Examples of new school report cards now online

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This fall every public school in Wisconsin will be rated on a new annual school report card. Samples of those report cards are now online and open for public comment.

The new report cards are one of a package of reforms that will be implemented in Wisconsin as part of the state’s recently approved waiver to the No Child Left Behind law.

In October, each school in the state will receive an overall score from 0 to 100. Laura Pinsonneault is director of the Office of Educational Accountability at the Department of Public Instruction. She says schools will be evaluated on student achievement and whether it improves over time. Pinsonneault says they will also measure efforts to narrow performance and graduation gaps that often separate different groups of students. “We’re looking at closing achievement gaps, and progress in closing achievement gaps. We have protections in the system to make sure that schools don’t get credit for closing gaps by actually lowering the performance of higher achieving students, but actually improving all students and still closing gaps. And then we look at what it actually means to be on track to graduation and ready for post-secondary pursuits.”

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Based on overall scores, schools will be placed in one of five categories of expectations: significantly exceeding, exceeding, meeting, meeting a few, and failing to meet expectations. The state will intervene and provide support measures to schools that don’t meet expectations.

Sample school report cards and a survey to collect feedback are available at the DPI website at dpi.wi.gov.

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