He is a Democrat and is the son of Texas state legislator Alma Allen, who preceded him as the Board representative for District 4.
[1] Allen was first elected to the Texas State Board of Education in November 2004 and seated in January 2005, succeeding his mother as the member for District 4 in the Houston area (Fort Bend and Harris counties).
[1][2] In 2010, Allen voted against a Board resolution vowing to reject school textbooks that depicted Islam overly favorably.
[3] In 2022, Allen opted out of seeking reelection to the State Board of Education in order to run for a Houston-area seat in the Texas House of Representatives.
[4] He lost the Democratic primary by a wide margin of 63%-37% to Asian-American lawyer Daniel Lee,[5] who went on to lose the general election to Republican nominee Jacey Jetton.