Browsing: Reports

Nine policy recommendations for Wisconsin schools to keep teaching talent by correcting the conditions that lead to teacher turnover.

Facing an increasingly difficult market for hiring teaching talent, leaders of Wisconsin independent schools are developing useful strategies even as they look to the state for some fundamental policy and financial reforms.

Wisconsin’s public school teachers are leaving their classrooms at higher rates than they have in more than 25 years. Here, we present their voices.

Wisconsinites should be concerned the state’s growing crisis of disappearing educators — a phenomenon the Badger Institute has been taking a closer look at. Multiple studies confirm that retaining good teachers is essential to school effectiveness and student achievement.

The School District of Beloit annually lost almost a quarter of its teachers on average during or right after the 2021-22, 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years — far higher than the loss rates for those years for both the adjacent School District of Beloit Turner and the state as a whole.

Starting in 2009-10, transfers between districts for Wisconsin teachers began to steadily climb. The average transfer rate from 2013-14 to 2019-20 of 4.4 percent was 3.6 times greater than the historical baseline.

Federal enforcement of cannabis laws in Wisconsin has been minimal in recent years, with only 67 individuals sentenced for federal marijuana crimes since 2017 and none at all in the Western District between 2020 and 2023.

Wisconsin residents report the increasing strain of trying to afford a home. These experiences are borne out by market data showing more Wisconsin residents priced out of homeownership.

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.

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.

Waiving the work requirement led to an increase of 780 adults receiving FoodShare on average per county per month from 2012-2023 in Wisconsin.

How do other states without an income tax fund essential services? Under what circumstances would this be feasible in Wisconsin?

Adult-use legalization could increase the incidence of disorders associated with cannabis use, including psychosis and schizophrenia, cannabis use disorder, depression and hyperemesis, and numerous other conditions.

The average potency of cannabis products – illegal and legal – is higher today than it was in past decades both domestically and abroad. The current data and research available do not conclusively indicate that such trends are driven by cannabis legalization, but there is initial evidence indicating that part of this trend is being driven by consumer preference for more potent forms of cannabis which appear to be more readily available in legal markets.

What if Wisconsinites were told they couldn’t heat their houses by burning fossil fuels in a furnace, the way about 4 out of 5 Wisconsin homes do now? What would that cost us?

Free-market reforms are driving prosperity and fostering human flourishing in the Dairy State. This unmistakable trend is evident in state economic indicators from recent decades, a hopeful story that can instill pride in all Wisconsinites.

Legalizing all adult use is likely to increase the uncontrolled and harmful use of cannabis — that is, “cannabis use disorder” — in Wisconsin. Researchers are more divided on whether legalizing only the medical use of marijuana has similar effects.

Cannabis legalization might be a policy that many would assume is a negative for a state’s workforce, but Badger Institute analysis of the limited available research paints a much more complex and positive picture.

The research shows that more adults will use cannabis if it is legal to use in any form. When it comes to youth use of cannabis, the research is still highly disputed, but the available research and data indicate there have not been dramatic increases in youth use of the substance when it becomes legal.

There is a real possibility for cannabis reform to result in public safety gains for the Badger State but the tradeoffs that must be accepted are a significant reduction in safety on the state’s highways and roads and an increase in minor property and nuisance crimes near cannabis dispensaries if the state were to establish a commercial market for either medical or adult-use products.