Youngstown schools and NAACP plan academic achievement conference

YOUNGSTOWN

Youngstown City School District families will be able to learn about the district’s academic progress at an Academic Achievement Conference next week.

The event from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday is a joint effort between the school district’s academic team and the NAACP Community Collaborative. It will be at East High School, 474 Bennington Ave.

After a presentation from the academic team at the conference, parents will be able to ask questions and principals and parent engagement coordinators from all city schools will be available to answer.

George Freeman Jr., president of the Youngstown Chapter of the NAACP, said it’s an important opportunity for parents to learn about the academic requirements their children must meet.

“Parents’ and family members’ support plays a critical role in ensuring their children make satisfactory academic progress in school,” he said. “The more the parents/family members understand what the school requires of their child to succeed academically, the better informed they are about how to provide the social and academic home support their child needs to be successful.

“Attending a conference focused on the academic achievement of their child is a great way to learn and ask the questions of the academic experts charged with ensuring the success of their child,” Freeman added.

The city school district's academic team will explain improvements made throughout the district over the last couple of years.

“We really have made a lot of progress,” said Chief Executive Officer Krish Mohip. “The state report card only goes so far, but there’s more to student achievement than the components measured there.”

Student growth has been demonstrated, for example through test results in math and reading, the district said in a news release.

Although the district scored an F on the Gap Closing component of the most recent state report card, the district saw significant improvement on several metrics. YCSD saw a 39 percentage point increase in the Gap Closing component compared to the 2016-17 report card, from 3.3 percent to 42.3 percent. The Gap Closing component shows how well the district met the performance expectations for the most vulnerable students in English language arts, math, graduation and English language proficiency.

YCSD also saw a dramatic improvement in closing the reading gap among black students. The reading gap is a measurement of the percentage difference between the actual performance of black students compared to the state average. The school district's reading gap for this group decreased from 54.6 percent on the 2016-17 report card to just 3.5 percent on the 2017-18 report card, a 51.1 percentage point reduction.

“We’ve achieved a lot of growth, but the report card focuses on proficiency,” Mohip said. “Students can’t reach proficiency without first realizing growth.”