Dayton Daily News education reporter Scott Elliott writes about schools, kids, teaching and learning.
Home > Blogs > Get on the Bus > Archives > 2008 > October > 16 > Entry
New state superintendent ran the state’s worst underachieving district
Regular readers here at GOTB know I’ve written a lot about how school districts perform on state tests relative to the median income in the district. In a nutshell, I argue that districts who rank high in the state for test scores but low for median income are “overachievers.” Those that score low but have high median income are “underachievers.” (For background, see my recent column here and past blog post here.)
Using this approach, I took a look at Cleveland Heights, the school district run by Ohio’s new state superintendent of instruction Deborah Delisle. Here’s what I found — Delisle presided over Ohio’s most underachieving school district.
Cleveland Heights is a low performing district. I am not intimately familiar with it, but I understand it is a close-in suburb of Cleveland. If you can tell us more about it, please chime in with a comment because the data about Cleveland Heights suggests it is very unusual.
Here are the numbers — Cleveland Heights this year ranked 569th out of 610 school district for test performance, with a performance index score of 86.8 (Dayton, ranked last, has a score of 70). That puts it in the bottom 7 percent in the state. But Cleveland Heights’ median income of $39,404 ranks 102 — in the top 16 percent in the state.
The spread between the two rankings — 467 places — is by far the widest spread in the state. Thus, I would call Cleveland Heights Ohio’s most underachieving school district.
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Comments
By Rick
October 19, 2008 11:06 AM | Link to this
Scott, there are probably some unusual demographics here, which make your model inapplicable. I have a brother living in Cleveland Heights. When I lived up in the Cleveland area in the late 1960s, Cleveland Heights was a mostly Jewish suburb with a good reputation for its schools. It has since become majority black. What I am guessing is that there are a lot of older Jewish residents who don’t have kids in the school. These folks have made their money and done reasonably well. The folks that have kids in the system are at the beginning or middle of their careers and may not have the skillsets necessary to do as well as the older residents. The relevant comparison would be between the wealth of parents with kids in the schools and the achievement of the students.By School Supporter
October 17, 2008 2:37 AM | Link to this
Scott writes, “I would call Cleveland Heights Ohio’s most underachieving school district.” But your approach is flawed for reasons cited earlier. For example, how do you know the district’s kids come from the same families as the area’s wealth? How might incoming families fleeing Cleveland effect scores? The district has several initiatives underway, see: http://www.chuh.org/news/news921_2006.shtml That said, Governor Strickland owes us an explanation for his attack on Dr. Zelman, especially given the recognition her department received from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights.By Mary
October 16, 2008 2:19 PM | Link to this
“Underachieving” is a problem for many individual students - not just districts. I think a number thrown around in the gifted community is 50% of gifted students are “underachievers” supposedly due to a lack of challenge in the early grades. They do not learn how to study or work at things because the curriculum is too slow. Some researchers say they are generally doomed after about 8th grade unless they are drastically accelerated. As far as relating a district’s coagulated test scores or “underachievement” to median income comparisons, it seems education level of parents and local cultural issues would also provide meaningful data. Median income in Cleveland Heights might be high or low income in other areas because of cost of living. Is the Cleveland Heights area culturally anti-intellectual? Is this where the Dawg Pound people live and go to school during the week? Or maybe Rock and Roll is their thing, but not academics.