Democratic Texas Gov.-elect Gina Hinojosa is barreling into office with a pledge to shift away from the conservative education policies that have set Texas apart from other red states — and the rest of the country.
Hours after the polls closed this week, Hinojosa repeated one of the promises central to her plan to shake up education in Texas: “In case you have not heard, on day one, I will fire Mike Morath.”
Morath, the state’s top education official, appointed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, has been on a 10-year crusade to remake education for the state’s 5.4 million students.
During the tenures of Morath and Abbott, Texas has earned a reputation as a testing ground for conservative education policies that have been replicated in other states, but nowhere quite as aggressively. Texas officials in recent years have encouraged prayer in schools, passed a law requiring classrooms to display the Ten Commandments, and allowed chaplains to offer spiritual counseling to public school students. School districts can get extra funding for adopting a curriculum that includes Bible passages.
In the state’s public universities, Republicans have wielded their control to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs. Some campuses have cut courses and eliminated majors in ethnic, women’s and gender studies.
And the Texas Education Agency has taken control of seven school districts because of academic underperformance, mostly in Black, Latino and Democratic swaths of the state.
Morath also is credited with overseeing a nationally recognized program that pays teachers more for boosting students’ test scores, and with helping to launch a new $1 billion voucher program.
Hinojosa will be able to start trying to undo much of that when she takes office in January. Some changes will be easier to tackle than others, experts say.
The state representative and former Austin school board member has said less about how she will address culture war topics, such as religion in classrooms and diversity, equity and inclusion. But she has vowed to peel back some of the foremost pieces of Abbott’s education plan, including ending contested state takeovers of school districts and halting his landmark voucher program. Hinojosa has also promised to do away with Texas’s standardized test, pause the statewide school accountability system and increase teacher pay.
“We are taking our children’s education back from a government that has failed them,” she said to a crowd of cheering supporters Tuesday. “Schools will not be taken out of our control. They will not be shuttered or suffocated.”
Soon, she will be able to appoint regents to public universities’ governing boards, a task that will need the approval of the majority-Republican state Senate. Along with the new Democratic majority in the Texas House and the State Board of Education, which is poised to lose its GOP majority, a crop of new leaders could roll back policies that Abbott’s administration championed.
“I would expect to see a lot less of the culture war policies and politics even kind of surfacing for a time now,” said David DeMatthews, a professor in the educational leadership and policy department at the University of Texas at Austin. “Questions around book bans and transgender bathrooms and the Ten Commandments, I would expect to see that kind of push go.”
Still, Hinojosa could face an uphill battle, and it is unclear how exactly she will fulfill her campaign promises.
Hinojosa’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Libby Cohen, executive director of Raise Your Hand Texas, an education advocacy group, said the state Senate will pose a challenge.
“Certainly, a lot of her ability to move on a legislative agenda is going to depend on her ability to find common ground with the Republican Senate majority,” Cohen said.
Hinojosa’s promises to end state takeovers of public schools are already stirring hopes in the Austin Independent School District, where families at two middle schools have advanced a controversial plan to close their own schools rather than cede control of the district to state officials.
In Texas, the state can take control of a school district if a single low-performing school gets five consecutive “F” ratings from the state’s education agency. During a takeover, the education commissioner can replace a district’s locally elected school board with a board of managers and install a new superintendent, among other changes.
Burnet and Webb middle schools, two predominantly Hispanic schools serving some of Austin’s lowest-income neighborhoods, received their fifth “F” in a row this summer. For months, families have feared that state officials would take over the district.
That appears unlikely when Hinojosa is in office, said Ken Zarifis, a Burnet parent and president of the district’s teachers union.
“I’m super excited,” Zarifis said. “Her whole campaign was about schools, about taking care of them, taking care of the kids.”
The Texas Education Agency did not respond to questions about whether it will take control of Austin’s schools before Hinojosa assumes office. In a message to families, Austin Superintendent Matias Segura said school leaders are evaluating how the election will affect the district.
Hinojosa is bound by law to intervene in a struggling district, so using the legislative process to end state takeovers would require bipartisan support. But the person she installs as the next education commissioner will have wide latitude over the process.
“The takeover doesn’t have to feel or look anything like what it has looked like under Morath,” DeMatthews said.
Researchers have found that, on average, school takeovers can be disruptive for students and do little to improve math and reading scores. Supporters say the intervention, which has surged in Texas, puts pressure on districts to turn around chronically underperforming schools.
Critics, however, argue that state takeovers leave schools worse off. Since the state took control in 2023 of the Houston Independent School District, Texas’s largest school system, the district has seen an exodus of 21,000 students, higher teacher turnover and a federal probeinto the district’s handling of special-education students.
F. Mike Miles, the state-appointed superintendent in Houston, said test scores have been on the rise since he took over. He pointed to state data showing that achievement gaps between Black and White and Hispanic and White children have shrunk, and noted that enrollment is declining in districts across the country.
“I don’t think people should just throw up their hands and say, ‘Well, you know, local control.’ I think, at some point, if the elected board and the administration haven’t done what they need to do for kids, then there should be an intervention,” Miles said. “It’s been a good thing for kids in Texas.”
Miles cut hundreds of teaching positions to remove educators he called ineffective and to rightsize after enrollment losses, he said. He added that 87 percent of teachers returned this school year.
At least 14 other Texas school districts are at risk of being taken over, according to an analysis by the Texas Tribune.
Hinojosa is also going after Abbott’s banner voucher program.
The Texas Education Freedom Accounts program pays families $10,474 per student, money they can use for private school tuition or other education-related expenses. Children with disabilities and home-schooled students also qualify for cash.
The program has more than 111,000 participants this year, state data shows.
It would take legislation to undo the voucher system. Hinojosa could, however, use line-item veto power to eliminate funding for the program or veto future voucher-related legislation.
“That is definitely a very meaningful piece of leverage that she now holds as she gets ready to step into the office,” Cohen said.
Changes on the State Board of Education could also help propel Hinojosa’s agenda.
Democrats this week gained a stronger foothold on the board, which lost its 11-4 Republican majority. The balance of power is now split 7-7; a final race had not yet been called as of Friday, according to the Texas Tribune.
No matter the outcome, Texans can expect to see a school board less mired in clashes over social issues, said Gustavo Reveles, a board member since 2025.
“It was a call from people, most of them Republicans, who said extremism went too far. Extremism did not help us at all,” Reveles said. “So this is not the right time for us as Democrats to swing it back to the other side. It’s time for us to really come to the middle, collaborate.”
This year the school board adopted hotly debated social studies standards that emphasize the influence of the Bible on America’s founding and include a mandatory reading list with stories from the Bible.
Nationally, education advocates are taking notice of what’s happening in Texas. Michael Petrilli, president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, predicts that there will be “less shenanigans on the culture war front” but worries about Texas losing steam on policies that have shown promise.
He called the Teacher Incentive Allotment, a program launched in 2019 that boosts pay for high-performing teachers, “one of the most promising policies in education today.” He added that state takeovers have been controversial but are necessary to turn schools around.
“I do think that the governor and commissioner deserve credit for the political courage to do something,” Petrilli said.
The path forward for other parts of Hinojosa’s plan is unclear. The governor-elect’s campaign platform called for replacing the state’s standardized test and pausing the accountability system that assigns every school and district a letter grade between A and F. Those grades are used to determine whether campuses should close or districts should be taken over by the state.
Federal law requires public schools that receive federal funding to administer some form of standardized test.
Hinojosa’s campaign did not respond to a question about what other assessments the governor-elect is considering.
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