"Consistently High Performance" in Elmbrook Appears to Show Only 51% of 8th Graders Proficient in Reading
Recent English Language Arts (ELA) data released by Elmbrook shows Spring MAP ELA middle school proficiencies not exceeding 59%, as well as drops from the previous year.
Elmbrook proficiency data is under discussion again, and the March 2025 presentation of K-8 English Language Arts (ELA) data appears to show middle school MAP test proficiencies falling back into the 50th percentile range.
This is labeled as “consistently high performance.”
On the slide below, proficiency rates are listed on the left and growth rates are listed on the right.
Two additional categories are broken out for Spring 2024 MAP ELA data - students with disabilities (SwD) and students with low socioeconomic status (Low SES). Those students have 31% and 41% proficiencies respectively.
Questions Raised
This data raises many questions. Is just over half of middle school students being proficient in reading acceptable to Elmbrook district leaders? Is well under half of students with disabilities or a lower family income being proficient also acceptable to district leaders? Shouldn’t academic achievement goals be high for all students, despite income or disabilities?
Is focusing on ranking and not proficiency allowing problems to continue?
Is block scheduling a challenge for this age range of students?
Or are there issues in the learning environment or with teachers themselves?
Will the middle school start time or changes in testing be used as a scapegoat for the proficiency levels?
While there could be some noise in the signal per se, academic proficiencies continue to struggle and do not appear to have consistently exceeded performance a decade ago. For example, in 2015-2016, 8th grade MAP ELA proficiency appeared to be 64%, as shown below. That proficiency level is 13% higher than current data.
What’s Next?
Will Elmbrook district senior leadership put academic achievement first and foremost again for all students? Or will only “celebrations of excellence” continue?
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I have a current student at ppms. Her classroom is constantly disrupted but a few students who are continually making noises and disrupting during class learning time. I have spoken to the school multiple times asking that during new material being presented the classroom could be quiet so my daughter can learn. I was met with basically a polite it is what it is. This, is why scores are decreasing.
What is a good ELA MAP score?
MAP reading scores above 223, math scores above 230 in math and language scores above 220 would be considered good scores.Jul 23, 2024