Fort Worth ISD’s learning-rate trend was among the weakest in the nation from 2022 to 2025, according to a new analysis.
The findings come from the Education Scorecard, a collaboration between Harvard University’s Center for Education Policy Research, Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project and faculty at Dartmouth College. The report uses state test results for roughly 35 million students in third through eighth grades nationwide to compare district-level, post-pandemic academic recovery.
The district’s learning rate — how much students improve year to year in math and reading — was 0.54 grade levels per year, putting FWISD in the bottom 2% nationally for learning rate.
Fort Worth ISD ranked 8,019th of the 8,147 districts with available learning-rate data.
Of the 6,065 districts with trend data, Fort Worth ISD ranked 5,861st — worse than 97% of districts nationwide.
The district showed continued decline as other school systems recovered from pandemic losses, according to the report.
Fort Worth ISD board of managers President Pete Geren said the data reinforces what district leaders already know.
“We are failing our kids,” Geren said. “It’s a moral imperative to do something about it. That’s why our focus is student outcomes, student outcomes, student outcomes.”
The goal of the district’s new leadership is to turn those numbers around for students, Geren said.
“Change adult behavior to improve student outcomes,” Geren said.
He said Superintendent Peter Licata and the board of managers are committed to giving students the education they deserve. Texas Education Commissioner Mike Morath appointed the managers and Licata as part of a state takeover of the 67,500-student district.
The Education Scorecard describes learning rates as a better indicator of school quality than average test scores because test scores are also shaped by factors outside of school, including family income, neighborhoods and preschool access. The measure looks at how much students’ scores improve as they move from grade to grade.
The data shows a sharply uneven academic recovery across Fort Worth-area schools.
Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD posted the strongest Fort Worth-area learning rate at 1.12 grade levels per year, meaning students learned more than one grade level per year on average from 2022 to 2025. Aledo ISD followed at 1.01.
Castleberry ISD posted some of the fastest improvement trends in the nation.
Superintendent Renee Smith-Faulkner credited the district’s additional school days, after-school tutoring, enrichment programs and early literacy work for helping students improve faster than similar districts.
The Education Scorecard named Castleberry one of Texas’ “Districts on the Rise.” The designation recognizes districts outperforming similar peers in both math and reading.
Seeing Castleberry listed as one of three Texas districts on the rise was a pleasant surprise, Smith-Faulkner said in a written response.
Castleberry ranked in the top 1% nationally for math trend, meaning its math scores improved faster than nearly every district with available data. Castleberry ranked 28th out of 5,468 districts with available math trend data.
Castleberry also ranked in the top 5% nationally for reading trend, even though its average reading scores remain below the national median.
Fort Worth, Everman and Lake Worth ranked near the bottom nationally in at least one major measure, highlighting uneven recovery across the region.
Spokespeople from Everman and Lake Worth did not respond to a request for comment prior to publication.
Like Fort Worth, Lake Worth is under state-appointed management following years of low academic performance at individual campuses.
Among 13 Fort Worth-area districts, FWISD had the second-lowest learning rate, ahead of only Everman ISD.
Texas ranked 28th out of 38 states in math growth and 25th out of 35 states in reading growth between 2022 and 2025, according to the report. In reading, the report specifically named Fort Worth and Arlington among districts that continue to slip and remain behind their 2019 levels.
“The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement,” Thomas Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University, wrote in the report. “The ‘learning recession’ started a decade ago, after policymakers switched off the early warning system of test-based accountability and social media took over children’s lives.”
Absenteeism remains a drag on recovery
The Education Scorecard links chronic absenteeism to uneven academic recovery.
Nationally, 23% of students were chronically absent in 2024-25, down from the post-pandemic peak but still above the pre-pandemic rate of 15%, according to the report. Researchers estimated that if absenteeism returned to pre-pandemic levels, academic recovery would have been larger.
In Texas, chronic absenteeism fell from more than 25% in 2022 to 19% in 2024, but remained almost 8 percentage points higher than before the pandemic, according to the state report.
Fort Worth-area districts also saw chronic absenteeism rise after the pandemic.
Everman, Crowley and Fort Worth ISDs had the largest local increases, all above the statewide increase of 10.2 percentage points. Fort Worth’s rate rose by 14.3 points, while Hurst-Euless-Bedford had the smallest local increase at 5.9 points.
The report also found uneven recovery by income level. High-income and low-income districts improved more since 2022, while middle-income districts — those where 30% to 70% of students receive federally subsidized lunches — lagged behind.
Researchers said federal pandemic aid helped drive gains in many high-poverty districts. Texas received about $19.23 billion in federal K-12 pandemic relief, or about $3,500 per student, according to the report.
Now that the federal relief money is gone, the report recommends states focus school improvement dollars on middle- and high-poverty districts that remain behind their pre-pandemic levels.
Castleberry and 107 other Districts on the Rise show leadership matters and that demographics are not destiny, Kane said.
“We owe it to our children to understand what they are doing and help spread it,” Kane wrote.
Disclosure: FWISD manager Pete Geren leads the Sid W. Richardson Foundation, a financial supporter of the Fort Worth Report. FWISD manager Laurie George is a member of the Report’s reader advisory council. FWISD manager Courtney Lewis is a member of the Report’s business advisory council. At the Fort Worth Report, news decisions are made independently of our board members and financial supporters. Read more about our editorial independence policy here.
Matthew Sgroi is an education reporter for the Fort Worth Report. Contact him at matthew.sgroi@fortworthreport.org or @matthewsgroi1.
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