After learning Worthington City Schools likely will be labeled a "continuous improvement" district for the second year, despite achieving "excellent" scores on the state report card, board members mulled over how to pull scores up to par with Adequate Yearly Progress targets.

School board members met Monday, Aug. 11 and heard a presentation on preliminary state report card results by Jennifer Wene, coordinator of student achievement and professional development.

"We are an excellent school district with the designation of continuous improvement," Wene told board members.

Despite meeting 28 of 30 state standards, with an index performance score of 101.9, the district did not meet AYP target scores for the third consecutive year.

Wene said even though results are preliminary, she doesn't expect scores to change in any significant way when the official results are released by the Ohio Department of Education later this month.

AYP is a component of the federal No Child Left Behind Act, which mandates each district will increase proficiency in its student subgroups to 100 percent proficiency by the year 2013.

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

The district missed AYP targets in reading for black students and for those with limited English skills, and in reading and math for students with disabilities.

Wene said the good news is 12 of 18 buildings met AYP.

"We also met AYP in six of nine subgroups in reading and math; met AYP in eight of nine subgroups in math; and all of our Title 1 buildings met AYP," she said.

Twelve individual schools were rated excellent. They are Bluffsview, Evening Street, Granby, Liberty, Wilson Hill, Worthington Estates, Worthington Hills and Worthington Park elementary schools; McCord and Phoenix middle schools; and Worthington Kilbourne and Thomas Worthington high schools.

Brookside, Colonial Hills and Slate Hill elementary schools and Kilbourne, Perry and Worthingway middle schools all were rated "effective."

Wene showed board members the short "Alien" video, which became popular on the Internet a few years ago, of an alien creature singing I Will Survive, then being smashed by a disco ball.

"We worked hard to keep our excellent status (which the district held for six years), and we felt just like this video last year when we found out AYP would put us into continuous improvement, despite our high scores," Wene said. "But we pulled ourselves up by the bootstraps and worked hard to improve the scores, but are in continuous improvement again this year.

"We do not believe the state report card comes close to defining the quality of our schools," she said, "but we will survive and will focus on improving. Marc Glasbrenner, Shirley Hamilton and I are planning to meet with every principal to go over their Continuous Improvement Plans."

Wene said because the AYP targets are based on a 100 percent goal by 2013, some have been raised to 85 or 87 percent proficiency, which is above the state's 75 percent passing standard for other students.

She said students also can be in multiple subgroups, so they can be counted more than once.

Wene said the district will work on strategic intervention plans for students who are below proficient, improve the alignment of the district's core curriculum with the state standards and increase the implementation of researched best practices through targeted professional development.

Superintendent Melissa Conrath said she "doesn't know if it is realistic to suppose all subgroups will perform at 100 percent in 2013.

"But we will work very hard with a talented group of teachers and administrators to try to focus the resources we have on the challenges we've identified," she said.

"We do not believe the state report card comes close to defining the quality of our schools, but we will survive and will focus on improving."

--Jennifer Wene