State and Federal Accountability
This page provides information and links to both the State Report Cards and the Federal ESSA Accountability system.
State Report Cards
What are the School and District Report Cards?
As part of the state accountability system, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) produces report cards for every publicly funded school and district in Wisconsin. These report cards include data on multiple indicators for multiple years across four Priority Areas (Achievement, Growth, Target Group Outcomes, and On-track to Graduation). In addition, the report cards provide course and program participation information for grades 9-12 for public schools and districts. A school or district's overall accountability score places the school/district into one of five overall accountability ratings:
Many more details are available
Department of Public Instruction (DPI)
- About the Report Cards: provides a general overview of report card content.
- Report Card Resources: organized on a year-by-year basis
- MMSD's report cards: links to the current report cards by school
ESSA (Federal) Accountability
Federal education law, currently called the Every Student Succeeds Act (or ESSA) requires the identification of the lowest performing public schools and schools with low performing student groups in each state. Wisconsin's plan was approved by the US Department of Education in January 2018.
ESSA Identifications
The ESSA Accountability system ultimately functions as a federal identification system in which there are three identification categories:
- Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI)
- CSI-Lowest Performance
- CSI-Low Graduation Rate
- CSI-ATSI Conversion
- Targeted Support and Improvement Schools
- Targeted Support (TSI)
- Additional Targeted Support (ATSI)
- Not Identified
ESSA Accountability Reporting
While the federal system is intended to identify the schools most in need of support and improvement, DPI will report results for all public schools in the state (including those with no identifications) because providing data to educators working to close Wisconsin's achievement gaps is critically important.
Click here for ESSA Accountability Reports
Note: unlike the state accountability system, ESSA only applies to public schools; it does not apply to private schools participating in the Parental Choice Programs.