WISCONSIN — The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) published its annual school district and school accountability report cards for the 2023-2024 school year on Tuesday, Nov. 19. 

Wisconsin schools and school districts are put into five categories, ranging from “significantly exceeding expectations” down to “fails to meet expectations.”

DPI said the 2023-2024 report card rating distributions were similar to what they were for 2022-2023. However, there were some changes to how standards were measured.

DPI officials said over the past few years, the department has worked with teachers around Wisconsin to revise academic standards for English language arts and math. This year, the assessment test that students took was updated. This means that testing and the subsequent results are different compared to how students have been evaluated in the past.

“This year, we had the opportunity to update the assessments, because we typically like to wait a few years before we make the changes to the assessments after the new standards have been put into place. So we developed new test blueprints, new test designs for both assessments and as a result, then we decided to do a standard study for both assessments,” Duane Dorn, office of educational accountability consultant with DPI, said.

Three years’ worth of achievement data are used to measure achievement for both individual schools and school districts. DPI is using a “one-year scale adjustment” of its data in order to make things more comparable for Wisconsinites looking to understand how school achievement compares to previous years.

According to this year’s DPI data, 353 of the state’s 377 school districts that were measured, either met expectations, exceeded expectations or significantly exceeded expectations — that’s 94% of school districts in Wisconsin.

When comparing 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 data, 29 districts increased by at least one rating category, while 24 decreased by at least one rating category. Meanwhile, 324 school districts did not see any changes in their ratings.

According to this year’s DPI data, 1,622 of the state’s 1,939 public schools that were measured, either met expectations, exceeded expectations or significantly exceeded expectations — that’s 84% of public schools in Wisconsin.

When comparing 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 data, 249 schools increased by at least one rating category, while 212 decreased by at least one rating category. Meanwhile, 1,461 schools did not see any changes in their ratings.

DPI said 153 public schools were not able to be scored. They were rated using an alternate accountability method.

According to this year’s DPI data, 418 schools in Wisconsin participated in the private school choice program during the 2023-2024 school year. DPI said 240 schools were not measurable — that’s 57% of schools in the private school choice program. DPI said this is because the “tested choice student population [was] too small to meet the conditions required to produce report cards, either because of low test participation rates, or total choice student population size.”

When looking at measurable private school choice schools’ report cards, 152 either met expectations, exceeded expectations or significantly exceeded expectations — that’s 85% of schools measured. Of the schools that were measured, 29 increased by at least one rating category, while 16 decreased by at least one rating category. Meanwhile, 119 schools did not see any changes in their ratings.

Report card data does not solely rely on student test scores. It also factors in other data points such as attendance, graduation readiness and student academic growth.

Read district report card data from DPI, here.