Cedarburg reports midyear I‑Ready results and first Act 20 screening; winter AIMSweb screener flagged more K–3 students than expected

Allie Rudin, the district’s director of curriculum, instruction and assessment, presented the Cedarburg School District’s winter I‑Ready benchmark data and the district’s first required screenings under Wisconsin Act 20 at the Feb. 19 board meeting.

Rudin said the district has set internal benchmarks to guide review — reading at or above the 66th percentile and math at or above the 70th percentile on I‑Ready — and described the winter I‑Ready distribution across percentile bands, cohorts and top‑ and bottom‑quartile groups. “If a student scores at the 66 percentile or better, they will be successful in their freshman college experience for that subject,” she said, explaining why the district adopted the 66/70 targets as a high‑performance standard.

Act 20 screener and follow up Rudin explained that Wisconsin Act 20 requires universal screening of K–3 learners on measures that include phonemic awareness, decoding and alphabet knowledge. The state‑mandated screener is Pearson AIMSweb Plus; the district’s winter screening window ran roughly from Dec. 1 to Jan. 31. Rudin said the screener is not optional and that students who score in the bottom 25% on the screener are identified as “at risk” and receive follow‑up diagnostic assessment.

On the winter screener Rudin reported that the district saw a higher number of students flagged than staff had expected. She said approximately 30% of kindergarten students flagged on the AIMSweb Plus screener (she reported that figure as about 53 kindergarten students) and that other grades also produced students requiring follow‑up diagnostics — for example, she reported 26 first graders of 206 who flagged the screening threshold. Rudin said all students who flagged the screener received a state‑recommended diagnostic to better determine needs.

District response and monitoring Rudin told the board that many of the students who flagged the screener did not represent new and previously unrecognized needs once staff completed diagnostics and reviewed other data. “Most of our students, once we… assess them… we were pretty confident with what we were seeing,” she said, adding that the screener’s inclusion of fluency measures led the district to identify some additional students for progress monitoring.

Rudin described a tiered set of responses: classroom monitoring for some flagged students, targeted teacher interventions during flexible instructional time, small‑group interventions led by coaches or interventionists, and more intensive multi‑session interventions for students with higher needs. Plans are tailored and progress‑monitored weekly, and Rudin said typical intervention plans are reviewed in eight to ten weeks.

Context and implementation notes Board members and Rudin discussed factors likely to affect the winter results. Rudin and board members noted that the mandated screener (AIMSweb Plus) and the state’s Act 20 requirements are new to the district this school year; she said other districts that started the screening earlier reported implementation challenges and that statewide many districts have seen more students flag the initial screens than expected.

Rudin also discussed curriculum transitions and screening mechanics: the district’s recent adoption of new reading materials and the technical differences between an in‑person, timed fluency assessment (part of the AIMSweb Plus screening) and online adaptive assessments such as I‑Ready can produce different results for the same child. She said that is one reason staff wanted to triangulate across multiple measures before assigning long‑term interventions.

Next steps and timing Rudin told the board the screening cycle continues: state guidance requires additional screenings during the school year (fall, winter and spring for K–3; 4K screens in April and spring). Rudin said the district will complete the spring screening window in April (district staff referenced a state calendar deadline in late April for the spring window) and expects follow‑up diagnostics, monitoring and updated numbers after that cycle. Rudin and board members said they expect the number of students flagged to fall as staff refine processes and as students receive interventions.

Quotes and attributions “All of these 53, 206, 304 students did get an additional, diagnostic screener, in addition to I‑Ready,” Rudin said, describing the district’s process for triage and follow‑up. Rudin also emphasized that the initial screener is a quick, universal snapshot used to determine whether further diagnostic assessment is necessary.

What the district will watch next Staff will continue progress monitoring, with weekly checks for students on intervention plans, and conduct the mandated spring screening. Rudin told the board that the district will report spring results after the April screening window and that building teams are already using diagnostic and classroom data to tailor responses for each flagged child.

Authorities and tools referenced Rudin identified Wisconsin Act 20 as the statutory driver of the required screening and named Pearson AIMSweb Plus as the mandated screener used in the district’s winter window.