Nobody is satisfied with the academic performance of the schools serving Ohio's poor, urban youngsters ? and nobody should be. In the 2008-09 school year, almost half of the quarter million students in the state's ?Big 8? cities attended schools rated ?D? or ?F? by the state.
And the 2009 data are no aberration ? academic achievement has been stagnant in these schools for years. Just 60 percent of students score proficient in reading on state tests, and only about half score proficient in math. We've been observing these trends since we first started analyzing urban school performance in Ohio seven years ago, and every year we see a handful of schools that buck these bleak trends and achieve significant results for disadvantaged youngsters from inner-city communities.
Fordham's latest report, Needles in a Haystack: Lessons from Ohio's high-performing, high-need urban schools, examines eight of? these schools and distills lessons that can inform district and state policies and practices that will foster more such schools ? without making it harder on the few we now have.
We undertook this study in order to understand the reasons for their success and transform that understanding into policy recommendations for Ohio educators, policymakers, and commentators. The good news is that these schools are terrific. The bad news is that there are so few of them: eight schools in five cities including two charter schools, two magnets, and four traditional district schools. They share ten common traits, including that they are all schools of choice (the district schools had high degrees of open-enrollment), there is little administrative turnover, and they are defined by a ?no-excuses? culture, to name just a few.
Check out the report for the full findings as well as individual narratives describing each school. It's enough to inspire hope even among skeptics. All of them serve poor kids. One has a student population that comprises 34 percent students with disabilities. Several serve much larger percentages of minority students than their home district. Yet they all achieve at consistently high levels. Some have practically unbelievable proficiency levels that outpace the district by 40-some percentage points.
These eight schools...prove once again that it is possible to do right by high-need youngsters within the framework of American public education.
These eight schools, and the leaders, staff, and students that work diligently within their walls each day, prove once??again that it is possible to do right by high-need youngsters within the framework of American public education. They give the lie to defeatists and excusers who assert either that ?these kids can't learn? or that ?schools can only do so much with kids like this until society fixes their families and their communities.? But such schools don't happen by accident. If we want more of them to serve more kids successfully, grown-ups have to make it happen.
We've identified six policy lessons that we think, when applied in tandem, can pave the way for more Needles-like schools. To find out what they are, visit our website for the full study, and for ?companion videos featuring interviews of staff members and leaders at each of the Needles schools.
- The Fordham Ohio team