State: Limited report card data stunts appraisal
Offifficials recommend looking past numbers to gauge school value.
The Ohio Department of Education released school report cards Tuesday but acknowledged that in this strange year they may not be much help in evaluating the good and the bad.
Because of canceled spring state tests, there was no data on year-over-year progress and no A-F letter grades.
Three things didn’t change, though.
■ Oakwood ranked among the state’ s top 10 district sin the“prepared for success” measure, which tries to assess high school graduates’ college and career readiness (the Class of 2019 in this case).
■ Dayton ranked second-last in the state in four- year graduation rate (72.2%) for the Class of 2019, while a collection of small rural districts( Newton, Twin Valley, Arcanum,
those with 100% graduation.
■ And people continued to debate the value of the state report cards, as most schools’ results — in Honors Diplomas, ACT scores, college completion — closely tracked the wealth and poverty of their communities.
“The fact that the state recognizes that any 2020 letter grades and rankings would be useless without spring testing dataproves justhowoverly reliant the existing grade card systemis on standardized tests,” said Scott Dimauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union.
The state government’ s Department of Education suggested residents and families look beyond the data to understand their schools.
“Given the limited data available on the report cards this year, it will be challenging to gauge how well a particular school or district is performing,” ODE offifficials said.
“All the more reason individuals interested in understanding schoolperformance should talk with parents, students, teachers and graduates for insight into what a school really means to students, families and the community.”
Graduation data
With letter grades and performance index and student progress missing, the most recognizable data point on the 2019-20state report card is the graduation rate. Graduation data is reported on a one-year lag, so the “fouryear graduation rate” statistics are for the high school Class of 2019.
Twenty-six small Ohio districts had 100% graduation rates. Among larger districts, Springboro (98.5%), Bellbrook (97.3%) and Troy (96.8%) were highest locally. After Dayton’s 72.2%, Mad River (81.3%) and Xenia (81.8%) were lowest locally.
A few local districts saw their four-year graduation rates change significantly from the previous year. Northridge’s graduation rate rose more than 7% to
90.2%, while Bethel (95.9%) and Piqua (90.6%) also saw 5% increases.
Piqua Superintendent Dwayne Thompson credited his district’s Success Bound plan, which gets students from elementary school to high school thinking about college, military and career options.
“Once students explore these options, they also learn what will be needed to graduate and successfully transition
into one of these pathways,” Thompson said. “It has brought a great deal of focus to the work our students and staff engage in.”
NewLebanonwas the only school district where the graduation rate decreased more than 5% from the previous year, to 89.6%. Other districts dropping almost 5% were Kettering (90.7%) and Trotwood (85.9%).
ODE said the statewide four-year graduation rate increased again in 2019 (from 85.3% to 85.9%). While some huge, big-city districts have graduationratesaround80%, the median four-year graduation rate among Ohio’s 608 school districts was 94.3%. That’s within 1 percentage point of districts like Northmont, Beavercreek, Eaton and Valley View locally.
Prepared for success
The state’s complex “prepared for success” measure attemptstogauge collegeand career readiness based on ACT/SAT scores, Ohio Honors
Diplomas, job industry credentials, College Credit Plus achievement and more. ODE said statewide scores improved again for the class of 2019.
Oakwood ranked sixth in Ohio in that category, behind other wealthy suburbs such as Ottawa Hills near Toledo and Indian Hill near Cincinnati. Oakwood ranked in the top 12 districts in Ohiowhen it cametoACT score data, honors diplomas, Advanced Placement test scores and percentage of students completing college degrees within six years.
Springboro ranked in the top 5% of the state on this measure, along with small north Miami Valley districts Minster, Russia and Fort Loramie. Bellbrook cracked the top 10%.
Tiny Jefferson Twp. schools, listed with only 276 students from K-12, ranked last in the state on “prepared for success.” Trotwood and Northridgewere also in the bottom10 districts statewide.