City and school district leaders plan to hold a press conference before a regular school board meeting to emphasize the new focus.
FORT WORTH, Texas — Fort Worth ISD leaders plan to announce a new and intense focus on students reading at grade level across the district.
“Since the COVID-19 pandemic, the problem of students not reading at grade level among school-aged children is a growing crisis,” the district said in a statement.
Tuesday’s press conference is set to kick of a regional effort to address the problem.
The FWISD board president, interim superintendent and other board members are slated to be in attendance. City leaders, including Mayor Pro Tem Gyna Bivens and several council members will also take part.
“I think if I had to just peer into what’s going on behind the district walls, I would think you’re finding a district willing to partner with the community because even though numbers are higher post pandemic, I can tell you parents have been knocking on the door of Fort Worth ISD for two to three years now, you know, because this has been a movement,” Bivens said. “There have been various organizations who have been trying to find out what do we need to do to get our child reading at grade level.”
In a review of Texas Education Agency or TEA data, STAAR Test results on the percentage of students who met or exceeded reading standards in Fort Worth ISD were as follows:
2023 – 34%
2022 – 38%
2021 – 30%
2019 – 35%
2018 – 35%
(Note: No test was given in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.)
Looking more closely at the percentage of students who were reading at or above grade level based on STAAR test results, Fort Worth students have consistently performed below the state average. In 2024 FWISD 8th graders lagged 32% below average in the state, with only 24% reading at or above grade level, compared to 56% of all Texas public school 8th grade students.
Pete Gerens, president of the Sid W. Richardson foundation, has been sounding the alarm about literacy. He blames the issue in large part on, “The bigotry of low expectations.”
“I don’t want us to single out the Fort Worth ISD,” he said. “I will single them out for one thing, and this is, this interim superintendent has made literacy a top priority, and she has plans and the school board supporting big plans to improve literacy here. But the dirty little secret is literacy is a problem across North Texas.”
Gerens said Eagle Mountain Saginaw ISD, for example, has 43% of its students reading at grade level, or Northwest ISD, where 60% are reading at grade level.
“It’s a problem everywhere, but because kids all get A’s and B’s, because they all passed, there is no awareness,” he said. “Then what we’re seeing now is parents are becoming aware that their kids can’t read. And the idea that it was just poor kids. Well, it’s not just poor kids. It’s children across the whole county.”
The Texas Academic Performance Report for FWISD for the most recent school year, 2023-2024, showed teachers are more experienced and earn higher salaries than the Texas public school average. It also shows 75% of the students in the district are classified as at risk.
If you’re a parent or teacher looking for resources, Gerens recommends Go Beyond Grades.
