Ohio School Report Cards are a mixed bag for local schools

By Kerry Rahm
krahm@wbcowqel.com

The Ohio Department of Education released their Ohio School Report Cards for the 2015-2016 school year on Thursday. Not all results were considered favorable by some, and Bucyrus City Schools Superintendent Kevin Kimmel felt that the criteria the schools were judged on left him questioning the process by which the students were assessed.

“The local report cards were just released yesterday to the public, and we’ve had the information in our district for the last several months. We continue to analyze it, take a look at areas where we can make improvements, but this is a transition year for the state because this is the third new test in three years, there’s also a change in criteria, so right now the amount of importance that we’re placing on the report card is limited. We obviously are not going to dismiss the results, so we take a look at them for ways to improve,” he said.

“A one-time test doesn’t define the job that we do in education here in Bucyrus or really any school district across the state of Ohio.

“If you have an opportunity to look at the results across the state of Ohio they’re dismal at best, across all of the school districts. There’s quite a bit of questioning of what it really tells us in this transition year, because we are transitioning to new assessments so at this point, we’ll take it for what it is, we’re always looking to get better, but our students and staff work extremely hard on a daily basis and we’ll continue to do that.”

At the Buckeye Central Board of Education meeting Thursday night, Buckeye Central Superintendent Mark Robinson spoke about the school’s grades.

“We did okay as a district when looking at the grades, but terrible to say, but I don’t know what all they are evaluating,” Robinson told the board. “I need to go back to review and research at how we got our grades, or how to improve in some areas. I will add that we do a lot of things with students that aren’t in the report cards.”

Robinson noted that the value-added portion looked good, but with the elementary receiving an F they will need to look at ways to improve.

The criteria listed below are only some of the areas that the schools were evaluated on, according to the Ohio Department of Education. “Achievement” is test scores, “Progress” is how students have improved on those test scores, and “Gap Closing” is how well schools have closed score gaps in relation to different factors such as “income, race, ethnicity, or disability,” according to the Ohio Department of Education website.

The six local schools from Crawford County and some of their scores are included below.