School officials talk about report cards

DAVE MOSIER/independent editor

Van Wert County school district officials had several comments to make on the recent State Report Card results released late last Friday.

Trent Kreischer, director of curriculum and instruction at Crestview Local Schools, which had the best marks of the three county districts, said a highlight for him was that Crestview improved in the gap-closing (AMO) portion of the report card.

“Because many small districts, including ours, do not have enough students to create all the possible subgroups, receiving an A on the AMO measure tougher to achieve,” Kreischer said. “We worked very diligently to identify subgroups in AMO and remediate those students to the level of proficient and beyond. We did the same in targeting the value-added subgroups to provide additional intervention and enrichment for gifted (students).”

The only areas where Crestview did not ace the report card was in the subgroupings on the value-added portion of the test, where the district received Cs, and the Performance component, where the district earned a B.

“While we received an A in overall progress (district value-added), we are already looking a methods to improve our Cs in that group,” Kreischer noted. “Statistically speaking, a C represents an average of nearly ‘one year’s growth’ for students; however, our goal is to excel to more significant growth that will push our students.”

The  other area that didn’t receive an A at Crestview was in the performance-based area, although Kreischer said he was pleased with the grade received, noting  it represented Crestview’s highest score ever in this category.

“To achieve an A in Performance Index, we estimate that we would need to have around 70 percent of our students in the Advanced and Accelerated categories on the OGT and OAAs,” Kreischer explained. “This was achieved at the high school level, but was just short in the elementary and the junior high school.”

Kreischer said the district would continue to work in areas such as enrichment for upper level learners and data-driven, targeted instruction for all students to achieve a better performance grade.

Kreischer added that he feels the district’s State Report Card grades are a “direct reflection” on the Crestview staff’s extra time spent on professional development that allowed staff members to be up on current standards and instructional techniques, as well as their willingness to teach and help individual students.

“We are pleased with our results and all the hard work that our teachers have put in, but we know we have deficiencies to improve on for our students,” Kreischer concluded. “ Our main goal this year will be to target those areas, as well as continue to maintain the scores we have in our areas of strength.”

Van Wert Superintendent Ken Amstutz said he was also pleased with the districts overall grades on the State Report Card, but did note there were areas such as value-added and fifth-grade achievement the district plans to address.

“Other than that, things overall look pretty good,” he added.

Amstutz noted that the gifted area of the State Report Card’s value-added category has been a problem for the district for some time, but that staff members are continuing to work on that area. Achievement testing at the fifth-grade level is a statewide problem, he noted, but added that testing requirements in that area may be at least part of the problem.

“I think it’s a lot to do with the change of the dynamics of the test, of the expectations, and a change on how they administer it,” Amstutz said of the fifth grade achievement tests, but also added “we’re getting closer” in finding a handle to get fifth-grade results more in line with the district’s other results.

Van Wert met all of its indicators except those for fifth-grade reading, math and science.

Amstutz said the district faces more challenges than its smaller, and more rural, county counterparts, largely because of the greater number of economically disadvantaged students in the district (54.1 percent of VWCS students are considered economically disadvantaged). The link between poverty and academic achievement was also a highlight of state education officials’ comments on this year’s State Report Card results, where it was noted that, overall, students who were economically disadvantaged did worse on tests.

“Economics and academic achievement go hand-in-hand,” the Van Wert superintendent said, but also noted he felt Van Wert’s scores were “stacking up” with more affluent districts in the state.

“Overall, our people are doing a tremendous job,” Amstutz said. “We’re really doing what we should be doing.”

While Lincolnview Local Schools had the lowest grades of the three districts on this year’s State Report Card, Superintendent Jeff Snyder said the district has been taking steps to rectify the situation.

“As the school district of the Lincolnview community, we realize where we are and where we want to get to, and we have spent a lot of time this past school year reorganizing and developing a new foundation for improvement,” Snyder said. “With new standards comes new accountability, plus more report card measures for our students and teachers. Like many districts, we are all trying to understand the new report card with additional measures and then break down our weaknesses and complement our strengths.”

Noting that the district received a B in performance and a C in indicators met (Lincolnview met 18 of 24 indicators, versus 21 for Van Wert and 23 for Crestview), Snyder said the results meant his district has more areas for growth, but added: “I really believe our teachers and administrators are up for the challenge on striving for higher results.”

The Lincolnview superintendent outlined a number of areas the district has focused on recently, or is focusing on, including:

• Increasing professional development time spent on the new learning standards.
• Hiring a new curriculum director and a new special education director.
• Placing emphasis on the new teacher evaluation model that begins in this upcoming school year.
• Placing emphasis on a new inclusion and co-teaching model in special education.
• Placing emphasis on quality assessments throughout the district.
• Placing emphasis on “building level teams” and “teacher-based teams.”
• The new 1:1 Chromebook initiative for grades K-12, with an expanded WIFI system and increased bandwith.
• Reviewing best practices in the “gap-closing” and “value-added” components of the State Report Card.

“We realize that it’s increasingly difficult to maintain high level of standards in public education, yet we accept the challenge