Fort Worth schools launch Saturday academy to help students recover from COVID losses
Beginning next month, Fort Worth schools will invite struggling students to school on Saturdays to get extra help.
Saturday Learning Quest is a program for students in grades 1-3 who are performing in the bottom quartile in reading or math. It’s scheduled to run for 14 sessions, with one or two sessions a month scheduled between Sept. 11 and May 7. Clint Bond, a spokesman for the district, said school officials “highly recommend” those students attend the program, but it won’t be mandatory.
Like many districts, Fort Worth has used mandatory Saturday school in the past for students who needed to make up absences. The new Saturday sessions are a separate program for students who need extra help.
“This won’t be your typical Saturday school,” said David Saenz, the district’s chief innovation officer.
The district plans to pay for the program using $7.3 million in federal relief funding intended to help states and school districts recover from the academic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Saenz told the Fort Worth school district’s Board of Trustees in June that the district plans to recruit teachers who have a record of helping students succeed to teach the Saturday sessions. It’s important that struggling students get consistent help from the district’s best teachers, he said, so the district will offer those teachers stipends to commit to working all 14 sessions.
Although the sessions will mainly focus on core subjects, Saenz said there will be social-emotional learning and enrichment components, as well.
For example, the district’s STEM trailers, which offer hands-on activities in science, technology, engineering and math, will be a frequent visitor to the Saturday sessions, he said. There will also be fine arts activities, he said. Students’ interest in fine arts and other extracurricular activities generally begins in the early grades, Saenz said, and the program is a good opportunity to connect young students with those programs.
The district plans to offer a parent education program with sessions running at the same time as Saturday Learning Quest, Bond said. District leaders are still developing details of that program, he said.
Like most districts statewide, Fort Worth saw steep academic declines last year, due at least in part to the pandemic. Fewer Fort Worth students in all grades 3-8 met or approached grade level in math or reading last spring as compared to the spring of 2019, according to the results of this year’s State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR. Fort Worth’s STAAR results placed the district roughly in the middle of the pack among the state’s 11 major urban districts.
Statewide, more students performed below grade level last spring across all grades and subject areas except English I and II, the agency reported.
The declines were more pronounced in math than in reading: the number of students who performed below grade level in math grew by 16 percentage points over 2019, while the number of students who didn’t meet grade level in reading grew by just four points.
The trend of more pronounced effects in math than in reading mirrors projections education researchers have made since the beginning of the pandemic. Researchers think that trend may reflect the fact that most parents feel more equipped to help their children in reading than in math.
The Saturday learning program is one of several strategies the district is adopting to help students recover ground they lost during the pandemic. The district also partnered with several community organizations to expand its summer school program. District officials are also planning to hire contracted tutors to provide high-dosage tutoring to students who need the most help.
