'Excellent' Ranking Includes One Outlier

 earned an for the 12th year in a row on their state report cards and its performance indicator score was in the top 20 in the state, according to the Ohio Department of Education's annual report cards released this morning.

Each building also earned "Excellent" ratings.

But one number stands out to Superintendent Rich Markwardt.

The district’s fifth-graders barely met the state standard in math, Markwardt pointed out at Monday’s Board of Education meeting.

Just over 76 percent of the students scored at or above the state standard in math, and the state requires that at least 75 percent of students meet this requirement. In the 2009-2010 school year, 87 percent of fifth-graders met this standard, and in 2008-2009 it was 88 percent.

Markwardt said that the book the school uses for fifth-grade math is to blame: it does not cover all of Ohio’s requirements for math, he said, and teachers would have to supplement its lessons with extra lessons they create or find elsewhere.

Every other area on the grade card is well above state minimums: the next-lowest proficiency rates are in the mid-80s, and the district saw a 100 percent graduation rate.

The district met every other indicator, including annual yearly progress in attendance and graduation, and its performance index score climbed from 106.6 to 107.4* - in the top 20 of more than 600 school districts in the state.

REPORT CARDS

• Beachwood City Schools: District
• Beachwood High School
• Beachwood Middle School
• Hilltop Elementary School
• Bryden Elementary School

*Editor's Note: The original version of this article reported that the district's performance index score was 107.2.