FIRST OF ALL, THOUGHTS ABOUT THE REPORT CARD AND WHAT IT MEANS TO CLARK
    There are many methods and nuances used to determine the value of a school in the minds of parents, teacehrs, staff, students and the community as a whole.
    Factors such as a school's curriculum, overall school system philosophy, the unique philosphy of Clark as a Montessori school and as a CPS 'School of Choice', student dynamics, location, even school hours can influence that opinion.
    
    At Clark there are many ways that we self-evaluate our worth as a school, and we strongly include our parents and even our students to make those evaluatons.
   
    The ODE's annual Report Card is another important method of evaluation. It is a consistent and objective measure of ALL Ohio schools - public, private and charter.
    Schools are asked to measure up to certain standards that if met, will help determine and guarantee whether that school is providing a child the tools needed to work towards prosperity, health and happiness.     


From the Graphic Above: "YOUR SCHOOL'S DESIGNATION" 
     At the end of each school year, the Ohio Department of Education uses a very specific set of criteria to evaluate every school - public, private and charter - operating in the state of Ohio.
    When the evaluation is complete, each school falls into one of the following levels:

         - Excellent with Distinction
         - Excellent
         - Effective
         - Continuous Improvement
         - Academic Watch
         - Academic Emergency

    Please take a moment to look back at the graphic near the top of this page. This is a portion of Clark's Report Card.
    As you see, for the 07-08 school year, Clark Montessori has earned the rating of "Effective".
    Well, pretty good!
    But not where we'd like to be. Anyone that has been around Clark Montessori for any length of time knows that Clark devotes itself towards being the absolue best it can possibly be under many different evaluations.
    And being designated as "Excellent" is very important too. Clark Montessori will always continually strive to move to the top rating, of which we are quite capable, and always true to the Montessori spirit!


A QUICK ASIDE - CPS AS A WHOLE!  
    Before talking about Clark's rating, we'd like to say something about CPS as a whole!
    Just like individual schools, entire school systems like CPS are also evaluated and rated in exactly the same way.
   We are VERY proud to say that while having been ranked at "Academic Emergency" in the past - Cincinnati Public Schools as a whole has now earned "Continuous Improvement" FOUR YEARS IN A ROW!!
  Congratulations CPS!!
    

How Does a School Earn a Particular Designation?
    The criteria use to determine a school's rating are complex, and a fairly deep study is needed to truly understand how the rating system reflects upon a school.
    So let's get started!
    We'll begin to breakdown and explain the criteria of the rating system and start you on your way to a full understanding how Clark earned its Designation.
   
    Again to the graphic near the top of the page. Listed to the right of the Designation are the four criteria used to determine that designation. Those criteria, and Clark's score, are as follows:

    Now we'll look at details for each Criterion, understand a bit more what each of them tell us, and then understand what school rating is earned by our scores in the four criteria.
    Click on each criteria below. This will take you to a new page. At the top of each page is a link to bring you back here.
    It's helpful to take each criterion in order...

When you have seen each criterion's explanation, come back here to see below how these criterion determine the school's rating.

Understanding How the Criteria Determine the School's Designation
    As with understanding the Report Card criteria, how that criteria determines the school's designation is also fairly eleborate, but it's not too bad! You're almost done - hang in there!

    Determining a school's designation is a three-step process:

    1. Start with the State Indicators and the Performance Index Score     
    The first thing that happens is to determince which of the ODE's 6 Designations the State Indicators OR Performance Index fall into. The Initial Designation is assigned by whichever is higher.
    In our case, at 78.9% in the State Indicators, and at 96.9 in the Performance Index Score, BOTH fall into the "Effective" level.

    2. Now Consider the AYP
    The AYP Status has an affect when the first two criteria are:
         - at the "Continuous Improvement" level,
         - when the AYP is not met for three straight years,
         - when more than one AYP student group does not meet AYP.
    None of these conditions are true for us, so we are still at "Effective".

    3. Finally, Throw in the Value Added Measure
    If a school earns a "+" in the Value Added Measure criterion for two straight years, and their designation is not restricted to "Continuous Improvement" for AYP reasons, the schol's designation will be raise one level! This is the only way to earn the new "Excellent with Distinction" level!
    Clark did earn the "+" in the criterion, but this is the first year for this criterion so it did not raise our designation.


IN SUMMARY
    As shown by the AYP, Clark Montessori does a very good job in making sure the quality of its education is spread across the various peoples that make up our student body. Additionally, we do a good job of meeting our educational goals - and then some, as shown by the Value Added measure.
    Clark could do better making sure the youngest of our students are prepared even better.
    Additionally, our abilities to achieve above and beyond the expected mediums is the fact that the troubles we have had in testing in the lower grades have disappeared once those students move on to higher grades. This says quite a bit for our Junior High teachers!

    As said before, "Effective" is pretty good. But we want more! We feel we have every capability to achieve the designation of "Excellent with Distinction" and along with all of our other efforts towards excellence, that designation will be our goal.

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MUCH MORE STUFF BELOW
    Provided below is ODE Report Card info across a much wider range than just Clark Montessori. Once you have gained some familiarity with the material from above, you should be able to understand the info below...

Our first link goes to the Report Card homepage so you can decide where you'd like to go with this. There are good search capabilites right here that are almost guaranteed to take you where you want to go.
Click HERE for the ODE Report Card Homepage.
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2. The CPS Report Card as a School System

New since last year at the ODE website is a page of "commonly asked questions" offered BEFORE going into the data, a very helpful change. From that page you can also get straight to the report card, below are links for both.
Click HERE for the commonly asked questions page.
Click HERE to go straight to the overall CPS Report Card.
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3. Report Cards for Individual CPS Schools

The below link will take you to the list of all individual CPS schools. When you click on a school you will go to that school's "commonly asked questions" page, and from there you can link to that school's report card.
Click HERE for report cards to individual CPS schools.
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4. Report Cards for other Hamilton County Schools and     School Systems

Finally, one of the comparisons made on the Report Card is Clark Montessori's and CPS' scores to "Similar Districts".
The first two links do not go to Report Cards, but rather to how ODE defines a "Similar" District, and some statistical comparisons

Click HERE for the ODE's method of determining "Similar Districts" (This link will open a MS Word Document)
Click HERE for the list of Similar Districts and some helpful statistics on how they compare to each other...

Below are links to CPS's Similar Districts "commonly asked questions" page, containing that district's Report Card...

Akron City
Canton City
Cleveland Metropolitan City
Columbus City
Dayton City
Toledo City