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BELOIT -- The West Branch Local School District reviewed its annual state report card during the school board's September meeting.
West Branch received an overall rating of four and a half stars, maintaining the same overall rating as last year. The district's score for graduation increased to five stars this year from last year's score of four stars and maintained scores of five starts in gap closing, four stars in achievement and progress, and three stars in early literacy and college, career, workforce, and military readiness.
Each year the state grades each school district on a scale of one to five stars in half-star increments with the districts receiving an overall rating as well as individual rating in six categories: achievement, progress, gap closing, graduation, early literacy and college, career, workforce and military readiness.
A rating of three-stars is considered to meet state standards, with ratings above and below three stars indicating the district is exceeding or falling short of state standards, respectively.
Director of Instructional Programming Terryl Swejk said that West Branch received the third highest score of all districts in Columbiana and Mahoning counties, exceeded only by the Columbiana Exempted Village School District with an overall rating of five stars and the Canfield Local School District which also scored 4.5 stars but had a higher point total than West Branch.
"We ended up being third place in those two counties. We had lots of hard work from our staff to make sure that all our students have the opportunity to achieve, and all our students working hard to meet those teachers' expectations," Swejk said.
Swejk also reviewed the district's score of three stars in early literacy. She said the early literacy category is scored on a weighted scale with 40% based off the final score based on the number of students who score proficient on state English testing, 35% based on how many students are promoted to the fourth grade, and 25% on improving K-3 literacy. After weighting, the district received only 8.3% of a possible 25% for improving K-3 literacy, which Swejk said was the result of a small sample size.
"It's a large part of our report card score, but it is only looking at students when they come in our door in kindergarten, and they've only been in school for what will be eight days today, they're required to take an assessment on the computer which they may have never used before to assess their reading and math skills," Swejk said. "Obviously, some of them will not have been able to [attend] West Branch Preschool or some other preschool program…that improving literacy score is taking that group of kids walking in our door that aren't what we call on track and then it measures them at the same time next year.
"Only that small group of kids, and at West Branch it is a small group of kids; last year only eight kids were counted in that measurement for second grade. So out of our 92 or 93 kindergarteners this year we're only looking at a very small number of kids that make up 25% of this score."
Swejk said that a three-year plan has been developed and implemented district-wide to improve educational outcomes for students and earn a five-star rating. By June 30, 2029, the district aims to increase its overall percentage of students which score proficient in reading and literacy testing from 68% to 80%, to increase the percentage of students scoring proficient in math from 75% to 85%, and to reduce the percentage of students which the state defines as chronically absent from 19.1% to 8.8%.
The board of education will meet next at 6 p.m. on Oct. 19.