Brecksville-Broadview Heights in the Top 25 Districts Under State’s New Ranking

Districts got a sneak peek at where they’ll stand in the state’s newest rankings earlier this month, and earned a place in the top 3 percent of the preliminary rankings.

“We are very proud of our district's accomplishments as reflected on the performance index reports,” Director of Curriculum and Instruction Carla Calevich said in an email. “Only four districts of our size scored higher than we did.”

The preliminary rankings were based on a district’s performance index. The most recent state budget requires the Ohio Department of Education to create a new ranking system for districts and schools based on measures including the performance index, student performance growth, spending per student and opportunities provided to gifted students. According to the department, this final ranking system must be in place by September 2012.

A district’s performance index measures how students score on standardized tests. The measure includes all students—not just those who score proficient or above—by weighting the different scores. The department determines the percentage of students that scored at a certain level, multiply that by the appropriate weight and add it together. A higher performance index means more students scored well.

Brecksville-Broadview Heights’ 2011 performance index was about 108.36, which earned it a ranking of 22 out of 936 ranked districts. The department included traditional districts, community schools, STEM schools and joint vocational districts, and not all were ranked this year.

Among traditional school districts, Brecksville-Broadview Heights was 18th of 611. Either way, that puts Brecksville-Broadview Heights in the top 2 to 3 percent.

In the future, the performance index ranking will be tied to reforms and recognition from the state, according to the department’s budget bill summary.

And 3,457 school buildings across the state were also ranked by performance index score, assuming they had tested enough students to be counted and that the students enrolled were in grades that take the state tests.

The Brecksville-Broadview Heights schools all ranked in the top 11.25 percent. The high school had the highest ranking, earning it a spot in the top 1.6 percent of buildings.

Here are the schools, ordered by their ranking:

• : 55
• : 72
• : 165   
• : 214
• : 219
• : 389