Fifteen Miami Valley school districts climbed a notch on the 2011-12 state report card ratings, while 21 others slipped a spot and the vast majority — 38 of the 74 — held steady, according to the preliminary data released Wednesday by the Ohio Department of Education.

The ratings achieved by districts in our nine-county region mirrored those of districts statewide, with the majority earning “Excellent” ratings and exactly 22 percent in the Miami Valley and Ohio, respectively, earning the highest rating of “Excellent with Distinction.”

In the Dayton area, Oakwood, Beavercreek, Northmont, Yellow Springs and Troy each slipped from “Excellent with Distinction” to “Excellent.” An earlier Dayton Daily News analysis conducted when the first-round of report card data was released in late September indicated that would occur because the districts did not exceed the crucial value-added measure.

Other districts — Kettering, Miamisburg, Brookville, Lebanon, Wayne, Ansonia, Newton and Southeastern — all rated “Excellent” last year, rose to the top tier of “Excellent with Distinction” because they exceeded value-added for 2011-12. Value-added shows whether fourth- through eighth-grade students have made a year’s worth, or more, of expected growth.

This was Miamisburg City Schools’ first “Excellent with Distinction” rating, and the first time since the 2005-06 school year that the district had exceeded 100 on its performance index, where 120 points are possible.

“It’s just fantastic,” said David Vail, who is in his first year as Miamisburg’s superintendent. “I’m pleasantly surprised and pleased. It’s just been the culmination of a lot of hard work on a lot of folks’ parts – I just came in after the fact.”

He said the district’s improved performance index and value-added scores were key to Miamisburg’s rating this year.

“A big piece was the value-added,” he said. “Two years ago, we were below, last year we met it, and this year we exceeded it.”

Miamisburg and the other recently top-rated districts join Centerville, Springboro, Valley View and Miami East, all of which maintained their “Excellent with Distinction” ratings.

Dayton Public Schools and Trotwood-Madison City Schools both slipped from “Continuous Improvement” to “Academic Watch,” the equivalent of a “D” letter grade.

Jefferson Twp. Local Schools, which had been at “Academic Watch” for the last three years, moved up to “Continuous Improvement” and escalated its performance index from 77.1 to 80.1.

Only one local district, Northwestern Local in Clark County, had a rating that moved more than one level. It dropped from “Excellent with Distinction” to “Effective.”

The Ohio Department of Education delayed and staggered the release of report card data this year because of the statewide investigation into whether some school districts manipulated attendance data to improve their ratings.

Wednesday’s report included attendance rates, performance index scores and overall district ratings from “Excellent with Distinction” to “Academic Emergency,” the equivalent of an “A-plus” to “F” letter grade.

No districts in the Miami Valley were labeled as “Academic Emergency.”

More than half of area school districts maintained the same ratings, including Vandalia-Butler, Bellbrook-Sugarcreek, Cedar Cliff, Bethel, Carlisle and Kings, which stayed “Excellent.” Those staying “Effective,” the equivalent of a “B” letter grade, included Huber Heights, Mad River, New Lebanon, Fairborn, Xenia, Franklin, Bradford and Springfield.

PERFORMANCE INDEX

The performance index is one of the four measures that determine a district’s rating. The others are state indicators met, and how districts performed on the state’s growth measures of Adequate Yearly Progress and value-added.

Of the four, the performance index is widely considered to be the best barometer of a district’s overall performance. The ODE defines the measure as reflective of the “achievement of every student enrolled for the full academic year.”

Although Oakwood’s performance index declined slightly from 110.2 to 109.8 for 2011-12, it is still the top mark in the Dayton area, second in the region to Mason’s 110.3, and eighth in the state. Mason is ranked seventh in Ohio.

Mary Jo Scalzo, Oakwood superintendent, noted that last year’s performance index score was the district’s highest since the metric was introduced eight years ago.

“Our students and teachers continue to demonstrate the high standard of achievement we expect at our district,” said Scalzo, who announced her retirement this month.

In the Miami Valley, 47 districts improved their performance index scores, 23 declined and four stayed the same. The districts that made the biggest changes were Bethel Local in Miami County, which raised its score 3.2 points to 103.4, and Trotwood-Madison City in Montgomery County, which fell 3.4 points to 80.6.

Greeneview Local Schools improved its performance index from 97.6 to 98.2 and the small, rural district in Jamestown moved from “Effective” to “Excellent.”

Curriculum Director Beverly Walkden believes two-hour late starts for teacher training once a month for the last three years finally paid off. The training focused on research-proven instructional strategies to improve kids’ test scores.

“There has been a lot of intense training with our staff and the load has been put on them,” she said.

INDICATORS

There are 26 state indicators that play a role in a school district’s rating on the state report cards. Twenty-four of those relate to proficiency standards on Ohio Achievement Assessments and Ohio Graduation Tests, and one each can be gained by meeting state minimum standards in attendance rate (93 percent) and graduation rate (90 percent).

For this report card, the ODE instituted a new graduation rate formula that redefines “on-time” as any student who graduates within four years of their high school start year. The U.S. Department of Education required states to adopt a uniform four-year graduation rate that officials say doesn’t undercount dropouts and produce inflated results.

Dayton Public, which met three of 26 indicators, was the only district in the Miami Valley to fall short of the attendance rate measure with 92.2 percent attendance for all grades. For Springfield City, its attendance rate of 93.8 percent was the only indicator met by the Clark County district.

Dayton also had the region’s lowest graduation rate, at 65.5 percent. But Superintendent Lori Ward said those indicators are not what made the Dayton area’s largest district slip back to “Academic Watch” after a year at “Continuous Improvement.”

“Last year, the district achieved ‘Continuous Improvement’ because we were above on value-added for two years, so that pushed us,” she said. This year the district was below on that measure. Its performance index also dropped slightly to 75.6.

“I would say it’s definitely not indicative of the hard work our teaching staff was doing,” Ward said. “We are definitely not pleased with our performance and we have a lot of work to do.”

VALUE-ADDED

Northmont City Schools Superintendent Sarah Zatik said she’s proud the district is “Excellent,” though disappointed it lost the distinction tag it had held since the 2008-09 school year after it fell below on the value-added measure this time.

“A year of growth is extremely important, so we’re going to have to take a look at and break down that data to find out where we need to focus,” she said.

Zatik said it’s become “tougher and tougher” for high-performing districts to achieve that growth and noted that ODE changed the formula to calculate that this year, which also made it more challenging.

Two Greene County districts, Beavercreek and Yellow Springs, each met but did not exceed the value-added standard and fell from the top rating to “Excellent.”

Mario Basora, Yellow Springs superintendent, questioned the accuracy of the value-added measure. He said the concept has merit, but is an imperfect science.

“It’s based on predicted scores; if a student has two or three straight years of growth, but doesn’t (demonstrate growth) in the fourth year, they score below value-added,” he said. “And the opposite is true. A student can be on a downward spiral for two years and then show growth, and be seen as exceeding value-added.”

Bill McGlothlin, Beavercreek superintendent, said his district will continue to strive toward attaining and retaining the state’s top rating.

“We always do a complete data analysis after report cards come out, and find out what areas we can improve upon and address those needs,” McGlothlin said. “We’re very pleased to have 12 straight years of ‘Excellent’ ratings, but we’re still not satisfied. We still have work to do.”