Mentor Public Schools and Beachwood City Schools are two of nearly 80 schools in Ohio that took issue with data published in this week’s report cards submitted by the Ohio Department of Education.
Mentor and Beachwood districts told newsnet5.com that data reported in the “Prepared for Success” categories showed obvious data gaps.
Mentor’s report card shows .2 percent of students participated in the ACT tests in 2014. It shows that 0 percent tested without remediation.
Kristen Kirby, director of community relations for Mentor Public Schools, said those numbers are blatantly wrong. She said two students even achieved perfect scores on the ACT in 2014.
“I think our community knows that when they see 0 percent of our kids scored without remediation, that can’t be true,” Kirby told newsnet5.com.
The Department of Education confirmed that Mentor Schools submitted an appeal, but the new data wasn’t calculated in time for this first round of report cards.
Ohio Department of Education spokesperson Kim Norris told newsnet5.com that the full report released on Feb. 25 will reflect the updated data.
Norris said the appeals window is now closed but many school districts took the opportunity to correct inaccurate numbers.
But Beachwood Superintendent Robert Hardis told newsnet5.com that he was told the appeals window hadn’t even opened yet.
Harris says the AP test data reported in the report cards is “wildly off base.”
The report card shows 0 percent participation in Advanced Placement programs and only 14.1 percent of students with an AP exam score of 3 or better.
“In fact, our high school offers 25 different AP courses and administered 472 AP tests this past May,” Hardis wrote in a letter to parents. “Of those, Beachwood students scored a 3 or above on 356 of their AP tests.”
Hardis told newsnet5.com that he wanted to let parents know that the data does not reflect the accomplishments of students and the district is working to correct it.
Norris explained that the data is self-reported by schools and school superintendents are required to verify the information.
Cleveland Metropolitan School District also reported their findings for the new "Prepared for Success" section incorrectly for the 2015 report card.
