Middletown City Schools’ new superintendent, G. Elgin Card, knows the district needs to make improvements.
This year’s Ohio school report cards graded more than 600 school districts on a five-star scale, but Middletown was one of only six statewide that received a 2-star rating, the lowest given.
“I really believe the grade card is not an end-all, be-all, because there's a lot of great things going on in Middletown in my couple months I've been here,” said Card, who took over as superintendent this year. “But it is something we want to do better at, we need to do better at.”
Middletown’s schools performed most poorly in the early and late stages of a child’s education, scoring only one star for both early literacy and college and workforce readiness.
Card, who came to Middletown from the much better-faring Princeton City Schools, said he already has ideas for how to make strides in both categories.
He wants to make sure the state-approved literacy curriculum is being used consistently and re-examine Middletown’s dyslexia screening process. Card added he suspects the district’s rating for college and workforce readiness will improve over the next couple of years, as more teachers become certified to teach classes for college credit.
And though the district still has a high chronic absenteeism rate, at 37.6%, Card said that is down from previous years. The statewide average is 23.9%.
“I want to make sure our community understands if our kids aren't here, they can't get the education they need, so we can't do better,” Card said, stressing buy-in from Middletown as a whole is important to the district’s success.
Card said change won’t happen overnight, but added he and the district’s principals have already met to consider the data.
“I'm an old coach, so I'm competitive, and I want to compete and do the best we can,” Card said. “And I want to take that, make sure all our staff feels that way, and all our kids understand that we can do it.”
Card said he plans to convene an advisory council of “students that aren't afraid to speak their mind” in the coming weeks.
For Cora Thompson, president of the Middletown Teachers Association, Card proved himself to be an asset for the district in the first weeks on the job.
“We're on the move. This is not how the story ends. This is really the beginning, and we're onto something good,” Thompson said.
Thompson, who is in her 27th year teaching for the district, said the report card shows there is room for improvement, but she doesn’t believe it’s a complete picture.
“My colleagues are not two-star teachers. That's just not the case. And I don't think our kids are two-star kids,” Thompson said. “These kids are seeing that, and I don't want them to have their heads hang down.”
Thompson criticized the rating’s heavy reliance on standardized tests.
The overall rating considers six components: achievement, progress, gap closing, graduation, early literacy and college and workforce readiness. But achievement, which considers student standardized test scores, accounts for 25% of a district’s overall rating. And student progress, which measures how test scores improved over the years, is another 25%.
“Not everybody fits into that mold. We know this in life. We don't all wear the same size shoes or anything,” Thompson said. “They are more than a test score, and I hate the idea of kids being seen as simply that, as a statistic, as a rating, when they are human beings, they are people.”
Thompson’s opinion is shared by Jeff Wensing, president of the Ohio Education Association, who said weighing a district’s performance based on test scores encourages teachers to cater to the test.
“I got my students ready for the AP Calculus test, and by that 13th year, I was pretty good at picking and choosing what topics would probably be on this year's AP test,” Wensing said. “And of course, I'm going to make sure I hit those pretty hard.”
Wensing said he’d like to see the state take factors like poverty into account and consider the wraparound services schools can provide.
“Are the students receiving healthcare needs, mental healthcare needs? Are they getting a winter coat? Are districts offering a food pantry?” Wensing asked. “There are so many ways to indicate what school districts and educators are doing for students.”
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