St. Joseph-Ogden High School was recognized as one of the state’s best according to the Illinois Report Card, which was released on Oct. 30.
“We were very excited to have earned the exemplary designation from ISBE,” Principal Gary Page said. “Our designation from this year is actually a carry over from last year as ISBE wasn’t able to collect all the necessary data due to the shutdowns last winter/spring. Nonetheless, it is always great to see an exemplary descriptor tied to our school and the efforts of our students, staff, and community have earned the recognition.
“SJO has extremely high expectations for our academics and is very proud when our students are recognized for their academic performance.”
Recognized as an “Exemplary” School, St. Joseph-Ogden joins nearly 11-percent of all schools in the state that receive the top ranking.
Page said that the success of St. Joseph-Ogden High School rests on a “shared expectation for academic excellence and the trusting relationship within our school community.
“Our students and their families value education and thus fully expect that our school district and teachers uphold the expectation for academic excellence,” Page said. “Teachers not only respect the desire for academic excellence, but more importantly share the same expectation, which has created a great deal of trust throughout our school community. When students want to be challenged academically and teachers are willing to put the extra in to challenge students it fosters a great atmosphere for academic success.”
St. Joseph-Ogden moved up from the “Commendable” category from 2018, where about 75-percent of all schools fall.
The pandemic, which had an effect on what would be reported in the 2020 Illinois State Board of Education data, has also magnified expectations in the Spartan district.
“By no means is school perfect or the same as any typical year but overall we are figuring it out and our staff and students are busting their tails to meet expectations,” Page said.
“As far as continued improvement goes we are driven by the same expectation so we do not become content. We are constantly evaluating our curriculum content, course offerings, academic data, different programs we offer to our student body, as well as our methodologies of student learning to improve opportunities for our students to be successful when they leave SJO.”
The 2020 Report Card takes a look at the previous school year’s data: annual assessments, graduation rates and teacher retention, to name a few data points. In previous years, the Report Card has been a benchmark of comparison for Illinois’ schools, offering a complete picture of students and school performance.
But, due to the stay-at-home order that pushed schools into remote learning at the end of the 2019-20 school year, assessments, such as SAT and the Illinois Assessment of Readiness were not administered.
ISBE has added data qualifiers to indicate the affected metrics.
Still, the 2020 Report Card breaks down the district’s finances, expenditures per students, teacher retention, attendance, enrollment and salaries in an attempt to help constituents gauge the district’s progress.
Since 2018, each school within Illinois has received a Summative Designation of Exemplary, Commendable, Under-Performing, and Lowest-Performing, a measure of progress in academic performance and student success. The designation is based on eight indicators of academic success and school quality, weighted towards graduation rates in high school and growth in English/language arts and math in PK-8.
Due to impacts on various accountability measures as a result of COVID-19, 2020 Summative Designations mirror the Summative Designations reported in 2019.
With 446 students, enrollment at SJ-O has dipped since 2015 when the district had 462 students.
The district has 7.8-percent low-income students, which matches the highest number the high school has seen in the last five years.
The report shows that chronic absenteeism, meaning students who miss 10-percent or more of school with or without a valid excuse, dropped from 9-percent in 2018 and 2019 to 4 percent in 2020.
High School drop-out percentages increased slightly whereas 0-percent of high school students dropped out in 2015 and 2016, one-percent dropped-out in 2017 and 2018, 2-percent dropped-out in 2019 and 3-percent dropped-out in 2020.
A five-year look at 4-year graduation rates showed them holding steady. In 2015, 92-percent of the class graduated within four years, in 2016 it rose to 98-percent and in 2017, 96-percent graduated in four years. The 4-year graduation percentage dropped again in 2017 to 92-percent bounced back at 96-percent in 2019 and was at 94-percent in 2020.
As a class, 94-percent of freshmen were on track to graduate in 2020. The percentage was at 92-percent in 2018.
A little more than one-third of the SJ-O student body in grades 11 and 12 have taken college courses for credit and/or AP courses over the last two years.
The district spends $9,900 per student enrolled.
The St. Joseph-Ogden School District was designated as a Tier 2 school for Evidence-Based Funding in 2020. At $3,735,951 Evidence-Based Funding Resources, they are at 68-percent capacity to meet the $5,477,623 Adequacy Target.
Average class size at the high school has been right at, but below the state average, since 2015. In 2020 the state average is 22, and classes at SJ-O on average are at 21.
The St. Joseph-Ogden School District, which has a total of 29 teachers has a student to teacher ratio of 17.1 at high school level. The state average is 19.1.
The teacher retention rate, the 3-year average percentage of teachers returning to work at SJ-O is at 93-percent and has been there since 2017.
On average, teachers St. Joseph-Ogden High School see a lower salary than their state-wide counterparts. This has held true at least since 2015.
Currently, on average, SJ-O teachers are paid $45,291 per year. The state average is $68,083.
In 2017, 2019 and 2020, 100-percent of SJ-O teachers received Excellent or Proficient designations on their evaluations.
SJ-O High School is below the state average of administration to student ratio. The state average of admins to students was 171:1 in 2019, and the ratio is 149:1 at the high school.
Average administrator pay is close to the state average. In 2020, SJ-O administrators made an average of $104,303 whereas the state administrators made an average of $111,293.
[table id=1 /]
