The Cleveland Metropolitan School District’s (CMSD) much celebrated 3-star school report card rating was short-lived. The district’s score dipped to 2.5 stars, which leaders expected because of a college and career readiness measure that Ohio added to the mix of data used to determine the annual rating.
District leaders, however, celebrated improved test scores in every academic category with high school test results in English, Algebra 1 and U.S. Government now exceeding pre-pandemic achievement.
In June, CEO Warren Morgan said he expected a low score in the new category, at least initially. He also prepped parents for the news as part of a 10-minute video shown at open houses across the district last week. In an email to parents on Monday morning, Morgan focused on the areas of progress.
“In all my years being an educator, I have not seen gains like this before and the academic progress we made this year exceeds the proficiency progress we made last year when we achieved a 3-star rating for the first time!”
Morgan wrote an important area to address is chronic absenteeism, which is when a student misses at least 10% of classroom days.
Search your school’s report card scores here.
What goes into the Ohio report card ratings?
The state releases the scores each fall, based on standardized test scores and other data from the previous school year. The report card system measures performance at the school district and school building level. The district ratings are in six areas: early literacy, achievement, graduation, gap closing, progress and college, career or military service readiness.
The state issues between 1 and 5 starts in each category. A rating of 3 stars shows that a school district met the state’s standards. Above 3 means the district excelled and below that means it fell short.
The only large metropolitan district that scored higher than 3 stars was Akron Public Schools, which achieved a 3.5 star-rating, up from 2.5 the previous year.
New category measures how ready students are for life after graduation
The new category is called “College, Career, Workforce and Military Readiness.” It’s a measure of how well districts prepare students for life after high school.
The measure has been around for a few years but this is the first time it was part of the calculation for the district’s overall rating.
The state has 11 different ways it tracks students’ readiness for this category. Basically, the more students have done to get ready for graduation, the higher the rating in this category for schools and districts. The state counts a student as “ready” if they enroll in apprenticeship programs, enlist in the military, earn an honors diploma, and score high on college entrance exams, among other things.
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In the 2023-2024 school year, CMSD’s strongest metric for post-secondary readiness was the number of students earning credentials in specific industries — such as a first aid certification or a training in customer service. Roughly 15% of CMSD students had earned enough credentials to count toward the district’s score.
But even that metric, as well as CMSD’s overall readiness score, lagged behind Ohio’s other large urban school districts: Columbus, Cincinnati, Toledo, Akron, Dayton, Canton and Youngstown.
The state deemed roughly 27% of CMSD’s roughly 2,400 graduating high school students as “ready” in the 2023-2024 school year. Ohio’s other large urban districts all had nearly double that number or higher, with Akron at a high of 76%.
Most of those districts, including Cleveland, reported no students enlisting in the military or completing an apprenticeship. CMSD said it didn’t have ways in place to collect that data then, but it now does. The district also said it was adding a career and technical education curriculum for all high schools and adding college entrance exam prep into school days.
