The Ohio Department of Education and Workforce has officially released its annual performance report cards for the 2025–2026 school year, providing an updated overview of academic achievement, student progress, and graduation metrics for public school districts throughout Licking County. The newly published data demonstrates broad academic competence across the region, while also highlighting specific areas where local districts require targeted intervention and support.
Across the ten school districts based in Licking County, the average overall evaluation stood at 3.75 stars out of a possible five. A strong majority of the region’s systems performed well above baseline expectations, with seven of the ten local districts earning an overall rating of four stars or higher.
Granville Exempted Village Schools distinguished itself as the sole district in the county to secure a flawless five-star rating, maintaining the highest overall academic standard in the area. At the opposite end of the spectrum, both Newark City Schools and North Fork Local Schools received 2.5 stars overall, a designation indicating that both districts require additional state support to consistently satisfy Ohio’s operational and learning standards.
In the broader countywide breakdown, Licking Heights Local Schools followed closely behind Granville with a 4.5-star designation. Four-star ratings were awarded to Heath City Schools, Johnstown-Monroe Local Schools, Lakewood Local Schools, Northridge Local Schools, and Southwest Licking Local Schools. Meanwhile, Licking Valley Local Schools earned a middle-tier score of three stars.
Ohio transitioned its evaluation framework to the current five-star rating system in 2021, departing from previous grading methodologies to provide clearer metrics on institutional effectiveness. Under this framework, districts receive an overall composite rating along with specific ratings across six core categories: achievement, progress, gap closing, graduation rates, early literacy, and college, career, workforce, and military readiness.
To determine these comprehensive scores, the state assigns different statistical weights to each evaluated category. The achievement metric, which measures student performance benchmarks on state assessments, and the progress metric, which measures academic growth over time, each account for 25% of the overall score. The remaining 50% is evenly distributed at 12.5% each among the gap closing, graduation, early literacy, and readiness categories.
According to Stephen Dackin, the director of the Ohio Department of Education and Workforce, these annual report cards serve as foundational tools for systemic educational improvement rather than static evaluations. Dackin noted that the data should be used to make informed decisions regarding where state and local resources are distributed, emphasizing the urgent need to ensure every student acquires the academic foundations and practical life skills necessary for future success.
A closer look at year-over-year data indicates that while most local districts maintained steady ratings, significant progress was documented in college, career, workforce, and military readiness. Johnstown-Monroe Local Schools recorded a dramatic three-star increase in this readiness metric, climbing from 50.4% to 77.7%. Substantial gains were also recorded by Newark City Schools, which saw its readiness metric leap from 31.3% to 63%, and North Fork Local Schools, which climbed from 60.5% to 75.2%.
Heath City Schools also showed notable progress in its readiness and graduation marks, although its final readiness score of 59.8% remained among the bottom three within the county, placing it just ahead of the readiness rates reported by Licking Valley and Southwest Licking.
Despite gains in readiness, North Fork Local Schools faced challenges in other foundational categories. The district experienced a one-star reduction in early literacy, falling by nearly 20% on the state measure, which evaluates reading intervention strategies and third-grade literacy proficiency. North Fork also contended with a 5% decline in total student enrollment, representing the sharpest enrollment contraction among all districts in the county.
Graduation outcomes throughout Licking County showed a marked division between the highest-performing districts and urban centers. Granville led the county with a 99.5% graduation rate, while Johnstown-Monroe, Lakewood Local, and Northridge Local all recorded four- and five-year graduation figures exceeding 98%. In contrast, Newark City Schools posted the lowest graduation rate in the county at 81.9%, although that figure represented a 0.9% gain compared to the previous year.
Enrollment trends diverged widely among the county's largest educational systems. Among the three largest districts—Newark City, Southwest Licking, and Licking Heights—Newark documented the steepest enrollment drop, falling by 3.2%. Conversely, Southwest Licking and Licking Heights were the only systems in the entire county to record net student population increases, expanding by 0.8% and 1.2%, respectively.
District administrators offered mixed reactions to the latest state assessments. Celebrating his district’s four-star standing, Johnstown-Monroe Superintendent Lou Kramer attributed the favorable results to strong community expectations and the ongoing commitment of local educators and students, while emphasizing that the district will remain focused on continuous advancement.
Addressing its 2.5-star rating, Newark City Schools acknowledged the score while noting that the aggregate rating provides an incomplete depiction of the district's overall educational trajectory. District officials emphasized that positive internal momentum is actively taking place, pointing directly to documented improvements in student gap closing and accelerated progress within workforce preparedness programs.
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