COLUMBUS — The Ohio Department of Education has released its annual School Report Cards for the 2019-2020 school year, but these report cards lack something significant — grades.
This year’s report cards do not contain overall grades for any district or building. They also don’t include scores for achievement, gap closing or progress — all of which are determined by state test scores. Most state tests were cancelled last year as a result of school closures due to COVID-19.
“While schools have less information available than in years past, we still emphasize the importance of gauging where students are in terms of academic achievement and using available district data to inform improvement to instruction,” said Paolo DeMaria, superintendent of public instruction.
While schools didn’t receive grades, partial data was reported for graduation rates, improving at-risk K-3 readers and “prepared for success” — which calculates how many seniors earned remediation-free scores on college entrance exams, earned an honors diploma or received an industry recognized credential. The grade cards also include most of the typical demographic, enrollment and financial information.
Data from the prepared for success metric reflects the two graduation years prior to the grade card’s release. Data for the four and five year graduation rates reflect 2019 graduates.
The data listed in the “Improving K-3 Readers” category only shows measures for kindergarten (Year 1), first grade (Year 2) and second grade (Year 3). Since third grade reading proficiency tests were not administered, no data is shown and Ohio legislators temporarily waived the requirement that a student meet the promotion threshold to advance to fourth grade for the 2019-2020 school year.
While there’s a lot of information missing from traditional school district grade cards, Career-Technical Planning Districts have a more comprehensive report. While CTPDs did not receive grades, most of the data is available because it is based upon career-technical education concentrators who left school in the prior year or four- and five- year graduation cohorts, which are lagged a year.
To see the 2019-2020 report card for your school district, visit https://reportcard.education.ohio.gov. For a full guide to this year’s report card, click here.
