Browsing: K-12 Education

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has flatly stated that the most pressing challenge currently facing the state education system is teacher retention. Two different analyses conducted by the Badger Institute at a statewide level appear to contradict the DPI’s findings.

Badger Institute supports 2025 AB 1, because no matter how lousy our kids’ and schools’ test scores are, it’s both counterproductive and plain wrong to pretend otherwise.

Badger Institute supports realigning educational standards with NAEP, using common sense language for describing the levels of proficiency, and setting higher expectations for our kids.

Wisconsin’s public schools are losing students faster than districts are downsizing their staff, analysis of data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction shows.

Enrollment headcounts of children receiving a publicly funded education in Wisconsin this school year continued the trends of the past 20 years.

The winner of Wisconsin’s race for school superintendent will have far-reaching powers to advance changes and improvements in education.

In the 12 years leading up to Act 10, school levies across Wisconsin rose 72%, compared to 31% in the dozen years after that up to and including 2024.

By the best estimate, the Act 10 reforms saved Wisconsin taxpayers between $18 billion and $31 billion since 2012.

In the 2023-24 school year, MPS schools called police 1,245 times for help with allegations of everything from armed robbery to sexual assault to felony theft.

When Wisconsin’s high school graduates find out the rest of life hasn’t lowered the bar for “proficiency,” when they find out they’ve been misled, it will be a cruel slap of reality.

MPS may regret its ongoing resistance to the state’s resource officer requirement the next time it comes to the Legislature looking for tax money.

Wisconsin’s largest school district, whose voters narrowly approved a quarter-billion dollar increase in funding last spring, is breaking the news to those voters that it may have to close some schools. But the process isn’t moving quickly.

If you’re puzzled why progressive commentators seem so threatened by a school choice program with one-sixteenth of the state’s pupils, with 2% of Madison’s kids, and with a taxpayer outlay per child that’s only 60% of what Madison’s government-run system spends to get its certifiably worse results, perhaps our answer lies in the upcoming referendum ask…

Passage of the controversial $252 million Milwaukee Public Schools referendum means hundreds of other districts statewide will get less aid. Madison, Waukesha and Racine school districts could lose $2 million or more in one year, Appleton and West Bend between $1 million and $2 million, and New Berlin, Fond du Lac, Green Bay and Mukwonago at least $760,000, according to calculations made by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

“Below basic” becomes “developing.” “Basic” becomes “approaching.” “Proficient” becomes “meeting.” Tellingly, the category of “advanced,” the result no one wants to hide, stays the same.

Gov. Tony Evers remains silent on the call for him to intervene in the Milwaukee Public Schools meltdown and use his education background to set up a new governance structure.  

Gov. Tony Evers, a former state Superintendent of Public Instruction, has a unique opportunity given his skill set to take charge of the Milwaukee Public Schools, a former MPS superintendent said.

DeAngelis spoke with the Badger Institute’s policy director, Patrick McIlheran, about the ideas in his book and about the future of school choice both in Wisconsin and nationwide.

Slightly more than 60% of school district requests to levy higher property taxes were approved by voters on last Tuesday’s ballots throughout the state — a lower percentage than in recent years but around the historic norm.

Years after the pandemic, chronic student absenteeism rates remain distressingly high across much of Wisconsin in both large urban districts and smaller places, according to figures for 2022-23 released by the Department of Public Instruction.