The latest batch of report cards issued by the Ohio Department of Education to local public schools and districts has attracted predictable complaints about unpopular standardized tests and new, tougher criteria for evaluating districts’ performance. But the assessments express another finding that deserves far more attention than it has gotten: the persistent negative connection between student achievement and poverty.

School officials, teachers, parents, and state lawmakers are protesting the downgrading of many districts from their previous evaluations. Several districts in suburban Toledo declined from a B grade to a C on their “performance index,” which primarily reflects student test performance during the past school year.

Click here to read more Blade editorials

The state dropped, after just one year, the set of standardized tests on which the most recent report-card grades were based. The report cards were delayed for months to accommodate changes in test providers. A new state law gives schools, districts, teachers, and students “safe harbor” through the next school year from penalties related to poor test performance.

But the report cards should not have surprised anyone. Education department officials had warned that grades were likely to go down, because the state is subjecting schools and districts to tougher expectations tied to the national Common Core education standards for English and math. The new scores, despite problems with test administration, provide a better measure of how well schools are preparing students for higher education and careers.

The Fordham Institute, a Columbus-based education research and advocacy group, notes that in previous years, state report cards declared more than 80 percent of Ohio students academically proficient. On the latest report cards, that figure ranges from 55 to 70 percent.

But other academic indicators, Fordham adds, suggest that just 30 to 45 percent of the state’s students are on track for success in college and their careers. And in economically distressed communities, it’s fewer than 25 percent.

Ohioans need to prepare themselves to accept and act on, not deny, such unpalatable findings — to “raise the bar,” as the education department says. Assuring ourselves that schools and young people are performing better than they are, and allowing large numbers of students to opt out of taking tests, are the wrong ways to build youthful — or statewide — self-esteem.

The answer is not to get rid of standardized tests, but rather to return them to the purpose for which they were intended: as diagnostic tools, not blunt political instruments to punish struggling school districts and deny them needed resources. Nor should the immediate instinct be to blame the tools when the results aren’t satisfactory.

Toledo Public Schools received a D in overall performance on its latest report card, as it did the previous year. Yet the district continues to face — and often overcome — long odds in educating its disadvantaged students. That challenge should not be underestimated, as TPS and other urban districts continue to struggle for adequate funding.

A deep dive into the report card data sponsored by three groups of Ohio education professionals — the Ohio School Boards Association, the Buckeye Association of School Administrators, and the Ohio Association of School Business Officials — finds big disparities in academic achievement between economically disadvantaged students in Ohio and their better-off peers.

Howard Fleeter, the author of that analysis and a consultant to the Ohio Education Policy Institute, identifies “a strong negative correlation between student achievement and socioeconomic status.” He concludes that for the future of the state, its work force, and all of its residents, “it is imperative that policymakers find solutions to close the significant achievement gap.” Such solutions must go beyond the classroom, he adds.

State officials are right to demand higher standards for all Ohio public schools. They also have an obligation to help all schools and districts amass the resources they need to improve their performance. That is a more important task than conferring more tax cuts and tax breaks on the wealthiest Ohioans.

First Published March 9, 2016, 5:00 a.m.