District report card shines again

The Cedar Grove-Belgium School District has maintained a high report card score, despite some of the goalposts and metrics changing slightly year to year in the state system.

The district’s score rose from 84.8 to 87.6, but its ranking in the state went from sixth to ninth among the state’s 322 kindergarten-through-12th-grade districts.

The district again earns a spot in the “significantly exceeds expectations” category, the highest attainable in the report card system.

“This top rating shows strong effort from our students and is a testament to the commitment our entire staff has for student learning. Each member of the team contributes to student success and well-being,” Supt. Elizabeth Freeman said.

“The Cedar Grove-Belgium board provides a clear vision for the district and supports our continuous improvement efforts as we work towards ambitious goals.”

School and district report cards include outcomes in four priority areas, according to the Department of Public Instruction:

• Achievement measures the level of knowledge and skills among students in the school compared to state and national standards. It includes a composite of English language arts and mathematics performance by the “all students” group in the Wisconsin Student Assessment System (WSAS) for all tested grades in the school.

• Growth measures changes in students’ English language arts and mathematics performance over time. Each student’s value-added score is calculated based on test score improvement from the prior year compared to similar students statewide. Similar students statewide are determined using prior test scores, economic status, race/ethnicity, disability status, gender and English learner status.

• Target Group Outcomes demonstrates outcomes for students with the lowest test scores in their school — the target group. Outcomes are displayed for achievement, growth, chronic absenteeism and attendance or graduation rate.

• On-Track to Graduation indicates the success of students in the school in achieving educational milestones that predict postsecondary success. It includes chronic-absenteeism and the graduation rate for schools that graduate students or the attendance rate for other schools. It also includes measures of third-grade English language arts and eighth-grade mathematics achievement, as applicable to the school. 

In individual school scores, the middle school made the biggest jump, from 84.5 to 94.3 and is ranked 11th of all middle schools in the state.

The number rating system didn’t apply to Rocket Academy, the district’s charter school that teaches skilled trades to juniors and seniors, but its performance showed it was making “satisfactory progress” for the second year in a row.