(The Center Square) – Leaders of Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction said that its new report card grading system was fully determined by a 26-member advisory committee that work with the contracted Center for Assessment, leaving DPI out of that decision-making process.
The grades and processes were questioned Wednesday in front of the Joint Committee on Education.
DPI also presented student enrollment data showing that student enrollment in the state has dropped and is projected to continue to drop like the state’s population due to decreasing birth rates compared to death rates in the state.
“No one is spared here,” DPI Assistant Superintendent for the Division of Government and Public Affairs Rich Judge said of the declining enrollment. “Private sector, public sector. They have all experienced a decline because there are fewer kids.”
Deputy State Superintendent.Tom McCarthy explained the changes will create a new baseline in school evaluations, though many of the numbers remain comparable to year’s past.
Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty Policy Director Will Flanders explained that the preliminary information on the new standards showed an 8-10% increase in proficiency without an actual increase in student performance in the state.
Flanders says DPI has consistently shown no transparency and instead misdirection and they don’t “hold chronically underperforming schools accountable.”
Quinton Klabon, Senior Research Director for the Institute for Reforming Government, said that he believes the new grades overinflate the scores for high-income and low-income schools while those schools in the middle are downgraded.
The three advocacy groups involved in Wednesday’s meeting said that they appreciated the increased transparency in this year’s standard changes but questioned the ultimate grading system, its toughness and its ability to accurately show how well schools are doing.
“We have just got to make this easier and more transparent for families,” said City Forward Collective Executive Director Colleston Morgan.
