6% of students meet grade level at Fort Worth ISD school with unique challenges
Nahida Khan and her family fled Afghanistan almost four years ago, just a month before the United States withdrew its military presence in 2021 and the Taliban regained control of the country.
Working with the U.S. Army, her husband’s life was in danger. Now, Khan, her husband and their three children have resettled in Fort Worth to build a new life — one that includes an education for their two daughters and son.
Two of their school-age children, currently in prekindergarten and first grade, attend Clifford Davis Elementary School in the Fort Worth Independent School District. Their native language is one of more than 40 languages that have been identified on campus, according to Principal Ebony Key. Their English skills have progressed on a daily basis since they enrolled.
The Khan family’s situation is similar to many other families whose children attend Clifford Davis, a traditional elementary school with a unique student population — even by state standards. Its 880 students largely consist of immigrants and refugees who are placed in a nearby apartment complex as newcomers to the community, making them zoned for the campus. As a result, language barriers have become a consistent obstacle for Clifford Davis and its academic performance.
Clifford Davis, in southeast Fort Worth, is the district’s lowest-performing school, with just 6% of students meeting grade level across reading, math and science, according to an analysis of 2024 state testing data by the Fort Worth Education Partnership. Districtwide, 25% of students are meeting grade level in the same subjects. As Fort Worth ISD has recently declared literacy its No. 1 priority and set academic goals for the next five years in an effort to turn around its overall stagnant performance, Clifford Davis is especially in need of additional support.
Parent reactions to the campus’ test scores and their expectations of the school vary greatly. For some parents like Khan, the campus’ performance isn’t an issue, as their main focus is their children’s English proficiency. Other parents have voiced disappointment with the quality of their child’s education, prompting them to look at other school options.
In general, Khan said it will take more time for students like her daughters to catch up to grade level compared to their English-speaking peers. Teachers are doing their best to navigate the multiple languages present, she said. Khan’s first-grade daughter’s report card is “excellent,” and Khan has received phone calls from her daughter’s teacher with compliments on her behavior and academics, she said.
“My experience is that my kids are getting really good with the language, with the behavior, with the writing, with the listening. They’re getting very good and better day by day,” Khan said, noting she plans to enroll her youngest son in pre-K at Clifford Davis this upcoming school year. “(I want) my kids to go to this school because I know everybody, all the teachers. They’re very kind and very, very good teachers.”
Majid Rasooli, a former Clifford Davis parent who had three children enrolled in the 2023-24 school year, said his main priorities were integrating his family into the community and finding a school close by where his children could get acclimated. He would focus on finding a school with a quality rating after a year or two of settling into Fort Worth after immigrating from Afghanistan.
Rasooli knew English, but his wife and children only spoke Farsi when they moved here, he said. Now, his children have acquired English skills, which has made them feel more confident in their school work.
“Considering the difference in the education system, in the curriculum and also the language abilities, initially they were kind of struggling to know what was going on,” he said. “Now they’re good. They’re able to navigate what’s going on.”
His family now lives in eastern Fort Worth closer to his children’s new charter school, Ignite Community School, near the border of Fort Worth and Arlington.
“The area or the community I was leaving ... it was good for the newcomers who just arrived, but after a few months or a year, you will think that you need to move out of this community,” Rasooli said. “That was the main reason. I want my kids to be in a safe and protected and good environment with access to better schools.”
In the 2023-24 school year, Texas Education Agency data shows 66% of about 680 Clifford Davis students were identified as emergent bilingual, or learning English as a second language. With an ongoing increase in enrollment, Key, the principal, said the percentage is now more than 70%. This year, many new students speak Kinyarwanda, the national language of Rwanda that’s also spoken in the Democratic Republic of Congo and Uganda. Last year, a predominant language at Clifford Davis was Arabic, Key said.
In addition to overcoming language barriers among staff, students and families, the Clifford Davis campus consistently deals with an increase in enrollment of new students throughout the school year. This adds another layer of complications when preparing students to take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, as one student could have the full school year to prepare while another student could enroll as late as April and be required to take the exam weeks later. These students are also testing in a language they’re just beginning to learn.TEA data shows the campus’ overall STAAR participation for the 2023-24 school year was 89%, meaning only 11% did not take the exam.
“We maybe have 30 or so kids enrolling a week,” said Key, who has been campus principal since the 2021-22 school year. “It’s constant, and our school population just continues to grow.”
Although the majority of teachers at Clifford Davis are certified to teach English as a second language, the school relies on technology, translators, parent volunteers and a translation service to bridge the gap. Staff can call the translation service to connect with interpreters who help identify new languages and provide translation among staff, students and parents. Students who speak common languages also translate for each other.
“The longer they’re here, the more English language they acquire,” Key said. “And you will be amazed at what they pick up and what they learn, and how quickly they learn different things.”
Christin Reeves, Fort Worth ISD executive director of Elementary Leadership, who oversees Clifford Davis and other schools in the same region of the district, noted how for many students, Clifford Davis is their first experience in a formalized school setting.
“It’s not unusual to get one or two students (during STAAR testing season), but I think last year we enrolled almost 30 students right before state testing,” Reeves said. “‘Hello, welcome to the country, your first-time ever experience in school. And here’s this test in a language you cannot understand.’”
Key said the campus’ low performance is being addressed through strengthening the general instruction that all students receive, focusing on small group instruction and partnering with community organizations. District leaders are also helping the school outline and address its challenges through current and upcoming campus improvement plans.
The school is notably named after the late L. Clifford Davis, a civil rights lawyer who helped desegregate Fort Worth and Mansfield school districts and was the first elected Black judge in Tarrant County. Davis recently died at 100 years old in February, leaving behind a legacy where he’s been recognized as a Tarrant County Legal Legend and a civil rights pioneer.
Other parent insights
Clifford Davis Elementary’s poor academic performance has prompted some parents to enroll their children elsewhere, or consider doing so. Others have said they’ve been satisfied with their child’s schooling experience.
The Star-Telegram reported in September 2023 the story of a second-grader at the school who was bringing home A’s in reading and language arts but later discovered she was reading at a kindergarten level. Her mom transferred her to Rocketship Dennis Dunkins Elementary School, a charter school in Stop Six, for her third-grade year.
An English-speaking parent, who declined to share her name for privacy reasons, said she has a third-grade daughter with autism who attends Clifford Davis. Her daughter is unable to read, and she’s considering transferring her to a different school.
“Plenty of people that have autism succeed. They’re lawyers, doctors, social workers,” the mother said. “I feel like she’s really, really behind, and I want her to succeed.”
Claudia Guadian, a former Clifford Davis parent whose son is now a senior at O.D. Wyatt High, recalled a similar experience with her son, who has dyslexia and left Clifford Davis with the inability to read. Some teachers were helpful at the school but lacked training for students with disabilities, she said. In hindsight, she realized the elementary years were the most important.
“I was very upset with Clifford Davis because I gave them four years, five years with my son. You would think that he would know how to read a sentence,” Guadian said. “My son started reading in sixth grade. I busted my butt, and I taught him. He knows how to read now.”
A few Spanish-speaking parents and grandparents with children enrolled at the school told the Star-Telegram their families’ overall experiences at Clifford Davis were positive. All of the guardians said their children had been enrolled in school for less than a year after their families immigrated from Guatemala.
Elsa Muralles, who has one child in kindergarten and one in second grade, said she’s been satisfied with the help her son has received through speech therapy. Although her daughter is reading just below grade level, the grading system is different from Guatemala, where she would be considered a grade lower. Muralles’ children have slowly been learning English through a bilingual program.
“My only complaint is with the behavior of other students here, but academically, the school has supported us a lot. I have no complaints with the instruction,” she said. “I’ve been told that this is the worst-performing school. I’ve asked my kids if they want me to send them to a different school, but they like being here. They don’t want to change schools.”
Isidro Santos, whose granddaughter is in first grade at Clifford Davis, said her English has improved a lot in the past six months since immigrating to the area.
“When we got here, she didn’t speak any English, but now she’s speaking lots of English. (She) has her ABC’s and her numbers,” he said. “For the time being, everything is going really well.”
How performance is being addressed
Among the tactics used to improve performance, Key said, is tutoring provided to students through partnerships with community organizations and through an after-school program. Clifford Davis has three instructional coaches, including one recently sent to the campus after Fort Worth ISD mobilized its central administration staff, who are certified teachers, to provide extra support to struggling students three days a week. The other two coaches on campus mostly focus on literacy and math for third, fourth and fifth grade. An intervention block is built into schedules where third-graders have 30 minutes a day for extra help while fourth- and fifth-graders have 45 minutes.
Clifford Davis’ 2024-25 campus improvement plan also directs educators to meet regularly to review student data and develop lesson plans. Teachers also receive additional training in DreamBox, the district’s online math learning program.
Superintendent Karen Molinar and Mohammed Choudhury, deputy superintendent of Leading and Learning, have worked with other district leaders to support Clifford Davis with its improvement plan for the upcoming school year, Fort Worth ISD officials said in a statement.
“The Campus Improvement Plan is built around a campus needs assessment that enables the campus staff to capture the unique opportunities for their campus. Dr. Molinar and team are aware that Clifford Davis provides many unique opportunities that need to be supported through differentiated staffing and budget. ... Our focus is on creating a plan that meets the unique needs of all students while fostering an environment where they can thrive academically,” district officials said.
Key noted that TEA results are just one measurement of student achievement, and growth is tracked through other district assessments. In the current school year, 22% of fourth-graders met their reading goal between the first quarterly assessment and the second quarterly assessment, while 18% of fifth-graders met their reading goal.
“You should see the excitement on the students’ faces as they’re coming to school,” Key said. “They love being here, and we love having them here. That was one of the things that I worked really, really hard on my first year as a principal, making a bridge to the community and extending that bridge and making sure the parents knew that we were here to serve them and that we wanted our students to have a good educational experience.”
The goal for Clifford Davis is to achieve at least a “B” state accountability rating, Key said. The school’s unofficial accountability rating, which relies heavily on STAAR performance, was an “F” last year, according to a district estimate calculated by using the state’s rubric. The Texas Education Agency has been prevented from releasing the scores for the past two years due to court orders.
Statewide and local comparisons
Clifford Davis’ demographics are unique not only to Fort Worth ISD and Tarrant County but also to the state of Texas. There’s about one comparable campus in each of Texas’ urban areas such as Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, according to Leila Santillán, chief operating officer of the Fort Worth Education Partnership.
“If we were to zoom in on a few of those schools, a few of which are also in TEA’s campus comparison group for Clifford Davis…. and we ranked those schools according to student academic performance, Clifford Davis would be at the bottom of that ranking in both reading and math, with the other schools on that list ranging from 22-33% in reading and 14-42% in math,” Santillán said, noting Linder Elementary in Austin ISD and Colonies North Elementary in Northside ISD near San Antonio as examples.
“While those schools aren’t ultimately where we want to be, they may serve as good examples to learn from on a path towards higher student achievement,” she added.
Elsewhere in Fort Worth ISD, there were seven campuses that performed with less than 15% of students meeting grade level across all tested subjects in spring 2024, according to the Education Partnership. Similar to Clifford Davis, all but one of these campuses have seen declining academic performance for the past three years. Edward Briscoe Elementary closely followed Clifford Davis as the second lowest-performing elementary school in spring 2024 with 11% of its students meeting grade level, five percentage points above Clifford Davis.
“Before the pandemic, Clifford Davis’ numbers were slightly higher — 23% in reading and 26% in math — with about one in every four students meeting grade level. Over time, the gap between Clifford Davis and the rest of Fort Worth ISD has widened today, where less than 1 in every 10 students is reading and doing math on grade level. While the school had high mobility rates and high rates of students that had recently immigrated then, those rates have further risen over that same period,” Santillán said.
Santillán said it will take parents, educators and community leaders and a commitment of additional resources to turn around campuses like Clifford Davis and ensure all students receive the same high-quality education.
“The data tells us where we are — but ultimately, it doesn’t define where we can go,” Santillán said. “The question we should be asking ourselves here isn’t just about the data — it’s about who we want to be as a city. Do we want to be a community that accepts these results as inevitable, or do we believe every child, regardless of their circumstances, deserves an education that puts them on a path to success?”
Elizet Hernández Kneisler, assistant professor of practice in the Department of Curriculum and Instruction at the University of Texas at Austin’s College of Education, said it’s important for schools to learn about their immigrant students’ background, culture and traditions before jumping into academics. Kneisler previously oversaw the bilingual, Title III and migrant education programs at the Region 13 Education Service Center based in Austin and also oversaw dual language programming at TEA.
“In regard to the academic side, I think it is not a one-size-fits all, because it shouldn’t (be),” she said. “It is not just us expecting the students to magically learn the second language, which in this case will be English.”
Campuses should also use student performance data to make sure they’re comparing apples to apples, Kneisler said.
“We need to have a more holistic lens in regards to the group that we’re serving, because if not, what we’re going to find is that they’re always behind,” she said. “It takes five to seven years to acquire another language, if given the supports needed.”
In regards to Clifford Davis, it’s important to note that there’s a consistent influx of students throughout the year, she said. It’s a variable the school can’t control, but it’s something for which the school can plan.
“They do have control over the strategies that are being implemented, especially knowing that there’s a constant movement of students needing the acquisition of a second language,” Kneisler said. “The focus should be on what kind of professional development and support and resources are being provided for the teachers” that can then be applied to their instruction with students.
Community organizations provide support
Clifford Davis Elementary partners with a variety of community organizations for tutoring, translation and counseling services. Among them are World Relief Texas, a Christian humanitarian organization focused on aiding refugees and other immigrants; Catholic Charities Fort Worth; and the Junior League of Fort Worth’s MINTS program, which stands for Mentoring, Inspiring, Nurturing, Tutoring and Supporting.
“Each year we are able to provide valuable support to the dedicated teachers in the classroom, the students through mentoring, the families by facilitating educational nights, and supplementing much needed supplies and uniforms,” the Junior League of Fort Worth’s website reads.
The Fort Worth chapter of The Links Inc. started hosting a monthly Saturday program at Clifford Davis this school year known as STEM Now and Into the Future, which includes literacy and phonics instruction in addition to science, technology, engineering and math projects with help from experts. The organization provides stipends for Clifford Davis teachers to attend the program to help with translation, and breakfast and lunch are also provided to those in attendance.
“What we’re trying to do is bring educational equity and access to underrepresented communities,” said Chapter President Kristin Vinson Wright. “What we noticed with Clifford Davis Elementary, there is a language barrier, and then there is a literacy concern. A lot of the students were not able to follow the directions because they couldn’t read the directions. So we started coming in starting with the consonants and working through literacy. How do you read this? How do you pronounce this?”
World Relief Texas’ Refugee School Impact Program offers education services to children ages 0-11, said Briana Vice, regional director of church and community engagement. English language instruction, school enrollment, school supplies distribution and translation are among the services. World Relief Texas mostly focuses on ages 0-5, while Catholic Charities focuses on students in grades 1-5. Vice said the two organizations work together to help families in both age groups.
World Relief Texas has helped resettle families with children who attend Clifford Davis for more than two decades, but the Refugee School Impact program started in 2022 with funding from the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops to meet more needs.
“Our goal is to foster a sense of normalcy for refugee children, support their emotional well-being inside and outside of the classroom, and then just help them build foundational skills to ensure that they’re prepared for success in the classroom here in the United States, as they’re adjusting to their new life here,” Vice said.
This story was originally published April 17, 2025 at 9:51 AM.
