Making the grade: School board hears update on district report card

The December meeting of the School District of Rhinelander’s board of education featured a presentation from Director of Instruction Ryan Ourada on the results of the annual state school report card.

The district’s overall score was 63.1 which means it “meets expectations” according to the Department of Public Instruction’s rating scale, Ourada reported.

“It’s the same range that our district was in last year, within a point or two, I believe,” he said.

The DPI rating scale is: significantly exceeds expectations, exceeds expectations, meets expectations, meets few expectations and fails to meet expectations.

 To “exceed expectations” districts must have a score between 70 and 82.9. The range for “meets few expectations” is 48 to 57.9.

The priority areas are: Achievement, Growth, Target-Group Outcomes and On-Track to Graduation.

Under achievement, which measures a student’s level of knowledge and skills attained compared against state academic standards in English Language Arts (ELA) and Mathematics, Rhinelander scored 53.5

Rhinelander’s score was 54.2 for ELA and 52.8 for math for an average of 53,5. The state averages were 58.3 for ELA and 57.6 for math.

Growth is described as “how rapidly students are gaining knowledge and skills from year to year.”

The focus is on the pace of improvement, Ourada explained.

In the improvement category, Rhinelander received a score of 58.4 in ELA and 56.5 in math.

The state average is 66.0 for both ELA and math.

“Right now, with the point ranges that we're within, we’re continuing to grow, we’re continuing to get closer to the state averages on these every year, and showing some great achievement, which is a huge celebration for us,” Ourada said, adding that school officials are “continuing to take a look at what we’re teaching and what that means to get to proficiency and really evaluate, are we teaching the right things at the right time?”

As far as absenteeism and graduation, Rhinelander is performing better than the average, Ourada reported, noting that the district is doing a great job of getting kids to school on a daily basis and to the finish line on graduation day.  “That’s a testament to the administrators and all our office staff that are making the phone calls and checking in on families,” he said.  

As the discussion continued, it was noted that 15 percent of the district’s enrollment of 2,298 students have disabilities and just over 50 percent are considered “economically disadvantaged.”

Ourada estimated the state average in terms of percentage of enrolled students listed as economically disadvantaged is approximately 40 percent.

Finally, Ourada listed other bright spots for Rhinelander including improvements in ACT scores and a seven-year high in 3rd-8th grade Forward Testing, which includes both mathematics and ELA.

He also highlighted the state rankings of three local schools.

Northwoods Community Elementary School (NCES) is ranked No. 321 out of 1,002 schools (Top 32%) while Central Elementary is ranked No. 366 (Top 37%) and Rhinelander High School is No. 194 out of 569 (Top 35%).

Ourada told the board the administrative team and school principals are analyzing the data gleaned from the report card in order to develop strategies for improvement.

“It takes time to be able to plan and prepare for helping students be successful and I think we have a lot of those components in place right now and we’re always continuing to grow and learn about how we can get better collaboratively,” he said.

To learn more about the report card, visit the district website, https://www.rhinelander.k12.wi.us/district/dpi-school-report-cards.cfm

Jeremy Mayo contributed to this report.

Heather Schaefer may be reached at [email protected].