The third graders in Steubenville, Ohio, are among the best little readers in the nation. For nearly 20 years, 93% or more of them have scored proficient on state reading tests. In fact, the elementary schools in this economically depressed area are producing better readers than some of the wealthiest places in the country.
February 20, 2025
The schools in Steubenville, Ohio, are doing something unusual. In fact, it’s almost unheard of. In a country where nearly 40% of fourth graders struggle to read at even a basic level, Steubenville has succeeded in teaching virtually all of its students to read well. Last year, almost every third grader in Steubenville City Schools scored proficient on the state’s reading test. Statewide, one in three third graders in Ohio missed that mark.
Only three districts out of more than 600 in Ohio did better than Steubenville last year.
And those impressive results aren’t a fluke. Every year since 2008, between 93% and 100% of the district’s third graders have scored proficient.
Nationally, the district also stands out, according to data from the Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University. Steubenville has routinely scored in the top 10% or better of schools nationwide for third grade reading, sometimes scoring as high as the top 1%.
Education journalist Karin Chenoweth visited one of Steubenville’s elementary schools back in 2008 and marveled at the results, which she wrote about in her book “How It’s Being Done: Urgent Lessons from Unexpected Schools.”
“It was astonishing to me how amazing that elementary school was,” Chenoweth said in an interview. “They had a kid they were so proud of who had been measured with a very low IQ, and he was reading.”
What stood out to Chenoweth was not just the school’s success, but that it was happening in a place like Steubenville.
Once a bustling steel town, economic forces have left the city in decline.
Thousands of steelworkers in the Steubenville area had lost their jobs by the 1990s, and thousands more have since then. Weirton Steel, located across the Ohio River in West Virginia, which once employed 8,000 workers, closed just last year. These days, the median household income in the city is less than $42,000 per year. Nearly 80% of Steubenville students receive free or reduced lunches, and the state of Ohio considers almost every one of Steubenville’s students to be “economically disadvantaged.”
“We have one-parent homes, no-parent homes, kids that are coming from the homeless shelters,” said Jennifer Blackburn, an instructional coach at Steubenville’s East Garfield Elementary School. Blackburn maintains a closet full of everything from socks to sweatshirts to winter boots for kids who come to school without proper clothing.
In study after study for decades, researchers have found that districts serving low-income families almost always have lower test scores than districts in more affluent places.
Steubenville bucks that trend.
Its third grade reading scores surpass those of well-heeled districts all around the nation. Places like Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia, San Pasqual Union Elementary School District near San Diego, and Chesterfield Township School District in New Jersey lag behind Steubenville, even though the typical families in those areas earn more than four times as much.
In measure after measure — unemployment, single motherhood and household income to name a few — Steubenville struggles.
So why don’t its students? Schools are complex systems, and teasing out correlation from causation can be difficult. But a visit to Steubenville reveals that its elementary schools employ a host of strategies that many others around the country don’t.
Subsidized pre-K. Nearly 80% of Steubenville’s children attend preschool, which costs just $100 per month for full-day classes and is free for the poorest families. The program begins at age 3, and teachers encourage students to talk in complete sentences, which helps them later when they start to learn to read and write. Nationwide, fewer than half of children attend a preschool program.
Attendance. Steubenville uses attendance contests to motivate students to come to school — and deploys a rapid response team when they don’t. A child is considered chronically absent if they miss school 10% of the time or more. Steubenville has a much lower percentage of chronically absent students than most school districts in Ohio. In a class of 30 children, Steubenville is likely to have only a couple of chronically absent students, whereas the average district across the state may have as many as six or seven.
Small reading classes. All the students in Steubenville’s elementary schools have reading class at the same time. That allows students to be grouped with others at the same reading level — even if they’re in a different grade. And reading classes can be small. Some have just six kids. Steubenville is able to have so many small reading classes because every teacher leads one, even gym teacher Josh Meyer.
Time to practice. Steubenville does something called “cooperative learning,” where kids work in pairs and small groups based on their skill level. While this is no substitute for direct instruction from a teacher, it provides something really important: time to practice.
Tutoring for kids who need it. Kids who need extra help get one-on-one tutoring in addition to the daily 90-minute reading class. The tutors include staff, community volunteers and local high school and college students.
Consistency. While many schools change reading curricula frequently, Steubenville has used the same program for the past 25 years. It’s called Success for All.
“SFA just fit us,” said Steubenville Superintendent Melinda Young. “When anybody asks, ‘Why do we have success?’ we start with SFA.”
The program was developed in the 1980s by two professors at Johns Hopkins University. Numerous studies show Success for All can be effective at boosting student achievement. But relatively few schools use it. Currently, only about 800 schools in the United States and Europe use Success for All. Around twice that many used it when Steubenville started in 2000.
