14 Valley districts improve their score

By Denise Dick

Fourteen school districts in the tri-county area earned higher ratings on the latest Ohio department of Education report card than they did last year.

Two districts among those, Howland and Lakeview, earned an excellent with distinction designation, the highest mark. They are among 74 school districts across the state to meet the highest designation.

Both districts received an excellent designation on the 2006-07 report card.

Excellent with distinction is a new designation this year. Adding the new, higher category recognizes districts that are still making significant progress even though they are already among the top tier of schools.

The ratings schools can earn on the annual report card are academic emergency, academic watch, continuous improvement, effective, excellent and excellent with distinction.

“I attribute the success to a lot of hard work from the teachers, the students, parents and our faculty,” said John Sheets, Howland superintendent.

Last year, Howland earned an excellent rating but didn’t meet “Adequate Yearly Progress” in all student subgroups.

The 2007-08 report card, however, implemented an element called a growth model, providing another way for districts to meet AYP.

The growth model gives districts credit for children who are making significant gains but have not yet reached the “proficiency” level on their achievement tests. Proficiency levels, determined by the state, vary by subject area and grade level.

A nonproficient pupil who is projected to be on a path to proficiency within two years will be treated as proficient in the current year, thus boosting a district’s proficiency numbers and chances of meeting its AYP goal.

That helped Howland meet AYP this year.

“We still have some work to do with our subgroups [certain student groups where districts must show progress], but this shows that we’re doing well with all groups of children,” Sheets said. “We’re ecstatic about it.”

The subgroups are all students, native American, Hispanic, white, limited English proficient, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, multiracial, economically disadvantaged and students with disabilities.

Robert Wilson, Lakeview superintendent, attributed that district’s success to “outstanding faculty.” Even with financial strains affecting the school district during the last year, teachers and staff worked hard to educate students, he said. “It’s a team effort.”

Only one district, Lisbon, slipped from the previous year’s designation — from effective to continuous improvement. Both Youngstown and Warren, the Mahoning Valley’s two largest districts, remain in academic watch for the second year.

Lisbon Superintendent Donald Thompson said that in previous years, the district’s performance index exceeded 90 points enabling the district to stay at the effective designation. This year, that number dropped to 89.3 so the designation decreased.

The district is targeting its curriculum and instructional methods, particularly junior high math, to try to improve its report card results, Thompson said.

“We aren’t pleased with it, and we’ll do what we have to do to try to improve it,” he said.

In Mahoning County, Campbell, Struthers and West Branch improved. Struthers saw the biggest gain, jumping two rankings from continuous improvement to excellent.

“We’re very happy with the staff that we’ve put in place over the last two years, and we think this is just the beginning of a very good period for us,” said Dean Burns, president of the Struthers school board.

The district employs programs to identify students who need help in particular areas and provide the help for them, he said. “We’ve been working hard at it.”

Dan Dailey, Struthers interim superintendent, also pointed to staff professional development efforts and said that some changes on this year’s report card also helped the district garner the excellent designation.

Campbell advanced from continuous improvement to effective and West Branch increased from effective to excellent.

In Trumbull County, Bloomfield-Mesopotamia, McDonald, Joseph Badger and Newton Falls all increased from effective to excellent.

In Columbiana County, Beaver and Southern Local both improved from continuous improvement to effective while Leetonia and United both increased from effective to excellent.

Designations for all other districts in the tri-county area remained the same.

Michael Wasser, McDonald superintendent, said the district remained at the effective designation for a few years before meeting the excellent mark this year. “It’s been a long time coming,” he said.

Wasser attributed the improvement to the hard work of district employees, particularly teachers, “to get us over that hump.”

The district employed after-school programs and other efforts aimed at improving student achievement.

One change between this year’s report cards and the previous year’s is the addition of the value-added measure, giving credit for pupil academic growth though a district hasn’t met all or nearly all of the 30 standards of pupil achievement. It demonstrates that schools and districts may be making academic improvements in student performance even though they may not have met the standard for student achievement.

While achievement scores show a student’s proficiency level at a given point in time, the value-added measure demonstrates how much student progress has been made since the previous year.

Value-added results are calculated for schools with grades four through eight in reading and math.

All pupils in grades three through eight are tested in those two subjects, allowing the state to compare the performance of last year’s third-graders with their performance as this year’s fourth-graders.

A school or district that achieves a composite result of above expected growth for two consecutive years may increase its designation by one category. Districts where pupils made above-expected progress from year-to-year, based on a state formula looking at previous years’ statistics, get a positive value-added measure.

The change helped the designations of some area districts including Boardman, which maintained its excellent designation for the second consecutive year, and Leetonia, which increased from effective to excellent.

“The value-added measure measures progress where the tests measure achievement,” said Dr. Linda Ross, Boardman’s director of instruction.

The school district didn’t meet adequate yearly progress in all of the required subgroups, but the value-added measure bolstered the designation to excellent. The district achieved excellent status on its 2006-07 report card, too.

“We’re being held at a higher level because we’re trying to meet the needs of nine subgroups as compared to some of our surrounding districts that have two or three subgroups — four at most,” said Boardman Superintendent Frank Lazzeri. “That achievement says a lot about what our teachers are doing in the classroom.”

The only AYP subgroup in which Boardman doesn’t meet the 30-student minimum is American Indian, Lazzeri said.

Robert Rostan, Leetonia superintendent, said the value-added measure is a legitimate way to evaluate progress.

“It shows that we are making progress even though we don’t meet all of the indicators,” he said.

Beginning with the 2008-09 report cards, districts and schools showing “below expected growth” for three consecutive years will have their designation reduced.

Statewide, districts have realized a 25 percent increase in performance index since 1999, said Susan Tave Zelman, state superintendent of public instruction. The performance index measures the achievement of every student tested.

“More districts than ever have been designated as effective or better,” Zelman said.

Nearly 85 percent of districts and almost 70 percent of school buildings earned an effective or higher designation on the latest report cards.