Fort Worth ISD released its A-F scores. Take a look at how your school fared
About 16,000 fewer students in the Fort Worth Independent School District are attending D- or F-rated schools this year, according to accountability score estimates the district released Tuesday.
The Texas Education Agency is barred from releasing statewide A-F scores under a court order issued last month. Fort Worth ISD, like several other districts in the state, calculated its own anticipated accountability scores based on the state education agency’s scoring rubric.
However, unlike other districts, Fort Worth ISD didn’t confirm its own scores with TEA before releasing them publicly, a spokesperson for the TEA said.
This year is the second year in a row that state A-F ratings have been blocked in court. But those court orders don’t preclude districts from calculating and releasing their own scores. Based on its own calculations, Fort Worth ISD improved from a score of 64 in 2023 — which would have been a D rating, had letter grades been issued last year — to a 70 this year, making it a C-rated district. The last official rating the district received was a B in 2022.
The district also saw a 36% decline in D- or F-rated campuses compared with last year, district officials said. Most notably, Sagamore Hill and Springdale elementary schools climbed from F ratings last year to B ratings this year, district officials said.
But not every campus saw growth. Woodway Elementary School’s score declined from a 74 last year to a 58 this year, falling from a C rating to an F. M.L. Phillips Elementary School’s score declined from a 65 to a 51, a D to an F. And both Rufino Mendoza and Hubbard Heights elementary school’s scores fell by 10 points, taking both campuses from a D to an F.
Superintendent Angélica Ramsey said the overall improvement in scores was a testament to the dedication of the district’s teachers and staff.
“We’re especially proud of the gains made in our high-need schools, and we remain committed to ensuring that all students, no matter their background or where they live, have access to high-quality education that prepares them for success in college, careers, and community leadership,” Ramsey said.
Student achievement is just one component of A-F
District accountability ratings are based in large part on how students perform on the state of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, exam. But student achievement only makes up one component of the state education agency’s scoring formula. The formula’s two other scoring components are “closing the gaps,” which looks at performance gaps among different student groups, and “school progress,” which looks at the amount of academic growth students made over the course of the year.
A look at Fort Worth ISD’s STAAR scores paints a less rosy picture: Across all grade levels and subjects, students in the district scored on grade level just 25% of the time, according to an analysis of test data by the Fort Worth Education Partnership. That’s a two-point decline from 2022, when districts were still dealing with the immediate fallout from the pandemic. In reading, the district saw a five-point decline in the number of students scoring on grade level compared to 2022.
Two weeks ago, Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker sent a letter to Fort Worth ISD’s school board, calling the district’s academic outcomes “unacceptable.” During remarks at the board’s Aug. 27 meeting, Parker called for a “bold, unified approach” to turning the district around, saying low performance was hampering students’ opportunities after graduation. The mayor later told journalists her office had gotten a large volume of calls asking her to step in and help move the district in the right direction.
During a school board meeting Tuesday, Mohammed Choudhury, the district’s deputy superintendent of learning and leading, acknowledged that the district isn’t progressing fast enough. Choudhury, who came to Fort Worth ISD a month ago, told the board the district needs to improve consistency across its campuses, so that what’s happening at successful campuses like Sagamore Hill and Springdale is being replicated at all campuses.
Chiefly, that means ensuring that the instruction that all students get is as high-quality as possible, Choudhury said. Ideally, 80% of students would understand a concept the first time their teacher goes over it, he said. Teachers can then work with students who didn’t understand in smaller groups or individually, he said, but the district can’t rely only on interventions like tutoring to raise all students’ achievement level.
“You cannot intervene your way to narrowing the achievement gap,” he said.
Among other things, the district needs to offer more coaching to teachers in real time, Choudhury said. Principals and other school leaders need to be able to give teachers advice on how to improve their instruction quickly, before they’ve moved on to another concept. If there’s too much of a gap in time between when a teacher delivers a lesson and when a principal offers feedback, that advice isn’t as useful, he said.
Judge blocks TEA from releasing A-F scores
State education officials planned to release A-F scores last month, but a Travis County judge blocked them in response to a lawsuit from five districts across the state. Those districts claim the scores are invalid because they’re based on flawed STAAR exams. Among other things, districts take issue with the state’s new electronic grading system for constructed response questions.
Since then, a number of districts across the state, including the Dallas and Houston independent school districts, have released their own scores. Fort Worth ISD isn’t the first Tarrant County district to release its own A-F ratings. Last month, officials in the Castleberry school district announced that it improved from a 76 in the 2022-23 school year to an 82 in 2023-24, according to calculations the district verified with TEA.
A hearing in the lawsuit is scheduled for September 16.
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