Shortly before Thanksgiving, a constellation of Fort Worth civic and nonprofit leaders gathered around tables in a shared workplace on the city’s Near South Side. They assembled to discuss the city’s literacy rates in particular and student achievement in general. And they did so shortly after the Texas Education Agency (TEA) announced it was taking over the Fort Worth Independent School District.
“Constellation” is how Pete Geren, the former Army secretary and congressman who now serves as president and CEO of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, describes the network of activists who are collectively addressing the city’s low literacy rates. Only 46% of students in public schools across the city of Fort Worth read at grade level, according to state data.
At one level, this column is about improving reading skills in Fort Worth, where Geren and I grew up together more years ago than either of us cares to acknowledge. But it also is about how citizens are owning a problem that Brent Beasley, CEO of the Fort Worth Education Partnership, has called a “civic, moral crisis.”
Understanding how Fort Worth is taking on its serious challenge stands as an object lesson to other Texas communities. Those cities and towns may have their own problems, such as inadequate health care, poor roads or an inadequate tax base. Taking ownership of them is essential to the health of the community — and to the strength of our democracy.
A literate population is not only central to a democracy’s stability, but also citizens are tempted to give up on democracy when they feel institutions no longer deliver for them.
Opinion
In Fort Worth, five elements are key to taking on these challenges.
Create a network
A single person may change some things on their own but rarely can a lone ranger drive transformation in a sizable, lasting way. Individuals burn out, lose interest or run out of money. Maybe all three.
By contrast, a group of committed citizens can bolster each other, find resources and identify solutions for the long term. Together and over time, they can address problems in a more substantial way than a single reformer might do, no matter the crusader’s passion.
That’s why you’ll find a network at play in Fort Worth, although a loosely structured one. Geren explains the Fort Worth Education Partnership manages the constellation of civic organizations like Parent Shield, the Texas Reading League, Fort Worth Families Forward, Go Beyond Grades, and Literacy Round-Up. But there is no central authority.
Supported and funded by the Sid Richardson Foundation and other local and national philanthropies, Fort Worth Education Partnership regularly informs city officials, school trustees, citizens and parents about the challenges facing students. The partnership likewise advocates for strategies to overcome those obstacles.
The constellation includes city leaders, led by Mayor Mattie Parker. She consistently uses her platform to bring low literacy rates to the public’s attention. That includes addressing the Fort Worth ISD school board to advocate for classroom instruction that improves reading skills.
She considers the low rates a problem for the city, not just its schools. “Fort Worth needs to own this,” the mayor said during a recent interview in which she credited a multipronged response for creating momentum. “This is a top-down and bottom-up effort,” she emphasized.
Karen Molinar, a longtime Fort Worth ISD administrator who now serves as superintendent, is upfront about the problem, too. In telling Beasley during a podcast interview that she “owns” the district’s realities, Molinar identified needed reforms, such as developing a stronger curriculum.
Follow the numbers
The first step in acknowledging a problem exists is understanding its realities. “You can’t solve a problem you don’t know exists,” Geren says.
The Fort Worth Education Partnership tracks data that illustrates the challenge’s contours. The partnership’s Leila Santillán takes the lead in studying results for Fort Worth ISD and other districts that educate the city’s students. The former teacher sees her role as breaking down complicated data for others to examine.
Results from the annual State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness (STAAR) exams and information from the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, she says, “give people common language about the situation in Fort Worth.” And it communicates what test scores mean for long-term outcomes for students.
These data are crucial to know about Fort Worth’s public school students: They met grade level standards just 37% of the time on STAAR exams in grades 3 through 8 on reading, math, science and social studies in the 2024-25 school year. Only 14% of Fort Worth ISD students are considered college ready, as judged by ACT and SAT scores. And only 19% of Fort Worth eighth graders go on to receive a two-or-four-year degree.
Involve parents
Educational reformers sometimes fail to develop sufficient support from local citizens, especially parents, for proven teaching methods, such as using phonics and other elements of the science of reading. However grounded in research and well-intended, reforms aren’t likely to last without a supportive foundation.
That’s why the work of Parent Shield, a Fort Worth organization that I have written about before in these pages, is key to changing outcomes for Fort Worth students.
Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, founder and executive director of the organization, sees her goal as educating and uniting parents in three of the city’s most economically disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Parent Shield shares data with parents, hosts summer reading clinics to assess student reading skills, and trains parents to advocate in parent-teacher conferences and before the Fort Worth ISD board for effective reading instruction. “Parents have to think differently and ask the right questions,” Mayor Parker explained.
Parent Shield is not alone. Go Beyond Grades, another star in the Fort Worth constellation, seeks to decrease what its director Alyssa Studer terms “the perception gap.” While 84% of Tarrant County parents think their students are learning at the appropriate grade level, only 54% do so.
A one-time educator herself, Studer and her organization instruct families on accessing the parent portals that school districts are supposed to use to flow student achievement data to parents. The Fort Worth Education Partnership worked with the state to make the portals more easily accessible to parents.
Fort Worth Families Forward organizes parents with students in charter schools to attend City Council hearings and vote in elections. The group also hosts candidate forums that connect parents with City Council candidates. Lety Gómez, the lead parent organizer, draws upon her work as an organizer in California, where her child overcame learning differences through attending a Rocketship charter school.
Caroline James is another longtime educator in the constellation. She became involved in literacy education through watching her dyslexic son receive inadequate reading instruction. Today, she heads Literacy Round-Up, an initiative the city of Fort Worth launched with the Sid Richardson Foundation and Go Beyond Grades. The organization uses phonics in its summer screening of students to detect reading deficits. She also led the constellation in persuading the Fort Worth school board to increase funding to combat dyslexia.
Speak truth to power
Robert Rogers, president of the Texas Reading League, uses stories and simple language to communicate to the school board in his regular appearances before trustees. Geren credits Rogers for being the constellation’s public advocate.
“I spend a lot of time figuring out how to reach council members,” Rogers said. “I try to use storytelling.” The board doesn’t allow power points, so the retired allergist and immunologist uses a set of green and red dots to communicate progress and deficits in the district’s campuses. “Use simple techniques,” he explained.
The constellation also sends representatives to the Fort Worth school board. Dorsey-Hollins shows up with parents regularly to address trustees about the latest achievement data. Geren says it is not uncommon for 50 parents to show up at school board and City Council meetings.
Use an opportunity
In some ways, Fort Worth’s work tracks what happened in Dallas 15 years ago. Civic, business and philanthropic leaders became involved then in identifying ways to improve student achievement across Dallas ISD. That led to numerous reforms, some of which remain today, such as identifying and rewarding effective teachers.
What’s different is the TEA stepping in to oversee Fort Worth ISD. The district’s three schools with consistently failing grades on the state’s annual measurement triggered a mandatory state intervention in October.
The constellation’s members who gathered before Thanksgiving didn’t object to the takeover. They plan on continuing their work, regardless of who’s in charge. But they do see the takeover as an opportunity to emphasize the status quo isn’t acceptable.
“This is not just about school funding,” said Ken Kuhl, a Stripling Middle School parent who’s involved with the Texas PTA. “We don’t have to accept these results.”
What’s happening in Fort Worth is disruptive, as Mayor Parker acknowledges. That includes the constellation’s work. But if the efforts succeed, students’ lives will be transformed, which is the real goal. At the same time, communities around Texas will have a roadmap on how to own and manage their own challenges.
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