Distress Commission considers high school academics

Hardy outlines trends

Education and public communication were on the table for discussion Sept. 17 at the quarterly meeting of the Lorain Academic Distress Commission.

The state-appointed members are overseeing the academic turnaround plan for Lorain City Schools.

In the meeting, Commission members Tony Richardson, Michele Soliz and Steve Cawthon heard from CEO David Hardy Jr. and several of the educational chiefs. They spoke about how turnaround principals, deans and teachers are working to improve education in Lorain schools.

The educators spoke about Lorain’s new standards-based grading methods and offering direction for classroom curricula without restraining teacher creativity.

For high school students, the educators began analyzing data in February and have found trends there, Hardy said.

It appears Lorain High School has some students who show up for class, are nice, well-behaved, but “undereducated” Hardy said.

High school graduation credits are an issue because about half of the Lorain High School seniors are on pace to graduate and be

ready for work or higher education, Hardy said.

The other half are obtaining the necessary credits but need a push to get over the finish line, Hardy said.

Among them, 20 percent to 25 percent “need a lot more than just credits” to graduate, Hardy said, so they need intensive system support.

At the high school, there are some Success Academy students who have a large number of credits but have only four, five or six courses that count toward graduation, Hardy said.

The silver lining is that school leaders are examining the situation earlier in the school year for seniors. They also are looking at the junior, sophomore and freshman classes to see how the students are accumulating enough credits to graduate, Hardy said.

Richardson asked how the situation was possible, whether students or families were creating their own schedules or were receiving help from counselors or teachers, creating schedules with classes that were needed or classes that filled the schedule.

“How does that happen?” he said.

Lorain has a number of students who get to the high school but are not ready for it academically, Hardy said.

In the last school year, 38.8 percent of the student population was chronically absent from school, Hardy said.

He conceded sometimes out of necessity students were put into classes, instead of purposefully scheduling them to be successful.

“I hate to say it, stuffing kids into groups to make sure they had a schedule and not really thinking through the trajectory of the young person” and what they need to be successful, Hardy said.

In the next few years, Lorain High School will transition into an academy model

with students tracks of study.

As that happens, part of the job of the high school leadership team for the next school year is to figure out how to front-load most of the required courses in ninth and 10th grades, opening up 11th and 12th grades for electives, Hardy said.

Richardson thanked Hardy and the administration for putting the information out.

When you see those types of statistics and realities, practices and procedures, it appeared Lorain schools were “railroading students,” Richardson said.

“We didn’t get here overnight,” Richardson said. “That’s one of the things that I try to preface when I speak publicly about sort of what’s happening in Lorain City Schools.”

In urban districts around Ohio, “as adults, as a community we’ve neglected our responsibility to hold our districts accountable,” Richardson said.

“So I do want to thank Mr.

selecting

Hardy and this administration for bringing these things to light,” Richardson said.

It is easy to applaud what the district does well and dismiss what the district is not doing well, Richardson said. Having a clear understanding of the issues is necessary to go in and improve how the district operates, he said.

There is no expectation to resolve the problems overnight, Richardson said.

“But there is one thing, that on the record, I will say, is that, now we have we have procedures and structures in place so now that we can actually test and evaluate what we’re doing as opposed to just talking about what we think should be done,” Richardson said.

The issue prompted some public comments.

“There should be no child who is entering into … the ninth grade without knowing what core credits they need, how many credits they have and have everything established prior to them going into high school,” said city resident Rhoda Lee.