Low early literacy scores not just a problem for Ohio's major city school districts

While public school districts in Ohio's major cities did not meet early literacy standards on the latest state report cards, some suburban school districts that did well overall also didn't fare well in that rating.

Four suburban school districts in Franklin County joined Columbus City Schools with below-standard performances by their youngest students (kindergarten through third grade) in early literacy, which measures reading comprehension that they need to become lifelong learners.

Whitehall Schools joined Columbus City with just one star out of five on the state's rating system that is not unlike Yelp's five-star rating system for restaurants. South-Western, Groveport Madison and Reynoldsburg school districts received two stars. Three stars is the state's minimum standard.

Jana Alig, Groveport Madison’s director of teaching and learning, said 79% of incoming students come underprepared for kindergarten, so students in the district are starting off behind.

“We know early literacy is paramount in students’ success in college and career,” she said.

The district uses small group interventions, Alig said, and is hoping to get higher ratings in the next year or two.

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Ohio's statewide assessment is completed at the beginning of each school year and compares students to the previous year in six categories on this year's school report cords, including early literacy.

Columbus City Schools were assessed in the classroom for the 2021-22 school year, but they were assessed virtually during remote learning due to COVID-19 for the 2020-21 school year.

“I don’t think it necessarily surprised us that this data came out this way," said Kelly Rivers, executive director of academic services at Columbus City Schools, the state's largest district with about 47,000 students.

“That environment wasn’t as controlled as we would like, so we weren’t sure really how accurate the baseline data would have been the previous year since it wasn’t a controlled testing environment,” Rivers said.

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How Ohio schools rated in early literary

About one-third of Ohio's609 districts school districts did not meet statewide standards on the report cards that were released on Sept. 15. Akron, Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo also got one-star rankings for the early literacy component.Cincinnati got a two-star rating.

The early literacy category measures how many students by school and by the district as a whole scored proficient or higher on the reading segment of Ohio's State Test for English Language Arts taken by third graders and measures the percentage of third grade students who were promoted to fourth grade. However, a five-star rating doesn't mean every student in that school or district read at or above their grade level.

The only Franklin County school districts that received a five-star rating in early literacy were New Albany-Plain Local Schools and Upper Arlington Schools. Olentangy Schools in Delaware also received a five-star rating.

Chris Woolard, Ohio Department of Education's senior executive director for the Center for Performance and Impact, said Ohio’s state report card data isn’t surprising.

“Throughout the pandemic, what we know is that student performance was greatly impacted, especially in the early years of the pandemic,” he said. “We know in particular our most vulnerable students were the most impacted.”

Why reading at third grade matters

Students who do not read proficiently by third grade are four times more likely to leave high school without a diploma than proficient readers, according to a 2011 study by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a charitable foundation focused on improving the well-being of American children. The number rises when those kids also come from poverty.

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“We can’t overstate the importance of students being able to become readers in the early grades,” Laura Hansen, a senior manager for English language arts content and curriculum advocacy at NWEA, a nonprofit testing organization.

Middle school and high school is focused on content, and those teachers aren’t equipped to teach foundational reading skills.

“That is very hard to do if your student can’t read the text,” she said.

Most Columbus elementary schools got one-star early literacy ratings

Five elementary schools in Columbus received a three-star rating for early literacy and 13 schools received a two-star rating. But the vast majority, 53 schools, received a one-star rating.

“Our schools are diverse,” Rivers said. “We have a diverse population of students and diverse needs, so you will see that. At some schools you’ll find that some students are more slated to be on track.”

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Anne Dison, the parent of a first grader at North Linden Elementary School, said the district’s early literacy ratings were jarring.

“When I saw the one in early literacy … it definitely made me take a pause and be like, 'What am I giving to my children?'” the 34-year-old North Linden resident said.

She was also perplexed to see that North Linden Elementary received a one-star rating for early literacy and Indian Springs Elementary School received a three-star rating when the schools are only three miles away from each other.

“That’s the whole point of public schools — it shouldn’t matter what neighborhood you are in," she said. "You are all Columbus City Schools. They should all be getting the same education."

Other Franklin County school districts with one-star ratings

Whitehall, which like Columbus got one star, has implemented a new early literacy curriculum in the district.

“The data tells us that we have great work ahead to increase our students' literacy,” said Whitehall Superintendent Sharee Wells. “Although we are disappointed that we missed the two-star rating by 3%, we are confident and excited about the improvements we anticipate in our students' literacy and related report card ratings.”

South-Western said the state report cards are just one piece of the puzzle.

“Similar to “taking your blood pressure” these state diagnostics provide valuable snapshots of performance on a given day at a given time,” district spokesperson Evan Debo said.

The district uses reading and writing diagnostics, Debo said, and has interventions to help students with comprehension.

Columbus improves Ohio State Test reading scores

Columbus City Schools saw a 10.5% improvement in overall Ohio State Test reading scores compared to last year, and to the state’s 7.9% increase.

The district exceeded its own goal for the 2021-22 school year with a 33.5% third grade reading proficiency compared to 29.4%.

At a September Columbus City school board meeting discussing the data, Chief Performance Officer Russell Brown attributed reading problems to the hardships of remote learning for those students.

“These are students who, frankly, need high-touch support services that are really hard to deliver in Zoom,” Brown said. “It’s not to say our teachers didn’t try. … It’s just not the ideal way to provide early childhood education.”

When asked whether he expected the upward trend to continue, Brown told the board it was like “asking me to look into a crystal ball,” especially since COVID-19 caused a disruption in the data.

“One of the challenges that we have right now, again since we had this massive (pandemic) interruption, so there’s no stability to our data,” Brown said. “Over time, you get two or three years in, oh, we’re back in in-person instruction, we’ve got the same curriculum, we're using the same assessments. Ask me that question three years from now predicting out two years, and I’ll feel a little different than I do right now.”

Dispatch reporter Michael Lee contributed to this report

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This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Ohio school report cards: Some suburbs rate low on early literacy