Comment touches off debate on school performance comparison

But BASD official says local variables make valid rankings difficult

By Jennifer Eisenbart

Staff Writer

While the Burlington Area School District curriculum committee did its review of its annual Wisconsin Knowledge Concepts Exam scores – and district officials preached caution on comparing districts – at least one School Board member wanted a comparison.

At least, when it came to what Waterford was doing right – right enough to earn a place on Newsweek’s Best High Schools list.

Waterford ranked 1,033rd among the 2,000 schools that were ranked. That placed Waterford 17th among the 54 Wisconsin high schools that made the list.

When the story about Waterford’s award was placed on www.myracinecounty.com last week, BASD School Board member Phil Ketterhagen was the first to comment.

“Why can’t BASD do as well? BASD has a $6,926.90 higher wage & benefit package than Waterford Union High including the feeder schools based on fulltime (sic) teaching equivalent (FTE) per the 2011-2012 DPI report from the 3rd Saturday in September 2012,” Ketterhagen posted.

He confirmed he had made the post Monday, and stood behind what he had said.

However, BASD Superintendent Peter Smet wasn’t as eager to compare Monday.

“That’s where you really have to be cautious,” Smet said. “I don’t know where they get their data.

“We want to take a look at our district, and constantly strive for improvement,” he added. “But sometimes comparisons are not valid.”

According to the criteria laid out by Newsweek, all data analyzed was self-reported by the approximately 2,500 schools that responded to the request. Newsweek invited more than 5,000 to take part.

All public high schools in the U.S. were considered eligible, and Newsweek ranked the top 2,000 schools based on four-year, on-time graduation (25 percent of the score), percent of 2011 graduates that were accepted to college (25 percent), AP tests per student (25 percent), average ACT or SAT score (10 percent) and average score on AP exams (10 percent). The last 5 percent went to percent of students enrolled in at least one AP course.

Smet was not able to provide the numbers that Waterford did – graduation rate: 99 percent; AP tests taken per student: 0.3; College-bound: 87 percent; Average ACT score: 22.6; Average AP test score: 3.1.

However, some of the data was available for BHS via the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction website. BHS had an average ACT score of 22.3 last year, as well as a 95 percent graduation rate.

The rest of the data regarding AP testing and scores, as well as students who were college bound, was not readily available.

In terms of addressing the differences, though, one other online commentator – who posted under the title “Lack of Perspective” – offered this as explanation in response to Ketterhagen’s post.

“Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the Burlington Area Schools has a 27 percent higher incidence of free and reduced lunch within our student population. But being the well researched school board member you are, you already knew that, otherwise your previous comment would make you look foolishly narrow minded. The only other district with a higher incidence of free and reduced lunch is Delavan. It is time you broaden your scope and take into account other factors that affect student achievement.”