Last fall, I went outside one Saturday morning to practice the Midwestern sacrament of leaf blowing.1 Weather conditions were perfectly crisp. I began an episode of Emily Hanford’s remarkable podcast, Sold a Story, that I’d been aging in the cellar for such an occasion. It was a deep dive on an Ohio district called Steubenville that helps nearly all of its students become good readers even though most of them come from low-income homes. Leaves were soon flying everywhere and all was right with the world.
Not long after, I realized I wasn’t blowing leaves anymore. I was just a goofball dad standing motionless in the front yard, listening. Dumbfounded.
I’d never heard of Steubenville. But the success being described - and sustained for more than a decade - astonished me. Before the episode was finished, I gave up on the leaves and went inside to see whether the results were as good as they sounded. I’ve been digging ever since, maybe a little obsessed.
I’m convinced Steubenville is real. And it’s an academic outlier, period, not just a feel-good story for elementary reading.
Let’s start with data from Stanford’s Education Opportunity Project (EOP), which solves one of education’s annoying problems: every state uses different tests. Its researchers convert all the tests onto a common national scale, allowing districts in Ohio to be compared with those nationwide. Combined math and reading achievement is then reported in terms of “grade-level units.” In layman’s terms, this is the number of grade levels above or below the national average.2
Steubenville’s performance for reading and math is +2.33, which means its students in grades 3-8 are more than two grade levels above the national average. Achievement is even higher in math than in reading.
To put Steubenville in perspective, let’s compare it to some demographically similar Ohio districts.3 None comes close. Only one of them - New Philadelphia - has test scores above the national average. Steubenville’s students are performing more than four grade levels higher than peers in Cambridge and Portsmouth.
Steubenville has elite results for virtually every subgroup. Black students, for example, are achieving at 1.6 grade levels above the national average for all students. That is a stunning figure. To put it in context, none of the ten largest districts in the EOP data set has Black student performance equal to the national average - let alone exceeding it by such a margin.4
But how does Steubenville compare to some of the leading states you’ve heard about? What about Mississippi? Aren’t they experiencing some sort of miracle, according to The Education Daly?
Thank you for asking. Mississippi has improved significantly, but its student average is -0.49. There is not a single district in the state that performs nearly so well as Steubenville.
Massachusetts has long been the highest-performing state in the country. Surely it gives Steubenville a run for its money? Nope. Its student average is +0.39 grade levels, which is impressive, but Steubenville is far better. And when we consider poverty, there is no contest. Low-income students in Massachusetts average -1.49, compared to +2.32 for Steubenville. That’s more than 3.5 grade levels of difference.
While comparing districts to states is a little apples-to-oranges, let’s do it anyway because it illuminates magnitude. Here is Steubenville vs. the ten states with the highest performance in the EOP data:
Perhaps most remarkably, Steubenville sidestepped the education depression. Most American districts peaked in performance between 2013 and 2015 before entering a prolonged period of decline, which continues through the present day. As of 2025, Steubenville students were achieving at higher rates in both math and reading than they were a decade ago. COVID disruptions had barely any discernible effect on test scores - quite the opposite of the rest of the country.
These patterns are the difference between having a great run and building a dynasty. Education has plenty of short-lived success stories. Steubenville has been winning for decades, defying national trends. Its dominance is singular in both magnitude and duration.
To find districts producing results comparable to Steubenville’s, we generally need to look at very affluent suburbs. I found a system with about 3,000 students, similar in total enrollment to Steubenville, but with vastly greater resources. It pays its teachers more than twice as much. It spends almost $30,000 annually per pupil compared with less than $12,000 for Steubenville. It builds best-in-class facilities that Steubenville could never dream of affording.
Even so, Steubenville’s low-income students (+2.3) outscore not only the overall student body in this famously wealthy community (its level is +1.58) but non-poor students specifically (+1.88).
The district I’m talking about here is Beverly Hills. Poor students in Steubenville have higher scores than non-poor students in Beverly Hills. I have an idea for a billboard:
Enough gawking. How does Steubenville do it?
I’m far from the first to recognize Steubenville’s excellence. In addition to Emily Hanford, Karin Chenoweth was onto Steubenville long before me. She wrote about the district in 2009’s How It’s Being Done and returned to it in 2021’s Districts That Succeed, part of her longtime quest to find schools and districts that broke the standard relationship between poverty and achievement. She also devoted multiple episodes of her ExtraOrdinary Districts podcast to Steubenville. It’s all excellent, drawn from in-depth interviews with local educators and families. I highly recommend digging in.5
Their dogged work, combined with publicly available data, let us rule out some of the obvious explanations for results this unusual. Here’s a list of things that do NOT account for Steubenville’s performance:
There isn’t a crusading superintendent. The district has been led since 2014 by Melinda Young, who was promoted to the position after spending 25 years as a teacher and principal. She keeps a low public profile and won’t be found delivering keynotes about the “Steubenville Way” at national conferences. As good as Young is, she isn’t a miracle worker who single-handedly willed the district’s culture into being. One of her predecessors was Richard Ranallo, a Steubenville lifer who held just about every job but janitor before becoming superintendent. His maxim was “systems elevate averages.” He emphasized choosing solid programs and working through the inevitable problems rather than abandoning them. He also developed the people around him, creating a bench that carried the work forward long after his retirement.6
It isn’t demographics. Steubenville is an Appalachian steel town of about 18,000 people across the river from West Virginia. It has more Black and multiracial students than the rest of Ohio and its household poverty rate - almost 27 percent - is about double the state average. Virtually all of its students are economically disadvantaged. There is one exception. Steubenville’s children arrive at kindergarten unusually well prepared. In fall 2023, just 26 percent were classified as not on-track in language and literacy, compared with 54 percent statewide. That may reflect the district’s unusually extensive investment in preschool. But when students do arrive off-track, Steubenville is much more effective at moving them to on-track within a year: 89 percent vs 33 percent for the rest of Ohio.
It isn’t funding. According to state data, Steubenville spends less per pupil than any of the demographically similar districts discussed above. Average teacher salaries - around $64,000 - rank fourth among the six Ohio comparison districts.
It isn’t a larger or better-credentialed workforce. Steubenville’s teachers are very similar in average experience to peer districts and no more likely to hold master’s degrees. Nor does it employ dramatically more counselors, psychologists, or other support staff than its peers.
It isn’t teaching to the test. Steubenville is an outlier on a wide array of data measures beyond grades 3-8 reading and math. High school students complete advanced coursework and earn dual enrollment credit at high rates. The district has unusually robust career and technical participation and excellent four-year college enrollment.
So what IS different about Steubenville? Here are a few things:
Student attendance is fantastic. In 2024-25, just 7.2 percent of Steubenville students were chronically absent, the term for missing 10 percent of all school days. The figure for Ohio statewide was 25 percent. For Black students specifically, Steubenville had 9.3 percent chronic absenteeism compared to 43 percent for the rest of Ohio. The typical Steubenville student attends about seven more days of school each year than the average Ohio student. From kindergarten through twelfth grade, that adds up to about 96 additional days - or more than half a year of schooling.7 A 2012 case study described the lengths educators go to support student needs - not just food, clothes, and school supplies, but in the event of a tragedy, “the police arrive first and the fire trucks second, and [school staff] are there third.”
Teachers show up, too. Teachers in Steubenville attended 96.1 percent of days in 2024-25, which means they averaged about eight absences each. Teachers in Cleveland, Columbus, and Toledo were absent more than twice as often.8 Additional absences mean more substitutes, more colleagues covering classes for one another, and less instructional continuity. Research suggests those absences also reduce student learning.
It has a long-term commitment to Success for All. Decades ago, the district adopted Success for All (SFA), a school-wide model focused on preventing failure through early intervention. Elementary students receive explicit phonics instruction, frequent assessment, and intensive tutoring when they struggle. Students are regularly regrouped by reading level - not age - which builds shared responsibility for each child across multiple teachers in the building. All teachers receive instructional coaching to ensure they are implementing the program as intended.
It is tempting to conclude that we’ve finally found the secret formula: Success for All. But that doesn’t quite wash. Success for All is no-nonsense. It is the furthest thing from buzzy in curriculum circles. If instruction were a fashion trend, Success for All would be a polyester leisure suit with massive lapels. Thousands of schools have used SFA over the years, and most have not become anything like Steubenville. In fact, as Hanford pointed out in her reporting, many districts quit Success for All because it was too operationally demanding. In other cases, teachers found it prescriptive. And in still others, districts cherry-picked elements of the program, which is meant to be comprehensive, and used them only until new leaders arrived and brought their own favored programs.
Steubenville did not possess some preternatural judgment to select a magic bean program. Rather, it implemented a sound off-the-shelf model faithfully and consistently for an unusual length of time, come hell or high water, grounded in what Chenoweth described to me as a bone-deep belief that kids can succeed and it’s the job of adults to figure out how to make it happen. The district is fanatical about execution. Which probably understates the matter. When researchers visited Steubenville more than a decade ago, they described elementary instruction as “minutely aligned.” Teachers across schools were generally teaching the same material, with the same methods, at the same time. There were common disciplinary expectations across classrooms, with every adult expected to enforce them. All of this became a way of life within Steubenville’s system.9
Which is the hardest trick in education. Maybe that’s the secret. Turn everyday execution into a way of life. That’s how you build a dynasty.
Next week, in the second (and final) installment of this month’s newsletter: If Steubenville has been producing such remarkable results for so long, why do we know so little about it? Why hasn’t the district been studied more carefully - flaws and all - so its lessons can be useful elsewhere? There’s a reason… and it says less about Steubenville than a strange blind spot we have in American education. (Update: read Part II here.)
Before you ask, I use a battery-powered leaf blower. I am not a monster.
EOP uses state test results from grades 3–8, then statistically adjusts them to account for differences among state tests and cut scores. It then links the results to NAEP, which is given in every state, to create a common scale that allows comparisons of performance across districts, states, grades, and years. Results are then expressed in “grade levels” relative to the 2019 national average. If that’s not wonky enough for you, full methods here. Figures in this post are from SEDA 2025.2, released in September 2026.
Here are 2024-25 basic details for the districts from the Ohio state report card - each one has 1,500 to 3,000 students and high levels of poverty. Most district data come from this file.
If you are looking for New York City, the nation’s largest district, the state of New York is not included in the EOP set.
Other excellent pieces on Steubenville: Chad Aldeman in The 74, Robert Pondiscio on the same platform, and Barbara Kantrowitz for The Hechinger Report.
Young’s immediate predecessor, Michael McVey, resigned as part of a deal to resolve criminal charges related to his role in obstructing the investigation of a horrific rape involving several Steubenville football players that drew national attention in 2012. If you had heard of Steubenville before, that story might be why.
If you want to understand Steubenville’s attendance culture, read its high school student handbook and compare it with your own local high school’s. Seriously, do it. The district intervenes early when attendance becomes a challenge and offers a range of supports. But it also expects kids to be in school every day:
Steubenville allows no more than six parent-excused absences per year. (Some districts allow ten or more absences per semester.)
Truancy officials contact families after three consecutive missed days. A truancy letter is sent home after five.
Tardiness counts as a conduct violation, like skipping class.
Previously assigned work is still due when students return. Students get one make-up day for each day missed. Perhaps most strikingly, long-term assignments are still expected to be sent to school even when a student is absent. Being absent does not mean the work, or the responsibility for keeping up, goes away.
Why do Steubenville teachers attend at such high rates? There are clues in the teacher collective bargaining agreement. It offers a cash incentive for perfect attendance. A full-time teacher who uses no sick or personal days receives $200 for each of four eight-week periods, another $100 for May, and another $200 if no days are missed the entire year. That’s as much as $1,100 annually per teacher.
No, Steubenville is not perfect. For details, tune in next week.
comparing different districts taking different tests leaves one wondering......
Best thing I’ve read all week. Thank you!