This part of the reason for the TEA takeover of HISD is less well known and has some adherents among the key stakeholders, but it’s still quite controversial and far from clear that the TEA will do any better.
Many parents of special education students in Houston ISD who feel the school system has failed their children are deeply conflicted over news of the state takeover.
Some who say their children have been denied federally protected rights to an education believe a takeover is long overdue. Others agree accountability is needed, but question whether the Texas Education Agency has the capacity or track record necessary to execute change for the better. Both entities have received intense criticism of their delivery of special education services for decades.
“It’s a tall order to ask a failing TEA special education department to come and rescue a failing HISD special education department,” said Jane Friou, an HISD parent and co-founder of the Houston Special Education Parent Association. “I don’t understand how it’s going to get any better.”
The school system’s special education department’s “significant systemic compliance problems” was cited among the reasons in TEA Commissioner Mike Morath’s notice that a state-appointed board of managers will soon lead the district.
“The takeover is happening because our children’s rights are systematically and continuously violated through denial (of services) and the noncompliance of HISD,” said Marifi Escobar, a parent of an HISD ninth grader with multiple disabilities. “I want to see an overhaul of HISD. This seems to be the first time HISD is being held accountable.”
However, some advocates say they anticipate little change to the beleaguered department given that state-appointed conservators have overseen it for years.
“We, as parents, have not seen anything get better since the conservators got here,” said Fiou. “It may have actually gotten worse from a parent perspective. It’s as chaotic as ever and that makes me very concerned for whatever is coming.”
Other education experts say the state agency’s own failures to provide supports to students with disabilities doesn’t bode well for success in the district.
“TEA is the entity that receives funding from the federal government to implement (the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act) and it is supposed to provide technical assistance, monitoring and professional development across the state,” said David DeMathews, associate professor of the University of Texas at Austin’s department of educational leadership and policy. “TEA has failed miserably doing this job for more than a decade.”
[…]
Criticism of TEA’s implementation of special education stems from its artificial cap on the number of students with disabilities who could receive services. The since-removed arbitrary 8.5 percent cap, which was first reported by the Houston Chronicle, led to the denial of services to tens of thousands of children with disabilities in Texas.
In January 2018, the federal Office of Special Education Programs announced it found TEA had failed to ensure all children with disabilities in the state were identified and evaluated. In October 2020, TEA told OSEP it believed it had completed all the required corrective actions. However, OSEP found the state had made only one of many required changes to its operations.
In 2021, the U.S. Department of Education said TEA failed to put into place many of the corrective actions it pledged to make to comply with IDEA and threatened recourse of taking away special education funding. Among the alleged shortcomings was that there was no indication districts in the state were promptly referring children for dyslexia evaluations.
Currently, TEA officials say the agency has “exceeded” the corrective actions laid out by OSEP and has increased the number of students in special education 37.3 percent since 2015.
See here for all my previous blogging on special education, which includes both the many issues at HISD and the many issues with the TEA. I have not had to interact with the special ed system at HISD, but some of my friends have and they very much say that it is a huge hassle. These are educated professional folks with resources to deal with those hassles talking, so you can extrapolate from there for folks who don’t have such resources. If the TEA can make things better here, that’s unequivocally great. There are plenty of reasons to be dubious of that possibility. As I’ve said before, it’s now 100% on them to make it happen. We’ll see.