Forward Exam, SY 2024-25
All grades, all students. % Meeting or Advanced.English Language Arts
83.4%
State avg 53.1%
District avg 84.3%
County avg 74.8%
-0.2pp since 2023-24
Mathematics
85.3%
State avg 54.8%
District avg 86.4%
County avg 75.8%
-0.5pp since 2023-24
Science
79.2%
State avg 50.8%
District avg 77.7%
County avg 69.9%
+4.5pp since 2023-24
Social Studies
91.7%
State avg 57.0%
District avg 84.4%
County avg 77.1%
+0.9pp since 2023-24
What this means: On the Forward Exam, Wisconsin's statewide test, about 83 of every 100 students at this school read and write at grade level, about 85 of 100 do math at grade level, about 79 of 100 are at grade level in science, and about 92 of 100 are at grade level in social studies. Across all Wisconsin schools, those numbers are about 53, 55, 51, and 57. Reading and writing scores have held steady since 2023, while math scores have held steady, science scores are up about 5 points, and social studies scores have held steady.
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 83.4% mean for English Language Arts at Thorson Elementary?
It means about 83.4 percent of students tested at Thorson Elementary performed at grade level or above on the Forward Exam English Language Arts test in 2024-25. The statewide average for Wisconsin that year was 53.1%. 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.
