With low reading scores projected, Fort Worth district doubles down on early learning
While Fort Worth schools continue to adjust to a new approach to teaching students to read, students continue to struggle with the pivotal skill, according to numbers presented at an October meeting of the board.
If the STAAR test were held today, only 25% of third-graders would score on grade level, lower than the projections made based on beginning of year tests at the October board meeting last year.
Those projections are not “self fulfilling prophecies,” associate superintendent of accountability and data quality Sara Arispe was quick to point out. STAAR scores show that students outperformed projections by 11% last year, with 37% performing on grade level.
“While we still have work to do, we … in the third grade have exceeded the pre pandemic level by three points,” Arispe said. “So happy to see that based on the hard work of our teachers, our students and their parents that students are recovering following the pandemic.”
Those numbers are still below district-set goals, which aim to have 40% of students on grade level by third grade in 2021 and 43% by 2022.
Spanish-speaking students are also projected to underperform on the STAAR according to beginning of year assessments, with only 13% slated to meet third-grade reading level in 2022-23. Despite declining enrollment in the earliest grades, school officials pointed to investments and focus on the pre-K-second grade space as one solution to increasing the scores.
Measure of Progress, or MAP, test scores presented Tuesday show that the expected growth for students in the younger grades was below national expectations in first grade, nearing expectations in second grade and meeting or passing national expectations in third through sixth grade.
Research has found that learning to read proficiently by third grade is important for future success.
Sociologist Donald Hernandez found in a 2013 study that children who do not read proficiently by the end of third grade are four times more likely to leave school without a diploma than proficient readers. In addition, Black and Hispanic children who are not reading proficiently in third grade are twice as likely as similar white children not to graduate from high school.
Early learning focus of district
Chief Academic Officer Marcey Sorensen and Superintendent Angélica Ramsey stressed the district’s emphasis on earlier grades in preparing for the third grade “cliff” as one board member referred to the important milestone.
“What we do in our pre-K space in terms of how we teach students how to read and what we do in that space around foundational literacy and foundational skills around literacy is just as important as what we do in third grade,” Sorensen said.
Pre-K, which is available at no charge to all students in the district, is a key part of that plan. Numbers presented at the meeting showed the impact of pre-K, with students who attended Fort Worth ISD pre-K scoring 29% higher on phonological awareness assessments than students who didn’t attend.
Despite that positive correlation, fewer students than last year tested as kindergarten ready.
According to recent data provided by the Texas Education Agency, a lower percentage of students entered Fort Worth kindergarten meeting the state readiness standards in the 2021-22 school year, less than 63% compared with about 66% in 2020-21 and 63% in 2019-2020. However, the number of students entering those grades also fell dramatically during that time, meaning fewer students are being measured.
According to Read Fort Worth, a city-wide collaborative with the goal of ensuring all students can read on grade level by third grade, “research shows kindergarten readiness predicts reading ability throughout a child’s educational career.”
Ramsey said that along with following through with the district’s shift to the science of teaching reading, early learning is the only way forward.
“While we’re K-12, if we don’t get the early learning right, if we don’t get the expanded learning right, then we are never going to get that career, college, military readiness piece,” she said.
Ramsey also reiterated the importance of working with existing child care to increase early literacy.
“How do we push in with more partnerships … to make sure there is a viable curriculum that is high dosage, high quality instruction happening for our 3-year-olds throughout our city,” she said. “We need to start talking with our city and our county and all our nonprofits, so that when a parent learns that they are going to be a parent, we can start having conversations about how important it is to read, sing ... (and) talk to your child and start that early development.”
Trustee Anne Darr said the numbers shared Tuesday were important to gauge next steps for the district.
“We can have good news and still recognize that there is work to be done,” she said.
