The News Herald (Willoughby, OH)
Making the grade: State releases report cards
Area school districts make gains, show improvement
The Ohio Board of Education released the latest statewide progress reports for the state’s 610 school districts.
The results reflect the 2018-19 school year, and several school districts saw moderate improvements from last year. Painesville, Euclid and Cleveland all improved from “F” grades to “D” for the 2018-2019 school year.
Each district receives an overall letter grade with additional letter grades for criteria including achievement, progress, gap closing, graduation rate, improving at-risk K-12 readers, and prepared for success. Madison Schools enjoyed a largely positive result with an overall B grading, up from 2017-18’s C grading. Their largest improvement was in the “gapclosing” category where they jumped from a F to B.
“We’re making gains, strides and improvements, although there’s still work to do,” said Madison Superintendent Angela Smith. “But overall, we’re happy with our growth. It shows that our most at-risk groups are making improvements, and that’s good.”
Also doing well was Mentor Public Schools which earned an overall B grading. Mentor Superintendent William Porter notes that “the state report card is just one measure of our students’ performance in school” and that “Mentor will continue to focus on creating meaningful hands-on, real-world learning for our students so they develop critical life-skills, such as problem solving and collaboration.”
Porter credited the hard work put in by his district’s staff and faculty.
“Mentor Schools is extremely proud of its staff and students and the hard work they put into the classroom each and every day,” he said. “Their work coupled with help from dedicated parents and guardians and a supportive community is what creates a well-rounded, highquality educational opportunity for children in Mentor.”
Perry Schools received an overall grade of “B, and was awarded an “A” in categories such as graduation, progress and gap closing. However, Assistant Superintendent Betty Jo Malchesky said the district measures student success in many other ways.
“The Ohio School Report Card gives us a data point for some discussion at Perry, but test scores are certainly not our story or reflect the Perry experience,” she said. “What we do know and are committed to is what student success looks like at Perry Schools and within the regional workforce and that common commitment is focused on growing students who
are inspired, engaged, resilient and ready for life.”
Painesville Schools’ result was welcomed but Superintendent Joshua Englehart cautioned, “We’re not exactly jumping in the streets over a D grade, but it is a strong indication of where we’re headed.”
He felt that the grade is not an accurate representation of the district’s value, including the school’s graduation rate of 81.1%, which only earned them a “D” for that category. He feels this does not reflect the progress they’ve made in recent years.
The district’s “prepared for success” grade was an “F” for the second year in a row. Factors considered in the category are SAT and ACT testing participation.
“ACT is what the colleges are looking for, each year districts choose if they are going to administer the ACT or the SAT. You have to go with one or the other, we go with ACT,” said Englehart, noting that this leaves the district’s much lower SAT participation rate counting against them.
Wickliffe Superintendent Joseph Spiccia, whose district also earned an “F” in
“I’m particularly proud of all the districts that have improved their overall grades. I know they will continue their focus on improvement so they can continue to advance even further and ensure that every student is successful.” — State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria
the “prepared for success” category, echoed these concerns.
“All of our students take the ACT, that’s what we offer,” Spiccia said. “Students would have to go outside what we provide to take the SAT. What Dr. Englehart says is exactly right.”
Spiccia criticized the way data was gathered, specifically toward his district’s graduation rates. He said that the total percentage of students accounted for the high school doesn’t always match with OBE numbers, leading toward skewed percentage rankings.
“Clearly, we’re calculating on a different level than they are,” he said.
The OBE acknowledge that the progress reports are “only one part of the story” but this gray area remains a concern for administrators whose districts may be vulnerable to state takeovers based, in part, on the performance grades.
A silver lining comes in a one-year moratorium Ohio legislators have placed on any potential interventions for districts like East Cleveland who are classified as academically distressed last year and the Lorain Schools district the year before that.
“We’ve been operating under this cloud of academic distress commission just following us around,” Englehart says in regards to his improved ranking. “This at least gives us some breathing room to where we can forward plan and not worry about the house being on fire right now. We still approach school improvement with the same intensity, the same urgency. It’s just a little bit different when we’re not being threatened all the time.”
The overall statewide performance index score rose from 84.2% in the 201718 school year to 84.7% in 2018-19.
Taken as a whole, fourthgrade English proficiency rates across the state matched the previous year’s 66% and the same grade’s math rates rose one percent from the last grading cycle, up to 74% in 2018-19. Seventh-grade math proficiency rates dropped from 58% to 57% for 2018-19 while seventh grade English climbed four percent from last cycle, now at 68%.
“I’m particularly proud of all the districts that have improved their overall grades. I know they will continue their focus on improvement so they can continue to advance even further and ensure that every student is successful,” State Superintendent Paolo DeMaria said of the performance grades in a news release.