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MADISON – More than half of Milwaukee schools met few or no state academic goals during the last school year, new state data shows.

The state’s largest school district — which has a student body living in poverty at a rate much higher than higher-performing districts — is again rated by the state Department of Public Instruction as meeting few standards while the vast majority of schools across the state are meeting or exceeding those goals.

Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Keith Posley in a statement touted the district’s growth over the last school year, despite the overall rating.

“We are proud of the hard work of our students, staff and families as we strive to improve outcomes for all our students and all our schools,” Posley said. “We are dedicated to making sure every child in Milwaukee Public Schools has the opportunity for success.”

Posley noted 34 MPS schools improved in at least one category over their performance in the 2016-’17 school year, and that nearly half the district’s schools have higher scores than last year.

The state ratings are assigned by analyzing data related to academics, attendance and graduation rates from the 2017-’18 school year and reported through DPI’s state report card system, which assigns five-star ratings to public schools and private voucher schools.

Nearly 84 percent of the state’s public and private voucher schools are meeting or exceeding expectations, according to the new data, but Milwaukee and other large districts with high concentrations of students living in low-income households continue to flounder in state ratings. “If a school or district has greater numbers of students who experience poverty it is more likely that their score is lower,” Laura Pinsonneault, director of DPI’s Office of Educational Accountability, said Monday. “That is the reality that exists.”

The new state data again shows there is a strong relationship between school performance and the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a school. And urban districts in Wisconsin tend to have higher percentages of economically disadvantaged students.

For example, statewide, in schools that significantly exceeded expectations roughly 25 percent of students were considered economically disadvantaged. In schools that failed to meet expectations, the figure was three times higher — 78.4 percent.

That rings true in Milwaukee, where the schools with the highest ratings have the lowest percentages of students living in poverty.

Even so, the rates of economically disadvantaged students in high-performing Milwaukee schools aren’t low relative to many other similarly rated schools in wealthier areas of Wisconsin: More than 75 percent of students in the 34 Milwaukee schools rated as exceeding or significantly exceeding expectations are living in poverty.

In schools that failed to meet expectations, that figure was 92 percent.

DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said the report card formula values growth in student learning over time much more than student test scores in schools and districts with high rates of poverty because of the effect poverty can have on students’ attendance, ability to learn and stay nourished, among other things.

An unstable home life also can result in students missing more school, and more than half of Milwaukee schools were penalized because students were missing too much school.

Rising absenteeism statewide

DPI officials said Monday that educators are seeing a rise in absenteeism in wealthier school districts outside urban areas, too.

Wisconsin schools are dinged on their overall report card rating when absentee rates surpass 13 percent and dropout rates are above 6 percent.

Statewide, the number of schools losing points for high levels of absenteeism increased from 102 to 124 from 2016-’17 to 2017-’18, — a 21.5 percent increase.

More schools in MPS got points deducted for absenteeism this year than last, but the report cards show schools in more rural districts like Ashland, Crandon and Wabeno were also penalized.

DPI officials said three school districts and 124 schools lost five points from their overall report card rating because of student absences. Milwaukee accounted for 83 of schools that received the deductions. That’s up from the 2016-’17 school year, when 74 schools received penalties for too many absent students.

Thirteen schools were private schools taking part in the state’s choice program.

The long-term effects of perpetual absenteeism can be dire, some research shows. Children who are chronically absent from the first three grades of school are much less likely to read at grade level by the time they are in third grade, and students who cannot read at grade level by that age are four times more likely to drop out of high school than students who can, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s 2016 report on chronic absenteeism.

And dropping out of high school has been linked to living in poverty, poor health and the likelihood of committing crimes.

But it’s unclear what effect missing fewer than 20 days of school in one year has on a student in the long run.

Statewide, 96 percent of public school districts met or exceeded expectations during the 2017-’18 school year.

Of the 281 private schools statewide accepting voucher students, 159 did not have enough data for DPI to calculate a report card score.

Of those schools that did have enough data for the agency to calculate a score, about 70 percent met or exceeded expectations.