City schools’ improvements in literacy inspire optimism

Yes, Virginia, there is hope for academic improvement within the long beleaguered, largely underachieving Youngstown City School District.

For the first time in recent memory, the urban school district of 5,300 students does not find itself in or near the basement in a critical statewide barometer of aptitude. A report on elementary-school literacy, released earlier this month, gives the school district a letter grade of C for the improvements it has made in increasing language-arts skills among kindergartners through third-graders.

For a district in academic watch that’s so long accustomed to receiving a vast majority of D’s and F’s on its state report card and other gauges of academic quality, the bump up to average competency levels stands as a refreshing and promising indicator of the direction in which the district looks to be heading.

Of course, it’s far too early to tell whether this one report is a harbinger of overall academic enrichment of district students at all grade levels. It does, however, illustrate solid progress in one of the most fundamental curriculum areas of any elementary school student’s regimen.

After all, reading is the foundation for all learning. That is why it’s critical to find and address reading deficiencies in students as early as possible. The K-3 Literacy gauge measures how well schools and districts are helping young students who read below grade level.

The measurement ties to Ohio’s new Third Grade Reading Guarantee, which aims to ensure that all students are reading at grade level by the end of third grade. Through this initiative, school districts and community schools diagnose reading issues, create individualized reading-improvement plans and monitor students closely.

Youngstown’s respectable ranking no doubt has much to do with the student-focused leadership of Superintendent Connie Hathorn, who has been ahead of the state curve on literacy building. Two years ago, he implemented a new literacy program that contains many of the same components of the Third Grade Guarantee.

“It’s paying dividends,” Hathorn said. “I compliment the teachers in the buildings for sticking to it. They believe in the program, they work hard, and they’re raising expectations for the kids.”

Hathorn’s replacement

The encouraging scores from city school pupils also serve as an additional piece of evidence to argue that the search for Hathorn’s replacement must be afforded maximum attention, seriousness and responsibility. Certainly no one would want to see the building blocks come tumbling down.

Elsewhere in the Mahoning Valley, the Mathews and Maplewood school districts in Trumbull County earned A’s on the literacy report. Clearly their formula for success should be shared and emulated by other districts with similar demographics.

On the other end of the spectrum is a set of districts that only merited poor grades of D. These included Girard, Hubbard, Southington, Warren, East Liverpool and Wellsville. Campbell, alas, is alone at the bottom of the heap with a failing F grade.

Campbell Superintendent Matthew Bowen attributes the low score to the failure of past administrators to comprehensively target and place low-performing readers into special programs. That issue has been corrected, he said.

All in all, the state’s new emphasis on literacy skills for the youngest public school students holds tremendous promise for urban, suburban and rural districts alike.

As Richard A. Ross, Ohio schools superintendent, aptly put it, “Boys and girls who can read on grade level in third grade control their academic destinies and are more likely to graduate with the skills they need to be successful.”