Saturday, March 31, 2012
By Denise Dick
Youngstown
The proposed update to the city schools academic-recovery plan focuses on strategies to improve high school students’ achievement.
The plan, adopted by the academic distress commission March 15, awaits approval by state Superintendent Stan Heffner.
Heffner, who has 30 days to review the plan, may approve, reject or modify the document.
Adrienne O’Neill, chairwoman of the distress commission, said the plan that’s been in place since July 2010 focuses on the elementary schools. That plan remains in place, but the newly-constituted commission updated it.
“The high schools are not doing as well as they ought to be doing,” she said. “All of the other urban eight [districts in Ohio] — with the possible exception of Cleveland — have graduation rates that have advanced significantly. Columbus and Cincinnati and Canton have over 80 percent graduation.”
Youngstown’s graduation rate on the 2011 state report card was about 68 percent.
Superintendent Connie Hathorn said the district can accomplish what’s in the plan.
It outlines seven strategies with the ultimate goal of the district earning a report-card designation of at least continuous improvement for two consecutive years. At that point, the commission would be disbanded.
The five-member commission — three members appointed by Heffner and two by Lock P. Beachum Sr., school board president — was established in early 2010 after the district earned an academic-emergency designation on its report card and after the district failed to meet adequate yearly progress for four consecutive school years.
It was the first and remains the only such commission in the state.
The district moved to academic watch, one step above the lowest rating of academic emergency, on the most recent report card.
The academic plan emphasizes the need for on-level instruction. With the exception of Volney Rogers Sixth and Seventh Grade Academy, O’Neill said the commission saw many classes where teachers were teaching below grade level. The commission also visited Chaney’s Visual and Performing Arts and Science, Technology, Engineering and Math Campus, East High School, P. Ross Berry Eighth and Ninth Grade Academy.
Such below-level instruction wasn’t in every classroom members visited, but “we saw more of it than I would have liked,” the commission chairwoman said.
At Volney, members witnessed instruction on grade level or above, she said.
There are other good things happening with the city schools, O’Neill said.
“The [Choffin] career tech center was excellent,” she said. “They have very well articulated programs, students know what the outcomes will be, what kinds of careers they’re preparing for, and instruction is pitched at or above grade level.”
Youngstown Early College, because of its excellent rating, its partnerships with other organizations and entities and its goal to graduate 100 percent of its students, is exempted from the plan requirements. The commission challenges that school to increase its report card rating to excellent with distinction.
“There are some very good things,” O’Neill said. “But overall high school performance really needs to improve dramatically.”
The graduation rate must improve and students should have clear college and career pathways, she said.
“If they could duplicate what’s going on in the career tech center everywhere, they would have a fine school system,” O’Neill said.