Elmbrook Academics - Changing Data & Problems in Middle Schools
If Elmbrook’s benchmarks are all declining, but Elmbrook is declining less, it will appear as an improvement.
Declining academics, which were occurring from at least the 2015-2016 school year, were made public in the 2021 and 2022 Board elections. Data from Spring 2022 shows mixed progress, with changes to what data is looked at and how it is evaluated.
MAP data was highlighted previously, and over the past year community members have noticed a change in what data is reported. Most recently, on 8/3/22, we can see Tanya Fredrich (Assistant Superintendent of Teaching and Learning), suggesting moving away from some MAP scores. This makes apples to apples comparisons harder. Also notable is a large focus on ranking, not raw scores. So, if Elmbrook’s benchmarks are all declining, but Elmbrook is declining less, it will appear as an improvement.
The Teaching & Learning Committee chair in 2022 was Jen Roskopf. In their meeting on 11/9/22, academics was reviewed. 8th grade shows both math and reading is declining - and this is even based on ranking, not raw scores.
In the 11/9/22 meeting, the benchmarks that Elmbrook ranks itself against came up. It was noted that the Slinger school district outperforms Elmbrook in some metrics, and some individuals said it should be removed from the benchmark list. Their reasoning was that it was significantly smaller than Elmbrook.
When Superintendent Mark Hansen’s contract was renewed on 6/14/22, Board President Scott Wheeler said (1:00:35) that this year there was a significant amount tied to performance that they want the Superintendent to focus on - such as 3rd grade reading, 8th grade math, ELA (English Language Arts) & ACT scores, et cetera. It begs the question, what was his performance measured on before?
Most recently, Scott in his 10/25/22 Board President report (3:16:58) was “grateful to Mark Hansen and his team” when they created the Urgency Team in early 2022 to address 1st grade reading. Yet this action was almost a year after problems were being raised.
On 3/3/21 in a Teaching and Learning Committee meeting, the administration noted that virtual learners outperformed in person and COVID mitigation was listed as a potential root cause of achievement levels staying flat.
In 5/11/21, community members loudly pushed back against senior leadership’s decision on mandatory masking and their approach to COVID. Parents, community members and even students stepped forward and spoke of the myriad of negative effects from these protocols.
It is not a surprise to community members that kids who were in mandatory masks potentially all of their Kindergarten year, and could have been in mask-required classrooms in 1st grade, struggled to with reading and speech development.
