Fort Worth ISD celebrates preliminary 2025 STAAR results for grades 3 through 8
Officials with the Fort Worth Independent School District are celebrating preliminary results from a statewide standardized test that they said shows gains in reading performance for grades 3 through 8.
Superintendent Karen Molinar presented the early test results for spring 2025 during a school board meeting on Tuesday, June 10, a week before the Texas Education Agency publicly releases statewide testing data from the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, for elementary and middle school grades. TEA released End-of-Course assessment results for high school subjects on Tuesday morning, which showed the district had seen gains in student performance in Biology and Algebra I, but losses in English I, English II and U.S. History.
The preliminary test scores for grades 3-8 showed no decreases in reading scores across the board, and the gains seen ranged from 2-7%. Notably, reading and math scores for third- and fourth-graders increased at all performance levels. The largest decrease in performance, compared to official 2024 results, was seen in fifth-grade math for students approaching grade level in the subject. There were 62% of students meeting this metric in 2025 compared to 66% in 2024.
“We are definitely not anywhere near where we want to be for any student in this district and as a district as a whole, but this does show that the actions that we did put in place this school year — by putting adults in front of students; and redesigning our campus instructional coaches to work with small groups; the professional learning and developments that we provided to our assistant principals (and) our principals with our leading and learning team, with putting a focus on instruction and data, we saw results,” Molinar said.
Molinar emphasized that the elementary and middle school data she presented was unofficial student-level data that would not be used for projecting the district’s A-F accountability ratings, which are administered by TEA to measure how well campuses and districts are performing academically and beyond. During the school board’s June 24 meeting, Molinar said, she will present the official results from TEA that will include a breakdown of the data by student demographics.
“I’m choosing to share our early results around our 3-8 (grades) to show you the importance of the plans we have already put in place for ‘25-’26 (school year),” Molinar said. “This is what we call very dirty data from a state file, and that we’ll see all cleaned up later on, on those release dates. Everything can differ just by a little bit, but we’re very confident in the percentages that you’ll see.”
The district is implementing a new instructional framework in the upcoming school year where all lessons will be structured the same way across all grades to create consistency in instruction and reduce planning time for teachers. The framework is part of the district’s efforts to turn around its stagnant academic performance that’s been seen historically. The district is also implementing a new block schedule for middle school students, who will have 90-minute classes starting in August.
Molinar noted the district met a literacy goal outlined in its strategic plan, which was to increase the percentage of third-graders meeting grade level in reading on STAAR to 33% by 2025. The preliminary test results showed 37% of third-graders meeting this benchmark. This literacy goal grows over the next four years with a final goal of having 50% of third-graders reading on grade level by 2029.
An additional math goal outlined in the strategic plan for third-graders was also met for 2025, Molinar added. The target was 32% of students meeting grade level, and the early test results show 34% of students performing at that level.
“Very excited about that. We know our target for next year in 2026 is 36%. We believe, with that new instructional planning calendar and framework and the redesign that we will not only meet that target in 2026, but we will exceed that target,” Molinar said.
This story was originally published June 10, 2025 at 8:43 PM.
