Tarrant County’s Independent School Districts (ISDs) are committed to a collective response to addressing student outcomes at a regional scale. Over the past twelve months, education leaders from across the county have come together with a shared commitment to leverage their regional strength to tackle challenges and scale solutions. Viewing the diversity of our region as an asset, they have agreed on regional strategies that data and research spotlight as effective in achieving student outcomes and are committed to advancing these strategies together.
The collective approach is even more impressive when considering our county’s scale and diversity. Collectively, Tarrant County ISDs educate 750,000 students, or seven percent, of all students in the state of Texas1. To benchmark this scale, this number of students is larger than the entire school-aged population of 15 other states2. Students are educated across 569 public school campuses where districts employ 35,200 individuals3, making Tarrant County’s public education system a larger employer than regional companies including Lockheed Martin, BNSF Railway, Bell Helicopter, or American Airlines4. The 16 ISDs range in student enrollments of 75,000 to 2,500 and economic disadvantage of 94 percent to one percent. There are rural, urban, and suburban districts. This opportunity for impact and responsibility is significant not only for our students, neighborhoods, and communities – but also for our state.
Academic metrics along the pipeline from early learning to high school success help leaders to identify, share, and accelerate bright spots that are impacting students each day. Data analysis identifies successes worth celebrating:
Arlington ISD, Fort Worth ISD, Grapevine-Colleyville ISD, and Crowley ISD excel in early learning outcomes as measured by high Pre-K enrollment numbers.
Birdville ISD, Everman ISD, Keller ISD, Mansfield ISD, Carroll ISD, and Northwest ISD achieve early literacy success as measured by reading metrics, and students in Azle ISD, Carroll ISD, and White Settlement ISD excel in meeting early grade math metrics.
Lake Worth ISD, Hurst-Euless-Bedford ISD, Castleberry ISD, Eagle Mountain-Saginaw ISD, and Kennedale ISD achieve notable math and high school outcomes as measured by Algebra 1 and Post-Secondary Completion.6
As the education system rounds the corner to a post-COVID era, addressing challenges and opportunities from a regional approach is the future. Students are more likely to attend multiple Tarrant County ISDs during their 13 years of education from Pre-K to 12th grade7. It is more common for educators to move between school districts during their tenure than to stay in a single ISD8. Education leaders acknowledge and are responding to the dynamics of our region by standing together to say that they can support one another to impact the goals they have for their individual districts when coming together to leverage the collective bargaining power of the third largest county in a state that educates 10 percent of our nation’s children9, while accounting for the uniqueness of each individual ISD.
One focus area of this regional approach is to increase the number of teachers entering the profession who have benefited from a residency experience. Based on a survey of Tarrant County ISDs, there were expected to be over 1,700 teacher vacancies to fill in September 2023. Given the large number of higher education institutions in Tarrant County, Rev Partnership convened nine of the Deans of these colleges, alongside the district leaders, and strategized approaches to increasing the number of candidates with residency experiences, with a specific focus on special education, as a multi-pronged approach to tackling the teacher shortage in Tarrant County. This framework will be developed in Fall 2023, and we look forward to sharing its impact in the months ahead.
The collective response of district leaders, their leadership teams, and the region is encouraging. The region becomes even stronger when our communities engage with their local schools, showing support for today’s students and tomorrow’s leaders. When standing together, the hill we aspire for all of Tarrant County’s students to climb is attainable.
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Rev Partnership is a regional educational backbone catalyzing system solutions across Tarrant County’s educational ecosystem that educates 750,000 students, or 7 percent of the state’s early learning to post-secondary students, and employs 35,200 educators. Our vision is a commitment to the best public education system for our students, schools, and community by fostering relationships between Tarrant County’s public education system, business ecosystem, and social support infrastructure for our students to thrive. We achieve this vision by empowering education leaders to achieve better results through collaboration.
ISD links:
Arlington: https://www.aisd.net
Fort Worth: https://www.fwisd.org
Grapevine-Colleyville: https://www.gcisd.net
Crowley: https://www.crowleyisdtx.org
Birdville: https://www.birdvilleschools.net
Everman: https://www.eisd.org
Keller: https://www.kellerisd.net
Mansfield: https://www.mansfieldisd.org
Carroll: https://www.southlakecarroll.edu
Northwest: https://www.nisdtx.org
Azle: https://www.azleisd.net
White Settlement: https://www.wsisd.com
Lake Worth: https://www.lwisd.org
Castleberry: https://www.castleberryisd.net
Kennedale: https://www.kennedaleisd.net
Data Sources: 1. US Census American Community Survey, 2021 ACS-5yr, released Dec 2022 & US Census ACS 2021 5-yr.; 2. US Census ACS 2021 5-yr.; 3. 2022 TEA TAPR; 4. Dallas Business Journal’s list of largest local employers in North Texas; 5. “Comparable districts” are districts across the state that have total enrollment and economic disadvantage within 30 percent of the ISD; 6. TEA – Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPR); 7. TEA – Texas Academic Performance Reports (TAPR); 8. TEA PIR, 2019, 2022; 9. TEA – Public Information Request.
