Dive Brief:
- Mike Morath has been appointed by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to serve as the new commissioner of the Texas Education Agency, overseeing 1,200 school districts and charter schools.
- Previously, the “admittedly nerdy” businessman served on the Dallas Independent School District (DISD) Board of Trustees, where he’s credited for helping create a new teacher evaluation system and a new compensation system that raised top educator pay to $90,000, along with boosting overall high school graduation rates from 75% in 2010 to 87% in 2014
- Critics, however, point to what they see as an effort to transform the Dallas Independent School District into a "home-rule" charter district, and the Association of Texas Professional Educators have claimed that Morath is tied to closely "to the ‘pro-privatization crowd.’”
Dive Insight:
According to the Dallas Morning News, Morath has a plan to use data to transform Texas schools into the birthplace of the nation’s best educational programs. That bold statement has people like Michael MacNaughton of Dallas Friends of Public Education, a watchdog group, nervous that “data” might mean more testing.
Others, like the Association of Texas Professional Educators, have taken issue with the lack of a career educator heading the agency in the past decade, and the fact that Morath's educational credentials reportedly consist of teaching just one high school computer science class.
“Republican education experts and others rushed to vouch for Morath,” the Dallas Morning News reported, saying that former U.S. Education Secretary Rod Paige, of Houston, was “delighted” with the appointment.
Morath is already undergoing scrutiny related to his role in what was seen as an attempt to transform the Dallas Independent School District into a home-run charter district, though he's told the media that he had "no active role" in that effort. His full statement on the controversy was published online by the Dallas Morning News.
