Ohio released its annual report cards for school districts Monday. But unlike the students they assess, the scores given to schools by the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce aren’t indicated using the A-F grade scale.
Rather than traditional letter grades, school districts receive star ratings in six categories, or components: achievement, progress, gap closing, graduation, early literacy and, new this year, college, career or military service readiness. The latter component was tracked as part of last year’s report cards but was not counted toward a district’s overall rating until this year.
Cincinnati Public Schools showed no improvement in its overall 5-star rating from the state, receiving a 2.5-star rating for the second year in a row and falling short of state standards.
The region’s largest district and the second-largest in the state joins the 48 other districts in southwest Ohio evaluated for performance during the 2024-25 academic year, five of which earned a perfect 5-star rating.
The ratings released Monday are intended to help parents, educators and taxpayers understand how students in their district are doing and to identify areas in need of improvement.
What are Ohio schools graded on?
How does the state define success or failure? Let’s start with what those components mean:
Achievement – This tracks student performance on state tests and whether they met state thresholds, for grades 3-12.
Progress – This shows the improvement or decline in student performance by comparing state test scores for the 2024-2025 school year to the state test scores from the previous two school years (2023-24 and 2022-23).
Graduation – This measures the percentage of students who graduated within four and five years of entering high school.
Gap closing – This determines whether students of different races, income levels and abilities are meeting state standards. Factors like chronic absenteeism, gifted services and support for English learners are all considered in this category.
Early literacy – This measures student performance on third grade reading tests, the percentage of students promoted from third to fourth grade and how well districts support struggling readers.
College, career, workforce and military readiness – This uses metrics like state tests, AP exams, military enlistment, honors diplomas and technical assessments to determine the readiness of a graduating class to enter post-secondary education, the workforce or the armed forces.
Which components are Ohio schools graded most heavily on?
The six components are not weighted equally toward a district’s overall rating. Rather, they’re broken down as follows:
What do the star ratings mean?
The state uses a rating system of 1 to 5 stars to show how well districts performed in each component and whether they are meeting state standards. A rating of 3 stars means the district met the standard for that component. Ratings higher than 3 stars mean the district exceeded the standard, while ratings lower than 3 stars mean it fell short.
The star rating in each component is based on a formula that measures performance. In the graduation component, for example, a weighted graduation rate of 96.5% or greater earned districts a 5-star rating. A rating between 90% and 93.5% met state standards and earned a 3-star rating, while anything below that failed to meet the standard.
A full description of the components, the rating system and the formulas used to measure performance can be found online at the Ohio Department of Education’s Guide to the 2024-2025 Ohio School Report Cards and at reportcard.education.ohio.gov.
Find your school district’s 2025 Ohio report card
Find your district’s score on the Ohio Department of Education’s 2024-2025 report cards:
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Ohio releases school report cards for 2024-25 academic year. Here’s how to read them
Reporting by Grace Tucker and Dan Horn, Cincinnati Enquirer / Cincinnati Enquirer
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
