Sean C. Morgan
Oak Heights Principal Keith Winslow wonders how his school can have its highest scores ever, showing improvement from last year and four years ago, yet decrease from “exceptional” to “strong” on the annual state school report cards.
Oak Heights Elementary and Sweet Home High schools were rated strong on the Oregon Department of Education’s report cards released Thursday. All other Sweet Home schools received a ranking of satisfactory.
Last year, Oak Heights was rated exceptional, and Foster School was rated Strong. All others were rated satisfactory.
Crawfordsville was not rated either because it has a small sample of students.
The state plugs test scores, multi-year averages, attendance rates and other factors into a formula to decide how to rate each school in the state each year.
The drop in rating left school officials scratching their heads and upset. The rating at Oak Heights was the lowest possible score the school could receive and still be “strong.” One-tenth of a percent less and it would have been rated “satisfactory.”
Oak Heights scored better than 95 percent in the number of students who meet or exceed state requirements for reading and 95 percent in math.
“You throw in the highest scores yet, then you drop,” Winslow said. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“My way of looking at it was, you have 95 percent of students meeting state benchmarks,” Supt. Larry Horton said. “Why wouldn’t you call that exceptional?”
By contrast, the high school was “rated strong despite the fact in mind we have some academic issues in reading,” Supt. Horton said. The school is working on those scores this year.
The high school showed heavy improvement in its dropout rate, from 5.3 percent to 2.3 percent.
“I compliment their staff,” Supt. Horton said. “I applaud them for the tremendous work they’ve done working on that dropout rate.”
Leading up to this year, school officials talked about what would happen when a school reached the top, when it couldn’t improve any further. The school report cards were based on improving each year. Without improvement, it would be difficult to receive an exceptional rating.
Frustrating officials even more, last year, Oak Heights dropped in math scores yet still received an exceptional rating.
Oregon Department of Education had an explanation. Over concerns about top-end schools being unable to improve, it decreased the weight that improvement bears on the overall rating.
“They’ve done a good job moving people up to meets or exceeds,” ODE Spokesman Anna Richter-Taylor said. The reason Oak Heights’ rating decreased this year has to do with the two-year rating of its academic performance, which includes a drop in math performance last year.
While that drop still affected the score last year in academic performance, credit for improvement carried stronger weight than this year.
Lake Oswego had nine schools rated exceptional this year, Richter-Taylor said. In a reverse of this situation, it would have had only three focusing on improvement.
“If they (Oak Heights) maintain that, they will be exceptional,” Richter-Taylor said. “This is a great school, and they’re on the right track. When they hit a dip, they changed it,” but improvement isn’t the bulk of the score.
When the parents and public see the scores Oak Heights had this year, they will see how well the school has performed, Richter-Taylor said. The details of the rating are included in the report card.
The report card is a snapshop, Supt. Horton said. “You should not judge any school by a test that’s taken by students one day.”
Rather, the district can use that information to determine trends over time at schools, Supt. Horton said. “Staff can identify in their own teaching what they need to work on.”
This is a good time for parents and citizens to visit schools and see what is going on, Supt. Horton said. He invites members of the community to call principals and set up a chance to watch.