The below is an op-ed from a Fort Worth ISD teacher:
Last week the Texas Education Agency Commissioner Mike Morath took over Fort Worth ISD. It should not come as a surprise considering the declining enrollment, bad STAAR scores and the district being the poster child for DEI.
When this process starts it will replace the board. A board with very little power except to agree to do whatever the upper administration tells them. They can approve the hiring of staff and the budget. All of which are done with the assistance of the Superintendent and her minions. Some board members seem clueless to the day to day operations of the district. It seems Ann Darr will only go through the doors of the schools or interact with parents of the more affluent neighborhoods. Does she even know the struggles of the other campuses?
Dr. Karen Molinar, the current superintendent will most likely lose her job. A shame since the argument most are giving is she only started the new job in February. Except, she has worked for Fort Worth for 30 years. She has been a part of the decision making for a long time. She also been in charge of several departments like, Human Resources, Strategic Planning and the Budget and Finance but wait a minute, is this not one of the areas the state will now oversee? How the district spends taxpayer money?
In her statement about the takeover she stated, “as a leader, transparency has always been an important part of my leadership.” So transparency is the reason why teachers at seven campuses recently found out that they would be a “resource campus” and will have to reapply for their jobs on social media and the nightly news, not in person?
She also stated that, “we must remain committed to daily delivery of high quality instruction for our students.” The same “high quality” instruction the district has bought or designed? So “high quality” that several core teachers are reporting of curriculum containing incorrect information in it or a new district assessments called “demonstration of learning” containing wrong responses used as the correct answers, making the data collected absolutely useless?
The same “high quality” instruction that requires all teachers representing all the schools to teach the same information at the same speed? Research is pretty clear giving differentiated instruction works.
Teachers are also not able to give “high quality” instruction when some class sizes on the secondary level are approaching levels in the 40s or 50s. A large class size is a perfect way to learn math or English from one teacher. The two subjects in FWISD where students’ score are the lowest.
It is insane the amount of non English speaking students with little or no English comprehension in the general education classrooms. Not receiving any basic language lessons before being put into the classrooms but are expected to score just as high as English speakers. You need to remember the teachers have large classes giving subpar curriculum, along with special education students not getting proper services and then trying to teach students basic language skills on top of that. Oh and stay in step with others..
Ask yourself how can “high quality” instruction happen when discipline across the district is problematic. Students are not responding to talks and do not care if they get suspended. So functionally, there are no consequences for them. The fights of FWISD are legendary on social media, but district administrators do not seem to care how they impact the education of others.
It’s like they are setting up the district for failure and then will blame the teachers and campus level leadership for it. All the liberal teachers upset by the take over are also the ones who will also complain about the issues stated here but don’t look at the double standard too long.
Fort Worth did this to themselves. They could have left Forest Oak 6th grade center open then by state law, Morath had a choice, he could’ve closed the campus or taken over the district. Instead the district closed the school leaving the state no other option.
For those of us in the trenches, this has been a slow rolling train wreck that we could not stop but now will have to suffer the consequences of an incompetent and corrupt management.
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Public education in Texas, and most everywhere else, is run by socialists who have ruined it. The WHOLE thing needs to be dismantled from the top down and replaced with a new system that has safeguards built in to keep this expensive scam from ever happening again. One of those safeguards should be a prohibition on hiring Democrats/progressives/socialists/communists/Marxists, and any other name they want to call themselves. They ruin everything they touch. Big Ed's aim is to destroy America by destroying her children. It's time to put the kids first.