September 19, 2022

Dear Parent/Guardian,

At the end of last week, the Ohio Department of Education released the state report cards for all Ohio schools for the 2021-22 school year. The report card is comprised of six components. They are as follows: Achievement, Early Literacy, Graduation, Progress, Gap Closing and College, Career, Workforce and Military Readiness. Within each of these components, there are several data points with very technical measurements that dictate our final rating for each category. My goal in sending this letter is to give you a general summary of our grade card while trying not to get too technical in the explanation.

First, there has not been a report card the past two years due to the pandemic. Also, there is not an overall rating nor a career readiness rating for districts this year for this same reason as there are parts of the report card in which they use multiple years’ worth of data to determine a final rating. Second, report cards used to have letter grades assigned to them A-F. Now, they are using a star rating system with 1 star being the worst and 5 stars being the best. Please see our district report card below with star explanations.

1 star= Needs significant support to meet state standards.

2 stars= Needs support to meet state standards.

3 stars= Meets state standards.

4 stars= Exceeds state standards.

5 stars= Significantly exceeds state standards.

As you can see, we met or exceeded expectations for each of the components. The following pages are a general summary of each component on how we did as well as how we did against comparable school districts. Comparable school districts are determined by the Ohio Department of Education and are categorized by enrollment, the physical size of the district, the % of economically disadvantaged students, the % of adults with college degrees, the % of minority enrollment and the % of population living in urban areas. The chart below shows how we did overall in each category with our comparable schools in Ohio.

ACHIEVEMENT

This component represents whether student performance on state tests met established thresholds and how well students performed on tests overall. This measurement accounts for all students grades 3 through high school on Ohio’s State Tests. Each test a student takes is assigned an achievement level based on the test score, with higher scores resulting in higher achievement levels. The higher the achievement, the larger weight is given in the calculation. The Performance Indicators report the percentage of students scoring proficient or higher on each of Ohio’s State Tests disaggregated by grade level and subject. As you can see in the chart below, we ranked #1 in Performance Index against our comparable school districts. The state average for Performance Index was 79.3% and we were at 88.2%. We did a great job in this category!

PROGRESS

The Progress component refers to how much value we’ve added to each student from one year to the next. In other words, it looks at the impact of districts, schools and teachers on the academic growth of groups of students from year to year. Finally, value-added compares the change in achievement of a group of students from one year to the next to an expected amount of change based on the student’s prior achievement history. Please see the chart below in how we compared with the other districts.

Across the state in this category, the following rating distribution was

1 star- 19.3%; 2 stars- 20.1%; 3 stars- 29.9%; 4 stars- 14.2%; 5 stars- 16.5%

EARLY LITERACY

The Early Literacy component measures reading improvement and proficiency for students in kindergarten through third grade. It measures how many students score proficient or higher on the reading portion of Ohio’s State Test for English Language Arts for grade 3 as well as utilizing two consecutive years of data to evaluate how well schools and districts are doing at providing supports for struggling readers to get them on track. Our chart with comparable districts is below.

Across the state in this category, the following rating distribution was:

1 star- 7.8%; 2 stars- 26.6%; 3 stars- 42.3%; 4 stars- 15.2%; 5 stars- 8.1%

GAP CLOSING

This component measures the reduction in educational gaps for student subgroups. Moreover, this component reflects whether schools and districts meet the expected performance thresholds on chronic absenteeism, the gifted performance indicator, the graduation goals for student subgroups, the English learner proficiency improvement indicator, the academic achievement in English Language Arts and Math for student subgroups and the academic growth in English Language Arts and Math for student subgroups. All of these are configured by subgroups and their annual goals and then combined into a final rating for this category. One of the categories, Chronic Absenteeism, is below in a chart against comparable schools.

As you can see, we are in the middle of the pack in relation to student attendance. We have taken some proactive steps for this year in relation to student attendance that will target some of the issues in this category. We received 5 stars in this category.

Across the state in this category, the following rating distribution was:

1 star- 0.3%; 2 stars- 6.9%; 3 stars- 19.3%; 4 stars- 25.2%; 5 stars- 48.3%

GRADUATION

This category looks at our graduation rate for students in four-year cohorts and five-year cohorts. The four-year graduation rate is weighted at 60% while the five-year graduation rate is weighted at 40% and then we are given our rating. We received 3 stars in this category. Our four-year and five-year graduation rating charts are below followed by Ohio’s graduation trend since 2011.

I know this is a lot of information but it’s important for all of us to try and understand how school districts are being evaluated across the state. Certainly, schools provide much more for students and families than what report cards share. However, I do believe report cards are important as it does provide relative and comparable data across a multitude of categories significant for learning and performance. I believe our report card was a good reflection of the great students and dedicated staff we have in our district. There are areas in which we did really well while there is also room for improvement in some areas. It’s imperative for all of us to look at our scores, analyze the data, and make changes where needed to benefit all students and families in our district.

Sincerely,

Rich Dackin

Superintendent