LIMA — Local career and technical centers performed well on state report cards released by the Ohio Department of Education, with each school receiving mostly A grades in achievement, graduation rates and post-program outcomes.
Ohio’s Career Technical Report, which grades career programs using an A-to-F scale, based its grading on data from the graduating class of 2013. Schools featured in the report include Apollo, Millstream and Vantage career centers, as well as Lima schools.
Lima Senior High School’s career tech program earned an A in technical skill attainment, college/career placement and five-year graduation rate. It also earned a C in the four-year graduation rate. In the previous report card, Lima schools earned a D in technical skill attainment and B’s in the other three areas.
Technical skill attainment measures the proportion of students passing Web-based technical assessments. Jill Ackerman, Lima schools superintendent, said going from a D to an A was a result of students gaining familiarity with the technology used in the assessments.
“Our teachers have been very astute in staying on top of it, making sure our kids are using technology skills throughout the year and making sure they have lots of practice in that area,” she said.
Ackerman said the five-year graduation rate for career tech students — 95.7 percent of students — shows the district’s teachers do not give up on their students.
“We make sure that if they’re not able to get things done within four years, that we keep them around to make sure they’re getting things done in that five-year period,” she said.
To improve the career tech’s four-year graduation rate, Ackerman said they are putting a system in place that will identify students in the sixth and ninth grade who are at risk of dropping out, and tracking their attendance, discipline and academics.
“We’re following them all the way through to make sure they have strong interventions so that they don’t fall behind in high school and they’re able to graduate in four years,” she said.
The three other career centers also performed well on the grade card.
Millstream, which is based in Findlay, and Vantage in Van Wert, each earned A’s in technical skill attainment, both four- and five-year graduation rates and college/career placement. Like Lima schools, Apollo received A’s in all categories except the four-year graduation rate. The career center received a C grade, with 88.9 percent of its students graduating in four years.
