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Valley’s nontraditional schools rate poorly
By Denise Dick
columbus
Of the top 100 school districts in Ohio as ranked by the Ohio Department of Education, eight are charter or community schools.
All of the districts in the bottom 100 are charter, community or conversion schools.
No community schools in the Mahoning Valley cracked the top 100. The highest ranked was the now-closed LEAD Academy in Liberty, which was listed at 210 on the list of 936 ranked school districts.
Seven traditional school districts in the Valley ranked in the top 100: Maplewood, 43; Canfield, 57; South Range, 88; Champion, 90; Lordstown, 91; Poland, 92; and Columbiana, 93.
The top three slots, though, went to community schools in Cuyahoga and Lucas counties.
Marianne Lombardo, vice president for school performance and accountability at the Ohio Alliance for Public Charter Schools, said the alliance has been working with ODE and charter schools to develop alternative recovery rankings for dropout-recovery schools.
Dropout-recovery schools, which serve students who have dropped out of traditional high schools, are among those at the bottom of the list.
“Current performance index rankings focus on the OGT [Ohio Graduation Tests] in 10th grade,” Lombardo said. “Some students at dropout-recovery schools have been out of school for three or four years.”
She said the alliance is working on alternative models that still hold schools accountable for performance and growth.
Special-needs schools also require an alternative model that the alliance is working with ODE to develop, Lombardo said.
The need for alternative models for both dropout-recovery schools and those that focus on students with special needs have been topics of legislative sessions, she said.
“It’s a recognized issue,” Lombardo said.
The preliminary list was released last month by ODE, and the rankings are based on performance index scores. A final list will be developed and released in September as a requirement of the state budget bill.
PI scores combine individual students’ results on all tested subjects in grades 3-8 on Ohio’s Achievement Assessments and on the 10th-grade Ohio Graduation Tests.
The list doesn’t rank schools in grades below third, schools that serve only ninth-graders, schools that serve only students in grades higher than 10th, joint vocational schools or schools with fewer than 10 tested students.
The final ranking to be released in September will include more information than performance index scores.
“ODE is required to develop another measure of student academic performance beyond the performance index so that all school districts and school buildings can accurately be compared,” according to ODE’s website. “Rankings will be supplemented with data on the amount of money devoted to classroom instruction and opportunities provided to gifted students. ODE is currently working to develop criteria for including these measures in the rankings.”
Though Youngstown City was the lowest-ranked traditional Valley district on the list at 807, 12 community schools in the Valley ranked lower.
Youngstown Academy of Excellence on Rigby Street was the Valley’s lowest at 913.