Fort Worth ISD passes literacy and strategic plans to boost student academic progress
FORT WORTH — The Fort Worth Independent School District and city leaders passed a literacy resolution Tuesday night to make sure more students can read at grade level.
District leaders and city leaders, including Mayor Mattie Parker, announced a "new, intense focus on failure to read at grade level" at a news conference before the board meeting.
Literacy in the district has been described as a civic crisis. Trustees say only 43% of their students meet grade-level standards.
In August, the mayor called for sweeping changes, saying the district fell 11 percentage points below Dallas ISD and 14 below Houston ISD. A month later, the superintendent resigned.
Since then, the district has been working behind the scenes to outline ways to improve student performance.
"We're very transparent, we know our reputation not the best reputation around Tarrant County," said FWISD Interim Superintendent Dr. Karen Molinar. "Urban school students are just as smart or smarter than suburban students, so we need to provide them with that education as well."
The strategic plan the board is expected to adopt tonight calls for the district to "redirect and allocate funds to support a literacy-focused organizational model," as well as to implement a literacy plan across all grade levels.
The district's strategic priorities include: student academic excellence, student and family engagement, effectiveness and retention for employees, and operational alignment and efficiency.
The plan also calls for half of the district's third graders to score on grade level in reading and math by 2029. Currently, only a third do.
"When we compare ourselves to some of the urban districts around the state of Texas – Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas – we are trending at the bottom and not making the gains as quickly as some of the urban districts in literacy," Molinar said. "… So this literacy plan, as well as the strategic plan, is really our next steps of doing action steps towards rebuilding our literacy fluency and making those gains for our students as well."
Literacy advocates are optimistic it could reverse the alarming trends in the district.
"We really can't solve any other problems in education until we ensure that all of our kids are reading proficiently enough to do well in school," said Dr. Robert Rogers, president of the Reading League Texas. "And we haven't focused on that for years. And there's I'm just thrilled that there's a new focus now."
Documents released by the district outline a five-point approach to literacy:
1. Comprehensive Instructional Framework for Literacy
2. Literacy Instructional Resource Alignment and Implementation
3. Educator Competency Development to Support Literacy
4. Student Literacy Screening and Progress Monitoring
5. Budget Alignment to Support Literacy
Molinar said they have to be bold and aggressive. She said they will replicate the current success stories at some of their schools and the district hopes to get back at least 2/3 of the students who left this system.
The trustees will start a listening tour this spring and in February, the district will launch a dashboard so everyone can measure their outcome.
