About the Campaign
Go Beyond Grades Milwaukee is an awareness campaign designed to help families and educators work together in support of student success.
Across the country, research shows that families want to support their children’s learning but often do not have clear information about whether their child is on track academically. In Wisconsin, more than 84% of parents think their children are at or above grade level.*
But, only 31% of 4th graders are proficient in reading, and 42% in math.**
Learning Heroes’ research shows that parents rely on report card grades as the primary source of information about their child’s grade-level achievement, and the clear majority of Wisconsin parents (77%), say their kids receive all B’s or better. While grades matter, they don’t tell the full story. Teachers say the number one way for parents to know how their child is achieving is ongoing communication with the teacher.
The Go Beyond Grades Milwaukee site has free tips, tools, videos and more (in English and Spanish) to support families and teachers.
A National Campaign with Local Focus
The Milwaukee campaign is led by City Forward Collective (CFC), a Milwaukee-based nonprofit dedicated to eliminating educational inequity and ensuring every child has access to a high-quality school. CFC works to secure Milwaukee’s future by transforming the city’s educational ecosystem through data-driven insights, stakeholder engagement, and policy advocacy.
By bringing together families, educators, community leaders, and policymakers, CFC advances solutions that expand access to excellent schools for all students. This includes helping to ensure that information about student progress is clear and transparent. In Wisconsin, how grade level proficiency is defined on state assessments has changed over time, which can affect how many students are reported as meeting that bar- sometimes referred to as “the honesty gap” – making it even more important that families have clear, accurate information about their child’s learning.
The Go Beyond Grades campaign was created by Learning Heroes, a national nonprofit organization dedicated to strengthening the relationship between families and schools so that every child can succeed. Since 2023, Learning Heroes has launched Go Beyond Grades in communities across the country, combining national research with local student achievement data to help parents take action.
To date, Go Beyond Grades campaigns have been launched nationally and across 11 markets (Arkansas, Beloit, WI, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Milwaukee, NYC, Sacramento County, St. Louis, Tarrant County, TX, Washington DC). Through post evaluation research, we found that parents who recall the campaign are much more likely to report taking action to get more information about their child’s academic achievement.
*50CAN, State of Educational Opportunity in America: A Survey of 23,000 Parents, 2026
**2024 Nation’s Report Card | The National Assessment of Educational Progress NAEP
Given grade level standards are inconsistent across states, NAEP “proficiency/above” offers a national standard representing “solid academic performance for the given grade level” which is what we aspire our students to be able to do.