The Ohio Department of Education released its 2022 Ohio School Report Cards last week, and Buckeye Valley Local Schools received 21 out of a possible 25 stars.
The report card is scored on five metrics: achievement, which gauges student’s performance on state tests; progress, which measures how students grow based on their past performance; gap closing, which measures the reduction in educational gaps for student subgroups; graduation, which measures how many students complete high school; and early literacy, which measures reading proficiency and improvement for students from kindergarten to third grade.
The state report card gave Buckeye Valley four stars in achievement; four stars in progress; five stars in gap closing; five stars in graduation rate; and three stars in early literacy for a total of 21 stars.
Buckeye Valley Superintendent Paul Craft, who joined the district in August, credits the overall team at BV for the high ratings on the report card.
Craft said Buckeye Valley will use the report card as feedback, and the district will take steps to increase its scores next year.
“The biggest takeaway, really statewide, was really the learning loss of the last two years,” Craft said. “The biggest challenge is learning loss from COVID. Almost every district saw that drop. We haven’t bounced back all the way from that. There are lingering impacts (on) reading and math.”
Craft said he worries about the lasting impact the pandemic had on early childhood education and said younger students struggled in online, hybrid and masked environments.
“We’re going to have an emphasis on early childhood literacy efforts,” Craft said. “There are challenges throughout the state. We haven’t bounced back in terms of performance index. We’ll continue to analyze data to see where we have those gaps and how do we get better at what we do with and for kids.”
Craft said he expects to see the district’s achievement grade improve over time.
“We’ll continue to really watch that,” he said. “(We’ll focus on) growing every kid in the way that we can and if we do that, the (grade) will take care of itself.”
Craft said he’s proud of the district’s graduation score. The state reports that BV’s four-year graduation rate was 97.1% last school year, up from 93% in the 2017-2018 school year. He hopes to continue to improve the percentage again next year.
“We’re focusing on the last few kids we’re losing over the course of their high school career,” Craft said. “We’ve gotten to the point where we can work kid by kid.”
Craft added his final takeaway from the state report card was “how blessed we are” to be in Delaware County.
“Delaware is the No. 1 county in K-12 education,” Craft said. “Buckeye Valley is one of the pieces that makes this county what it is. We’re proud to be where we are.”
