Ohio classifies the Wyoming School District as “Excellent with Distinction”, the state’s top rating category. The district a received 110 points (the highest in the state on a 120 point scale) based on testing scores across the full range of grades. Keeping that rating, however, isn’t an easy task as the Lebanon School District learned with this year’s ratings. (see Sunday’s Enquirer Article by Michael Clark).
Lebanon has been an “Excellent with Distinction” district for 7 years. This year – it dropped to “Continuous Improvement”, the 4th (out of 6) categories on par with districts like Cincinnati City, Lockland, Mt. Healthy, and Norwood. The precipitous drop was caused “when 10 of the students – one third of 1 percent – did not pass reading”.
Interesting, but how does it relate to Wyoming? For our student population, the magic number would be six.
Translating the Lebanon experience to Wyoming, if six students fail reading, Wyoming goes from Excellent with Distinction to Continuous Improvement. Makes me wonder what it takes to go from Excellence with Distinction to Excellent, a one category drop…what’s that magic number of students who fail reading…two…one ??? There are likely students in our district that are, through no fault of their own, a subtle step from that failure. There are no systems, processes, or administrative guidelines that will reach out to those one or two students – only the daily focus of a teacher stands between us and and the potential for a district wide slip.
All we have in Wyoming is schools and the great community that surrounds them. We don’t have movie theaters, shopping, restaurants, etc…we have schools. Do you think people would notice if we went from Excellent with Distinction to “only” Excellent. Keeping Excellent with Distinction should be everyone’s top priority. I’d like to see the administration’s actions, not just their words, start looking like that’s the case.