Four of the five school districts in Oconto County met or exceeded expectations of student achievement and engagement for 2012-13, as determined by the Department of Public Instruction.
The report cards give each school and district an accountability score, which places them in one of five categories, from fails to meet expectations to significantly exceeds expectations. This is the first year for district report cards and the second for school report cards.
Districts and schools are evaluated on four areas: student achievement on statewide assessments; student growth; closing gaps for reading, math and graduation; and college and career readiness.
Oconto Falls
Candi Lehto, assistant superintendent of the Oconto Falls School District, said she was ecstatic to see the district’s grade this year.
“It just validates what you know about the district anyway. We know it’s a great school district, and it’s nice to get that kind of validation that the whole state can see,” she said.
Lehto said school officials pay special attention to absenteeism and graduation rates, two of the categories considered in the ranking.
“We have alternative programs to make sure every kid has the opportunity to get a diploma and to succeed,” she said.
Another area of concern is math.
“We knew math was an issue last year and the year before so we took steps to make things happen differently,” she said.
Gillett
Gillett School Superintendent Todd Carlson said he’s pleased with the district’s overall rating, but knows it can improve. An emphasis on reading skills at the elementary and math at the middle school have led to positive student growth, Carlson said. As for the high school, strong ACT scores indicate students are excelling.
“(ACT scores) exceeded the state average in all of the areas, showing that the students going onto college are really prepared for that next step, which says a lot of the staff here at Gillett,” he said.
Carlson said the purpose of the report card is not to compare one school district to another, but to be a guide to self-improvement. One area to improve is student attendance, especially at the high school, he said.
Suring
“We’re not happy where we’re at, but we also know what we need to do,” School Superintendent Robert Ray said in response to Suring’s “meets few expectations” ranking. “We’re looking forward to next year and following years because we have a lot of new things in effect. It doesn’t happen overnight.”
The district has done extensive work on curriculum and staff development, he said, and expanded programs to monitor student performance.
The high school bettered its score by 10 points from its 2011-12 report card, but the elementary school’s overall score fell three points. Ray said scores on state tests may have contributed to the decline. With a small school like Suring—some grade levels have only 22 students—just one or two students scoring poorly can skew the results, he said.
Although he acknowledged math and reading scores at the elementary are “not where they need to be,” he said the district is headed in the right direction.
For the 2011-12 report card, the high school received a five-point reduction for absenteeism, but the school wasn’t penalized for 2012-13. Also at the high school, reading and math scores improved year over year.
Oconto
Improved attendance also helped Oconto High School, whose 2011-12 score was also cut five points for absenteeism. The school improved its overall score by nine points for 2012-13.
“Our scores are very high, especially at the high school, compared with how they were last year because of our teaching staff and the things they did to close the gap in students achievement,” School Superintendent Sara Croney said.
Lena
Schools in Lena fell short of maintaining last year’s ranking of exceeding expectations at every level and instead met expectations. School Supervisor Dave Honish said Lena’s small size affects the ratings. The school has an enrollment of about 370 students.
“Knowing that from one year to another we can move from exceeding expectation across the board to our current status demonstrates the volatility of the data in schools of our size. This was very evident based on the fact that our high school was not scored because the classes were not large enough to provide reliable data,” he said.
The focus of the staff will be to regain the exceeding expectations status, he said.
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