Pickerington Academy

Pickerington Academy is a small public virtual high school serving grades 7-12 in the Pickerington Local School District. With just 53 students, the school has seen a shift in its racial makeup over the past two years, with the percentage of White students decreasing and the percentage of African American students increasing.

Academically, Pickerington Academy significantly underperforms the Pickerington Local School District and the state of Ohio, with proficiency rates ranging from 6.7% in Geometry to 53.1% in American Government, compared to the district's 46.1% and 74.4% respectively, and the state's 39.8% and 69.1%. However, the school maintains a relatively high four-year graduation rate of 91.7%, slightly lower than the district's 97.8% and the two traditional high schools' 98.7%. The school has also seen fluctuations in its chronic absenteeism rate, ranging from 1.8% to 6.8%, which is significantly lower than the nearby traditional high schools, which have chronic absenteeism rates around 30%.

As a virtual school, Pickerington Academy may face unique challenges in student engagement and academic achievement compared to traditional in-person schools, as evidenced by the wide range in its student-teacher ratio, from 26.5 to 56.5 over the past two years, higher than the nearby traditional high schools, which have ratios around 20. The school's diverse student population and the significant shifts in its racial makeup over the past two years could also be an area of further investigation to understand the factors driving these changes.