Tiny Jefferson Twp. Local Schools ranked third in the state in K-3 Literacy improvement last year, one of the local highlights as Ohio released the first piece of the 2014-15 state report card Thursday.
Jefferson Twp., a district that struggled in past years, was the only core Dayton-area district to score an “A” on K-3 Literacy improvement. A handful of others — Springboro, Bethel, Franklin, Wayne Local and Kettering — earned Bs.
K-3 Literacy measures what percentage of a district’s struggling kindergarten through third-grade readers were brought up to speed in a year’s time.
Jefferson Twp. Superintendent Richard Gates said this fall that the 450-student district had turned its PreK-6 Blairwood Elementary into a “literacy school” with everything focused on reading.
Chris Woolard, senior executive director for accountability at the Ohio Department of Education, said he “could definitely make the case” that the K-3 Literacy measure is the most important piece of this year’s report card.
“From a state perspective, we’re really emphasizing the importance of early literacy,” Woolard said. “Having kids reading in third grade is a lynchpin to success. Clearly there are other key pieces throughout the K-12 cycle, but getting kids to that literacy is important. This is a measure of how well (schools) are providing interventions to get kids there.”
About one-fourth of districts statewide were not graded on this measure, most of them because fewer than 5 percent of their kindergartners were reading below grade level. Locally, that included traditional high-performers Oakwood, Centerville, Tipp City and Cedar Cliff.
The Dayton area did not have any school districts score among the bottom 20 districts in the state in K-3 Literacy improvement. Dayton was the only local district to receive an F, and it trailed most of the state’s other large urban public districts.
Numerous local districts earned Ds in this measure. They included Northridge, Xenia, Mad River and Trotwood, but also some traditionally higher-performing districts, such as Northmont, Brookville, Miamisburg and Vandalia Butler.
The rest of the report card, which includes the primary achievement and progress grades from last year’s state tests, will be released Feb. 25, because of delays in setting the grading scale for those tests.
Schools and districts are graded on several individual measures on this report card, but will not receive an overall grade or rating.