Tuesday, Jul. 29, 2025
Fact brief: Did Fort Worth ISD lose ground on STAAR reading tests in 2025?
Fort Worth ISD saw gains in reading STAAR tests across all grade levels between 2024 and 2025.
Students take the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness exams each spring. Results are broken down by how well they perform on the tests compared to grade-level expectations. Meets grade level means students passed and are proficient.
The district saw 41% of third- and fourth-grade students meet grade level in reading. That marked an 8-point gain from last year’s 33%.
That increase was Fort Worth ISD’s largest one-year improvement in any grade’s reading test since before the pandemic.
Fifth through eighth grades also recorded jumps.
Fort Worth ISD officials credited the growth to focused literacy efforts and targeted instructional strategies, such as consistency for lessons and teaching guidelines.
The district still trails other large, urban systems. Fort Worth ISD is now 6 points behind Dallas ISD, a smaller gap than previous years.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Sources
- Fort Worth Report Fort Worth-area students improve STAAR scores for first time since 2022. Here’s who leads
- Texas Education Agency STAAR Performance Standards
- Texas Education Agency STAAR resources
- Fort Worth Report How Fort Worth ISD is shifting instruction so educators can focus on teaching, students
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Fact briefs are bite-sized, well-sourced explanations that offer clear "yes" or "no" answers to questions, confusions, and unsupported claims circulating online. They rely on publicly available data and documents, often from the original source. Fact briefs are written and published by Gigafact contributor publications.
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