What to know about Wisconsin's change in state test scores and the GOP push to restore previous benchmarks

Yahoo

31-01-2025

Shifting academic standards are taking center stage in the state superintendent race this spring.
Department of Public Instruction superintendent Jill Underly, who is running for re-election, overhauled the state's standardized testing benchmarks and renamed the levels of student achievement in 2024.
Both of Underly's challengers, Sauk Prairie superintendent Jeff Wright and education consultant Brittany Kinser, have said the changes lower the bar for student performance and complicate efforts to see how schools and districts perform across time.
The Republican-controlled Legislature appears poised to pass a bill sometime this year that would restore the previous testing system.
The primary election is scheduled for Feb. 18. The top two candidates will advance to the April 1 election.
Here's what to know about the Republican bill and the broader debate about the change in academic standards:
Wisconsin students in grades three through eight take the Forward Exam every spring and were labeled 'advanced,' 'proficient,' 'basic' or 'below basic" in subject matters such as math and English/language arts.
Underlying those labels are "cut scores" that mark the boundaries between one category of performance and the next higher or lower category on the tests.
More: Are Wisconsin students really doing better? Or does it just look that way?
The Forward Exam previously aligned its cut scores with the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as NAEP, a widely followed program used in all 50 states.
Education experts agree the NAEP is difficult, requiring students to do better than on other tests to be considered "proficient."
The intent behind aligning the Forward Exam with NAEP: By setting higher expectations, students and schools would improve.
That hasn't really happened. State scores have remained generally flat for years.
Underly said the NAEP tests students about a grade level above their abilities, which made students appear to be performing academically worse than they actually were.
"If we're going to force (students) to take this assessment, we want it to have meaning, and we want teachers to be able to understand the results so that they could use it to make decisions in the classroom," she told the Journal Sentinel. "We couldn't do that before."
Nearly 100 educators worked with the DPI last year to review the exam's "standards," which are the subject material tested on the exam.
Updating standards is a routine process that occurs every few years to account for changes in what educators believe students should be tested on. Science standards, for example, changed in 2018-19.
When standards are updated, cut scores should be, too, Underly said.
"The scoring has to change because you're now not scoring the same things," she said. "You've added different things to the test. You have to re-evaluate the grading scale for it."
The new cut scores are lower than when they were aligned with the NAEP. Underly said educators requested the revisions.
"Teachers told us to make these changes so that an actual assessment would mean something," Underly said. "So what we did was we measured it based off of where Wisconsin teachers felt Wisconsin kids could be on the Wisconsin test."
Underly said her critics have conflated cut scores with standards to argue standards have lowered. She said the new Forward Exam standards have increased because more challenging material was added while less important material was removed.
The new benchmarks come with new levels of student achievement: 'advanced,' 'meeting,' 'approaching' and 'developing."
DPI said the new language "encourages and motivates student learning, providing a snapshot of students' progress in learning grade level skills and content."
Yes, the changes increased the number of students considered proficient.
Just over half of Wisconsin grade school students met or exceeded state standards for math and English language arts last school year. That's up from the 41% or less considered proficient or above in the same subjects under the previous system in 2022-23.
Yes. Wisconsin isn't alone in boosting its proficency rates through changes in benchmarks.
At least three other states — Oklahoma, Alaska and New York — recently made similar adjustments. Illinois and Colorado are considering such revisions, according to The 74, a nonprofit education news outlet.
Republicans have criticized the changes. Sen. John Jagler, R-Watertown, and Rep. Robert Wittke, R-Caledonia, are circulating a bill and plan to introduce it in the weeks ahead that would restore the Forward Exam to align with the national test.
'We have to be honest about how well our schools are educating our children,' the lawmakers' memo said. 'Every school has its own unique challenges, but a standardized assessment system is one of many important tools informing parents of where best to educate their children.'
There's a good chance the bill could make it through the Legislature.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said he was supportive of defining test categories in state law to prevent scores from being manipulated for political gain. In a December interview with the Journal Sentinel, he accused Underly of "rejiggering" the scores to improve her electability.
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said the Senate would pass the bill.
"Changing cut scores and lowering standards was an obvious mistake by Superintendent Underly," he said in a statement to the Journal Sentinel, adding: "If the governor is serious about making 2025 the Year of the Kid, he needs to hold the education bureaucracy to account and consider bold reform at DPI and in our entire education system."
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers also called changing the state test score benchmarks a "mistake."
"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," Evers told reporters in a news conference earlier this month.
Evers, a former state superintendent, is avoiding showing support for his successor, pledging not to endorse in the primary election. Asked whether Evers would sign the bill into law, an Evers spokeswoman said Jan. 21 the governor had not yet reviewed the proposal. The spokeswoman did not respond when asked Jan. 30.
Both candidates challenging Underly in the state superintendent race have blasted her over the changes.
'As a former teacher and principal, I know students rise to the expectations set for them," Kinser said in a statement. "Lowering standards deprives our kids of the opportunity to be college- or career-ready, and that is unacceptable in Wisconsin. Our kids deserve more, not less, and I look forward to working with the legislature to pass this proposal."
Wright objected to the timing of the changes, just a few years after students suffered learning loss due to COVID-19 and districts trying new interventions to catch them up.
"It causes a lot of confusion and makes it very hard for educators and families to understand whether or not their students are truly proficient," he said.
Wright said it's "unfortunate" the Legislature has to step in, blaming Underly for what he sees as a lack of collaboration and communication.
Kelly Meyerhofer covers higher education in Wisconsin. Contact her at [e-mail] or 414-223-5168. Follow her on X (Twitter) at @KellyMeyerhofer.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Changing academic standards becomes focus in Wisconsin superintendent race