Big 8 Urban School Districts Show Improvement

Ohio 8 is an unusual alliance made up of school superintendents and teacher union representatives of the eight largest school districts in Ohio. They are meeting now to tout their success in improving urban schools:

..the big urbans have gained 19 percentage points since 2000-2001. Schools overall in Ohio have gained 13.4 percentage points over that same period.

During the 1999-2000 school year, Ohio's eight big-city districts -- Cleveland, Akron, Canton, Youngstown, Toledo, Columbus, Cincinnati and Dayton -- were all foundering in academic emergency, the lowest of five state ratings. Today, none has that dubious distinction.

... the number of students in the eight districts has dropped from 280,000 in 2001 to 230,000 today.