- Home
- Issues
- Mandate for Madison
- Research
- News & Analysis
- Media
- Events
- About
- Top Picks
- Donate
- Contact Us
Subscribe for Updates
Get the latest news and updates from Badger Institute.
- Five surprising facts about the Wisconsin economy: Experiencing the benefits of free market reforms
- Minnesotans fleeing to western Wisconsin
- Barely one bill in 10 becomes law in Madison
- The many ways Wisconsinites will pay and pay for other people’s student debt
- UW tenure hysteria was unwarranted
- Will government’s heavy hand make business “Go Galt”?
- Chronic Absenteeism remains extremely high in districts across Wisconsin
- Settled: Pandemic school lockdowns hurt Wisconsin kids badly and were pointless
Browsing: Trending
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.
The population of Eau Claire County, now approximately 108,000, has grown almost 10% just since 2010. A little farther west, just across the St. Croix River from Minnesota, St. Croix County has grown 15%.
In both of the two most recent legislative sessions, Wisconsin legislators introduced just over 2,300 bills and saw less than 12% enacted.
When the president tells borrowers not to bother paying back what they owe, it isn’t relief in the way medicine relieves your pain — it doesn’t alter any painful underlying causes. It isn’t forgiveness in the divine sense, metaphysically washing away the stain. The stain remains in the form of blood-red ink on the federal books.
The number of tenured faculty in the University of Wisconsin System has fallen roughly in line with the decrease in student enrollment since 2015.
At the national level, recent studies show that small businesses are not contracting with the federal government as frequently as in the past. And those that do are becoming more concentrated in a handful of congressional districts around Washington, where rent seeking is the 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.
The lasting damage to children from shutting down schools for month after uselessly virtual month during the pandemic is now so obvious that even the New York Times admits it.
Lazy whiners not welcome. Latest entry in a series of profiles of persevering small towns in the Badger State —…
Enrollment in schools run by Milwaukee Public Schools district is now down to 59,200 — a dramatic and larger decline than is often acknowledged in a district that is asking its voters for $252 million more a year in funding in an April 2 referendum.
The number of school buildings controlled by Milwaukee Public Schools that are most dramatically underutilized totals 21, a look at the district’s complete filing with the state confirms.
Separate constitutional amendment on veto power also advances Wisconsin voters will decide on primary day, Aug. 9, whether the state…
According to the Milwaukee Public Schools’ own figures filed with the state, at least 20 of the district’s schools had enrollments last school year that were less than half the building’s capacity.
Wisconsin’s smallest incorporated village is on a hill, and in a valley, too.
“It’s like they said ‘Let’s just shoot for the moon’ with this referendum, Andrekopoulos told the Badger Institute. “At some point, don’t you have to say ’No’?”
The law does not allow Wisconsin to give anyone a free ride based on racial identity such as being Native American. So instead, UW-Madison is basing the cost waiver on membership in one of 11 federally recognized Wisconsin tribes.
The news of a $100 million investment in a new school on metro Milwaukee’s north side by St. Augustine Preparatory Academy, a school participating in Wisconsin’s pioneering school choice program, puts a number on a development predicted last summer.
For too long to remember, MPS has been mired in mediocrity, unable to move forward on anything with any sort of urgency. There’s abundant evidence that more money will not produce better outcomes, but even more evidence that MPS typically moves slightly slower than the speed of your average hermit crab race.
“I have seen my fair share of ridiculous ideas, but this one might be near the top,” said State Sen. Duey Stroebel. “The notion that it is government’s job to subsidize and prop up a dying industry like journalism is preposterous.”
Healthcare spending continues to grow. Fortunately, a bill being considered in the Wisconsin Legislature, SB905, provides a solution that could make it both cheaper and more accessible via direct primary care.