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.
The report, titled “Cultivating Hope: Fort Worth Bright Spot Schools,” was released Monday. In it, the nonprofit highlights four campuses that perform well academically despite having large numbers of economically disadvantaged students.
Across all public and charter school campuses in the Fort Worth city limits, students met grade level standards 37% of the time on last spring’s STAAR exam, according to a separate report by the nonprofit. Monday’s report compares state test scores among campuses with similar racial and ethnic makeups, rates of economic disadvantage and percentages of students who are in special education or English language acquisition programs to determine which schools are outperforming their peers.
Here are the four campuses highlighted in the report:
Alice Contreras Elementary School (Fort Worth ISD)
Economically disadvantaged student population: 92%
Special education student population: 19%
Emergent bilingual student population: 54%
Located in south Fort Worth’s Rosemont neighborhood, Alice Contreras serves 441 students in grades pre-K-5. On last spring’s STAAR exam, 55% of the school’s students scored on grade level in reading and 51% were on grade level in math.
Principal Amelia Cortes-Rangel said the school’s strategy includes three key elements: offering students the highest-quality instruction possible, improving campus climate so that students, teachers and community members all feel welcome and focusing on student data so teachers can see where each individual student is succeeding and where they need extra support.
Community partnerships are also critical, Cortes-Rangel said. During her first year as principal, she worked with other campus leaders to build more relationships with outside groups. Now, the school partners with the Optimist Club of Fort Worth to offer after-school sports programs and participates in Battle of the Books, a reading incentive program, and a number of University Interscholastic League activities, she said.
Those partnerships offer students opportunities they might not otherwise have, Cortes-Rangel said, but they can also be motivators for teachers. When teachers see outside volunteers and organizations come to school to help out, she said, it’s a reminder that they aren’t doing the work of educating students alone.
IDEA Edgecliff College Prep (IDEA Public Schools)
Economically disadvantaged student population: 79%
Special education student population: 14%
Emergent bilingual student population: 37%
Located in south Fort Worth’s Edgecliff Village neighborhood, IDEA Edgecliff College Prep serves 604 students in grades 6-11. On last spring’s STAAR exam, 61% of students scored on grade level in reading and 48% were on grade level in math.
Senior Principal Kenieka Francis said the campus sets high expectations for student achievement and then follows those expectations up with the support teachers and students need to reach that threshold. The campus’ instructional team spends most of their time in classrooms working with teachers to improve their instructional skills, she said. There’s also a heavy emphasis on data analysis, she said — teachers analyze students’ work to see how they’re performing and develop strategies for closing gaps.
Cesar Chavez Primary School (Fort Worth ISD)
Economically disadvantaged student population: 94%
Special education student population: 22%
Emergent bilingual student population: 69%
Principal Monica Ordaz said Cesar Chavez places a strong emphasis on teacher collaboration. The district’s curriculum is too heavy for any single person to know all of it, she said. So by working together, teachers can build on each other’s areas of expertise and raise the quality of the instruction in the building overall, she said.
Leaders at Cesar Chavez have tried to map out the school’s instructional plans by looking at what students are expected to know by the end of fifth grade, and working backwards from there, Ordaz said. It’s an idea called vertical alignment. It isn’t a new idea, she said, but it’s tricky to pull it off because campus leaders have to carve out time for teachers across every grade level to come together for planning. But those planning sessions are important, she said, because they allow teachers to look at the curriculum across grade levels and figure out what’s missing and how they can supplement it.
That alignment across grade levels is important, Ordaz said, because without it, a student might find themselves lost when they make the transition from one grade level to the next. She compared the experience to that of going to a new grocery store — shoppers who are used to shopping in one store expect items to be in a certain spot on a certain aisle. But if they go to another store, they’ll be somewhere else. Teachers and school administrators are trying to make sure students don’t experience that same kind of disorientation anytime they move to a new grade level, she said.
Leadership Academy at Maude I. Logan Elementary School (Fort Worth ISD)
Economically disadvantaged student population: 94%
Special education student population: 19%
Emergent bilingual student population: 41%
Located in the Historic Stop Six neighborhood, Maude I. Logan serves 319 students in grades pre-K-5. On last year’s STAAR, 53% of students scored on grade level in reading and 31% did so in math.
Principal Michael Connor wasn’t available for an interview for this story. But in the report, authors wrote that a focus on student data, an emphasis on enrichment programs and support from the Leadership Academy Network were key factors in the school’s success.