Fort Worth Star-Telegram / Isaac Windes

Early Childhood Education Reporter - Crossroads Lab

Isaac Windes covers Early Childhood Education as part of the Star-Telegram’s Crossroads Lab. The position is funded with assistance from the Morris Foundation. Windes is a graduate of the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. Before coming to the Star-Telegram he wrote about schools and colleges in Southeast Texas for the Beaumont Enterprise. He was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. Please reach out with your questions about Early Childhood Education. Email: iwindes@star-telegram.com or call or text (817) 668-5449. Follow Isaac on Twitter @isaacdwindes

Kids are not reading at grade level. Why don’t all Fort Worth schools invest in books?

De Zavala Elementary School librarian Teresa Guardiola is worried about children’s reading abilities, based on what she has seen in the first few weeks of school in Fort Worth. Students are disengaged and lagging behind in basic reading skills, she said. “Out of a dozen kids or so, maybe three were somewhat engaged in looking for sight words,” she said of one class. “The rest of them were totally oblivious, which tells me they’re not used to listening to stories, they haven’t been accustomed t

Deadline approaches for Texas child care providers to apply for $775M in assistance

Almost two-thirds of eligible child care providers across Texas have applied for some of the $775 million in assistance available from the Texas Workforce Commission, with just weeks until the July 31 deadline. But with an unprecedented flow of money available for providers in a sector that rarely gets this type of public investment, advocates and organizations across North Texas are pushing for those that haven’t applied to take advantage of the funds. “These funds are to pay for the costs of

Fort Worth ISD expands collaboration with summer school reading intervention program

Students across Fort Worth ISD are working this summer to catch up after lost learning time due to COVID-19, and forge ahead as part of the largest summer learning program the district has ever had. Students struggling with reading, a priority for the district in recent years, are making significant progress in one of the collaborative learning partnerships the district has with United Community Centers, which is providing an intensive literacy intervention program called Leveled Literacy Inter

Fort Worth Star-Telegram • 1st October 2021

STAAR report shows Fort Worth students struggled with math, reading during pandemic

More than twice as many eighth graders in Fort Worth schools are not meeting grade level in math as in 2019, a stark drop highlighted in state assessment data released Monday. In Fort Worth and across Texas, students lost substantial ground both in reading and in math, according to the results of this year’s State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness, or STAAR. Those results highlight the academic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic that state policymakers, education officials and researchers have warned of for more than a year.