All five Upper Arlington elementary schools earned Gov. Mike DeWine's Science of Reading Champions award this spring. The recognition came as Ohio completed its first full year of mandated phonics instruction.

About 63% of Ohio third graders scored proficient on spring 2026 state reading tests, up from 61% in 2025, as first reported by The 74 and published by the Ohio Capital Journal on Wednesday, Oct. 7. The 2025-26 school year was the first in which every Ohio school was required to use phonics-based methods under the state's 2023 science of reading law, which banned "cueing," the practice of having young students guess words from context or pictures.

Upper Arlington was ahead of the curve. The district began integrating science of reading methods around 2015, according to a governor's office announcement in April. On the 2024-25 state report card, UA's third-grade reading proficiency rate was 88.8%, compared to 61.3% statewide that year. Greensview Elementary posted 94.9%.

DeWine visited Greensview on April 27 to present the awards. UA is one of only eight districts statewide with at least five schools earning the recognition.

"We are very aggressive with the measurement we use to identify our at-risk kindergartners," Superintendent Robert Hunt told ABC 6 on Sept. 15. "We take a lot of pride in the work in the area of literacy."

The district also rolled out Amplify CKLA, a phonics-aligned English Language Arts curriculum, across its elementary schools during the 2025-26 year. At a Sept. 25 board meeting, district leaders reported that a majority of K-3 students at three schools who were identified as off track at the end of 2024-25 had moved to on track by the end of 2025-26.

Both UA and Grandview Heights earned five-star overall ratings on the 2025-26 Ohio School Report Card, the highest possible mark. They were two of only four Franklin County districts to reach that level, alongside Bexley and New Albany-Plain, the Columbus Dispatch reported.

On the Performance Index, which measures test scores across all grades, Grandview Heights ranked 25th statewide with a 96.1 score, down from 96.6 in 2025, according to cleveland.com. UA ranked 38th with a 94.7, up from 94.4 the prior year.

Still, statewide results carry a mixed signal. The 63% third-grade proficiency rate remains below the 65% recorded in 2024, when the science of reading was still being phased in. The share scoring ‘limited’ was essentially unchanged from 2025 and remained above the 19.1% recorded in 2023.

Aaron Churchill, Ohio research director at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, told the Ohio Capital Journal the gains are not yet conclusive. "It's too early to tell in my view," Churchill said. "We need to keep at it and give it a few years."

UA voters will decide Issue 7, a combined 4.9-mill operating levy and $273.5 million bond issue, on Nov. 3.