MTSD's Excellent State Report Cards
Mequon-Thiensville is “a”, if not “the”, top ranked district in the State of Wisconsin.
Summary
We have several excellent schools in Milwaukee County and its collar counties. Besides the Mequon-Thiensville School District (MTSD), standouts include Elmbrook, Whitefish Bay, Hamilton, Cedarburg, Shorewood, Slinger, Germantown and Grafton. To the south, Mukwonago, Greendale, Muskego and New Berlin stand out.
When looking holistically, it seems pedantic to nuance who is the #1 school from year-to-year, when we should be proud to live in an area with high educational standards and excellence. But if we must be pedantic, based on the Wisconsin DPI’s published annual report cards, Mequon-Thiensville is “a”, if not “the”, top ranked district, in recent history, in the State of Wisconsin.
Analysis
We pulled the state report card detail in Excel, directly from Wisconsin DPI
https://apps2.dpi.wi.gov/reportcards/
We identified the top schools through the following screens:
K-12 school districts
Greater than 1,000 students enrolled.
This second screen is CRITICAL because it eliminates small districts from a comparison to large districts.
This is most important when we look at the last year of the study, 2018-19. MTSD ranked #2 behind Kohler with 700+ students. Removing Kohler based on size, brings MTSD to #1. Regardless of the eliminations, the ordering of the Top 10 districts would not change.
Findings
Over 6 years of DPI published accountability report cards, Mequon-Thiensville ranked number: 1, 1, 5, 7, 6, 1. The periods were: 2012-13, 2013-14, 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18, 2018-19. No reports cards were completed in 2014-15 or 2019-20.
Mequon-Thiensville showed growth in every year since 2013-14, or 3.6% over the years.
Only 3 other districts were in the Top 10 each of the 6 years. Along with Mequon-Thiensville, those schools were: Elmbrook, Whitefish Bay and Hamilton.
Elmbrook, while starting lower, showed the greatest improvement at 6.1%. Very impressive.
Whitefish Bay, while finishing 4th in the most recent report card, grew at 2.6% and has a 0.08 higher average than MTSD (87.30 vs. 87.22) – technically, the highest average score in the State – with Mequon-Thiensville less than a tenth behind.
Hamilton grew very little over the period, starting at #2 and ending at #3, which is very respectable.
All are given the rating of: “Significantly Exceeds Expectations.”
From the 2013 report card to the 2019 report card: Grafton and Slinger showed double-digit improvements, while Germantown and Cedarburg declined slightly. Shorewood improved about the same as Mequon-Thiensville.
We still have to wait a few months for the 2020-21 report card, at which time, we will update the stats. It will be interesting to see how MTSD successfully navigated education during COVID versus its peers.
Please open the attached Excel file for the details.
If any errors are discovered, please notify us immediately so they can be corrected. In@InformMT.org
MTSD-DPI-RANKINGS
.xlsx
Download XLSX • 24KB