Two of Warwick’s elementary schools- Norwood and Oakland Beach- saw stars added to its rating in the Rhode Island Department of Education (RIDE)’s annual accountability rankings.

The rankings, which are part of RIDE’s School and District Report Cards, were released on Friday. They measure each school’s performance, according to its website, using “measures like test scores, graduation rates, and chronic absenteeism for students and teachers…[to] give a Star Rating to every public school in the state.”

Oakland Beach was formerly the only Warwick school with a one-star rating. Harold F. Scott Elementary School scored the highest of Warwick’s schools, earning four stars out of a possible five.

Warwick Public Schools Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment Lisa Schultz attributed the gains at Oakland Beach and Norwood to new district strategies implemented over the 2022-23 school year.

“We were hoping to see more schools move up, but we didn’t realize at the time that they take two years worth of growth now and average that out, and they’re going to be doing that moving forward,” Schultz said. “Everything that we’re putting in, we’re going to see this year’s and next year’s growth combined, we’re going to see a lot more schools push forward.”

Elementary Education Director Patti Cousineau said that there were other schools in the district that just missed the cut to move up a ranking as well. Both she and Schultz expect them to move up in next year’s rankings.

According to RIDE, Oakland Beach moved up from one star to two in the “Achievement- ELA, Math, and Science” and “Growth- ELA and Math” categories, allowing the school to move up to two stars as a whole. RIDE’s accountability scoring system mandates that schools cannot have a higher ranking than the lowest category that they are graded on.

Currently, the majority of schools in Warwick have a three-star ranking, with Scott the only school at 4 stars. Lagging behind the pack at two stars are Oakland Beach and Lippitt - as well as all of Warwick’s middle and high schools.

As to why Warwick’s secondary schools scored lower than the elementary level, Schultz said that it’s harder for districts across the state to see positive growth at that level.

“Students make more growth in the lower levels,” Schultz said. “When you reach middle school and high school, it becomes really difficult to show high growth across the state.”

Schultz also expects Warwick Vets and Winman to see their ratings increase to three stars next year, saying that they both saw significant growth within some of the school’s subgroups.

The secondary level also saw the highest drops statewide, with Classical High School, Lincoln High School and Mount Hope High School all falling from four stars to two.

The former two were due to low scores in the English Language Proficiency category, which some, such as Boston Globe columnist Dan McGowan, argue rewards a lack of diversity due to schools with fewer multilingual learners (MLLs) not being scored on the category, and low scores in the category being enough to bring a school’s ranking down. Both Classical and Lincoln were not graded on the category last year, hence the drop.

In Warwick, only four elementary schools are scored on the category- Holliman, Oakland Beach, Robertson and Scott- as well as all four secondary schools. The category is also the one currently keeping Toll Gate at a two-star ranking, as the school showed improvement in other categories ranked at two stars last year.

Schultz said that she believed that it was unfortunate that schools were docked points in their ratings due to this, but said that Warwick’s MLL students were “crushing it” and the district has seen growth with them and other groups.

Warwick’s schools sit at the middle of the pack among school districts in central Rhode Island- its average of 2.7 stars throughout the district are tied with Johnston’s schools, outpace Cranston and West Warwick and lag behind East Greenwich and Coventry.

Asked if there were any district-wide goals for next year’s report on the 2023-24 school year, Schultz and Cousineau said that they were looking to see more schools join Scott in the four-star category, and hoping to see positive momentum in Warwick’s secondary schools.

“We want improvement,” Cousineau said. “There are so many layers in place… that we feel really confident that we’re going to see some really good things.”