Sycamore Taxpayer

11 Responses to “ACADEMIC COMPARISONS 2”

1. Administrator says:

   December 12, 2011 at 7:47 pm

   ..About 28 percent of 2011 high school graduates in Ohio are ready for college – as measured by their passage rates on the ACT college entrance exam.
   ..Ohio students’ readiness rate was better than that of their peers nationwide, only 25 percent of whom are ready for college based on their test results.
   ..While they did better than the nation, Ohio students’ readiness rate remained flat from last year. Still, the state has gradually improved from 25 percent readiness in 2007.
   .. Ohio Department of Education spokesman Patrick Gallaway said the state will continue to encourage “preparation at the local level” and will help districts as they adopt new curriculum standards this year.
   ..In Kentucky, 16 percent of 2011 graduates were ready for college; in Indiana, 31 percent. Those two states require all seniors to take the ACT (Ohio does not).
   ..The data was released today in the annual Condition of College and Career Readiness report. A student is considered academically “ready” if he met the test’s benchmarks in all four subjects: English, reading, math and science.
   ..The ACT is a national standardized achievement test that students take as juniors or seniors. The test is important – particularly for college-bound seniors – because colleges look at scores when considering a student’s application.
   ..Gallaway said the scores are a “barometer of what we need to do to prepare students to be college- and career-ready.”
   ..ACT benchmarks are the minimum score that a student needs to get on each subject test. Meeting a benchmark indicates that student would have a 50 percent chance of getting a B or a 75 percent chance of getting a C in specific first-year college courses –English composition, college algebra, introductory social science and biology – without the need for remediation.
   ..In all, 92,313 students, or 69 percent of 2011 Ohio graduates, took the ACT test last year, a 2.7 percent increase from 2010. The graduates posted an average composite score of 21.8 out of a possible 36.
   ..That’s better than Kentucky (19.6) but worse than Indiana (22.3). The national average is 21.1 percent.
   ..ACT does not release results for individual districts or schools, and districts are not required to report their scores to the Ohio Department of Education.
   .. Nationally, college and career readiness increased 1 percentage point over last year, mostly due to students doing better in math and science.
   ..But 28 percent of the test-takers – 23 percent in Ohio – didn’t meet any benchmarks...Racial achievement gaps are also a problem.
   ..The vast majority of the test-takers in Ohio were white. Asian students did best on the tests, while African American students did the poorest.
   ..The gaps prompted criticism from the FairTest National Center for Fair & Open Testing.
   ..”Test-driven policies which claim to be improving U.S. Public Schools have, in fact, failed by their own standards,” said Director Bob Schaeffer. “Academic gains, as measured by ACT, are stagnant and racial gaps are increasing.”

   About the ACT
    What: The ACT is a national college admissions exam for high school juniors and seniors that consists of subject area tests in English, reading, math and science. Students can also opt to take a writing test. It includes 215 multiple-choice questions and takes approximately 3.5 hours to complete.
    Cost: Registration fee is $34, although some school districts, including Cincinnati Public Schools, pay for their juniors to take the test.
    Difference between the ACT and SAT: Act is an achievement test, measuring what a student has learned in school. The SDAT is more of an aptitude test, testing reasoning and verbal abilities.
    Information: http://www.act.org.
   Source: ww.act.org
   Source: College-readiness rates beat national average By Jessica Brown, THE ENQUIRER 8/17/2011 B6
2. Administrator says:

   December 11, 2011 at 5:24 pm

   .. SAT reading scores for the high school class of 2011 were the lowest on record, and combined reading and math scores fell to their lowest point since 1995.
   ..The College Board, which released the scores, Wednesday, said the results reflect the record size and diversity of the pool of test-takers. As more students aim for college and take the exam, it tends to drag down average scores.
   .. The Ohio reading score improved by one point. …math went down two points; reading stayed the same. ..in the context of the 800-point test, the national three-point decline in reading to 497 may seem little more than a blip; Average math scores for the class of 2011 fell one point to 514 and scores on critical reading section fell two points to 489.
   .. The Ohio Department of Education noted that overall scores in Ohio remained above the national average, but the state still has work to do in improving college readiness.
   Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana are among 44 states to adopt new Common Core Standards in English and math.
   .. Bob Schaeffer, public education director of the group Fair Test, a longtime critic of the SAT, found unpersuasive the explanation that the declines were due largely due to a broadening test pool. In 2008, he said, the number of test takers expanded by a greater percentage than last year, but scores that year rose 6 points on math and reading.
   .. Source: SAT reading scores decline to lowest ever By Justin Pope Associated Press, published in THE ENQUIRER 9/15/11 A6
3. Administrator says:

   July 11, 2011 at 7:30 am

   . To find your school’s OAT (Ohio Achievement Test) passage rates, visit the Ohio Department of Education’s website at http://www.ode.state.oh.us. Click on “Testing” at the top of the page, then “Achievement Assessment”
   . The Ohio Achievement Tests are state standardized tests for grades three through eight. Friday’s results are preliminary. They are expected to be finalized in August.
   . The test results are important because they are among the measures used to determine a school or school district’s Ohio Report Card rating.
   In addition to the OAT tests, the report cards also factor in Ohio Graduation Test scores, attendance rates, graduation rates and how much students improved during the course of the year.
   . Source: Math thorny for many students. Local results vary greatly in early test results. By Jessica Brown The Enquirer 7/11/11 C1
4. Administrator says:

   June 26, 2011 at 9:18 am

   To ADD

   History gets D grade
5. Administrator says:

   May 5, 2011 at 7:35 am

   Read page 210 of the SPECIAL INTEREST book. It covers two ways (ACT or SAT exams) student achievement is mostly measured. The math exams are taken by a small group of college bound students and therefore not a representative sample of most students. Math itself is only one of many subjects offered and by itself is not a wide measure of student performance.
   Source: SPECIAL INTEREST book by author Terry M. Moe. Brookings Institution Copyright 2011, p210
6. Administrator says:

   May 4, 2011 at 8:38 am

   27 area students named National Merit Scholars by Sue Kiesewetter Enquirer 5/4/2011 C3

   Cincinnati Country Day
   Mount Notre Dame
   Mason
   Summit Country Day
   Oak Hills
   Seven Hills
   Sycamore
   Mariemont
   Springboro
   Loveland
   Cincinnati Hills Christian Academy
   St. Ursula Academy
   Lakota West
   Indian Hill
   ——————————————
   . Forty-three students from Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky are among 1,700 National Merit Scholarship finalists who received between $ to $ annually for up to four years of undergraduate study.
   . The awards were announced Monday. They are the last of the 2011 National MS winners. Other winners were named in three previous announcements.
   . Anderson; Clark Montessori; Home School; Indian Hill; Kings; Lakota West; Mason; McNicholas; St. Ursula; St. Xavier; Seven Hills; Summit Country Day; Sycamore; Ursuline Academy; Walnut Hill and Wyoming.
   . Overall, 8,300 students received awards. The students were selected from more than 1.5 million juniors from 22,000 high schools who took the 2009 Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test and made it to the finalist round.
   . Source: 43 area students named Merit scholars. By Sue Kiesewetter The Enquirer 7/12/11 B3
7. Administrator says:

   January 13, 2011 at 4:37 pm

   “However, we do believe that the fiscal crisis, and the latest embarrassing rankings of U.S. students by the Program for International Student Assessment compared to their international peers (of 65 countries, American 15-year-olds were 17th in reading, 23rd in science, and 31st in math), can focus the nation on the need for change.

   Source: “In Budget Crisis, an Opening for School Reform,” by Michelle Rhee, Wall Street Journal, January 11, 2011.
8. Administrator says:

   December 9, 2010 at 8:01 pm

   Opinion: Higher expectations, leaner rations
   By Terry Ryan

   Checker’s piece on the recent “Sputnik moment” for American education sent my mind reeling and my heart racing. According to the recent PISA findings, the U.S. is running in place educationally as other countries (e.g., China) accelerate improvements to their education systems. The United States faces becoming a second-class nation if we can’t figure out how to significantly lift student achievement. Having lived in Poland (one of the world’s fastest improving countries according to PISA data) for two and half years in the 1990s and being fortunate enough to travel to other parts of the world in the years since, I accept the reality that we are in a race with other countries to have the best educated and most innovative citizens in the world. The future will be dominated by the countries with the smartest people. As a parent of two young daughters, this fact both excites and scares me.

   In Ohio, where I now live, lawmakers are girding themselves and their constituents for cuts of up to $8 billion out of a $50 billion state budget. As K-12 education comprises about 40 percent of that budget, it will face serious cuts in the next two years, with schools losing as much as 20 percent of the sums to which they’ve grown accustomed. Not only are we entering a new competitive global era but we’re doing so at a time of leaner rations. And not just in the Buckeye State.

   This is no short-term challenge either. Education has to get dramatically better while it competes evermore fiercely for public dollars. In Ohio, for example, Medicaid spending now consumes about 26 percent of the state budget and enrollment trends look like a shuttle launch (see chart below). In 2008, for the first time in Ohio history, there were more enrollees in Medicaid than students in K-12 public schools.

   There is also much justified concern about unfunded pension liabilities and the burden these are placing on state budgets. The PEW Center on the States documents a half trillion dollar gap between long-term liabilities and current funding levels. Ohio’s State Teachers Retirement System, for example, faces a $38.8 billion unfunded liability and the state’s four other public pension programs face similar chasms. But the challenge doesn’t stop there. By 2025, senior citizens are likely to outnumber the nation’s school age population for the first time in our history and, as James Guthrie and Arthur Peng point out in Stretching the School Dollar, “The U.S. needs to pay interest on and reduce its $13.7 trillion national debt; pay social security and fund the health-care needs of an aging population.”

   Are you feeling the palpitations yet? Despite these serious challenges, I am optimistic about the future for the simple reason that a growing number of lawmakers, reformers, and innovators seems to genuinely understand that this our moment to tackle these challenges once and for all. As Sputnik showed, nothing focuses a nation’s energy like an existential threat to its future and that of its children. This is our time.

   This piece originally appeared (in a slightly different format) on Fordham’s blog, Flypaper. 12/9/10
9. propertyowner333 says:

   December 13, 2009 at 12:05 pm

   The U. S. News & Worlds Report of the top 100 public schools in the United States was recently published.

   Walnut Hills ranked No. 65 and earned a gold medal from the magazine.
   Wyoming received an honorable mention.
   Kentucky’s Beechwood and Highlands earned silver medals.
   Bronze medals were awarded to Clark Montessori, Fairfield, St.-Bernard, Ludow and Taft Information Technology High School.

   To view the entire report, visit http://www.usnews.com/sectrions/education/high-schools

   Source: Cinti. Enquirer 12/11/2009, Page B3. By Ben Fisher.
10. propertyowner333 says:

    November 28, 2009 at 1:43 pm

    THE TOP ACADEMIC
    OHIO HIGH SCHOOLS – 2009
    NOVEMBER 19, 2009
    PREPARED BY SCOTT GERBER

    This document identifies the best schools in Ohio based on each school’s performance on the Ohio Graduation Test (OGT). This is the only report that examines Ohio’s public, private, and charter schools together. It analyzes the March 2009 OGT and it is an update to the versions that were available for the March 2007 and March 2008 tests.

    For those unfamiliar with the OGT tests, there are five parts — Reading, Mathematics, Writing, Science, and Social Studies. There is also a summary page that shows the percentage of students who successfully passed all five parts with a “Proficient” rating. The data used in this report is from those five parts and from the summary.

    There were 1,005 schools included in this analysis.

    THE TOP ACADEMIC
    OHIO HIGH SCHOOLS – 2009
    19-Nov-09
    Prepared By Scott Gerber
    Ranking School
    .
    2 Cincinnati Country Day
    3 Seven Hills
    6 Ursuline
    8 Walnut Hills
    9 St. Xavier
    17 Summit Country Day High
    19 St. Ursula
    35 McAuley
    37 Indian Hill
    39 Wyoming
    46 Mariemont
    51 McNicholas
    56 Sycamore
    57 Turpin
    63 Mason
    66 Madeira
    71 Fenwick
    73 Cinti Hills Christian
    77 Moeller
    93 Mother of Mercy
    104 Elder
    105 Anderson
    106 LaSalle
    111 Mount Notre Dame

    http://gerberanalytics.com/data/data_top_schools/top_academic_ohio_2009_20091119.pdf
11. propertyowner333 says:

    September 6, 2009 at 7:31 pm

    Wyoming is once again Ohio’s No. 1 school district, according to the state’s recently released (2008-2009) school report cards. Wyoming scored 110 points out of a possible 120.

    Other highly-ranked Greater Cincinnati districts:
    - Madeira (fourth, 109.5 points)
    - Indian Hill (fifth, 109 points)
    - Mason (sixth, 108.9 points)
    - Mariemont (10th, 107.7 points)

    Source: Cinti. Enquirer: September 6, 2009