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Students, teachers, staff, parents and taxpayers throughout the Mahoning Valley and Ohio have reason to smile over this week's release of the humongous batch of 2025-26 Ohio School Report Cards.
Collectively, they document a large majority of our public school systems making the grade. Statewide, grades for English language arts skills have reached a five-year high of 62% proficiency.
"Every subgroup that we have made progress over this last year in literacy," Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Director Steve Dackin touted Tuesday.
Likewise, math proficiency among all students also reached a five-year high of 56% on the 2026 Ohio State Tests. Encouraging news also came on the front of chronic absenteeism among students. Though still far too high, that statewide rate dropped significantly to 23%.
Locally, there's plenty to applaud as well. Consider:
• Youngstown City Schools made a historic gain in its overall performance index, rising to level 3, which means the Big 8 Ohio urban district at last extricated itself from the lower rungs of achievement and now meets state standards. For years, it dwelled in the basement as the lowest achieving district in the Buckeye State. Today, it is tied for No. 1 in overall achievement among the state's largest urban districts, rising above such other school systems as Columbus, Dayton and Toledo.
• Only one of 35 public school districts in Mahoning and Trumbull counties failed this year to meet state standards, as Campbell City Schools remained stuck with a below-average 2.5 rating. In Mahoning County, the Career and Technical Center district and Youngstown's Choffin Career Center scored perfect 5 ratings, with Canfield, West Branch and Western Reserve close behind with a stellar 4.5-star rating.
• An impressive 22 school districts in Mahoning and Trumbull counties showed jumps in their grade for career readiness. That likely results from the increasing emphasis schools and partner workforce organizations are dedicating to post-graduation success. It's a clear sign those efforts have paid dividends and should be continued and strengthened.
Nonetheless, not all of the standards measured on the new Valley schools' report cards are something to crow about. Take chronic absenteeism, for example. Though 23% statewide, the new data pegs Youngstown's rate at a disturbingly unacceptable 56.7%.
Or take grade-level reports of student achievement. In Struthers, for example, only 43% of third graders are reported proficient at English language arts and seventh-grader math proficiency comes in at a lowly 35%.
Those are just some of many, many areas for improvement that the tests have identified for all districts large and small to focus on moving forward into this new school year. Indeed part of the benefit of the annual grade reports lies in their ability to accurately steer the ship of academic progress in properly productive directions.
Of course, the annual report cards on the state of Ohio schools fail to take into account the impact of external factors in students' lives that weigh heavily on achievement levels.
Many other ingredients go into building good grades, including the availability of strong learning resources, economic status and the support system students receive in their personal lives from parents and guardians. That's why test and report card results should never be used as the sole indicators of the success or failure of a student, a school or a district.
As state ODE Director Dackin pointed out, "The Ohio School Report Cards are never an end point, but a building block for data-driven decisions that guide where to focus state and local resources, and, most importantly, how best to support Ohio students."
On the whole, however, the report cards do serve as one viable tool among many that schools should use to identify and then address their own strengths and weaknesses.
If taken seriously, examined closely and used appropriately, they can play an important role in improving the overall quality of learning for Ohio's most precious commodity -- its 1.5 million public school students.