Forward Exam, SY 2023-24
All grades, all students. % Meeting or Advanced.English Language Arts
18.5%
State avg 52.8%
District avg 44.4%
County avg 49.2%
Mathematics
22.2%
State avg 55.4%
District avg 43.8%
County avg 49.0%
Science
18.2%
State avg 51.7%
District avg 41.0%
County avg 45.9%
Social Studies
27.3%
State avg 55.4%
District avg 47.2%
County avg 51.5%
What this means: On the Forward Exam, Wisconsin's statewide test, about 19 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level, about 22 of 100 do math at grade level, about 18 of 100 are at grade level in science, and about 27 of 100 are at grade level in social studies. Across all Wisconsin schools, those numbers are about 53, 55, 52, and 55.
What is Forward Exam?
Forward Exam is the statewide standardized test administered by Wisconsin public schools.
What does "% Meeting or Advanced" mean?
It is the share of students at the school who performed at grade level or above on the test, summed across the top two of four performance levels. A higher number is better.
What does 18.5% mean for English Language Arts at McKinley Elementary?
It means about 18.5 percent of students tested at McKinley Elementary performed at grade level or above on the Forward Exam English Language Arts test in 2023-24. The statewide average for Wisconsin that year was 52.8%. The other students fell into the lower performance levels.
How is the state average calculated?
It is a weighted average, not a simple average of each school's number. We multiply each public school's score by how many of its students tested, add those together for all schools in Wisconsin, and divide by the total students tested that year. This way a big school with 1,500 students counts more than a small school with 50 students, which is the right way to ask "how did the typical student do this year?". District and county averages on this page use the same method, just scoped to that district or county.
Where does this data come from?
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Wisconsin Forward Exam. School-level All Students subgroup from the WISEdash Download Files. Headline metric is the cumulative "Meeting + Advanced" rate (top 2 of 4 Forward performance levels: Developing / Approaching / Meeting / Advanced).
How often is it updated?
Forward Exam is administered once a year (spring). Results are released by the state in the summer or early fall. We refresh this page after each annual release.