(The Center Square) – A new report says Wisconsin’s public school bureaucrats have been warning for nearly a year the state’s new test scores will make some schools look much better than they really are.
The Institute for Reforming Government poured over more than a year’s worth of open records and email requests between State Superintendent Jill Underly and her staffers at the Department of Public Instruction.
Those emails and documents show Underly pushed to change Wisconsin’s test scores so schools in the state look better compared to schools in other states, despite warnings from DPI that changing the scores – but not improving reading or math skills – would only widen Wisconsin’s achievement gaps.
“Our analysis projects that student groups who have been traditionally underserved will see smaller gains in proficiency rates as compared to more advantaged groups, widening the gaps between them,” an email to Underly from the Office of Educational Accountability in April of this year stated.
Specifically, DPI staff warned the test scores will drop for low-income students, black students and disabled students.
IRG’s Jake Curtis said the emails and internal reports paint a picture that Undelry is hurting Wisconsin students to boost the state’s national profile.
“Putting students first means improving their schools, not juicing the numbers for the suburbs. Instead, Superintendent Underly has inflated test scores, made disadvantaged students look bad, and dismissed literacy work as ‘nonsense’,” Curtis said.
A handful of the emails that IRG obtained do show Underly not only questioning Wisconsin’s recent literacy changes but show that she didn’t understand what would happen if she changed the standards for Wisconsin’s standardized tests.
“The crummy thing is, I am an educator and I don’t understand it – so how are parents supposed to understand this too? If we could set the standards and the cut scores, but then have some kind of way to interpret it to parents and educators as a companion, that would be great,” Underly wrote in an email in June of last year. “For example, what does Proficient mean vs. Advanced? That they are at grade level vs. the next grade level? I just hate this stuff so much.”
Underly’s ordered changes include both changing the standards and the cut scores. She also ordered DPI to change the language that will be used to explain the test results. The biggest change there is that students who do the worst on the test will no longer be labeled as Below Basic but will instead be labeled as Developing. What was Basic in the past will now be Approaching.
IRG points out in the report that changing that language, in addition to the standards and cut scores, means that parents will not be able to compare this year’s test scores to any of their student’s scores from the past.
