“Unfortunately, there is not a lot for residents to take away from these grades,” Thiel said. “The report card does not have the ability to capture the high quality work done by our staff every day.”
Last Thursday, each school and district in the state received a report card with an A-F grade.
More than half of each school’s overall grade depends on how students perform on state tests each spring. Six factors are nearly evenly weighted- achievement, progress and “gap closing” on state tests, plus graduation rate, improving K-3 reading and a “prepared for success measure based on high school accomplishments.
The district has an idea on why Urbana’s overall grade did not improve from last year, Thiel said.
More: 3 districts in Clark, Champaign move up a grade on state report cards
“With the construction of new facilities in the district, which resulted in reduction of student instructional time, we felt that most likely there would be an impact on student performance on these assessments,” Thiel said.
During the 2018-19 school year, students at the pre-K through eight grade building started school on Sept. 11, a week later than typical, due to construction on the school.
Urbana opened their new pre-K through eight grade building and high school last year. The two projects cost a combined $68 million and were the result of taxpayers passing a $31 million bond issue in November 2014.
Prior to the opening of the new buildings, Urbana had been operating in some of the oldest school buildings in Ohio, with some parts of the old high school more than 100 years old.
Thiel said although an overall grade of “D” was not what the district would have liked to see as a final result, there was improvement on a number of components on the grade card.
“The 4-year-graduation rate has shown improvements over the last year,” Thiel said.
During the 2017-18 school year, the district had a 4-year graduation rate of 81.7%, during the 2018-19 school year, the rate rose to 85.7%.
While the district did see a slight up-tick in the graduation rate, Urbana still found itself with the lowest 4-year-graduation rate in Champaign County, according to data from the Ohio Department of Education. Mechanicsburg Exempted Village School District had the highest of the county, with 100% of their seniors graduating last school year.
More: Northwestern best performing school in Clark County on state report cards
Urbana is already taking active steps to improve their overall report card grade for next year, Thiel said.
“The district is working on improvement through implementing the Literacy Collaborative instructional framework. This year will be our first with our two literacy coaches serving grades K-5,” Thiel said.
The Literacy Collaborative framework for literacy lessons consists of a number of elements that provide many opportunities for reading and writing, according the Ohio State University, who founded the framework.
Through the collaborative, coaches provide direct, research based instruction to guide students in acquiring strategies for maintaining fluency, text comprehension and vocabulary development, according to the Ohio State University.
Outside of the scope of the report card, Thiel said the district is also implementing project-based learning for students to have opportunities to engage in solving real-world problem or questions.
“The goal of the framework is for our students to not only develop deep content knowledge, but to also gain and sharpen critical thinking and communication skills which can’t be captured through the state test program,” Thiel said.
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