Six Months to Fix It: Houston — Education Across the States

The state of Texas runs Houston ISD, the largest school district in Texas. This month, according to Texas Education Agency documents obtained by the Houston Chronicle and reporting by ABC13 in Houston, the agency placed Houston on a six-month action plan: fix its special education program rapidly, or risk losing state funding and face more state sanctions. That collision — a state takeover ordered to fix the very program the state has now sanctioned — is the subject of today’s three-part Texas special from Education Across the States.

The plan is concrete. The state will review 650 student records. The district must fix every individualized education program, or IEP, that the review finds out of compliance, train staff across the district, hold public town halls, and create a parent advisory group. If many of those 650 records are wrong, the district may have to meet individually with thousands of families by February to repair their children’s plans one at a time — the first hard checkpoint inside the six months.

The fight behind the plan is about who decides where a child learns. For 2026–27, Houston’s Student Success Program consolidated specialized programs onto fewer campuses, affecting, by the district’s own count, about 5,000 students served mainly in self-contained settings, out of more than 21,000 Houston students who receive special education services. Families argued that a campus change is a decision for a child’s IEP team, not a central-office plan. In the case the agency fully investigated — taken apart in Part Two, involving a first grader whose IEP named Sinclair Elementary — TEA found the district broke federal rules. The district says it is working with the state and will share town hall details soon.

The takeover frame is what makes this different. On June 1, 2023, TEA removed Houston’s elected board and installed its own Board of Managers; in June 2025 the commissioner extended the takeover to June 1, 2027. One of the state’s three exit criteria, in the agency’s own words, is that special education operates in compliance with requirements — and in May 2025 the commissioner wrote that the district had not yet met any of the three. A second track is also open: since May 8, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has run a disability discrimination investigation into the same consolidation. That investigation has made no finding yet.

Takeaway: Watch the dates, not the statements. The town hall schedule, the parent advisory group, and above all the February checkpoint — how many of the 650 records failed, and how many individual family meetings Houston then owes — will show whether the six-month plan is a repair or another promise.

Sources: Texas Education Agency documents as reported by the Houston Chronicle and ABC13 in Houston; TEA’s June 1, 2023 takeover, its June 2025 extension to June 1, 2027, and its three exit criteria; U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights investigation opened May 8, 2026 — all as covered in today’s three-part special, which publishes its sources in its episode descriptions.