How did MPS do on the state report card it received from the Department of

Milwaukee Public Schools’ has “met expectations” on its 2023-24 state report card, according to data released by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction on Tuesday.

The DPI gave MPS an overall accountability score of 58.2 on a scale of 100, slightly higher than the district’s 2022-23 overall accountability score of 58.0. The 2022-23 rating also put MPS in the “meets expectations” category.

The DPI’s state report card measures how school districts and schools across Wisconsin performed during a given year, beyond just the results of state standardized testing. In evaluating school districts and schools, the DPI looks at outcomes in the areas of achievement, growth, target group outcomes and on-track to graduation.

Achievement looks at how students’ knowledge and skills compare to state and national standards that includes a composite of English language arts and math performance on state standardized tests.

Growth measures student performance in English language arts and math over time.

Target group outcomes focus on students with the lowest test scores in their school and outcomes “are displayed for achievement, growth, chronic absenteeism and attendance or graduation rate.”

On-track to graduation shows how students are doing in meeting goals that predict success after high school, including attendance and graduation rates.

Using those priority areas, the DPI gives each school and school district an overall accountability score that classifies them into one of five ratings: “significantly exceeds expectations;” “exceeds expectations;” “meets expectations;” “meets few expectations” and “fails to meet expectations.”

“When I look at us being fairly in line with where we are last year, I think that’s a positive thing because the achievement and growth areas are using last year’s data and the year prior, so we’ve got a similar story going there that we didn’t dip down, if you will,” MPS director of research, assessment and data Natalie Collins told the Journal Sentinel in a phone interview.

For the 2023-24 report card, the DPI used data from the 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years. The DPI adjusted its state standardized testing cut scores to better align with state academic standards that were updated last summer. It implemented a one-year scale adjustment to achievement scoring to allow for better comparability of report cards, according to a DPI news release.

What were the highest- and lowest-performing MPS schools on state report cards?

The highest-performing MPS schools in 2023-24, both receiving ratings of “significantly exceeds expectations,” are Whittier Elementary School and Reagan College Preparatory High School. Whittier, a 3-year-old kindergarten through fifth grade school, received an overall accountability score of 89. Reagan received an overall accountability score of 84.9.

Twenty-two MPS schools received “exceeds expectations” ratings, while 42 MPS schools received “meets expectations” ratings in 2023-24. In 2022-23, 23 MPS schools received “exceeds expectations” ratings, while 44 MPS schools received “meets expectations” ratings.

On the lower-performing end of the scale, 43 MPS schools received “meets few expectations” ratings, and 35 MPS schools received “fails to meet expectations” ratings in 2023-24. In 2022-23, 50 MPS schools received “meets few expectations” ratings and 23 schools received “fails to meet expectations” ratings.

Examples of the lowest performing schools in 2023-24 were Assata and Shalom high schools, which both received “fails to meet expectations” ratings.

What trends did MPS experience from 2022-23 to 2023-24?

In 2023-24, MPS’ growth score was 67.0, an increase from its 2022-23 growth score of 65.1. The district showed growth in English language arts from 69.8 in 2022-23 to 71.7 in 2023-24 and in math from 60.3 in 2022-23 to 62.2 in 2023-24.

The district’s growth score was the same or higher than 65.3% of K-12 districts statewide.

“In the growth area, what we’re really proud to see is that in English language arts, the growth of the district beat other K-12 districts across the state, so we’re growing our students more than other K-12 districts in the state, so that was a pretty good thing to see,” Collins said.

However, Collins said the district has work to do in achievement. MPS’ achievement score was 27.8 in both the 20223-24 and 2022-23 school years.

“Growing students is a great thing, but we’ve got to get them growing and getting them to grade level so that they’re also succeeding in the achievement area,” Collins said.

In 2023-24, MPS’ target group outcomes score was 53.3, a slight decrease from the district’s 53.9 score in 2022-23.

In 2023-24, MPS’ on-track to graduation score was 53.4, an almost two point decrease from its 2022-23 score of 55.3.

“I think attendance still continues to be a concern where we’ve got attendance efforts that are happening in the district to make sure that parents and students understand the importance of being at school to get the learning to be growing and achieving,” Collins said.

More: Anxiety, illness, missing the bus: all can lead to chronic absenteeism. What can Wisconsin schools do to get students back in class?

“The biggest part of that score in on-track to graduation score that seems to have impacted this year’s scores, the absenteeism, which is something that we work through with our school improvement plans, culture climate and our attendance initiatives across the district as well,” Collins added.

Collins said those efforts have included social-emotional learning to make students feel welcome at school; training staff to help them make connections with students and even ensure accurate attendance-taking.

“There’s a lot of work that we do across a lot of different departments and data accuracy because if we don’t have accurate attendance, we don’t know if that number is correct to be able to act on, so that’s a big part of it, too, but a lot with welcoming school environments and staff building relationships with students,” Collins said.

Contact Alec Johnson at (262) 875-9469 or alec.johnson@jrn.com. Follow him on Twitter at @AlecJohnson12.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: How did MPS do on its state report card?

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