By Rachel Deterding
Lake View Community School
There’s a lot to celebrate at Lake View Community School, and the latest state report card reflects what families and staff see every day: our students are working hard, growing academically, and becoming thriving, fluent readers.
Lake View earned an overall score of 80.9, or a four-star rating that exceeds expectations, and we had the fourth highest elementary school score in the Madison Metropolitan School District. This score is especially significant knowing our school population — 74% economically disadvantaged students and 47% multilingual learners. These results speak to our strong commitment to equity, the power of organizing adults to support student learning, and our high expectations for every learner.
Academic achievement is climbing, too. Our achievement score increased by 7.4 points on this last state report card, meaning more students are reaching grade-level proficiency than ever before.
Growth remains a standout strength, with scores of 88.8 and 91.7 over the past two years. This is clear evidence that students are making meaningful progress year after year.
Even more exciting is the progress among students who need the most support. The Target Group score on the state report card rose to 85.5 last year, up from 54.8 just two years ago, showing the power of focused instruction and caring relationships.
During the 2025-26 school year, a key area of focus is reading fluency, or the ability to read text accurately, quickly and with proper expression (prosody), making it sound like natural conversation. Fluency is important because it acts as a bridge between recognizing words and understanding them, allowing readers to focus on meaning rather than only decoding words (or pronouncing them correctly).
Students who need extra support with reading fluency are reading regularly with an adult who provides real-time feedback, encouragement and coaching. Staff are closely monitoring progress and refining these supports to make sure every student keeps moving forward in their journey to becoming a fluent reader.
Help a young reader shine!
While we are celebrating our impressive recent progress in reading, our work is not done. Lake View is looking for community members to volunteer as literacy tutors. This is a simple but powerful way to make a lasting difference.
We need volunteer tutors to listen to students read and give real-time feedback to build confidence and fluency. Because the latest educational research indicates that regular and small-dosing tutoring is the best way to accelerate student learning, volunteers should be available two to four times per week at the same time, making this a great fit for someone with a flexible work-from-home schedule or a retiree who wants to stay connected to youth and support them on their educational journey.
Are you interested in joining us in supporting all students to be thriving, fluent readers? Contact Rachel Deterding, Lake View Community School Resource Coordinator at rdeterding@madison.k12.wi.us or 608-576-5004 to learn more and help keep Lake View readers growing in their reading abilities.
