Some Valley schools shine on latest state report cards, others continue to struggle

YOUNGSTOWN

Mahoning Valley school districts saw grades across the board in the latest state report-card data released Thursday by the Ohio Department of Education.

Though no Valley district got all A’s, Boardman, Poland, South Range, Springfield and Lakeview earned all A’s and B’s.

Youngstown, on the other hand, scored six F’s and one D.

Other districts were everywhere in between.

Interim Youngstown Superintendent Stephen Stohla said the district is working toward improvement, but it’s not a quick process.

“It didn’t get like this overnight, and we’re not going to fix it overnight,” he said. “The teachers and all of the board members want student achievement. I don’t know anyone in the city who doesn’t want student achievement.

It’s going to take hard work and sticking to a program to make that happen.”

Measurements

There are up to seven grades in the latest release for schools and districts: Performance Index, Indicators Met, Annual Measurable Objectives and Value-Added Overall, Value-Added Gifted students, Value-added lowest 20 percent and Value-Added students with disabilities.

Ohio Department of Education officials said this week that some districts may see lower scores because the state has raised expectations for what students must learn in the classroom.

“We’ve long expected that grades might decline as we began to raise the bar for our students and schools,” Lonnie Rivera, interim state superintendent of public instruction, said in a news release. “We believe both teachers and students will take steps to adjust to the new standards and tests.”

Last year, the state Legislature passed a provision calling for a “safe harbor” to give students and schools time to adjust to the new standards and tests. Safe harbor allows districts not to include student progress as part of teacher evaluations. Schools also will not use student test scores to hold students back, except for meeting graduation requirements and scores on Ohio’s third-grade reading test.

The components released Thursday measure schools’ and districts’ performance in achievement, progress in closing achievement gaps among different student groups and reading and math progress.

Data on kindergarten-to-third-grade literacy improvement and the four- and five-year graduation rates were released last month.

There was a delay in the release of report-card information this year because of the transition to new tests and because of the late delivery of Partnership for Assessment of Readiness for College and Careers test results. Ohio dropped the PARCC after one year.

Read more about the results and the response from local educators in Friday's Vindicator or on Vindy.com.