WKCE - The Flipside of the Coin

Traditionally --religiously, in fact-- people focus on the bright side of the WKCE results, i.e., that percentage of students scoring as either "Proficient" or "Advanced" for a particular subject area. If we're truly concerned about education for every child, however, shouldn't we be taking a walk along the dark side of WKCE? That is, that percentage of students scored as only "Minimally Proficient"?

According to WKCE materials, "Minimal" is described as:
Limited achievement in the content area. Test score shows evidence of major misconceptions or gaps in knowledge and skills tested in the academic content area.

" Minimal Performance: Demonstrates very limited academic knowledge and skills tested on WKCE at that grade level. "
--- http://dpi.wi.gov/oea/pdreading.html

Rose-colored lenses definition
Demonstrates an emerging understanding of the academic content and skills tested on
the WKCE at that grade level.
-- http://dpi.wi.gov/oea/pdf/stprntbrochure.pdf

As a community, however, we need to be concerned not only with the numbers of kids scoring as "Proficient or Advanced", but also those scoring as only "Minimally" Proficient. For these are the kids most at risk. These numbers tell us both the strength of our district in terms of how well we are preparing kids, or how great a challenge we have ahead of us. Since these are numbers for grade 10, we have 2 more years to cultivate these young seedlings.

So...as Jeff Probst woulds say, "Let's get to it".
What follows is a series of 4 tables:

(1) How Sun Prairie ranks against other Dane County districts in terms of PERCENT of kids scoring minimally proficient,

(2)How Sun Prairie ranks against other similar-sized districts in terms of PERCENT of kids scoring minimally proficient,

Then we turn the heat up a notch:

3) How Sun Prairie ranks against other Dane County districts in terms of NUMBER of kids scoring minimally proficent,

(4) How Sun Prairie ranks against other similar-sized districts in terms of NUMBER of kids scoring minimally proficient.

Here we see that SPASD ranks 4th among the 16 Dane County districts in terms of percent of kids scoring only minimally proficient on the WKCE (grade 10, average of all 5 subject areas).

Then you look at the class sizes and say..."Jeez...some of those are pretty small". So, this time, we look at how SPASD ranks when stacked up against the 20 state school districts closest in size in terms of percent of kids scoring only minimally proficient on the WKCE (grade 10, average of all 5 subject areas). Wow...here we continue to rank 4th....but now we have an apples-to-apples comparison. This is good news, folks.

OK....time to start getting beyond the statistics, and into the sociology...the true demographics. Percentages often mean nothing. A 2% minimally proficient score means something very different for a district 10% the size of Sun Prairie. So...it's time to even the odds and bring this analysis down to its root level: How many KIDS are we talking about? Because any kid scoring only minimally proficient in any subject area is a kid to whom we need to reach out. We took some liberty here. In determining the "minimum number of kids at risk", we took a conservative approach and used the maximum number of kids scoring "minimal" in any given subject area. Similarly for the "maximums" we used the sum of all kids scoring minimally proficient in any subject area. Certainly there will be kids that score minimally proficient in more than one subject area...perhaps there are even those who do so in all subject areas. Therefore the true number of kids "at risk" lies somewhere between our minimum and our maximum.

Here we see that SPASD ranks 4th among the 16 Dane County districts in terms of percent of kids scoring only minimally proficient on the WKCE (grade 10, average of all 5 subject areas).

So, this time, we look at how SPASD ranks when stacked up against the 20 state school districts closest in size in terms of percent of kids scoring only minimally proficient on the WKCE (grade 10, average of all 5 subject areas). We remain high (5th) with the apples-to-apples comparison. This is good news, folks. Biut the number of kids potentially at risk is much scarier.

For those of you interested in grade inflation (as we are), we can look at these as very likely indicative of those kids that are in the "sub C" grade level....or D and below. If we consider that for Sun Prairie, that means somewhere between 33 and 125 kids at the grade 10 level, and we extrapolate those numbers across the whole high school, we're looking at somewhere between 132 and 500 kids...or between 8 and 30%. And THAT number seems a little more like the bell curve that Dr. Culver dissed recently.

As educators, parents, and community members, we can't be complacent because of the number of kids that make the honor roll or the number of kids that score as Proficient or Advanced on state tests.

Every kid must count. Let's keep "priority Goal #3 in mind:
Improve and expand learning opportunities so that every graduate is prepared and inspired to successfully and productively pursue any option after high school.