Berea City School District Releases Quality Profile

BEREA, OH - The Berea City School District has released its quality profile, posting an executive summary on its website for residents to view the report. Many districts are asking residents to gauge a district's success using quality profiles instead of the state's controversial report card grading system.

"The Quality Profile illustrates how our district is dedicated to offering a comprehensive education.
We know that a Berea City School District education encompasses so much more than what a student demonstrates on a standardized test," says Superintendent Michael Sheppard in the report's introduction. "We owe it to our community to share a more complete picture of where Berea City School District is today and our goals for the future."

From an educational standpoint, the district touts its offering of 14 Advance Placement courses to students and the 212 students who participate in dual-credit course offerings. The district also notes that there are 1,417 students participating in clubs and organizations throughout the district.

The district's full executive summary is available for download here.

The Berea City School District did not perform well on the state's annual report card, released in September. The district's grades were:

• Achievement - D
• Progress - F
• Gap Closing - F
• Graduation Rate - B
• Prepared for Success - C
• K-3 Literacy - D

However, the state report cards have come under fire from a number of districts. Kim Bonvissuto, the Westlake School District's communications coordinator, Westlake Schools said the "state's measurement system is not reflective of our expectations as a district."

"Many high achieving school districts, including Westlake, are seeing much lower grades on this year’s report card than in years past," the statement says. "It’s important to know that the report card is just one snapshot into a school district and does not accurately represent the quality learning and teaching going on in our schools."

Westlake Schools then criticized the state's ever-changing testing process.

"Westlake, like other school districts, has been working to adjust to an increase in the number of state tests given each year, higher cut scores, three different tests in three years, online testing issues and a lower than the required 95% participation rate on state tests," the statement says.

The criticism also came from schools that performed exceptionally on the tests. Solon, for example, had one of the best report cards in the entire state but Solon School District's Superintendent Joseph Regano cautioned that the state accountability system has serious flaws when so few districts and students statewide are showing improving results. Due to the continuing changes in the assessment system and dramatic ramping up of cut scores on those assessments each year, the results are losing important context, he said.

Image from Berea Schools