Fort Worth ISD could suffer as some families choose in-person classes at other schools
Lyndsay Hoover was shocked at the difference between her two kids’ online classes last spring, after schools stopped in-person classes.
Hoover’s son was a second-grader at Tanglewood Elementary School in Fort Worth. Her daughter was a fourth-grader in private school. Neither school’s online classes were ideal, Hoover said. But her daughter’s school gave her lots of live instruction and plenty of opportunities to interact with her teacher, and the platform the school used was simple enough that her daughter didn’t need much help.
Meanwhile, her son’s classes from Fort Worth ISD were hard to access and too complicated for him to navigate on his own. There was no live teaching, no interaction and no engagement, she said, so the classes didn’t hold his attention for more than a few minutes at a time.
So this year, when Fort Worth ISD announced it would begin the school year online, Hoover and her husband decided to move their son to private school, as well. Hoover said she didn’t think her family had a choice. Her son is in third grade this year, a critical period in a child’s academic development. Education researchers often say third grade is the year children stop learning to read and start reading to learn. If a child isn’t reading on grade level by that time, researchers say it can have severe effects on the child’s academic outlook. Hoover was worried another round of online classes would put him behind and unable to catch up.
“We were risking losing him academically,” she said.
Hoover is among a number of parents — some of whom are part of a loosely organized group — who have removed their children from Fort Worth ISD schools and moved them to private schools, charter schools or homeschooling before the beginning of the school year. Many, like Hoover, were unhappy with the district’s decision to start the school year online and moved their children to schools that returned to school in person at the beginning of the year.
Experts say that when those families — most of whom are middle- to upper-income — leave the public school system, it can have long-lasting consequences for the students who stay behind. Experts say low-income students don’t perform as well in schools that primarily serve low-income students. And for the district, fewer students would mean less state funding at a time when education leaders are already predicting school budgets will take a hit.
But Fort Worth ISD officials say they’re already at work closing equity gaps between low-income students and their peers, including any brought about by students leaving the district. On Aug. 29, the district sent more than 100 volunteers out into neighborhoods to encourage families to register their children for the school year. District officials are also promising a better online experience than last spring.
Parents want kids back in school
It’s unclear exactly how many parents have opted to pull their children out of Fort Worth ISD because of concerns about distance learning. Some who have removed their children from Fort Worth ISD have said that thousands of students have left the district. But Fort Worth Superintendent Kent Scribner said the district hasn’t seen a sharp drop in enrollment.
On Aug. 25, two weeks before the beginning of distance learning, about 71,000 students were enrolled, Scribner said. That’s about 12,000 more students than were enrolled two weeks before the first day of the 2019-20 school year, he said. The district’s total enrollment last year was 82,704, according to Texas Education Agency records.
Although he didn’t know how many students it represented, Scribner said district officials are aware that a group of families has chosen to leave the district in favor of other options. But district officials have to try to make decisions in the interest of all students, he said, and each family has to decide what’s best for their own children.
“This obviously is a difficult time for every family,” he said. “We want our students in school, brick and mortar, person-to-person instruction as much as anyone.”
In late July, the Fort Worth ISD Board of Trustees voted to push the first day of school, originally scheduled for Aug. 17, back until after Labor Day and begin the year online. The district’s plan is to offer parents the choice between in-person and distance learning on Oct. 5. District officials have also said the online learning platform students use this school year will be more effective and interactive than what they used in the spring.
But for Kate Mathieson, that isn’t good enough. Mathieson, whose son was at Westpark Elementary School last year, is homeschooling him this year. Mathieson said she doesn’t think the district’s online learning platform will be any more effective this year than it was last spring. But if it is, she said even the most robust online program will always be lacking in the social interactions and bonds between teachers and students that only happen in person.
Mathieson, a certified teacher, worked for Fort Worth ISD last year as a long-term substitute for two teachers who went on maternity leave. This year, she said she’s joining with a group of about 50 other families to do occasional group classes in a city park, where she’ll lead the students in science experiments. Anyone who wants to wear a mask will be welcome to do so, she said.
“We’re just letting them be kids,” she said.
Mathieson said she’s angry that Fort Worth ISD decided not to go back to school in person at the beginning of the year. She pointed to other districts in the area, such as Keller, Granbury and Prosper, that have already gone back in person. She thinks Fort Worth ISD could bring students back to school safely, with appropriate COVID-19 precautions in place.
“These kids have been out since March,” Mathieson said. “They need to get back to school.”
Students who remain suffer consequences
When parents leave traditional public school districts in favor of charters, private schools or homeschooling, the biggest effect on the district is funding, said Monique Chism, vice president of policy, practice and systems change at the American Institutes for Research, a social science research firm based in Washington, D.C.
Each state calculates funding levels for school districts based on enrollment. So when students leave a public school district, that means the district loses some amount of state funding, said Chism, who served from 2015-2017 as deputy assistant secretary in the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Elementary and Secondary Education.
That lost funding can be a particular problem for school districts because many of their operating costs don’t automatically drop when there are fewer students, Chism said. Operating bus routes and supplying and staffing libraries are major expenses that don’t change based on enrollment, she said. When state funding drops and those costs remain the same, districts are left to make cuts in other areas, she said.
Fort Worth ISD’s per-student funding from state and local sources is about $9,800, said Clint Bond, a spokesman for the district. So a loss of 1,000 students would result in about $9.8 million in lost revenue.
Aside from funding, there are social and academic issues, as well, said Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the Century Foundation, a left-leaning think tank based in New York. Kahlenberg pointed to research showing that students of all backgrounds do better in economically integrated schools. One Century Foundation study found that low-income students who attended more affluent schools were roughly two years ahead of low-income students who attended schools that primarily served low-income students. So when middle- and upper-class students leave public schools in large numbers, those who are left behind suffer, Kahlenberg said.
There are a few reasons for that disparity, Kahlenberg said. To begin with, students generally fare better when they’re in schools with high-achieving peers, he said. If a student is having trouble understanding a concept in class and the teacher is busy with other students, a high-achieving classmate can often help. There are plenty of bright low-income students, Kahlenberg said, but in the aggregate, lower-income students are less likely to be high-achieving because they don’t have the same resources at home.
Having parents who are active in schools is also an advantage, Kahlenberg said. Active parents can volunteer in class or help with fundraising, he said. They can also act as a set of eyes and ears for other parents, so if there’s a class with serious problems, the entire community is more likely to hear about it. Low-income parents are no less committed to their children’s education, Kahlenberg said, but if they don’t have a car or they work more than one job, they’re less likely to have the time to dedicate to school. So if upper- and middle-class families leave the public school system, there are fewer parents to perform those roles.
Teacher quality is another factor, Kahlenberg said. He pointed to research showing that schools that serve low-income students tend to have less experienced teachers than other schools.
Convincing families to return
Kahlenberg said he doesn’t think parents who have pulled their children out of public schools during the pandemic are necessarily a part of a large-scale, permanent exodus from the public school system. Many may be willing to return once districts begin to reopen in person, he said, but public school districts will have to make the case to them.
If public school systems want to keep middle- and upper-class parents from moving their students out of the district — or want to attract them back to public schools once the pandemic is over — they need to convince them that public schools are the best option for their kids, Kahlenberg said. There’s an argument to be made that public schools are better choices for those students because those schools teach them how to work and get along with people from all backgrounds, he said. That’s an increasingly important skill in the American workforce, he said.
“I think every parent is understandably going to do what they think is best for their children,” he said. “I think the challenge for the public school system going forward is to be able to persuade those families that it’s in the children’s interest to eventually return to public school.”
Scribner, the Fort Worth superintendent, said he’s confident that many parents who opted to pay for private school this year will return to Fort Worth ISD once COVID-19 numbers stabilize and the district is able to reopen in person. In the meantime, the district is already working to shore up equity gaps, including any brought about by students leaving the district, he said.
One of the district’s biggest projects on that front is a new school performance framework that gives greater autonomy to high-performing schools, Scribner said. That framework allows the district to identify schools that have succeeded in closing gaps between economically disadvantaged students and their peers and double down on strategies that work, he said.
The district is also bringing certain special education students who need extra support to meet their individual learning plans back to school in person before the rest of the students in the district return, Scribner said.
The district promises that students will have higher-quality online classes when school starts compared to last spring. Under the district’s plan for online classes this year, students will get four hours of direct instruction from their teachers every day. Teachers will also hold virtual office hours, where students who need extra help can get more one-on-one support.
District officials say the new online courses will be a marked improvement over the classes it offered in the spring through Edgenuity, an online learning platform. Edgenuity lessons included pre-recorded instructional videos, short tasks and longer assignments, but little direct interaction with teachers.
‘Not a lot of knowledge being given’
Al Silva, a Fort Worth parent who moved his children from Fort Worth ISD to a private school last month, argued that low-income and other high-need students will feel the effects of an extended school shutdown most severely. He worries the shutdowns will widen the gulf that already exists between low-income children and their peers, causing psychological and academic damage that will be difficult to undo.
When Fort Worth ISD made the decision in July to delay the beginning of in-person learning until early October, Silva and his wife started looking for other options for their three children. After listening to district town hall meetings, he started to suspect the district would push the start of in-person classes back again by as much as another four weeks.
“We didn’t really feel like there was a lot of light at the end of the tunnel,” Silva said.
So Silva and his wife started applying, interviewing and having their kids tested for private schools. They applied at All Saints Elementary School, Fort Worth Country Day and Trinity Valley School. There wasn’t much time to spare, because the schools where they were applying started their year in mid-August, and the application process usually takes months. But just before the school year began, one of the schools — he didn’t want to say which one — accepted them.
Silva acknowledges that he and his wife have advantages other parents don’t. They were able to put the rest of their lives on hold while they looked for a school that could accept their kids. Once they found one, they were able to afford the tuition. While he’s concerned about students in families that don’t have those same advantages, Silva said he didn’t think he could subject his children to another month or more of online classes when there were other options available.
Silva said he knows principals and teachers at the public schools in their neighborhoods have worked hard to develop an online curriculum for the fall that’s more effective than what they used in the spring. But even the most effective distance learning curriculum puts students in front of computer screens for hours, something that Silva said young children’s short attention spans can’t handle.
“They’re not absorbing information. There’s not a lot of knowledge being given,” he said. “The bottom line for us is there is no substitute for in-person learning.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
CORRECTION: This story has been edited to remove an incorrect reference to where Al Silva’s children attended school last year.
