Everman ISD’s Baxter Junior High and Townley Elementary are the first in the metroplex operated by Third Future Schools, a Colorado-based nonprofit.<\/p>\n
EVERMAN, Texas \u2014 Students and parents at two Everman ISD campuses will notice some differences when school starts Tuesday.<\/p>\n
For one, Baxter Junior High and Townley Elementary are ending their summers and returning to class a week earlier than other schools in their district. But that’s just one of the changes implemented by the Colorado-based nonprofit that now runs the campuses.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The TEA gave Townley F grades in 2023 and 2024 and a D in 2025. It gave Baxter F grades all three years. Five years of failing grades puts the district at risk of state takeover. To avoid that risk, Everman ISD opted for a little-known, but increasingly popular alternative: outsource the failing schools \u2014 in this case, Baxter and Townley. \u00a0<\/p>\n
The district will pay millions of dollars to Third Future Schools, which comes in with its own curriculum and many of its own highly-paid teachers (An Everman ISD spokesperson said Third Future kept eight teachers at Baxter and only four at Townley).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Third Future operates almost entirely on a pen-and-paper curriculum with an initial period of instruction followed by a short worksheet to determine whether students have learned the material. Depending on their individual performance, students either leave the classroom to advance their individual work in a central classroom, or receive additional, more personalized instruction from their classroom teacher. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Third Future also extends the school day and adds about two weeks to a typical school year. It emphasizes subjects like math and English language arts that are measured by STAAR tests and eschews libraries, athletics and band during academic hours. \u00a0<\/p>\n
“Our number one priority is instruction so we can change the accountability rating of the campus,” Baxter Junior High Principal Taylor Parker said. “Yes, it\u2019s going to be a hard transition for them because they\u2019re changing what they\u2019re used to.”\u00a0<\/p>\n
In return, Third Future promises to increase the students’ test scores and the school’s accountability grade. Parker said other districts run by Third Future have seen success.<\/p>\n
“We\u2019re looking for that extreme growth, the majority of our network has settled at 1.88 years of growth [in a single school year],” she said. \u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Everman ISD’s Baxter Junior High and Townley Elementary are the first in the metroplex operated by Third Future…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":397236,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[150,152,151],"class_list":["post-397235","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arlington","tag-arlington","tag-arlington-headlines","tag-arlington-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397235","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=397235"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/397235\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/397236"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=397235"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=397235"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=397235"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}