Go Beyond Grades

Several years ago, Pete Geren of the Sid Richardson Foundation and I began to realize how few of the kids in our local public schools were reading and doing math at grade level. For example, in all of the district and charter schools located in the city of Fort Worth, only 36% of kids are at grade level. And it’s not just in high-poverty schools where kids are not doing as well as they need to be. In one of our suburban school districts, Keller ISD, just over half of students overall are meeting grade level.

There are real world consequences to this. One study shows that of the third-graders in Texas who were not at grade level, less than 1% of them got a college-ready score on the SAT or ACT when they took it in high school. And did you know that only about 20% of our Tarrant County kids are earning a college degree (2 or 4-year)?

We have wondered, Why aren’t more people seeing this as a crisis?

I think the answer is that most people don’t know.

A poll conducted by Learning Heroes in February and March indicated that parents of Tarrant County public school students almost universally think their kids are doing well academically. Of those surveyed, 96% thought their kids were at or above grade level in reading, and 92% thought they were at or above grade level in math. But state test scores tell a different story. Across the county, just 52% of public school students scored on grade level or better on last spring’s State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR. Just 43% scored on grade level or better in math. Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/education/article287427995.html#storylink=cpy

This is why we are supporting the Go Beyond Grades campaign.

As Silas Allen wrote in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram last week:

Brent Beasley, director of the Fort Worth Education Partnership, said he hopes the campaign will help Tarrant County parents understand the problem. There’s a certain amount of awareness of the issue among city leaders, he said — he’s given presentations on the disconnect to the Fort Worth City Council and other groups.

But until that awareness makes its way down to parents making decisions about their kids’ education, Beasley said it will be a difficult problem to solve. That’s because the lack of awareness itself is the main factor driving the issue. If parents know that their kids need extra help, he’s confident that most will either offer it themselves or find outside help like after-school tutoring. There’s no lack of resources available for parents who know to look for them, he said. But the grading system most schools use isn’t designed to help parents understand when their kids need help.

Beasley said he hopes the campaign will help spread that message more broadly than local community organizations have been able to do on their own. Once parents start to see messages about the mismatch on their drive to and from work or when they open their favorite social media apps, he hopes they’ll be more likely to have a conversation with their kids’ teachers..“

There’s a big gap there between what people believe and what is the reality,” he said. “We have a lot of faith in parents, that they will do what they have to do to take care of their kids if they know the reality.”

Read more at: https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/education/article287427995.html#storylink=cpy

I hope you’ll visit the Go Beyond Grades website here: https://gobeyondgrades.org/tarrant/ and read the excellent articles by Jacob Sanchez and Silas Allen in the Fort Worth Report and the Star-Telegram:

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/local/education/article287427995.html

Most Tarrant County students aren’t at grade level. This new campaign wants to change that