The Takeover of Texas Public Schools: Mike Morath, AJ Crabill, TPPF and the Tyranny of “Lone Star Governance”
Texans must understand what’s happening in Fort Worth ISD is not reform. It is a hostile takeover.
If Lone Star Governance Works, Why Is Fort Worth ISD Being Taken Over?
If AJ Crabill’s Lone Star Governance training is as successful as the Texas Education Agency claims, why is Fort Worth ISD being taken over by Commissioner Mike Morath and his inner circle?
This is not about helping schools or students. It is about control. What we are witnessing is a calculated effort to dismantle locally elected and independent school boards under the false promise of accountability and governance reform.
The Birth of the Takeover Machine
In April 2016, Governor Greg Abbott appointed Mike Morath, a former Dallas ISD trustee, to serve as Texas Commissioner of Education. One of Morath’s first major moves was to bring in AJ Crabill, formerly known as Airick West, as the Texas Education Agency’s Deputy Commissioner of Governance.
By October of that same year, Crabill sent letters to superintendents and school boards across eleven districts, including Dallas, Houston, and Fort Worth. Those letters ordered them to attend his new Lone Star Governance training. The message was clear. Comply, or face state intervention.
These sessions were presented as tools to improve “student outcomes,” but in practice they became a top-down model that stripped elected school boards of their decision-making authority and replaced local leadership with state-driven oversight.
The “Application” for Your Own Takeover
In 2025, Fort Worth ISD finds itself under full state control. https://tea.texas.gov/texas-schools/school-boards/school-governance/fort-worth-isd-letter-to-community-english.pdf
Applicants are told they will have a “unique opportunity” to support ethical leadership, use data and feedback to guide decisions, and ensure that every student is ready for college, career, or military service.
Those phrases are not random. They come straight from the federalized lexicon of education reform embedded in the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) and the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA). These initiatives are designed to rewire education into a workforce development pipeline, not a system of academic knowledge and civic literacy.
So who truly benefits from this process? It is not the families, teachers, or taxpayers of Fort Worth. It is the bureaucrats and private interests who profit from the system they built.
Where Is the Research?
Where is the independent research proving that Lone Star Governance actually improves schools?
That question has followed Morath’s TEA since Crabill’s first letters in 2016. Parents and analysts have been warning for years that this model was never about helping children.
Meg Bakich, a public school advocate urged the FWISD board to focus on inputs rather than outcomes manufactured by bureaucrats. She was right. The results tell the story.
According to a 2025 Austin American-Statesman analysis, the gap in performance between Lone Star Governance districts and others has grown worse. In 2018, districts using LSG averaged 84 points compared to 86 points for other districts. By 2023, that gap had widened to 74 versus 81. Several of those same LSG districts are now under state intervention for lack of progress.
That is not reform. It is proof that Lone Star Governance was never intended to work.
The Accountability Trap
Dr. Pat Huff, a leading authority on Texas’ flawed accountability system, has long explained how the state’s A–F grading formula was built to guarantee failure. Once a district is branded “F-rated,” TEA can justify dissolving the elected board and installing unelected managers.
This is the pattern. Declare failure, take over, and call it progress.
The result is not local improvement but state control.
The Corporate Connection: Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Takeover Network
In 2020, I wrote an article on Voices Empower titled “Texas taxpayers and parents beware, your children’s education and their data is now a COMMODITY.” That warning has come to life.
Governor Abbott’s Commissioner, Mike Morath, along with AJ Crabill, Kara Belew, and others, were positioned and funded by those who see our children as their most valuable commodity.
When DeSoto ISD conducted a full forensic audit in 2020 that cleared its financial record, TEA ignored those findings and launched its own investigation. That gave Morath cover to appoint Crabill as “Conservator” over the district, despite his lack of financial experience.
This was not about oversight. It was a manufactured crisis that opened the door to a state-directed consulting industry, funded by taxpayers and controlled by insiders.
The Revolving Door of Power and Profit
Former TEA Deputy of Finance Kara Belew, who now serves as a policy advisor at the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), co-founded the consulting firm Tenet with former TEA trainer Laurie Elliott. Tenet now contracts with districts like Houston ISD to implement Lone Star Governance “turnaround” plans.
The same people who designed the takeover system at TEA are now profiting from it in the private sector.
This revolving door blurs the line between public service and self-enrichment. TPPF, which claims to champion limited government, is in reality advancing the same centralized education model it publicly criticizes.
Both Belew and Crabill are connected to the Council of Great City Schools (CGCS), an organization that promotes Obama-era education reforms. Crabill served as a CGCS board member, and Morath represented Dallas ISD under that same network. These are the policies now being implemented and codified into Texas law under the guise of “local control.”
Follow the Money and the Model
The web of influence is clear.
AJ Crabill was Morath’s Deputy Commissioner and now enforces CGCS-style governance in Texas.
Kara Belew moved from TEA to TPPF, promoting the same reforms and nominating Crabill for awards.
Laurie Elliott went from TEA trainer to private consultant under Tenet.
TEA continues to direct millions of taxpayer dollars into board training and school “improvement” contracts that feed this same network.
This is not a reform movement. It is a business model. Education has been turned into an industry.
The Psychological Agenda Behind the Reform
Crabill often repeats the line, “It is adult behavior that needs to change.” That statement reflects a broader ideology first articulated by Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, who said education should transform beliefs and behaviors rather than focus on academics.
That concept has been built into the Texas Long-Range Plan for Public Education. Through a framework known as Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS), schools are required to track the emotional and behavioral data of every student.
Metrics now include intrapersonal and interpersonal effectiveness, self-regulation, communication skills, and “executive functioning.” The focus is not on teaching knowledge but on measuring compliance.
These data systems feed a statewide accountability network that manages students as workforce assets rather than individuals with unique minds and moral agency.
The Texas Public Policy Foundation, through its advocacy for “school choice,” has quietly advanced this model by promoting digital learning systems and outcome-based education that turns children’s behavioral data into marketable information.
They Were Warned
When the Texas Education Agency began promoting Lone Star Governance, citizens, parents, and experts spoke out.
I testified before the Fort Worth ISD board, warning that the so-called reform was a Trojan horse for a complete state takeover. That testimony is documented in my Substack article “The Trojan Horse for Total State Takeover of Texas Schools.”
No one listened. And now Fort Worth ISD stands as proof that the warnings were real.
The Endgame: State-Controlled Education
Lone Star Governance is not about fixing failing schools. It is about centralizing power in Austin.
Each takeover removes another layer of local representation. Each “Board of Managers” answers to the Commissioner, not the community. Each rubric and data dashboard feeds a state-controlled accountability system that tracks both students and teachers in real time.
Once a district loses its elected board, the people lose their voice. And once your vote no longer matters, local self-governance is gone.
The Final Warning
What is happening in Fort Worth ISD is not an isolated event. It is the playbook for every district in Texas.
The same network—Morath, Crabill, Belew, Elliott, and the Texas Public Policy Foundation—appears repeatedly. They are the architects of a system that uses public education to collect and trade data while dismantling community authority.
If Texans do not demand transparency and accountability now, there will be nothing left to take back.
Our children’s hearts, minds, and futures are not commodities. It is time to set public education free.
Related Reading:
The Transformation of Education: From Opportunity to Human Capital (Substack)
The Trojan Horse for Total State Takeover of Texas Schools (Substack)