PRESCOTT – Director of Teaching and Learning Mike Kosmalski discussed the academic calendar and report card results at the Nov. 20 Prescott School Board meeting.

Kosmalski presented the school district’s report card and explained that its purpose is to identify strengths and areas for improvement. He reported that Prescott scored high in the Middle Border Conference rankings: #1 District for Math and ELA; #1 Elementary for ELA and Math; #1 Middle School for ELA & Math and #2 High School for Math and #3 High School for ELA.

“So, a lot of things to be proud of, now that information goes on to our report card,” said Kosmalski, “as well as the last two years of academic information and up to six years of attendance and graduation rates, and that all gets coalesced into a new report card for every school district across the state.”

He said the process of pinpointing areas of improvement begins in August when they first get a glance at the state assessment data before the report card comes out.

“The report card is based on point value,” Kosmalski explained. “It's not a percentile, it's a point and then each point category, you get different rankings. DPI (Department of Public Instruction) does say you should never compare points, and the reason why is because, like, your academic and growth are based on your free and reduced lunch numbers. So, in Prescott, we're about 20% free and reduced lunch numbers. So, the state will say, well, academically, you should be higher than say Ellsworth, who's around 40% free and reduced lunch numbers. They should have more growth and maybe not quite as high academics. Every district, and even within the district, every school, is treated slightly differently. So, looking at the overall points to make a comparison is not a good way to compare. A better way to compare is a couple years ago, the state started putting out percentile ranks in each category, and they are ranking you from zero to 100 in the entire state of Wisconsin. If we lined up all the elementary schools, let's say, and we looked at their academics, where's Prescott lined up all the middle schools, where's their growth?”

The report card has four categories called priority areas. Kosmalski further explained that number one is achievement which is a weighted value. It's weighted based on the category within the state assessment. Are they meeting expectations? Are they exceeding expectations? Are they approaching expectations? Those categories get different point values, and then those point values also get weighted by the year. It's a double weighting system.

The overview of the state report card, which can be viewed online at bit.ly/3uSMP99 shows in Achievement PSD scored the same or higher than 89.75 of districts in the state and in Growth the district scored the same or higher than 91.6% of districts. Target Group Outcomes, which examine students with the lowest test scores, are designed to create equity by helping schools focus on learners who need the most support while also improving outcomes for all students. The score combines component scores for achievement, growth, chronic absenteeism and attendance rate or graduation rate. PSD scored the same or higher than 94.4% in the state. And the district scored the same or higher than 84.5% of the state in the On-Track to Graduation category. Overall, the district is in the top 10% in academics and growth in the state. And PSD is number one in Achievement, Target Group Outcomes and Student Growth in the Middle Border Conference districts.

“This is something we should be really proud of, because we just showed you academically and in the Middle Border Conference and in all of western Wisconsin, we're at the top in nearly everything,” Kosmalski stated. “And now you can see, in terms of growth, we have really high growth. So being good academically is one thing, but being able to take those students, meet them where they are at and then take them to the next level… A lot of times you can do one really well and not the other, and we're really doing both very well. So that's something that we should all be proud of our students, our families and our teachers.”

Kosmalski also explained the reasons behind specific calendar dates, such as the day off in October, which is requested because it’s the end of the quarter and teachers are at the school late for parent/teacher conferences.

He answered some common questions about the school calendar. He explained that there are no required number of school days, but rather a minimum number of instructional hours required: 4K=437, K-5=1,050, 6-12=1,137. Return to Learn days count as summer school which impacts the district’s funding. The school year can officially start on Sept. 1. The reason why days are aligned to trimesters and not quarters is that PHS offers new courses each trimester.