![Photo of Anastasia Goodwin](data:image/svg+xml,<svg xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" width="100" height="100"><rect fill-opacity="0"/></svg>)
When state officials announced that the Texas Education Agency would be taking over Houston ISD, they cited Wheatley High School’s five consecutive years of unacceptable accountability ratings and a 2019 state investigation that found misconduct by HISD board members as a justification for the intervention.
Critics quickly pushed back by pointing out the academic improvements at Wheatley that had earned the school a passing accountability rating of “C” in 2022, breaking its streak of unacceptable performance ratings from the state. Additionally, the HISD district as a whole improved between 2019 and 2022 – 80% of its campuses earned “A” and “B” ratings in 2022 compared to only 48% in 2019. The district was given an overall rating of “B”, the same as it did in 2019.
