Most local school districts scored high marks on state report cards released Wednesday, but many area superintendents criticized the system used to produce the ratings.

The preliminary data released Wednesday included the attendance rates, performance index results and final designations that were withheld from earlier releases because of an investigation into attendance rate reporting discrepancies at some Ohio schools.

Every district in Clark and Champaign counties received ratings of “Effective” or higher. Five districts were designated “Excellent,” and three earned “Excellent with Distinction.” Three districts improved their ratings and three slipped.

Several school administrators questioned the accuracy and usefulness of the school ratings.

High report card ratings can be earned by meeting combinations of state assessment standards that take into account both the performance of students and the progress they make during the school year.

Schools are rated based on the better of two different measures of student performance that take into account different patterns of student performance within a district. The district’s rating can drop or gain a level depending on the Annual Yearly Progress criteria, which measures progress by subgroups that typically do not perform as well as their peers, and the Value Added Growth rating, which measures student progress throughout the year.

The system puts a lot of weight on Value Added to bump the rating up to “Excellent with Distinction,” said Kraig Hissong, superintendent of West Liberty-Salem Local Schools. West Liberty-Salem received the highest performance index score in both counties and missed only one indicator, receiving a rating of Excellent.

“I think that the system could be improved to distinguish or identify school districts that are truly doing a good job with their students,” Hissong said. “Since that’s just one small component of a system of ways to rate the schools, I think it’s somewhat misleading to the public when they see that “Excellent with Distinction,” if they’re not looking at the rest of the information on the report card.”

Superintendent Gregg Morris of Clark-Shawnee Local Schools said that the rating system affects different types of school districts in different ways, and that final ratings boosted by the Value Added score may seem unfair to some districts.

“If you’re in an area that has a lot of poverty and the family structure has broken down, maybe students will start at a score of 50 on a test and go to 65,” he said. “But they’re still failing, and that’s the part that feels unfair to some districts.”

Clark-Shawnee received “Excellent with Distinction” again this year, meeting all indicators and scoring “Above” in value-added, thanks to focusing on individual students and intervening when students weren’t doing well, said Morris.

He said the rating system isn’t perfect, but it would be hard to design a single system to accommodate so many different types of school districts.

“There are pieces that make you better, that make you focus and look at this data and see where you’re going to improve, but when a system develops from the top down and is legislated, there are gaps,” said Morris.

Springfield City Schools benefits on the report card from the performance index and value added rating, which pushed the school up from a rating of “Continuous Improvement” to “Effective,” said Superintendent David Estrop.

“I think having both the performance indicators on there, and having value added on there to measure progress is a pretty good match,” Estrop said. “I think there has to be a balance between performance and progress, and schools should be working to do both.”

Although Springfield has a relatively high percentage of students who don’t pass proficiency tests, putting the school in the lowest category by the state indicator measure, the district’s performance index is much higher due to students who perform well on tests, said Estrop.

The largest rating drop was reported for Northwestern Local schools, which fell two steps from the highest score, “Excellent with Distinction,” to “Effective.”

Superintendent Tony Orr blamed the drop on the schools’ attempts to adapt to changing standards and said the district is continuing to prepare its students for college and careers.

“Truly, the system is broken,” said Orr. “The interference from legislatures and the disorganization of the Department of Education creating a moving target for educators to hit has certainly compromised the effectiveness of school districts that continue to chase a moving target in hopes of helping students realize success.”

Southeastern Local Schools gained a rating level this year, moving from “Excellent” to “Excellent with Distinction.” Superintendent David Shea attributed the move to the district’s high value-added score and consistently high student test scores.

“We’ve had some of the highest performance index scores in the county, but this is the first year that we’ll be Excellent with Distinction,” he said. “This year we were able to do just a little bit better.”

Shea doesn’t look at the rating system as good or bad but as a system that provides goals for his schools.

“Right now that’s the system we have … and our job as educators is to try to do the very best we can within that system,” he said. “We’re at a point where there’s always going to be some type of measuring tool, and we do the very best we can within that.”