Brunswick City Schools gives overview on district's report card

BRUNSWICK — Brunswick Schools analyzed its most recent district report card on Tuesday by looking at the district's past, present and future. The Ohio School Report Card examines achievement, progress, gap closing, graduation rate and early literacy and gives districts a score in each category. Districts can receive between one and five stars with three stars meaning state standards have been met. Overall, Brunswick City Schools received 4.5 out of five stars, which is the same rating as last year. Director of Instruction and Innovation Pat Geschke said they are in the top 30 percent of all districts in the state. The district earned four stars for achievement this year and last year. He said the category demonstrates how well students perform on state tests. Brunswick scored 91.8 on the performance index compared to 92.3 last year. "Our kids performed about the same last year as they did this year," Geschke said. "I guess that's good, but there's a part of me that says we want to keep pushing kids and pushing our teachers. That's a goal of mine to always increase that achievement." Progress looks at student's growth based on past performance, and Brunswick remained at four stars this year. He said across the district, students met expectations for growth in most subjects, and there was above expected growth in science across most grade levels. Yet, Brunswick fell short of growth expectations in eighth grade math and algebra. "We've been making changes over the past couple of years with who is taking eighth grade math versus who is taking algebra," Geschke said. "My expectation is the things we're putting in place now are going to help solve both achievement and growth in eighth grade, so that our students are really prepared as they go into ninth grade at the high school." Gap closing measures the reduction of educational gaps for different student subgroups, and Brunswick's rating dropped from five stars last year to four stars this year. He said eight of the nine subgroups met goals for language arts and math achievement, but many subgroups did not meet growth expectations. The district received five stars for graduation rates again this year with 97.8 percent of students graduating within four years. Geschke said the rate continues to increase little by little each year. Early literacy decreased from four stars to three stars this year. He said the category consists of proficiency in third grade reading, promotion to fourth grade and the K-3 literacy measure, which looks at how many students who were off track in reading became on track. The K-3 literacy measure only contributes to the district's early literacy score if more than 10 percent of kindergartners are determined to be off track at the very beginning of the school year, Geschke said. As a result, the measure was included in this year's score for the district when it was not in the past. Therefore, the district's early literacy score went down this year even though Brunswick had a higher percentage in third grade reading proficiency this year compared to last year and every third grader was promoted to fourth grade, he said. Brunswick Schools is implementing strategies to enhance student learning, Geschke said. For instance, there is an intervention and enrichment period at the elementary school level in which students are given targeted intervention based on their needs. "We're giving targeted interventions to our kids at the middle school level based on data-based decisions," he said. "This is the first week that has launched, so I'm excited to see where that goes." A focus has also been put on collaboration between teachers, Geschke said. The district will continue to invest in updated resources and training as part of the curriculum adoption cycle and provide staff opportunities for professional development. "We're going to take (the data), and we're going to understand its value and implement what we can learn," he said. "As proud as I am of some of these numbers, I'm more proud of those kids." Contact reporter Madisyn Woodring at (330) 721-4049 or mwoodring@medina-gazette.com.