Ashland City Schools shine on new state report cards

ASHLAND — Ashland City Schools met or exceeded the state’s standards in four out of five ranked categories on the Ohio Department of Education’s newly released Ohio School Report Cards.

Every year, the Ohio Department of Education compiles data from school districts and divides it into six categories: achievement, progress, gap closing, graduation, early literacy, and college/career/military readiness.

In every category except for career readiness, districts are rated on a five-star scale.

A three-star rating means a district met the state’s standards, and any star amount higher or lower than three means a district either exceeded the standards or fell short, respectively.

Where Ashland City Schools excelled

Ashland City Schools received four stars in the graduation and achievement categories, and five stars in the gap closing category.

This means the district exceeds state standards in academic achievement and graduation rates, and significantly exceeds state standards in “closing educational gaps,” according to the report card.

The achievement category is based on how well students perform on state tests, while the gap closing category evaluates how well different subgroups (like disabled students, gifted students, or multiracial students) perform and improve on tests.

Ashland City Schools Superintendent Doug Marrah credits the district’s high marks in achievement and gap closing to its focus on in-person class in the 2021-2022 school year.

“The benefits of our kids being more in-person learning in 2021-2022, all in-person learning, that the abilities that our teachers have to teach kids is evidenced by what’s going on with the academic achievement, the gap closing,” he said.

A ratio of 93.3% of students graduate from Ashland City Schools in four years, while 97.3% of students graduate in five years, earning the district’s four-star rating in graduation.

Marrah described the graduation rates as “incredible” and acknowledged that the district still has work to do with the small amount of students who don’t graduate in five years.

“We continue working those kids and get those kids to cross the finish line,” he said.

Where Ashland City Schools met expectations

Ashland City Schools received three stars — meaning they meet the state’s standards — in just one category: early literacy.

The early literacy rating is drawn from how many third graders meet requirements for promotion to fourth grade, how many third graders score proficient or higher on state english tests, and how many K-3 students are “on-track” with reading goals.

For the 2021-2022 school year, 100% of third graders at Ashland were promoted to fourth grade and 68.6% of them were proficient on the state English tests.

Marrah chalked up the district’s success on third grade promotions to its focus on “structured literacy,” a “highly explicit and systematic teaching of all important components of literacy,” according to a definition from the International Dyslexia Association.

“That work is showing itself in 100% of those kids being promoted from third grade to fourth grade,” he said.

However, only 36.9% of K-3 students at Ashland were “on-track” with reading goals, which held the district back from a higher rating.

Where Ashland City Schools struggled

The only category where Ashland City Schools had less than three stars was in the “progress” category, where the district received a one-star rating, meaning that the district “fell short of student growth expectations by a larger magnitude,” according to the report card.

The progress rating is created by comparing how students perform on tests from one year to the next, and if students exceeded or fell short of expected growth.

In Ashland, every grade level from fifth grade through high school, except for seventh grade, showed significant evidence of students making less progress than expected in at least one subject.

Only fourth graders managed to meet or exceed expectations in all subjects, while seventh graders made progress similar to statewide expectations in all subjects with available data.

However, Marrah was not worried about the district’s low rating on progress, saying it is based on inconsistent data from the 2020-2021 school year.

“That school year we had such a spectrum of who our kids were and who they counted and who they didn’t count, and even people at the state were inconsistent with who they were counting,” he said.

He added that the report card was “mixing apples and oranges” by rating schools’ progress on the 2020-2021 data, while all other categories were rated on 2021-2022 data.

Additionally, he said the 2021-2022 data will be out in October.

What’s next and how other districts did

While Ashland performed well on its report card, many other districts across Ohio continued to struggle with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The pandemic was a catastrophe for many Ohio students,” Ohio Research Director for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute Aaron Churchill said.

“Today’s report cards reveal the ongoing consequences of the pandemic, with more students than usual struggling to meet grade level expectations in math and English.”

Statewide, less students in all grade levels scored proficient or higher on state math and English tests during the 2021-2022 school year than they did in 2018-2019, according to data from the Thomas B. Fordham institute.

Ashland also has room to grow in English and math in the years to come, Marrah said.

“What we’re seeing is what we’re doing with early literacy is starting to show, that’ll keep getting better. And what we’re doing in terms of, we’ve just started a new math program that aligns with the state standards so we’ll see that grow too,” he said.

Ashland was not alone in its accomplishments with test scores, every public school district in Ashland County either met or exceeded the state’s expectations for achievement.

Additionally, Crestview Local Schools and Mapleton Local Schools also struggled in the progress category, both earning one star.

You can review the report cards for all the public schools in Ashland County and the county’s average star rating by scrolling through the spreadsheet below.