Oshkosh Area School District 'met expectations' in annual student performance report cards
OSHKOSH ― Oshkosh’s schools have been given a passing grade again.
Despite recording another slight dip in scores, the Oshkosh Area School District still “met expectations” when Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released its annual student performance report cards last month.
The state accountability report for the 2022-2023 school year gave Oshkosh an overall score of 68.4, which represents a very miniscule falloff from last year’s 68.7 rating. That score was 69.9 in 2020-21.
It’s a report card given to all schools and districts measuring them on four key areas: student achievement, year-to-year knowledge growth, the performance of their lowest student percentile and their on track to graduate numbers.
Those first two areas, achievement and knowledge growth, are then graded in separate sections for English Language Arts and Mathematics.
Each district and school receives a weighted average from zero to 100 based on those scores, which determines if they fall in categories of “fails to meet expectations,” “meets few expectations,” “meets expectations,” “exceeds expectations” and “significantly exceeds expectations.”
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Accelerated Advanced Learning Program, Traeger Middle significantly exceeded expectations
Once again, two schools in the district — Accelerated Advanced Learning Program and Traeger Middle School — significantly exceeded expectations.
And Jefferson Elementary, Merrill Middle School and South Park Middle School managed to improve on last year’s two-star rating, moving from “meets few expectations” to “meets expectations.”
“We had a more specific focus of interventions on math and reading in those schools, so when we see this kind of movement, it is a testament to the growth made through strategic interventions,” said Oshkosh Area School District Assistant Superintendent of Instruction Dr. Sam Coleman.
“And we’re excited with [Accelerated Advanced Learning Program and Traeger Middle] because they continue to implement the practices that are producing favorable results," he added. "But we’re not kicking our feet up. We’re celebrating these results while still looking for ways to sustain this growth so we can keep moving forward.”
Overall, eight schools exceeded expectations, eight met them while three — Merrill Elementary, Roosevelt Elementary and Webster Stanley Middle — met few expectations.
That's an improvement from last school year, as five schools met few expectations in 2021-2022.
On average, the Oshkosh district recorded scores of 55.9 in Language Arts and 55.0 for Mathematics, falling behind the state averages for student achievement of 60.1 and 57.2, respectively.
But the district scored well above the state averages for growth in both Mathematics and Language Arts while also boasting of a higher “on track to graduate” number.
“I am excited that the hard work of our students, educators and administrators are recognized in these report cards because it is a testament to the growth the students are making in math and reading,” Coleman said.
“There was a very slight overall dip, but I don’t think that is an indicator we need to be alarmed," he added. "We’re taking these changes in scores seriously and we’re using this information to refine our strategic goals, but we also know the current results don’t reflect our true potential.”
Considering multiple years of data were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, the Department of Instruction did advise using caution when trying to interpret these scores.
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Other districts either met or exceeded expectations
The neighboring districts of Neenah (72.9), Omro (70.6) and Winneconne (78.1) all “exceeded expectations” with their overall scores while Menasha (66.9) “met expectations.”
Five Neenah schools — Alliance Charter Elementary, Clayton Elementary, Lakeview Elementary, Roosevelt Elementary and Tullar Elementary — “significantly exceeded expectations.”
Of the five districts, Winneconne posted the best overall scores in achievement in Language Arts (78.4) and Mathematics (84.1) and graduation numbers (98.8).
Contact Justin Marville at jmarville@gannett.com.
This article originally appeared on Oshkosh Northwestern: Oshkosh schools meet expectations in Wisconsin DPI report cards
