(The Center Square) – There are not a lot of high expectations for Wisconsin’s next state school report cards.
The Department of Public Instruction is holding meetings of its Report Card Standard Setting Group this week as part of its effort to create new report card standards.
"The DPI has recruited a representative group of Wisconsin education leaders to serve on the report card standard setting panel to provide input on performance expectations for the state’s school and district report card accountability system," DPI announced earlier this year. "The recommendations of the panel will go to State Superintendent [Jill] Underly for review and adoption, and the updated rating category score ranges will apply to the 2024-25 school and district report cards."
Quiton Klabon, with the Institute for Reforming Government, however, said updated doesn’t mean upgraded.
“These ratings are meaningless — by design,” Klabon said in a statement. “DPI keeps changing the scoreboard to avoid showing the score. These report cards aren’t tools for parents. They’re PR.”
The most common criticism of Wisconsin’s current state report card is that it ranks far too many schools as “meeting” or “exceeding” expectations, even as students struggle to read, write or do math at grade level.
In some cases, schools are getting passing grades on their state report cards when 25% of their students can read at grade level.
Klabon said an IRG report from last fall showed DPI has been planning for a while to lower those state report card scores to cover for its student “disparities.”
"After quietly lowering the bar for test scores, DPI realized nearly every school would now earn 4 or 5 stars — regardless of performance. Our latest report revealed the internal DPI emails where staff admitted it," Klabon explained. "Parents are being misled. Schools are angry. And real problems are being hidden behind a wall of inflated stars."
The Report Card Standard Setting Group was scheduled to begin its meetings Tuesday and wrap up by Thursday.
The meetings, however, are not open to the public. Parents and schools will have to wait until the group has finished its work to see what Wisconsin’s state report cards will look like going forward.
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