Ottawa High School is commendable. That’s not the best ranking, but it means the Illinois State Board of Education rates OHS at least as good as it thinks schools should be. Only a tenth of Illinois schools get the exemplary rank.
Principal Patrick Leonard says the school will keep trying to improve, especially when it comes to overcoming the learning gaps the pandemic caused or magnified.
The Illinois School Report Card for OHS shows positives such as three-quarters of teachers having masters degrees or higher and being proficient or excellent when evaluated. A negative is nearly half of students being absent for more than 10% of the time. It’s hard to catch up when students aren’t there.
Less than a tenth of OHS students are considered chronically truant. The chronically absent include students who have excuses such as illness or family emergencies. Chronically truant students are gone 5% or more of the time and have no excuses.
The Illinois School Report Card shows fewer students meeting or exceeding expectation on SAT college entrance exam scores over the last few years. The decline started before the pandemic. There’s a year with no data because of the pandemic.
OHS has an 87% graduation rate with only 5% of students dropping out.
There is much more information on OHS at this link. You can look up other schools at https://www.illinoisreportcard.com/.