Jessica Brown, and Michael D. Clark

Cincinnati

Only 15 of Southwest Ohio's 49 school districts avoided D's and F's on their state report card this year, worse than the previous year when 19 districts avoided D's and F's.

Cincinnati got almost straight Fs. Others, like Mason and Wyoming, got nearly straight As. Meanwhile, several statewide education groups said the results underscore the link between poverty and student achievement.

Ohio's 2013-14 academic report cards for public schools and school districts were released Friday morning by the Ohio Department of Education. It's the second year under a new accountability system that state officials say is more transparent and detailed than in the past. It's the first time since the change that year-to-year comparisons can be made.

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Several districts performed more poorly than last time. Cincinnati Public Schools went from a mix of C's, D's and F's to nearly straight F's. Its bright spot was a C for it's achievement score, better than any other large urban district in the state.

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Richard Ross warned that some districts might be disappointed with their results. "Some districts and schools will see lower grades on their report cards this year in certain areas because Ohio has raised the bar," he said in a statement. "The goal is to continually challenge the 1.6 million girls and boys in Ohio's classrooms and make sure they are prepared to succeed as they complete school and graduate to college and careers."

For instance, 80 percent of students must pass state tests this year, up from last year's 75 percent, to raise the school's overall report card grade.

A mix of other changes happening at the same time as the report card overhaul has also taken a toll. Ohio schools are dealing with new Common Core learning standards, new tests, new teacher evaluations, new reading mandates and new data reporting procedures all within the past few years. And more changes are coming this year.

Some schools said the changes hurt their scores.

"They were field testing (the new Common Core tests)," said Cincinnati Public Schools Superintendent Mary Ronan. "The test questions were harder, the (minimum score to pass) was higher."

She said certain things improved, like the graduation rate, and the overall academic achievement score stayed fairly steady. But that wasn't enough to raise the letter grades.

She said it may take years for her district to start looking better.

"We anticipated a drop as we moved to new standards, new tests and new targets," she said. "Every time there's a new accountability system, we've adapted. We're definitely looking at the new metrics to understand them. We're confident we'll be successful but it will take us a few years."

Other districts agreed the higher bar caused difficulties.

"If the 2012-2013 metrics were applied, Hamilton would have earned 16 of 24 indicators, and been within 0.6 percent of meeting a 17th indicator," said Joni Copas, spokeswoman for the Hamilton City school district. Instead, it met only 14 of the 24 standards, the same as last year, she said. Copas said the letter grades don't show the progress the district has made.

Lebanon school officials also cited harder tests.

"Our grade for gap-closing fell due to a combination of harder assessments and a higher bar for passage," said Mark Graler, director of curriculum and instruction for Lebanon schools. "Gap-closing" measures how well sub-groups of students, such as minorities or students with disabilities, performed compared to the general student body.

The state isn't planning on backing off of the ever-toughening standards. "Even though we're raising the bar, we hope districts and schools will jump over it," said Ohio Department of Education spokesman John Charlton.

Ohio's report cards annually rate schools and districts based on a long list of measurements ranging from academic progress to graduation rates; Kentucky's are due to be released later this month. The report cards are important because they're the barometer used by parents and residents to judge the quality of their schools. Good schools attract families and businesses to a region. Poorly performing schools do the opposite.

Report cards have long been criticized for not giving a full picture of how good a school really is. So last year, Ohio revamped its accountability system and issued new report cards that it said measured more topics. It now gives schools and districts letter grades on a variety of measures. Previously it had used overall labels such as Excellent or Academic Emergency.

Among the local highlights this year:

--Wyoming earned the highest achievement or "Performance Index" score in the region and state. The score measures how well students did on state tests. Madeira was second-highest. Lockland earned the lowest in the region and was in the bottom third in the state.

--Several districts met 100 percent of the 24 standards. But a few barely met any. Mount Healthy and Middletown did the worst, locally, meeting only 12.5 percent of the standards. Eight districts got F's for how many standards they met (Mount Healthy, Middletown, New Miami, Cincinnati, Lockland, North College Hill, Winton Woods and St. Bernard).

-Fifteen districts earned all A's and B's. The Cincinnati and Hamilton districts got the most D's and F's. No district got straight A's or straight F's.

--There remains work to do on Value Added (the amount of progress students make in a year). Eleven Southwest Ohio districts got F's in that category.

--And districts have a lot of work to do in "AMO" – closing the achievement gap between subgroups of students and the general student population. Sixteen districts got F's on that measure.

--Districts tended to do fairly well on four-year graduation rates. Only two, Cincinnati and North College Hill, got F's.

Schools: 'we set the bar high'

Mason Schools in Warren County remained among the region's top performers.

The 10,000-student district met all 24 state standards and, at 110, registered one of the highest achievement indexes in the state.

"Our teachers and administration continue to set the bar high. We have great students and very supportive families. It is gratifying to see that we consistently deliver the kind of value that our community expects," said Kevin Wise, president of Mason'a school board.

But Superintendent Gail Kist-Kline stressed that state grades only provide a partial picture of school systems. Mason is among more than a dozen local districts that compile their own report cards, separate from the state's.

"Rankings, while often celebrated, don't tell the whole story. We're proud that our children are performing at some of the very highest levels in the state, but there is much more to a high quality education than what's measured on the state tests," said Kist-Kline.

Wyoming Superintendent Susan Lang agreed. Even though her district is consistently one of the top-performing and earned the highest achievement score of locally, she said the scores aren't everything.

"The experience and opportunities we give our students beyond the walls of the classroom further define education," she said.

Still work to be done



Kings Schools in Warren County also remained highly rated, meeting all 24 state standards, but officials said they are analyzing the latest data so they can improve some lagging academic subjects and categories.

"We do recognize areas in need of improvement. Therefore, we will maintain the practice of taking a close look at all of the data we collect in an effort to target these areas," said Dawn Gould, spokeswoman for Kings.

Lakota, Southwest Ohio's second largest school system, met all 24 standards. It earned A's and B's in all but one category. It got an F in the "Annual Measurable Objectives" category, which measures how well it is closing the achievement gap.

"There's good news in this report card, but it's also clear we still have much to do," said Lakota Superintendent Karen Mantia.

"We're now using data to drill down through school, grade, and classroom, all the way to individual students. Then we're working to support those students in different ways so that they can make the progress they need to."

The 9,500-student Fairfield district in Butler County says its improvements are paying off.

The district's lowest grade was a single D for how its poorest-performing students progressed. "We will continue to work with our lowest 20 percent (of students) to ensure that all of our students are getting the instruction that they need," said Lani Wildow, director of curriculum and instruction.

An analysis by several education policy groups said the report card data underscored the link between poverty and student achievement. "Data showing this correlation is dramatic, and it's clear more work is needed in Ohio to address this gap," said Damon Asbury, director of legislative services for the Ohio School Boards Association. The analysis was done by Howard Fleeter, a consultant with the Education Tax Policy Institute on behalf of the Ohio School Boards Association, Ohio Association of School Business Officials and Buckeye Association of School Administrators.



Not everyone thrilled with process.

State officials laud the new accountability system, noting that it earned nearly perfect scores last year from the Education Commission of the States for design and ease of use.

But some local educators still have concerns.

Little Miami Superintendent Greg Power's chief concern is about testing. Tests change again this year. And although his district continued to progress, meeting 23 of 24 standards, Power worries that the emphasis and frequency of state-mandated testing is not the best way to serve students.

"The district continues to be concerned about the kind of and amount of high-stakes assessments students are expected to complete," said Power.

"We will continue to work to be even better during the coming year, recognizing we have some more difficult and challenging (testing) forthcoming," said Power.

Dave Siebert, a Lebanon school parent and PTO official, said while the changing rating system is sometimes confusing, he appreciates the state's use of letter grades rather than the old classifications such as "Continuous Improvement," which often meant little to the public.

"The letter grades are easier to understand and it fits more into the way laypeople understand," said Siebert.

He believes school officials should be wary of overemphasizing the tests required by the state to formulate the ratings.

"Schools now do a lot of testing. That is not necessarily a bad thing but we need to careful to not teach to the test," said Siebert

Report card still a work in progress

Ohio's report card is still a work in progress. This year it includes letter grades for 10 measures, including Performance Index, Value-Added and Graduation Rate.

Overall school and district grades will not be calculated until 2016 to give districts time to adjust to new learning standards and new state tests. Grades also are included for career technical planning districts and dropout recovery schools.

The report card was initially going to include a grade for K-3 literacy, a critical milestone in a child's development. But after reviewing the K-3 Literacy data they had submitted, several school districts discovered errors and alerted the state. Because of the way that grade is calculated, errors made by one school can affect the letter grades of all the others; the state will wait to calculate letter grades until later this year, once all data has been confirmed as correct.

The new report card will also include data – but no letter grade – for college and career readiness. Later in the year, financial data from schools and districts will be added to the online report cards.

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SEE THE GRADES

Use our interactive report card database to see how your school or district did. Want more? Go to the Ohio Department of Education's web siteand download to your heart's content.

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HOW TO READ THE REPORT CARDS

Ohio switched to a new accountability system for public schools and school districts. It used to offer labels like "Excellent with Distinction" or "Academic Emergency." But it revamped its system last year in an attempt to better measure how well Ohio's schools were educating their students. This is the second year of the new report card. Instead of overall labels, schools and districts each get A-F letter grades in 10 categories ranging from academic performance to graduation rate. New this year is a category for K-3 literacy.

Here are the most telling categories:

Achievement: How well students do on state tests. Ohio uses a "Performance Index" score, a weighted average of student scores on state reading and math tests. Schools or districts can score up to 120 points. An "A" means a school got 90 percent or more of the available points. A "C" means they got 70-79 percent of the points. An "F" means they received fewer than 50 percent of the available points.

Student Progress: Whether students made a year's worth of academic progress as measured by state test scores. This is also called the "Value-Added" measure. A "C" says the students made one year's progress. An "A" or "B" says they made more than a year's worth of progress and a "D" or "F" indicates they made less than a year's worth of progress. The report cards also list progress grades for how well "sub-groups" of students did, such as students with disabilities or low-income students.

Gap Closing: Also called the "Annual Measurable Objective." This measures how well a school or district did in closing the achievement gaps between the general student body and the sub-groups. Subgroups include ethnic minorities, low-income students or students with disabilities. Generally a school cannot get an "A" on this if one if their student subgroups score below the state's goals for all students. The goals are adjusted upward each year.

Graduation rate: Schools and districts are graded on the percent of students who graduated in four years, and the percent who graduated in five years.

K-3 literacy: This is a new category this year. Schools and districts will be graded on how well they handled K-3 students who were behind in reading. The letter grade is based on how much progress those students made on state reading tests.