Fort Worth students made improvements on STAAR tests, new report shows
Students across Fort Worth saw gains on this year’s state test, according to a report released Tuesday.
Across the city, the number of students who scored on grade level across all subjects on this year’s STAAR climbed by two percentage points. Students posted a three-point gain in grade-level performance in reading, according to the Fort Worth Education Partnership’s annual City of Fort Worth Academic Performance Report.
The report is a compilation of STAAR scores in every campus in the city, including schools in 12 school districts and 13 charter school networks, broken out by city council district. In every council district city-wide, the percentage of students scoring on grade level on the state test either held steady or grew compared to last year’s exam.
In reading, 46% of students scored on grade level, up from 43% last year. And across all subject areas, students scored on grade level 37% of the time, up from 35% last year.
Brent Beasley, the nonprofit’s executive director, said the growth was an encouraging sign. He noted that this year’s report marks only the second time Fort Worth has seen city-wide gains on the state test in the six years the organization has released the report. The first was the year immediately after the end of school shutdowns, when test scores at schools across the country rebounded after historic lows.
But Beasley also noted that there is no single council district in the city where more than 50% of students are performing on grade level. District 10, which covers the northern reaches of the city, including the Alliance area, was the top performing council district, with 49% of students scoring on grade level.
In an email, Leila Santillán, the nonprofit’s chief operating officer, said the improvement in scores citywide was largely driven by gains in Fort Worth ISD. The district, which is the largest both in the city of Fort Worth and in Tarrant County, saw growth in the number of students meeting grade level across grades 3-8 in nearly every subject tested — reading, math, science and social studies. The only exception was fifth-grade math, where 34% of students met grade level this year, compared to 36% last year. Campuses in Northwest ISD, White Settlement ISD, Uplift Education and IL Texas also posted smaller, but still positive, growth.
Santillán said the biggest growth came from schools that mostly serve low-income students. Both in Fort Worth ISD and other districts and charter networks, schools where 60-79% of students are economically disadvantaged saw the biggest gains, while schools where less than 60% of students are economically disadvantaged saw the most modest growth.
Although Fort Worth saw growth overall, it wasn’t even across all areas. Council districts 4, 7 and 10, in the northern part of the city, saw the weakest growth. Santillán said that’s largely because those areas have more low-poverty schools, which saw smaller gains or even losses compared to last year.
Fort Worth’s modest STAAR gains could be a hopeful sign
Although this year’s gains appeared modest, Beasley said he’s taking them as a hopeful sign. Over the past year, city and county leaders have rallied around the issue of literacy, and several school districts have identified reading as their top priority. Beasley pointed to practical ways that leaders in the city have put their efforts behind the issue, including Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Karen Molinar revamping the district’s budget to put more resources into reading programs and Fort Worth city leaders launching a dyslexia screening program at summer camp locations.
This year’s improvements on STAAR scores could be a sign that those efforts are beginning to pay off, Beasley said. Although the gains the city posted this year are modest, he also noted that many of the initiatives designed to boost reading scores only happened recently, so it may take time for their full impact to appear.
Beasley said he also thinks more people in Fort Worth are simply becoming aware of the city’s struggles in reading. When his organization began releasing its annual report a few years ago, Beasley said nobody was talking about the issue. But since then, it’s become a top priority, not only for school districts, but also for community leaders. As those conversations continue, more people become aware of the problem, and many of them want to do something about it, he said.
“There’s the way things are and the way things ought to be,” he said. “And when people find out more about the way things are, and it’s a long way off from the way things ought to be, that can create a lot of energy for change.”
This story was originally published August 12, 2025 at 6:00 AM.
