8 Schools Now Ranked ‘Effective’ and Graduation Rate Jumps to 96%

August 14, 2007
UNIVERSITY HEIGHTS , OH – Gains on Ohio State Tests continued for the Cleveland Heights – University Heights City School District with eight schools meeting the State’s second-highest ”Effective” ranking, an improvement from five schools the previous year. In addition, continued student outreach programs and the progress of the Small Schools of Heights High have produced a 96.4% graduation rate, up from 89% last year. The District also posted gains in 11 testing areas that can be compared with last year.

Cleveland Heights High School and Coventry, Noble, Oxford, and Roxboro Elementary Schools maintained their “Effective” rating. Canterbury, Fairfax, and Gearity Elementary Schools moved up one ranking to “Effective.” The remaining schools maintained their “Continuous Improvement” ranking.

Two schools narrowly missed moving up to a higher State ranking. Roxboro Elementary School was 4 students away from moving into the “Excellent” designation and Roxboro Middle School was one point away on the Performance Index from moving up to the “Effective” designation.

The District’s overall ranking was “Continuous Improvement,” missing “Effective” by 1.3 points on the Performance Index, which looks at overall student growth in all test subjects.

“With five new testing areas, our students, teachers and staff worked hard to maintain the achievements of recent years while adapting to the added and new assessments that State has imposed on schools this year,” Superintendent Deborah S. Delisle said. “It is encouraging to note that in a side-by-side comparison of tests students took last year, our District would have actually maintained the ‘Effective’ ranking, which demonstrates our District’s continued progress. Although frustrating, the constant flux in the yearly State Testing cycle is a reality to which we continually adapt, as we have proven the last several years. Now that we have a benchmark for comparison of these new tests, results will be analyzed thoroughly by administrators and teachers, so that our curriculum can be further aligned to best prepare our students for success.”

The following are highlights from the 2006-2007 ODE Local Report Card:

Significant improvements were made in 3rd grade math up to 80.7% from 72.4% the previous year, and an overall improvement of 13.3% since 2004-2005.

Fourth grade reading test results show continued growth. This year’s results show 82.3% of students were at or above proficient on the test compared to 79.3% the previous year, and 69.9% in 2004-2005. All elementary schools met and exceeded the 75% indicator with no school scoring below 78%.

84.2% of students were at or above proficient on the fourth grade writing test with all schools passing the 75% indicator.

Boulevard fourth grade students saw growth on the math achievement test with 87.8% passing compared to 66.7% last year.

Canterbury improved to 84.5% of third grade students passing reading (from 72.2%) and 89.7% of third graders passing the math test (from 73.2%).

Fairfax third grade students improved significantly on the reading test with 78.3% passing (from 59.4%) and on the math test with 83.3% passing from 46.9%.

Gearity Professional Development School third and fourth grade students improved on their reading, math, and writing tests. 94.1% of third grade students passed the math achievement test, compared to 76.5% the previous year and 82.4% of third graders passed the reading achievement test improving from 64.7% the previous year.

84.5% of Wiley seventh grade students passed the writing achievement test.

81.7% Roxboro eighth graders passed the reading achievement test (up from 73.7%).