Failing Youngstown schools must work to improve now

The Youngstown City School District has failed its students and its community.

That’s the miserable in-your-face assessment from this year’s state report cards on academic performance released last week. The ranking, akin to an F on a standard report card, is unacceptable and must be reversed. The blemish on Youngstown is made all the worse in that not one of the other 609 districts in Ohio fared as disgustingly defective.

The community’s patience in tolerating a litany of excuses and in waiting for improvement has worn thin. If healing this black eye on the state’s eighth-largest city means draconian change — up to and including administrative changes that reach to Superintendent Wendy Webb, so be it.

Too much is at stake for the city schools’ 7,000 students, the school district’s reputation and the larger community to expect less than an aggressive, immediate and concerted academic overhaul by the state, district leaders, board of education members, parents, teachers and staff.

About the report cards

The report cards, issued annually in August by the Ohio Department of Education, log student performance based on standards set by the state and mandated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Specifically, they gauge academic performance by measuring 30 indicators based on standardized tests, as well as attendance, graduation and year-by-year student improvements.

Youngstown managed to pass a mere two of these indicators —10th- and 11th-grade writing. Compare that with Canfield and Champion, which met 29 and 30 respectively.

We realize Youngstown’s inner-city handicaps of high poverty rates, a greater proportion of special-needs students and dysfunctional family environments make the task of providing high-quality education more challenging. But Youngstown need only look a few dozen miles to its west, where the Canton city schools — with demographics similar to Youngstown’s — scored significantly higher in the Continuous Improvement, or average, range. School officials would be wise to network with Canton to find the ingredients those school leaders have used to produce measurable improvements.

As a result of Youngstown’s failures, the state will soon intervene. The Department of Education is dispatching an Academic Distress Commission to Youngstown to work with city school leaders to chart a map for change.

They have the power

Thankfully, the commission is armed with broad powers that include authority to reassign administrative personnel and terminate contracts of weak administrative links.

Although Deborah DeLisle, superintendent of state public instruction, said the five-member panel won’t be heavy-handed, the panel must not shy away from any and all firm measures to get the school district back on track.

Taxpayers and students deserve more than they are getting. Property owners in Youngstown have passed levies thinking their hard-earned dollars would fund quality education. Yes, we do have sparkling new buildings. Unfortunately, we do not have effective learning inside them.

As we’ve argued in the past, ensuring accountability plays a large role in producing academic success. Teachers must be held accountable to principals, principals to administrators, administrators to school board members and board members to district voters. Some links in that chain clearly have weakened over the years. It will now be up to the state commission to strengthen them by whatever means necessary.

The community should expect evidence of the commission’s success to be clearly visible on the Youngstown schools’ next report card.