Update (Sept. 20, 2024): In the 2024 edition of the Ohio School Report Card, Akron Public Schools, one of Ohio’s eight largest urban school districts, showed improvement compared to years past. APS led the pack in four-year graduation rate and generally performed well among its peers overall. APS tied for second in this group of school districts with 2.5 stars, second behind Cleveland’s school district (three stars). Akron ranked second in performance index and third grade reading proficiency, two metrics that show improvement year over year. Meanwhile, it lagged in chronic absenteeism, ranking the middle of the pack.
The other “Big 8” urban districts are: Cleveland Municipal School District, Cincinnati Public Schools, Columbus City Schools, Canton City Schools, Dayton City School District, Toledo City School District and Youngstown City Schools.
Student performance in Akron Public Schools last school year improved in several areas — highlighted by early literacy and high school graduation rates — according to a preliminary state education report card presented Tuesday evening at the Akron School Board’s Instructional Policy Committee meeting.
But the school district is still expected to fall short of Ohio’s academic standards and receive 2.5 out of a possible five stars on its state report card, falling just short of the three stars that would mean it meets all state standards.
Although the district received the same overall grade during the 2022-23 school year, Assistant Superintendent Tamea Caver said after Tuesday’s committee meeting that the preliminary report card showed broad progress for the district.
“We can see that in every area that I presented here today that all of our ratings have gone up in each one of the components,” Caver said.
The preliminary report, which does not include all final metrics, assesses districts across six areas — five of which contribute to the overall grade.
- Achievement – Measures student academic progress and achievement on Ohio’s State Tests.
- Gap closing – A component that measures the distance between the state’s academic expectations and the district’s performance in math, English language arts and graduation. It also measures district performance for English learners and gifted students.
- Progress – Measures student performance compared to expected growth on Ohio’s State Tests.
- Early literacy – Measures reading improvement and proficiency for kindergarten through third-grade students.
- Graduation – Measures four- and five-year adjusted graduation rates.
College, Career, Workforce and Military Readiness (CCWMR) is a sixth component that is assessed but not counted toward the cumulative score. That’s expected to change in the coming years.
Graduation rates and early literacy among district’s biggest improvements
APS improved marginally in the achievement category, earning 63.3 performance index points in the 2023/2024 school year compared to 61.1 the previous school year. The performance index measures the state test results of every student.
Still, it only earned two stars in the metric, falling short of the 70% of the total possible performance index points needed to gain three stars.
Gap closing showed the most improvement, with the metric rising to 44.7% in 2024 from 27.1% in 2023. The district nearly earned four stars in this area, falling .3% short of the mark.
The marked increase is largely due to improvements in reducing chronic absenteeism and increasing graduation rates. There were multiple areas of declining performance across all English language arts and mathematics indicators.
The district also improved its graduation rate from 85.6% in 2023 to more than 88% in 2024, a rise that contributed to an additional star, for a total of five.
The 2024 graduation rate is the highest the district has reported during the seven years of data shown in the preliminary report presentation.
Another area of marked growth is early literacy measures. Proficiency in third-grade reading rose to more than 50% from less than 45% the prior school year.
But promotion to fourth-grade reading fell from 99.9% to 93.6%, a metric Caver said the state is still calculating. She also mentioned that changing rules around promoting children to fourth-grade reading have lowered the score for the district.
“At first, we could promote everybody,” Caver said. “Now we have to make sure the parents sign a waiver to promote them.”
The overall measure of improving literacy among the kindergarten to third-grade cohort rose to nearly 24% from about 19% the year prior.
Overall, proficiency in third-grade reading and improving literacy for kindergarteners to third graders both rose more than 10 percentage points from 2022 to 2024.
“We’re seeing that our early literacy rating is improving,” Caver said. “We believe that some of that work that we’ve done over the last couple of years with our primary English language arts curriculum adoption as well as professional development for our staff members are starting to pay off.”
Superintendent: College, career academies may allow district to lead state in readiness assessment
One area that showed the greatest improvement but does not contribute to the overall grade is the College, Career, Workforce, and Military Readiness (CCWMR) assessment.
“We are so far ahead of where so many of our school districts in Ohio are right now as it relates to college and career academies,” Superintendent Michael Robinson said during the committee meeting.
From 2023 to 2024, the district improved from 42.3% to 76.6%, a jump that Caver attributed to APS’s early adoption of the College and Career Academies. She expects that, when this metric is included in the overall score, APS will jump ahead in its overall rating and, hopefully, lead the state in the component.
“This is going to be something that, in the next couple of years, that’s going to become a part of our report card,” Robinson said. “And we are just really lightyears ahead of it.”
Caver said the district consistently takes these report cards into account when planning out where and how it hopes to improve during the academic year.
“Until all of our scholars are three stars and above in every single area,” Caver said, “then we’ll just continue to work on all of the content areas, on all of the components of the report card to meet our goals.”