Thursday, November 7, 2019
Dear District Administrators, Choice Administrators,
In preparation for Tuesday’s public release of final Accountability Report Cards for 2018-19, updated secure preliminary report cards are now available in SAFE.
Please note that these report cards are secure. The secure report cards contain unredacted data, and should not be shared publicly, in any setting. The secure versions in SAFE are meant to be used by school and district staff to inform your local school improvement planning efforts, and to prepare your local message in advance of the public release. The most up-to-date report cards are time stamped for November 7, 2019. The public report cards will be released on November 12, accompanied by a DPI news release.
The updated report cards reflect any data changes resulting from an inquiry with the Office of Educational Accountability. Your score could have changed even if your school/district did not complete an inquiry with DPI. This is due to the fact that report cards include some normative measures, in which a school/district’s score is relative to the scores of all other schools/districts.
You will also find a ^ notation on a school/district’s overall score if that score changed ten or more points since last year. This is a cautionary note to the reader, highlighting the fact that it is unclear whether the amount of change in accountability scores is reflective of the actual amount of change in performance. As always, we encourage a close review of priority area scores and other supplemental data for every report card.
Finally, some schools and districts have an NA* for their Closing Gaps score, which indicates that their Closing Gaps score changed at least 20 points from last year and is not included in the overall score. These large score changes are often due to changes in student groups that impact the calculations more than changes in performance, and schools cannot control the size of different populations. The Office of Educational Accountability is working with an Accountability Advisory Group to design a new closing gaps measure for 2019-20 accountability. This year’s Closing Gaps score is displayed on the Closing Gaps supplemental reporting pages for all schools and districts.
In addition to the updated secure report cards, SAFE contains some resources we created to support you in the upcoming public release. These resources are also considered preliminary and we ask that you not share them prior to the public release.
- Summary statewide data for schools and districts
- Report card data download files for schools and districts
There are also publicly available resources to support your preparations.
- Sample parent letters, an interpretive guide and more technical walk-throughs of the report card calculations: https://dpi.wi.gov/accountability/resources
- Optional template for you to customize into a local report card, a place to provide additional information about accomplishments, opportunities, and outcomes in your school and district
As a final reminder, secure report card data is unredacted and should not be made publicly available.
DPI will issue a news release as part of Tuesday’s public release of 2018-19 report cards, to be available early on Tuesday morning. This will signal that the final report cards are posted.
If you have any questions, please contact the Office of Educational Accountability at 608-267-1072.