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Districts and schools receive an overall rating of 1 to 5 stars in half-star increments on their report cards. The overall rating is comprised of six rated components - Achievement, Progress, Gap Closing, Graduation, Early Literacy and The College, Career, Workforce and Military Readiness.
CELINA - The area's reputation for superb public schools was reaffirmed this week with Tuesday's release of the Ohio Department of Education & Workforce's annual school report cards.
Five out of 10 districts in the area received perfect 5-star ratings, meaning they significantly exceed state standards. The rest of the region's school districts either received 4-, 4.5- or 3.5-star ratings, meaning they exceed or meet state standards.
Using a rating system ranging from one to five stars in half-star increments, Ohio's school report cards are designed to give communities a clear picture of progress of schools in raising achievement and preparing students for the future, according to the Ohio Department of Education & Workforce.
The overall rating of a school report card is made up of six components - achievement, progress, gap closing, early literacy, graduation, and college, career, workforce and military readiness, per ODEW.
This is the second year that the college, career, workforce and military readiness component has gone toward the overall rating on the report cards. Previously, it was a separate report that did not have weight in the overall ratings.
The top rated schools overall in the area for the 2025-2026 school year were Marion Local, Fort Recovery, Minster, New Bremen and New Knoxville. All but one retained their 5-star overall ratings from last year. New Knoxville Local School improved to 5 stars from 4.5 last year.
"Parents in Minster value education, so they send their children to school ready to learn. Our community supports what we do and our teachers work really, really, really hard to make sure that they get the most out of each and every one of our students," Minster Superintendent Josh Meyer said of the district's perfect overall rating. "We don't chase a lot of initiatives. We don't try flavors of the month or year around here. Kids come to school ready to learn, parents support what we do, and our teachers work really hard at teaching them."
The remaining districts also fared well overall. St. Henry and Coldwater retained the 4.5-star ratings they received the previous year; Parkway Schools earned a 4-star rating; and Celina and St. Marys city school districts both received 3.5-star overall ratings.
"I think our kids perform really, really high and we love to see that," St. Henry Superintendent Adam Puthoff said. "(I'm) extremely thankful for the hard work of our staff and our students - and for the support of our community for our kids. We're excited to get back to work and try to get to that 5-star rating that we all want."
Last year was a big year for early literacy across the state and in the Grand Lake region, as the 2025-2026 school year marked the first full year of implementation of instruction grounded in science of reading statewide.
"We know the Science of Reading is the best method we have for teaching children of all abilities how to read," Gov. Mike DeWine said in a news release Tuesday. "With the support of the General Assembly, we made the Science of Reading a requirement in Ohio schools (in 2023). A change of this scale takes time and persistence from teachers and students, but when you look at this year's state report cards and see what has been done in a relatively short amount of time, it is a tremendous accomplishment."
Per the ODEW, science of reading means an interdisciplinary body of scientific evidence that:
• Informs how students learn to read and write proficiently from early childhood through adolescence.
• Explains why some students have difficulty with reading and writing.
• Indicates that all students benefit from explicit and systematic instruction in phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, comprehension, and writing to become effective readers.
• Does not rely on any model of teaching students to read based on meaning, structure and syntax, and visual cues.
Area schools fared well overall in the early literacy component, which measures how well districts and schools support K-3 reading development.
Minster Local Schools was the lone district to significantly exceed state standards in the component, garnering a perfect 5-star rating in it.
New Bremen, Marion Local, Fort Recovery and New Knoxville earned 4-star ratings, exceeding state early literacy standards. Parkway Local Schools, Celina City Schools and St. Marys City Schools all earned a 3-star rating in early literacy, meeting state standards.
St. Marys Superintendent Bill Ruane noted that his district retained its 3-star early literacy rating from last year despite recent changes to how the state determines it.
"I think staying the same at the 3 stars isn't necessarily terrible if you look at the big picture and the changes that the state made," he said. "I think the biggest thing we've done is we've done a lot of initiatives across the district to try to encourage both growth and achievement in our students. Those were using grants, such as our literacy grant, having literacy coaches and a new ELA curriculum. I think that's big."
The passage of the state's biennial budget, known as House Bill 96, in June 2025 required adjustments to how the early literacy component is calculated and how ratings are assigned, per ODEW.
The early literacy component is based on three measures: proficiency in third grade reading, 40%; improving K-3 literacy, 25%; and promotion to fourth grade, 35%.
HB 96 revised how the promotion to fourth grade measure is defined, according to ODEW. For report card purposes only, students count as being promoted to the fourth grade if they: Score 700 or higher on the third grade ELA state test; score 50 or higher on the reading sub-score section of the third grade ELA state test; or meet the cut score on an approved alternative assessment.
Also under HB 96, parent requests, previous retentions, and IEP exemptions no longer count as promotion for the purposes of the report card measure.
The area's schools also earned some of the best test scores in the state, with Minster Local Schools achieving its highest Performance Index score in over a decade, Meyer said.
A PI score measures the test results of every student, not just those who score proficient or higher, per ODEW. Schools and districts receive points on the index for every student who takes a test. The higher the performance level on the state tests, the more points are awarded toward the index score. The index score is divided by the maximum possible score. Each year the maximum possible score is determined by the average of the highest 2% performance index scores in the state.
Minster earned a PI score of 109.5, which divided by the maximum district PI score of 110.2, put it at a PI percent of 99.3%.
"The thing that stands out the most to me is just how our students and staff continue to excel across a lot of academic subjects, grade levels and just all around," Meyer said. "The other thing that stands out to me is our Performance Index score of 109.5 is the highest that it's been since 2014."
Marion Local also once again earned one of the highest PI scores in the state at 111.6, in line with its PI scores of year's past: 111.7 in 2025, 111.5 in 2024 and 110.8 in 2023.
Other districts with high test scores ranking within the top 10% of the state were New Bremen at 109.2; St. Henry at 107.8; New Knoxville at 105.0; Fort Recovery at 104.7; and Coldwater at 100.3.
"Our district also earned 5 stars in achievement and 5 stars in graduation, with a Performance Index of 91.0%, a four-year graduation rate of 100%, and a five-year graduation rate of 98.1%," Coldwater Superintendent Doug Mader said in a note to staff that was shared with The Daily Standard. "These are outstanding results and something our entire staff should be proud of. While we should absolutely celebrate these results, we also know there is room to grow. We will dig deeper into the data to identify where we can continue to move the needle."
The state report cards' progress component has long been a complex and elusive area for districts to improve upon. Per ODEW, the component measures the amount of growth made by groups of students compared to students like them across the state. The overall value-added composite combines growth across all subjects and grades at the school or district for the past three years.
Due to how it's measured, the component often ends up being the last for districts to perfect.
New Bremen Local Schools was the lone district in the Grand Lake region to achieve a coveted 5-star rating in progress, meaning it showed significant evidence that the district exceeded student growth expectations by a larger magnitude.
Marion Local, Minster, New Knoxville and Fort Recovery all achieved 4-star progress ratings, meaning the districts showed significant evidence that they exceeded the state's student growth expectations.
Celina and Coldwater both earned 3-star ratings in progress; St. Henry and Parkway both earned 2-star ratings; and St. Marys earned a 1-star rating.
"A progress score is the one component within the report card that is kind of holding us back a little bit," Puthoff said. "Definitely saw some strides in the right direction there, but that component itself just takes time to get shifted and moved because there's a three-year, two-year and one-year average that kind of goes into that. That's an area of focus for us that we're going to continue to look at, examine and make adjustments."
Regardless of the ratings Minster, or any other area district, earned, Meyer noted that there is much more to a school district than its annual state report card.
"It's a snapshot of what we do; and it is a picture of that day and time of how that student does on that test. Are we happy with our results? Absolutely, 100%, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise. However, I would be negligent and I would do our teaching staff a huge disservice if I said that that's the only thing we're proud of, is test scores around here. We do so many other things well that aren't measured on this test with our student programs - whether it's band or FFA or student council, I could go on and on and on about what our staff and what our students do here," he said. "I know that people think, 'Oh, you got great test scores, (that's) super,' and they're right. But that's only a small part of what we do. It'll never be the only thing that we focus on at Minster."
All of the state's 2025-2026 school report cards are available at reportcard.education.ohio.gov/home.
