The Bethel-Tate School District was honored by the state with a banner presentation at a recent school board meeting.

The banner was presented by the state to commemorate the district’s excellent rating, which was achieved this year after a series of good performances by students on state exams last school year.

“If you make excellent on your school district report card, the Ohio Department of Education presents you with a banner,” said Bethel-Tate Superintendent Jim Smith. “A 10th district representative brought that banner to us Monday night and presented it to the board. All of the excellent districts got a banner.”

According to Smith, the district earned the distinction by earning all but one of a series of state indicators that assess how students and districts are performing. With the exception of a measurement of daily attendance and graduation rates, the indicators are all based on academic performance.

“To make excellent, the state has 25 indicators, which are mainly Ohio Achievement Test scores,” said Smith. “There is an indicator for attendance and one for graduation rate, but the rest are tests. We made 24 of those 25, and have to earn at least 24 to be excellent. We did really well on those tests last year. Another way to earn it is to have a lot of students who do very well on the tests, which is how Milford made excellent.”

While the banner presented by the state will not be seen hanging outside the schools, similar ones will most likely pop up around the district, said Smith.

Bethel-Tate is hoping to purchase a number of the banners to place around town, hopefully in time for homecoming. The new banners will be personalized for the district.

“It’s actually an indoor banner, it won’t be placed outside,” said Smith. “I think it would get weathered out pretty quick. I think we will purchase some. The company that makes them can customize them for your district. I think we’ll get one for each of our buildings, and we’ll put one on the football stadium, and one across Plane Street in town for homecoming week. It will be a recognition to people for their efforts.”

Smith said that they district is pleased to receive the banner and proud of their accomplishments, but sees it as a challenge to continue to earn such high honors. According to Smith, if their strategy has been good enough to earn the district an excellent rating, then they hope it will be good enough to keep them in the excellent range.

“The strongest thing we’ve done over the years is to analyze test data,” said Smith. “From that, you can tell what we are doing well from a teaching perspective and what areas in which we struggled. We fine-tune our instruction to the point that, last year, our kids did well on those tests. We try to work on instruction and successful teaching and have that come back to us through good test scores. We just try to work hard at teaching students successfully in the classroom. That’s been the focus since I’ve been here.”