Saturday,  August 22, 2009 

By Jennifer Smith Richards

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

For the third year in a row, the Columbus school district has earned a C on its state report card.

And for the second year in a row, district students met six of 30 state testing, graduation and attendance goals.

But the district is cheering progress on a measure called value-added, which shows that students learned more than a year’s worth of material. The year before, students gained about a year’s worth.

“When you think about a district where so many kids come in behind, and three-quarters of them are eligible for free- and reduced-price lunch, and the kids are above the state expectations in terms of progress, I think that’s significant,” said Mark Real, president and CEO of KidsOhio.org. The Columbus-based nonprofit group studies school issues and Columbus schools in particular.

The state grades districts on a number of measures, but Columbus has earned its C in recent years because of an index of how students scored on tests, not just how many passed.

For the first time in five years, however, Columbus’ performance-index score declined, albeit slightly. For last school year, the index score was 80.4, down from 81.7 in the previous year.

An index score of 80 is required for a C, which the state calls “continuous improvement.” The highest index score is 120.

Superintendent Gene Harris said the dip was so slight that she doesn’t view it as negative.

“Five years of straight growth is just not what typically happens. You can have an upward growth trend, but growth every year is not typical. I would be more concerned if we had a steeper dip or if you were seeing it over several years,” Harris said.

Mike Wiles, a candidate for the Columbus school board, said the district hasn’t made enough progress.

“That’s just a breadth of difference between not making it and making it,” he said. “If your bar is to maintain or minimally improve over the previous year, you really come up short. I think that’s the problem.”

School-board member Ramona Reyes, who is running for re-election, saw the results as promising.

“Unfortunately, we can’t do this overnight,” she said, but “we are improving.”

The district showed a slight decline on a federal measure of students’ progress in math and reading, too. The federal adequate yearly progress goals track how well different groups of students are doing instead of merely looking at the student body as a whole. For example, it singles out black, Latino and special-needs students.

If they aren’t improving quickly enough, then the whole school or district fails the federal measure.

Harris said she’s focused on the fact that students got more than a year’s work during the school year, and that even those students singled out in the federal progress measure are catching up.

“I feel like we’re going in the right direction. While I’m pleased, I’m not satisfied,” she said.

Harris wouldn’t say when she thinks the district can climb a rung on the grade scale, only that it would — just as it moved from the lowest grades over the years.

“We didn’t pop right out of ‘academic emergency’ and ‘academic watch.’ It was the result of a strategic action and long-term hard work. That’s the same way we’ll reach the next level of ‘effective,’  ” she said. “It can be expected.”

 

jsmithrichards@dispatch.com