Volney School To Cost $3.3 Million More

[mpalma]

Please don't be fooled by all the smoke and mirrors used in creating the report from the Alliance for Charter Schools.  The report says 57% of 7 charter schools raised their scores.  It doesn't really say why the other charter schools are not required to report.  The Vindicator says there are 10 charter schools for this area.  I counted 11 just off the top of my head.
The report says that 38% of sixteen public schools raised their scores.  In plain English, that would be 6. They DON'T say that they got the number of sixteen schools by dividing Volney into two schools, one the 5th and 6th grades, and the other the 7th and 8th grades.  But they counted charter Summit Academies as one school.  That's right.  The one at St. Pat's on Oak Hill, the one at St. Brendan's on Oakwood and Schenley, and the one at The Immaculate Conception on Oak St., one school. (Why is Oak such a popular name?)

And worst of all they DON'T SAY that the public schools had higher scores.  In this weird way of interpreting scores, a student who receives a perfect score in the first year of the two-year cycle has nowhere to go but down the next year.  A score of 90% correct answers would then be said to indicate a lack of efficacy at his school because it went down ten points, when at an inner city charter school, a child's score might rise from 40% to 55%, a positive gain of 15 points. This failure would then be celebrated because he failed with a higher score than his failure of the year before.  Bad is Good.  We're all totally confused.   The Youngstown Vindicator swallowed the Alliance's press release in whole and published it on the front page of the newspaper with color pictures of happy children at a charter school, and the headline: "Charter schools top city's in performance".

I worked at Volney Rogers Middle Schoool in Youngstown last year, a public school where about half of the kids in the sixth grade passed the Ohio Achievement Tests in reading and math (the data being considered by the article).  This number did not meet the expectations of the state because these students had good reading scores in fifth grade, and indeed, our students could certainly have done better.  Meanwhile at the charter "Youngstown Academy of Excellence,"  about a fourth of the kids passed the tests, and at another charter, "Legacy Academy,"  less than a fifth of the students passed the tests; but the article argues that this proves the superiority of charter schools because their levels of success EXCEEDED the state's expectations for these students. (The expectations must have been pessimistic to say the least.)

Some charter school students perform well though. At "Youngstown Community School",  68% of sixth graders passed the reading test.  But, no, sorry.  This does not meet the state expectations for the YCS students.  In this article, that makes YCS a poor performer despite the fact that they consistently have the highest reading scores in the city.

The fact that the Vindicator swallowed all this moonshine whole-hog just proves what we all know:  we need another news outlet in Youngstown.

[AllanY2525]

Rick,

I agree with you on that point - if the Youngstown City School district cannot
solve it's problems, then why shouldn't parents send their kids to a private school?
They'll get a better education, in an environment that does not and will not tolerate
problem students, gangs, etc....

The bottom line is this: It's all about the kids (students) and providing them with
the very very best education possible - after all, these kids will be running things
someday when we have grown old and retired.

[Rick Rowlands]

Actually, an article in today's Vindicator says that the charter schools are doing better than the city schools.  I think that is great, as people are voting with their feet to choose solutions to problems that don't require more legalized extortion (taxes).

We need to keep voting down the levies which will encourage more parents to send their children to charter schools. Perhaps someday the Youngstown school district will become just one of many choices for education in Youngstown. 

[AllanY2525]

Folks,

PLEEAASE don't jump on me for saying this - it IS only my opinion (whatever that's worth...)
but has anyone thought about WHY so many students have left/are leaving the city's school
system?

Could it be the better teachers, curriculum and ....ummm....FACILITIES that the other cities in
the area have?

The millions that are going into the rebuilding of the city's school buildings are almost
ENTIRELY funded by STATE GRANTS...the "Use it or lose it" type, so can anyone
really blame the city for wanting to use as MUCH as possible of this money, WHILE
it is still available?

Just playing devil's advocate here...please don't "bite my head off".....

Allan

[jay]

Enrollment in the Youngstown city school system has declined by 499 since last year.

[Towntalk]

I couldn't agree with you more, but how do we compel the board members to use good oldfashion common sense? One way would be to keep voting down school Levy's over and over and over again even if it means having the system run completely out of money. It would be a very harsh message ... drastic in fact ... but the only thing they would understand.

[jay]

It was reported in newspaper that the price tag for the construction of the new Volney Rogers Middle School has risen by $3.3 million due to the increase in construction costs from the original 2004 estimate.  Another recent newspaper article claimed that the school system lost several hundred students to other education institutions during the last year.  It is time to cut back on these building projects and do a realistic assessment of the facilities needed for a student enrollment that continues to shrink.