By Ben Rodgers
Editor
ASHWAUBENON – The Ashwaubenon School District meets expectations, according to its recent district wide report card from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
The district scored a 72.1 out of 100, which is worth three out of five stars.
“I think that report cards are one of many assessments we use to see our students performing,” said Kurt Weyers, Ashwaubenon superintendent. “As I shared with our school board, it’s another snapshot, another picture of how we’re doing and areas for us to celebrate and areas for us to continue to work on.”
The district uses the Star assessment for all students at all grade levels.
With that it is able to track continued growth of a particular class over the years, as well as snapshot data like the DPI report cards.
The report cards also only track specific academic benchmarks, not things like class offerings and social/emotional learning.
“I think that we all need to be accountable to our stakeholders and we need to be accountable to the kids and the families we serve, and we hold ourselves accountable higher than any state can hold us,” Weyers said. “We should always do that, and we do that in a lot of different ways as I mentioned.”
Across Wisconsin, 83.7 percent of districts met or exceeded expectations, with 96.4 percent of the state’s public schools reaching that mark.
This is the third year that report cards used legislatively-mandated calculations to gauge district performance.
Report card ratings range from five stars, denoting schools and districts that significantly exceed expectations, to one star for those that fail to meet expectations.
Scores are calculated in four priority areas: student achievement, school growth, closing gaps between student groups, and measures of postsecondary readiness, which includes graduation and attendance rates, third-grade English language arts achievement, and eighth-grade mathematics achievement.
Student achievement is broken down to English and math achievement, school growth tracks English and math growth and closing gaps looks at English, math and graduation achievement gaps.
Ashwaubenon scored a 68 for student achievement, compared to the state average of 63.
It scored a 69.8 for district growth, compared to the state average of 66.
For closing gaps, the district notched a 62.9, compared to the state average of 67.9.
Finally, for on-track and postsecondary readiness, the district scored 88 compared to the state average of 85.
Pioneer Elementary and Valley View Elementary both exceeded expectations, while Ashwaubenon High School and and Park View Middle School both met expectations.
“Breaking that information down is critical to making progress, otherwise you can end up being data rich and information poor,” Weyers said.
In total 105, districts in Wisconsin achieved the three-star rating.
To view the report cards and a more detailed breakdown of each school, visit dpi.wi.gov/accountability/report-cards.