Want to Improve Wisconsin’s Schools? Follow Mississippi’s Lead

DPI Changing School Report Cards

Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has announced plans to make major changes to its annual school and district report cards. Did you feel that sense of déjà vu? Good. DPI just changed report card standards four years ago and, unsurprisingly, made it much easier for failing schools and districts to receive passing grades.

In 2021, DPI lowered what are known as “cut scores” for each level of achievement. The score range for a school or district to “exceed expectations” was reduced from 73.0-82.9 to 70-82.9. To “meet expectations,” a school or district suddenly needed only to score between 58.0 and 69.9—down from a range of 63.0-72.9. The “meets few expectations” designation dropped from 53.0-62.9 to 48.0-57.9, and “fails” decreased from below 52.9 to below 47.9.

As a result, DPI handed out the same number of passing grades in the 2020-2021 school year as it did in the 2018-2019 school year even though COVID-19 closures dramatically impacted student learning.

To further illustrate how ridiculous this change was, Milwaukee Public Schools received a passing grade last year despite national testing revealing it to be the single worst district in the nation at educating black students.

This testing also revealed that DPI has been massaging its student test scores as well. Before the 2024-2025 school year, Wisconsin Superintendent Jill Underly unilaterally made radical changes to the state’s Forward Exam—making it impossible to compare student scores with prior years and taking the test out of alignment with national standards.

When those national test results came back in January, they proved that Underly’s changes were designed to make it seem as though Wisconsin’s students were doing much better than they actually are. The Forward Exam claimed that 52% of fourth graders in the state were proficient (or at grade level) in reading, but the national test showed that just 31% of them are proficient. 54% of students were rated as proficient on the Forward Exam, but just 42% were deemed to be at grade level on the national test.

If DPI really wants to improve both student and school performance (and not simply make it look like they are doing fine), then it should adopt the radical changes put in place by, of all states, Mississippi.

Long a punchline for its poor education system, Mississippi now ranks first in the nation in fourth grade reading, fourth grade math, and eighth grade reading, and fourth nationally in eighth grade math when test scores are adjusted for demographics such as poverty levels.

Black students in Mississippi performed 1.5 grade levels above black students in Wisconsin, and even when scores are not adjusted for demographics, 32% of all fourth graders in Mississippi are proficient in reading compared with 31% in Wisconsin.

This dramatic improvement has been dubbed the “Mississippi Miracle,” and it needs to be replicated everywhere. In 2013, the state passed the Literacy-Based Promotion Act, which required that schools adopt a phonics-based approach to teaching students to read and mandated early intervention for students who were falling behind.

Most controversially, it also required that students who were not reading at a third-grade level in third grade would be held back until they did. Critics howled at the disastrous social impact on students who were held back that was sure to follow, but research determined that it never did. Students who were held back did just fine socially, behaviorally, and educationally afterwards.

Opponents of the policy also argued that Mississippi’s subsequent rise in test scores was due to held-back students not being included in standardized testing, but this, too, was debunked.

Additionally, the retention rate of third graders has declined precipitously over the past decade since early intervention and a return to phonics-based teaching in early learning has dramatically improved proficiency rates.

Wisconsin, too, can see a miraculous turnaround in student performance, but only if DPI stops changing standards to make education bureaucrats look better and instead makes real changes to its early education policy aimed at boosting actual student performance.