Fort Worth ISD mid-year academic performance shows promise in reading, gaps in math scores
The Fort Worth Independent School District's middle-of-the-year test scores for reading and math have yielded a mixed bag of results, but district officials say the scores show a limited reflection of the extra tutoring support recently implemented by the district.
Interim Superintendent Karen Molinar gave a presentation on Tuesday, Feb. 18, updating the school board on the latest MAP scores, or Measures of Academic Progress test, and whether the current performance of students are on track to meet the district's state performance goals for the next five years. The test is administered by the district at the beginning, middle and end of each school year and serves as a gauge for how students could perform on STAAR, or State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness.
While third-grade students are on track to meet their spring 2025 reading goal set by the district — 33% meeting or above grade level for state testing standards — the same third-graders are currently off track to meet their spring 2025 math goal, which is 32% meeting or above grade level.
Looking at grades 6-8, students are on track to meet these same performance measures in reading — at 32% — while just missing the mark for math performance, even though the percentage of students meeting proficiency standards on the MAP test is identical to the district's spring 2025 STAAR goal, which is 22%.
'This is an area of concern for our grade 3 math. But what this tells us is that this time of the year, we need to put more intensive and strategic and explicit interventions in place around the area of math,' Molinar said. 'When we have looked at our middle-of-the-year data before, we didn't do any systemic interventions and targets to make a change in the data. However, we have already committed that our (middle of the year) data will change where we're deploying some of our interventions and supports out to our campuses.'
Molinar noted the ongoing tutoring support from about 150 central administration staff who are mainly focused on reading and math intervention, and how the initiative only has been active for about five weeks. Students take the middle-of-the-year MAP test when returning to school from winter break.
When looking at STAAR reading projections for grades 3-8, the difference from beginning-of-the-year data to middle-of-the-year data shows minimal improvement. The projections show just 1 percentage point increase in students mastering grade level, 2 percentage point decrease in students meeting grade level and 1 percentage point increase in students not meeting grade level. The projections for math for grades 3-8 only show an increase in the percentage of students not meeting grade level.
Molinar acknowledged the district is not where it needs to be but highlighted and commemorated specific teachers whose students are excelling in these subjects. In Graciela Blanco-Davis' first-grade class at Natha Howell Elementary School, 100% of students are meeting or exceeding their growth targets for reading by the middle of the year.
'We are not where we need to be as a district. However, we need to celebrate our teachers that are showing tremendous gains,' Molinar said.
A bright spot in the MAP testing data shows a 12-percentage-point gain from a year ago to now with 36% of students performing at grade level or above in Algebra 1. When looking at STAAR projections for this subject, there's a 4-percentage-point increase in students mastering grade level.
Molinar also shared an update on the tutoring initiative of central administration staff, all of whom are certified teachers, who are providing small-group tutoring two to three times a week throughout the district. As of Feb. 10, there were more than 10,600 support hours logged; more than 17,100 support sessions recorded; and more than 2,600 students served. The students receiving tutoring are surpassing their peers and the district overall in meeting their MAP growth targets, Molinar said.
School board Trustee Anne Darr said she was excited to see some of the gains in reading and asked Molinar what the plan was to boost math performance.
'We need to go back and look at what resources we're asking our intervention support teams to utilize, especially in (those) areas of math, the alignment with those resources, and to see if they need additional training as well,' Molinar said. 'Everyone's always stronger in one content or another. I was a teacher; I was a lot stronger in literacy than I would have been if I was a math teacher. So we need to make sure we also are providing support to the teachers that they also have the knowledge base to be able to intervene with our math students.'
At the Tuesday meeting, Molinar was also named as the sole finalist for the permanent superintendent position just moments before her presentation. She has served in the interim position for about four months after the resignation of former superintendent Angélica Ramsey. The school board had received about a dozen applications from superintendent candidates over 10 days, starting on Jan. 23, before selecting Molinar. The board is expected to take final action on her hiring at a special meeting on March 11.
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