Maple Heights falls short of 4‑star progress rating; district shifts to small‑group early‑literacy intervention

Maple Heights City School District staff presented the district's 2024–25 Ohio School Report Card to the Board of Education on Monday and outlined a shift from primarily online personalized instruction to small‑group, teacher‑led literacy intervention after declines in third‑grade proficiency and a narrow miss on the progress threshold.

The presentation by Mr. Scala, a district staff member responsible for the report card update, said the district's overall progress score fell just short of the threshold required for a 4‑star progress rating. "But, unfortunately, we were at 1.92 standard deviations above the mean," Mr. Scala said, adding the district missed the 2.00 threshold by "0.08," a margin that kept the district from a higher composite rating.

District officials said other components produced mixed results. Graduation met the state's highest threshold: the presentation reported a combined graduation rate of 96.8 percent, higher than the 96.5 percent threshold for a five‑star rating. The college‑career‑workforce‑military (CCWM) indicator came in at 90.8 percent, above the 85 percent threshold for a five‑star score and therefore is expected to be recorded as a five in next year's report card.

Why the drop: third‑grade proficiency and on‑track measures

Staff emphasized that the largest single factor driving the early literacy decline was third‑grade proficiency, which the presentation showed fell from 51 percent in an earlier year to 36 percent in 2024–25. "If that number stays at 36 percent, it's gonna be almost impossible to get up above a 1 star," Mr. Scala said. The presentation also traced a decline in the district's "off track to on track" metric (the share of students who move from off track to on track): that figure was reported as 36 percent, then 24 percent, then 22 percent across successive cohorts, a trend district staff said is concerning.

Staff said those outcomes appear linked to reliance on primarily online personalized instruction using i-Ready, which the district has used for intervention, and they recommended adding mCLASS small‑group intervention to provide teacher‑led, diagnostic support that targets early literacy building blocks such as phonemic awareness, phonics and reading fluency.

Program changes, supports and monitoring

Mr. Scala said the district will keep the existing i-Ready contract in place for the remainder of its term but asked the board to "pick up the mCLASS contract so that we could get started this year." He described mCLASS intervention as "small group instruction with a human instructor in front of a small group of 6 students, and sometimes 7 to 8 students," and said it is intended to supplement—not immediately replace—existing interventions. The presentation also noted the district invested in K–5 reading coaches this year to support teachers and speed implementation of new intervention routines.

Staff described a faster progress‑monitoring cadence tied to the new interventions: instead of monthly checks, teachers will run brief, minute‑based fluency measures roughly every 10 days so the district can pivot more quickly when students are not on expected trend lines.

Board oversight and next steps

Board members were directed to the academic committee for more frequent updates. Mr. Scala told the board the district would provide initial progress‑monitoring data in October, after two to three rounds of the new measures, and recommended that the academic committee review those trend lines monthly to track how many students are meeting their individual growth targets.

Public and board questions during the session focused on which students are covered by the interventions, whether summer supports reached students who were off track and how the district will ensure teacher training accompanies new programs. Mr. Scala said the district provided targeted summer invitations to off‑track students but acknowledged recruiting and attendance were challenges. He said teachers recently received mCLASS training and that building coaches and title teachers will lead daily small‑group work.

District officials framed the changes as an effort to improve third‑grade reading proficiency ahead of future Ohio School Report Cards and OST (Ohio State Tests) administration.

Ending

The district presentation closed with a request that the academic committee receive regular progress updates so the board can monitor whether the combination of increased coaching, mCLASS small‑group intervention and more frequent progress monitoring moves the district's third‑grade proficiency and gap‑closing measures back toward prior levels.