Fort Worth ISD must improve student reading. We’re watching school board for action | Opinion
In the last 100 years, technology has brought us from sliced bread to the development of artificial intelligence. But we are still fighting for our kids to learn to read.
Currently, 64% of children in Fort Worth ISD schools are not reading on grade level. As the executive director of Parent Shield Fort Worth, I know first-hand the impact this crisis has on our communities. The connection between literacy rates, poverty and jail sentences aren’t just statistics; they are lived experiences of the people served by our organization. As parents fight these harsh realities, they face a school system that, time and time again, pushes the idea that parents don’t care.
Since 2022, I have worked with hundreds of parents, and when they learn about the literacy crisis and how it affects their children, they are sad and furious. We have to fight to get the information we deserve to know about our children. Too often, we learn later that report cards do not tell the actual story about our children’s skill level. As such, the literacy crisis is a symptom of larger issues, such as poor school-to-parent communication and decision-making that does not include parents.
For these reasons, we are taking up the fight for data and governance transparency.
Parents who want to find out about their child’s reading scores have to navigate several platforms, only to find scores and phrases that offer little to no context for how it connects to their child’s reading abilities. This is why our parents are actively pushing the district for truth-in-reporting on report cards and the district’s online portal. We appreciate FWISD’s move to standards-based reporting, but there is more work to be done.
At Parent Shield Fort Worth, we have made it our mission to educate parents about their children’s reading levels. According to a national Gallup poll, nearly 8 in 10 parents believe their children make mostly Bs. But the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress reveals that, nationally, 66% of fourth-graders and 69% of eighth-graders are not reading on grade level. This disconnect is critical to the work we are doing now to educate parents on literacy data.
Last summer, we tested more than 100 students and reported their reading scores to their parents in a program we called Freedom July. We set up a series of literacy clinics that tested children and educated their parents on the importance of literacy and data about it. We learned that parents are relying on report cards and schools to keep them aware of their child’s progress, but nearly 70 percent of the parents who went through our program did not know their child’s reading level.
One parent was aware of her son’s dyslexia and struggles to read, but she was in tears to find out the child was three and a half years behind. The mother struggles to read, too, and feels hopeless about supporting her child. Unfortunately, stories like this aren’t rare. For this reason and more, our team has taken an additional step to advocate for transparency and ensure parents are crafting the narrative about what’s best for their children.
In January, Parent Shield launched Board Watch, a parent-facing initiative to build governance awareness, monitor policies that directly affect our students and families, and shape the direction of decisions that have the potential to change the trajectory for generations of Fort Worth citizens. Before each meeting, our team reads through the lengthy FWISD board agenda and identifies three major issues of interest to our families. Then, we attend meetings to monitor progress and track the discussion, and we report back to our families what we learned and next steps.
We believe in our campaign to amplify the importance of data transparency and shine a light on the work of our trustees. Unfortunately, our efforts aren’t enough. It takes all of us working together with a shared purpose. We have a finite amount of time to get it right for our children, not 100 years.
