The good news? Akron Public Schools meets the state’s education standards in the newest state report cards released Monday.
The not-so-good news? Akron lost ground in the critical early literacy metric — less than half of the third graders in public schools read at a proficient level (45%). The state’s standard is 57%.
Still, the school district improved overall from 2.5 stars last year to 3.5 this year, out of a total of five. That’s a big deal, the growth brought the district’s education offerings up to the state’s standards cumulatively.
The largest growth was tied to the College Career Workforce and Military Readiness category, which this year finally counted toward the total score. You can review the district’s entire assessment here, and here’s a handy guide for the report.
On the back of its College and Career Academies, Akron schools was expected to receive high marks in the readiness category. It received four stars, which helped bump its total score high enough to meet state standards. It’s one of the measurables Superintendent Mary Outley said she’s most proud of.
“Our success isn’t again, just internal,” Outley said, “but it’s due to the support of our community, embracing us and wanting our students to have these experiences, so they’re taking learning outside of the four walls and into the community.”
In Akron schools, what happened with early literacy?
Early literacy, specifically third grade reading levels, are among the most important markers for student academic success. Given that, why has the district lost ground?
“They change the bar going up, up, up, increasing, and now the bar has hit proficiency,” Outley said during a virtual press conference Monday. “And so that was the greatest change that we are facing, is ensuring that we get as many students to that finish line as possible.”
During a presentation last week to the board’s Instructional Policy and Student Achievement subcommittee, administrators explained literacy performance by cluster. Of the district’s six clusters (Buchtel, East, Ellet, Firestone, Garfield and North), Ellet and Firestone experienced the highest third grade reading levels.
More than 62% of third grade students in the Ellet cluster and 58% of students in the Firestone cluster were marked as proficient. By contrast, only 34% of third graders in the Buchtel cluster and 37% in the East cluster scored as proficient.
Reading proficiency generally drops across all clusters in higher grades. Notably, only 9% of Buchtel cluster eight graders scored as proficient in reading. The state standard for eighth grade reading proficiency is 55%, which none of the clusters reached.
Last year, third-grade reading proficiency was over 50% across the district.
“Are we where we need to be for [English language arts]?” Toan Dang-Nguyen, the district’s content supervisor for K-12 literacy, asked during the subcommittee presentation. “We’re not where we want to be, but we are making progress.”
Dang-Nguyen went on to note that, while the overall marks are not encouraging, students in grades 6-8 showed an increase in the percentage of students scoring proficient or higher.
How is Akron Public Schools addressing poor reading scores?
Dang-Nguyen said the district is working to target low-performing students earlier while bolstering its professional development for teaching staff. That two-pronged approach, they hope, will help to bring students up to par more quickly in coming years.
“We have 24 buildings doing enhanced core reading instruction,” Dang-Nguyen said. “So we’re building the strong rapport with the early literacy program, so our teachers are providing that explicit, systematic instruction.”
The district is also partnered with the University of Akron’s Center for Structured Literacy for professional development for teachers. And they were ahead of the state’s mandate to re-adopt a phonetics-based science curriculum.
“We want to continue to support our teachers in delivering that high quality instruction,” she said. “So one more thing that we are doing is tightening up what we are doing in our data driven progress monitoring.”
That means developing a data-based record of regularly tested assessments that stays with students throughout their educational journey.
What about Akron schools’ graduation rates and achievement?
The district largely held steady with its 4-year graduation rate, which sits at just under 89%. This mark sits about even with the state graduation rate and several points higher than a similar district, according to ODEW data.
APS also slightly increased its performance index in the achievement category, sitting at 65.8 this year. Last year, it was 63.4, and coming out of the pandemic in 2021, the district had an achievement performance index of just 39.2.
On the state report card, APS is shown to have 19,737 students enrolled last school year. Their chronic absenteeism rate is just over 43%. Firestone Community Learning Center, Ellet CLC, and Akron Early College High School were marked as the best high schools in the district.
What were the Akron Public Schools’ marks?
- Overall: 3.5 out of 5 stars
- Achievement: 2 out of 5 stars
- Progress: 4 out of 5 stars
- Gap Closing: 3 out of 5 stars
- Graduation: 2 out of 5 stars
- Early Literacy: 1 out of 5 stars
- College Career Workforce and Military Readiness: 4 out of 5 stars