The Plain Dealer

8/3/2007

Scott Stephens, Joseph L. Wagner and Angela Townsend

Plain Dealer Reporters

The Cleveland public schools took a crucial step up the state’s achievement ladder this year, advancing one rung from “academic watch” to “continuous improvement.”

“This is not the panacea, but it is the building block for moving ahead,” schools CEO Eugene Sanders said Thursday. “Certainly the goal this year was to establish a floor and foundation of academic credibility.”

The progress was good news in the much-maligned district, which was mired last year in academic watch and met none of the state’s academic benchmarks.

This year, the district met four of 30 benchmarks.

Those were in 10th- and 11th-grade reading and writing. It missed making a fifth benchmark, attendance, by less than 1 percentage point. The graduation rate moved up more than three percentage points to 55 percent.

The district last met four benchmarks in the 2003-04 school year.

“Dr. Sanders set continuous improvement as his goal and he has accomplished it - I am very pleased,” said Mayor Frank Jackson.

More important than the designation, the district posted record-high passage rates in 21 out of 23 testing areas that can be compared with other years. Only third-grade reading and sixth-grade math had lower passage rates than the previous year.

Sophomores and juniors also posted the highest scores in the district’s history on each of five parts of the Ohio Graduation Test - the test students must pass by the end of their senior year to graduate. That’s a much-needed boost for a district that finished the past school year with about 1,300 seniors still needing to pass one or more parts of the exam to get a diploma.

In fact, last year’s sophomores scored as high as last year’s seniors on the test, which assesses reading, writing, math, science and social studies.

“If that holds, we should have significant gains in the graduation rate when these sophomores are seniors,” said Craig Cotner, the district’s chief academic officer.

The data is based on tests given to the district’s students during the 2006-07 school year. The Ohio Department of Education will release official results for all districts Aug. 14.

Cleveland wasn’t the only big-city district with good news. The Columbus schools, which surpassed Cleveland last year as the state’s largest district, also made continuous improvement.

But the test results provided a measure of personal vindication for Sanders, who took the district’s top job a year ago after serving as superintendent of the Toledo schools.

Securing the continuous improvement ranking was one of the new CEO’s often-repeated goals, and he acknowledged Thursday that it will give his administration increased credibility if the district needs to ask residents for a property tax increase to support the schools.

“The timing of that has not been set as of yet,” Sanders said. “When we do go out and call on the community for something, we have a record to stand on.”

Sanders and Cotner offered a litany of reasons for the improved passage rates, including establishing firm goals for all schools, tightly focused teacher training, textbook upgrades and an aggressive effort to improve student writing. Once heavy on multiple choice answers, state tests now emphasize short answers and essay responses.

“It’s not that our students didn’t know the answers,” Cotner said. “Our students didn’t know how to write the answers.”

While Sanders credited his administrative team with achieving continuous improvement, the Cleveland Teachers Union said its members’ role in the higher grade should not be overlooked.

“It is due to the passion and commitment of Cleveland teachers that we have achieved the goal of continuous improvement on the state report card.” said CTU President JoAnne DeMarco. “It’s what happens in the classroom every day that matters.”

Former CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett said her administration laid the groundwork for the gains. Byrd-Bennett left the district in February 2006 after eight years at the helm.

“I’m really, really pleased for the kids,” Byrd-Bennett said. “We had things in place to reach continuous improvement and (Sanders) built on the foundation we put there.”

During the upcoming school year, the district will address areas that need improvement, including the performance of gifted students, students with limited English skills and pre-kindergarten instruction.

“We need to make sure our kids enter kindergarten with a vocabulary equal to or greater than suburban kids,” Cotner said.

To reach these Plain Dealer reporters:

sstephens@plaind.com, 216-999-4827

jwagner@plaind.com, 216-999-4906

atownsend@plaind.com, 216-999-3894

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