6 takeaways from latest school report cards

In broad terms, there are two brackets of high schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system — ones that have admission standards for students and are doing reasonably well (or better), and ones that don’t have admission standards and have alarmingly low results.

How did my school do?

I assume that’s the main question parents, teachers and even students want to know when report cards about schools and school districts across Wisconsin are issued. That’s natural. Everyone connected to a school should take both interest in and ownership of how the school is doing.

The report cards issued by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction on Tuesday are not perfect, so much so that the DPI issued warnings about how much weight to put on results for some schools where things changed a lot from the prior year.

But overall, the report cards offer insights into the bigger picture of Wisconsin education. Let me offer six thoughts on that picture.

What are our expectations? I fear that, overall, we set them too low for many kids’ education.

Nonetheless, we’re doing a good job of meeting or exceeding expectations, as they’re defined for these reports.

More than 95% of the 420-plus school districts in Wisconsin got at least a three-star rating, also called “meets expectations.” The same was true for 82% of individual schools. You still want more three-star schools to move up to four- or five-star levels, where they “exceed expectations,” but, in general, the results offered some cheer.

What’s the income in your community? Tell me that and I can make a good guess on the report card for your schools. This is not new, and it just doesn’t change much, which is hugely important.

Overall, if you live in a higher-income school district, your schools are getting good report cards. And if you’re in a low-income community, the results are not so pretty.

But what about the exceptions? This is an important question. The new report cards give high marks to some schools where high percentages of the students are poor and either African-American or Hispanic. This was the second year that the report cards put a lot of weight on measures of how much students improved academically across a school year, wherever they started on the scale. So a school where low performing kids made a lot of progress got a pretty good report card.

Year after year, some schools with high percentages of poor and minority kids get results above what you might expect for their ZIP codes.

To give a specific example, last year, the four Milwaukee College Prep charter schools in the central city of Milwaukee each got remarkable, five-star ratings. This year, two of the schools weren’t given report cards for bureaucratic reasons (not the schools’ fault). But the other two once again were at the very top of the scores for all Milwaukee County schools. What are they doing right? Some school leaders and advocates are learning from the success of these schools. But many are not.

How about the sector comparisons? This was the first time most of the private schools in the state’s voucher programs were given full report cards. Just giving them report cards is progress.

In my book, you take public money, you provide public accountability, and we’re finally getting there with these schools.

Advocates for the private schools were quick to point to positives in the overall picture. Some voucher schools did very well. Will Flanders, a researcher for the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, crunched data and found that voucher and charter schools overall had higher growth rates than public schools.

Interesting, and if it continues in coming years, that will be important.

But some voucher schools got poor report cards. Overall, there were encouraging and discouraging outcomes for schools in each of the sectors — public, private and charter. No sector has a lock on excellence or failure. And all need to do better, no matter what their report cards.

Big news in Racine: Racine Unified School District moved up one notch from “fails to meet expectations,” the bottom bracket to the “meets few expectations” bracket. This means Racine won’t face the state’s Opportunity Schools law, which caused much aggravation in Milwaukee two years ago. And if the law had kicked in, it could have led to communities in the district outside the city of Racine breaking away. Racine Unified dodges a big issue.

Milwaukee’s high schools problem. In broad terms, there are two brackets of high schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system — ones that have admission standards for students and are doing reasonably well (or better), and ones that don’t have admission standards and have alarmingly low results.

The Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce made up a chart of every school in Milwaukee County that got a report card, ranked by their overall score. Of 335 schools, North Division was rated 333, Pulaski High 331, Washington 329, and Bradley Tech 328. Bay View and Hamilton tied for 326, South Division was 325, Vincent 324 and James Madison 320. Oy, vey. Has MPS got a big problem with these big high schools.

By the way, the MMAC is expected to make public soon an interactive online map that gives easy access to data and report cards for every school in Milwaukee County. I’ve sampled using it. It will be valuable, easy to use and just cool for anyone interested in a single school or the broader scene. Way easier to use than the DPI’s website.

The Journal Sentinel’s statewide, school by school database can be found on the Data on Demand tab at jsonline.com/watchdog.

Shakespeare wrote, “The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars.”

In the big picture, schools shouldn’t blame the report card system if they didn’t get all the stars they’d like. They should bear down on what it would take to earn more stars next time around.

Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.