If a majority of Hamilton County’s 80 schools received A’s on their state report card, would district officials still say the state report card is a pretty narrow way to look at schools? We hope one day to find out.
Currently, though, only 12 district schools received A’s on the state’s most recent measurement, which is based on a school’s academic proficiency (what their standardized test scores show), overall growth (how they improved on those standardized tests year over year), and the growth of the lowest performing quartile of students (whether the students who need the most improvement are improving). With high schools, the report card also considers college and career readiness.
However, district Chief Strategy Officer Shannon Moody told this newspaper that letter grades are a pretty narrow way to look at school and that the district doesn’t “put a lot of weight on letter grades simply by themselves.”
That’s fair. But parents across the state have to have some relatively even-handed way to measure the school their child attends, and they don’t have access to all the internal metrics to which education officials are privy.
Unfortunately, the 2023-2024 report card didn’t treat Hamilton County very well. While 12 schools received a higher grade than in 2022-2023, 25 schools were given a lower grade, with more than a third of schools (37.5%) earning a D or F.