West Liberty-Salem and Mechanicsburg had the top overall grades among Champaign County schools, according to the latest information released by the Ohio Department of Education on Thursday.
WL-S and Mechanicsburg each earned “B” overall ratings, followed by Graham and Triad each with “C” overall ratings and Urbana with a “D” rating. The grades are based on the A-through-F scale.
In addition to the overall grades, each district was assigned an additional letter grade for each of many categorized benchmarks of district performance. The five Champaign County districts’ report cards are shown as separate graphics accompanying this story.
WL-S Superintendent Kraig Hissong released this statement about the grades for his district:
“We are very proud of our students and staff regarding the District Report Cards. There are many areas in which we continue to do well and a few areas that we will continue to work on and focus on for our continuous improvement planning,” Hissong said. “Overall, we are pleased by the growth of our students and the additional indicators that we met this year. We continue to see opportunities for improvement in the number of students proficient in some subjects/grade levels. We are hopeful that in the years to come the state will improve and become more consistent with the data that is used to formulate district report cards.”
Graham Superintendent Kirk Koennecke released this statement about the grades for his district:
“Each year for the past 2 years Graham’s report card has improved, in terms of growth scores and overall grades. While we are never satisfied with the report card as a holistic measure of all we do at Graham to prepare Future Ready citizens, we are very pleased that our overall grades and measures are up again,” Koennecke said.
“Graham earned 2 indicators this year, as compared to 0 the year before. Our gap-closing measure of growth raised from an F to a D grade. Test scores with significant growth occurred in 11 of 18 tests K-12, especially in 5th Grade LEA and Science, as well as 9th Grade Algebra, a key indicator. All three areas had over 10 percent growth from a year ago. The 5 year graduation rate jumped over 4 percent, to 94.1, a huge amount of growth,” Koennecke added.
“The state has decided not to change high school graduation indicators, or lessen tests, or modify areas of grading for STEM awards, preparedness credits for credentials, internships, job shadowing, until next year, so our data in these areas won’t show up on this report until then. Needless to say, we are thrilled at our numbers in these areas,” Koennecke concluded.
Mechanicsburg Superintendent Danielle Prohaska released this statement on Friday morning about the district’s report card: “Mechanicsburg recognizes that the state issued report card is just one of the many measures that demonstrates why we are ‘The best small school in Ohio’. The district is once again proud of our efforts to add value to the lives of our students. We have steadily improved across multiple areas on the report card and are especially proud of earning all A’s in the progress measure. Mechanicsburg’s teachers and staff work non-stop to make learning relevant, meaningful, and challenging. Those efforts continue to pay off. I could not be more proud of our students, staff, and district.”
Triad Superintendent Vickie Hoffman released this statement about the district’s report card: “The 2018 Triad report card indicates a definite strength in Progress. This component of the report card looks at all students and groups of students to see if they are showing at least one year of instructional growth. In all grades and all subgroups, our teachers are meeting the mark of at least one year of growth and many are showing more than one year of growth. Another area of strength is the improvement in our graduation rate. This is the first year Triad has had an A in our 4 year graduation rate. Although we are pleased about the amount of growth we are showing with all students, the area we will continue to focus on includes a focus on curriculum mapping, assessment, and instructional practices. This focus will continue to move all indicators closer to the 80 percent needed to increase the percentage of indicators met and achievement component. In the first six weeks on the job, I have already seen teachers working closely with our administrators to build on the foundation of great things that were started in past years. We are excited about the great things happening at Triad and look forward to celebrating future continued growth.”
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Attempts by the Urbana Daily Citizen to contact Urbana superintendent Charles Thiel have been unsuccessful.
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For direct access to report card data from the government database, log on to https://reportcard.education.ohio.gov/. The website was not functioning properly during the release of data on Thursday. To access a media-built portal constructed by the Lima News, log on to https://www.limaohio.com/reportcards.
