In August 2024, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) made a controversial decision to change both the scale, cut points and terminology of the Forward Exam. This has made it harder for districts, parents, and the public to track student outcomes over time, posing a significant challenge in assessing progress on COVID-era learning loss. Despite this difficulty, it is still possible for school districts with student level data to approximate student achievement levels under the previous cut scores. This post shows districts how to do just that. For districts interested in learning more, WILL is open to discussing how this tool can be applied. Please contact WILL’s Research Director, Dr. Will Flanders if interested.
Each year, DPI releases Percentile Rankings that map back to categories of performance on the Forward Exam. Percentile rankings explain where a student’s test score ranks relative to their peers. A student in the 80th percentile in ELA, for example, did better than about 80% of their peers in that subject.
Mapping backwards is possible because DPI also releases information on what scale score for a student is needed to achieve each category of performance. Below is the example of ELA for the new 2024 ELA scores:
Using the percentile rankings in the table below, we find that in order to be placed into the “approaching” category in ELA, a third-grade student must achieve at least a score of 1511 on the Exam. This score would place the student in roughly the 18th percentile of students statewide.
Below are the cut points that were used from 2016-2023 for ELA, as well as the percentile table for 2023. In addition to all the other changes, DPI changed the labels for the categories of achievement for 2024. “Developing” was previously known as “Below Basic.” “Approaching” was known as “Basic.” “Meeting” was known as “Proficient” while “Advanced stayed the same in both years.
Under the previous cut points, a score of 522 was required to reach the equivalent “Basic” level of that we examined in the example above. Using the percentile rankings for last year, this means that a student would be between the 26th and 27th percentile in proficiency in order to make it out of the lowest achievement category. This clarifies the sizable easing of testing that DPI engaged in with the new cut points—shifting about 8% of students from the lowest category to the next category.
For a school or district to approximate how they would have performed under the old metrics, they can generate a count of the number of students that fall within each percentile ranking that the old cut points required. The table below shows the scale score cut points for ELA under the 2024 scales if 2023 standards were applied.
Under the 2024 metrics, a student scoring 1560 would be in the “Meeting” category. But under the 2023 metrics, this student would have been in the “Approaching” category. Re-mapping the scale scores for every student will allow districts to approximate where their proficiency percentages (“Meeting” or above) would’ve been had DPI not changed the metrics.
The included Excel sheet somewhat automates this process. It will allow schools and districts to enter the number of students they have within each scale score range on the most recent Forward Exam and will generate the levels of proficiency that would’ve been expected under the old cut points. Note that there is stand-in data to be replaced to demonstrate how the completed display chart might look:
Limitations
The biggest limitation here is in the utility of the percentile scale scores. These can shift slightly based on real changes in aggregate student performance. However, these shifts tend to be quite small. The table below shows the ELA scale score required to teach the 26th percentile over the past five years. The score remained the exact same through four of the years before shifting up slightly in 2023.
Because of this limitation, mapping back to 2023 standards will only be useful for a couple of years. It is vital that legislation is passed to reverse the altered standards from DPI so that we can maintain a clear-eyed view of what is happening with student proficiency around the state.
For more information or to get a walkthrough of the Excel sheet, please contact:
