When Houston ISD administrators carried out a sweeping audit of the district’s special education department in the fall of 2023, digging deep into the files of 1,350 students with disabilities, they discovered enormous dysfunction throughout the system.

Administrators found thousands of violations of district policy and hundreds of violations of students’ legal rights under state and federal law — pointing to neglect that likely left many of the district’s students with disabilities lacking much-needed support. 

About two-thirds of files didn’t contain documentation showing special education staff provided students with all required services and therapies. Half had no evidence that all staffers working alongside students with disabilities were given information about classroom changes they needed to make to accommodate students’ needs. And roughly one-third showed parents didn’t get legally required notices on time about meetings to discuss their child’s education.

The audit, obtained by the Houston Landing and reported here for the first time, offers new perspective on the scale of special education issues that state-appointed HISD Superintendent Mike Miles’ administration inherited upon his arrival in June 2023. The documents also illustrate the lackluster progress of state-appointed conservators, who were sent to HISD in early 2021 to rehab HISD’s long-troubled special education department.

A follow-up audit of another 1,350 folders in spring 2024 by HISD administrators showed Miles’ team made progress in its first few months addressing the failings documented in the student files. Specifically, schools boosted the number of students recorded as receiving needed help and entered more information about children’s classroom adjustments into the district’s digital recordkeeping system, among other improvements.

Still, progress was only partial: Hundreds of legal violations and failures to follow recommended practices remained. And because each audit involved staff scrutinizing the files of 7 percent of HISD’s 18,700 students with disabilities in 2023-24, the probe likely uncovered only a small fraction of all policy and legal violations across the district.

The audits didn’t measure whether students actually missed out on legally entitled support, nor did they address the quality of help given to children by staff members.

The file reviews mark the latest evidence of HISD’s decades-long failure to serve students with learning, physical and behavioral disabilities and autism. Several investigations by state officials, outside experts hired by the district and HISD administrators have found widespread violations of students’ rights, despite ample warning given to district leaders.

“I am not surprised. I wish I could say I was, but I’m not,” said special education advocate Jackie Cross-Ecford, who has helped hundreds of families over three decades in HISD and beyond. “You would think having the oversight of conservators would change things.”

Stacy Venson, HISD’s deputy chief of special education, wrote in an email that the audit results represented “both a wake-up call and an opportunity for improvement.” 

“Although we are confident in the progress we’ve made over the past 1.5 school years, we are working to address long-running, systemic challenges,” Venson said. 

Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath has said state-appointed leaders must fix HISD’s special education department, which now serves about 20,400 students with disabilities, before the district’s elected school board can retake control. Morath hasn’t set exact targets that HISD must meet, but Texas Education Agency spokesperson Jake Kobersky said the agency was “encouraged” by HISD’s progress and “aligned with district leadership” about how to continue improving special education.

TEA spokesperson Melissa Holmes pushed back on the notion that the agency’s conservators should have done more to improve special education services, casting their role as mostly for “guidance.” State law gives conservators the authority to order HISD principals, board members and the superintendent to make specific changes — putting them among the most powerful actors in the district.

Diagnosing the problem

Following years of complaints and reports about HISD’s special education department, TEA leaders launched their own investigation into the district in 2019. Investigators concluded in 2020 that “systemic failure in special education has become institutionalized,” warranting the appointment of conservators to turn around the department.

Yet two and a half years later, when the TEA installed Miles, the dysfunction persisted.

Miles’ administration began the audit several weeks after his arrival, aiming to pinpoint the district’s weaknesses in special education. The process involved central office staffers in HISD’s special education department reviewing five randomly selected student files from all 270 campuses.

Staff members scrutinized each child’s folder against a list of 21 questions, each of which addressed whether special education staff, teachers and administrators were following laws and district policies. 

Many of the questions addressed whether staff members properly documented that students received support outlined in their individualized education plan, or IEP, a federally required document detailing the child’s disability and needs. IEPs often spell out how teachers and other staff must accommodate students, such as giving them extra time on tests, reading them instructions verbally or allowing them to use fidget toys during class.

District administrators cautioned that the review is “not a comprehensive audit,” noting that five student files per campus might not be enough to get an accurate picture of each school’s special education program.

Nevertheless, HISD administrators ultimately assigned each school an A-through-F rating, depending on the results.

“This was the first time, from my understanding, in Houston ISD history that a massive folder review had been completed to this degree,” Venson said.

For many HISD schools, the review wasn’t flattering. Eighty schools received D or F grades, while 14 earned an A rating. Across the district, staff didn’t meet one-quarter of the expectations measured in the audit, amounting to roughly 7,000 violations.

“We wanted to get that baseline so we could identify the professional development and the support that was needed to address those areas,” Venson said.

‘A lot of growth’

In the early months of Miles’ administration, HISD made several changes designed to address its special education woes. 

The district raised salaries for special education teachers in dozens of schools by $10,000 to $20,000, putting them among the highest-paid teachers in HISD. District leaders added training sessions for teachers, who are ultimately responsible for carrying out many parts of IEPs. Miles also made special education metrics part of principals’ yearly evaluation, which can impact their pay and ability to keep their jobs.

The follow-up audit in spring 2024 suggested the changes and added oversight of special education paid off.

The number of schools rated D or F dropped from 80 to two. In addition, roughly 85 percent of reviewed files in the spring contained evidence of staff properly documenting support given to students, while less than half did in the fall. Virtually all files had up-to-date IEPs and progress reports, up from about 80 percent.

“We did see a lot of growth between the fall folder review and the spring folder review,” Venson said.

Still, the audit revealed dozens of schools continued to struggle in spring 2024 on some important areas.

For example, at 36 schools, most reviewed folders showed staff didn’t properly document services that should have been given to students. HISD also continued to fall short on giving timely notification to parents and guardians about key special education meetings, missing the mark in one-quarter of cases.

Community concerns

While the audits offer the most detailed picture of HISD’s special education department to date, the reviews don’t address some key elements of parents’ experience with the system.

Some parents have argued Miles’ rigid classroom structure, which provides less freedom to teachers and requires students to take frequent quizzes, makes it difficult for campus staff to provide support detailed in IEPs.

Marion Keller, whose twin seventh grade daughters attend Lanier Middle School and have ADHD, said the extra time her children receive on the numerous in-class assignments under the new model meant they would continually fall behind their peers as work piled up. Keller said she had to repeatedly speak with campus leadership to find a way to balance the workload.

“There is a big push for constant assessment. … There’s an idea that there needs to almost be a grade for class (each period),” Keller said. “That can be a difficult fit with the extra time provisions that are relevant for a lot of people.”

Cross-Ecford, the special education advocate, also disputed whether the folder audits reflect improvement across the district. She argued Miles’ top special education brass are less knowledgeable and responsible than leaders of previous HISD administrations. 

“How do I know things are getting worse? Because I see it every day,” Cross-Ecford said. “I’ve heard directors, managers of special (education), misadvise principals. I hear that probably weekly.”

Venson acknowledged some parents and advocates raised concerns “when the model was first implemented” in 2023-24, but she argued they have since mostly died down. School employees, on average, are better trained around how to serve students with disabilities under Miles’ leadership than they were under previous superintendents, she said.

Investing in improvement

HISD has continued to make investments in special education this school year. 

Budget documents show HISD planned to give $15,000 raises to another 600 special education staffers; spend $5 million on adding 50 “resource classrooms” that provide extra space for students to receive instruction separate from classmates in general education; and spend $3 million on 40 more special education teacher assistants.

The district also has identified roughly 1,700 additional students who qualify for special education services in 2024-25, pointing toward its continued recovery from a de-facto TEA policy that illegally limited the number of children receiving services through the mid-2010s. Serving the newly identified students comes with millions of dollars in additional expenses. 

“The cost of (occupational therapists), (physical therapists), speech pathologists, all of which we have to go outside to get more people, is very expensive,” Miles said. “So that has gone up.”

Venson said HISD is also looking to create an advisory committee for parents of children with disabilities to provide feedback about what is and isn’t working in special education. Venson said there isn’t a timetable for rolling out the group.

Still, some signs point to stalled progress and key questions remain about the long-term sustainability of Miles’ investments.

Early results from a fall 2024 file review showed HISD hadn’t improved from the spring on notifying parents about special education meetings or creating and executing high-quality IEPs, according to data provided by the district to the Landing upon request. (HISD said it was “unable” to provide full results from the audit.)

District officials also project HISD will run a $250 million budget deficit in 2024-25, which is partially due to tens of millions of dollars in additional spending on special education. The large deficit leaves uncertainty about whether the higher spending levels on special education will be sustainable. Miles has said he plans to balance HISD’s budget in 2025-26, but he hasn’t detailed how.

Holmes, the TEA spokesperson, acknowledged that HISD has work to do on “providing consistent implementation of services and accommodations,” but she said the Miles administration’s focus on special education will drive continued growth.

“Special education became a regular agenda topic at every organizational level, from campus teachers to the superintendent’s office,” Holmes said.

Update, Feb. 6: This story has been updated to clarify Marion Keller’s comments about her children’s experience at Lanier Middle School.

Data Reporter José Luis Martínez contributed to this report.

Asher Lehrer-Small covers Houston ISD for the Landing. Find him @by_ash_ls on Instagram and @small_asher on X, or reach him directly at asher@houstonlanding.org.

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