COLUMBUS: State officials on Wednesday released Ohio school and district ratings that had been delayed amid a statewide review of student-attendance data.
Of the 17 Summit County school districts, 15 were rated either “Excellent with Distinction” or “Excellent” — the equivalent of “A+” and “A” grades in the state’s six-category system.
Five districts in the county raised their rating from the 2010-11 report card to reach the highest level this year: Copley-Fairlawn, Coventry, Norton, Tallmadge and Woodridge. Green and Revere, each “Excellent with Distinction” a year ago, retained that rating.
Barberton and Mogadore schools moved from “Effective” to “Excellent.”
Akron Public Schools remained in “Continuous Improvement” — basically a “C” grade.
Norton Superintendent Dave Dunn said the district has ranked at least “Excellent” for eight years and was “extremely excited” to return to the top-tier rating.
“When we are able to achieve that, we are extremely proud,” Dunn said. “Our staff does an absolutely outstanding job with our students.
“We are certainly not a district that can spend as much money per student for education — in fact we are the lowest in Summit County — and yet our staff works hard, and we have good students to work with.”
The state report card collects data from numerous grade-level proficiency tests, along with attendance and graduation rates. Overall, there are 26 standards for school districts to meet.
In Summit County, 11 districts met all 26 benchmarks.
Akron met only five of the standards, as did Canton, and that number was unchanged from a year ago for each district. Among Ohio’s so-called Big 8 urban school systems, however, only Cincinnati reached a higher number, with 11.
Youngstown met only one benchmark; Cleveland met none.
Akron issued a statement on its website saying the district “is moving in the right direction” and that it ranks high among the state’s eight largest school districts in performance.
“We’ve worked hard to prepare students for college and careers,” Superintendent David James said in the statement. “We’re finding out what works, and now we’re seeing the results.
“APS ranks as one of the best large urban public school districts in the state and continues to make steady progress year after year,” James added. “Our students are getting a year’s worth of learning value out of every school year, which should be encouraging to Akron’s parents and taxpayers.”
James could not be reached for comment.
Barberton Personnel Director Jason Ondrus said the district is pleased that its rating climbed from “Effective” to “Excellent” and said the district is working daily to improve test scores. Its four-year graduation rate also rose from 74.5 percent last year to 81 percent.
Despite those improvements, the district reported one of the poorest attendance rates in the state at 93.2 percent. That tied for 11th worst out of 610 districts.
Copley-Fairlawn Superintendent Brian Poe said he was pleased with the top rating, and even more impressed with his students’ standardized college admissions test scores, which also were reported Wednesday but are not part of the 26 state standards on the report cards.
“A better indicator of how well the students are doing besides passing the state tests is the ACT and SAT mean scores, which were also higher” at Copley-Fairlawn, Poe said. “An ACT mean score of 23 and an SAT mean score of 1190 … means our staff is doing a terrific job of instructing our students. It’s a better indicator for me to see how our students are being prepared.”
In the Coventry school district, Superintendent Russell Chaboudy said the rank is great news to him. “We’re very excited,” he said. “Our staff has worked extremely hard and we’re very proud of it, and we hope our community is as proud of it as we are. It’s something we are really trying to get across to them that school and community go together.”
The results released Wednesday are considered preliminary as Ohio Auditor Dave Yost investigates enrollment and attendance irregularities around the state. The Ohio Board of Education voted to release the eagerly awaited information, in part because Election Day is approaching and many districts are pursuing levy and bond issues.
Comprehensive tables of test scores, including building-by-building data, can be found with the online version of this story.
Beacon Journal reporters Rick Armon and Marilyn Miller contributed to this report.