The entrance exam for Cincinnati's top-performing public high school is changing this upcoming school year.
The Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education notified families last week that the entrance exam for Walnut Hills High School will shift from the Iowa Assessment to the i-Ready Diagnostic Assessment for 6th-grade students preparing to enter the 7th grade. CPS students already in the 7th grade or higher will still need high scores on the Iowa Assessment to be eligible for admission. Non-CPS students looking to get into Walnut also will need to take the Iowa test.
Walnut Hills High School boasts an impressive 99% graduation rate, received a five-star overall rating on the most recent school report card from the Ohio Department of Education & Workforce, and was ranked as the No. 1 public high school in Ohio by U.S. News & World Report.
'A shockingly high number of wins'
Walnut's academic achievements exceed those of the other CPS high schools, but earlier this year, several CPS families and students told WVXU they thought the entrance exam process to get into the high school was not equitable, and often favored students with more connections and financial resources.
CPS says it's switching to i-Ready to reduce student testing fatigue, save money, and make Walnut Hills more racially diverse.
Students in the school district already take the i-Ready exam twice a year, providing two opportunities to qualify for Walnut. Additionally, the district says not administering the Iowa test to 6th-graders and not dedicating instructional time to it will save CPS an estimated $40,000 a year.
Amanda Vargo is the testing and assessment manager for CPS and part of the school district's testing review committee, which was formed to evaluate different testing options. She says the committee looked at recent testing data from students who took both the i-Ready and Iowa Assessment and found that Black and Hispanic students had higher scores on the i-Ready test than the Iowa test, making more of them eligible to get into Walnut. White students still got relatively high scores on i-Ready, but the percentage of students eligible was more even across racial demographics.
"Using i-Ready instead of the Iowa for our CPS 6th graders yields a higher and more diverse population of eligible students," Vargo told the school Board in April. "Using i-Ready benefits all subgroups of students."
While Walnut Hills may be Cincinnati Public's most celebrated high school, the difference in its racial and economic makeup is stark compared to the rest of the district.
Close to 72% of CPS students are Black or Hispanic, and close to 20% are white. More than 85% of all the district's students are considered economically disadvantaged.
At Walnut Hills, around 60% of students are white, while 25% are Black and Hispanic. Twenty-six percent of Walnut students are economically disadvantaged.
Board member Ben Lindy expressed support for the change last month, saying the data presented by Vargo was convincing and clearly showed the benefits of a testing change.
"I don't know that I can remember a presentation that says this will improve the diversity of the student body, get us more accurate, better-normed information, cost us less, [and] reduce the amount of testing we do with children," Lindy said. "It is a shockingly high number of wins."
Additionally, Vargo says having 6th grade students only take the i-Ready test will help educators avoid frustrating technical difficulties associated with the Iowa Assessment.
"The platform that the Iowa test is administered on for years has been awful. It's incredibly un-user-friendly, it's terrible for students to log in to, it crashes constantly. We had to suspend testing right in the middle of the window for a week," she said.
CPS students will take the i-Ready exam this September and December. Students who earn qualifying scores will not be automatically enrolled in Walnut Hills. They'll need to register with the school on specific dates at the beginning of 2026.
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