Clay Lamberton Report Card

School and District Report Cards - State Accountability

At the foundation of Wisconsin’s state accountability system are the school and district report cards, which annually report on the performance of all public schools and districts, including charter schools, and private schools participating in a parental choice program. 

Beginning in 2011-12, a comprehensive accountability index replaced the Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) system. The index approach uses multiple measures and classifies schools along a rating continuum. The ratings determine the level of support a school receives, ranging from rewards and recognition for high-performing schools to state intervention for the lowest-performing schools in the state. Accountability scores, ratings, and a 5-star rating system (as of the 2015-16 report cards) are reported annually in the report cards.

School and district report cards include outcomes in four priority areas:

1. Achievement measures the level of knowledge and skills among students in the school, compared to state and national standards. It includes a composite of reading and mathematics performance by the “all students” group in the Wisconsin Student Assessment System (WSAS) for all tested grades in the school.
2. Growth describes how much student knowledge of reading and mathematics in the school changes from year to year. It uses a point system that gives positive credit for students progressing toward higher performance levels, and negative credit for students declining below proficiency. This area focuses not on attainment, but the pace of improvement in student performance, no matter where students begin. All improvement is treated as a positive. Schools with high performance and little room to grow are not penalized.
3. Target Group Outcomes demonstrates outcomes for students with the lowest test scores in their school - the Target Group. Outcomes are displayed for achievement, growth, chronic absenteeism, and attendance or graduation rate.
4. On-Track to Graduation indicates the success of students in the school in achieving educational milestones that predict postsecondary success. It includes chronic-absenteeism and the graduation rate for schools that graduate students, or the attendance rate for other schools. It also includes measures of third-grade reading and eighth-grade mathematics achievement, as applicable to the school.

 The resulting overall accountability score from the priority areas will determine the accountability rating a school receives:

Wisconsin state report cards also contain data that are not factored into report card scoring, but are reported for context or additional information about schools and districts. This includes the following data:

• Test participation - supplemental information about student participation in the most recent state assessments. Shows a school/district’s recent ELA and mathematics participation alongside statewide participation, allowing for comparisons to state averages.
• Student group level reporting - performance data broken down by student group, including race/ethnicity and service provision (economically disadvantaged, English learners, and/or students with disabilities), contained in supplementary pages of the report cards. This disaggregation allows educators to assess the impact of student outcomes on overall performance and identify groups of students who are in need of support or are demonstrating progress.