Fort Worth students are making measurable gains in the classroom.
New STAAR results show 39% of the city’s public school students met grade level this spring — the highest citywide performance on record and the third straight year of improvement.
The Fort Worth Education Partnership, a non-profit that tracks the performance of Fort Worth area schools and students, acknowledge there is a lot of work to do, but their 2026 Fort Worth Academic Report uncovered an encouraging story inside those numbers.
This latest data also reflects progress made before the state takeover of Fort Worth ISD in March.
President and CEO of the Fort Worth Education Partnership Brent Beasley spoke with NTX Now's Miranda Suarez and Ron Corning about the details of the report, and solutions to keep improving.
These interview highlights have been edited for length and clarity. To hear the full conversation, click the 'listen' button above.
Overall findings
Beasley mentions many statistics that are encouraging to him.
- 39% of Fort Worth's 165,000 plus public school students met grade level on the STAAR test.
- 78% of campuses that serve high economically disadvantaged students improved, and they're growing at a faster rate than other campuses.
- An increase of 2% of kids at FWISD are meeting grade level requirements.
Beasley says while 2% doesn't feel like a big number, when you look at the increasing trends and the total amount of students, it's a positive statistic.
"Two consecutive years at 2% a year, so now that's 4%," he said. "There's 165,000 students in all these schools. So that means there's thousands of kids — 4% is thousands more kids who are where they need to be academically."
Disparity between schools
Beasley says the top performing school in the city is Overton Park Elementary, and the lowest performing school is William James Middle School.
At Overton Park Elementary, 87% of the kids are meeting grade level. At William James Middle School,
12% of the kids are meeting grade level.
Beasley explains while factors like poverty can explain these differences, there's a lot of variation within generalizations to keep in mind.
"Schools that have mostly low income kids versus schools that have more affluent kids from more affluent families, generally the trends show that the higher the income of the families, the higher their performance," he said. "But within that trend, there is a lot variation."
"So there can be schools with very similar demographics that are very different," he said. "William James has a lot of low-income kids and it's performing really poorly, but there are other schools in Fort Worth that have the same number of low income kids that are performing a lot better. So the general trend is one thing, but inside that trend, there's actually a lot variation."
Miranda Suarez and Ron Corning are the hosts of KERA's NTX Now. Got a tip? Email Miranda at msuarez@kera.org or Ron at rcorning@kera.org.
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