Report Card Letter 2024-25

November 11, 2025

Dear South Milwaukee Parents and Caregivers,

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Report Cards are now available to the public for the 2024-2025 school year.  

We are incredibly proud of the work done by our team at Blakewood Elementary, who achieved a 19.2-point increase on the report card system in just two years!  We are also pleased to report that E. W. Luther Elementary remains in the Exceeds Expectations category this year, and we thank our team there for their consistent efforts and focus on achieving outcomes for all students.  

The state has made some changes to the scoring methods and report card calculations, which make an apples-to-apples comparison challenging.  This is just an explanation of the differences and is not intended to be an excuse, as our students deserve better outcomes in our schools. You can see the chart below to explain the areas you can directly compare to last year’s scores:

2024-25 Report Card Data Element	Comparable to 2023-24 Report Card Letter
Front Page
Student Information on Front Page	Yes
Overall Score	No
Overall Rating/Stars	No
Priority Area Weighing	Yes
Achievement Priority Area
Achievement Priority Area Score	No
Student Group Level ELA/Math Achievement Scores	No
Achievement performance level percentages - charts and tables	Yes
Growth Priority Area
Student Group Level Growth Scores	Yes
Student Group Level Growth Scores	Yes
TGO Priority Area	No
TGO Achievement	No
TGO Growth	Yes
TGO Chronic Absenteeism	Yes
TGO Attendance/Graduation	Yes
On-Track to Graduation Priority Area
On-Track to Graduation Priority Area Score	No
Chronic Absenteeism	Yes
Graduation/Attendance	Yes
3rd grade ELA & 8th Grade Math	No
Course Program and Data
Post Secondary Prep	Yes
Arts	Yes
New Areas of the Report Card
3rd Grade Reading	N/A
State and Local Law Violations	N/A

 

We continue to push and support all schools, enabling us to focus on fostering a strong sense of belonging and implementing standards-based instruction with access points for all students.  We were disappointed in the overall reduction of categories and scores at many of our schools.  This is certainly not due to a lack of effort by our school leaders and staff.  We will continue our efforts to intentionally plan for all students to meet high expectations in both academic and social-emotional learning standards. This means working closely with our staff to plan together and review student work, ensuring that all students demonstrate growth over time.  We have very targeted and intentional plans at each school to either continue the growth they have seen, especially for our students showing strong results, or to make some adjustments so that we can see consistent growth over time for students who have gaps.   

 

While we recognize that our students’ experience extends beyond test scores, we also acknowledge that our outcomes matter and that we must continue to work on improving them.  We also want to highlight that although our overall scores are disappointing, we do have some bright spots and incredible work happening each day that we need to recognize and maintain over time.  

 

One consistent challenge across our school remains chronic absenteeism. We continue to work with families to support students in coming to school each day that they are well enough to do so.  You have likely received our attendance letter and a magnet, which will help you track the number of days your child has missed.  The state statute allows for 10 days of excused absence each year, which adds up quickly if we do not closely monitor those days. We hope the magnet serves as a helpful reminder of the days a child has missed, so that we can get them into school as often as possible.  

 

In the coming weeks, each school leader will also send a follow-up communication highlighting the bright spots and the specifics of the school improvement plans for each school, so you know what we are working on for the 2025-2026 school year.   

 

Thank you for your continued partnership! 

 

Sincerely, 

Deidre Roemer

Superintendent