Ashland County schools score well on state report cards: How did each district perform?
Ashland County school districts recognize the work still needing to be done to reach academic excellence, but each district has areas to celebrate on this year's Ohio Department of Education's annual report card released in September.
The report card measures how well districts and individual schools are performing in six categories — achievement, progress, gap closing, early literacy, graduation rate, and college, career, workforce and military readiness. The readiness component is not yet part of the state's calculation of the overall rating for districts until next year.
All of the school districts in Ashland County met the state standards on the new overall ranking, while several exceeded them.
This year, instead of letter grades, the state used stars to rate schools and districts.
Three stars means a district or school is meeting expectations; four stars, exceeding expectations; and five stars, significantly exceeding expectations.
Ashland, Black River, Hillsdale and Mapleton all earned four stars, while Crestview came in at three stars and Loudonville-Perrysville at 3.5 stars.
Achievement measures students' scores on state tests; progress, academic growth from year to year; early literacy, reading improvement and proficiency in kindergarten through third grade; and gap closing, how well academic expectations are being met by subgroups of students, such as black, Hispanic, economically disadvantaged and those with disabilities.
The Readiness component takes into account such factors as students taking honors, advanced placement and College Credit Plus courses.
District personnel are now analyzing report cards to know where their strengths and weaknesses lie and how they can adjust goals in the coming year based on the state report card analysis.
How each district did in Ashland County
Ashland - 4
Superintendent: Steve Paramore
What is the biggest takeaway from the results?
We are very proud of the work our staff does with students every day to lead to the achievement levels that are clearly shown with a 4-star out of 5-star rating. We are very proud of the growth and effort our students have given to also garner these results. We also take extreme pride in the improvement specific content areas have made through student achievement results. We also take away that our students and families receive a high valued education for a very feasible rate, based on expenditure per child and achievement ratings.
What's next for the district?
We will continue to operate and educate at a high standard; that’s what can be expected. A large focus (will be) on writing across all content areas, and continued improvement in math and literacy. Training will continue for all staff to educate and care for the whole child.
Black River - 4
Superintendent: Chris Clark
What is the biggest takeaway from the results?
Our biggest takeaway is where we finished in comparison with some of the larger districts; we held our own. We still have room to work, but we are believed we are heading in a good direction. During COVID we had to make a lot of academic changes that we knew would affect our report card over the next five years. We recognized up front that we had to address issues and tackle them. Our results are starting to show for us.
What is next for the district?
Currently the district has a permanent improvement levy up for renewal, and that is our focus. Supposedly, the United States Department of Agriculture is supposed to recognize Black River as a recipient of the RUS DLT (Rural U.S. Distance Learning and Telemedicine) grant, which will be close to a million dollar grant for communication upgrades (and) which will be huge for our district.
Crestview - 3
Superintendent: Jim Grubbs
What is the biggest takeaway from the results?
After attending a meeting at (State Support Team Region 7) a little over a week ago, we have more insight into our takeaways from the report card.
We were informed that we were only 1.7 percentage points from being a four-star (district). Comparing key indicators from this year to last, we were generally close to or better than last year's data. We remain at 3 stars, which overall means we meet the state standards. Our only loss area was early literacy, which I feel is a more accurate number than last year's and is also likely impacted by a change of assessment instruments. We saw a gain of one star in gap closing to 4 stars.
What is next for the district?
The district will look at other data, not just the report card. We just received word that our preschool received a five-star rating from the state of Ohio.
Hillsdale - 4
Superintendent: Catherine Trevathan
What is the biggest takeaway from the results?
Hillsdale has a score of four stars, which means we exceed state standards in academic achievement.
What's next for the district?
We will continue to move forward in working towards the 5 stars.
Loudonville-Perrysville - 3.5
Superintendent: Jennifer Allerding
What is the biggest takeaway from the results?
I am proud of the work that has been completed by our students and staff, demonstrating that we are meeting or exceeding state expectations in several areas. While we continue to show progress and seek to improve academically, we will also continue to focus on equally important characteristics of good character and developing our students into positive members of our community, which is not measured on the state report card.
What's next for the district?
As a team we will spend time analyzing data, implementing best practices, and creating meaningful experiences for our children in the classrooms. We will focus on the area of progress and what we as adults can do to positively impact our students' academic success.
Mapleton - 4
Curriculum director: Skip Fulton
What is the biggest takeaway from the results?
The two biggest takeaways from the report card are the progress measures and gap closing. We're seeing students grow year after year, with consistency across curriculum and all students being exposed to the same curriculum. That's where we needed to start, and we are making gains.
What is next for the district?
Next is continuing our improvement with literacy. We saw a significant growth across the district in literacy, and we will be refining literacy practices.
We will be working on our improving math scores, which is still an area of weakness. We will apply the same philosophy to math ... as we did to literacy.
This article originally appeared on Ashland Times Gazette: Ashland County schools receive state report card scores
