The Ohio Department of Education’s annual State Report Card was released Thursday and Rossford Schools received an overall C grade for the second consecutive year. While the district continues to achieve well in the progress or growth piece of the report card we understand this is only one evaluation tool the district utilizes.
The school district strives for excellence in this evaluation too, but we also use several ways of obtaining academic achievement. We look at Star math and reading benchmark assessments, early literacy assessments such as Dibels and give the Terra Nova as an alternate assessment to third graders for English and Language Arts. These scores aren’t reviewed in the state report card, but are valuable to our students and their growth.
“The state report card is one tool we use to evaluate, but it absolutely does not define us,” Curriculum Director Megan Spangler. “The data from the state report card is valuable in helping us to recognize both some relative strengths and areas in which we can improve.”
Our intervention programming helped our third grade students have a 2.5 percent growth from last year in the third-grade reading guarantee. This increase led to 97.6 percent of our third graders meeting the reading guarantee criteria.
Spangler is helping introduce the American Reading Company Core Reading Program to help our students read more efficiently in grades K-5. We’re also piloting the junior high ARC reading program. District officials are excited about the research and data behind this new reading program and what we think it’ll do for our students.
The progress in the state report card was a ‘B’ overall, and we had some very positive scores at our junior high building. Our students are meeting great expectations at the junior high in reading, science, math, and algebra. The school was given positive scores for gifted students, students in the lowest 20 percent, and students with disabilities.
Two other highlights in the report card was ‘B’ grades in progress and graduation rates.
“Progress is reflective of the growth which individual students make as compared to their past performance on state tests. This is very encouraging to see another positive step for our students,” Spangler said. “The Graduation Rate also remained a ‘B,’ demonstrating Rossford’s deep commitment to ensuring all high school students have a solid path to earn a diploma.”
Rossford Schools are looking for improvement in some of the other categories, but the report card isn’t reflective of the district as a whole. District officials are proud of our staff, teachers, and students for their tremendous achievements in the classroom, in extra curriculars, in their service to society, and what our students have accomplished after graduation. We believe in our students and their education.
“Our District Leadership Team will continue to focus on improving achievement,” Spangler said. “Ohio’s strategic plan acknowledges that supporting successful students goes beyond traditional academics to encompass supporting the whole child through programming and wrap-around services—which is a priority of our district and board as well. We have implemented programs such as STEM throughout the district, which helps students to develop grit and perseverance, along with critical thinking and problem solving skills.”