Stellar scores for the eighth year in a row should add up to "excellent" on the state report card for the Worthington City School District, but the moving target that is Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) may nix the district's chance at the top slot again, kicking it into "continuous improvement" for a second year.

Jennifer Wene, coordinator of student achievement and professional development, said preliminary state report card results show the district meeting 28 of 30 standards, with 12 of 18 buildings rated excellent and the rest "effective."

The district's performance index score is 101.9, with a graduation rate of 96.8 percent and a student attendance rate of 95.7 percent.

"We exceeded the target of 100 for the performance index for the fourth year in a row, increased the percent of students passing all sections of the Ohio Graduation Test in 10th grade and increased the graduation rate," Wene said.

The only two state indicators the district missed this year were fifth-grade math and eighth-grade social studies.

Last year, the district passed 29 of 30 state indicators, with a performance index of 102.4, but lost the distinction of being rated excellent for the seventh year in a row when it failed AYP for the third consecutive year.

"Overall, we are pleased with our report card results," Wene said. "Our efforts paid off in some of the areas we focused on, but there are some areas we have questions about."

Some of those questions involve the subgroup performance measured by AYP -- the reason the district first dropped last year from the top slot to the third rating of continuous improvement, which is just above "academic watch" and "academic emergency."

The state will not allow any rating higher than continuous improvement if AYP proficiency targets, which go up each year, are missed for three or more consecutive years.

AYP is the cornerstone of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates a goal of 100 percent proficiency in all subgroups by 2013.

Those subgroups include students with disabilities, racial and ethnic minorities, students with limited English proficiency and economically disadvantaged students.

The district did not meet the AYP reading targets this year for black students, limited English students or students with disabilities, who also missed the AYP math target.

Wene said the reading target went up by about 6 percent this year and the math target went up by about 8 percent to 11 percent.

"The African-American reading score was a surprise," she said. "That problem was not on our radar, because we didn't think we were in jeopardy of missing that target. We're always trying to reduce the achievement gap, but the groups we focused on were Hispanic and economically disadvantaged students and we showed improvement in both of those subgroups.

"One unfortunate thing AYP does is pull out groups of students as a focus, and that feels uncomfortable," she said. "We did see there is a significant difference among the students who have been in our district three years or more, or three years or less, and almost 40 percent of the African-American students have been in our district three years or less.

"It looks like we're doing poorly with that subgroup in reading," Wene said, "but we really aren't, because they just haven't been with us long enough to pass the test. By the time students reach the high school level, they are passing all the tests.

"I want to stress that if students are in Worthington schools and stay here for a period of time, their skills will grow and they will leave us at a high level of excellence," she said.

Transience may also have played a factor in the missed targets for limited English proficiency students and students with disabilities, Wene said.

"The LEP group is more transient, but some have very high English," she said. "We are trying to dig more deeply in the data for all the subgroups to try to understand the results and why we went up or down."

Wene called fifth-grade scores "a mystery," although only the math indicator wasn't met.

"We dropped about 5 percent in three areas in fifth grade and that's a lot," she said. "I know for a fact these kids are learning math, because they are performing very well in math in fourth and sixth grade. I think it may be an alignment problem and does not reflect the effectiveness of the teaching. The lessons may not be aligned well enough to the state test."

The eighth-grade social studies score was less of a mystery, because it was the one indicator the district didn't pass last year -- and failed to pass again this year.

"The social studies test was of the same design as the year before, and basically, our eighth-graders didn't perform any differently," Wene said. "One of the problems is the state social studies and science tests cover three years of content, so a fifth- or eighth-grade teacher must figure out how to teach the content of the grade level and review all the content of the two previous grade levels."

Several districts sent letters and complaints to the state superintendent last year, questioning the validity of the eighth-grade social studies test, Wene said.

"We'll continue to have more conversations about eighth-grade social studies," Wene said. "Parents should understand that it is not that their child is not learning social studies, but we may not be preparing them for that test in a way that allows them to be successful."

Most districts do not want to "teach to the test," Wene said.

"We struggle with trying not to teach to the test and I want to stress that the state tests measure the state standards, and not the relative content of our curriculum," she said. "But we will have to find out what changes we may need to make in our curriculum to get better performance in some areas."

Final state report card results will come out later this month and will be posted on the ODE Web site, ode.state.oh.us/reportcard, under the "accountability" link.