This post originally appeared at https://will-law.org/taking-the-blindfold-off-k-12-accountability/

January 21, 2025

By Will Flanders, Research Director

Since at least 2020, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has made changes that obscure the true performance of schools, making it harder for Wisconsin families to make informed decisions about their children’s education. Today, Senator John Jagler (R-Watertown) and Representative Bob Wittke (R-Caledonia) introduced new legislation (LRB-0976) aimed at restoring transparency and accountability to Wisconsin’s K-12 testing regime.

The bill represents an important step in restoring the ability of parents, policymakers, and taxpayers to assess how well Wisconsin’s schools are doing across the public, charter, and private voucher sectors. Here, we will explain what the bill does, but we first begin with a look at what a mess DPI has made of accountability over the past few years.

Beginning in the 2020-21 school year, DPI has made a number of changes to Wisconsin’s academic accountability standards that have made them far less rigorous.  These changes were all made unilaterally by the Department without any input from the legislature or Governor. The key changes were:

• 2020-21 School Year: DPI lowered the cut points on the state’s report cards, allowing more schools and districts to be rated as three stars or higher (“Meets Expectations” or above) without any improvement in performance.
• 2023-24 School Year: DPI changed the labels on the categories for outcomes on the Forward Exam.  “Below Basic” became “Developing,” “Basic” became “Approaching,” and “Proficient” became “Meeting.”  The “Advanced category was left the same.
• 2023-24 School Year: DPI lowered the cut points on the Forward Exam and ACT/PreACT, allowing students to be judged proficient at lower scores.  This broke the tying of proficiency standards on the Foward Exam to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).  Not only can school districts not create long-term trends of student performance after this change, but we can no longer compare Wisconsin students to national benchmarks.

These changes, made behind closed doors with little public input, have resulted in some absurdities that call into question whether schools can be held accountable for academic failures at all. Milwaukee Public Schools jumped from 15.8% proficiency in Reading to 23.4% proficiency from 2023 to 2024. They have also helped the district achieve three stars—or “Meets Expectations” on the state report card, despite their consistently poor performance.

Under the bill, all of these changes would be reversed—restoring the various aspects of the accountability system to how they functioned prior to the 2020 school year, including:

1. The legislation would restore the clearer, more straightforward accountability category names that were previously used. Terms like “below basic” and “basic” clearly convey the need for improvement and encourage action to boost student performance. In contrast, the newer terms, such as “developing” and “approaching,” can give the misleading impression that a student is on track, potentially downplaying a need for improvement. – READ MORE
2. The Report Card cut points would be also restored to those that allowed for greater variation in the performance of schools and districts rather than compressing almost all of them into the upper three categories. Under the current report card cut scores, zero school districts fell into the “Fails to Meet Expectations” category and only 28 districts “Met Few Expectations.” – READ MORE
3. Perhaps most importantly, the bill would restore a proficiency standard that is tied to national NAEP standards for the Forward Exam and college readiness for the ACT/PreACT, giving Wisconsinites a far clearer idea of where students stand compared to other states. DPI’s arbitrary cut score changes to the Forward Exam, make comparing student proficiency difficult to compare to other states and previous year’s results. As a result of DPI’s changes, school districts experienced an average boost of 14% in math proficiency and 13.2% in ELA proficiency, despite average proficiency dropping on average across the nation. – READ MORE

Under the bill, many school districts might see a reduction in their proficiency rates and even in their report card scores.  But the system as it stands now is effectively one that rewards mediocrity and failure—a Lake Wobegone where everyone is above average. Academic accountability standards require a clear-eyed look at the data to identify rather than excuse problem areas.

There is some reason to hope that these reforms could make it through the legislative process. Governor Evers served as Superintendent of DPI when the previous standards were in place, and he has expressed surprise and frustration with the changes made in recent years. Speaker Vos has also expressed interest in returning to higher educational standards.  Having high standards for our schools should not be a partisan issue, and we simply can’t keep lowering the bar when those standards aren’t met.

Read More:
Op-Ed: Your Child May Not Be Doing as Well in School as You Think
Gaming the System: Wisconsin’s Forward Exam Scores Now Useless
Wisconsin’s Report Cards are Broken, Here’s How to Fix Them
Wisconsin’s Report Cards Mask Troubling Proficiency Rates
The Soft Bigotry of Low Expectations: Wisconsin’s Report Card Fails to Meet Expectations

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