Districts fare well on report cards

The first half of the 2015 Ohio School Report cards was released on Thursday with Marion Local and St. Henry school districts receiving the highest local scores while Celina saw a drop in graduation rates.

The Ohio Department of Education said in the release that a "one-time delay in the report card time line (was) due to the transition to new assessments and unexpected, multi-week delays caused by the late delivery of PARCC assessment results." Next year's results are expected by Sept. 15.

Mercer County Education Service Center Superintendent Shelly Vaughn said the most accurate statistics on the partial report were the graduation rates, with the caveat that special education students attending schools for longer than 5 years were counted against districts.

Marion Local Schools Superintendent Michael Pohlman said he was very pleased with the district's 100 percent 4-year graduation rate and 96.9 percent 5-year rate.

However, he said the 96.9 percent rate can be misleading as students on a special education plan may be educated through 21 years of age.

"But it's my understanding, the way the state does the reporting ... that counts against your graduation rate," he said. "In my mind, this is what's best for the child. And yet we're sort of dinged by the state on our graduation rate."

Pohlman's district also scored the highest in the county on ACT participation at 90.7 percent and students receiving honors diplomas at 34.7 percent.

"A lot of that I credit our students for their hard work and our teachers for their dedication, and I give a lot of credit to the families for valuing their children's education," he said.

St. Henry Local Schools tied Marion Local's 100 percent 4-year rate and also tied with Fort Recovery for the highest 5-year rate at 98.7 percent.

Celina City Schools had the county's lowest graduation rates with a four-year rate of 92.9 percent and a five-year rate of 93.9 percent, both the equivalent of B grades. This was a drop from last year's A ratings, superintendent Dr. Ken Schmiesing said.

"We did drop in those areas from the 2013-2014 school year," he said. "But looking at the students, talking about 200 students, you're talking about one student making the difference between a B and an A. We continue to offer a lot of opportunities to our students. ... I know there is a lot of work at the high school to make sure they meet their graduation requirements."

One such opportunity is Aladdin Alternative School, a former charter school that recently merged with the Mercer County ESC. Graduates from Aladdin Academy will count toward Celina's graduation totals in 2016. In the past, the district could not count Aladdin students from Celina as graduates, Schmiesing said.

Schmiesing noted the district's K-3 literacy rating went from an F to a B, crediting increased efforts to report literacy progress.

"That's something when I interviewed for this position that I saw as an accountability piece as far as reporting to the state," he said.

Parkway schools had the lowest rate of students receiving honors diplomas at 10.6 percent. Superintendent Greg Puthoff noted the rate is typical for the district.

"I think that's about normal for Parkway," he said. "One of the hard parts (of the honors diploma) is three years of foreign language. For a lot of our students, it's hard to fit that in their schedule if they have other interests, like FFA. ... We have high expectations on that honor diploma."

Vaughn said the state evaluation system is convoluted and the scores don't tell the whole story.

"It's a mess. The state report card is a mess. School district officials want to be held accountable for student achievement. That's our job. But this has become such a convoluted mess that it really doesn't work," she said. "Legislators have acknowledged that, education officials have acknowledged that and they're working on it."

She said the ESC is working on a Mercer County district report card to give residents a clearer picture of their schools' performance.

"We're measuring what matters," she said. "The superintendents have been collecting meaningful data and we're putting it together. Our hope is to release that in January so we can show the public accurate data and show them data that is relevant and understandable."

The ODE has announced it will release the remaining components of the district report cards on Feb. 25. Information on gifted student services, district financial expenditures, career-technical planning and dropout recovery will be included in those numbers.

Report cards can be viewed at reportcard.education.ohio.gov.

Graduation rates:
                                        

District	4-Year Grad rate	5-year Grad rate
St. Henry	100 (A)	98.7 (A)
Marion Local	100 (A)	96.9 (A)
New Bremen	98.5 (A)	98.8 (A)
Coldwater	98.2 (A)	96.2 (A)
Minster	97.3 (A)	98.1 (A)
Fort Recovery	96.9 (A)	98.7 (A)
Parkway	95.5 (A)	97.5 (A)
St. Marys	95.5 (A)	94 (B)
Celina	92.9 (B)	93.9 (B)

Note: Results are in percentages.