Tarrant County commissioners urge Fort Worth-area schools to prioritize reading
Tarrant County commissioners are encouraging school leaders to do more to get students on track in reading.
The commissioners court voted unanimously on Wednesday to approve a resolution calling on Tarrant County school districts to make reading their highest priority, and develop plans to ensure all students can read on grade level.
During the meeting, Commissioner Manny Ramirez, who sponsored the resolution, said he was pleased to see several school districts in the county take up the challenge. The issue of literacy is one that stretches well beyond school districts, he said — it affects other areas of public interest, like economic development and public safety, as well.
“We’re starting to realize through the data that literacy and crime, poverty, they’re starting to stretch far beyond correlation into causation,” Ramirez said. “And if we can do something about it here in Tarrant County, then we ought to.”
During a news conference Wednesday afternoon, Tarrant County District Attorney Phil Sorrells and Fort Worth Police Chief Neil Noakes said there’s a strong link between students who can’t read proficiently and adults who end up in the criminal justice system. Sorrells said illiteracy is the first step on a pathway that ends in incarceration — when students can’t read well, they struggle in school. Students who struggle in school are more likely to drop out, which in turn makes them more likely to resort to crime because they don’t have the skills to get a job, he said.
Police are “all too aware” of the link between illiteracy and crime, Noakes said. But the reverse is also true, he said — by focusing on reading and making sure students have opportunities to succeed, city and county leaders can head off criminal behavior before it happens.
Riley Shaw, Tarrant County’s director of juvenile services, said the resolution represents a challenge not just to every school leader, but also to every adult in the county. He encouraged parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles and neighbors to get involved in students’ reading journeys. Doing so can help struggling readers improve, he said, which could keep them out of the juvenile justice system.
Jerry Hollingsworth, superintendent of the Eagle Mountain-Saginaw Independent School District, said a big factor separating successful students from those who struggle is having parents who read with them every night. Successful students’ parents make time to read with them, he said. But he says fewer and fewer families make nightly reading a priority.
That’s one area where the broader community has a role to play, Hollingsworth said. Tarrant County has a growing number of retirees who could be enlisted to serve as volunteers to read with kids, he said. Churches and other community groups can help organize those volunteer efforts and put their weight behind making literacy a priority, he said.
“This isn’t magical,” Hollingsworth said. “We have to read to our children. That’s all there is to it.”
The county resolution comes six months after Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker spoke at a Fort Worth ISD board meeting, calling for a city-wide effort to turn the district’s academic performance around. Parker noted that the number of Fort Worth ISD students on grade level in reading had been stagnant for more than a decade, even as other big urban districts like Dallas and Houston made steady gains.
The commissioners court’s resolution mirrors a similar one passed last month by Fort Worth ISD’s board. That resolution identified reading as the district’s top priority, and directed the district’s superintendent to develop a plan to move toward universal grade-level reading.
During the same meeting, interim Superintendent Karen Molinar outlined the early details of a plan to boost reading scores, including putting money behind reading programs in next year’s budget, standardizing reading instruction across the district and training teachers to teach reading. The board voted Tuesday to name Molinar as the lone finalist for the permanent superintendent job.
In the Fort Worth ISD, only 33 percent of third-graders were reading at grade level in 2024, according to STAAR test scores. But the problem is not limited to Fort Worth ISD. A number of districts have schools in the Fort Worth city limits, and among them, nearly 60 percent of students in third though eighth grade did not meet grade level for reading in 2024, according to a report by the Fort Worth Education Partnership.
This story was originally published February 19, 2025 at 12:04 PM.
