Report finds 82% of Fort Worth graduates rated college-ready, but 51% without prep courses

Most high school graduates in Fort Worth carry the state's "college-ready" label, but a new report argues the designation leans heavily on short prep courses and says far fewer students cleared the bar on the SAT or ACT.

The Fort Worth Education Partnership released the report Tuesday, Oct. 13, according to the Fort Worth Report. Looking at the class of 2025, it found that 82% of graduates of public high schools inside Fort Worth city limits met one of the state's college-readiness standards. When graduates who qualified only through college-preparatory courses are set aside, that share falls to 51%.

Countywide the pattern was the same. Tarrant County had 25,785 public school graduates in 2025, and 83% were rated college-ready, or 53% without the prep-course route. While 93% of the county's seniors took the SAT or ACT, 25% reached the college-readiness score on either test, the report found.

Campus gaps

The difference was widest at some Fort Worth ISD high schools. At Eastern Hills, 91% of graduates were labeled college-ready and 3% met the SAT or ACT standard. At Polytechnic, the figures were 95% and 4%.

Texas gives schools equal accountability credit for each path to the college-ready label, which also include the Texas Success Initiative Assessment, dual credit and associate degrees.

The report cites a Texas Tech University study of about 1 million Texas graduates that found students with college-ready SAT or ACT scores were 22 percentage points more likely to finish a bachelor's degree within six years, compared with 16 points for an associate degree earned in high school and 12 points for dual credit. The study shows associations rather than cause and effect.

Brent Beasley, the partnership's president and CEO, told the Fort Worth Report the state system "overstates" readiness. He said the gaps do not mean students who qualify other ways are unprepared, but that the single label can hide real differences in what they have shown. His advice to parents is to ask how their child earned the designation.

Degree completion flat

The report also updated the group's long-term tracking of 31,489 students who were in eighth grade at public middle schools within city limits from 2013 to 2015. Six years after high school, 14% had earned a bachelor's degree from a Texas school, 5% an associate degree and 3% a degree from outside Texas, results that were essentially unchanged from the group's earlier study.

Rules tighten in 2027

Starting with the class of 2027, only prep courses from state-approved providers will count toward college-ready credit, and providers will have to show that at least 60% of students who complete them earn a C or better in the matching college course.

Fort Worth ISD Superintendent Peter Licata questioned at a late September meeting of the district's board of managers whether the prep coursework is "substantial enough," while noting the district will use the option as long as the state offers it, the Fort Worth Report said.

Sources

fortworthreport.org