Can Youngstown be pilot for education standards?

As the first-of-its-kind state Academic Distress Commission goes about the arduous task of devising a recovery plan for the Youngstown City School District, there is an opportunity for Gov. Ted Strickland and Deborah Delisle, state superintendent of public instruction, to make the system a pilot project with national implications.

Last week, 48 states, including Ohio, agreed to embrace national academic standards for the nation’s public schools. The standards are open for public comment through April 2, and then a final document detailing what students from kindergarten to high school should be learning will be published.

The timing coincides with the work of the Academic Distress Commission, chaired by Debra Ann Mettee, who is superintendent of the Springfield School District.

According to the schedule released by the five-member panel, which had its first meeting at the beginning of the month, a final academic recovery plan for submission to state Superintendent Delisle must be ready by June.

Given that Mettee and her colleagues are charged with resurrecting the Youngstown school system from academic emergency, the national standards that have been embraced by President Barack Obama provide an intriguing reference point.

The New York Times reports that under the U.S. Department of Education’s Race to the Top initiative, in which states are competing for a share of $4 billion in school improvement money, states can earn 40 points of the possible 500 for participating in the common effort and adopting the new standards.

With the Youngstown system not only in academic emergency, but also in fiscal emergency — a state fiscal oversight commission has controlled the purse strings since 2006 — the need for drastic action is obvious.

At the first meeting of the academic panel, Mettee said: “Despite good intentions, things have not gone well and students are being shortchanged.” Implicit in the statement is the belief that a top-to-bottom review of the school district is in order to determine why it has the worst academic record in the state of Ohio.

Whose fault?

Is it because of administrators in the central office, led by Superintendent Dr. Wendy Webb? Does the fault like with the principals and the teachers? Or, is it because of the economic and social challenges confronting many students, especially those from inner city neighborhoods?

Answers to those and other such questions would help determine what the district needs in terms of an academic strategy.

“Our focus will be positive,” Mettee said. That’s good insofar as trying to get all the interest groups to embrace what the Academic Distress Commission is doing.

But, the failure of the school district indicates systemic problems that will not be addressed without some straight talk from Mettee and her colleagues.

President Obama and U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan are demanding performance from school systems, especially in urban areas. The national academic standards are designed to give all children an equal chance of success.

“Now we have the possibility that, for the first time, states could come together around new standards and high school graduation requirements that are ambitious and coherent. This is a big deal,” Chester E. Finn Jr., former assistant secretary of education, told the New York Times. Finn has advocated national standards for more than two decades.

Ambitious and coherent. That’s what the academic recovery plan for the Youngstown City School District must be.