Michael Kosmalski serves as principal for the Prescott Intermediate School and is the head of Teaching and Learning for the district. He has been busy with kicking off the teacher leadership events, keynotes, and working with the professional learning community. At the Sept. 19 Prescott School Board meeting he gave updates on the Forward Exam.

Wisconsin Forward Exam grades 3-8 has had a significant overhaul and part of that came from the multi-year process that the Department of Public Instruction has of looking at the new standards.

“New standards for both math and ELA came out about 2020-21; from there, they do some piloting of questions that align to those standards,” said Kosmalski. “On the Forward Exam itself, students that were taking the exam previous years… there were extra questions that they were piloting to see how kids were doing and how we were doing as educators with the new standards. And now finally, this year 2024 spring, that exam was 100% aligned to the new standards. The DPI also looked at this as an opportunity to look at the cut scores and what we looked to define proficiency, but then also the categories themselves.”

Categories were made clearer by relabeling them as advanced, meeting, approaching and developing.

“It also turns learning into a continuum,” said Kosmalski. “Also labeling a student ‘basic’ or ‘below basic’ is insulting. We talk about growth mindset with our students, and that terminology is not growth mindset. It really gave this connotation, ‘Well, you're a below basic kid, and that's just where you are,’ versus if ‘I'm a developing or an approaching kid, I'm getting really close to where I need to be.’ It's a verbiage change and partially that, but again, giving parents, educators and students just a better understanding where they are on that learning continuum.”

Cut scores and percentiles needing to be proficient have changed. Kosmalski pointed out previous proficiency hurdles were at different levels.

“It's really evident to see where in third grade in order to be considered proficient previously, you have to be in the 66th percentile and by the time you got to eighth grade, it was the 67th percentile. But then there was fluctuation in between,” he said. “Also, if you look at the math, 53rd percentile in third grade, but you had to be in the 70th percentile by the time you're in eighth grade. So, with this sort of scoring and using these categories, was developed back in 2012 the line to the National Assessment of Educational Progress. At that time, Tony Evers, our governor, was the superintendent of schools for the state of Wisconsin, and he really wanted to push our state to be this model for the rest of the country. Outside organizations have come out, and they have said that Wisconsin is the third most rigorous state in order to be considered proficient in the country at that time. So, we may have been a little bit too ambitious.”

Kosmalski said that one of the things it does lead to is this conflict between neighboring states of Minnesota, or even Illinois or the Midwest in general. And how are we doing?

“We have less kids being deemed proficient than other states, but on our ACT scores, we're higher than them. So, this is the DPI looking at this is an opportunity.”

DPI has not officially released the percentile cut scores for each one of these categories, so he wasn’t able to share that information.

“I have the Kosmalski cuts that are not official because we don't have enough kids; there's sometimes a four- or five-point gap that we don't know right exactly where that cut is. I'm trying to prime the board for this, because our report card, initial report card, is going to be coming out towards the end of this month, and then in November, typically, is when they release the official one that then I can present to you and show you all of our numbers. But when we talk about the hurdles again, if a kid was proficient in third grade at the 53rd percentile, they make a year's growth in a year's time they're no longer proficient in fourth grade. So same thing, seven to eight, you can make a year's growth in a year’s time, you're no longer considered proficient anymore. So really, again, by the time you got eighth grade math, only 30% of our students in the state of Wisconsin should have been proficient on the Forward Exam. And that is what the state averages was… There was usually a rate between 29 and 31% of our kids are proficient. And then people, then parents and the community see that say, ‘How can only a third of our kids be considered proficient?’ Because that's the way it was set up, only a third could be proficient or meeting those marks. So, they're working on trying to maybe change those a little bit, so that way there isn't these big jumps, and it's a better alignment to our neighboring districts, or neighboring states.”

Kosmalski told the board that more information will come out next month, when they release those to the general public.