School report card scores have slumped post-pandemic

The Wausonian looked at report cards for Wausau, D.C. Everest and SPASH and so far, things aren't improving much

One of the disturbing trends of the pandemic was the loss in student learning. The numbers of students who were failing increased dramatically during the pandemic. Wausau School District officials were concerned, and vowed to do what they could to fix things.

That was 2020. Very little was said about it since, though several school board candidates brought up struggling grades during their interviews.

The Wausonian decided to take a look at report cards sent to the state to help determine if things got any better.

Over the last couple of school years, things haven’t been getting much better. At D.C. Everest and the Wausau district, scores have improved, but are still far below pre-pandemic levels. At Stevens Point Area High School, they’ve actually gotten continually worse.

Here’s a data visualization I created to show the problem ¹:

In 2016-17, SPASH had been leading the three major school districts of central Wisconsin. But it had already lost that top spot, and report card scores have continued to decline every year since then. Then we come to Wausau.