Why do state and U.S. News and World Report high school rankings differ?

While the magazine and state rating systems generally agree on the performance of Dane County’s schools, there are some outliers at the high school level.

Waunakee High School, for example, is ranked 12th among 569 public high schools in the state, according to U.S. News and World Report, but received a lower report card score from DPI than Madison East High School, which ranks 186th, according to the magazine.

At No. 24, Madison West High School is also ranked higher than Madison East by U.S. News and World Report. But when it comes to the state’s report card, East garnered a 79.7, or “exceeds expectations,” while West was at a 76.

Both the state and U.S. News rely on many of the same factors in their rating systems, but differences in their outcomes are likely best explained by differences in the breadth of factors they’re measuring and in the ways they treat economically disadvantaged students, non-white students or both. 

The state looks at four metrics when determining an overall score:

• Achievement, meaning scores on math and English language arts tests meant to gauge student knowledge compared to state and national standards.
• Growth, meaning how much better students get at English language arts and math over time.
• Target group outcomes, meaning how those with the lowest scores do on tests over time, how regularly they are attending school and how often they are graduating on time.
• On-track to graduation, meaning how successful all students are at meeting milestones predictive of success after high school graduation. Those milestones include attendance, graduation rates, and third-grade English language arts and eighth-grade math test scores.

The first two factors, however, are weighted differently depending on a school’s or a district’s percentage of students who are considered economically disadvantaged, and the difference in weighting can be stark.

Under state law, for example, the growth metric is given nine times as much weight as the achievement metric at schools or districts in which 65% or more of their students are poor. The reverse is true — achievement is given nine times the weight of the growth metric — at schools where 5% or fewer of the students are poor. For enrollments between those two extremes, there is a formula for determining how much weight to give each of the achievement and growth metrics.

“The higher percentage of economically disadvantaged students, the greater the weight given to growth and lesser to achievement,” DPI spokesperson Chris Bucher said.

U.S. News and World Report, meanwhile, considered six factors in their rankings, and also specifically took into account student race and ethnicity:

• College readiness (30%), or the proportion of a school’s 12th graders who took and earned a qualifying score on Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate exams.
• College curriculum breadth (10%), or the percentage of 12th graders who took and earned qualifying scores on multiple AP and IB exams.
• State assessment proficiency (20%), or the percentage of students who scored proficient in math, reading and science as measured by state standardized tests.
• State assessment performance (20%), or how well students did on state standardized tests compared to how well other schools with the same demographic characteristics did on the tests.
• Underserved student performance (10%) considers the size of the gaps in performance on state standardized tests between “underserved” students — meaning Black, Hispanic and low-income students — and students who aren’t considered underserved.
• Graduation rate (10%), or the proportion of students who graduated in four years.