State Report Card

WI DPI Accountability School Report Card

The State of Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction uses a comprehensive accountability index system to share information with the public about Wisconsin’s schools. Accountability determinations (the index score and rating) are reported annually in the School Report Card.  For more information about State Report Cards, please visit Wisconsin DPI’s Accountability page.

2023-24 State School Report Card Information*

2022-23 State School Report Card Information

2021-22 State School Report Card Information

2020-21 State School Report Card Information

2019-20 State School Report Card Information

No report cards were issued due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

2019 State School Report Card Information

Four Priority Areas for Accountability

Achievement: The purpose of this priority area is to show how the knowledge and skills of students in the district or school compares to state academic standards. This priority area summarizes English language arts (ELA) and mathematics performance for all students in grades 3 through 11. This includes students taking the Forward, ACT Aspire/Pre-ACT Secure, ACT with writing, and DLM exams in the Wisconsin Student Assessment System (WSAS). The score is based on how student outcomes distribute across the four WSAS performance levels (advanced, meeting, approaching, developing), and it takes up to three years of test data into account. 

Growth: The purpose of this priority area is to give schools and districts a single measure that summarizes how rapidly their students are gaining knowledge and skills from year to year. In contrast to Achievement, which is based on the levels of performance students attain in a given year, the Growth priority area measures changes in students’ performance over time. In particular, this priority area focuses on the pace of improvement in students’ performance in a school or district compared to the growth of similar students across the state. This priority area rewards schools and districts for helping students improve performance, regardless of a student’s prior achievement, by measuring student progress across assessments over time.

Target Group Outcomes: Target Group Outcomes is a priority area that examines multiple measures for students in the bottom quartile (25%) of performance based on the prior year’s test results, along with any students who scored less than proficient on the prior year’s DLM alternate assessment. This priority area is designed to inform improvement efforts, resulting in positive change for learners who most need it while also improving outcomes for all students. It replaced the “Closing Gaps” priority area. The target group is determined by prior performance rather than demographic association. It is roughly the bottom quartile of performers using the prior year’s state assessment results,

On-Track to Graduation:  The purpose of this priority area is to indicate of how successful students are at achieving educational milestones that lead to postsecondary readiness. This priority area has three components. The first component is chronic absenteeism: 100 minus the rate of students who are chronically absent. The second is either a graduation rate—for schools that graduate students (i.e., high schools)—or an attendance rate for schools with no 12th grade or whose graduation cohort has fewer than 20 students. Chronic absenteeism, graduation, and attendance data are lagged by one year due to the timing of when the data become available for use. The final component is third grade ELA achievement, eighth grade mathematics achievement, or a combination of the two, depending on grade configuration and data availability. The scores for these components are included in a weighted average used to produce the On-Track to Graduation score. Scores for schools without a third or eighth grade will be based solely on chronic absenteeism and attendance or graduation.

*Information from DPI Regarding the 2023-24 Report Cards

This information is specific to the 2023-24 school and district report cards, which were released November 19, 2024.

Please use caution when interpreting scores and ratings. Careful review of the detailed data on all pages is encouraged. Multiple years of data are used throughout the report card in most of the priority area scores:

• • • Achievement and Growth require two years of data (2023-24 and 2022-23 required) and may use up to three years of data (including 2021-22).
    • The graduation, attendance, and absenteeism components in On-Track to Graduation use lagged data (from 2022-23) and absenteeism scores may use up to three years of data (including 2021-22 and 2020-21).
    • Target Group Outcomes follows the same rules as the Achievement, Growth, and On-Track to Graduation priority areas including lagged data as well as multiple years of data.

Note that the scoring of achievement on the 2023-24 report cards has been modified to allow for comparability and stability in the system. Achievement scores refer to the Achievement priority area (both ELA and Math scores), the Target Group Outcomes Achievement component (both ELA and Math scores); and the 3rd grade ELA and 8th grade Math component scores of On-Track to Graduation.

More information is available through the DPI at their “What’s New” and other report card resources on their website to learn more about this one year change.

Please see the Report Card Weighting Calculator to learn more about how priority areas are re-weighted when data for a particular priority area are not available.