How did central Ohio schools do on state report cards? Here's what we learned
The Ohio Department of Education released its annual report cards for school districts Friday, and some central Ohio districts improved while others lost stars in some metrics or remained the same.
ODE collects information from the state's more than 600 public school districts and funnels the data into six categories: achievement, progress, early literacy, gap closing, graduation and readiness (which isn't tracked this year). Beginning two years ago, the state shifted away from an A-F letter-grade system to new categories and calculations based on a star system.
More: Columbus Schools earns two-star rating, makes no improvement in state report cards
Find your Ohio school district's 2024 report card
How did central Ohio schools do?
Columbus City Schools, the state's largest district, showed no improvement in its two-star ranking, with the same individual results for the 2023-24 school year as the previous year.
The South-Western City Schools maintained its three-and-a-half-stars rating from the 2023 report, despite dropping one star rating each in achievement (two-star) and gap closing (three-star). The district, however, improved a star in graduation rate, from two to three stars.
Olentangy Local Schools, the fourth-largest district in Ohio with more than 23,000 students, maintained an overall five-star rating in all categories.
Upper Arlington Superintendent Robert Hunt said in a statement that “many factors” contributed to the district's five-star rating in every category, such as staff, students and the “extremely supportive community committed to our schools.”
“Maintaining five stars in all categories is difficult — especially in the progress category — because that indicates that we are continually facilitating well beyond a year's worth of growth for students in a year's time," Hunt said.
Grandview Heights City School District was also one of the few districts to receive five stars in all of the categories. The district also did very well last year, but jumped from a four-stars rating on the progress indicator to five stars. Superintendent Andy Culp said the district focused on areas to improve for state testing and ensured important concepts were taught in advance of testing.
“It seems that the changes made from last year to this year were impactful," Grandview Superintendent Andy Culp said.
Pickerington Local Schools maintained its overall four-and-a-half-stars rating, but the district’s Assistant Superintendent Alesia Gillison said that students earned more points within each of the components than the year before.
"That shows that there's some forward momentum and growth, and that is attributed to what we're doing in the classroom," she said.
Pickerington schools is continuing to grow. It had 200 more students in the 2023-24 school year than in the year before, taking the district’s enrollment to 11,222, according ODEW data. Gillison said the district has a commitment from “district leadership all the way down to the classroom to provide a quality education for every student in every classroom every day” to ensure that all students, no matter their background or individual needs, can succeed.
Westerville City Schools, which achieved a four-stars rating overall, said in a statement that "dedication to educational excellence and student success at every grade level" factored into success, and that all nine demographic student groups achieved above the performance index in both math and English language arts.
"While we celebrate the progress we've made, we remain committed to ongoing improvements to ensure our students excel not only in the classroom but also in the broader community," spokesperson Melanie Amato said in a statement.
Whitehall City Schools improved its overall rating from three to three-and-a-half stars, with improvements in graduation rates and gap closing accounting for the rise. Whitehall Superintendent Sharee Wells said that "while we recognize we have a lot of work still left to do," the district was pleased to see improvements.
Some rural schools also saw high marks. Fairbanks Local Schools, located in Union County, received five stars overall, and saw the highest student achievement rating it has ever received as a district. Superintendent Adam Schirg said the environment created by students, teachers and parents "allows for continuous improvement across Fairbanks."
"Positive results in anything we do individually or collectively is a product of hard work, measuring progress, and celebrating small wins," Schirg said. "Our students, teachers, principals, and support staff work hard to demonstrate growth meeting the expectations we set across Fairbanks Local Schools."
Language arts skills rebounding statewide, students still struggling in math
According to report card data, districts statewide improved in reading skills, returning to nearly pre-pandemic levels. Aaron Churchill, a researcher at The Fordham Instititute, said Ohio schools "have gotten back to square one" in terms of English skills since a major drop-off during the pandemic.
The third-grade reading level has improved to 64.5% proficiency, up from a low-water mark of 51.9% in the 2020-2021 school year, but still below the pre-pandemic level of 66.7%.
"It's not problem solved or mission accomplished, but something I think we can say, like, 'Hey, we're making some progress,'" Churchill said.
However, the state is still lagging well behind pre-pandemic levels of the math benchmarks, with just 55.9% of students proficient in algebra, down from 61.1% in 2018-2019.
Vlad Kogan, an Ohio State University professor and researcher, wrote in a Thursday report that in several benchmarks, "students have made minimal improvements in math over the past year in most grades."
Churchill said that while the state was improving in some areas, officials will have to continue to look at strategies to improve math education for students.
"While there's some signs pointing upward on literacy, the sobering part of this big statewide picture is with math," Churchill said. "We are still way behind math relative to pre-pandemic, there are way too many students in Ohio who are struggling in this area and just not making enough progress."
Chronic absenteeism falls slightly, but still concerning to experts
Overall, statewide chronic absenteeism fell slightly, although it still remains a point of concern for researchers. The 2023-2024 absenteeism rate statewide was 25.6%, which reflected a decline from more than 26% the year prior. Chronic absenteeism means a student misses 10% or more of a school year for any reason.
That number spiked during the pandemic, when more than 30% of Ohio students were chronically absent during the 2020-2021 school year. Churchill said chronic absenteeism was holding Ohio students back from progress.
"Chronic absenteeism is definitely holding (post-pandemic recovery) back, especially for students who need to catch up most in school, and makes it harder to learn, and it makes it harder for teachers to teach when students aren't there every day," Churchill said.
@Colebehr_report
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: State report cards in central Ohio: What to know about local districts
