Students succeed through reform

By Harold Gwin

Support for staff development, the small-schools concept and early college have benefited Youngstown.

YOUNGSTOWN — KnowledgeWorks Foundation says implementation of its high school reform models have helped students in struggling Ohio high schools, including Youngstown, improve academic performance and graduation rates.

“They’ve been strong partners with us,” said Wendy Webb, Youngstown school superintendent, acknowledging that the foundation has had a very positive impact on the city schools.

KnowledgeWorks Foundation provides funding and leadership to promising educational innovations around the country, using education experts and innovative partners to help develop programs that prepare students for success in global competition.

The organization launched Ohio High School Transformation Initiative and Early College High Schools reform models in 2002, working in partnership with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the Ohio Department of Education after data showed that only 62 percent of Ohio students were graduating from high school. Graduation rates in the cities were even lower.

The primary goal was to boost the high school graduation rate and, according to ODE statistics, the effort has succeeded, raising the rate more than 31 percent across the Ohio High School Transformation Initiative network that includes metropolitan areas such as Youngstown, Cleveland, Akron, Columbus, Dayton, Toledo and others.

Providing staff development assistance is “the real key that they have provided” in Youngstown, Webb said.

KnowledgeWorks has also given funding for curriculum coaches and has backed the city school district’s move to small-school initiatives. This “school-within-a-school concept” saw Youngstown’s Chaney and East high schools (and Wilson before it was closed) essentially organized into three small learning communities, offering focuses on technology, hands-on project-based learning and inquiry, and self-discovery with independent study.

“They’ve worked with us a lot. They give us an outside perspective,” Webb said, noting that KnowledgeWorks also supported the Youngstown schools’ creation of a ninth-grade academy launched this year at East and Chaney to help freshmen with the transition to high school.

Statistics show that ninth grade is the point where schools begin to lose kids who eventually just drop out, Webb said. The ninth-graders are separated from upperclassmen in the two schools, and the emphasis is on setting up the academies as preparatory schools to help them achieve academic and social success at the high school level, she said.

KnowledgeWorks, citing ODE data, said that Chaney experienced a significant improvement in its graduation rate, from 60.8 percent in 2002 to 79.1 percent in 2007.

East High School just opened last year and 2008 data isn’t available yet from the state, but the school did show a 2007-08 attendance rate of 88.5 percent, KnowledgeWorks said.

The foundation is also a backer of Youngstown Early College, a partnership launched three years ago by the city schools and Youngstown State University that has selected students in grades nine through 12 attending classes on the YSU campus. Upperclassmen are taking college courses in addition to their high school studies.

KnowledgeWorks noted that Youngstown Early College had a 93 percent graduation rate in its first senior class last spring and is rated as “effective” on its state report card.

It’s been difficult to make educational reforms in the midst of financial distress and related cutbacks, Webb said, referring to Youngstown’s classification by the state as being in “fiscal emergency” since November 2006 and the spending reductions the district has had to enact.

“We’ve done an amazing job of holding it together with nothing, and KnowledgeWorks has been a big part of that,” she said.

gwin@vindy.com