精东影业

Every year, Ohio鈥檚 Department of Education releases a list of underperforming schools. Parents at can request vouchers to send their kids elsewhere.

This year鈥檚 list had a few surprises.

Three elementary schools in Shaker Heights made the list, after . also appeared for the first time.

According to Shaker Heights City School District spokesman Scott Stephens, an appearance on the list hasn鈥檛 led to an exodus at Mercer Elementary, the school that also appeared on the list last year.

鈥淥nly five families availed themselves of a voucher to go elsewhere and three of those were kindergarteners who had never stepped foot in one of our schools,鈥� Stephens said.

This year, Shaker elementary schools Onaway and Woodbury joined Mercer on the list. District officials were shocked and are exploring fixes to suggest to the state, Stephens said.

Two of the schools marked as underperforming, Onaway and Mercer, still received overall B grades on their .

鈥淭his kind of underscores our concern 鈥� the state鈥檚 method of measuring a school鈥檚 performance simply does not reflect a school鈥檚 true quality,鈥� Stephens said. 鈥淚t鈥檚 not what happens when you go in the door. Our parents know that. Our teachers know that. And we just kind of wish the state would know that.鈥�

Ohio uses criteria from the state report cards to decide if a school should be deemed underperforming. , but a school has to receive a D or F grade in at least one of several possible categories of evaluation or fall in the lowest 10 percent of Ohio schools for two out of the last three recent performance rankings.

The EdChoice program began in Ohio in 2006. According to , the program鈥檚 enrollment has grown from about 3,000 students in 2007 to 22,600 in 2018.