At the beginning of this school year, Makenzie was to move up to Wedgwood Middle School. But Hazel Harvey Peace was never a good fit for Makenzie, said her grandmother, Lisa Henley, Parent Shield parent. Makenzie, who has dyslexia, struggles with reading, Henley said, and she never got the one-on-one attention she needed at her old school. She was also withdrawn and didn’t speak up in class, Henley said, because she was embarrassed about the fact that she was struggling. At the beginning of this school year, Henley transferred Makenzie to the Academy of Visual and Performing Arts, a new charter school located in La Gran Plaza de Fort Worth.

"Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, director of the education advocacy group Parent Shield Fort Worth, said she hopes the changes will put parents in a better position to help them if they’re children are struggling. Lack of access to information has been an ongoing challenge for parents in the district, she said. The organization, which lobbied the district for both changes, held a series of literacy clinics across the city last summer.

Inside the library on a scorching July afternoon this summer, Trenace Dorsey-Hollins and a group of parents were making their own history. The Parent Shield leaders, a grassroots organization that Dorsey-Hollins launched in 2022, were hosting the first of nine “Freedom July” mobile literacy clinics.

“A report card is really tricky in our opinion, because you’re just looking at A’s and B’s and C’s,” Carpenter said. Nowhere on the report card does it say “what reading level your baby’s on, and that’s what’s throwing parents for a loop.” By talking to parents about issues like literacy and the nuances of grading, families are better able to advocate for their children in the school system and work in partnership with educators, said Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, a parent and founder of the advocacy group Parent Shield Fort Worth in Texas.

A parent advocacy group is calling on Fort Worth schools to give parents better access to information about how their kids are doing in school. Parent Shield Fort Worth released a report Wednesday outlining findings from a series of literacy clinics the group held over the summer. The report also included recommendations for boosting literacy rates among the city’s public school students.

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, director of Parent Shield Fort Worth, told the crowd that parents have to demand better for kids who are falling through the cracks. During the group’s literacy clinics held over the summer, 70% of parents who attended told organizers that they thought their kids were reading on grade level. But when school staff members gave kids reading assessments, the results mirrored what state test scores show, she said. “Our children are not being taught to read, and reading is true freedom,” she said.

“The balloons are going up, and from this day forward, so will the literacy rate,” Dorsey-Hollins said. “It’s only up from here, and we’re going to lift literacy as a community.”

Six in 10 students who live in Fort Worth, a city that has 12 school districts, did not meet grade level on the state reading test in 2022, according to parental advocacy group Parent Shield.

Parents in Fort Worth ISD have told Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, leader of the parent advocacy group ParentShield, that they have students in the special education program in Fort Worth ISD who are not receiving adequate services. Instead, she said, students are labeled as a discipline problem.

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, president of Parent Shield Fort Worth, said the clinics are meant to help parents take control of their children’s education since many students have struggled academically in the aftermath of the pandemic.

The education advocacy organization Parent Shield Fort Worth is holding a series of literacy clinics at several locations across the city throughout the month of July. During the check-ins, staffers from school districts in the Fort Worth area will give students brief assessments to determine whether they’re reading on grade level, and educators and advocates will be on hand to talk to parents about how to use that information to advocate for their children’s needs.

Trenace Dorsey-Hollins, president of the parent advocacy group Parent Shield Fort Worth, said she’s been pleased to see that Ramsey seems receptive to the idea of talking with parents about their concerns.

Dorsey-Hollins previously had discovered that it can be hard getting school data beyond the traditional report card. So, Parent Shield is doing a deep dive with its first cohort of 25 parents who have been selected to participate in the organization’s advocacy fellowship. They are digging into campus results on the Texas Education Agency’s site to see how well their children’s schools performed on the State of Texas Assessments of Academic Readiness exams. Then, the parents study how the results break down into categories like race and gender.

Six in 10 students who live in Fort Worth did not meet grade level on the state reading test in 2022, according to data from parental advocacy group Parent Shield. The education organization recently hosted a forum with Mayor Mattie Parker to discuss how to shift people’s mindsets around reading and education so Fort Worth can do better.

“My concern, and even the concern that some of the parents who I’ve spoken with, is that the voucher still may not be enough to provide Black and brown children with the adequate education,” Dorsey-Hollins said.

Trenace Dorsey Hollins' organization, Parent Shield Fort Worth, represents hundreds of parents focused on improving education for their children. "Our boots are on the ground, we're knocking on doors, talking to parents," she said.

The next few months promise to be a pivotal time for Fort Worth ISD stakeholders who need the district to succeed.

Fort Worth ISD’s low SAT and ACT scores caused Trenance Dorsey-Hollins, the leader of parent advocacy group Parent Shield, to look into the district’s prep offerings. At the school board’s January meeting, administrators said the district offered SAT prep classes to students.

Today, as a mother of two beautiful daughters, I spend my days advocating for quality education for all children, but especially children in my neighborhood and neighborhoods like mine.