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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.