DPI Releases State Report Cards

Department of Public Instruction

Releases State Report Cards

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) in a News Release announced that the State Report Cards for individual schools and districts are now available to the public.  Districts and schools are “evaluated on four priority areas”:

• student achievement on a state assessment;
• year-to-year student growth in reading and mathematics;
• success in closing gaps between specific groups of students; and
• predictors of high school graduation and postsecondary readiness.

The overall accountability score rates schools on a scale of 0 to 100 and places them in one of five categories:

• significantly exceeds expectations (83-100),
• exceeds expectations (73-82.9),
• meets expectations (63-72.9), 
• meets few expectations (53-62.9,
• and fails to meet expectations (52.9 and below). 

Arrowhead High School was rated as “exceeds expectations.”  When breaking down the overall accountability scores, Arrowhead scored highest in the areas of “student achievement” and “on-track for graduation/postsecondary readiness.”  For the past several years, the Arrowhead staff has developed programs, supports, and action plans focused on offering rigorous and relevant curriculum, innovative and experiential learning opportunities, quality assessment practices, as well as focusing on achievement gaps among student “supergroups” (e.g. students with disabilities; economically disadvantaged).   Although we are very proud of our students’ achievements and the work of our staff, we continue to look at areas to improve the quality of learning for our students.

The State Report Card provides a limited view of how a school or district performs.  The information provided in this reporting system is viewed as a piece of information in a much more complex and comprehensive review of our students, staff and schools performance.  The following is a comparative summary of some of the areas Arrowhead has done well based on the state’s accountability system:

Rating Area	Score	State Rank (out of approximately 500 public HS)
Overall Accountability Score and Rating	81.1 - Exceeds Expectations	22nd
Student Achievement Score	90.7	3rd
Reading Achievement	42.8	4th
Math Achievement	47.9	2nd
ACT Participation	77.7	5th

The area that we continue to focus on, as a district, are the achievement gaps for “supergroups” reported on the State Report Card.  Specifically, students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students when compared to students without disabilities and those not economically disadvantaged.  As a district when we compare these “supergroups” with how the same student groups in schools of similar demographics perform, we find that our students in these groups perform at or near the top on the state tests.  We also know that when comparing the performance of the “supergroups” to non-supergroup students and then comparing to other schools that in many cases a larger gap exists.  Simply stated, Arrowhead students with disabilities and economically disadvantaged students perform at or near the top when compared to the same groups from other districts.  Where a distinction is made is when comparing these students to the remainder of students, a larger gap exists compared to some other schools.  This is an area we will need to study further to better understand how the state calculates this score and how it might assist us in continuing our efforts to support all students learning needs.

Hopefully this information has been helpful in trying to understand a complex measurement system of one aspect in understanding how our students perform on the State’s measurement tool.

NOTES: To view individual district and school report cards, visit http://reportcards.dpi.wi.gov/ and click on the button for District and School Report Cards. The “What’s New” document on that website contains more information about changes to School Report Card calculations between 2011-12 and 2012-13. This news release is available electronically at: http://news.dpi.wi.gov/files/eis/pdf/dpinr2013_107.pdf. 

Arrowhead High School

State Report Card