Preliminary State Report Card Data: Avon Lake Moves Up

Traditional state report cards for local school districts have been delayed, but the Ohio Department of Education today released some preliminary data to give the public an idea of how their local school district performed last year.

Avon Lake students again performed well on the tests, although some information is still unavailable. 

The information does not include an overall rating, such as “excellent” or “effective,” that the public is used to seeing. The state is investigating whether some districts manipulated attendance data and is holding off on releasing final report cards until that investigation is complete.

The available information includes the percentage of students who scored proficient or higher on state tests and the graduation rates for the 2011-2012 school year. It also includes the value-added measure—which tracks whether students make a year’s worth of growth in grades 3 to 8 for reading and math—and adequate yearly progress, which measures achievement for students by subgroup.

On its website, the department stresses that this information is preliminary and could change.

Still, the information released showed the Avon Lake School District was performing well.

“The numbers that were released look very good," Avon Lake Superintendent of Schools, Bob Scott, said. “I am (as always) proud of the students, teachers, and families who work so hard to get these results.  When you add the standardized test results to the other accomplishments from last year I think it shows how serious ALCSD is about an excellent education for all students.” 

Avon Lake met one of the goals it set last year, earning an “above” on the value added score.

“Last year we did not get “with distinction” because our value added score only ‘met’ the State requirement,” Superintendent of Schools Bob Scott said. “One of our goals was to have a Value Added of ‘above.’”

A Value Added of “met” means that the students averaged a year of growth on the standardized tests for a year of school.  Above means that the students grew more than a year on the tests for a year of school.

 “We will have to wait for the individual scores…….proficient is our minimum expectation for all students,” Scott said. “We want students to be in the advanced and accelerated categories.  We will use the data from these scores as we have in the past to tweak any programs we need to change due to the data, but more importantly we want to get ant kids who are struggling the help they need. 

“We know that we have more work to do with kids on IEPs.  We have a wide achievement gap between their results and the rest of the school district.  We are looking at several programing changes to see if we can get different results while still meeting the student’s needs. Some have other needs we need to meet first before we work on academics.”

Here’s a look at how Avon Lake schools performed:

• 94.4 percent of students graduated within four years.
• The district met adequate yearly progress.

• The district has a value-added score of “above,” which means that, overall, students in grades 3 to 8 learn above what was expected in a year.

You can download all of the available data, including test scores from grades 3 through 8 on reading, math and science  on the Ohio Department of Education’s website.

Here's the scores from the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT) for Avon Lake's grades 10 and 11 (percent passed):

Grade 10

• OGT Reading– 97.2
• OGT Writing – 96.8
• OGT Math – 97.2
• OGT Science – 96.1
• OGT Social Studies – 97.2

Grade 11

• OGT Reading – 98.1
• OGT Writing – 99
• OGT Math – 96.8
• OGT Science – 96.1
• OGT Social Studies – 97
• Graduation Rate (4 year) – 94.4