lose its class character, doing away with class antagonism once and for all. Anything short of that and we will be in danger of producing an undereducated proletariat, one that will lack the skills needed for its own emancipation.

Sources

[1] Moskowitz, Ron (October 30, 1970). "Professor Sees Peril in Education". San Francisco Chronicle. p. 13.

[2] www.bestcolleges.com/news/analysis/threat-of-educated-proletariat-created-the-student-debt-crisis/

[3] protectborrowers.org/communities-of-color-in-crisis-examining-racial-disparities-in-student-loan-debt-and-borrower-outcomes

[4] georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/infocus/education/

[5] www.edweek.org/policy-politics/no-child-left-behind-an-overview/2015/04.

[6] www.nytimes.com/2001/01/26/us/adding-a-financial-threat-to-familiar-promises-on-education.html.

[7] https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/the-every-student-succeeds-act-an-essa-overview/2016/03

[8] https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/education-news/2019/01/15/318005/heres-what-you-need-to-know-about-a-potential-state-takeover-of-houston-schools/

[9] https://edworkingpapers.com/ai21-411

[10] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/opinion/outlook/article/state-takeover-affect-hisd-students-research-17816737.php

[12] https://www.texastribune.org/2024/01/16/greg-abbott-jeff-yass-camapaign-donation/