eing a teacher at Dobie Middle School last school year felt a bit like trying to build a path as you’re walking along it, Taylor Carriker-Cavin said.
For Dobie and two other Austin ISD middle schools, Webb and Burnet, the school year looked different. The district carried out state-required turnaround plans at the three campuses, which all received their fourth consecutive F accountability score from the Texas Education Agency in 2025.
Accountability scores for Texas public schools are heavily – and controversially – based on annual State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness scores, plus other factors like graduation rates, academic growth by demographic, and college, career, and military readiness.
The new turnaround plans meant new principals, and switching to curriculum that the TEA qualifies as “high-quality instructional materials.” New, experienced teachers like Carriker-Cavin were hired at Dobie to improve student test scores and overall academic performance.
And preliminary 2026 math and reading STAAR scores, released in June, did improve across all three campuses from the previous year. But academic growth at Dobie showed up in many more ways than standardized testing, Carriker-Cavin said.
“We saw the school culture shift to be more academically focused,” she explained. “We saw students make strides in language acquisition across the board, because in every subject, we focused more on language acquisition rather than just STAAR content achievement.”
Those strides in language acquisition are meaningful in a school community that is about 73% English language learners as of April. And because STAAR exams are only offered in English after elementary school, Dobie students are taking tests in a language they are still learning.
Roughly 78% of students at both Webb and Burnet middle schools are also learning English, as of April, and must take high-stakes math, reading, and science STAAR exams in English that contribute to state accountability scores.
Carriker-Cavin, as a science teacher at Dobie, is also teaching students who learned science in their home language in dual-language elementary school. Now, they’re having to relearn the vocabulary of science in English to take STAAR as middle schoolers, she said.
“That can be very, very challenging, because academic vocabulary builds from such a young age,” Carriker-Cavin continued. “Either the district needs to shift how we approach dual-language content vocabulary, or the state needs to adjust what testing is offered at the middle school level. Because it absolutely does a disservice to our bilingual and multilingual communities.”
Despite the significant academic gains, in June, over half of the three campuses’ math and reading STAAR tests did not receive passing preliminary scores. The TEA is scheduled to release 2026 accountability scores on Aug. 14.
If Dobie, Webb, or Burnet receives a fifth consecutive unacceptable score, TEA Commissioner Mike Morath would be required by state law to either close the campus or take over AISD, he notified district leadership in September.
When TEA takes over a district, the agency usually appoints a new superintendent and board of managers in place of the current locally elected school board.
Morath has taken over five Texas school districts for academic reasons since 2023 – at an unprecedented rate – including Houston and Fort Worth ISDs, which are large, urban school districts like AISD.
Carriker-Cavin believes that Dobie is on an upward track academically, but said the boost in standardized test performance demanded by TEA takes more than a single school year.
“The teachers worked really, really hard, and our students really showed up,” Carriker-Cavin said. “But in historically marginalized communities, that kind of turnaround really takes years and major investment in the community that the timeline just didn’t allow for.”
This school year, 24 more AISD campuses will have turnaround plans. Carriker-Cavin hopes the district will listen to educators about what works best at their campuses. The “high-quality” math and reading lessons Dobie teachers were required to teach last year per TEA sometimes “missed the mark” for their specific students, she explained.
“Teachers and the staff at those schools are experts on their communities, and their feedback should not only be listened to, but there should be changes in the turnaround plan implementation based on their feedback,” Carriker-Cavin said.
But where the current AISD administration can be amenable to feedback, Texas teachers have had less confidence in a state-appointed one. New Education System schools in Houston and Elevate schools in Fort Worth adopt standardized, STAAR-centric curriculum, which largely removes the individual teacher’s expertise or creative freedom in designing curriculum.
“The idea of teaching even more scripted lessons, my students being over-tested … it honestly makes me very emotional,” Carriker-Cavin said, her voice breaking. “I love my students. I love everything about teaching. I want to keep teaching, but I don’t think the TEA would let me keep teaching the way that I love to teach.”
Following Fort Worth’s first school year under state control, over 1,000 teachers have resigned as of July. In the same situation, Carriker-Cavin said she would likely make a similar decision.
“It wouldn’t be my classroom anymore. It would be exactly the same as the person next door, and that changes everything,” she continued. “I don’t think that I would be able to stay, and I know many of my colleagues have said the same.”
Can Austin Avoid Takeover?
The day after this issue hits stands, the Texas Education Agency is expected to release 2026 accountability results for Texas public schools and school districts. If any AISD campus receives a fifth F, the school district could be at imminent risk of takeover.
AISD – a district that has received pushback from Gov. Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton for allowing students to protest ICE and celebrate Pride – could lose the local leadership that has defended that district culture and is currently accountable to the Austin community as elected officials.
The timeline could look similar to that of Fort Worth ISD. After a single campus received a fifth F in August 2025, Morath announced that Fort Worth would be taken over in October. The elected board of trustees appealed the decision in November, which a state administrative court denied in February.
David DeMatthews, a professor in UT-Austin’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, said that decision doesn’t necessarily set a binding legal precedent for any appeal process that AISD might pursue.
“Any legal challenge would depend on the specific facts, procedural history, and legal arguments in Austin’s case,” DeMatthews wrote to the Chronicle. “The FWISD decision suggests that courts may be inclined to defer to the state’s authority when TEA acts within powers granted by the Legislature, but it does not eliminate AISD’s ability to pursue its own appeal.”
DeMatthews added that districts that trigger state intervention requirements “generally have limited negotiating leverage,” but that Morath could opt for non-takeover options like school closure, conservatorship, or other monitored improvement plans.
“AISD could certainly … make the case that local leadership should be given additional opportunity to continue reforms,” Morath continued. “Whether TEA would entertain such an arrangement would depend … more on the agency’s interpretation of its legal obligations and the commissioner’s willingness to pursue a less disruptive intervention strategy.”
As more districts get taken over, Morath’s takeovers are appearing to follow the trend of establishing STAAR-centric curriculum – which is leading to high turnover of teachers, furthering Texas’ existing teacher shortage, Sarah Woulfin, another professor in UT-Austin’s Department of Educational Leadership and Policy, told the Chronicle.
“The teachers in those schools are being watched and monitored to a high degree, where there are penalties and very strong messaging around exactly how they are using the curriculum,” Woulfin added. “We’re starting to see a certain brand of takeover has been institutionalized in Texas … and could then be more easily imported to AISD.”
AISD has taken concrete steps over the last few months to avoid state takeover. The district submitted a partnership application for a two-year relief period from state intervention at Dobie, Webb, and Burnet, which TEA denied. AISD also voted to immediately close Paredes Middle School on July 30, which was also nearing the takeover trigger of five consecutive F’s, and transition students to Bailey or Mendez middle schools.
But now, whether the district will be able to avoid those accountability consequences through the school closure is uncertain, given a newly adopted TEA rule change that will go into effect Aug. 16. It states that if a district closes a failing school and reassigns those students to a newly opened school or a campus rated C or below, that receiving campus will inherit the higher count of unacceptable ratings from the failing school.
Bailey is a C-rated campus and could inherit Paredes’ string of unacceptable accountability scores, per the rule. Students could be moved to an A- or B-rated campus without those scores being inherited. It’s still unclear how the rule change will impact the proposed Paredes closure, which trustees approved July 30 ahead of the rule’s effective date.
Additionally, Austin ISD submitted 7,585 end-of-course and STAAR tests from “nearly all” AISD campuses back to the TEA to be regraded, an AISD spokesperson wrote to the Chronicle.
School districts can resubmit STAAR tests to TEA – the majority of which are now graded by “automated scoring engines” – to be rescored by a human grader. Districts must pay the state for the tests that fail to rescore higher.
An AISD spokesperson wrote to the Chronicle July 28 that 1,719 of those tests were returned by the agency with a higher score. AISD has yet to be billed for the rescoring as of Aug. 7, wrote a district representative.
Whether or not those STAAR rescores tip AISD’s accountability scores into safe-from-takeover territory remains to be seen. Per the Statesman’s July 29 reporting, AISD is allegedly in conversations with the city of Austin and state officials about making alternative arrangements with the TEA rather than state takeover, in the event the district receives five F’s.
Both AISD and the city of Austin did not respond to the Chronicle’s questions about those alternatives to takeover or confirm the conversations between the district and city.
AISD leaders may be looking toward Wichita Falls ISD, where a campus received five F’s and the district was still able to avoid losing its locally elected leadership by coming to a unique agreement with TEA in March.
The agreement involves accepting a TEA-appointed conservator to oversee district decisions, and partnering with Third Future Schools – a charter network founded by Morath’s appointed superintendent for Houston ISD’s takeover, Mike Miles – to turn around campuses.
Whatever’s to come this school year, Carriker-Cavin, who is also a member of AISD’s union Education Austin, thinks it’s smart to start preparing and organizing district staff and families for the possibility of takeover – even if it doesn’t happen.
“Best-case scenario, we don’t get taken over,” Carriker-Cavin said. “And, ‘Oh no, we have more communication. Oh no, we have more connected communities. Oh no, we have more people on the PTA, and more educators who are stepping up and speaking out for their students.’”
“I think we need to be cautiously optimistic,” she continued. “I’m hopeful that it won’t happen, but I am going to do everything that I can to prepare for the worst.”
Temperature Check
The string of district takeovers also follows a pattern of declining enrollment across Texas public school districts. And when state funding for Texas public schools relies on average daily attendance, widening school district budget deficits have followed statewide.
Austin ISD notably had the largest budget deficit in the state, at a projected $181 million by the end of the 2026-27 school year. Trustees eliminated the deficit in June through school closure savings and sweeping districtwide cuts into campus-level staffing, programs, teachers’ planning time, and more.
The public school enrollment decline is really a nationwide trend, fueled in part by the declining birth rate, Woulfin explained. “The canary in the coal mine is seeing enrollment declines at the elementary level,” she continued. “In less than a decade, those kids will be in high school, and then we’ll be noticing that our high schools are underpopulated.”
But in Texas specifically, additional factors are further cutting down enrollment numbers, Woulfin continued. One is Texas’ new private school voucher program – Texas Education Freedom Accounts – about to launch its first school year.
“If there’s an increase in support for students in private, charter, and homeschooling options, they’ll exit from the traditional public school district,” Woulfin said. According to the comptroller’s Aug. 1 report, 1,020 students reported to live within Austin ISD are participating in the voucher program.
AISD Superintendent Matias Segura has also pointed to heightened immigration enforcement as affecting student attendance and enrollment. Between the last two school years alone, Texas public school enrollment declined by about 76,600 students, according to the policy research firm Texas 2036’s May 2026 study. The study found that 81% of that decline in public school enrollment were Hispanic/Latino and emergent bilingual students.
Austin’s school district has lost over 10,000 students alone over the last decade. AISD’s total resident student population is expected to decrease by another roughly 3,800 students by 2030, per the district’s May report.
And during a particularly difficult year of school closure decisions and financial troubles, AISD trustees have repeatedly expressed concern that the decline will grow steeper into next school year.
A little over 55,000 students have registered for the 2026-27 school year, an AISD spokesperson wrote the Chronicle July 22, though families are continuing to enroll. Over 68,000 students were enrolled last school year.
AISD is also losing teachers after the 12 school closures and campus-level cuts to take effect this fall. AISD is seeing a 14.4% reduction in teachers from the 2025-26 school year as of July 7, a district spokesperson wrote the Chronicle, and 11% of teachers districtwide have transferred to new campuses or roles.
And in the aftermath of the school closures, thousands of AISD families are about to begin at a new school. Dan Barrett’s family had been part of the Becker Elementary community for 17 years. The closure of Becker last fall felt “staggering,” he recalled.
Despite the loss of their longtime neighborhood school, the Barretts have decided to stay in AISD to provide social stability for their elementary student. But Barrett believes AISD has lost a measure of community trust through the school closure process. “[The district] was so adamant on moving so quickly, to cut with such a wide knife,” he said.
One way to re-earn that trust would be to more transparently communicate issues that arise in the district with families moving forward, Barrett said. “Authentic transparency will bring trust.”
Barrett believes that local control of the school district is better than the alternative, but still believes AISD could do better, pointing to the abrupt closure of Paredes. “No one wants the state to take over,” he said. “But back to trust, it’s hard to trust that the district is making wise decisions when they’re just trying to stop the bleeding.”
Summer Organizing
In front of Pease Elementary in East Austin on June 8, which AISD closed as a school in 2020, House Rep. Gina Hinojosa declared that, if elected governor in November, she will end takeovers of Texas public school districts. Hinojosa has vowed to fire Commissioner Morath, and reform the state’s A-F accountability system.
“We have 100 schools shutting down in this state. We have over 150 school districts operating at four days a week,” Hinojosa told Austinites. “This is happening all over the state because Greg Abbott has starved our public schools for years.”
“What I want the people of Austin to understand … is that it’s not just you. It’s happening all across this state,” she continued. “It is never the right answer for struggling schools to take power away from parents and communities.”
November elections aside, Austin families, PTAs, and the union Education Austin are bracing for whatever the school year could bring.
“It may be until December that a [takeover] decision is made,” Education Austin President Ken Zarifis said. “If Gina wins, this is over. … So a lot of things can happen before anything happens, and we want to be prepared.”
Crystal Brothwell Hernandez, president of the Austin Council of PTAs, said the group is actively collaborating with Fort Worth PTAs on how to best advocate for the community during a takeover. ACPTA is also organizing this summer to educate Austin families on what takeover has looked like, and make sure more people in the district know each other.
“We are reaching out to our PTAs, telling them, ‘Hey, send a letter, send a comment, send a postcard to your House representatives, your legislators. Let them know how you’re feeling,’” Brothwell Hernandez said. “We’re trying to change the system not only locally, but statewide.”
“We’re doing everything we can, because it’s so important to protect our students, our teachers, and our community,” Brothwell Hernandez continued with emotion. “Our children are the future … and we need to give them the best education possible.”
Mary Kay Tiernan, a parent of two AISD high schoolers, said her kids have had “excellent” schools and teachers over their time in the district. But now, particularly for her younger child, she worries about what state takeover could mean.
“I’ve talked to friends that teach in the Houston area, and I’ve talked to friends who have kids who go to school in the Fort Worth area … and that is not anything I wish for my kids to have to endure in their public education career,” Tiernan said.
Tiernan wants to foster a lifelong love of learning in her kids and believes AISD is a district that shares that goal. “I don’t think the experiences of the kids in the TEA districts reflect that. I don’t think that that’s their priority,” Tiernan continued. “I think their priority is to solely focus on STAAR scores. And honestly, I couldn’t care less about their STAAR scores.”
In Tiernan’s conversations with other parents and her fellow PTA members about what the new school year could bring, “everyone is unilaterally against a TEA takeover,” she told us.
“The parents are prepared to fight this,” Tiernan pressed. “Watch out, TEA, because we’re mad. And we’re not going to take it lying down.”
On Thursday, Aug. 13, AISD announced the results of its 2025-26 accountability scores. Read more in next week’s issue.
This article appears in August 14 • 2026.
