In his latest blog, our CEO examines the role education plays as a pathway out of poverty for children. "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."

In this conversation with Brent, Pete reflects on his time as Under Secretary of the Army and Secretary of the Army under two administrations, and as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives—and how those experiences have shaped his leadership today as President of the Sid W. Richardson Foundation. Pete and Brent discuss how politics have changed over the years and how to create meaningful change within government and large bureaucracies, particularly those responsible for education. They also talk about who Sid Richardson was and the foundation that bears his name.

William McKenzie writes about the community response in Fort Worth from education advocates, parents, and nonprofits to call attention to and help solve the literacy crisis in Fort Worth.

In this episode of Paying Attention, Brent Beasley sits down with Pete Geren to discuss Fort Worth’s literacy crisis and what it will take to improve student reading outcomes. Drawing on his work with the Sid Richardson Foundation, Pete shares what philanthropy can—and can’t—do to move the needle. Together, they examine the hard realities behind the data and why leadership, alignment, and accountability matter.

Brent sits down with Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, Executive Director of Parent Shield Fort Worth. Trenace talks about the organization's work supporting families and helping parents navigate the school system. She discusses the importance of parent voice, the need for clear information, and what it looks like to stay focused on a mission that puts students first.

Four Fort Worth schools stand out as bright spots in the education system.

Although Fort Worth leaders have expressed concern about the direction of the city’s school system, there are a number of campuses that outperform expectations, according to a new report from the Fort Worth Education Partnership.

Fewer than one in five Fort Worth students earn a college degree within six years of graduating from high school, according to a new study.

FORT WORTH, Texas — A new report reveals sobering data on the state of education in Fort Worth.

Fewer than 1 in 5 Fort Worth students earn a postsecondary degree within six years of graduating high school, according to a new report released Sept. 15.

Only about one in five Fort Worth middle school students goes on to earn a degree from a Texas college, according to a new report from the nonprofit Fort Worth Education Partnership.

Mayor Mattie Parker sits down with Brent to discuss the future she envisions for Fort Worth, governing in a divisive environment, and what that may mean for those who choose public service in the future.

Intervención estatal en Fort Worth ISD — Preguntas frecuentes

In part two of her conversation with Brent, Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Dr. Karen Molinar discusses the district’s upcoming school closures and the extensive process behind those decisions — including a review of facilities, enrollment trends, and campus locations. She also shares how Texas’s new cellphone ban has influenced classroom culture, improving both student engagement and teacher connection.

State Intervention in Fort Worth ISD FAQ

Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker joins Brent on the latest episode of Paying Attention to talk about public education in our city. They have a back-and-forth conversation about the challenges and opportunities facing Fort Worth students, what led her to raise awareness about the educational outcomes of students in Fort Worth ISD last fall, the changes in FWISD over the past year, the possibility of state takeover, and how city and school leadership can collaborate to drive change.

FWISD Superintendent Dr. Karen Molinar joins Brent to discuss the past year since her appointment and all the changes she has implemented. She shares her approach to improving academic results and offers her perspective on the Texas Education Agency’s potential takeover of the district.

In Season 1, Episode 1 of our new podcast, Paying Attention, Brent sits down with Leila Santillán, COO at FWEP, to discuss their latest report, High School and Beyond, which tracks three cohorts of 8th-grade students from Fort Worth city public schools and six years after graduation. The realization that only 19% of students finish a two- or four-year degree within six years of graduating high school is sobering - and worth paying attention to. Watch the full episode here or listen wherever you get your podcasts.

FWEP is trying something new: We’ve launched a podcast called Paying Attention. While the podcast highlights education and education-related issues in Fort Worth, it also shines a light on the people in our community doing good and important things.

Citywide proficiency now sits just two points below the pre‑pandemic benchmark of 39%, but no City Council district has yet seen even half of its students meet grade‑level standards—highlighting persistent educational inequality.

Fort Worth ISD posted the largest STAAR gains in the city, helping boost Fort Worth’s overall grade-level proficiency to 37% — the first increase since 2022. The biggest jumps came from schools serving mid-to-high economically disadvantaged students, while lower-poverty schools saw smaller improvements.

Brent Beasley, FWEP CEO, sits down with Cleo Green on Texas Today to discuss the 2025 City of Fort Worth Academic Performance Report, the results, bright spot schools, and why literacy at a young age is so important.

A recent poll asking Tarrant County residents how they perceive and prioritize public education showed that they want multiple school choices in their community, and they want a system that provides open information about academic performance, according to a report released on Tuesday.

Brent reflects on the surprising unity revealed in FWEP’s recent polling of Fort Worth residents. Despite today’s political polarization, families across race, income, and party lines share a clear vision for public education: they want strong academic standards, more high-quality school options, and transparent information about student performance. Originally published as an op-ed in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, this piece highlights the opportunity our community has to move forward together—and ensure every child has access to a great education.

In his latest blog, our CEO reflects on testifying before the Texas Legislature in support of a bill that would make STAAR results easier for parents to access. He shares his personal experience as a public-school parent navigating the confusing system and highlights why this issue matters. The bill didn’t pass—but the work continues. Learn how local districts are stepping up and how we’re helping families get the information they need. Because every parent deserves to know if their child is meeting grade level requirements.

Clifford Davis dedicated his life to ensuring all children had access to a quality education. Yet today, at the school named after him, only 6% of students meet grade-level reading standards, and 7% in math. Across Fort Worth, many students still face significant learning gaps. Desegregation was about more than access—it was about opportunity. As a community, we have the chance to build on Davis’s legacy by working together to improve education for all children. By starting conversations and seeking solutions, we can help ensure every child has the opportunity to succeed. How can we move forward together?

At FWEP, our mission is clear: expand access to high-quality education for Fort Worth children. But beyond funding great schools and programs, we’ve realized something bigger—true impact comes from advocacy. Advocacy isn’t just about speaking up; it’s about adding a voice to those calling for better opportunities. Parents and families in Fort Worth are already raising their voices for change—will you join?

Public education has transformed into a diverse "patchwork quilt" of schools and programs, giving families more choices than ever. Despite ongoing challenges like inequities and academic struggles, this new landscape creates opportunities for innovation and collaboration. Together, we can build a stronger, more inclusive education system that empowers every child and strengthens our community. Discover how Fort Worth is making it happen.

Learning a new profession is sometimes best done by just diving in—but not teaching. High-quality teacher residency programs are now considered the gold standard for training new teachers and gives them real classroom experience alongside skilled mentors so they don’t have to struggle alone to keep afloat. FWEP is dedicated to helping Fort Worth’s schools and students benefit from these residency programs through a grant that offers aspiring teachers year-long, hands-on experience and strong support. Investing in these programs ensures that new teachers enter their careers ready to make a real impact from day one—so students don’t experience the ‘flailing’ that can come when someone is left to figure it out on their own.

One of the key indicators that a teacher will stay for the long haul is making it beyond year five. Those who make that goal post are more likely to remain in the profession. One way to increase retention, education experts say, is to increase in-classroom training time. A Texas Wesleyan University program received a three-year, $300,000 grant from the Fort Worth Education Partnership. The university is expanding its teacher residency program, a clinical teaching program where students spend time in the classroom for a full year rather than the typical one semester. Right now, the university is working on placing teachers in Fort Worth ISD.

It is not uncommon for us to hear local education leaders respond to low academic achievement numbers by pointing out how many of our students live in poverty—implying that we shouldn’t expect schools with large numbers of children from low-income families to achieve academic excellence. I find the “but our kids are living in poverty” justification for low levels of student achievement discouraging and alarming—especially when it comes from our education leaders. As our Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker has said recently: “We cannot allow poverty to be the determining factor in a child’s success academically.”

The Fort Worth school district’s “unacceptable” student achievement has the attention of state lawmakers, who say action needs to be taken for improvement. Fort Worth Mayor Mattie Parker and other leaders sent a letter to district leadership on Tuesday, demanding better academic performance. The letter follows the release of state test scores that show the district lags other large urban districts. The “unacceptable” results on state tests narrow students’ opportunities and have long-term workforce, economic development, poverty and public health consequences, Parker wrote.

Mayor Mattie Parker laid out her case for why Fort Worth ISD needs a turnaround plan. She used results from the state standardized test, called the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, from the Texas Education Agency and compared Fort Worth ISD’s performance to similar districts. Regardless of how the data is sliced, the same trend is noticeable: Fort Worth ISD performs worse than other districts, including Dallas and Houston ISDs, the two districts that Parker pointed to as having seen significant growth in the past decade.

Fort Worth Education Partnership is releasing our annual report this week that details how students in Fort Worth schools are doing academically. As I have reflected on this year’s report, I have thought about the fences that keep people in and out—the fences that keep too many of our Fort Worth kids from access to opportunity.

FWEP CEO Brent Beasley discusses the results from the organization's 2024 annual report on the academic performance of schools in Fort Worth.

Education remains at a standstill in Fort Worth, according to a new report. The Fort Worth Education Partnership, a nonprofit committed to high quality public education in the city, released its annual analysis of Fort Worth public schools, both traditional and charter. Overall, 35% of students who live in Fort Worth met grade-level standards — a 1 percentage point decline from the 2023 report.

Across the city, only about one in three Fort Worth students met grade level on last spring’s state test, according to a new analysis of assessment data. The nonprofit Fort Worth Education Partnership released its annual report showing a breakdown of state test scores across all parts of the city on Monday. According to the report, 35% of students across all grades and subjects performed on grade level on last spring’s state test, a one-point decline compared to last year.

More than two years after Texas schools reopened, Fort Worth students’ academic performance continues to lag behind pre-pandemic norms, according to state test scores released Friday. The new data underscores the uphill battle for students and teachers attempting to rebound from the impacts of the pandemic while the Texas Education Agency has added changes to State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR, including the use of artificial intelligence to grade written answers that was rolled out this spring and a new format that launched in spring 2023.

Newly released state standardized test results from spring 2024 show schools in the city saw a 1 percentage-point drop in the number of students meeting grade level across subjects, according to the Fort Worth Education Partnership. The Texas Education Agency released results for third- through eighth-grade reading and math tests.

Alexia Hernandez, a junior at Fort Worth ISD’s Young Women’s Leadership Academy, is still weighing her options for colleges.

A $7,500 grant awarded to her school will allow her and six other students from the robotics team to tour two faraway colleges. The Fort Worth Education Partnership grant provides funds for sophomores and juniors to visit the University of Texas at El Paso and New Mexico State University in Las Cruces.

In the next few years, parents of elementary students in the Fort Worth Independent School District will no longer see letter grades on their kids’ report cards.

Fort Worth ISD officials are planning to shift to a new grading model for lower grades that shows parents how students are performing against state standards instead of a raw percentage for each subject. It’s one of a pair of changes the district is making with an eye toward giving parents more information about how their kids are doing academically.

Texas lawmakers passed a measure at the end of their regular 2023 session that helped move the state forward in its effort to improve reading outcomes. HB 1605 includes several elements, including creating a process and incentives for districts to purchase high quality instructional materials approved by the State Board of Education. Importantly, it also bans the use of three-cueing, an ineffective instructional practice commonly used in balanced literacy that teaches young readers to rely on visual and meaning cues to guess a word.

Education advocates in Fort Worth say there’s a worrisome disconnect between where students are in reading and math and how parents think their kids are doing in school, potentially leaving parents with the mistaken impression that their kids don’t need any extra help.

Civic leader Pete Geren sees education in Fort Worth as being in a crisis — one that is hiding in plain sight and not being addressed.

One in three students across the city’s 12 school districts and 14 charter networks met grade level on the state standardized tests, according to a new report from the Fort Worth Education Partnership, a nonprofit committed to high quality public education in the city.

Fort Worth’s public school students lost ground in reading on this year’s state test, according to a new analysis of test results.

The Fort Worth Education Partnership presented its annual report on the city’s state test results at a Fort Worth city council work session Tuesday. Across all grades and subjects, 36% of students in the city scored on grade level, according to the analysis. That’s the same percentage as last year. Students made progress in math, climbing from 30% last year to 34% this year.

But results dipped in reading, with 44% scoring on grade level this year, down from 46% last year, according to the report.

Although students in the Fort Worth area have made progress in reading since the pandemic, an official in the Fort Worth Independent School District told its board last week that the district is still seeing worrisome declines in early literacy indicators among Black students in third grade and below. Officials say they’re working with the district’s new leadership team to give added support to campuses in the district that need the most help.

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins is on a mission. The mother of two daughters and one stepson wants parents across her hometown of Fort Worth to know exactly how well their children’s schools are doing in subjects like reading and math.

Don’t let A’s and B’s on report cards fool you, the 38-year-old said during a conversation at her shared Fort Worth workspace one recent morning. Dig deeper into what data says about the school’s performance on state achievement tests. If you don’t like what you see, get active.

Some crises call for all hands on deck. The discouraging record of public schools in the Fort Worth area and Texas more broadly is one of them.

If city leaders want to get involved in helping improve education, more power to them. It’s important that it be done the right way, respecting the school board trustees whom voters have chosen. Other leaders must try to be supportive, not supervisory.

The Fort Worth Education Partnership looked at the 141,500 students enrolled in 12 independent school districts and the 17,900 students in 15 charter school networks. The report examined only the performance of third- to eighth-grade math, science and social studies. That means slightly more than one in three Fort Worth students are performing at or above their grade. This marks an 8 percentage point gain from 2021. However, the 2022 figure is still 3 percentage points lower than in 2019, the last year before the pandemic.

Although students have made significant gains over the past year, Fort Worth schools' performance on last spring's state exams still lagged behind the numbers they posted in 2019, before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new report.

Nearly two out of three students in third through eighth grades across the City of Fort Worth aren't meeting grade level on state tests.

The finding came in a report delivered to the city council this week, breaking down student performance across the city, rather than individual districts or schools.