Paying Attention
Brent Beasley, CEO of Fort Worth Education Partnership, speaks with guests about topics such as education, current events, Fort Worth, and the paths that led them to where they are now.
Paying Attention
2026 Polling Report: Fort Worth Perceptions on the State of Education
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Brent and Leila discuss FWEP's 2026 Polling Report: Fort Worth Perceptions on the State of Education.
Welcome to the Paying Attention Podcast. I'm Brent Beasley, leader of the Fort Worth Education Partnership. And one of the things that we have decided to do as an organization is conduct some professional polling every year to learn more about what the community thinks and feels about public education. So we're really trying to pay attention to the community's feelings, beliefs, priorities. And over the last couple of years, we have released some reports describing what we found. And so today, on this episode, what we're going to do is talk with my colleague, Leila Santillon, about two reports on two different polls that we have done in the last couple of months. This is obviously an interesting and important time in education in Fort Worth in Fort Worth and Fort Worth ISD with the state intervention. So the first poll that we did was about asking people about state intervention of Fort Worth ISD. This was done right before the new board of managers and superintendent were announced. So the state installed a board of managers, hired a superintendent, and we thought it was really important to understand what our community was thinking and feeling about that. What did they know about it? How did they feel? What outcomes were they looking for? And then the second poll and the report that we have recently released is a more general survey just about people's thoughts and feelings about public education in Fort Worth and Tarrant County right now. What do they want? What are they looking for? So what we found in these surveys, I think that you will find interesting and insightful, and in some cases surprising. And Layla really led this work, the polling and the reports. And so Layla, thank you for being here to talk about these. Thanks for having me. And before we jump into kind of the main headlines from this, I wanted to get you to talk just for a minute about what we call the methodology, like how did we do these, who did we talk to, and all that kind of all that kind of stuff.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, happy to. Thanks for indulging the methodology uh section. I think this is important because methodology and sample size are really what gives the data that we're going to talk about today validity.
SPEAKER_01We didn't just call up a few friends.
SPEAKER_02Correct. We we did not, yes. Um, so the methodology helps us know that what we're talking about is actually representative of the community that we're looking at, Fort Worth, how Fort Worth, you know, what they think and how they feel. And so just a couple of notes on methodology, very similar methodology across these two polling um reports. The first one, as you said, was fielded the beginning of March. 742 respondents. That's important because it helps us minimize the margin of error. So we stay pretty close to what we think those initial results are that we we get. When we do our polling, it's really important to us that we have oversamples of specific subsets. So we look at uh racial and ethnic group breakdowns, ensuring we're oversampling those groups as well as oversampling parents, because we care a lot about understanding how parents who are the most proximal to schools and the school experience and the education system, what do they think about their experiences and what they're looking for from their kids? So we partner with a national kind of, as you said, professional polling organization, public opinion research organization. We partnered with Harris X on the Fort Worth ISD polling and on the polling that we fielded in April, which is as you said, our annual polling that we sort of have tracked over time. We partnered with SKDK on that. So they really help us to ensure that everything we're looking at is valid, is weighted to be representative of the makeup of the city of Fort Worth, of county, of any other sort of subsets that we're looking for. And I'm excited to get into it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's a whole science to this that I don't know a lot about, but have just been exposed to in this process.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. So let's talk about what we learned in our survey about the state intervention in Fort Worth ISD. And again, as you've mentioned, this was done just before everybody knew this was coming, but it was just before they announced the new superintendent and board of managers. And so when we looked at that survey, we felt like there were four main sort of buckets or headlines to talk about. So let's just kind of talk through those. And the first one was we asked some questions about the state's role. What is the state's role in academic success with state intervention? And so what kinds of things did we learn there?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right. So first we wanted to understand what people thought the state's role was in education. So we asked that question, what's the state's most role important role in education? And 62% of respondents said that it was ensuring kids of all income levels and zip codes have access to high quality education. So that was really priority number one. And that was consistent across parents, non-parents, any other demographic sort of subgroup that we looked at. An additional 25% said the state's role was providing transparency and accountability on how schools are performing, and 13% said it was providing adequate financial resources for public schools. So all important functions for the state, but you know, above head and head and shoulders above the others. I think the community was saying that the most important role of the state in education was ensuring kids have access to high quality education. And then the other thing that we asked about is the state has this sort of rating system, and we wanted to understand, you know, what was a better indicator of school success? Uh, hearing that a school was rated A or B on the state's A through F accountability system, or hearing that students are meeting grade level standards. And uh 65% of respondents there believe that hearing that the majority of students are reading and doing math on grade level is a better indicator of success for a school, which I think is important to us. You know, we talk about that quite a bit.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's important to us because we the state has an A through F rating system, it's very complicated, it has different domains, it each domain has different parts, it's it's useful, but it has a lot of different components. And we have often in our reporting and talking just simplified it down to how many kids are reading on grade level or doing math at grade level. And so, yeah, this question is sort of getting at that, and it it seems to say that most folks said the actual kids meeting grade level is actually more meaningful in understanding how this how the schools are doing. That's right. Um another area of that we talked about in this in the survey was community awareness of state intervention and people's views about it. So this is hotly contested uh topic. Um, you know, this Houston went through this a couple of years ago, so we saw how contentious it has been in Houston. Um so we wanted to know like what do people think about this? This is a hot topic. So um, yeah, what what did we learn about that?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we asked uh two important questions here to start. The first was, you know, are you how familiar are you with state intervention in Fort Worth ISD? Um interestingly enough, broad majority of the community were very, very aware. Um they were either very uh very familiar or somewhat familiar of state intervention in Fort Worth ISD. For the city of Fort Worth, it was 60% of all respondents. And maybe unsurprisingly, even more so, parents uh were very aware. So we saw 73% of Fort Worth ISD parents, 73% of parents overall said they were familiar that there was a state intervention in Fort Worth ISD. I think the other question uh that was important for us to ask was do you approve or disapprove of state intervention in Fort Worth ISD? I think this one was um sort of surprising for us to see. We saw uh 58% of all respondents said that they approved uh of state intervention in Fort Worth ISD, with the highest sort of approval rates again coming from parents and Fort Worth ISD parents specifically.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's very interesting because I think it was 71% of parents said they approved, which is that was maybe the biggest surprise for me. Yeah. Was the overall 58%, I think, approved, but then parents being that high.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and even more so, you know, we also looked at specifically Fort Worth ISD parents when we're talking about, you know, who is the community that is most closely um impacted, we're talking about Fort Worth ISD students and families, and we saw 64% approval, 22% disapproved, and then there was you know a small subset as well that you know we're not sure uh sort of their feelings there, but 64% I think was a surprisingly high percentage. Interesting.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Uh then we talked about and asked about what is what is the community looking for out of this? What are they hope what are they what are their hopes or expectations?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so we asked uh folks what would be uh what they were most hopeful for from state intervention. And again, uh the highest sort of thing that people were thinking about were student educational outcomes. That was the number one thing that folks were hopeful would improve. Um, 38% of all respondents were hopeful that student educational outcomes would improve, and 40% of those who lived within the boundaries of Fort Worth ISD. So pretty high, um high percentage of folks that were looking for student educational outcome improvement, followed by teacher quality and retention. So teacher quality and retention, hoping that that improved was at uh 30%, and just under that was school safety and student well-being increases at 29%. So that was what folks were most hopeful for when they think of the state intervention in Fort Worth ISD.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so that's sort of their priorities or hopes. And then we also asked some questions about do they think it their intervention is going to have a more positive or a more negative impact across some different areas? So can you talk about some of those?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So we asked uh the question was do you believe the state intervention would have a positive or negative impact? And uh asked a variety of different questions to see where folks sort of fell on this. For uh the highest one was student educational outcomes again. So 66% of respondents uh felt that the intervention would have a positive impact on student educational outcomes. And uh interestingly enough, within Fort Worth ISD parents, again, sort of being one of the groups that we were looking most closely at, they were at 74%. So 74% of Fort Worth ISD parents uh believed state intervention would have a positive impact on student outcomes. And the ones sort of most closely following that were quality of education at 64% positive and quality of teachers at 62%. And again, across the board, Fort Worth ISD parents had the highest percentage of positives for most of the different areas that we were looking at.
SPEAKER_01I I think that speaks to an awareness in Fort Worth over the last few years that educational outcomes for Fort Worth kids aren't where they should be. That there's sort of a broad understanding in Fort Worth these days that that's the case, which would lead then to people being hopeful or optimistic about some positive change. That's right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I'm curious thinking of that. How do you think the work that we've been doing at Four Worth Education Partnership has sort of impacted that along the way?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I'd like to think it it has impacted that. I I think back to, you know, when we first started talking about the percentage of kids at grade level in Fort Worth, and people really didn't know. They were they didn't know, they were surprised, sometimes not believing that it was true because it was so low. And all the times I stood up in front of the city council and talked about the percentage of kids at grade level in Fort Worth being in the low 30s, basically. And so, yeah, we've we've kind of had that steady drumbeat of trying to inform and explain to the community how the kids are doing, and I do think that that that has helped our community to have a better understanding of what our needs are as we enter into this time of intervention. To learn more about Fort Worth Education Partnership, check out our website, FortworthEP.org. And we are on Instagram at Fort WorthEP. Okay, let's talk about the one more point from this poll about state intervention, and that it has to do with the board of managers, which is a new concept. It's uh, you know, we have an elected school board which has been displaced. They they still are in office, but they don't have any power. So the interesting situation. Um, but then we have this appointed board of managers. So these are folks from the community from Fort Worth who applied, uh, went through a long process of selection. They they finally selected and named these nine members of the board of managers. So that's who we're talking about here. Um and we asked some questions in the survey about these folks. And and just to be clear, uh these are you know not elected, they're appointed by TEA. Um, and so yeah, people's expectations for this group. Let's talk about what we learned about that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we asked folks what would make you uh give you the most confidence that board of managers are acting in the best interest of Fort Worth ISD students, and we asked them to sort of select things to really lift up for us. What are you looking for from your board of managers? The number one uh the source, the number two uh things they tied uh first and second place that were setting clear and measurable academic goals with public progress reports. So they want academic goals set by the board of managers and they want public progress reports. And then the second one was demonstrating measurable improvements in student educational outcomes. So that mirrors that theme we sort of saw throughout this of folks being hopeful about the impact of this on student educational um outcomes. And then, you know, beyond that, it was uh paying and retaining the strongest teachers, improving school safety. Um, but both for Fort Worth ISD students and Fort Worth City as a whole, they want to see the academic uh goals set, public uh public reporting, and they want to see progress for students.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I think though this poll shows that the community is paying attention, paying attention to this. And while not everybody agrees on all of it, um people do they want to see real improvements in student outcomes. So there really is an academic focus for the community on this. They want to they want communication about the progress, they want a board of managers that that earns some trust through um transparency and and results. Um let's let's talk about we also did a general public education survey um that and we did that just last month in April. And um we've we released a report about it and recently. Um so let's talk about kind of go through and talk about the the key headlines or buckets that we got out of that. So the first one on that, which is actually kind of similar to what we heard in the this last one, is education is a top priority for folks in Fort Worth and certainly for parents. Talk about kind of what we saw, and we saw some changes in this from this year compared to last year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right. So we ask folks um, you know, uh what we give them a number of different things and we say sort of what is the most important issue for you and your family. Number one, probably not surprising to folks, is cost of living. Uh sort of across all demographic groups, cost of living uh was number one. But number two is education for parents. Any parent group that we looked at, whether it be City of Fort Worth, um, Tarrant County, parents uh, you know, are are focused on education, which makes sense. They have kids in schools, you know, they are looking for the experience that their students are having in in school and they want to make sure it's positive to set up their kids for uh, you know, whatever that child wants to do after their K-12 experience. And that was actually up since last year. Um so it was up from number four, so had moved up in importance. Um, you know, and then we saw other things that we asked sort of further down on that uh that rank, things like um crime, healthcare, those sorts of things.
SPEAKER_01Affordable housing. There's all they're given all these times of things. So that's right, yeah, to note that education was the second out of all those things. Cost of living, yeah, as you said, was far and away the top concern right now. Yeah. Um, but but education number two. Yeah. Um, we also asked about sort of qual school quality. And one way of getting at that is like what makes a a school good. We asked several questions about that that talk about accountability and results. What uh good teachers talk can you talk a little bit about what we learned about um what makes a school high quality in people's minds?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, absolutely. And one of the things worth mentioning that's we saw that was interesting in this poll is we we also asked a question about the direction of Fort Worth as a whole, and we saw that increase this year. So we saw that the public was more positive this year on the direction of Fort Worth. It was actually up seven percentage points to 60%. And that was interesting because we also asked about the direction of Texas and we saw a decline there. So we sort of saw this opposite um impact on how folks thought about the direction of Texas, which saw a 4% decline down to 50%, thinking it was in the right direction, versus the direction of Fort Worth. And the reason why I mentioned that is it sort of plays out in how we think about uh quality or some of the things that we saw in uh satisfaction and perceptions of quality. And so we asked this question of overall how satisfied are you with public K-12 education in Tarrant County? Um, and we saw that increase. We saw it go up uh eight percentage points to 70%. So interestingly, compared to last year when we ran this, um, folks are actually more satisfied on public K-12 education in Tarrant County.
SPEAKER_01And interesting to note that when this poll was done, this survey was done in April, the first few weeks of April. So this was right after the state intervention started. That's right. The new superintendent board of managers was named March 24th. So then in the in the immediate weeks after that, we're asking people about their feelings about public education in Fort Worth, and it reflects a pretty positive um stance.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that's right. And and um, you know, worth noting in the report we have all of these different demographic sort of breakdowns you can look at, um, household income, uh, partisanship, race or ethnicity, um, sort of breakdowns. Generally it was high for everyone, but there are some minor sort of differences across various um demographic groups.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. What about um the public and families and information about schools? We asked several questions about that. What what are sort of the headlines there?
SPEAKER_02Well, with that, we saw, you know, we asked where are folks looking to learn about the quality of a school in their area? We want to know where uh where folks in the city of Fort Worth are finding their information about school quality. Number one and number two, sort of tied at the top, are they looking at school district or school websites for information? So they're going sort of first to the direct source that they're getting from their school or their school district, and second on that is friends or family. You know, school or school websites has been high previously, but we saw friends or family increase 11 percentage points this year. So pretty, pretty large increase for friends and family and the influence that friends and family have on how folks are thinking about school quality. Uh, and then number three on that list is state or school rating websites. So at 37% of folks are still looking at state or school rating websites for information on quality.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and so to that point, we asked about the state having a system for measuring school quality, and we got pretty strong response to that. Uh well, yeah, talk talk a little bit about that. I think it is almost 90% of Fort Worth residents said it's really important for the state of Texas to have a system that measures children's performance, school performance.
SPEAKER_02That's right. That's right. So we've asked about this in the past, and I think you know, last year we were really surprised when we saw how um how important folks thought it was. I think that was surprising, sort of, you know, you hear sort of the dialogue that can happen, and then there's how does the general public sort of feel? And we have seen it high year over year. So 89% of um folks that we polled said it was important for Texas to have a system of measurement on educational performance for uh individual students and then also overall school performance. And that one, there's almost no difference across any of the demographic subgroups that we looked at. So, you know, Fort Worth Democrats, Fort Worth Republicans, Fort Worth independents, all very high on that metric, similarly for Fort Worth parents and nonparents across income levels. Really very little variance there, slight uptick, but has stayed consistently high.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And specifically about the meeting grade level part, we had a question about believing that that was. That has that the student has the foundation to succeed at the next grade level related to meeting grade level standard. Yeah. I didn't say that very well.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So we ask folks how important is to you that students achieve meeting grade level before moving on to the next grade level? And 91% come and uh came through and said it was important for students to sort of meet that meeting grade level threshold to advance to the next level, which is is not surprising. You know, folks, folks want to know that kids are meeting grade level to be ready for the next grade.
SPEAKER_01That's a pretty striking number, though, 91%, because think about what a change that would be if you had a policy that said you cannot, a child cannot go on to the next grade if they're not meeting grade level on the state assessment for their current grade. I mean, that would that would that would be quite a I mean that has been done in states like Mississippi, which has seen big gains in reading levels, they implemented this third grade retention policy like that. So, but it you would feel like that would be a really controversial policy to implement. But here we have 91% of people saying they think that would be right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, high across all subgroups, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Um another topic we asked about was public school choice and options. And we're not talking about vouchers or ESAs here. We didn't, we didn't ask about that. We were just talking about public school options. So talk about what we learned about that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. One of the questions that we ask on public school options is you know, we ask uh, is it important for families to have multiple public school options available, including charter schools and schools of choice? Again, I think this is something last year that we were very surprised was as high as it was. Uh, 91% of respondents and the strength of those respondents was relatively strong as well in terms of strong favorability, um, believe that it's important for families to have multiple public school options available, including charter schools and schools of choice. And um again, I think this is something that you hear that there's a lot of variation across potentially demographic subgroups, but it really doesn't play out in the data that we saw. Uh, you know, we have Fort Worth Democrats 94%, um, Fort Worth Republicans 95%.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, let's highlight that. I mean, we sometimes we think of choice, school choice is a Republican uh issue, and Democrats are against it. It's the way you kind of think about it in your head that it breaks down. But uh say that again, it's basically the same.
SPEAKER_0294% for Democrat, Fort Worth Democrats, and 95% for Republicans. So yeah, almost no difference sort of um between those two groups. And you know, worth mentioning Fort Worth Parents. Again, we always try to see what do parents think. Uh and parents were at 94% as well. So generally across the board, across all subgroups, we saw strong, um, strong prioritization of this.
SPEAKER_01Is there anything in this poll? We've done this now two years in a row, is there anything that surprised you this year?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think, I mean, we've we've said it a little already, but we're always surprised by the the broad sort of agreement across a lot of different subgroups. I think, you know, these are uh potentially issues that folks can view as contentious. Uh, but what we really see are families want pretty practical things. They want, you know, a state that is measuring how students are doing. They want to ensure students are meeting grade level, they want to ensure families can choose the school that works best for their students and have access to a great public school, whatever the choices that they decide to make. And so I think, you know, I'm always surprised by just how practical some of the results come from.
SPEAKER_01You say that makes me think what's missing from this when we ask people these questions is all the like hot button culture war type issues that we hear so much about. Those didn't really come up. That's right. Yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00The entire State of Education 2026 polling report is available on our website, Fortworthep.org slash reports.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, as we've said, this is kind of an interesting time to be doing this in Fort Worth with the state intervention of the district, board of managers, new superintendent, um, a non-elected board of managers. So um thinking about public perception and opinion, I guess wondering how this might inform what they're doing. Uh, one thought that comes to mind is, you know, we did these at the very beginning of the, we did it right before and right at the beginning of the new leadership. It'll be really interesting to do this again next year, especially after they've had some results next year and see what people are thinking then. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. I mean, I think this is a a great snapshot, really. That's what a poll is. It's just a snapshot of how folks are feeling and thinking in the community. And, you know, we see that the community is hopeful that they want strong academic results for students and they're optimistic about that potential. And I think I, you know, my hope now is we have to deliver on that for students and families and and prove that um, you know, we can we can get there for students.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, it's very clear what people want, which is improved academic outcomes. And the pressure is to deliver on that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And what it's an interesting time this next year because we won't know really the answer to that until next June. And uh so we're in this time of new leadership and a lot of change, but we won't really have results to to look at and evaluate that change on until next year. I guess there'll be some during the year results we can look at next year.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think it's such a I'm so glad you said that because I think one of the things that I often and worry about is, you know, there's a how do we make sure that we don't make the conversation about sort of the inputs? Um and what we see here is that what folks want are outcomes for students, and that's what's important that our students are, you know, getting the experience they deserve to pursue whatever they want. And so there's there's, I think, um, you know, one thing that I think we often talk about and as a community, we we need to think about is how do we keep it focused on students throughout this period and how students are doing and what it means for their lives.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02We spent a lot of time today talking about sort of the data, what we've seen in the polling, but what are you sort of taking away from all of this?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think one of my big takeaways is there's there's some folks today, particularly in this the contentiousness of the state intervention, who are arguing that we can't expect all the schools to do well and all the students in those schools to do well academically because of life circumstances that they're in. So mostly poverty and the things that go with poverty. And so we we've had you know someone say at a in public comment at a board of managers meeting that you can't expect kids to succeed beyond the level of their life circumstances. And I think that really goes against what we're hearing from people in the survey, back to the very first question that we talked about, which is people, the vast majority of people in Tarrant County expect and want schools to provide a high quality quality education to all students, regardless of zip code or income. I mean, that was one of the questions. And people say, yes, we expect that. And that's consistent across parents and non-parents, it's consistent across racial and ethnic groups. So I mean, I think that's the big takeaway for me, is just that one we know it's not true that people can't succeed academically beyond the level of their life circumstances. We can all think of people in our own lives, famous figures, uh, schools. Um, but it's also not the will of the people. People want their public school system to educate all kids, particularly those in poverty who need an opportunity to grow out of poverty. And I think you've, you know, you've done a whole report on the fact that schools can, there are examples of schools that do that very thing.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, it's not just that it's the will of for everyone, it's that it's also possible. We've seen examples of that even in Fort Worth, and particularly for students that are growing up economically disadvantaged. For sort of that group of students, it matters immensely what's happening in their school building, and it's possible for all students, regardless of their circumstances, to succeed at high levels. And we can acknowledge the many challenges that schools face, and we can make sure that they are resourced and supported for those challenges, and we can also make sure that you know students get the academic foundation they need to um, you know, lead whatever their future is that they want to be true.
SPEAKER_01Right, that's right. This is a Fort Worth Education Partnership production. To watch Paying Attention, subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can also listen to Paying Attention wherever you get your podcast.