The New Bloomfield R-III School District saw a 15.4 percent increase in its Annual Performance Report (APR) from this last year to this year. The district earned 126.5 points out of 140 possible - 90.4 percent - this year, up from last year's 105 points and 75 percent.
Superintendent David Tramel said the district lost a lot of points in the College and Career Ready category last year, the same category the district saw a 12-point-increase in on this year's report.
"Many of those points, we attributed to an issue in how we reported our data and how we collected some of our data (last year). We addressed that," Tramel said. "That's not to say we didn't show improvement in that area, we did."
Tramel said the district met 14 of the 14 standards on the old APR format, so when the district saw last year's score, they knew there had to be a data reporting problem. He said last year's 75 percent score was not a true reflection of the school.
"This year's score is great but last year's score in reality wasn't as bad as it looked because much of last year's issue was directly the cause of some data-reporting problems we were having," Tramel said.
From last year to this year, the district saw smaller point increases in the Academic Achievement, Subgroup Achievement and Attendance categories on the report. The school received a 100 percent of its possible points for the Graduation Rate category both last year and this year.
Tramel said he is happy with the district's score this year, but he wants the school to push for 95 or 100 percent APR score.
Building principals are breaking down the data to see where their school lost points and what they need to do to increase points next year. Then, they will either create or update strategies in their school improvement plan. Tramel said the school should have that information ready to present to the school board either this month or next. The next New Bloomfield R-III School District Board of Education meeting is 6 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 18.
"Every school wants to have that perfect grade," Tramel said. "We want to provide the best education we can. This is a very global assessment of our school, in terms of everything from attendance, test scores, what our graduates are doing - it's a very global assessment."
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Megan Favignano can be reached at (573) 826-2417 or [email protected].