School District Report Cards Are In

The school year just started, but Wisconsin schools have already received their grades from the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

The DPI released school district report cards on Sept. 17, ranking schools based on criteria such as student achievement, attendance and graduation rates, and closing the academic gaps between groups.

Schools could be placed in five categories: significantly exceeds expectations, exceeds expectations, meets expectations, meets few expectations or fails to meet expectations, and Door County schools did well.

Gibraltar, Sevastopol and Southern Door all exceeded expectations, Sturgeon Bay and Washington Island met expectations. Sturgeon Bay and Washington Island schools were close to the higher category – just 2.2 and .2 points away from exceeding expectations, respectively.

But local superintendents caution the report cards are just a snapshot in time, and the picture was taken almost a year ago.

“This is old data,” said Sevastopol superintendent Linda Underwood. “The data they use for the college and career readiness piece is from the 2011-2012 school year. The data on student achievement, math, reading, closing the achievement gap, growth, all those things are from November 2012.”

So while the report cards are handy when tracking progress over years, they don’t reflect current students. Still, they help administrators such as Washington Island School District Superintendent Tim Raymond look at a school’s progress over time and how to compare it to similar districts around the state.

“We sit down and take this data with our other local and district assessment data and break that down to what is it telling us, what is the effect this has on our students,” Raymond said. “What is this telling us about our students and where we’re going?”

To get a better picture of student performance, schools do their own assessments to see how students are progressing in reading, writing, math and other skills. Tina Van Meer, superintendent of Gibraltar Area Schools, said one issue with the state report card is the way they study gap closure between groups of students.

Gibraltar schools have a large enough population of economically disadvantaged students to measure their progress, but Gibraltar’s population of limited English proficient students isn’t large enough for the state to measure. Gibraltar makes a point of studying those learning gaps and addressing them on their own.

There’s no assessment that really reflects the personality of a school, something Underwood said matters just as much as the skills that can be tested with a Scantron test.

“You’re talking about a report card that’s based on data,” Underwood said. “It doesn’t capture the sense of community, culture or the tone of the school’s climate. That’s not included in accountability measures and it would be nice to be able to capture that but it’s not going to happen with high stakes reporting. We believe that’s part of what makes Sevastopol a really great place to work and live, so it’s hard to see the report card out and know that’s not what’s captured in it.”

A Snapshot of Door County Schools

Information from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s School District Report Cards. For more information, log on to reportcards.dpi.wi.gov.

Overall Accountability Score

• Gibraltar:  76.1
• Sevastopol:  79.4
• Southern Door:  80.2
• Sturgeon Bay:  70.7
• Washington Island:  72.7

Students with Disabilities

• Gibraltar:  8.1%
• Sevastopol:  13.4%
• Southern Door:  12.9 %
• Sturgeon Bay:  12.8 %
• Washington Island:  21%

Economically Disadvantaged Students

• Gibraltar:  28.2%
• Sevastopol:  41%
• Southern Door:  34.5%
• Sturgeon Bay:  43.1%
• Washington Island:  30.6%

Limited English Proficient Students

• Gibraltar:  6%
• Sevastopol:  6.7%
• Southern Door:  1.3%
• Sturgeon Bay:  1.5%
• Washington Island:  0%

District Student Achievement Score

• Gibraltar:  80.1
• Sevastopol:  77
• Southern Door:  78.6
• Sturgeon Bay:  69.1
• Washington Island:  68.1

District Closing Gaps Score

• Gibraltar:  63.9
• Sevastopol:  72.7
• Southern Door:  87.5
• Sturgeon Bay:  63.4
• Washington Island:  NA

Postsecondary Readiness Score

• Gibraltar:  92.8
• Sevastopol:  91.8
• Southern Door:  90.6
• Sturgeon Bay:  86.5
• Washington Island:  91.3