Are Wisconsin students really doing better? Or does it just look that way?
“Instead of focusing on declining academic achievement in Wisconsin, the Department of Public Instruction is working to hide the problem,” wrote Will Flanders, research director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a conservative law firm and think tank. “Unfortunately, changing standards for political correctness and to avoid accountability will hurt students today, tomorrow and long into the future.”
Has the actual achievement of students improved much, if at all? That’s a different question that can’t be answered yet.
But Wisconsin’s measuring stick for student performance has been changed. And the categories for student performance have been renamed in, shall we say, kinder, gentler ways.
Results from the state’s round of standardized tests — administered in the spring and known as the Forward tests for third- through eighth-graders and the ACT and PreACT Secure tests for high school students — have been distributed to school districts and schools and, in some places, to families. The overall results will not be made public until sometime this fall. But Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction leaders have released enough information to make clear that significant changes have been made in the accountability system.
The changes — especially in where the bars are set for categorizing students’ performance — will make it difficult, at best, to compare this year’s results to prior years for the large majority of students in Wisconsin, including large numbers of private school students who take part in one of the state’s four school voucher programs.
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“Instead of focusing on declining academic achievement in Wisconsin, the Department of Public Instruction is working to hide the problem,” wrote Will Flanders, research director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a conservative law firm and think tank. “Unfortunately, changing standards for political correctness and to avoid accountability will hurt students today, tomorrow and long into the future.”
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More.
Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending.
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
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2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
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“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
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