MARIETTA - State report card data will be released before the end of the month, but not in the format to which people have become accustomed.
Jason Smith, director of teaching and learning for Marietta City Schools, told board members during Monday's regular meeting of the Marietta City Schools Board of Education that preliminary data will be made available by Sunday.
It will not include the overall number of state indicators a district has met, the familiar ratings ranging from "excellent with distinction" to "academic emergency" or attendance data.
It's the attendance data that led the Ohio Board of Education to withhold the report cards, which are traditionally released in August. A trio of school districts in Columbus, Toledo and suburban Cincinnati were alleged to have manipulated attendance information to give them a better showing on the state tests that make up the bulk of the rankings.
The Auditor of State's Office launched a probe into attendance data statewide, and the state board of education initially voted to delay the release of the report cards indefinitely. Earlier this month, the board voted to release the data that is not affected by the probe.
Smith said the soon-to-be-released data will include the performances for all grades and subjects from the Ohio Achievement Assessment and Ohio Graduation Test, but will not tally them into a Performance Index score showing how many indicators were met.
That information - except for the attendance rate - could be gleaned from the raw data, but those results will only be preliminary and could change, although Smith said that would be unlikely in most cases.
Also included will be preliminary data on value added, measuring whether students learned a year's worth of material in a year's time, and adequate yearly progress, measuring whether students are improving at the required rate.
No date has been announced for the release of the complete report card data.
"What I've heard is that the full report card won't be released until the (state) auditor has his investigation done, and that could be January before all is said and done," Smith said.
Tasha Werry, Race to the Top and Teachers Incentive Fund (TIF) grant coordinator for the Marietta City Schools District, told board members the data being released is enough to allow the district to move forward with TIF payouts to teachers who have taken on additional leadership roles, developed and followed through with professional goals and reached student growth benchmarks, as measured by state testing.
"We are still going to have our first payout in December," she said.
The amount to be paid out from the federal grant is not known at this time due to the delay in data being released.
