Cincinnati Public Schools earned 3 stars in the state report cards, breaking its years-long streak of below-average ratings, the district's Superintendent Shauna Murphy announced to the school board in its Sept. 14 meeting.
The region's largest district saw an improvement after earning 2.5-star overall scores the last two years as part of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce's annual report cards, which will be made public tomorrow, Sept. 15.
CPS also doubled its score in the progress component, which measures the improvement or decline in student performance on state tests for the 2025-26 school year as compared to the previous two school years. After earning 2 stars in that component last year, CPS was granted 4 stars in this year's
report cards, Murphy told the school board.
"I want to say thank you to the board for all of your dedication, hard work, your push, your drive," Murphy said at the regular business meeting.
"To our students, for their tenacity, their hard work and for their families for choosing Cincinnati Public Schools," she said. "To every single staff member ... we definitely could not do it without you, so thank you."
The news comes a day prior to when the district's official report card was slated to be released along with the rest of the state's public and charter school report cards on the education department's website. Murphy's board meeting announcement reflects the state's official data, CPS Communications Director Dawn Grady told The Enquirer.
"We are proud of this progress, and tomorrow we will share a fuller picture of the results, including important achievements by individual schools," the district stated in a quote shared with The Enquirer Monday night.
The five-star scale, adopted in 2021, grants districts an overall star rating and individual ratings for six components: gap closing, achievement, progress, graduation, early literacy and college, career, workforce and military readiness.
Though they've been criticized on numerous occasions by some schools officials for pitting low-income districts against affluent ones, the purpose of the report cards is to give families a universal tool to measure the quality of their students' schools, the state education department previously told The Enquirer.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Cincinnati Public Schools gets 3-star report card, superintendent says
