A report this week on the official results of the state report card began with Worthington school board member David Bressman asking Jennifer Wene, "How are you tonight, Jennifer?"

"Excellent!" Wene replied with a smile.

Wene, the district's coordinator of student achievement and professional development, was all smiles as she told board members at the Monday, Aug. 25 meeting that the school district's official report card rating had returned to "excellent," despite initial word that it would stay at the middling "continuous improvement" level.

She said she looked over the final report card results while she was in her office last week.

"I screamed and I think Mark (Glasbrenner) thought I was having a heart attack," she said. "I was so delighted we were back up to excellent."

The new "value-added" measurement put in place this year by the Ohio Department of Education was responsible for the boost in ratings, getting the district out of the continuous improvement slot and shooting it back up to excellent.

Official results for the state report card were released Tuesday, Aug. 26, at the ODE Web site, ode.state.oh.us.

Earlier this month, despite meeting 28 of 30 state standards and garnering a Performance Index Score of 101.9, preliminary state report card results showed the district would stay in continuous improvement after missing Adequate Yearly Progress targets for three student subgroups.

The district missed the AYP reading targets for black students, students with limited English skills and students with disabilities; the latter group also missed the AYP math target.

With the value-added component applied, however, the district missed the AYP reading target in only one subgroup: students with disabilities. The new component measures yearly progress in reading and math in grades 4-8.

"We were also pleased to learn we were given a designation of earning above anticipated growth for our students overall in the value-added measurement," Wene said.

Board member Marc Schare wondered why ODE didn't inform districts the value-added component would change the preliminary reports.

"We knew value-added would be measured this year, but we didn't know it could be applied to subgroup measures to help us pass AYP," Wene said.

The school district was rated excellent for six years in a row on the state report card, then lost that rating last year due to missing AYP targets for the third consecutive year -- meaning its rating could be no higher than continuous improvement.

With this year's fourth AYP miss on the preliminary results, the rating seemed destined to stick, until a few days ago when Wene received the official results with the value-added measurement applied.

"This rating doesn't change our improvement plans," she said. "We're still missing the AYP marks in some of our subgroups, but at least this new report recognizes that what we are doing overall is working."

The two state indicators the district missed were fifth-grade math, which came close to the 75 percent passage rate at 72.7 percent, and eighth-grade social studies at 67.8 percent.

Twelve of 18 buildings were rated excellent, with two of those buildings, Bluffsview and Liberty elementary schools, given an "excellent with distinction" rating.

The excellent with distinction rating is given through value-added measures, when a school has made "above expected growth for at least two consecutive years," according to information from ODE.

Buildings rated excellent are: Evening Street, Granby, 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 were rated "effective," the second-highest rating.

Wene said the district will use "strategic and targeted focus on intervention for students who are below proficient through the implementation of researched best practices."

She said teachers also will work on aligning curriculum with the state standards and improving the effectiveness of the implementation of best practices "through targeted and aligned professional development."