The Ohio Department of Education recently released its report cards for schools across the state and multiple local districts received high marks.
Alexander and Nelsonville-York school districts received an excellent rating, which is the highest a district can receive. Athens and Federal Hocking schools received an effective rating, the next on the scale, while Trimble schools received a continuous improvement mark, the lowest ranking.
“The report card we got was pretty good for us,” Athens City School District Superintendent Carl Martin said.
The district met 19 of the 26 indicators used in the report card, but had a slightly poorer showing than the previous year.
“I think there are a couple areas we can improve,” Martin said. “It appears that looking at the whole report card, the fifth grade achievement in reading, math, and science is what we will have to look at a little closer. Fifth grade is a tough testing grade around the state, but that’s an area we will have to focus on.
Martin said he believes the district scored well in all of the other areas, including graduation rate.
“Every year is a different group of kids and things change so much all of the time, so these are going to change,” Martin said. “It’s just hard to have something that is consistent. We just take it a year at a time, and see what the requirements are for next year and try to keep up with all of that.”
The Alexander Local School District met 25 of the 26 requirements, receiving an excellent rating, which has Superintendent Jeffery Cullum pleased.
“That’s the highest number of indicators we’ve ever gotten,” Cullum said.
However, Cullum acknowledges that there is always room for improvement.
“Within that is the percentage of kids who passed and those are things we look at that we want to improve,” Cullum said. “Although we may have met (the requirement), for example, 75 percent of the students in third grade need to meet reading and we had 79 percent; we would still like to see a higher percentage.”
Cullum said that the fifth grade math test, which was the category the district didn’t meet, seems to be the most difficult of all the tests. Nelsonville-York is the only district in the area that met that standard.
“It’s not just us if you look at the state average,” Cullum said. “Even if we had gotten all 26, we would still be looking to improve percentages of people who passed. Until it’s up to 100 percent we haven’t met our goal.”
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