TOLEDO, Ohio — Report cards for school districts across Ohio will soon be released to the public.
School officials said the report cards are an assessment measuring how well a district did the previous year.
"The intention of the report card is to give a district, the community, the families and stakeholders a snapshot of teaching and learning, and how schools and districts are performing set by the state of Ohio," Katie Spenthoff, the director of K-12 curriculum and instruction at Washington Local Schools said.
It is based on five components: achievement, progress, gap closing, graduation and early literacy.
Spenthoff said it's measured on a star scale.
"A three-star means you're meeting the state expectation, below a three means you need support to meet that state expectation, a four is exceeding state expectation and obviously a five is a superior performance," Spenthoff said.
But some categories account for more than others.
"The progress and the achievement are actually a big part of what gets you the stars," Adam Fineske, superintendent of Ottawa Hills Local Schools said. "Over 50% of the total score is based on those two which are then based on the state tests and how the students performed on the tests this spring prior to the report card."
Graduation looks at how many students are graduating in four years and how many are graduating in five.
Early literacy measures reading improvement and proficiency for students in kindergarten through third grade.
The fifth is gap closing, to show how well districts meet expectations in English, math and graduation. It also considers reducing chronic absenteeism and subgroups.
"This is an expectation from the state to move all learning forward," Spenthoff said. "So they look at gifted education, they look at our English language learners, they look at all of our subgroup populations."
District leaders said the score goes further than just the district as a whole.
"The state report card is given to a school district and then it's also given to each school building within that district," Fineske said.
Those individual ratings from the schools will then factor into the overall score of the district.
The report cards will be available on Friday morning.