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DPI Planning to Change School Report Cards
Wisconsin parents will likely see different report cards next year.
The state’s Department of Public Instruction on Monday announced plans to “review” and “update” the state’s report cards.
"Just as you wouldn’t rely on a decade-old GPS to find your way today, we can’t use outdated performance benchmarks to guide school improvement,” Superintendent Jill Underly said in a statement.
DPI said it will hold summer meetings with a "panel of more than two dozen education leaders," to look at the "score ranges that determine the overall accountability ratings."
Report cards measure reading, writing, and graduation rates, along with several other targeted scores for students of color or lower income students.
The worry, according to education reformers in Wisconsin, is that DPI changed the state's learning standards last fall. And not for the better.
"Last year, DPI met behind closed doors to lower the standards for the Forward Exam," the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty's Will Flanders said Tuesday. "Now, they will apparently do the same thing for the state report card. We need transparency in these meetings. Why are these standard settings that affect all WI families held behind closed doors?"
"As we have pointed out, this process is necessary due to [Superintendent Underly] & DPI lowering expectations for kids," the City Forward Coalition's Colleston Morgan said in a tweet of his own. "Would've liked to see more stakeholders - parents, employers, civic leaders - be given voice on this panel. We'll be closely monitoring the outcomes."
"DPI has a history of using these opportunities to lower standards, so the public should pay close attention to this process," WILL's Kyle Koenen said on Twitter. "Wisconsin families deserve a stable and accountable system—not one that shifts at the whim of Madison bureaucrats."
Underly’s office says the panel will first meet online in June, and then meet again in August. DPI is not saying when the new report cards will be finalized.
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