Fort Worth Education Partnership

Committed to High Quality Public Education in Fort Worth

Regina Wilken

We All Want the Same Thing: High-Quality Schools for Every Child

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The poet Margaret Wheatley once wrote: “There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.”

It seems like everyone has talked over the last year about the state of public education in Fort Worth.

Resolutions from the Fort Worth City Council, Fort Worth ISD school board, and Tarrant County Commissioners declared literacy for students a top priority. A wide variety of community forums, discussions and presentations tackled education questions. Fort Worth is rallying around a shared interest in our kids being academically prepared for the future.

These conversations are happening in an environment of intense partisan divide in our country, and that political division is increasingly making its presence known in Tarrant County and Fort Worth. Sometimes it feels like we are all playing for two different teams, and everything is about whether a person is on the “red” squad or the “blue” one.

At Fort Worth Education Partnership, the organization I lead, we wanted to learn more about what Fort Worth and Tarrant County residents think and feel about local public education, so we commissioned a poll this spring and released a report about the findings a few days ago.

As we analyzed the results of the poll, we noticed something striking. Almost all Fort Worth residents agree on the fundamentals. It turns out we are less divided than our politics suggest we are. We were able to look at responses broken down by political party, and on almost every question, Republicans and Democrats are much more united than we expected — at least on priorities for public education.

Across party lines, there is strong support for academic accountability. 89% of Democrats and 88% of Republicans in Fort Worth say it is important that Texas has a system to measure individual children’s and overall school performance. There is also consensus about the importance of students meeting grade level. 90% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats believe students should meet grade-level expectations before advancing to the next grade.

Fort Worth Republicans and Democrats both want more choices and better access to quality options. While some want us to believe parents are starkly divided on the issue of public school choices, when we asked Fort Worth residents how important it is for families to have several public school options, including charter schools and district schools of choice, both Democrats (95%) and Republicans (85%) agree that it is “important” or “very important.”

Academic quality shapes family choices. It is also clear that parents are paying close attention to school quality, with academic performance emerging as the top reason they consider changing schools. Nearly half (46%) of Tarrant County parents have considered changing their child’s school; among those, the top reason for considering change for both Democrat and Republican parents is academic quality.

This alignment goes beyond party lines. We saw the same strong consensus when we broke down responses by income level and race/ethnicity.

Across race, income, and political lines, Fort Worth residents are unified in what they want:

  • schools that work for all kids,
  • transparent, honest, and clear information about how students are doing,
  • more public school options for families to choose from, and
  • strong support for teachers and school leaders who are making a difference.

That kind of consensus provides us a unique opportunity — to not just talk about what we want but also to pursue it together.

Margaret Wheatley’s poem begins, “There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.” It continues:

“Ask: ‘What’s possible?’ not ‘What’s wrong?’ Keep asking.

“Notice what you care about. Assume that many others share your dreams.”

“Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.”

In Fort Worth, we’ve already started that conversation, and we have discovered a shared belief: All our children deserve access to a high-quality education.

So, let’s be bold and go for it. We believe it together. We can achieve it together.

The Right to Know: Making State Test Results Truly Accessible for Parents

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A few weeks ago, I walked into the Texas Capitol for the first time in my life—not as a tourist or a parent chaperone for a school visit but as a witness. I was there to testify before the House Public Education Committee on a deceptively simple bill: House Bill 5263, filed by Representative Charlie Geren. The bill aimed to require that every parent in Texas be able to access their child’s state assessment results with a single click.

On its face, it seems like a small administrative tweak. But I testified because it’s more than that. It’s about a parent’s right and need to know.

TEA has built an excellent tool in texasassessment.gov. It breaks down each child’s STAAR scores in a clear, easy-to-understand way. You can see exactly where they’re strong and where they’re struggling. It even recommends targeted resources for learning support. It’s the kind of transparency that is so important in public education.

But here’s the problem: most parents never see it.

I know, because I’m one of them. As a public-school parent, I tried to log in to the website and spent hours chasing down the information, calling my child’s school, then the district, then trying again. I was asked for things like a “unique access code” and a PEIMS ID. When I finally got the code, it didn’t even work. It was the wrong one.

It shouldn’t be this hard.

If parents are partners with the school in their child’s education, we need to equip parents with the most basic, critical information: Is my child on grade level?

Right now, most don’t know. When the Go Beyond Grades campaign was launched in Fort Worth last spring, parents were surveyed across Tarrant County. 96% of them believed their children were reading on grade level. The reality? Only about 50% were.

That’s what we call the perception gap—and it’s one of the most urgent problems we face.

House Bill 5263 was designed to close that gap by making state assessment information, specifically STAAR results, easily accessible for all parents. It would ensure privacy, protect data, and empower parents to act when their child falls behind.

I shared this story with the committee. I brought pages of notes, anticipating tough questions. I got none. Not one. Maybe because the problem—and the solution—is so obvious. How could anyone be against this?

Unfortunately, HB 5263 didn’t survive the session. It was folded into HB 4, a broader accountability bill that ultimately failed to pass, getting stuck in negotiations between the House and the Senate.

That’s frustrating. But it doesn’t mean there’s nothing we can do.

Here in Fort Worth, we didn’t wait. Last year, Fort Worth ISD made the change. FWISD parents now have quick, easy access to their child’s state test scores. Other districts and public charter networks across Texas can do the same—and they should.

Until a statewide solution is in place, we’ll continue doing everything possible to help parents navigate the system. We’ve created a step-by-step guide to access the TEA’s site (Texasassessment.gov.docx), and we’re connecting families to free summer learning opportunities across Tarrant County that help students stay on track.

Because here’s what I know:
Parents may not always have access.
But they always care.

And when given the information they need, they act—because no one will fight harder for a child than their parent.

Let’s not make that fight any harder than it has to be.

Finishing Clifford Davis’s Fight

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One of Fort Worth’s most notable citizens died February 15: Clifford Davis. He was 100.

Born Oct. 12, 1924, Davis grew up the son of a sharecropper in Wilton, Arkansas. Wilton was deeply segregated, and the local Black school system stopped at the eighth grade. Clifford’s parents rented a house in Little Rock, the state capital, where he and five of his six siblings lived while attending high school and college.

He graduated from Philander Smith College, a historically Black institution, in 1945. Davis wanted to go to law school, but there were none in Arkansas that would accept Black applicants, so he moved to Washington, D.C. to attend Howard University, where he received his law degree in 1949.

He worked with Justice Thurgood Marshall on the landmark case, Brown v. Board of Education, that eventually led to school desegregation.

After moving to Fort Worth, Davis represented five Black students who were barred from attending Mansfield High School in 1955. Davis sued Mansfield ISD and won in 1956. When his clients attempted to enter the school, however, they were met by a mob. In 1959, he brought a class-action suit against Fort Worth ISD, which remained segregated. He won, and this time the system agreed to a plan to integrate its schools. Eventually Mansfield ISD and Fort Worth ISD integrated, largely because of lawsuits and pressure from Davis.

Davis opened one of the first Black law firms in Tarrant County and was one of the county’s first Black judges.

An elementary school in FWISD bears his name.

And here is where the story takes a turn.

Last year at Clifford Davis Elementary, 6% of students met grade level standards in reading on state assessments. 7% met grade level in math. That means, in a typical classroom, only 1 or 2 students are meeting grade level.

These results hold true across all the different groups of kids at the school, Black students, who make up 45% of the student population, show similar outcomes to the overall numbers.

And this is not about one school; across all subjects and all schools in Fort Worth, 77% of Black students are not meeting grade level.

As we honor the memory of Clifford Davis in Fort Worth, we are also forced to acknowledge that we as a community have defaulted on the promise of desegregation—that all children deserve equal access to a quality education. The school that bears Mr. Davis’s name stands as a stark reminder and symbol of that broken promise.

That’s why I believe literacy (and numeracy) is a civil rights issue. Clifford Davis was not just fighting for all children to have access to a school building. He was fighting for the idea that all our children have a fundamental right to a minimum standard of education—one that provides access to literacy.

Clifford Davis was right.

The most meaningful way we can honor Mr. Davis’s legacy today is to continue his fight, because what he was fighting for has not yet been realized.

Most of us who were born after the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s want to believe that if we had been alive then, we would have been on the right side, the side of Martin Luther King and Rosa Parks and Clifford Davis. The heroes we have read about. We want to believe that we would not have stood by and been OK with segregated schools, water fountains, and lunch counters.

What side would we have been on? What would we have done?

Here’s our chance to answer that question. In this very moment, 2025, in our city, all children still do not have access to the education they deserve. Whose side are we on now? What will we do now? What we tell our grandchildren about where we stood?

This isn’t about blame and certainly not about blaming one particular school. When Rosa Parks had to sit at the back of the bus, we didn’t just blame the bus or the bus driver. There are all kinds of big, complicated reasons for the situation we are in. Nevertheless, it is true: the promise of equal access to education has not been fulfilled in our time.

What if we as a city rallied to the cause? What if we collectively said, “Not on our watch?”

Let us, as a whole community, take up again Clifford Davis’s fight to give all the children of Fort Worth the opportunity to receive a good education. And let’s start with Clifford Davis Elementary School.

In her poem, Turning to One Another, Margaret Wheatley writes:

 

There is no greater power than a community discovering
what it cares about.
Ask “What is possible?” not “What’s wrong?” Keep asking.
Notice what you care about.
Assume that many others share your dreams.
Be brave enough to start a conversation that matters.

 

Ask. Discover. Notice. Dream. Be brave. Start conversations.

There is no power greater than a community discovering what it cares about.

 

Advocacy: Adding Our Voices to the Chorus

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The mission of the Fort Worth Education Partnership is to support, invest in, and coordinate opportunities that increase access to a high-quality education for Fort Worth children.

As we go about this work, one of the words that comes up often is “advocacy.”

After you do this work for a while, you begin to realize that it is not enough to provide funding to worthwhile programs, organizations, and schools (although that is a lot). You also have to advocate for these opportunities for families and children. And, even more importantly, you begin to realize that you have to empower those same families and children to themselves be advocates for these opportunities.

That is why the word “advocacy” comes up so often in our work.

It wasn’t until recently that I thought about the word “advocacy” itself. The word “advocate” actually comes from the courtroom. Its root is the Latin word vocare, which means “voice” or “calling.” It’s where we get our word “vocation,” which is the idea that we are all called to something in our lives; our vocation is our calling.

The “ad” at the beginning of the word “advocate” means “in the direction of” or “in addition to.” So an advocate is some who “adds” a “voice.” To advocate is to add a voice to a cause or a person. An advocate is anyone who adds that voice by representing another person in court, or by supporting or working toward a particular course of action.

So, in that sense, what a sacred privilege it is to “add a voice” to the voices of children and families in Fort Worth who are in need of and who are seeking the life-transforming opportunity of a high-quality education.

The unfortunate reality right now is that many, many children in our public school systems are struggling, for all kinds of complex social and systemic reasons, and they are not prepared for academic success beyond high school. Fewer than 10% of economically disadvantaged kids in Fort Worth are earning a two or four year degree within six years of graduating from high school.

There are parents and families in Fort Worth who are seeking something different and better, and rightfully so. They are working for it and speaking up for it. They are calling for the opportunity that each child in our city deserves. Some of these parents combined their voices into advocacy organizations, such as Parent Shield and Fort Worth Families Forward.

Count me in as an advocate for Fort Worth children and families. In fact, I when I think about what my vocation is these days, I believe it is to do what I am able to “add a voice” to theirs. I hope you will add your voice, as well, so that it becomes a rising chorus calling for opportunities for all to receive a great and life-changing education.

The Beauty of Quality Education for All

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High up in the Winchester Cathedral in England sits a stained glass window that is extremely unusual for the time in which it was created — the 17th century. It doesn’t represent a scene from the Bible. It doesn’t memorialize a saint.

It’s a kaleidoscope of colors, a very contemporary looking stained glass window. It’s as if someone from the 20th century traveled back in time to the 1600s and designed it.

This window is a relic from a destructive time. Troops from Oliver Cromwell’s army used iron bars to shatter the Winchester Cathedral’s ancient windows and break up all the statues. The troops left the ground outside the cathedral littered with fragments of glass.

What was for so long a unified whole was fragmented into many separate pieces.

The public education landscape looks a lot different today than it did when I was growing up in north Dallas in the late 70s and 80s. When I started kindergarten, I walked a couple of blocks over to my neighborhood elementary school with my best friend, Jon, who lived a few houses down. And then, as the years went by, Jon and I progressed automatically from there to our assigned junior high and high schools. There weren’t any other options to consider, other than private school, as far as we knew.

Consider, now, the patchwork quilt that is public education today. What was once a unified whole is now fragmented into many separate pieces. There is opportunity, though, in the pieces. There are a number of different avenues in Fort Worth by which our children and their families are seeking out a quality education:

  • neighborhood schools like the ones I went to and that my kids went to
  • district schools of choice like the I.M. Terrell, a school for vocal and performing arts and STEM, or the Applied Learning Academy
  • single gender district schools like the Young Men’s and Young Women’s Leadership Academies
  • district charter schools like the Leadership Academy Network, which is a partnership between FWISD and Texas Wesleyan University
  • special programs of choice within neighborhood district schools
  • early college high schools, which are partnerships between district schools and Tarrant County College where kids can graduate high school and receive and associate’s degree at the same time
  • a growing number of public charter schools.

The uniform education system of the past has evolved into a dynamic and diverse tapestry—an intricate quilt of many pieces, each contributing to a whole greater than the sum of its parts. This shift, while not without its challenges, has also created meaningful opportunities for growth and innovation.

To build on these opportunities, Fort Worth Education Partnership is dedicated to supporting and expanding this mix of quality schools, ensuring every child in Fort Worth has greater access to the best possible public education.

The unfortunate reality right now is that many children in our public school system are struggling for all kinds of complex social and systemic reasons and are not prepared for academic success beyond high school. Most Fort Worth third graders are not reading at grade level, and studies show that 75% of children who struggle with reading in third grade never catch up and are four times more likely to drop out before graduating.

Thousands of Fort Worth children are mired in generations of poverty, inadequate education, and lack of opportunity. Still, in some of the city’s most underserved areas, schools are achieving remarkable success in providing vulnerable students with access to a high-quality education. Some kids are getting a great public education in Fort Worth. But too many are not.

This is why I am grateful for the patchwork quilt that is public education today—neighborhood schools, district schools of choice, district-charter partnerships, early college high schools, and public charter schools. These options, accessible to all families, help expand opportunities beyond the constraints of a child’s ZIP code.

At our best in Fort Worth we are able to see public education not as a disjointed jumble of adults’ competing interests but as that beautiful patchwork quilt, working together every way possible with the best interests of Fort Worth kids at heart.

The truth is, when we weave our communities together, it is almost always stronger and more beautiful.

The people of Winchester in England were devastated that they lost their beautiful, ancient stained glass windows when Oliver Cromwell’s troops destroyed their cathedral in the 17th century. It was all they had ever known. What they did in response was gather and save all the fragmented pieces of stained glass that littered the ground.

Years later, when this violent time had passed, one cathedral worker volunteered for the difficult task of re-installing the windows. High on a scaffold, he assembled all those broken pieces into an abstraction of color.

It resembled nothing in Europe at that time, and even today it stands out. And no one can deny that those windows of reconstructed bits of glass are a work of great beauty, a work of art. The light from the sun filters through to illumine the cathedral with a constantly changing mosaic of colors.

Even when the unified social fabric we used to know comes apart, new life and beauty can come from the pieces when they are put back together. The pieces can become raw material for the creation of something new and beautiful — something that establishes connection, builds relationships, offers care, creates trust, educates all our children, and makes our communities better places for all.

And that is beautiful.