I invite you to read the WI DPI State Report Card for your local high school and you also may learn two contradictory facts. I use my local high school’s 2022 school report card for this purpose.
- 65% of the students in the high school are proficient in reading and 25% are proficient in math, and
- the DPI says this school’s achievement significantly exceeds the state’s expectations for high school reading and math.
Based on the DPI labeling Niche claims these achievement scores rank the school 83rd out of 496 high schools in the state and US News and World Report banners on the school walls recognizing this as a school of excellence.
https://apps2.dpi.wi.gov/reportcards/home
https://www.niche.com/k12/d/gibraltar-area-school-district-wi/
https://www.usnews.com/education/k12/wisconsin/districts/gibraltar-area-school-district-103996
What Should We Know
There should be a head scratch arising when we assign excellence to a school where 35% of students are not proficient in reading and 75% of students are not proficient in math, especially the math statistic. How would we interpret these school results if the headline on the report read “One of every three students lack proficiency in reading and three of every four students lack proficiency in math”? This is more than seeing our world as a glass half full as compared to a glass half empty. 35% of high school students not proficient in reading and 75% not proficient in math is not good news and is not excellent. Not!
Perhaps our understanding of schooling excellence is like Billy Bean’s answer to Peter Brand after disconnecting his phone call with another team’s general manager in the movie “Money Ball” – “when you get the answer you want, hang up (the phone)”. Such thinking tells us “Don’t argue with US News and World Report when they say your school is excellent or with the Department of Public Instruction when they say you significantly exceed Wisconsin’s expectations”. However, what do we say to the too many students who are not proficient? Your school did well even if you did not.
Using labels to describe how well schools cause children to learn is political appeasement. In general, everyone wants to feel good about their local school. Parents don’t want to think badly of the place they send their children to be cared for and educated. Secondly, like parents, taxpayers don’t want to think badly about the schools their taxes support. Sadly, property taxes in support of schools are generally higher in many of our districts where achievement is lowest. Thirdly, political leaders know they have little power to change educational outcomes at the local school level, so they create labeling that does not rock their political boat. For these three reasons, we are given inflated words in our annual school report cards that often do not align with statistical truths.
The bar for school excellence is a low bar. Few want to tear the scab from the historic dilemma faced when school report card data is disaggregated by the socio-economic characteristics of schools in our state. It is a fact that students in urban schools with neighborhoods of poverty, high numbers of children of color, and children with significant educational challenges generally fare poorly on academic state report card measures. As a result, the bar for school excellence in our state is set very low so as to not exclude all such schools and the bar is obfuscated by including measures of annual growth from preceding school report cards. We applaud upward changes in annual tests even though the measures may never achieve proficiency.
What Needs Doing
As a mentor would tell me years ago when we faced a difficult task, “Let’s pull up our socks and get about doing better”. When we stop labeling and address the data, the work before us changes immensely.
- Label the data as if we were grading a student’s daily academic assignment. Use a generally accepted grading scale. Why grade schools differently than we grade our children’s schoolwork? Soft sellers will tell us that there are many other variables to consider when evaluating the success of a school, but do they also use those variables when grading a student’s daily assignments? No. So, use a grading scale even children will understand.
| A+ | 97 – 100 |
| A | 93-96 |
| A- | 90-92 |
| B+ | 87-89 |
| B | 83-86 |
| B- | 80-82 |
| C+ | 77-79 |
| C | 73-76 |
| C- | 70-72 |
| D+ | 67-69 |
| D | 65-66 |
| E/F | Below 65 |
Using the College Board’s grading scale, our local high school would receive a D grade for reading proficiency and an F grade for math proficiency.
- Urgency attaches to how we label the quality of our work. The current rating of “exceeds expectations” conveys very little urgency, even though 35% of students are not proficient in reading and 75% are not proficient in math. From our students’ perspective, there is immense urgency. And if we graded our work accurately, grades of D in reading and F in math would indeed be urgent. In fact, there may be hell to pay for such results. The use of current labeling blinds us to real urgencies.
- Instructional analysis and change follow how we label our schools. Analysis is short-lived when a school is labeled as excellent. The general conclusion is “if we are excellent, little needs to be changed”. And that is the case in most schools taking comfort in the current DPI labeling. However, if we base our analysis on a grading of our schools, how we instruct children in reading and math is in for extreme rethinking. A reading program that results in 35% of students being non-proficient and a math program that results in 75% of students being non-proficient are not acceptable reading and math instructional programs. Instruction needs to change.
If we continue to teach children in our elementary school the same way we taught our current high school students when they were elementary students, that instruction will cause similar statistical results. The changes needed are K-12 not in the high school alone.
The requirement for honesty in reporting school data is essential because we use the data as our perception of education in our schools. Words like “succeeds expectations” and “excellence” cause a warmth of pride followed by complacency. When schools are told they are good, they smile and relax. When told they are not good, they frown and are prodded to do better.
The Big Duh!
What a difference it would make if a school’s banner read “Grade A School: More than 93% of students are proficient in reading and in math”. That truly would be a school of excellence that significantly meets expectations.
More importantly, what a difference it would make for the children of the school who would be proficient in reading and in math.
We need to pull up our socks and get about the work of being better.