43
Academic panel hears report
By Denise Dick
YOUNGSTOWN
City school children in kindergarten through second grade show the best performance on math assessments while scores drop beginning in fourth grade.
The latest report from Pearson School Achievement Solutions presented Monday at the Youngstown Schools Academic Distress Commission says that 75 percent of kindergartners and first graders and 52 percent of second-graders scored at or above proficient in math on third-quarter assessments.
About 50 percent of kindergartners and 33 percent of first graders score in the advanced range, the report said.
However, “the proportion of students scoring at proficient or higher drops precipitously in 4th grade and virtually none of the students score in this range from 7th through 9th grade,” it said.
The report compiles information from the three consultants working to help implement the district’s academic recovery plan.
In English language arts, sixth-grade students perform the poorest on the assessment compared to other grades — with more than 90 percent below proficient.
The report notes that some of the difference between the scoring in lower and upper grades may be due to unmatched difficulty levels across the grades.
JoAnn Berkowitz of the Ohio Department of Education, who presented the report, pointed out that one of the consultants, EdFocus of East Palestine, wanted commission members to know about the “passion, heart and dedication to the students these [city school] teachers have.”
The five-member Academic Distress Commission was established by ODE in January 2010 after Youngstown schools was declared in academic emergency and failed to make adequate yearly progress for four-consecutive years.
The commission is implementing an academic recovery plan that mandates the district rise to continuous improvement on the state report card — two ranks up from its current academic emergency status — by 2015.