TEA Ratings Released for Fort Worth ISD

The Texas Education Agency released final school accountability ratings today, including those for the Fort Worth Independent School District. While the TEA reports both good news and challenges for the FWISD, it also confirms the District is on the right track in its aggressive plan to improve academic success.

The TEA 2006-07 ratings released today reveal the Fort Worth ISD has 19 high-performing schools and 82 schools that met the academically acceptable standard. The District has 15 schools that have not met the standard for academically acceptable in one more groups meeting minimum size criteria.

Even though the District has fewer recognized and exemplary campuses, scores rose overall in many areas and there are several schools that came very close to these distinctions, missing the mark by only one point. And, 14 campuses missed recognized or exemplary because of science only. Thirteen middle schools and one elementary missed recognized or exemplary status only because of math scores.

"The bar is going up significantly and we acknowledge that we are behind the power curve for required improvement," said Superintendent Melody Johnson. "We are committed to long-term improvement efforts as well as providing critical, well-planned, short-term interventions. We are ready and willing to do the very hard work necessary and we embrace both the challenge and the accountability.

"More importantly," said Dr. Johnson, "We have been working all summer to develop an overall plan of action as well as improvement plans for each campus. We received preliminary data in May, and we went to work right away with our principals on District wide and school specific strategies."

Among the many significant steps the District is taking, include:

This fall the Fort Worth ISD will debut a new curriculum that is consistent and well-defined. What that means is for the first time ever, what is being taught in one first grade class is being taught in every other first grade class in the District, etc.

For the first time, parents of Fort Worth ISD students will be able to go to the District's Web site and see what's expected of their child in each subject and at each grade level. This information will be updated every 6 weeks to reflect what is going on in the classroom.

The District will continue to advance strategies for Parent Engagement.

• Every Fort Worth ISD school will emphasize that this is a place that says 'Parents Welcome Here' ---and we're inviting all parents and grandparents to be at their children's school on the first day of classes, August 27.
• The District will have a new, fully staffed department of Parent Engagement. FWISD is expanding a pilot program of a nationally recognized program from Johns Hopkins University to 30 campuses that will significantly improve parent involvement in all of our schools.
• Fort Worth ISD schools will reprise last year's very popular family math, science or literacy nights to increase parents' participation in their child's learning experiences.

The District will implement a strategic Math and Science initiative that includes:

• Increased staff in math and science at every middle and high school for the coming year -- as well as Lead Content Teachers in those two areas.
• Thirteen master teachers in math and science to help support the schools and provide guidance.
• New math textbooks in middle and high school --- and this year a new elementary math textbook will be selected.

The District will have an aggressive plan to recruit, hire and retain highly qualified teachers and provide continuous professional development.

• The District will continue its geographically far-reaching search to hire the best teachers in the country, especially in the area of math and science instruction. This past year FWISD held hiring fairs and placed 25 math and science teacher ads in other cities. This coming year that number will increase and additional cities and towns will be targeted.
• All Fort Worth ISD teachers will continue to be trained in effective teaching methods to meet the needs of all learners, through either on-site professional development or off site instruction.

Fort Worth ISD will have a campus improvement plans for all schools.

Additionally, the District will implement comprehensive support and intervention plan for each academically unacceptable campus.

• Each plan is tailored to the needs of the children in that specific school. The plan could include anything from additional resources and personnel to additional training for teachers.

Fort Worth ISD will support middle and high school redesign.

• The District will continue to support Transition Camps for rising 6th and 9th graders and build upon their success this fall.
• FWISD will continue to implement its $4M investment in Academic Teaming, in which common groups of teachers get to know and work consistently with common groups of students and schedule daily time for parent phone calls and conferences.

If one computes the subjects measured in TAKS testing with the number of schools in which students are tested, there are 449 subject content areas in the Fort Worth ISD. Of that number 62 subject areas were exemplary, 172 were recognized and only 20 were unacceptable.

"The state test became more rigorous beginning in 2003-2004, and the standard for acceptable performance in math and science has risen ten to fifteen per cent since 2005 and will continue to rise in increments of five per cent in the foreseeable future," said Dr. Johnson. "Clearly, mathematics and science will continue to be our biggest challenge. Though we recognize our state accountability ratings will decline for a period of time, we welcome the more rigorous expectations for our students.

"We're doing the right thing," she continued. "We are confident that what we are doing and the investments we are making will get results; but only if we stay the course and continue to engage our parents and community as full partners."

-FWISD-