Major changes to school report card proposed, including closing poorly performing schools; Teachers union official calls bill 'armageddon'

Erin Richards:

Starting in 2015'16, every school that receives taxpayer money would receive an A-F rating based on their performance in the following areas:

Achievement on state tests.

Achievement growth on state tests, based on a statistical analysis called value-added that estimates the impact schools and teachers have on student progress.

The progress in closing achievement gaps between white students and subgroups of students who are poor, of minority races or who have disabilities.

Graduation and attendance rate status and improvement.

The current school report card system went into effect two years ago and took the place of the widely disliked sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Gov. Scott Walker once pushed for using A through F grades, but a task force on school accountability had opted for a five-tiered system placing schools in categories from "significantly exceeds expectations" to "fails to meet expectations."

The 2012-'13 report cards placed 58 schools statewide into the "fails" category. That included 49 in MPS -- one is closed, so now there's 48 -- two independent charter schools authorized by the City of Milwaukee, four public schools in Racine and three public schools in Green Bay.

Wisconsin's lowest-performing public schools would be forced to close or reopen as charter schools and the state's 2-year-old accountability report card would be revamped under a bill unveiled Monday.

The proposal also would require testing for taxpayer-subsidized students at private voucher schools while barring the lowest-performing schools from enrolling new voucher students. Participating private schools also could test all students for accountability purposes.

"We're going to start holding anybody who gets public money accountable for getting results. That is the bottom line," said Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, which plans to vote on the amended bill Thursday.

The bill makes several changes to the state's K-12 school accountability system -- including assigning schools letter grades -- which itself recently replaced a decade-old system under the federal No Child Left Behind law.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at January 29, 2014 12:21 AM
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