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Get the latest news and research from Badger Institute
- Transportation policy for the way Wisconsinites actually want to travel
- Having two parents matters; so does data
- Do Madison’s schools underperform Milwaukee’s? Let’s talk about it.
- Milwaukee-Racine-Kenosha rail idea back on radar, despite costs, existing options
- Three policy avenues to help public schools flourish
- Data center boom means good times for old-line manufacturing, 50 or 500 hires at a time
- Strong foundations, untapped potential: Wisconsin’s economy
- Want to help families, Wisconsin? Stop raising childcare costs
Browsing: Reports
On any given day, 83% of the offenders who have been convicted of a serious crime in Wisconsin are not in prison: they are on the streets, while 17% of criminals are in Wisconsin prisons
By John Wagner The State of Wisconsin has approved a significant expansion of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). Supporters…
How effective is the Department of Public Instruction?
A regional high school of excellence
By Simon Fass, Ph.D. – April 1991 The end of the United States’ military involvement in Indochina marked the beginning of a tide of refugee immigration from Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos that would accumulate to almost one million individuals between 1975 and 1990. Tucked away in this flow of immigrants was a people from Laos
A survey of prisoners and an analysis of the net benefit of imprisonment in Wisconsin
By Tonia Devon, Ph.D., Rustum Roy, Ph.D. State programs in science and technology in the late seventies and eighties were largely responses by governors to the steady downturn in the manufacturing sector of the economy, which in the northeast had become a serious problem. They were also responding to international competition and the perception that
Where does the money go?
By Roger Parks, Ph.D., Ronald Oakerson, Ph.D. Throughout the 1980s and into 1990, Wisconsin has labored over the twin issues of property tax relief and the control of state/local spending. The two concerns are interrelated, but differently focused. Effective property tax relief requires local tax restraint; otherwise tax dollars spent for relief may instead finance increases in
By Daniel Alesch, Ph.D. This is a case study of privatized general relief administration. The privatization program, which may be…
It can be done
By Richard Cebula, Ph.D. The purpose of this study is to estimate the additional aggregate cost per year to Wisconsin…
The Internal “Brain Drain” Reexamined
This study reviews the state-financed program of racial integration in metropolitan Milwaukee public schools. It addresses the cost of the program, the manner in which it has been implemented, and academic results
A survey of how 3,000 Wisconsin residents view public education in Wisconsin
Answers to the most frequently asked questions about mediocrity in American education and what can be done about it
The migration impact of Wisconsin’s AFDC benefit levels: a re-examination
By George Mitchell The financing of Wisconsin’s “Chapter 220” program needs to be reformed. Here are the reasons why: The…
A survey of Wisconsin public opinion
The state’s most valuable – and undeveloped – resource

