A Houston-based education advocacy group fighting to eliminate standardized test requirements is led by a white left-wing activist who accused the Texas government of racism after it obeyed a state law written by a black Democrat requiring it to replace the city’s top school officials.
Community Voices for Public Education (CVPE) describes itself as a “multi-racial, community-based nonprofit uniting parents, educators, students, and community members to advocate for strong, equitable public schools.” Among its top priorities are implementing “restorative practices for schools in communities that have been denied resources for generations due to racist and classist public policy” and replacing Houston Independent School District (HISD) superintendent Mike Miles, whom the state appointed after the school system received failing scores for more than five consecutive years.
It also aims to “reduce the high stakes consequences of standardized testing” by ending the graduation requirement for students to pass the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness and to eliminate the Texas Education Agency’s A through F scoring system for districts and individual schools that is partially based on test results.
CVPE, which is overseen by two steering committees filled with left-wing activists, is headed by cofounder Ruth Kravetz, an HISD teacher who has repeatedly aligned with socialists and argued that the state’s takeover is a “racist” endeavor. The group has routinely partnered with the Democratic Socialists of America’s (DSA) Houston chapter, and in January, Kravetz helped organize an anti-ICE protest alongside the DSA Chapter of North Texas and Communist Party USA Dallas/Fort Worth, as well as other far-left groups such as the Sunrise Movement and Indivisible.
Kravetz, who has encouraged student walkouts, gave a lengthy interview to Section 44, a self-described “journal of Texas Marxism” made up of “revolutionary socialists,” in February 2020. She told the outlet that the Texas government replaced HISD’s top school officials with its own appointees because “the Republican leadership doesn’t like cities with black and brown, women-led school districts” and “is a conscious effort to dismantle public schools.” She suggested that CVPE’s growth in recent years was thanks to a surge from DSA members.
In reality, the Texas Education Agency replaced the HISD school board and superintendent with its own appointees in 2023 after Wheatley High School received failing grades from 2010 to 2019. A 2015 law written by state Rep. Harold Dutton Jr., a black Democrat who has represented Houston in the Legislature for more than four decades, requires the state to intervene in failing school districts.
Since Miles began overhauling HISD, the school district’s performance scores jumped up to 82 from 72, and Wheatley went from a D in 2019 to a B.
Still, Kravetz referred to the takeover as an “occupation” in a 2023 op-ed she cowrote for the socialist-aligned In These Times. Kravetz, along with top officials from the local AFL-CIO and teachers’ union chapters, condemned higher performance demands Miles placed on teachers and a curriculum he implemented. They also accused “corporate interests and billionaire financiers” of pouring “hundreds of millions of dollars into quick fix solutions,” like better technology, yet also complained that the $9,000 HISD spends on each student is “far less than what is needed.”
CVPE’s steering committees, meanwhile, include educators and other left-wing activists who don’t teach in HISD or have children attending Houston schools. Jeremy Eugene, for instance, was arrested in June 2023 while trying to enter a school board meeting after he was directed to a room to attend virtually due to the main space reaching capacity. CVPE’s website lists him as a teacher, but it doesn’t mention that he’s actually a Missouri City, Texas, resident who teaches virtually at a Texas school unaffiliated with HISD.
Another steering committee member, Melissa Yarborough, was a middle school English teacher at an HISD school—until she quit when she refused to follow the required curriculum that Miles implemented. She now heads the League of Women Voters of Greater Baton Rouge while juggling her role on the steering committee for the Houston-based group.
Deyadira Arellano is the only steering committee member whom CVPE describes as a “parent” without specifying that her child attends a HISD school. Arellano delivered a presentation on “parent advocacy” at a 2018 “Racial Equity Summit,” which notes that her “work as a community organizer includes the intersection of issues such as immigration, public education, environmental justice, healthcare, and worker’s rights.” Her session listed only three confirmed attendees.
She also works at Texas Environmental Justice Advocacy Services, a CVPE partner that promotes “environmental protection through education, policy development, community awareness, and legal action.” The group protested the Keystone XL pipeline and in 2025 sued President Donald Trump over an executive order that exempts 50 chemical manufacturers from an emissions regulation.
Sonya Lucas-Roberts, who goes by Sister Mama Sonya, is one of the five steering committee members who do not appear to be HISD teachers or parents. She is, however, a “storyteller, poet, playwright, motivational speaker, activist, minister of the gospel, and author whose works weave stories from the historic Third Ward, the South, and the African diaspora,” according to the Houston Defender, which describes itself as “Houston’s leading Black information source.” Her writings consistently refer to the United States as “ameriKKKa.”
Roughly a week after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, Lucas-Roberts said she was “saddened” to see black people “who are following” the late conservative influencer.
“These young ppl are being misguided and follow white racists,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “These young ppl have turned their backs on who we are. They repeat and believe kirk’s heinous venomous hatred. Their internalized racism iz baffling and troubling and very scary.”
Jevon German, another steering committee member who isn’t listed as an HISD teacher or a parent, ran for school board in 2019. He lost with less than 10 percent of the vote, then lost a second bid in 2024 with an even smaller share. In March, he wrote that he was prepared to “get fireworks and liquor” in response to a post claiming that Trump had died.
CVPE, Kravetz, Arellano, Eugene, German, Yarborough, and Lucas-Roberts did not respond to requests for comment.
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