The dream that lies behind my organization, Fort Worth Education Partnership, is that all children in Fort Worth, regardless of where they live or how much money their family has, will have access to a high-quality public education.
Why do we aspire to such a thing? It’s not just because of the inherent value of learning, although I do believe a good education has deep value in and of itself. The main reason, though, for our aspiration for Fort Worth kids is that we believe a good education can be something that can change a person’s life. Education can open closed doors and be a path out of poverty for many children. A good public education can have a life transforming power.
That’s why I was so taken aback at something a speaker said at a recent Fort Worth ISD Board of Managers meeting. In public comment, this speaker said that “students are only able to be as successful in the classroom as what their experiences and circumstances outside the classroom permit.” In other words, the circumstances a child lives in place a cap on his or her ability to achieve academically. I had to back up the YouTube livestream to listen to it again and make sure I heard it correctly. I did.
Of course it’s not true that people cannot succeed academically beyond the level of their existing circumstances and experiences. All of us can quickly think of numerous examples from history of individuals who were able to be successful in the classroom well beyond the level of their extremely difficult life circumstances in their formative years: Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Viola Davis, George Washington Carver, Sonia Sotomayor, Clifford Davis, Bill Clinton, and Ruth Simmons, just to name a few well-known ones. And besides famous people, we all know friends, family, or colleagues who grew up in difficult circumstances but used education as a vehicle to create opportunity in their own lives.
Besides being false, the speaker’s statement that places limits on what kids in poverty can do is also paternalistic and offensive. Imagine the audacity of a well-educated, relatively affluent white person of privilege to speak on behalf of families living in poverty, predominately communities of color, and tell the rest of us what they are capable of.
There is something else, though, about the comment that is, I think, even more important to address, because it gets at the heart of the work in which we are engaged.
As we at Fort Worth Education Partnership have reported on academic performance across schools in twelve Independent School Districts and thirteen charter networks operating in Fort Worth, this claim comes up year after year: that school performance is simply a function of poverty.
Certainly, the percentage of economically disadvantaged students a school serves has historically been strongly correlated with student proficiency, a pattern often referred to as the Achievement Gap or, more recently, the Opportunity Gap.
However, it’s equally true that even among schools serving similar student populations, we see a wide variation in outcomes, including right here in Fort Worth. For example, currently in Fort Worth there are two schools with the same grade levels served, each with fewer than 10% economically disadvantaged students, that differ by nearly 30 percentage points in the number of students meeting grade-level math standards. Likewise, among two Fort Worth schools where more than 90% of students are economically disadvantaged, there is a gap of more than 40 percentage points.
If students’ academic performance were solely a function of economic status, how do we explain these large differences between schools with such similar demographics?
I would encourage you to read Fort Worth Education Partnership’s 2025 report, Cultivating Hope: Fort Worth Bright Spot Schools, to learn more about schools in Fort Worth that are right now proving what is possible with students who live in low-income environments.
I believe this is a fundamental issue for all of us in Fort Worth who are concerned about children who live in poverty and the opportunities they will have: Is education a path out of poverty? Or is poverty destiny when it comes to learning?
This question is fundamental, because if educational outcomes are predetermined by poverty, why try to improve public education at all?
As my colleague Leila Santillan has written:
None of us is blind to the real, structural, and societal inequities that face kids in poverty and black and brown children. We should work to solve them. That isn’t the point we are debating. We are debating whether or not public education exists precisely because circumstances are unequal. My belief is that it’s a democratic intervention designed to disrupt and offset the predetermination of circumstances.
Are public schools more like hospitals, where sick people go to get well, or hospice, where dying people go to be made as comfortable as possible while facing the inevitable?
No rational person would ever deny that in a large urban environment with high levels of poverty, educational achievement can be extremely difficult to obtain. Students experiencing poverty have many significant challenges to overcome. We as individuals and as a state and nation should be doing more to address those challenges. I believe our government should be investing far more in addressing the causes and problems of poverty.
However, for me and many others in Fort Worth, the answer is not to give up on education as a means of change for individual students until we eradicate poverty. In fact, our hope and expectations for Fort Worth students are crucial ingredients in the change we seek.
Recent research has repeatedly uncovered the link between high expectations and student achievement outcomes.[1] In fact, TNTP’s The Opportunity Myth found that no resource was more impactful on student achievement than high expectations and a belief that students could meet grade-level standards. In fact, when high expectations were present, students gained more than four months of additional learning progress.[2]
Further, the effect of high expectations was even stronger when students started off the year behind, like many of our kids in Fort Worth are. It makes sense intuitively; when we believe students can meet the bar set by grade-level standards, we offer stronger assignments and instruction. In classrooms where students started the year behind their peers – students with adults who held high expectations and a belief that they could meet grade-level standards saw an additional 8 months of achievement growth.
We do better when more is expected of us. That is why it is so important that our educational and city systems operate with the belief that all kids can and should succeed. Many of our kids in Fort Worth are experiencing poverty, and they can learn and achieve at high levels.
Only 37% of Fort Worth ISD kids are reading at grade level. And those numbers are much lower in schools in certain parts of our city. But we cannot allow poverty or zip code or family situation to be the determining factor in a child’s success academically and the future opportunity that success can provide. Surely most of us can agree on this.
Let’s debate how to best educate economically disadvantaged students—not if we can educate them.
There is a famous George Washington Carver quote about education and opportunity. He did not say “The door to education is locked for those who live in difficult circumstances.” Carver’s life proved otherwise. What he said was this: “Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.”
May it be so for Fort Worth’s children.
[1] https://fordhaminstitute.org/national/commentary/high-expectations-drive-student-success [2] https://tntp.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/TNTP_The-Opportunity-Myth_Web.pdf
