Granville, Johnstown, Southwest Licking lead schools in state report card ratings

The Ohio Department of Education released the 2022 Ohio School Report Cards Thursday with Granville, Johnstown-Monroe and Southwest Licking schools leading the way in Licking County student performance.

Instead of receiving letter grades for the 2021-22 academic year, the revamped report cards feature star ratings along with new categories and new calculations.

"An A is five stars, a B is four stars, so on and so forth, so we're like hotels now instead of grade cards," Heath Superintendent Trevor Thomas said.

The hope is that this new system will be fairer for schools and easier for parents to understand.

More:Ohio school report cards: Find your district in this searchable database

Districts can earn up to five stars in each category. However, districts and schools did not receive overall ratings this year.

The categories are as follows:

• Achievement: Measures how students did on statewide tests and whether their schools met established thresholds. Three stars mean the school met statewide expectations, four stars are for exceeding expectations and five stars mean significantly exceeding expectations.

• Progress: Tracks how children are doing year over year instead of how well they score on statewide exams.

• Early literacy: Measures reading improvement and proficiency for students in kindergarten through third grade.

• Gap closing: Looks at several data points such as how many students are chronically absent, qualify for gifted programs, and whether certain subgroups of students (Black, Hispanic, disabled, economically disadvantaged) are meeting statewide standards.

• Readiness (college, career, workforce, military): Evaluates whether students are "prepared for what comes next" after they graduate high school. This is a new category on the report card and doesn't have an overall star rating for the 2021-2022 academic year.

• Graduation: Looks at the percentage of students who graduate with a regular or honors diploma.

Here's how the star ratings work in the graduation category:

• One star means a graduation rate of less than 84%.

• Two stars mean a graduation rate of 84-89%.

• Three stars mean a graduation rate of 90-93.4% (This is the statewide standard for schools.).

• Four stars mean a graduation rate of 93.5-96.4%.

• Five stars mean a graduation rate of 96.5% or more.

Granville Exempted Village Schools received five stars in all categories but progress, where it earned four stars.

District officials were very pleased with the ratings, Granville Superintendent Jeff Brown said.

"It's an indication that we are returning back to pre-pandemic levels of performance, which is what we had expected to see," he said.

Based on the performance index, a type of data point in the achievement category, Granville ranks as a top 13 district in the state, Brown said, adding that it's a strong indicator of high performance levels from Granville students.

Even though the district preformed well, Brown said Granville is always trying to improve and this data will help them do just that.

"I think we've always taken the approach in Granville schools of data doesn't provide any answers, it leads to more questions," he said. "So for us, this is an opportunity for looking at ways we can continuously improve and part of our continuous improvement mentality."

Johnstown-Monroe Local Schools earned five stars in gap closing and graduation, four stars for achievement and early literacy, and two stars in the progress category.

Philip Wagner, Johnstown-Monroe's superintendent, said he was pleased with the results, which need to be viewed with the context of the disruptions brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. The results, he said, speak to the work teachers and families have put into education in the last two years.

Wagner, who took over as superintendent in August after 11 years with Licking Heights, said the district was already in the process of making improvements based on local assessments.

"This information will complement our local assessments and how we can progress forward," he said.

Southwest Licking Local Schools earned five stars for gap closing; four stars in achievement, progress and graduation; and three stars in early literacy.

Southwest Licking Superintendent Kasey Perkins was pleasantly surprised by the districts five star gap closing rating, but knows the district still has work to do with it's fast growing English language learners student population.

"It's something that we have to learn to adapt and educate ourselves and continue to get better," she said. "It's definitely not something to be disappointed about. But it's something for us to strive to, you know, meet that next metric and really work with that student population."

Heath City Schools received four stars in achievement, gap closing and graduation. For early literacy and progress, the district earned three stars.

Thomas said overall he was pleased with the district's ratings. The ratings did show the district some areas of concern, he added, specifically regarding achievement in reading and math for sixth and eight graders. The district implemented a new English language arts curriculum last year for third through eight grades, and Thomas said there were some unexpected complications.

"I think all the teachers did a really good job with that because it was not easy. Due to supply chain issues, we didn't even have all the materials until October," he said, adding that teachers didn't have their editions for the first eight weeks of the school year.

The COVID-19 pandemic was also a factor in the district's performance, Thomas said. Because of spikes in cases during the fall of 2021 and winter of 2022, about 35% of Heath's students were chronically absent, he said.

"That's going to affect achievement and growth on its own," he said. "I mean, we're still three stars in growth and four stars in student achievement. We're pleased with that but by no means do we think that's normal performance."

Newark City Schools was the only county district to earn one star ratings, which it did for progress and graduation. The district earned three star ratings in the other three categories.

Seth Roy, the district's communication coordinator, said the report card data shows Newark is making strides in many areas, citing the performance index has grown each of the past two years.

"We work daily to increase opportunities for learning and growth for our students. Our offerings in STEM fields have expanded dramatically during the past decade," Roy said. "We have also focused a lot on social and emotional health of students and staff — these efforts are not directly reflected in state testing results."

Licking Heights Local Schools earned five stars in two categories, progress and gap closing. It received a four star rating for graduation, three stars for achievement and two stars in early literacy.

Ohio report card database: Find your school district's report card

Thomas, Wagner and Perkins all said they prefer the new stars rating system because they felt the letter grades were detrimental.

"A C, D or an F is perceived extremely negative. Whereas, if you look at the progress component value added three stars or what would have used to have been a C is you met expected growth for the year, so you grew your kids where you need to," Thomas said.

Those C, D, or F ratings would have a negative impact on faculty and staff morale, Thomas said.

"If you have an area where you grew kids, like you got them to where you were supposed to get them and that's a C, that really hurt," he said.

mdevito@gannett.com

740-607-2175

Twitter: @MariaDeVito13

This article originally appeared on Newark Advocate: Ohio school report cards: Granville, Southwest Licking lead in ratings