The Rest of the School Report Card Data is Coming – But It’s Still “Unofficial”

Ida Lieszkovszky / StateImpact Ohio

Posters at Wells Academy in Steubenville show off the school's past report card ratings.

Ohioans who have been trying to figure out how their schools performed this past year finally will have the answers, but they’ll have to dig a bit to find them.

At its meeting this week, the State Board of Education decided to go ahead and release the remaining data on its school report cards, including the ratings of each district – from Excellent to Academic Emergency.

Due to an investigation by the state auditor into attendance rigging by some districts, only preliminary data had been released earlier this month. And next week’s additions still won’t be in the user-friendly PDF format of years past.

“The information we are releasing is still preliminary data, until the auditor concludes his investigation, so we did not want to release those official report cards until that investigation is wrapped up and we have some results from the auditors office,” says John Charlton, Ohio Department of Education spokesman.

Charlton says it’s unclear when the official PDF’s of the report cards will be released, but the auditor has said he may not complete his investigation until well into the new year.