Ohio changed its approach to literacy education last year, and there are early signs it is paying off. Recently released school report cards show a statewide five-year high in literacy proficiency.
Dayton Daily News education reporter Eileen McClory has reported a series of articles detailing the report cards and reaction from local school districts. She spoke with WYSO’s Jerry Kenney about what she learned.
This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
McClory: Overall, the report cards were really good this year for our local districts. One thing that I want to highlight up top is that every kind of student in Ohio improved in English Language Arts state testing in the past school year. So that's the 2025, 2026 school year, this is a really big deal because after the 2019-2020 school year where every school was shut down for the last two, three months of the school year we really saw very few academic gains.
There was a huge learning loss right after COVID and it has really taken until this year to see every type of subgroup improve on those literacy metrics. So that is a huge deal. The other highlight is that every type of sub-group of students, except for Alaskan Native and Native American children improved in mathematics on the latest state report cards.
The other thing that I should highlight on report cards is both Trotwood-Madison schools and Jefferson Township local schools. These are both districts that have a very high poverty rate and have traditionally struggled on report card. Just two years ago, Jefferson Township was one of the lowest ranked districts in the state, but those districts got three stars overall this year. That is the "meets expectations designation," but it's also harder for schools that are higher poverty to meet that designation. So getting three stars for Jefferson Township and for Trotwood is a really big deal for both those districts. I spoke with both of those superintendents and they're both celebrating with their districts this year.
Kenney: Do the improvements apply statewide?
McClory: So statewide, all of those literacy and the math scores that I was talking about. One thing that I also wanted to know is that if you look at individual districts, for some of them, see literacy scores technically went down at some of these districts in the star ranking. However, all those kids are doing better on literacy than they were previous years, and the state changed expectations under state law.
So even if you are seeing, for example, Beavercreek was one district that went from a four-star rating to a three-star rating in early literacy, that doesn't mean those students aren't still achieving and we're not still seeing great achievement from those students. What it means is that the state changed their expectations.
Kenney: And all of this comes after a full year of implementation of the science of reading program that was initiated throughout the state. And so that seems to have worked.
McClory: Yeah, so one of the things that both Gov. Mike DeWine and the Ohio Department of Educational Workforce Director Steve Dakin were really highlighting is the literacy initiatives that the state has been making in the last year.
Essentially, what the "science of reading" does is go back to really the neuroscience behind how kids learn how to read and ensure that all of those students are really understanding what they're reading. So you really want to make sure that those kids have all the basics.
There isn't really a science of math in the same way that there is a science of reading, but there are in the same way that reading has neurological ways that children understand how to read, there are ways that children better understand math. So in implementing those better ways to understand math at many of these districts, that's also why we saw so many math scores improve as well.
Kenney: Were there any other areas that are still challenging districts?
McClory: Yeah, I mean, I want to say too, that while these literacy and math scores are really good — they're significantly better than last year — they still are not where we were pre pandemic.
We still have a way to go to get kids back to where they were pre pandemic and really ensure that all of our kids are improving and the goal is not to have pre-pandemic levels. The goal is to have every student achieve proficiency in English language arts and proficiency in math. So I think it's really important to keep that in mind.
The other thing that the state is really struggling still on is chronic absenteeism. Chronic absenteeism is a student missing at least 10% of the days in the school year so far. And that is still a really big issue. If your kid is not in school, they can't learn.
I wrote three different stories about report cards. You can read all three of those report card stories at DaytonDailyNews.com.
