This week, the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce (DEW) doled out report cards for every public school district for the 2024-2025 school year.
Instead of traditional letter grades, schools are rated from 1 to 5 stars on everything from state testing to graduation rates. Around 10% of school districts received less than three stars, meaning they did not meet the state’s benchmark standards.
“The Ohio School Report Cards are never an end point, but a building block for data-driven decisions that guide where to focus state and local resources, and, most importantly, how best to support Ohio students,” Stephen Dackin, director of DEW, said in a press release earlier this week.
Conor Morris, education reporter with Ideastream Public Media, analyzed the state’s report cards and joined The Ohio Newsroom to share his findings.
This interview has been lightly edited for brevity and clarity.
On overall trends
“The state says that we're kind of at a five year high for some math and reading scores. That, in some ways, is not surprising because we are five years out from the pandemic-related school closures. Things are still generally not back where they were before [those closures]. And so the state is saying ‘Yes, we are seeing progress in general.’”
“There was a new score this year as well that was added to the report card. It's called the ‘college and career readiness’ metric. Basically, this is measuring how well schools are preparing students for careers after school: for college and for the military.”
On how career readiness shaped schools’ scores
“For some schools, this was a really big boon. Akron Public Schools was one example there. Their overall score jumped from two and a half to three and a half stars, so they are now the highest scoring urban school district in the state right now, in part because of this [metric]. They've got these career academies. Some of them are adopted by businesses like Goodyear, for example, and they focus on getting kids work experience.”
“Other districts like Cleveland scored really low. They got just one out of five stars in this new score. They say it's long been a struggle for them: they're trying to bring these [career] programs into all buildings but they've got budget challenges and need to close buildings they say – just like Columbus did recently.”
“Another interesting thing is some schools are performing well in this measure even with simple programs. There's one rural kind of suburban school district I talked with in eastern Ohio, they just have students take a semester-long class with CPR, emergency preparedness, things like that, and that counts toward the score.”
On reading scores and literacy trends
“English scores are at a five year high on the state test. But again, that's not saying much because of the pandemic school closures. At the same time, third grade reading proficiency is down about five points compared to last year. So about 60% of third graders are proficient in reading statewide. That's nine points higher than it was when schools were shut down, but still lower than the year before [2023-2024].”
“The state is basically saying schools are adjusting to new [science of reading] materials and structural practices. They're saying there's going to be brief shifts in performance that are normal. They say it remains a priority, basically, for schools statewide.”
On urban vs. rural school ratings
“The highest poverty districts, especially in urban settings, usually score two or two and a half stars out of five. That's the same this year. Their scores on state tests are just generally lower. One in three third graders at Columbus schools scored proficient on the reading test. The scores for third graders for math was a bit higher, but not by much. And advocates argue it's just because these kids are kind of the toughest cases. They're dealing with a lot more at home, undiagnosed learning disabilities, they aren’t really set up for success like kids coming from wealthier homes.
“It's not just about poverty, though. [Some] rural districts that are considered to have high student poverty are getting three, three and a half, four out of five stars overall.”
“There are also individual schools in Cleveland, Columbus, Akron that are doing really well. These are often called magnet schools. They attract motivated kids, they have unique high quality programming. Districts say they want all their schools to be like this, but they don't have the budget to replicate that at every school. And there is a lottery system for these schools. Some kids are coming from outside the city as well to get into these schools.”
