No more apologies: Fort Worth school board must focus on achievement, accountability
In 1775, Paul Revere raced on horseback over moonlit roads through slumbering villages with his famous alarm.
Not all colonials agreed with Revere. Despite oppressive laws, taxes, and armies there were apologists pushing the blame on someone other than King George. It’s good that few listened to them.
In 2020, a group of Fort Worth residents founded Focus On Students to sound an alarm to our neighbors that the Fort Worth ISD leadership’s failure to provide quality education is crippling our children and our city. The nonpartisan group supports qualified school board members and candidates who focus on academic outcomes by establishing a culture of high expectations, accountability, transparency, and professional ethics, along with holding the district superintendent accountable.
Why the alarm? Under district grades issued by the state education agency, FWISD is dead last among the state’s 20 largest districts. FWISD has three times as many failing schools as Dallas. Two-thirds of third graders can’t read at level, and similar shares of high schoolers fail to pass their end of year exams in English and algebra.
Just released STAAR test results for 2020-21 show an even more dire situation. Families have noticed. Since 2015 enrollment has dropped by more than 10,000 students. And yet, as families have left, the district’s central office and professional support staff has grown 12%.
You might be thinking about funding. According to the Texas Education Agency, Keller ISD spends less per student ($11,213) than FWISD ($11,352) and earns an A. Godley ISD spends more than 25% more money ($14,424) per student and gets a C. Money is welcome but without good leadership all the gold in Kentucky can’t do a thing.
Despite FWISD’s record and standing in relation to its peers, the apologists are coming. Don’t blame the district, they say. It’s too complex, it’s poverty, it’s money, or it’s systemic racism. Never mind Dallas and Houston are outperforming FWISD.
They’ve even tried to shift the blame and suggest we’re attacking teachers. We support teachers and want them to have the district leadership they deserve.
The chin-pulling apologists may have good intentions. But they’re wrong. For the sake of our students and city, we shouldn’t listen to them.
How do we get our students on the right track? It starts with culture. Every high-performing school in the country works on culture built on high expectations and accountability.
Parallel to culture is policy, which begins with personnel. Without the right leaders in place no change can occur.
In response to the just-released STAAR results, Fort Worth Superintendent Kent Scribner said, “We now have an opportunity to respond to these data with initiatives and solutions to accelerate student learning to regain and surpass pre-pandemic levels of learning.”
Scribner has been in Fort Worth since 2015, and the district’s academic outcomes have remained poor. Perhaps he now has a plan to improve, but nothing he’s done so far has demonstrated this.
His comment suggests COVID is the main problem, but it’s only a factor. The district must be transparently frank with itself and the public about its performance.
Culture starts at the board of trustees, which must hold leadership accountable and avoid distractions from vendors, national politics and controversial ideologies. This can be addressed in three ways.
First, the board ought to be trained by outside experts rather than district staff. Second, the district needs an ethics policy that includes a prohibition on campaign contributions to board member campaigns from vendors with or seeking contracts with the district. Third, board members need to understand the difference between governance and management.
Board members have been known to serve as boosters for campuses in their specific districts and to disrupt student instruction with micromanaging agendas. Proper training is needed.
If we’re serious about cutting poverty and reducing the socio-economic gap between communities, we need to be serious about teaching reading and math. It’s time for FWISD to focus on students and hold its leadership accountable. Whoever that leader is.
This story was originally published July 2, 2021 at 7:04 AM.