Wisconsin Muddies The Picture On K-12 Student Achievement

Damning national testing results earlier this year should spark a clarion call in state capitals, emboldening leaders to come clean with parents and take meaningful action that improves student learning.

But Wisconsin is running the other way, by lowering its state standards and “cut scores”—the minimum score needed to pass an assessment. The moves make it far more difficult for a parent to determine whether their child is succeeding and truly learning enough to advance to the next grade.

Parents simply aren’t being told the truth.

Colleston Morgan Jr., executive director of the Milwaukee-based City Forward Collective, an education non-profit, shed light on the impact of the most recent standards revision.

“Analyzing educational data should be a straightforward process that allows for clear year-over-year performance comparisons—and most years it is,” Morgan told me in an interview. “But the most recent changes to the Wisconsin Academic Standards and state assessment have both lowered the bar for what we expect from our students and muddied the picture of student outcomes and school performance across years.”

Wisconsin’s 2023-24 state test results show public school students have a proficiency rate of 52% in 4^th grade reading and 51% in 8^th grade math.

But the most recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) paint a less promising picture with 4^th grade reading at just 31% proficient and 8^th grade math at 37%. That’s a 21-point difference in reading and a 14-point difference in math between the state test and NAEP.

In a press release, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) discussed how a public survey influenced its decision on standards and cut scores. It stated, “Wisconsin students noted a decrease in feeling like they belonged at school. Less than half (45 percent) of students who got a “C” letter grade and just 24 percent of students who got a “D/F” said they felt like they belonged at school, survey data indicated. The updated performance level terms improve feelings of encouragement and motivation for all students, including those scoring lower on tests than their peers.”

For Morgan, that’s not justification. “Of course, we want our students to feel encouraged and motivated,” he told me. “But that doesn’t mean we lie to them and tell them that they’re more prepared than they really are. We must believe in them and work to provide them and the entire education system with the supports and resources they need to meet the challenge—the challenge that every other student will face across the country, not just here in Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, appears to agree. “I think we need to have as high standards as possible. I don’t think we should be lowering them,” he told reporters at a news conference. “It’s hard to compare year-to-year if one year you’re doing something completely different. I think it could have been handled better.”

Help might be on the way for Wisconsin, where a group of state lawmakers has introduced a bill to reinstate Wisconsin’s previous high academic standards and cut scores.

In a statement to the Wisconsin Examiner, bill co-author, Republican Sen. John Jagler accused DPI of making the decision to change the way the state measures academic standards in a nontransparent way.

“These changes were made behind closed doors in advance and revealed only when the test scores were announced,” Jagler said. “Not surprisingly, the massive uptick in artificial performance gains was confusing at best and misleading at worst. We also lost, because of these changes, the ability to compare performance from previous years.”

The bill is still pending in the Wisconsin legislature.

To be clear, raising standards and cut scores alone doesn’t guarantee student achievement.

States need high quality curriculum, strong teacher professional development, and supports for struggling students.

But the truth matters.

Whether they plan to go to college, enter a career or join the military, Wisconsin students should be held to national and global standards. If their proficiency scores at home don’t match what’s expected beyond high school, we’re setting them up for failure.