Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Eighteen of the tri-county’s public districts are rated excellent or better.
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HOW IT’S DONE: The focus is on the lesson as teacher Joanne Barnhart teaches fifth-grade science at Howland Road North Intermediate School. The school achieved an excellent rating on its 2008-09 state local report card Tuesday, and the Howland district has been rated as excellent with distinction for a second consecutive year.
Five Mahoning Valley school districts earned higher marks, but eight others slipped a notch on the latest state local report cards issued by the Ohio Department of Education.
The state released its annual academic accounting Tuesday, and it was the first year for Canfield, Champion and Springfield to achieve a rating of excellent with distinction, the highest designation.
Springfield saw the biggest jump, moving from effective last year to the highest rating this year. Canfield and Champion both increased this year from excellent.
The ratings of both Campbell and Maplewood shot from effective to excellent this year.
“We’re very excited,” said Springfield Superintendent Debra Mettee.
Last year, though, the district missed an excellent rating by only a fraction, she said.
The district used after-school and summer-school programs to help those students who needed extra attention, Mettee said.
“The teachers and the administrators, the students and the parents worked very hard,” she said.
The community’s passage last May of the district’s 1 percent income tax renewal the first time it appeared on the ballot also played a role, the superintendent said.
The first-time passage allowed teachers to focus on teaching rather than diverting their attention with worries about the renewal’s passage.
“I’m happy for our students and our teachers,” said Dante Zambrini, Canfield superintendent. “They worked very hard.”
But he believes all schools that reach the excellent rating have reason to be proud.
It’s the first year for both Canfield and Champion to achieve the excellent-with-distinction mark.
Canfield met 29 of 30, and Champion met all 30 indicators on the latest report card.
“It’s very difficult to achieve that,” Zambrini said. “It’s very difficult to meet 29 or 30 indicators.”
Zambrini said he would like more information on the statistical calculations used in the value-added data.
The value-added looks at a child’s performance on a particular day, Zambrini said.
“Testing is a state standard,” he said. “Teaching is an everyday art.”
Campbell achieved an excellent rating, meeting 19 of 30 performance indicators. The value-added measure helped bump the district to an excellent rating.
“It’s a very good day in Campbell,” said Superintendent Thomas Robey.
Last year’s report card earned an effective rating, with the district’s scoring a continuous improvement the previous year.
“I’m very, very proud of our staff,” Robey said. “They’ve worked very hard.”
The district hired academic coaches to help students in math and literacy where students had demonstrated difficulty on previous years’ report cards. A subgroup where the district still struggles is students with disabilities.
“We’ve hired a special-education coach with our stimulus dollars to help with that,” the superintendent said.
The district has students in seven of the 10 subgroups measured by the state in determining Adequate Yearly Progress.
Campbell is a small school district, but it’s also an inner-city district, Robey said.
“For Campbell to meet 19 performance indicators is an achievement,” he said.
About 72 percent of the student population is considered economically disadvantaged, Robey said.
By most accounts, Girard should have retained the excellent rating it achieved last year.
It met 29 of the 30 state indicators, had a performance index rating of nearly 102 and met the Adequate Yearly Progress requirement.
However, the district didn’t meet the expected level of performance on the new value-added measure on the report cards, which looks at the amount of student academic growth for the same group of students from year-to-year.
It was enough to drop Girard to an effective rating.
“We are disappointed,” said Superintendent Joseph Jeswald, vowing to get the district back into the excellent category next year.
He said Girard’s grades 4-8 didn’t make the necessary improvement, and the district will look at the state data and its own test data to see what changes need to be made to improve that performance.
Newton Falls dropped from excellent to effective on its report card, but it wasn’t the value-added measure that caused the problem.
The district didn’t meet its Adequate Yearly Progress mark, said Superintendent David Wilson. That is a federal requirement that Ohio uses as one of its educational standards.
Newton Falls High School was rated excellent for the third consecutive year, and the middle school achieved that ranking for the first time, but the problem was in the junior high grades seven and eight, Wilson said.
A couple of the student subgroups didn’t make the required academic advances, he said, pinpointing the categories of economically disadvantaged, English as a second language and minority student groups as the areas needing to improve.
“Overall, we’re still very happy,” he said.
Brookfield dropped from effective to continuous improvement, and Timothy Saxton, who’s been on the job as superintendent for less than a month, said he’s not sure of the exact cause yet, but he’s sure of one thing.
“I’m not pleased with the results,” Saxton said.
The district needs to look at the state and internal data to determine what it needs to do to boost the rating, he said.
Fifth-grade math appears to be a concern, he said, noting that personnel moves and financial cutbacks may have been negative factors on student performance.
Other tri-county districts that dropped in the ratings are: Lakeview, from excellent with distinction to excellent; Joseph Badger, from excellent to effective; McDonald, from excellent to effective; Southern, from effective to continuous improvement; and Youngstown, from academic watch to academic emergency.