Upcoming School and District Report Card Secure Release

Dear District and Choice School Administrators,

Next week, Tuesday, October 5, DPI will release the secure preliminary versions of 2020-21 School and District Report Cards. As in prior years, the preliminary report cards will be released via SAFE, the Secure Access File Exchange. The School and District Report Cards are both preliminary and secure. As a secure report, they contain potentially identifiable student information, and have not been redacted. As such, and because the report cards are preliminary and subject to change, the secure reports and any information on the report cards may not be shared with your local media or with parents.

We plan to release public and final versions of the School and District Report Cards in late November, posted to the DPI website. The public versions will have redacted data and will be safe to share.

To prepare for next week’s secure release, I encourage you to do the following:

1. Get access to SAFE—and delegate or update access to the School and District Report Cards in SAFE—as soon as possible. Please visit and follow the steps on this page to access SAFE (http://dpi.wi.gov/wise/secure-home-info). If you have any questions about accessing SAFE, please contact the DPI help desk: https://dpi.wi.gov/wise/secure-home-info/asm-help-ticket.
2. Read the What’s New document for 2020-21. This document explains the following features of the 2020-21 report cards that have changed from the last report cards (2018-19):
   1. The report cards have been redesigned visually with more graphs and fewer tables to make them more appealing and user friendly.
   2. The Closing Gaps priority area of the report card has been replaced by the Target Group Outcomes priority area in order to make the measure more reliable, inclusive, and actionable.
   3. Schools and district report cards with grades 9-12 contain course participation information on postsecondary preparation and arts courses. The data are reported for informational purposes only (not scored).
3. Make use of the accountability resources we have available to help understand and explain the School and District Report Cards. Note that due to the pandemic, 2020-21 report cards will contain a statement on the front page encouraging the use of caution when interpreting 2020-21 scores and ratings. If you have questions about your school or district report card, or the data used for accountability, please contact the Office of Educational Accountability or your Accountability Trainer.

I will send another message to confirm when the preliminary report cards are available in SAFE. If you have any questions about this timeline, please contact the Office of Educational Accountability.

Sincerely,