Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The Ohio Department of Education released preliminary results for the 2009-10 state report cards. Official results will be released Friday. The Mahoning Valley schools that earned an Excellent with Distinction designation, the best mark:
MAHONING COUNTY
Poland Western Reserve
COLUMBIANA COUNTY
Columbiana Exempted Village
TRUMBULL COUNTY
Bloomfield-Mespo Champion Maplewood
Source: ODE preliminary results
By Denise Dick
By DENISE DICK
POLAND
Six Mahoning Valley school districts earned the Excellent with Distinction rating, according to preliminary state report-card results for 2009-10.
The official results will be released Friday by the Ohio Department of Education. Some results will be available Friday on Vindy.com, with full results in Saturday’s Vindicator and on Vindy.com.
ODE released preliminary information after public-records requests.
In Mahoning County, Poland and Western Reserve schools earned the Excellent with Distinction rating — the highest possible. What gives a district the distinction rating rather than an Excellent designation is its meeting expected growth in student performance for at least two- consecutive years.
This marks the first year that those two districts earned the designation. Both have been designated Excellent for the last several years.
Youngstown city remains in academic emergency.
“We’re very proud,” said Robert Zorn, Poland schools superintendent. “We’re proud of the team effort of the parents, the teachers, the students and the staff.”
Charles W. Swindler, Western Reserve’s superintendent, said the district’s efforts focused on changes in the middle school curriculum to provide double math and language-arts classes.
“The middle school was where our scores were dropping some,” Swindler said.
In math, for example, one class deals with the theory and concepts while the second addresses review, practice and application of those concepts.
“The teacher taught the lessons and then provided hands-on experience with it,” Swindler said. “It seemed to really help the kids at that age.”
In Columbiana County, Columbiana Exempted Village was the only one to get the Excellent with Distinction designation. Last year, Columbiana was designated Excellent.
In Trumbull County, Bloomfield-Mespo, Champion and Maplewood reached that designation, according to the preliminary results.
Champion also earned that designation last year; Bloomfield-Mespo and Maplewood were both Excellent on last year’s report card.