Members of the Gillett School Board got a detailed report Dec. 19 on the district’s annual report card from the state Department of Public Instruction, including the contrasting performances of the middle and high schools.
While Gillett Middle School — sixth through eighth grades — got a high enough score to be rated as exceeding expectations, Gillett High School — ninth through 12th grade — scored so low as to get a “fails to meet expectations” rating.
Administrators said the discrepancy was partially a result of the way achievement test scores are weighted against other factors in calculating the final score.
The DPI report cards were based on four areas: achievement, growth, target group outcomes and being on-track to graduation, with achievement data for the past three years assessed to determine a school’s overall score.
The overall district score of 58.8 meets expectations; Gillett Elementary School at 67.2 also meets expectations; Gillett Middle School’s 73.1 exceeds expectations; and at 40.0, Gillett High School fails to meet expectations
The administrators highlighted Gillett students’ performances in the statewide standardized achievement tests, which are close to or higher than the state average.
“When you look at how the overall score is calculated, you’ll see that less than 10% of that 58.8 score actually comes from the achievement of our students,” Superintendent Nathan Hanson said. “The rest of it comes from other areas that they’ve targeted. I would contend that achievement’s a pretty important thing. Unfortunately, it’s only 10% of our overall score.”
Elementary principal Curt Angeli explained that the weight given to achievement is based on poverty levels measured by the number of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches. Achievement might be 30% or 40% of wealthier school districts’ scores. In poorer school districts, student growth is given more weight.
“So if I am, say, in a wealthy suburb of Milwaukee, where we have hardly any free or reduced, everything that they do is based on achievement,” Angeli said, “because when you are a high-achieving school, it is very difficult to grow when you’re already in the 90th to 99th percentile.”
Emphasizing growth over achievement scores gives poor, inner-city urban schools a chance to improve their overall rating, but the sliding formula penalizes a rural school district that has both high poverty and high achievement scores like Gillett, he said.
“If you’re a high poverty school and you have low achievement, which is generally what (the DPI model) expects, it works for you. If maybe you’re a higher achieving school with low poverty — say, like Abrams — this may work out for you,” Angeli said. “But for a lot of us, if we’re high achieving, then we have bad poverty, we’re not rewarded for the achievement that we have.”
Angeli said he has always cared most about student achievement and is proud to see Gillett elementary students significantly above state average in achievement.
Secondary principal Shawn Limberg, who oversees both the middle and high schools, noted that Gillett Middle School is again listed among U.S. News and World Report’s Best Middle Schools.
Of the 27 high schools in the CESA 8 region, Gillett is ranked sixth or seventh in achievement test scores, but Limberg acknowledged its growth rates are among the worst in the state.
Part of the problem may be in the transition from middle to high school, he said.
“We’re coming off of a middle school that has high achievement, high growth … and you make the transition to high school, which has the pre-ACT and the ACT test, which are very different tests than the Forward (Exam given to middle school students),” he said.
The school needs to do a better job of instilling a sense of the importance of and “the ‘why’ behind” the high school level tests, Limberg said.
School board member Jamie Heroux said the achievement scores are noteworthy, but the high school’s growth score is not acceptable.
“Saying that because we’re high achieving at the middle school, students can’t grow at the high school, I think you need to figure out what level they’re at as they’re leaving middle school and they need to grow from there,” Heroux said. “As much as you guys are on achievement, I’m on growth, and I think this plummet we have from the middle school to the high school at some point has to get looked at.”
Hansen said he agrees that growth must be addressed but added he feels the weighting system needs to be more fair.
“To say that we failed to meet expectations when our achievement scores are as high as they are, especially compared to some districts that are schools that even exceed expectations and have those lower academics, I don’t know that it’s a fair system,” Hansen said.
Heroux agreed about the way the scores are figured but repeated that the report shows student growth is an area of need.
wbluhm@newmedia-wi.com
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