Report cards: Urbana’s grad rate rises
State school report cards were released this month.
Ohio’s report card system for K-12 schools usually includes letter grades for overall performance and for a number of individual metrics — academic achievement, year-over-year progress, graduation rate and much more.
Those letter grades were not included in the 202021 school year report card because of the disruption created by the COVID-19 pandemic.r, But some of the raw data listed included academic, graduation and attendance measures.
Urbana City School District had a better four-year graduation rate this year at 84.6%, compared to last year’s 82%, according to state report card data.
For performance index, which measures state test performance, Urbana scored 59%. As far as chronic absenteeism, which is when at least 10% of the year’s instructional time is missing, the district had a rate of 32.7. These numbers from last year were not available, since many school district instituted remote learning from home and not inside classrooms.
When it comes to the prepared for success component, which is how well-prepared students are for future opportunities, Urbana scored 32.2%. Last year, the district scored 30.4%.
Prepared for success data measures college and career readiness through high school students’ ACT/ SAT scores, Ohio Honors Diplomas, job industry credentials, College Credit Plus achievement and more.
Each school building and district usually receives an overall grade between A-F on the report cards, and more than half of each school’s overall grade depends on how students perform on state tests each spring. The report cards also usually measure student achievement, performance index, year-over-year growth and gap closing.
Last year, schools received the equivalent of an “incomplete” mark and no A-F letter grades were assigned, because there was much less data available due to the pandemic. The report cards only contained a handful of normal data points, since the spring 2020 state tests in English, math, science and social studies were canceled after mid-March coronavirus-related school closures.
The main data categories available last year were graduation rates and high school “prepared for success” measures.