I’m trying to hear how he differs from Mike Miles. I’m still thinking about it.
“It’s going to take a while to correct the system,” [appointed Superintendent Peter] Licata said Friday as he walked around Morningside, a campus slated for a new academic turnaround model. “But we don’t have time.”
The visit was one of the first looks at how Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath’s hand-selected leader is approaching classrooms just four days on the job.
Morath picked Licata for leading Broward County Public Schools to its first A in 14 years and eliminated D and F campuses.
Licata walked into a C district where 63 campuses improved in 2025 academic accountability ratings but which still has 39 D and F schools, including two middle schools teetering on triggering the state’s intervention law.
The state intervened in October after more than a decade of low academic performance, with only about a third of students performing on grade level in reading and math.
Improving outcomes will require urgency and a shift in expectations, Licata said. Poverty is not destiny. ZIP codes do not dictate students’ future. Success is possible.
“That expectation when that kid walks in the classroom is as high as for every kid in the district,” Licata said.
School board President Pete Geren has long seen Fort Worth ISD’s stubbornly low academic performance, particularly in literacy, as a moral failing. Licata shares that view.
“He has a passion for the children who are the most economically disadvantaged,” Geren said of the new superintendent. “He’s a kid-focused, student-outcomes kind of person.”
[…]
In his first year, Licata said he hopes to see a 5- to 10-percentage-point improvement in student proficiency.
“If you shoot for 10-percentage-point growth, and get it, phenomenal,” Licata said.
Gains depend on aligning grade-level lessons across the district, strengthening teacher support and holding campus leaders accountable for instruction.
He outlined a culture change across the district — one centered on academic expectations, consistent instruction and coaching.
“We always blame the teacher,” he said. “We’re going to do that in reverse. We’re going to look at the adults and the leadership.”
Not everyone is convinced.
Steven Poole, executive director of the United Educators Association, said teachers are looking for specifics about classroom changes as anxiety runs high.
“You can tell the teachers all day long what you plan to do,” Poole said. “But until you actually put it into action, they need to see it and not just hear it.”
Neighboring school districts are actively recruiting Fort Worth ISD teachers, Poole added. Castleberry ISD, for example, is touting local control as a selling point for prospective teachers.
Licata acknowledged that some educators may leave, but said his goal is to retain teachers by improving support and working conditions.
“Teachers, fear not,” he said. “You’re going to be supported.”
He pointed to potential changes in compensation and additional staffing at struggling campuses as ways to strengthen classrooms and possibly bring back teachers who left.
But for many educators, Poole said, it’s not just about the salary.
“It’s also the working conditions,” he said.
See here for some background and this related story for a high-level summary of his goals. I continue to follow this to see how and in what ways the Fort Worth ISD experience will differ from ours in HISD, and what if anything that tells us about the lessons the TEA has drawn from all this. To boil it all down, does the TEA think the Mike Miles Way is the one true way to go with these takeovers, or do they see the need to tailor their approach to each district? Would they say that while Miles did some things that they liked and got the sort of results they wanted, he could and should have done some things differently and maybe would have achieved better results had he done so.
My impression so far is that Superintendent Licata is at least rhetorically different from Mike Miles. He sounds more open-minded and collaborative, even if he will take a Milesian approach to the academics. I don’t want to go too far with this, because we’re still dealing with very early and limited impressions. I’m also mostly comparing Licata to the Mike Miles we have now, not the guy who came in. I don’t think Miles has changed much since the beginning – he’s more dug in and perhaps less flexible, but it’s not like he was some kind of uniter to start with – but that’s long enough ago that I can’t discern the subtleties. And look, maybe none of this means anything. Maybe Licata was just the best guy available and willing to do the TEA’s work who had the requisite experience with a school district of that size. There may be no conclusions to draw here other than Mike Morath played the hand he was dealt.
What is clear is that barring a change to the law that allowed this takeover and all of the other recent ones, there will be more of these coming. In a few years, we’ll know a lot more about how successful they were in their immediate mission, and in bringing an enduring change to the affected districts. I’m very curious to see what they TEA does along the way, to see if they feel the need to adapt and modify their approach as they go. It’s too soon to say here, but at the very least it seems there’s room for some variation. I find that interesting and maybe a bit encouraging.
See for yourself, in this interview clip:
The full interview is here, and thanks to Ruth Kravetz for sending this to me.