The Ohio Department of Education released the state's 2024 School Report Cards Friday. The scores rate school districts on a scale from one to five stars based on their performance during the 2023-2024 school year.
Schools are assessed in areas like academic achievement, progress, early literacy, and graduation rates. The combined scores form the district's overall rating, which determines whether a school district is meeting state standards. School districts in Ohio must reach an overall rating of at least 3 stars to meet that standard.
Dozens of southwest Ohio districts met or exceeded the 3-star standard this year, and ten local districts received the highest possible overall rating.
Forest Hills, Madeira, Loveland, Mariemont, Sycamore, Wyoming, Ross, Mason, Springboro, and Wayne school districts all earned 5 stars.
Seven local districts failed to reach the 3-star benchmark this year including Cincinnati Public, Lockland, Mt. Healthy, North College Hill, St. Bernard-Elmwood, Winton Woods, and Middletown.
Though they didn't meet state standards this time, districts like Cincinnati Public Schools are improving year-over-year. CPS earned 2.5 stars overall this report card compared to just 2 stars for its performance during the 2022-2023 school year.
CPS Interim Superintendent Shauna Murphy says the district still has a lot of work to do, but the state report card is showing signs of progress.
"We're happy about the 2.5-star rating because we are incrementally improving," she said. "We're happy that we didn't stay the same. We're certainly happy we didn't fall down, but we are doing better and we'll continue to do better over time."
The most noticeable area of improvement for CPS was in early literacy. The district received a 2-star rating in that department based on its 2023-2024 performance, an improvement from its 1-star rating from the previous school year. According to the state's data, CPS saw a more than 13% improvement in K-3 literacy rates and a more than 10% jump in 3rd-grade reading proficiency.
CPS also improved slightly with its graduation rate, student performance on state tests, academic growth, and chronic absenteeism.
Murphy credits the work of teachers, parents, and school staff for these areas of improvement and says she expects to see more progress as the district continues to restructure.
Before the start of this school year, CPS moved younger students from Shroder High School to a different building now called Shroder Middle School.
Murphy says having more school buildings focus on certain grade levels will bring positive change to the district, and the community can expect to see the creation of more middle schools in the coming years.
