Memphis Is Being Offered Houston as the Model. Three Years In, Houston Has Lost 13,208 Students and One in Five of Its Teachers Is Uncertified.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - The people who want a state-appointed board running Memphis-Shelby County Schools have named their model. It is Houston.

Takeover advocates and members of the state oversight board seated for MSCS have long held up Houston Independent School District's 2023 intervention as the example Memphis should follow, according to Chalkbeat Tennessee. Houston is the comparison the takeover's supporters chose. It is therefore a fair place to look for what the approach produces.

In January 2026, the Institute for Education Policy Research and Evaluation at the University of Houston College of Education published a report doing exactly that. Researchers Toni Templeton, Willa Friedman and Blake Heller pulled individual-level administrative data from the University of Houston Education Research Center, which draws from the Texas Education Agency's own reporting system, and measured how the district's student and teacher populations changed before and after the state took control on June 1, 2023.

What the data shows

Enrollment. Houston was already losing students before the takeover, declining 12.1 percent between 2016-17 and 2022-23, an average of 2 percent a year. Since the takeover, the rate roughly doubled to an average of 3.5 percent a year. The district lost 5,827 students in the first year of state control and 7,381 in the second, a two-year total of 13,208 students, or 7 percent.

The decline was not evenly distributed. Enrollment of students identifying as Black or African American fell 10.6 percent in those two years, against an average annual decline of 3.4 percent before the takeover that rose to 5.3 percent after. Ninth-grade enrollment had been rising slightly before the takeover and fell 15.1 percent after.

Where students went. The share of Houston students who simply left public school entirely, not transferring to another district or a charter but disappearing from public enrollment records altogether, rose from a pre-takeover average of 5.1 percent to 8.1 percent. Of students enrolled in 2023-24, 14,055 were not in any Texas public school the following year.

Teacher certification. This is the finding the report itself calls the most striking. Before the takeover, Houston had 106 uncertified teachers, about 1 percent of its teaching force. In the first year of state control that number went to 1,096. In the second year it nearly doubled again, to 2,122. By 2024-25, 19.8 percent of Houston teachers held no teaching certificate at all, and the share holding standard certification had fallen from 95.1 percent to 74.1 percent.

Experience. Teachers with 16 or more years of experience declined 14.4 percent in two years. First-year teachers rose 64.7 percent. Teacher retention at the same campus fell to 58.6 percent, a nine-year low, against a pre-takeover average of 74.8 percent. The share of teachers who left Texas public education entirely roughly doubled, from 6.2 percent to 12 percent.

The report also notes the broader research: a study examining 35 state takeovers between 2011 and 2016 found no evidence that the intervention improves student outcomes.

Where Memphis stands right now

The Memphis figures that would move under a takeover are already public, and they are worth setting beside Houston's.

MSCS projects enrollment of 103,553 students across 212 schools for the year beginning Monday. District enrollment has fallen more than 9 percent over the past decade, a slower rate than Houston's pre-takeover slide. The district is close to filling all 5,734 teaching positions, with a few hundred vacancies reported at its July 28 board meeting.

On certification, Memphis has a documented problem before any intervention. MSCS leaders testified to the Tennessee State Board of Education in March that more than half the teachers at the district's 14 lowest-rated schools are working on conditional or emergency licenses. Houston's experience suggests state control did not reverse that kind of gap; in Houston it widened district-wide.

The Tennessee oversight board, if reinstated, would hold final say over charter approvals and school closures, could appoint a new superintendent, and would need to approve district spending above $50,000. Its authority has been suspended by a federal court order since July 1, and no hearing date had been set as of July 30.

The case on the other side

Houston's supporters point to results the University of Houston report does not measure. The district's STAAR scores in grades three through eight climbed in reading and math. The Texas Education Agency, in extending the intervention through June 2027, said the district had made progress and that two years was not enough time to repair systems broken for decades.

Three differences matter and should not be glossed over.

Texas law and Tennessee's Public Chapter 1057 are different statutes with different triggers and different scopes. Houston's takeover was set off by one campus receiving seven consecutive failing ratings, under a 2015 state law requiring the commissioner to act. Memphis's was enacted through separate legislation now being challenged in federal court.

Houston is substantially larger, at 176,693 students against 103,553 in Memphis. And Texas funds districts primarily through average daily attendance, which converts enrollment loss into revenue loss faster than Tennessee's formula does. That last difference cuts against a direct read-across of the financial consequences.

The comparison is not that Memphis will get Houston's numbers. It is that Houston is the case its own advocates put forward, and the case has now been measured.

Why It Matters for Memphis

Memphis families are being asked to accept an intervention on the strength of an example. That example has three years of data behind it, published by a university research center using the state's own records, and the data has not been part of the public argument here.

The specific figure worth holding onto is the certification one. Memphis already has more than half the teachers at its 14 lowest-rated schools working on conditional or emergency licenses. If the intervention modeled here produced a district where one in five teachers holds no certificate, that is directly relevant to whether it fixes the problem it is being sold to fix.

Accountability Watch

Who is accountable: The Tennessee Educational Oversight Board for MSCS, whose members have cited Houston as a model. The Tennessee General Assembly, which enacted Public Chapter 1057. The Tennessee Department of Education. Memphis-Shelby County Schools, which has not published a certification and retention baseline.

What is pending: A public statement from the oversight board or the state addressing the measured outcomes of the Houston intervention they have cited as their model, and any commitment to certification, retention or enrollment reporting.

Timeline: Houston takeover began June 1, 2023, and was extended May 30, 2025 through June 1, 2027 after the state found its three improvement conditions unmet. University of Houston report published January 2026, covering data through 2024-25. MSCS takeover blocked by federal court July 1, 2026, with no hearing date set. Memphis classes begin August 3, 2026.

Status as of July 31, 2026: No response identified. The 901 Report has found no statement from the oversight board or state officials addressing the University of Houston findings.

How to verify: The report is titled "Houston ISD Takeover: By the Numbers," dated January 2026, and is posted in full with all underlying data tables at uh.edu. Every figure in this post is drawn from its tables. Memphis certification testimony is in the record of the Tennessee State Board of Education's March 2026 accountability hearing. MSCS enrollment and staffing figures come from the district's July 2026 board presentation.