Saturday, November 17, 2001
A state education department spokesman said reports won't be final until March.
By DENISE DICK
VINDICATOR TRUMBULL STAFF
NILES -- The school district meets 15 of the state's 27 performance standards, up one from last year, the superintendent said.
The Ohio Department of Education is expected to release the latest round of school district report cards in March. But school districts around the state received preliminary reports from the state in August.
Superintendent Patrick N. Guliano said the preliminary results indicated the district met 13 of the state's 27 performance indicators. That would have placed the district back into academic watch.
It moved out of that category into the continuous improvement section for report cards issued for the 1999 to 2000 school year, meeting 14 of the state standards. The previous year, the district carried the academic watch classification, meeting 13 standards.
Where most are: Most districts across the state fall into the continuous improvement category.
J.C. Benton, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Education, said information from the August reports is preliminary and cannot be confirmed until the final reports are issued in March.
The standards include scores in the citizenship, mathematics, writing and science categories of the fourth-, sixth-, ninth-, 10th and 12th-grade proficiency tests as well as attendance and graduation rates.
Districts determined to meet between 14 and 25 of the performance standards fall into the continuous improvement category.
Guliano said he asked John Vross, district director of computer services, to compute the data. Vross found that the district meets 15 standards.
"We were very, very close in some others," Guliano said.
The two additional areas the district found that it met the standards were the mathematics category on the 10th- and 12th-grade proficiency tests.
"One little coding could throw the whole thing off and skew it one way or the other so we wanted to go through all of it," the superintendent said.
The district has forwarded its findings to the state. Districts have until Dec. 7 to examine the preliminary data and return it along with their findings to the state.
dick@vindy.com