Directory:

June 25, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

Top Five Things You Should Know About Education Funding in Wisconsin

A group of protesters led by the Wisconsin Public Education Network spent the weekend marching to Madison, calling for more education funding and rallying against the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) budget package. Today, they’ll arrive at the State Capitol after a 60-mile march from Palmyra, Wisconsin.

The group has the support of DPI State Superintendent Carolyn Stafford-Taylor, but they’ve spent all weekend spreading falsehoods about the education funding package included in the JFC budget. To have a truly honest debate, let’s cover some basic facts about education finance.

1. A $665 million increase to the Department of Public Instruction is not a cut. We know math scores are pretty low in this state, but this one comes down to plain arithmetic. DPI will receive $665 million more over current spending levels in this budget, according to the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The group claims that the spending “doesn’t even keep pace with inflation,” but funding to DPI will increase by 4.6 percent from the base. The rate of inflation from 2017 to 2019 is 4.5 percent.

2. Public school enrollment is declining. State support to K-12 education has steadily increased since the recession, and student enrollment has slowly trended downward. Wisconsin taxpayers are spending more for fewer students.

3. Honest budget comparisons cannot use the stimulus-inflated funding levels in 2011 as a base year. The Wisconsin Budget Project claims that “the state provided $3.5 billion less in state aid to public schools than it would have if state aid stayed at 2011 levels.” That figure has been parroted by numerous other organizations and has appeared in material for the 60-mile march. But to use 2011 as a base year is to blatantly distort facts. That budget was padded with $3.5 billion in one-time federal stimulus dollars, and over $552 million in federal money was used to backfill state aid funding.

4. The special education reimbursement level in JFC’s budget is the same that Evers requested before running for Governor. Before he had his eyes on the East Wing, then-State Superintendent Tony Evers asked the state to reach 30 percent reimbursement for special education costs. The JFC budget does exactly that. It wasn’t until Evers ramped up his run for Governor that he doubled the ask to 60 percent.

5. Voucher students produce strong results – oftentimes stronger than their public school peers. “Unaccountable voucher schools” easily rolls off the tongue of many legislators, but the premise itself is wrong. If a family isn’t happy with a voucher school, they can vote with their feet and leave the school. That’s accountability in the form of direct action. Besides that, voucher students in all three school choice programs earned higher ACT scores than public school students on the most recent round of state tests. Despite what detractors say, dozens of studies have shown that school choice leads to positive academic and social benefits.

May 29, 2019 | By Matt Kittle

Republicans Reject Dems’ Poverty Act For UW System

MADISON, Wis. — In a performance worthy of Hugo’s Les Miserables, Democrats on the Legislature’s powerful budget-writing committee on Tuesday cried poverty for a University of Wisconsin System with a total budget of $6.37 billion.

The Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee, on a 12-4 party-line vote, approved some $58 million in additional spending for Wisconsin’s public colleges and universities.

But it wasn’t nearly enough for committee Democrats, who insisted the System needed more than twice that amount, the $126.6 million spending increase that Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has proposed in his massive $84.2 billion biennial budget plan — a plan gradually being re-written by the conservative majority.

The committee also boosted spending for the Department of Natural Resources and approved pay increases for public defenders, assistant district attorneys and county prosecutors, but, again, not enough to sate the seemingly insatiable spending appetite of JFC Democrats.

Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) argued that the poor University of Wisconsin System has “weathered the difficult financial times that the Legislature and the previous governor (Republican Scott Walker) put them in.” More than $1 billion in cuts from those fiscal conservatives, Erpenbach and his fellow Democrats on the committee cried. And now, just a measly $58 million increase, much of which — $45 million — would be money System administrators could collect in supplemental appropriations, if they come back to the JFC with a plan of how they will spend the state taxpayer money.

Missing in the sad song and dance is the fact that the System has been made whole and then some through the reforms the Republican-controlled Legislature and Walker put in place after inheriting a $3.6 billion budget shortfall from their Democratic predecessors.

Committee co-chair, Rep. John Nygren, noted that between 2012 and 2017, the System saved approximately $750 million in pension costs thanks to Act 10, which, among other changes, requires public employees to contribute to their state pensions. It also raised health insurance contribution levels to at least 12 percent, saving the System another $250 million, the Marinette Republican said.

“Do your math, that’s about $1 billion. It basically eats up all of the cuts you talked about over the years,” Nygren said. “And that doesn’t take into account increases to the the budget that have happened over the years as well.” The last biennial budget alone included an increase of $36 million. Walker’s budget plan originally included a $100 million bump.

UW’s total budget, including the state’s portion, has increased by $770 million, or nearly 14 percent, since 2011.

Nygren reminded his colleagues that the committee was once represented by several accountants. They liked to remind him that “there’s income and expenses.”

“I think Democrats and Republicans might look at those two sides of the ledger a little differently,” he said. “Our perspective is from income, how can we give more back to the people who pay the bills here, the taxpayer. I think your perspective might be how we can spend more of the money that taxpayers in Wisconsin have.”

“The expense side, I would suggest, is one you don’t take a look at, how we can reduce the costs of government,” Nygren added.

Those same accountants a few years back discovered the System had stowed away about $650 million in unrestricted Program Revenue balances, a “slush fund,” if you will. The full balance, including “strings attached” funds, topped $1 billion.

Sen. Howard Marklein, was a member of the CPA Caucus at the time. The Spring Green Republican served on the budget-writing committee then, and does so today.

“At the time, the former UW System president was coming in talking about, ‘We’re broke.’ Meanwhile, looking at the audit reports and data, and there’s $1.2 billion sitting there,” Marklein recalled. More galling was the fact that System officials continued to come hat in hand, even after increasing tuition on in-state students by 5.6 percent or more each year for a decade before the slush fund was discovered in 2013.

Last year, the System’s unrestricted Program Revenue balances were north of $900 million, with total balances of $1.323 billion.

“We have a responsibility, I have a responsibility to the taxpayers. It’s the taxpayers’ money, I want to be able to let the taxpayers know they’re getting value for their money.”

JFC members agree the six-year-old freeze on in-state tuition should remain in place, but Evers’ budget calls for backfilling the lost revenue, holding the System harmless over the next two years. Evers wants $50 million for that initiative. The GOP-led committee said no.

System President Ray Cross, said such paltry funding won’t do.

“Today’s vote was a missed opportunity and shortsighted. The UW System is the best investment the state can make to develop its workforce and attract and retain talent,” Cross said in a statement.

Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Cedarburg), agreed with his fellow committee members that the University of Wisconsin System is a powerful resource that serves 170,000 students and has a substantial return on investment (23 dollars for every $1 spent, according to the System).

“But one person’s investment is sometimes another person’s tax-and-spending,” Stroebel said. “We also have a whole lot of other budget priorities here, too.”

Evers’ overall budget would add 701 government positions from all funding sources. A sizable portion of those jobs — 219.84 new full-time positions — would be added to the System’s payroll.

Committee Republicans also rejected a Dem omnibus package that included $45 million for “student success and attainment,” $10 million to hire more nursing program educators to deal with the state’s nursing shortage, and another $5 million for student advising.

As the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau noted, the System could use the $45 million approved in the “block grant”-style appropriation to fund all or portions of Evers’ initiatives.

Science Fiction?

Committee Democrats blasted Republicans for not fully funding Evers’ plan to launch a Bureau of Natural Resources Science, and the five scientists the governor sought to staff it at a cost of $718,500 over the biennium.

Instead, the committee voted on party lines to add two DNR researchers charged with tracking water pollution. Democrats, as they have in recent years, accused the majority of turning their backs on science, cutting DNR jobs and easing up on environmental regulations. Erpenbach said he could “hear the earth breathing.”

“You don’t seem to care about clean drinking water,” Rep. Chris Tayler (D-Madison) told her Republican colleagues on the committee.

Republicans called the accusations ridiculous. Democrats and Republicans alike want clean drinking water, said Sen. Tom Tiffany (R-Minoqua). The difference, he added, is making sure that “freelancing” scientists aren’t interjecting radical environmental politics into DNR policy.

Money for Justice

The finance committee also approved an omnibus package that, among other pay hikes, raised public defender hourly fees from $40 to $70.

“I am pleased with today’s action by the Joint Committee on Finance,” said Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Patience Roggensack. “It contains elements, that if adopted by the Legislature and the governor, will strengthen and support Wisconsin’s justice system.”

May 23, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

Joint Finance Committee Increases K-12 Spending by $500 Million

The Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee (JFC) passed its K-12 education budget Thursday, spending $500 million more than current levels. The 2019-21 Department of Public Instruction (DPI) budget will spend $12.3 billion on school aids, a 4.3 percent increase from the base. The previous budget, Gov. Scott Walker’s last while in office, spent $11.8 billion. The 11-4 vote came after two and a half hours of debate.

The generous Republican plan is possible without the $1.3 billion in tax hikes proposed by Evers’ original budget thanks to years of fiscal discipline and higher-than-expected revenue forecasts that have come as a result. JFC previously stripped $1 billion in tax hikes from Evers’ budget.

Throughout the debate, Democrats continually referred to the spending hike as a cut, with Rep. Chris Taylor (D-Madison) calling it more “cut, gut, boom, bust budgeting.”

When unveiling their plan on Wednesday, Assembly Republicans said they didn’t want to raise taxes to increase spending in the classroom. The previous budget, for 2017-19, added more than $630 million to prior levels of funding. That spending increase was achieved while maintaining a property tax freeze and without raising other taxes.

“This budget shows that, clearly, we can live within our means and build on last session’s historic investments,” Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) said Wednesday. He emphasized that in this economy, Republicans will not agree to raise the income tax, sales tax, or expand welfare.

Of the $500 million increase, approximately $330 million will go to generalized aid for schools. That funding will flow through the equalization aid formula, which benefits property-poor districts in the state, like Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). Former Republican Gov. Scott Walker favored per-pupil funding in the form of categorical aid that was distributed equally among all school districts.

Evers’ original budget proposal included $611 million in general aid increases. Another major facet of his proposal was a $606 million increase for special education. That would have increased to 60 percent the school district reimbursement for providing those high-cost services.

Instead, the Republican-led JFC approved $97 million in special education increases. In the first year of the budget, districts will have a 26 percent reimbursement rate for those services. That figure will increase to 30 percent in the second year.

In a press conference before the vote, JFC Co-Chair, Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), said that the spending level was “more realistic” and that in case of an economic downturn in the future, school districts wouldn’t see drops in funding levels.

Democrats slammed the budget motion, especially the changes to special education aids put forth by Republicans. Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) called the changes “baloney” and derided Republicans for cutting funding from the governor’s proposal. But Republicans pointed back to levels requested by Evers before he began running for governor.

“When Gov. Evers was (Department of Public Instruction) Superintendent Evers, he proposed 30 percent reimbursement,” said Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon). “We will get to 30 percent reimbursement today.”

Olsen, chair of the Senate Education Committee, went on to say that the 30 percent figure is the highest that Evers had ever proposed during his time as state superintendent. In his 2017-19 agency budget request for the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), as superintendent Evers asked for $87 million total for special education aids.

The final budget signed by Walker did not include an increase for special education aids. At the time, Evers called it a “pro-kid” budget.

Two years later, when preparing for his gubernatorial run, Evers brought his request for special education aids up to the $600 million-plus figure his fellow Democrats praised. That shift led GOP leaders to call the proposal “political” and “not realistic.”

Rep. Mark Born (R-Beaver Dam) pushed back on the idea that the massive spending increases are actually “cuts” as Democrats claimed.

“This motion invests more in a lot of areas – a half billion dollars more,” Born said. “Why that’s a ‘cut’ only makes sense in the bubble of government. That doesn’t make sense to my constituents.”

Republicans also slammed the contention that education had been underfunded during the Walker years. Nygren reminded JFC members that the only time Walker cut funding to education was in his first year, facing a $3.6 billion state budget shortfall.

The current budget, for 2017-19, added more than $630 million to the previous levels of funding.

While rarely mentioned during the debate, the JFC omnibus motion also included numerous provisions proposed by Evers. One of those is an increase to the low revenue adjustment, which Assembly Republicans had previously pushed for. That change will allow certain districts to raise property taxes to fund schools.

The low revenue adjustment will increase to $9,700 per pupil in the first year, and $10,000 per pupil in the second year.

Another provision the GOP motion picked up from Evers’ budget was an increase to per pupil funding across the board. Schools will receive $200 more per pupil in the first year, and $204 more in the second year. Three-fourths of the increase will be paid through a revenue limit adjustment, and the rest will come through per-pupil categorical aid.

The motion doubles the amount of money spent on two different types of mental health grants, bringing those line items to $12.5 million more. It spends $2 million on a rural teacher talent pilot program, and adds $1.6 million more to high cost transportation grants.

JFC will be back in on Tuesday, May 28, to vote on agency budgets for the University of Wisconsin System and Department of Natural Resources, among others.

May 22, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

What Gov. Tony Evers Got Wrong in His K-12 Education Proposal

Gov. Tony Evers – once educator, then bureaucrat, and now Wisconsin’s governor – has dedicated his life to public education. His gubernatorial campaign largely centered on the question of equity and progress in K-12 education. Yet his 2019-21 budget proposal, up for a Thursday vote in the state’s Joint Finance Committee (JFC), would have turned back the clock on the very values he claims to hold dear.

What Evers Proposed on Choice

As proposed, Evers’ budget would have added $1.6 billion over current funding to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the department he led until January. DPI would receive more than $15.83 billion over the biennium. That’s on top of the record-high increases in the last budget, which added over $630 million more.

While many conservatives and moderates balked at the sheer sum of money in question, the governor’s numerous attacks on school choice access were of particular concern.

Thanks to JFC, all of Evers’ proposals on school choice have already been stripped out of the budget document. Many of his changes to the school finance formula, like the elimination of property tax credits, are also gone. The powerful budget-writing committee will vote on what’s left for DPI on Thursday.

Still, it’s crucial to remember where we started this process, and what an unaltered Evers budget would have looked like.

Evers’ proposal would have frozen enrollment in the state’s popular school choice programs – the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), the Racine Parental Choice Program (RPCP), and the statewide Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP).

Today, more than 38,000 students are enrolled in private schools thanks to those three programs, an 89 percent increase from the 2010-11 school year. Students can only participate in the parental choice programs if their family incomes are below certain limits. In Milwaukee and Racine, families can earn up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level to qualify. For a family of four, that amounts to $75,300 for the 2019-20 school year. Outside of those two cities, the limit is 220 percent of the poverty level, or $55,220 for a family of four.

If families exceed the cap, their options are to either attend public schools or pay out-of-pocket for a private school education. Wealthy families already have the power to choose educational options for themselves. Until school choice, poor families didn’t. Evers would have turned back the clock on educational access for the most disadvantaged among us.

The programs aren’t just popular. They’re successful, too. Mountains of research nationwide have shown the academic, social, and fiscal benefits of school choice programs, including a robust study published Monday by the Cato Institute and Reason Foundation.

That study examined cost-effectiveness of private schools in the choice programs, and independent charter schools, compared to traditional public schools in the 2017-18 school year. Private and independent charter schools tend to be more cost-effective than district-run public schools in the state overall and in the majority of cities. In layman’s terms – the programs do more with less. In Milwaukee, private schools are 50 percent more cost-effective. Racine’s private schools are 75 percent more cost-effective.

Raw test scores show the powerful academic impact of school choice as well. Participating students consistently post better academic outcomes than their public school peers, including on the most recent ACT Exams in 2018. The most recent DPI report cards also show this impact. Of the 17 schools at Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) that received five stars on 2018 report cards, 10 are private choice and four are charters. Just three traditional public schools at MPS received five stars in 2018.

While the governor flipped back and forth on how he’d treat vouchers while on the campaign trail, he came out swinging with his budget document. He claimed that freezing enrollment wouldn’t affect current students, but ignored the impact on their younger siblings and the fact that school doors would almost certainly shutter had his idea become law.

It’s also important to note what Evers wouldn’t have changed. His budget made no similar changes to public school open enrollment, the state’s largest form of school choice. That program, utilized by nearly 61,000 young people, lets students attend public schools outside of their own districts. You rarely hear complaints about open enrollment from the very vocal opposition to choice and charter. That’s because their many complaints are about politics, not policy.

A separate portion of Evers’ budget proposal would add more than $600 million for special education initiatives. No doubt, the most vulnerable of our population need extra help, and that’s certainly true in the classroom.

But Evers also would have ended the Special Needs Scholarship Program (SNSP) after the current school year, with no new students allowed to participate beginning in 2020-21. That program lets students with special needs attend the private school of their choice with a scholarship from the state. While Evers would have opened the door for more children in the public schools, he would have shut that door on students who already know the system doesn’t work for them at all. That’s a shame, and it’s far from the equity he so often speaks about.

His budget also would have barred independent charter schools authorizers from starting new charter schools until 2023. Those authorizers include any UW System chancellor, the city of Milwaukee’s common council, any tech college board, the Waukesha County executive, tribal authorities, and the UW System’s Office of Educational Opportunity. Under Evers’ proposal no new schools could be authorized by any body other than a school district until 2023.

He would have closed the door on tens of thousands of economically disadvantaged children who have left public schools in pursuit of a better option. Thanks to Republicans on JFC, none of these ideas are in the budget document anymore, though there will certainly be plenty of debate on them during Thursday’s executive session.

What Evers Proposed on the School Funding Formula

Evers has long pushed a rewrite of the state’s education finance mechanism. To be sure – it’s a broken, ineffective, overly complicated system. But his idea for fixing it would have stripped away crucial property tax controls, almost certainly ending the property tax freeze. Again, much of what he proposed was pulled out by JFC, but not all of it.

His original document would have eliminated the School Levy Tax Credit and the First Dollar Credit. Together, both credits total more than a billion dollars of property tax relief. Evers would have instead sent that funding through the equalization aid.

The majority of K-12 dollars flow through equalization aid, also known as general aid, which exists to even out funding disparities in local property taxes. Property-poor districts such as MPS receive disproportionately high amounts of equalization aid. Forms of aid like the school levy tax credit and the first dollar credit are considered categorical aid, and are distributed equally across school districts. JFC struck that change.

Other changes included an increase in the revenue limit adjustment by $200 in the first year and another $204 in the second year, with future increases indexed to inflation. The plan also increases the low revenue adjustment from $9,100 under current law to $9,700 in 2020 and $10,000 in 2021. That will allow school districts across the state to levy millions more in local property taxes. Both of those issues remain in the budget and will be huge points of debate on Thursday.

Another big aspect of Evers’ plan remains, though this one is more symbolic than anything else. Evers would restore the two-thirds funding promise, which commits the state to covering two-thirds of all school expenditures, with the rest covered by locals. That idea was originally put into law by Republican Tommy Thompson and stripped by Democrat Jim Doyle. In recent years, former Gov. Scott Walker slowly increased the state share of spending as the state’s fiscal picture improved. In the current budget year, 2018-19, the state covers 65.4 percent of school funding, a hair shy of two-thirds.

Republicans on JFC also maintained Evers’ proposals for poverty aid. Under that plan, Evers would have eliminated the $16.8 million high poverty aid program and reallocated the funding into the general school aid formula. Any economically disadvantaged pupil would be counted as 1.2 full time students instead of 1.0, building in more funding for any school with impoverished students.

Other changes to public school finance include a number of grant increases for target areas. Student mental health needs would be funded by more than $63 million for in-school pupil services, staff training, and other related initiatives. A new Urban Excellence Initiative would spend more than $15 million on closing achievement gaps in the state’s five largest public school districts. Rural schools would get more help, too, with a reworking of sparsity aid. Republicans are likely to act on all of those proposals.

The Plan that Doubled Down on a Lie

Apart from all of Evers’ proposals, much of the debate has been predicated on falsehoods, starting with the idea that public education was underfunded for years under Walker. They continue with the claim that school choice does not and has never shown positive results.

The data disagree with both points. As we’ve written before, Walker’s first budget cut agency funding across the board. Those cuts were made even bigger by the fact that his predecessor’s budget had been built on one-time federal stimulus funding.

But there’s also rarely a mention of the long-declining enrollment in public schools. In the current school year, more than 853,000 children attend Wisconsin public schools, a figure that has fallen for years. At the same time, K-12 investments have grown. The state continues to spend more money to educate fewer children.

And for all the claims Evers has made on what he believes to be the harmful effects of Walker’s Act 10, his budget does nothing to strip back those reforms. School districts have saved at least $3.2 billion on benefits plans since 2011 thanks to their newfound flexibilities. Even so, the majority of the taxpayer-funded plans are still incredibly generous, especially compared to the private sector.

Those savings are still reverberating. In March, Kenosha School District saved nearly $30 million on health care plans alone by switching providers. The district’s taxpayers will spend 41 percent less than their projections, and individual teachers will come out contributing even less toward their monthly premiums.

At 26 percent of districts, employees pay less than 12 percent toward monthly premiums on single plans. Years after Act 10’s requirement that public sector employees contribute at least 12 percent toward health care costs, just 74 percent of school districts comply with the rule for premiums. Prior to Act 10, benefits costs to districts had been increasing by 4.3 percent annually. Had that trend continued, taxpayers would be paying almost 60 percent more today.

That money adds up. In many cases, districts freed up dollars to go to the classroom by adjusting their benefits plans, Wauwatosa School District and MPS among them.

None of those savings are accounted for in state figures that show how much Walker put toward education. It is billions of dollars, previously locked down, that districts can now spend on their own priorities. Walker’s public sector collective bargaining reform legislation bent the cost curve for school and ultimately, for taxpayers. While spending on health care has exploded across the country, Wisconsin bucked the trend because of Act 10.

Why does this matter? Simply put, if school districts saved $3.2 billion on health care and retirement benefits, that money should have been directed to other education programs.

Finally, DPI’s own figures show just how little districts spend on those priorities. State figures show just 54 percent of district spending goes toward instruction. Just a slim majority of all K-12 education spending reaches the classroom.

If top-heavy overhead were reduced, the teachers doing the vast majority of meaningful work in schools could perhaps be better compensated. Instead, the many secondary and tertiary roles schools have taken on directly compete with the primary reason for schools’ existence: educating children.

Act 10 gave districts the tools to save money, and the flexibility to put it where it’s needed.

Still, a broken system will always demand more money. On Thursday, Democrats are likely to argue that Evers is simply attempting to fix eight years of Walker reforms. Republicans aren’t likely to go along with all $1.6 billion in new spending for schools, though they will certainly make new investments. But it’s important to remember where we were, and how far we’ve come.

Evers would turn the dial back – not only for taxpayers, but for the students who need help the most. School choice supporters can likely rest easy now that the worst of his budget is gone, but it’s a debate that is always worth revisiting.

As always, we’ll be there. Thursday’s executive session begins at 11 a.m. Follow @MacIverWisc and @NewsMacIver for live coverage, and stay tuned for more wrap-up coverage as the first major issue of the 2019-21 budget is finalized.

April 8, 2019 | By MacIver News Service

Voters Approve $768 Million in Referendum Tax Increases in Spring 2019 Election

In the spring 2019 election, voters across 48 districts approved 44 referenda amounting to $768 million in tax increases. Of the proposed $1.2 billion up for a vote, voters approved 64 percent, a significant decrease in referendum passage rates.

Last November, voters approved $1.37 billion in property tax increases via referendum questions, passing 94 percent of the measures on the ballot. In the April 2018 elections, voters passed 83 percent of proposed referendum questions, approving $563 million.

With just 64 percent of referendum questions passing in the most recent election, it appears taxpayers may be growing wearing of constantly increasing property taxes.

Of the 26 districts requesting to issue debt, 16 referendum questions passed, approving $661 million in new debt. Voters approved 65 percent of the total amount in new debt that school districts proposed. Last fall, voters approved 97 percent of total new debt proposed by school districts. Out of any shift in votes, this was the most stunning decrease.

Taxpayers also approved six of the seven recurring increases on spending caps, worth $10 million, and 22 of the 26 one time non-recurring increases, costing taxpayers $97 million.

School districts have state-imposed revenue limits that protect Wisconsinites from constantly-increasing property taxes. However, districts can still ask voters for more by coming to them with referenda during regularly-scheduled primary and general elections. Even if voters do not have a referendum question on their own ballot, referenda increase the statewide property tax base, affecting taxpayers across the state.

In the past, districts could propose referenda during special elections and could repeatedly propose the same project in consecutive elections. Former Gov. Scott Walker and the Republican-led Legislature have shared a commitment to lowering property tax burdens, spurring referendum reforms to ensure more voters have a say in matters of large tax hikes.

Gov. Tony Evers’ 2019-21 biennial budget proposal would roll back some of those protections on property tax increases, allowing school districts to offer up referendum questions during any election, not just regularly-scheduled elections.

Voters in Neenah rejected the second largest referenda request, a proposed new middle school and various building upgrades that would have raised taxes by $129,580,000. The Freedom Area District was denied a request for $55,680,000 to build a new high school along with a recurring $625,000 for operating expenses. In West Bend, voters refused a new elementary school which would have cost $47,000,000. Voters also denied requests for new gymnasiums, an athletic track, and building renovations across the state.

In the Sun Prairie School District, voters approved two separate measures. They approved $164,000,000 for a new high school. In order to operate the new high school, taxpayers approved a recurring $5,000,000. All in all, Sun Prairie was the biggest spender, making up 14 percent of the statewide requests, and over a fifth of the approved tax increases.

April 1, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

$1.2 Billion in Property Tax Increases Up for Vote in School Referenda Tuesday

Tuesday’s spring election will have voters considering nearly $1.2 billion in property tax increases, thanks to school district referenda. Forty-eight districts across the state are asking voters to approve projects ranging from brand new schools, to operating costs, and security upgrades.

A vast majority of the money that school districts are asking for would issue debt to property owners in the districts. This debt would be paid for by increasing local property taxes. Across the state, 26 districts are asking for more than $1.1 billion total in new debt.

According to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), 85 percent of the referenda up for vote will issue debt directly to the taxpayers. Of the remaining 15 percent remaining, 14 percent are non-recurring or “one-time” increases on spending caps for the districts. Recurring increases on spending caps make up the remaining 1 percent of the amount up for vote.

Of the districts asking to issue new debt, the largest spender is Sun Prairie School District, which is asking for $164 million to build a new high school. Neenah School District is asking for voters to consider $129 million in debt to construct a new middle school, renovate several other buildings, and increase school security district wide.

Seven districts are requesting a recurring increase, which has no end date, and will continue to roll over year after year. Most of the recurring costs provisions would increase staff salaries or expand after-school programs. Sun Prairie has a ballot measure requesting $5 million a year to staff the new high school. DeForest Area is requesting a recurring $2.5 million for operational costs and district programming.

A non-recurring referendum allows districts to exceed their current spending for a set number of years before returning to original levels after the measure expires. Twenty-six districts have non-recurring referenda on the ballot, totaling $172 million.

Kettle Moraine School District is voting on a non-recurring referendum that would pay for operating expenses, requesting $5,975,000 a year for five years. This would increase the property tax burden of those in that district by $29,875,000 by the time it expires.

Several districts have multiple referenda on the ballot. For example, Sun Prairie is asking voters for $169 million in two referenda, one to build a new high school, the other for staff for the high school. The DeForest Area District is requesting $127,500,000 in total for construction and staffing.

Statewide, the $1.2 billion districts are requesting is nearly double the amount on the ballots last April, despite fewer referenda questions. In November, voters approved $1.37 billion in new property taxes when they passed 77 of the 82 referenda up for votes.

Some districts are using referenda as an opportunity to improve buildings and educational services for students., However, others such as Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau are using these measures to create a new performing arts center.

Even for voters in districts that do not have referenda coming up in the spring elections, these spending increases raise the average level of property taxes statewide. At a time with record-high spending in schools, districts are continuing to ask for more than the levels set by the state.

March 18, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

Analysis: Evers Budget Extends UW Tuition Freeze, Hikes Spending

Gov. Tony Evers’ biennial budget proposal for 2019-21 puts a big emphasis on education. As the former Superintendent of the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI), it’s a natural fit. As we wrote last week, the new governor’s budget would spend at least $1.5 billion more on K-12 schools. How much would he spend on higher education? That’s what we’ll break down today.

Overall, the plan proposes $175 million more for the UW System across the biennium, for a total of $12.76 billion, all funds. That’s a 2.8 percent increase from current spending. Total positions at the UW would increase by 240.84 full-time equivalents, a 0.67 percent increase. The 36,293.16 positions at the UW will make up half of all state-funded jobs.

Across Evers’ entire budget plan, positions would increase by 701 full-time equivalents. Just over one-third of those new jobs will be at the UW System.

Looking at only general purpose revenue (GPR), the largest fund of state tax dollars, spending at UW will increase by $69 million under Evers’ plan. That’s a 6.2 percent increase, bringing total GPR spending at UW to $2.36 billion across the biennium.

Continuing the tuition freeze, increasing spending despite healthy balances

The cornerstone of Evers’ budget plan for colleges and universities is a continuation of former Gov. Scott Walker’s tuition freeze for in-state undergraduate students across the University of Wisconsin System. That move has saved students and families thousands of dollars in college tuition and loan costs since the freeze began in 2013.

Continuing the tuition freeze is one of the most taxpayer-friendly initiatives in the entire budget proposal. The governor deserves kudos for continuing the popular measure. In the years before the freeze, tuition had steadily increased year after year. At UW-Madison, for example, resident undergraduate tuition jumped from $6,678 in 2008-09 to $9,273 in 2012-13, a 39 percent increase in actual dollars.

Student loan debt has exploded in recent years, and one good way to control those costs is by limiting their growth in the first place. For even more of an impact, the administration should consider implementing more pathways for three-year degrees, as Walker had proposed in the last budget.

Evers has argued that while the tuition freeze under Walker was a good idea, it left the UW with a budget hole. For that reason, his proposal would send $50.4 million in GPR to cover lost tuition revenue. The governor’s Budget in Brief notes that the funds “may be used as the system sees fit, including to help struggling campuses or academic programs.”

That sounds a lot like the UW’s slush fund of hefty program revenue balances, a pot of money that legislators in the state’s CPA caucus discovered in 2013. The slush fund totaled over $1 billion, leading lawmakers to question why the UW continued raising tuition and asking for more funds when they had tucked away such sizable surplus balances.

The sentiment was summed up by then-Rep. Steve Nass (R-Whitewater), who stated that “more than 2/3 of this surplus was generated by unjustified tuition increases over the last three years. In other words, [then-UW President] President [Kevin] Reilly and the Board of Regents knowingly jacked-up tuition by 16.5 percent on Wisconsin families over three years even though the funds weren’t needed. These actions are nothing short of a betrayal of the public trust.”

The slush fund became the main impetus behind Walker’s tuition freeze and other program cuts. The system is now required to regularly report those figures and justify any large increases.

Since 2013, the System’s Program Revenue (PR) balances have continued to grow. At the close of the 2018 fiscal year, total PR balances for the system stood at $1.3 billion, an 11.6 percent increase from 2014.

However, funds have shifted to the restricted fund away from the unrestricted fund. The restricted fund is made up mostly of gifts, funds, and contracts. The largest portion of the unrestricted fund is tuition, followed by auxiliary operations.

Nearly twice as much money is in the restricted fund today compared to 2014 ($417 million now, vs. $212 million then.) In 2014, 82 percent of all PR balances were unrestricted. Today, 69 percent are unrestricted.

With such hefty balances, it’s important to ask why the UW System will see a sizable $175 million increase in the biennium – and whether that increase is truly justified.

Walking away from performance-based funding to spend on other initiatives

Alongside the tuition freeze, Walker’s last UW System budget had prioritized performance-based funding. Those measures create goals for the institutions, like graduation rates or job attainment. UW schools then receive more or less from a portion of state dollars based on their performance on the metrics.

Private companies understand these incentives well. Performance-based funding is, in government speak, a regular business environment. Public entities will never be as efficient as private entities because they simply don’t have the same incentives built in. Nevertheless, Evers’ plan walks that initiative back, calling performance-based funding “ineffective.”

While the system had requested $82.5 million more for performance-based funding, instead, the money goes to other Evers priorities. The move effectively wipes away an initiative which has only just begun. While the tech college system has operated under performance-based metrics for years, the UW System has had just two years to implement the plan. Without letting the system have much time to work out the kinks of the process, Evers’ plan takes away the very opportunity.

The priorities to which Evers redirects the money include $45 million in GPR for building initiatives, $26.3 million GPR for faculty pay increases, $50.4 million for the tuition freeze, $4 million for supporting student services at UW Colleges, $10 million for nurse educators, and $2.5 million for county-based representatives through the UW-Extension. Compared to Evers’ plan for K-12 schools, this approach sets larger amounts of money to fewer individual projects.

The proposal puts $17.3 million into need-based Wisconsin grants. Students could use that grant at any UW System institution, tech college, private nonprofit universities, or tribal colleges.

The Technical College System also receives $18 million in each year of the budget, a 7 percent annual increase.

One controversial measure extends in-state tuition to undocumented Wisconsin residents in the UW System and the Wisconsin Technical College System. Those individuals must have graduated from a Wisconsin high school, have a high school equivalency degree, and have continuously lived in Wisconsin for three years after beginning high school. They must show proof of having filed for a visa or proof that they will file as soon as they are eligible.

In all, Evers’ proposal spends $5.9 million more at UW than the agency itself had requested.

Studying a refinancing authority

Tipping his hat to the Democratic Caucus, Evers sets up a committee to study the creation of a state-run refinancing authority. Wisconsin Democrats have long pushed for their “higher ed, lower debt” package, which includes a government-run refinancing authority specific to the student loan industry.

Walker had long resisted setting up such an authority, arguing that private business already allows students to refinance their loans. He’s right. UW Credit Union (UWCU) has expanded membership eligibility multiple times in recent years. Individuals can now become UWCU members if they’re a Wisconsin resident who attended any accredited university nationwide.

Today, students who aren’t even Wisconsin residents can refinance their debt through UWCU. They simply need some connection to the state, like being an immediate relative of a UWCU member.

Under Evers’ plan, the study committee is tasked with forming a plan by late 2020 for inclusion in the 2021-23 budget.

Millions in building projects

Large portions of the plan for the UW System weren’t included within the biennial budget. That’s because the state’s facilities are funded in the capital budget, released shortly after Evers’ original budget proposal. Read our initial coverage on the capital budget here. The capital budget would increase state bonding to $2.5 billion, more than double the previous budget. New bonding approaches nearly $2 billion.

Of that, approximately half would go to the UW System. Evers’ capital budget recommends spending $1.1 billion on building projects across the system. The vast majority – $899 million – would be borrowed. Charitable gifts account for $99 million of spending, $71.6 million is cash, and $5 million is building trust funds.

Renovations are spread across the state. Numerous initiatives, like classroom renovations and general utility improvements, are system-wide. Others, such as a chemistry building at UW-Milwaukee for $129.5 million, or $83 million for a science center at UW-La Crosse are specific to each campus. Milwaukee’s proposed chemistry building is the most expensive single project for UW included in the governor’s plan. All of that project is funded by borrowing.

Not counting system-wide measures, about $401 million would go to UW-Madison for building projects. That includes funds from all sources, including gifts. UW-Milwaukee would see over $178 million for projects.

The governor’s capital budget turned down millions of dollars worth of proposals from the UW System alone. The system had requested $1.9 billion in spending, including $1.7 billion in borrowing. Evers’ recommendation drops those figures by nearly half.

Budget work will continue in earnest when the Legislative Fiscal Bureau has completed its work on a nonpartisan fiscal analysis, expected later this month. After that, the Joint Finance Committee will hear from each agency, before traveling around the state to hear from the public. As always, MacIver will be there every step of the way.

March 13, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

Analysis: K-12 Education Spending Soars In Gov. Tony Evers’ Budget Proposal

A whole lot more money, and a whole lot less choice

As former state Superintendent of the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), Gov. Tony Evers has made K-12 education a top priority in his 2019-21 biennial budget proposal. That is, as long as students attend the types of schools he prefers.

The budget would spend an estimated $15.5 billion for DPI’s programs and operations, an 11.5 percent, or $1.6 billion, increase from the current base of $13.8 billion.

The massive spending plan calls for nearly $1.6 billion more for DPI over the biennium, another record hike over the prior budget’s increase of more than $630 million. It would dramatically rework the school funding formula, based on a proposal long-championed by Evers called “Fair Funding for Our Future.” It would also drastically restrict access to educational choice.

DPI sees the largest increase in state aids of any agency in the budget proposal. Looking at general purpose revenue (GPR) alone, the budget would spend an estimated $15.5 billion for DPI’s programs and operations, an 11.5 percent, or $1.6 billion, increase from the current base of $13.8 billion.

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) will soon release its nonpartisan fiscal analysis of the budget document, which is when full funding figures will become clear. For now, all we have to analyze is Evers’ budget document, which directly cites the $1.6 billion increase in GPR to DPI, the largest of any agency. Surprisingly, total positions at DPI actually decrease over the biennium, from 649 to 646.

Another portion of the document shows that general and categorical aids rise to $7.35 billion in the second year of the biennium. Those figures are counted slightly differently than GPR-based state aids. Confusing? We agree. Wisconsin’s school finance formula is notoriously complex. Take a look at the increase over the Doyle and Walker years in the chart below, and keep reading to learn about other policy changes for K-12 education.

A freeze on choice

More than 38,000 low-income children attend private schools in the Milwaukee, Racine, and Wisconsin Parental Choice Programs (the MPCP, RPCP, and WPCP, respectively.)

That number would freeze under the Evers plan, with the number of students allowed to participate in the three voucher programs capped at 2019-20 enrollment levels. Moving forward, new students could only attend the programs if others graduate or leave. Research shows that the programs have been incredibly popular among participating families, and students consistently post better academic outcomes than their public school peers.

Hundreds of choice students, parents, and faculty gathered in the rotunda before Evers’ budget unveiling on Feb. 28 to protest the governor’s proposals.

“I want the best school for my kids,” one mother, whose children attend Rocketship Southside Community Prep, a charter school in Milwaukee, told MacIver News Service on the night of Evers’ budget address.

Nelly Hernandez, Manager of Family and Community Engagement at Rocketship, helped translate for her friend. Hernandez added that she was also a founding parent of the school, and she wants it to stay open.

Tammy Olivas, Outreach Director for Hispanics for School Choice, thought the show of support for school choice was “amazing.”

“We got so many families that really understand what it would mean to not have the options that they have here,” Olivas said. “I’m speechless because they spoke for us…we came together to be a family and to just let everybody know that what we have is what we want. Not less.”

Students can only participate in the parental choice programs if their family incomes are below certain income limitations. In Milwaukee and Racine, families can earn up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level to qualify. For a family of four, that amounts to $75,300 for the 2019-20 school year. Outside of those two cities, the limit is 220 percent of the poverty level, or $55,220 for a family of four.

If families exceed the cap, their options are to either attend public schools, or pay out-of-pocket for a private school education.

Another section of Evers’ budget proposal would strike at private schools in a different way, by removing tax deductibility for private school tuition.

The MPCP was established in the 1990-91 school year, making it the nation’s oldest voucher program. That year, the fall headcount was 337 students attending seven schools they could not otherwise afford.

Enrollment caps for the program were lifted in 2011, and participation in the program has since soared to 28,067 students at 129 private schools. Compared to the first year, student enrollment has increased by more than 80-fold.

“I’m here to advocate for school choice, to put a face on this voucher, and let people know that these opportunities do mean something. They do matter,” said Kenya Green, a 2014 graduate of Hope Christian High School. “I want people to have the same choice that I had. Here I am, today, successful because of the opportunities that the voucher provided me.”

“I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with public school, but I’m just saying people should have a choice on where they choose to educate their kids. Public school doesn’t cut it for everyone sometimes. That’s why I’m here – to put a face on this movement and to let people know that we do have results. This voucher does matter to a lot of people.”

Today, the only program with an enrollment cap is WPCP. This year, up to 3 percent of public school students may enroll in the statewide program. If enrollment exceeds the cap, a random lottery chooses who is allowed in and who is placed on a waiting list. Thirty-nine students are currently on WPCP’s waiting list.

According to prior law, that percentage would have to increase by 1 percent annually until it is 10 percent, after which time the cap would be removed.

Evers’ plan would dramatically walk that access back, creating a cap on enrollment in the next school year. As a result, some families may be denied seats for younger siblings if no seats open up, splitting families across different schools.

Jim Bender, President of School Choice Wisconsin, highlighted the higher achievement predominant at participating private choice schools in a statement to MacIver.

“According to [Evers’] own school report card, the vast majority of the 5-star schools in Milwaukee are private schools in the choice program or independent charter schools,” Bender said. “Limiting access to these schools puts the financial and political needs of adults ahead of progress for kids.”

Choice students with special needs would be even worse off under the proposal. Evers plans to axe the Special Needs Scholarship Program after the current year.

Indeed, the most recent DPI report cards show private choice schools and charter schools outperform traditional public schools. Of the 17 MPS schools that received five stars on 2018 report cards, 10 are private choice, and four are charters. Just three traditional public schools at MPS received five stars.

On the other end of the scale, 50 MPS schools received one star last fall. Of those 50 failing schools, 10 are private choice schools, and three are charter schools. The remaining 37 failing MPS schools are traditional public schools. Under Evers’ plan, more students would be forced to attend traditional public schools.

Choice students with special needs would be even worse off under the proposal. Evers plans to axe the Special Needs Scholarship Program (SNSP) after the current year. No new students would be allowed to participate in the program beginning in 2020-21. That program allows students with special needs to attend the private school of their choice with a scholarship from the state.

Evers’ budget document asserts that the program was snuck into the 2015-17 budget without public oversight and “was created without the opportunity for a public hearing.” However, the idea was publicly vetted in 2014, with parents testifying in favor and against the proposal. MacIver was there to capture testimony.

The nonpartisan Legislative Audit Bureau audited the program in 2018. The results were glowing. Parents reported fewer negative experiences for their children compared to their time in public school. More than three times as many parents reported that they were “very satisfied” with participating private schools compared to public schools. While 6.5 percent of respondents said they were “very disappointed” with their child’s private school, 32.8 percent of parents said the same about their child’s public school.

Independent charter schools are also targeted in the budget plan. Under current law, any UW System chancellor, the City of Milwaukee’s common council, any tech college board, the Waukesha County Executive, tribal authorities, and the UW System’s Office of Educational Opportunity are considered independent bodies that can authorize new charter schools.

In Evers’ proposal, no new schools could be authorized by any body other than a school district until 2023. Already-existing charter schools would be allowed to continue operating and adding new students. In the current school year, 8,450 students attend independent charter schools.

One City Schools is authorized by the UW’s Office of Educational Opportunity. This school year was its first operating a charter school for 4- and 5-year-old kindergarten. The school was voted Best in Madison in Child Care by Madison-area voters for Madison Magazine in 2019. One City would purportedly be unaffected by the change, but other schools hoping to follow its model would be turned down.

The most commonly used form of school choice in the state is public school open enrollment. That program, launched in the 1998-99 school year, allows students to attend public schools in a district outside their own.

This year, 60,820 students participate in the program. Public school open enrollment is not frozen in Evers’ budget request.

Other changes to the school choice programs proposed in Evers’ budget include a new requirement for all private school teachers in a participating choice program to be licensed by the state. Schools would also have to be fully accredited, not just pre-accredited as current law requires. Information about state aid that goes to private school choice programs would also be included on property tax bills.

New formula, new grants

Wisconsin’s school finance formula is notoriously complicated. Schools receive money from the state, from local property taxes, from the federal government, and several other sources. The state also sends money to individuals to offset local property tax increases.

That’s the goal of the School Levy Tax Credit (SLTC). The SLTC appears as a property tax credit on homeowners’ bills, deducting from the total amount they must pay in property taxes. The First Dollar Credit (FDC) works in a similar fashion.

Under Evers’ plan, both credits would be eliminated. The more than $2 billion spent on them in the biennium would instead flow through the equalization aid formula.

Equalization aid is designed to “equalize” local property taxes – that is to say, the aid goes mostly toward property-poor districts such as Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). Categorical aid, such as per-pupil aid, is sent to all districts equally, regardless of wealth.

That change alone is likely to increase local property taxes.

Increasing revenue limits is another path toward higher property taxes. Evers’ budget plan would increase per pupil revenue limits by $200 in the first year and by $204 in the second.

Increasing revenue limits simply means that school districts can levy more (in layman’s terms, tax more) per student at the local level. It’s extraordinarily rare for districts not to levy as much as the state allows, so it’s likely that property taxes statewide will increase by the total increased levy authority.

Evers’ plan also increases the low revenue adjustment, a move championed by Assembly Republicans during the last budget cycle. Their plan, much less far-reaching than Evers’, would have increased statewide levy authority by more than $90 million. Property tax increases under Evers’ proposal can’t be estimated at this time. When the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) concludes its work analyzing the budget with its nonpartisan pen, we hope to add those figures to this piece.

Students in poverty would get additional weighting in the funding formula under Evers’ proposal, which seeks to add a 0.2x multiplier for poverty. If a student qualifies for free or reduced lunch, they would count as 1.2 full-time equivalent students (FTE). That will increase the apparent pupil amount at districts like MPS, which will then see higher levels of every form of aid to reflect their higher pupil count under the more generous formula.

The budget would also spend more than $600 million on students with special needs. The majority of the hike would go toward increasing the state’s reimbursement level for special education costs by $606 million over the biennium. The high-cost special education program would be made sum sufficient – meaning that the program will be fully funded at whatever level it needs, essentially a blank check. Special education transition readiness grants would increase from $1,000 per pupil to $1,500 per pupil, increasing spending by more than $7 million on those grants.

Other changes to public school finance include a number of funding increases, or entirely new programs, for target areas. Many of the proposals are ideas that came from the Blue Ribbon Commission on School Funding, which met this year and last year to discuss ways to change Wisconsin’s school finance formula.

In the second year of the biennium, a new level of sparsity aid would be created to help school districts who stop qualifying because of an increase in enrollment. Sparsity aid is meant to go to rural districts with sparse, spread out student populations. That change would cost $9.8 million.

Student mental health needs would be funded by more than $63 million for in-school pupil services, staff training, and other related initiatives. A new Urban Excellence Initiative would spend more than $15 million on closing achievement gaps in the state’s five largest public school districts. Funding for a host of bicultural-bilingual programs would be increased, including a $35.3 million increase to bilingual-bicultural program reimbursement. A new $2.4 million program that would provide $100 per English learner would also be created.

After-school and out-of-school grants would be created to the tune of $10 million annually. Tribal language revitalization grants, robotics league participation grants, the Special Olympics of Wisconsin, and Very Special Arts of Wisconsin, among others, would see grant funding increased.

Changes with no fiscal note attached include a provision that requires teachers to have 45 minutes or a single class period in planning time every day, whichever is greater.

The plan does away with current restrictions on the number of referenda that a school district may hold in a year. Those changes were ushered in over the past few legislative sessions as part of Walker’s and the Legislature’s push to keep property taxes frozen. Currently, school districts can only pose referenda questions during regularly scheduled general and primary elections. Voters have approved $9.7 billion in tax increases via referenda since 1999, according to a Wheeler Report analysis released last summer.

The Joint Finance Committee will begin its work parsing through the document next month. As always, MacIver will be here with in-depth analysis and coverage.

February 25, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

Our Wisconsin: Education

Welcome back to Our Wisconsin.

While society has changed around us, one institution has remained largely constant: the classroom. However, new innovations are slowly moving the landscape of both K-12 and higher education. The fourth edition in the “Our Wisconsin” series takes a closer look at education.

From tele-education to the school choice movement, innovation and technology have brought new methods of learning into our lives. In 1998, impoverished families in Milwaukee were first allowed the opportunity to send their children to private schools they otherwise couldn’t afford. That program has grown rapidly, now enrolling tens of thousands of young Milwaukeeans, and similar programs have launched in Racine, statewide, and across the country.

With the implementation of annual report cards, the state has vastly improved its transparency and reporting in the education realm. However, clear disconnects exist: while more than 123,000 students attend schools ranked as “five star” institutions, fewer than half of all Wisconsin students are proficient in math or English. That’s why we must continue to keep our eyes on the many, many figures provided to us by the state and other entities like the ACT.

The University of Wisconsin System boasts one of the best research institutions in the country. Half of all state workers are employed by the UW, and thousands of students make their permanent homes in the state after first being drawn here by our excellent schools. Still, many come to college woefully unprepared, resulting in four-year graduation rates below 40%.

As we close in on Gov. Tony Evers’ first budget address, education will be a massive priority in the months to come. Though enrollment has fallen significantly over time, there is no shortage of new programs or new ideas for infusing more money into the system. As always, we’ll be here to break down every important detail.

We hope our scorecards will keep the debate and conversation grounded in reality. We hope our scorecards will help you cut through the fog of hyperbole and rhetoric. We hope these scorecards help you decide for yourself – what is the true state of our great state?

Don’t take Gov. Evers’ word for it, or any other politician for that matter. Don’t let the media tell you what you should think. Decide for yourself. Stay tuned for more editions in the weeks to come, before Gov. Evers releases his first budget plan.

Forward, Wisconsin.

The Education Scorecard can be viewed here.

February 19, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

Wisconsin’s Exploding High School Discipline Problem And Other Trends

The state’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) recently released a new dataset on student performance across Wisconsin. We took a first look at those figures here, highlighting that graduation, discipline, and Advanced Placement (AP) Exam participation rates are up, while enrollment continues to fall.

Today, we’ll take a deeper dive into achievement gaps and examine how some of Wisconsin’s largest districts are faring on the new metrics.

Achievement Gaps

Wisconsin’s students have long been plagued by racial disparities in graduation rates, at times posting the largest achievement gap between black and white students in the country.

The new dataset shows that the achievement gap is still prevalent, with the graduation rate for white students 24.2 percentage points higher than for black students.

The figure has stayed relatively stagnant over time, but is beginning to shrink. In 2011, the statewide black-white diploma gap was 27.6 points. This year’s figure is the smallest gap between the two groups in many years.

The figures show that black students are catching up to their peers, with the statewide black graduation rate now at 69.3 percent, up from 67 percent in 2017. White students graduated at higher levels this year, but did not increase their rates as quickly.

Other racial groups also saw impressive growth in graduation rates in 2018. At 94 percent, Pacific Islander students posted the best four-year graduation rate of any racial or ethnic group, beating out non-Hispanic white students (93.5 percent) and Asian students (91 percent).

Almost every group increased average graduation rates, except for American Indian students, whose rate fell by 1 point to 77.8 percent. Asian students maintained the same graduation rate of 91 percent, still above the all-student average of 89.6 percent.

At 66.7 percent, the overall graduation rate at Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) was lower than the state average, though MPS’ rate grew by an impressive 4.5 percentage points over the past year. In 2017, 62.2 percent of MPS students graduated high school in four years.

Students of every major racial and ethnic group at MPS improved their graduation rates, though some groups improved faster than others. The diploma gap between white and black students at MPS increased from 14.9 percentage points in 2017 to 16.3 points in 2018.

Black students make up the majority of MPS’ student body. While the achievement gap increased over 2017, the gap is smaller than the state average.

In the state’s capital, a smaller percentage of students at Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) graduated in four years, compared to the prior year. The class of 2018 posted an 81.5 percent four-year graduation rate, down from 83 percent. Most major ethnic and racial groups did worse than the previous year at MMSD, except for Hispanic/Latino students who slightly improved their figures.

The diploma gap between white and black Madison students is now 22.3 percentage points, greater than at MPS but slightly smaller than the state average. That achievement gap has worsened from 18.1 points for the class of 2017.

Discipline

As we detailed last week, disciplinary measures have increased statewide over the last year. The state’s large districts showed similar trends.

In 2018, MPS reported 24,371 total incidents involving assaults, drugs and alcohol, endangering behavior, weapons, and all other school rule violations. The figure increased by 24 percent over 2017, when 19,686 such cases were reported.

Approximately one-third, or 32.3 percent, of MPS students were involved in a disciplinary case in 2018. In 2018, 124 students were expelled. Both of those figures were higher than in 2017, when 25.8 percent of students were involved in an incident and 104 students were expelled.

At MMSD, 9.2 percent of all students were involved in a disciplinary incident in 2018, up from 7.5 percent in 2017. Suspensions were also up, from 7.5 percent to 9.2 percent. The district had four expulsions in both 2018 and 2017.

Looking at the sheer number of student incidents in the district, MMSD reported 2,469 overall cases in 2018. That was a 22 percent increase from 2017, when the district reported 2,023 such cases.

Green Bay Area Public Schools (GBAPS) showed a similar increase in the number of disciplinary cases within the district, with the number of overall incidents increasing by 8 percent in one year. In 2018, the district posted an overall student incident rate of 14.8 percent, up from 13.4 percent in 2017. The overall number of incidents increased from 2,824 incidents in 2017 to 3,054 in 2018.

However, punishments seemed to increase dramatically compared to the incident rate. In the 2017-18 school year, the district expelled 14 students. The prior year, zero students had been expelled.

Differing Trends: A Rise in AP, but a Fall in College Attendance

Two recent trends have emerged for Wisconsin students, and taken together, they seem rather peculiar. While the number of AP Exams taken has increased by a stunning 61 percent since 2010, fewer students are enrolling in post-secondary education.

That measure shows the percentage of 2018 graduates who are now enrolled in some kind of institute of higher learning, whether it’s a public or private, two- or four-year university or technical college. DPI updates the college attendance statistic twice a year, so the initial figure slowly ticks up after students complete gap years or decide to go back to school after some time.

Still, the trend is clear — 59 percent of 2018 high school graduates statewide are now enrolled in a college of some sort, significantly below the 69 percent of 2013 graduates doing the same. For a multitude of reasons, young people are turning away from universities and trade schools and ending their education, at least for the time being, with high school.

A look into large districts showed a similar trend. Just under two-thirds, or 65.3 percent of MMSD students who graduated in 2018 are attending college, down from 70.3 percent of 2017 graduates.

MPS graduates are less likely to go onto postsecondary education, with 41 percent of 2018 graduates enrolled elsewhere today. The trend at MPS is even more stark than the statewide trend, as 55 percent of 2013 MPS graduates are enrolled at a postsecondary institute.

While more students are taking AP Exams to earn college credit before high school graduation, many others are forgoing post-high school education altogether.

Graduates of Racine Unified School District (RUSD) are making similar choices. Less than half, 49 percent, of 2018 RUSD graduates are enrolled in a college of some sort. Of 2013 graduates, 65 percent have done the same. The same is true in GBAPS, where 53 percent of 2017 graduates are enrolled in a college or trade school. Of 2013 graduates, 71 percent have done the same.

Yet as more students turn away from going to college immediately after high school, others are preparing for college more than ever before. More students are taking more AP Exams and earning college credit before graduating high school. In 2018, 17 percent of Wisconsin high schoolers took an AP Exam.

At MPS, 9.6 percent of AP Exams taken in May 2018 had scores of three or higher, the score generally considered to be a cutoff for college credit. The number of exams taken by MPS students fell slightly, from 3,004 to 2,977, but more students overall participated in AP Exams. In 2018, 9.7 percent of MPS students took an AP Exam, up from 6.5 percent of students in 2013.

One-fifth of MMSD students took an AP Exam in 2018, up from 18.9 percent in the previous year. The number of credit-earning exams among MMSD students has slowly fallen over time, though at 77.4 percent of tests scored three or higher, the rate is better than the state average.

Enrollment, Attendance, and Dropouts

Enrollment statewide continued to tick downward, falling by 0.15 percent from 2017. Large districts reported similar trends. MMSD reported a 0.19 percent change in student enrollment, and MPS reported a 0.14 percent fall. At GBAPS, enrollment fell by 1.32 percent. RUSD reported a 1.47 percent decline in student enrollment, bringing that district below 18,000 students for the first time in years.

In Milwaukee, the attendance rate was 87.7 percent in the 2017-18 school year, continuing a three-year decline. The dropout rate also fell from 5 percent to 4.7 percent. Similar trends played out in MMSD, where the attendance rate was 92.6 percent and the dropout rate was 1.8 percent. RUSD’s attendance rate also fell from 90.5 percent to 89.2 percent in 2018. At the same time, the dropout rate fell from 3.8 percent to 3.1 percent.

Green Bay students showed the only deviance from the trend in this regard, with the dropout rate increasing from 2.5 percent in 2017 to 2.8 percent in 2018. The attendance rate fell, albeit just by a hair, from 92.7 percent to 92.5 percent.

February 15, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

Data Release: Expulsions Up, Enrollment Down In Wisconsin High Schools

More Wisconsin high school students are graduating in four years, and there’s good news on Advanced Placement participation and attendance, according to an expansive new data release from the Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

89.6 percent of Wisconsin high school students graduate in four years, according to a new data release.

At the same time, the report shows a troubling increase in student behavioral issues, with an increase in campus cases of assaults, drug use, weapons violations and other endangering behavior leading to a significant increase in school expulsions.

The graduation rate for the class of 2018 rose to 89.6 percent, up from 88.6 percent in 2017. The figure dipped between 2014 and 2016 but has generally trended upward.

The dataset focuses on the class of 2018 and includes metrics such as graduation rates, Advanced Placement (AP) Exams, attendance, dropout rates, and post-graduation plans. Enrollment figures for the 2018-19 class are also included.

More high school students are taking AP Exams, and perhaps more significantly, more students are scoring well on those exams. Students with an AP Exam score of three or higher are awarded college credit at many universities, including in the University of Wisconsin System.

Even as the number of exams taken increased by 2.5 percent in one year, scores also continue to increase. Approximately two-thirds, or 66.5 percent, of AP Exams that students took in May 2018 had scores of three or higher. The previous year, 65.9 percent of exams were scored three or better.

The overall participation rate remains low, at 16.9 percent in 2018, but has gradually increased since 2010. In 2017, 16.4 percent of high school students statewide took an AP Exam.

In terms of overall exams taken, Wisconsin students took a stunning 61 percent more AP Exams in 2018 compared to 2010.

Both attendance rates and dropout rates fell by a hair compared to the prior year. Overall, students had a 93.9 percent attendance rate in the 2017-18 school year, down from 94 percent in 2016-17. The statewide dropout rate fell to 1.4 percent this year, down from 1.5 percent the prior year. While a minuscule difference, the attendance rate is now at a five-year low. In the 2013-14 school year, attendance was 95 percent.

Postsecondary enrollment for all students also fell dramatically, continuing a strong trend of students opting out of college in recent years. For students who graduated in 2018, 59.4 percent are enrolled in some institute of higher learning. Currently, 66.1 percent of 2017 graduates and 68.3 percent of 2016 graduates are enrolled. The data include students who attend public or private two- or four-year colleges, technical schools, or training programs.

That particular set of data is updated twice a year when the state receives new enrollment figures, after students complete gap years or decide to go back to school. This time last year, 61.6 percent of 2017 graduates had enrolled in a college or trade school of some sort.

Clearly, students are making different choices than those before them. As thousands more chose to take AP Exams each year, many others opt out of college altogether.

School discipline rates are part of a new set of data first published in Wisconsin’s WISEdash system for the 2016-17 school year. Those figures show a troubling increase in incident reports involving students — from assault, drugs and alcohol, endangering behavior, weapon related, and all other violations of school rules, the incident rate for all students increased to 8.1 percent in 2018. The prior year, the student incident rate was 6.8 percent.

Statewide, 554 students were expelled in the 2017-18 school year, and 8.2 percent received out-of-school suspensions. That marks a 22 percent increase in the number of expulsions from 2016-17, when 453 students were expelled. That year, 6.8 percent of students received out-of-school suspensions.

Overall student enrollment continues to fall, though the 0.15 percent decrease is smaller than in recent years. The third-Friday headcount last September showed that 858,833 children attend Wisconsin K-12 schools. The previous year, the headcount had fallen by 0.43 percent.

Wisconsin has seen declining enrollment in its schools for years. At the same time, spending on the public education system has increased dramatically. The issue will be particularly crucial in the months to come, as Gov. Tony Evers introduces his first biennial budget.

“A high school diploma is a ticket to the future,” new State Superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor said, congratulating the class of 2018 in a statement. “Graduation is to be celebrated because it improves students’ opportunities for better jobs, income, and further education, which contributes to life success.”

The data release comes earlier than in previous years. Read our coverage from last year’s release here, and our deeper dive on achievement gaps and districts of particular interest here.

January 21, 2019 | By Ola Lisowski

Students from 196 Wisconsin High Schools Needed Remedial Classes at UW System

A new report shows that students from 196 Wisconsin high schools were required to take remedial math or English when they entered the UW System as new freshmen in the fall of 2017.

The report, published by the UW System, shows the extent to which the K-12 education system is failing students. Rather than demonstrating mastery of material before graduating high school, thousands of students are moving through the system and arriving at college unprepared.

Students taking remedial-level classes pay full tuition for the courses, but receive zero college credit. The classes do not count towards degree completion, and students must pass them before moving onto regular coursework. The issue plays into the trend of increasingly high levels of student loan debt, and the amount of time it takes college students to earn a degree—if they finish at all.

Studies show that students who take remedial classes in college are also less likely to graduate, leaving them with thousands of dollars in debt without a degree.

The report tracks the number of students from each Wisconsin high school who were required to take remedial math, English, or both. Students have a tougher time meeting math requirements, with 195 schools on the list graduating students needing additional math instruction. Fifty-six schools sent students needing English remediation, while 55 schools sent students that needed both math and English.

Of the 196 schools on the list, 14 are private schools, and 182 are public schools.

One hundred and eighty-five schools graduated classes where 10 percent or more of the students starting at UW needed remedial math instruction. That’s an uptick from the previous year’s report, which showed that 172 schools graduated classes where 10 percent or more of students needed remediation.

Eleven schools sent classes to UW where 50 percent or more of the students required remedial math. That’s an improvement from 2016, when 15 high schools met that criteria. Of those 11 schools, five are part of the Milwaukee Public Schools district, the largest in the state. At 80 percent, Royall High School had the largest percentage of its graduating class needing math remediation.

The high school to send the most individual students to the UW System needing remediation was Kimberly High School. Out of the 174 Kimberly High School graduates beginning at UW in the fall of 2017, 67 needed remedial math classes, a rate of 38.5 percent. Ten of those students, or 5.7 percent of the entering freshman class, also needed English remediation.

Perhaps most troubling in the report is that many schools on the list had recently ranked highly on Wisconsin’s own report card system. Fifty percent of the high schools who received five stars on Wisconsin’s 2018 report cards graduated students who needed the remedial classes. On average, Wisconsin’s “best” high schools graduated classes where 21 percent of students who entered the UW System required math remediation. Those 222 students come from all over the state – Brookfield, Tomahawk, Shorewood, Kenosha, Milwaukee, and many others.

Fourteen schools that sent high numbers of unprepared students to the UW System received ranks of five stars, or “significantly exceeds expectations,” on Wisconsin’s 2018 report cards. That’s a significant increase from the prior year’s list, which showed that nine schools with significant remediation needs had received five-star rankings on the most recent report cards.

Others still were included on notable lists such as U.S. News and World Report and are purportedly among the best schools in the state and country. Eisenhower High School in New Berlin was ranked the second-best high school in the state by U.S. News and World Report. Fifteen percent of their graduates going to UW needed zero-level math coursework.

In fact, nine of the ten best high schools in Wisconsin – according to the U.S. News and World Report 2018 rankings – appear on the remedial education list. The only school that does not is the number one-ranked school, Whitefish Bay High. Of the top twenty schools on U.S. News’ list, 17 had issues with math remediation.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between official rankings and student preparedness for life after high school. Students who are told that they attend the best high schools in the state go on to UW behind their peers, requiring help with basic algebra and trigonometry.

Of any district, Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) appeared the most times on the list, with 10 schools. Reagan College Prep, the district’s only five-star high school, sent 100 students to UW in the fall of 2017, and a stunning 41 of those students needed math remediation.

Rufus King sent the most students needing zero-level classes to UW that semester out of any MPS school, with 45 of 106, or 42.5 percent of the class, requiring math remediation. At two-thirds of their class, Alexander Hamilton graduated the highest percentage of students needing extra math help of any MPS school.

Out of the MPS schools on the list, only the Milwaukee High School of the Arts and Riverside University High School had graduates who needed English remediation in addition to math. Seventeen students between the two schools needed extra English help, and 59 students needed additional math work.

Math remediation is in much higher demand than English remediation, but many schools struggled adequately in preparing students for both subjects. Fifty-five schools appear on the list for both English and math remediation.

Barron Area High School sent the largest percentage of its students behind on English out of any school on the list, with 38.9 percent of students needing English remediation. Students from that school also struggled significantly with math, with 52.8 percent of its students requiring math remediation. The school received three stars, or “meets expectations,” on Wisconsin’s 2018 report cards.

The only high school where students needed English remediation but not math was Pulaski Community High School. Nine of the 90 incoming UW freshmen from that high school required English remediation.

None of the 14 private high schools on the report had needs for English remediation. Pius XI High School at MPS sent the largest percentage of students needing math remediation of any private school, with 49.1 percent of its 57 students needing math help.

Compared to last year, 12 more schools made the list. Forty-seven schools are new on the list this year, while 33 dropped off from last year. The vast majority were on last year’s list, as well.

Remedial education has drawn more attention in recent years, as an increasing number of students require basic levels of math and English when they enter college. The report follows a 2015 law championed by Rep. John Jagler (R-Watertown) requiring the System to publish information on which high schools have the biggest issues when it comes to getting their students ready for college. Schools are only added to the list if six or more of their graduates needed remediation at the UW.

College affordability is a hot topic these days, for good reason. The issue of remediation shows that perhaps the necessity of college for all students should be part of the discussion, too. Sadly, statistics show that many of the students needing remediation will simply not finish college, or take more than four years to attain their degree. Still, these students will pay thousands of dollars for remedial classes while receiving zero credit in college.

When high schools fail to prepare students for college or beyond, students across the state pay dearly. Oftentimes, as this report has shown, many of the students come from relatively well-ranked schools — at least according to the official rankings. In reality, those students are simply not prepared for college.

The MacIver Institute will update this story as more reactions become available.

November 29, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

2018 School Report Cards: Spotlight on Milwaukee, Racine, Choice and Charter

School choice students see stunning success, MPS slowly improving, fewer students overall attending failing schools

Wisconsin schools and districts appear to be trending in the right direction, according to the Department of Public Instruction’s latest report cards for the 2017-18 school year. Having already examined the results as a whole, let’s take the time to focus on some districts and schools of interest.

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS)

Milwaukee improved one point from last year, for a total overall score of 57 out of 100. That means MPS “meets few expectations,” a two-star rating for the state’s largest district.

Five MPS schools earned five-star ratings, an improvement from last year’s four schools at that level. More schools also earned four- and three-star ratings, showing slow upward movement in individual school achievement across the district. In all, 139 MPS schools received scores on the five-star scale.

According to the report cards, 20,893 students attend 34 schools in the top two categories. That’s a 20 percent increase in student enrollment in four-star and five-star schools from 2017.

In all, 22,446 students attend MPS’ 39 failing schools. The number of students attending failing MPS schools fell by a full 10 percent compared to last year.

Last year, 46 MPS schools earned failing grades. That number fell to 39 schools this year, or 28 percent of the district’s schools. In all, 22,446 students attend MPS’ 39 failing schools. The number of students enrolled in failing schools fell by 10 percent from last year.

The fact that 10 percent fewer MPS students attend failing schools is undoubtably a good thing. Still, there are more students attending these schools than the entire population of the city of South Milwaukee. Across the state, 40,919 students attend failing schools, with 55 percent of them at MPS. The district is trending in the right direction, but with overall achievement low, challenges still lie ahead.

In scholastic achievement, the district scored 34.1 points. Student proficiency was nearly flat, improving by 0.6 percentage points in math and falling by 1.2 percentage points in English. The report cards show that this year, 15.7 percent of MPS students are proficient in math and 19.2 percent are proficient in English. Proficiency figures are largely based on the spring 2018 administration of the Forward Exam, which we wrote about here.

At twelve MPS schools, there were no students proficient in math or English. Those schools did not receive standard state report card grades, instead using the alternate rating process. That is a self-evaluation of the school’s performance on student achievement in English and math. Seven of the twelve schools reported they are making satisfactory progress, while the other five say they need improvement.

At twelve MPS schools, there were no students proficient in math or English. 55 percent of students attending failing schools statewide are at MPS.

North Division High has the lowest scholastic achievement score in MPS, at just 7.2 points. Even after weighting the score, the school only got a 22.5 overall accountability score and a one-star rating. Only 1.4 percent of its students are proficient in math and 2.1 percent are proficient in English. Last year, zero students were proficient in math, and 7.5 percent were proficient in English.

Auer Avenue Elementary came in next with an overall accountability score of 46.8 points. Even though that’s more than double North Division’s, Auer’s achievement score was only slightly better at 8.2 percent.

Five schools in MPS received a five-star rating of “significantly exceeds expectations.” However, their actual achievement scores leave much to be desired, ranging from 46 to 70.2 percent.

As a district, MPS scored 62 points on its “closing gaps score,” and 62.2 on its growth score.

As we’ve written in the past, the formula for rating schools has changed in recent years. Schools with higher levels of poverty weigh student growth more heavily than achievement. This has resulted in disconnect between the actual rating and student proficiency, but it’s important to see whether or not students are improving as a mark of their school’s effectiveness.

If schools were evaluated on scholastic achievement alone, 110 of MPS’ 139 schools would receive a one-star rating.

Whittier Elementary is the best school in MPS judging solely by scholastic achievement with a score of 84.6 percent. That would merit a five-star rating, but through weighting, it got bumped down to four stars.

In terms of improvement, MPS had one school with a 100 percent growth rating: Milwaukee Excellence Charter School. It received an overall accountability score of 94.3 points, a five-star rating.

Another MPS school, Milwaukee College Preparatory School on Lloyd Street, had a 100-point “closing gaps score,” which contributed to its 89.7-point overall accountability score and five-star rating despite an achievement score of 60.6.

Racine Unified School District (RUSD)

Racine Unified, another historically struggling district, fell from an overall score of 59.3 last year to 58 this year. That makes it a two-star, “meets few expectations,” district.

Two years ago, Racine was a one-star “failing” district with an overall score of 48.1. Although the overall score improved, scholastic achievement has fallen. In 2016, Racine had a 41.2 point achievement score. Last year it dropped to 39.2, and this year it is 38.6.

Despite falling achievement, the district has increased its overall score because of student growth, which has increased from 26.1 points in 2016 to 48 points this year.

All together, there are 17,869 students in the Racine Unified School District, and 10,589 go to one or two-star schools. That means 59 percent of students at RUSD attend schools considered failing or meeting few expectations.

Poverty is a challenge in the district, with 64.7 percent of students listed as economically disadvantaged. The school with the highest poverty rate in the district, Janes Elementary, is a five-star school. With an 84.5-point overall accountability score, it stands in stark contrast to Gifford Elementary, which has the lowest poverty rate in the district and an overall score of 65.8.

Parental Choice Programs

Compared to last year, students in the private choice programs made strong gains. More schools received five-star ratings, and fewer schools received one-star ratings.

DPI’s report cards identify individual schools as either public, private, and private-choice. Among graded schools, there are 1,910 public schools with a total of 815,978 students, 78 private schools with 24,358 students, and 122 choice schools with 30,380 students.

The total number of students enrolled in choice programs increased by 18 percent from 2017, and 30 more schools are participating in the programs. At the same time, the number of school choice students enrolled in failing schools fell by a stunning 63 percent. While 25 private choice schools received just one star last year, this year 11 schools did the same.

A clear upward trend is apparent from last year, which was the first time any choice school received a report card. Two more schools earned top marks, and the number of schools receiving four stars (exceeds expectations) nearly doubled, from 18 to 33. The number of students in rolled in five-, four-, and three-star schools increased by 49 percent from 2017.

On the other side of the achievement scale, the number of students enrolled in two- and one-star schools fell by 35 percent. A sizable number of schools are not rated on the scale, with 159 schools enrolling 5,083 students not receiving an accountability score. Last year, 140 private choice schools were not rated.

Poverty is a determining factor in student achievement. It also runs disproportionately high in private and choice schools, since entry into most of the program is limited to economically disadvantaged students. The average percent of economically disadvantaged students is 40.4 percent in Wisconsin public schools, 62.6 in private schools, and 87.6 percent in choice schools.

Charter Schools

Last year, we called charter schools the shining stars of the report cards. This year, they fared well again, though not quite as strong as the prior year’s growth.

The total number of charter schools receiving report cards fell from 230 to 225, with 41,469 students enrolled. The number of schools earning five stars fell from 29 to 27, while schools earning four stars increased from 46 to 51. In general, more schools seem to be moving towards the middle. Last year, 13 schools earned failing scores and this year, 10 schools did the same.

In all, 30,692 students attend charter schools that earned three-, four-, or five stars. That’s a 3 percent improvement over last year, when 29,755 students attended those schools.

More significant movement occurred at the bottom of the achievement scale. Last year, 8,499 students attended schools earning just one or two stars, while this year, 6,105 students attended those schools. That’s a decline of 28 percent.

Some of the state’s best schools are charters, according to the report cards. Two of the five highest-rated schools in the state are charter schools. Tesla Engineering Charter School, in Appleton, earned a five-star ranking with 97.8 points—the third-best ranked school in the state. Wauwatosa STEM earned 97.7 points, making it the fifth-highest ranked school in the state, according to the ranking metrics.

Five MPS schools earned rankings of “significantly exceeds expectations.” Of those schools, the four highest-ranked schools are charters. Milwaukee Excellence Charter School outranked all other MPS schools with an overall accountability score of 94.3 points. At the school, 31.7 percent of students are proficient in math, lower than the state average of 41 percent but much higher than MPS’ average of 15.7 percent math proficiency this year.

The Best and the Worst

So, with so many different ways to look at success, what is the best district and school in the state?

Hartland-Lakeside J3 makes a strong case for the best district. It has a 96.6-point overall accountability score. That includes a 97.7-point achievement score, a growth score of 100, a closing gaps score of 96, and an on-track score of 93.8.

Identifying the lowest performing district is less clear. Mercer School District has a 55.9-point overall score, the lowest in the state. It is followed by Menominee Indian School District with 56.8 points.

Mercer has an on-track score of 83.9 points compared to Menominee’s 70.9. In Menominee, only 2.8 percent of students are proficient in math and 7.1 percent are proficient in English. In Mercer, 33.3 percent of students are proficient at math and 48.5 percent are proficient in English.

When it comes to actual academic achievement, Mercer comes out head and shoulders above Menominee. Mercer has a 72.1 percent academic achievement score, compared to Menominee’s 19.7 percent.

One final takeaway from the data drop is the clear improvement in the school choice programs. As more private schools begin reporting data to the state, the positive impact of choice is sure to become even more clear—a good thing for public transparency.

Last year was the first that any private schools received report cards, and 12 percent more schools participating in school choice programs got report cards this year. Still, 57 percent of those schools were not rated on the five-star scale because of a lack of data. That number will slowly decrease, and the public will get an even better idea of the success of private school choice, especially in Milwaukee.

November 12, 2018 | By Bill Osmulski

2018 School Report Cards: Districts Generally Improve, Schools Drifting To Middle

MADISON – Student achievement in Wisconsin school districts is on the rise, according to the Department of Public Instruction’s latest report cards released on Tuesday. But at the same time, individual schools are increasingly drifting away from both the highest and lowest scores towards the middle.

Most districts and schools are scored on a 0-100, five-star scale, from “failing to meet expectations” to “exceeding expectations.” A small percentage of districts and schools use alternative accountability measures, and receive scores of either “satisfactory progress” or “meets improvement.” The general trend is a noticeable shift towards the top of the rating scale and away from the bottom.

DPI pointed out another troubling trend during a conference call on Monday – the rise of absenteeism. Across the state, 125 schools took a hit for that.

The bottom rating of one-star is “fails to meet expectations.” There were no one-star districts this year or last year.

A two-star district “meets few expectations.” This year there were 14 two-star districts, compared to 20 last year.

Next, a three-star district “meets expectations.” This year there were 152 three-star districts, down from last year’s 166.

Nearing the top of the scale, a four-star district “exceeds expectations.” This is where the largest growth took place. This year there are 206 four-star districts, while last year there were 190.

Finally, a five-star district “significantly exceeds expectations.” This year there are 49 five-star districts, compared to 44 last year.

Mercer School District in Iron County had the lowest total score of 55.9 percent. The district has no students with limited English proficiency, 12 percent are minorities, and 22.5 percent have disabilities. Half of the students are economically disadvantaged, which DPI says is directly tied to performance.

“If a school has a greater proportion of students that are economically disadvantaged, there is a greater probability that its scores will be lower,” Debra Bougie, DPI Communications Specialist, said Monday. “That is a reality that exists. We’d like to buck that trend.”

One district that has overcome that trend is the Delavan-Darien school district. It has an overall score of 83.6 percent, a five-star score, and yet 64 percent of students in the district are economically disadvantaged, 20 percent have limited English proficiency, over half are minorities, and 17 percent have disabilities.

Bear in mind, however, that the scores are heavily weighted to allow disadvantaged districts to compete. And so, Delavan-Darien’s combined English and math score was 48.9, but other factors brought it up to 83.6 percent.

DPI also rates schools individually. Here the trend was for schools to move towards the middle. The number of one-star schools went down from 117 last year to 95 this year. Two-star schools went down from 261 to 250. Three-star schools went up from 643 to 671. Four-star schools went up from 719 to 768. Five-star schools went down from 361 to 327.

Most schools receive an overall accountability score on student achievement.

The best individual school in the state is Milton’s Consolidated Elementary with an overall accountability score of 99 percent. It has no students with limited English proficiency, 11 percent are economically disadvantaged, 10 percent have disabilities, and 96 percent are white.

TransCenter for Youth/El Puente High got the lowest score in the state at 10.3 percent. 92 percent of its students are economically disadvantaged, 95 percent are minorities, and 23 percent have limited English proficiency.

After TransCenter for Youth/El Puente High, the next seven worst performing schools are MPS high schools. North Division scored 22.5 percent, WHS scored 26.6, Pulaski got 26.9, Marshall 27, Bradley Tech reached 30.5, South Division got 31.2, and Vincent hit 31.4.

There are also 204 schools that receive “alternate ratings” that do not include an actual score. It involves a self-evaluation on raising student achievement in English and Math. Of the schools using this system, 185 were rated as “making satisfactory progress” and 19 were rated as “needing improvement.” Of the 19, ten are in MPS.

DPI pointed out another troubling trend during a conference call on Monday – the rise of absenteeism. Schools that don’t meet attendance goals are penalized 5 points in their total scores. Across the state, 125 schools took a hit for that.

“The schools that are starting to see these deductions are not the schools you’d think of when you think of absenteeism,” Tom McCarthy, DPI Communications director, said. “We don’t care if you’re deer hunting or on a college visit. If you’re not at school, you’re not there.”

October 31, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

The Truth About Education Spending in Wisconsin

A fact check: inflation and spending in Wisconsin public school districts

State spending on school aids has become a major debate across Wisconsin. Many facets of the issue have entered the complicated conversation—including how much money districts receive, how they spend it, and whether the funding formula itself should be changed.

A recent Marquette Law poll found that 57 percent of Wisconsinites would favor increasing school spending, with 37 percent of respondents favoring cutting property taxes. That’s quite the swing from early 2013, when 49 percent of respondents said they’d prefer cuts to property taxes, while 46 percent said they’d prefer increasing school spending. Both major candidates in Wisconsin’s heated gubernatorial race have promised to increase state aids and restore the two-thirds state funding commitment for public schools that was established by Gov. Tommy Thompson.

For all of the high-profile debate circulating around the issue, some crucial points have been left out of the discussion. This fact check aims to address those issues to heighten the quality of discourse. Those points center around two concepts: inflation and the 2009 federal stimulus spending.

Inflation

Critics of Gov. Scott Walker have argued that state support to schools has fallen behind since Walker’s tenure began. However, the 2017-19 biennial budget spends more than $11.5 billion on K-12 schools, the largest-ever amount in actual dollars in state history. The current budget increases state aids by $636 million over the prior budget’s investments. Yet when accounting for inflation, budgets from 1997-99 through 2009-11 have outpaced the current spending plan.

Between 2004 and 2012, school district health insurance costs rose by 4 percent above inflation annually. In Wisconsin, the trend has shifted—thanks in large part to Act 10.

Nevertheless, those measures of inflation do not account for massive cost reductions to public school benefit plans spurred by Act 10. Walker’s public sector collective bargaining reform legislation bent the cost curve for schools and ultimately, for taxpayers. While spending on health care has exploded across the country, Wisconsin bucked the trend because of Act 10.

In the first five years after the law’s implementation, school districts statewide saved a combined $3.2 billion on health care and retirement benefits, according to the Department of Administration. Prior to Act 10, health care spending devoured a significant portion of school district budgets, claiming 4.3 percent increases annually.

Why does this matter? Simply put, if school districts saved $3.2 billion on health care and retirement benefits, that money should have been directed to other education programs.

To understand how dramatic Wisconsin’s turnaround has been, it’s helpful to look outside our borders.

How Wisconsin districts compare nationally on health care spending

Across the country, health care costs have been a significant driver of inflation. At school districts, the line item has eaten up larger portions of budgets over time, outpacing inflation. From 2004 to 2012, school district costs for teachers’ health insurance rose at an annual rate of 4 percent above inflation, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Ultimately, high health care spending crowds out spending for other goods and services.

Total health care spending makes up more than 18 percent of GDP – up from just 5 percent in 1960. Almost everywhere you look, spending on health care or health insurance is eating up increasingly larger portions of state budgets.

The National Center for Education Statistics — a federal data warehouse in Washington, D.C. — has tracked district expenditures for decades. In the 2000-01 school year, school district employee benefits took up 17 percent of district budgets. Fourteen years later, spending had risen to 23 percent, amounting to a 35 percent increase in just 14 years.

At the same time, spending on school supplies stayed flat. Purchased services increased from 9 to 11 percent, a 22 percent increase. Meanwhile, salary spending fell across the nation. Where salaries took up 64 percent of budgets in 2000, they had fallen to 57 percent in 2014, an 11 percent decline. Together, salaries and benefits make up 81 percent of district budgets. Education spending outside Wisconsin has shifted from salaries to benefits.

Turning back to Wisconsin, we can see how the trend played out locally, given Act 10’s shift. Take the Wauwatosa School District (WSD), for example. WSD spends less now in actual dollars on benefits than it did in the 2010 school year, which is the earliest available budget on the district’s website. Benefits also take up a smaller share of the overall budget than they used to—23 percent now, compared to 27 percent in 2010.

Since 2001, WSD’s budget has increased by 43 percent. At the same time, enrollment has increased by 2 percent. Overall budget size is slightly outpaced by inflation, which grew by 44 percent in the same time period. Benefits take up a smaller share of the budget, and the district is spending less on benefits than it did in 2010.

In the budgets since 2010, WSD initially decreased its spending on salaries and benefits before slowly increasing them again over time. Personnel is the largest single expense for any business, and schools are no different. These types of cost controls did not occur elsewhere in the country.

Because of Act 10, schools in Wisconsin have largely been able to avoid this cost driver by restructuring their benefits programs and wellness packages, if they so chose. Thanks to property tax controls and Act 10, the biggest driver of district spending has been controlled.

In Milwaukee Public Schools, the state’s largest public school district, business administrators found considerable savings thanks to Act 10. For numerous years, the district and its taxpayers saw falling benefits expenditures thanks to restructuring. The district also paid down its retiree healthcare liabilities, from $2.8 billion to $1 billion today. As MacIver has reported, the district is still in big financial trouble, but without Act 10’s tools, the situation would’ve been much more dire.

That school districts across the state saved more than $3.2 billion in five years alone should be a central part of the conversation on state aids. School districts spend $643 million less on benefits each year. That annual savings is more than the education spending increase in the 2017-19 budget.

As both state and outside estimates show, these reforms bent the cost curve for districts down, and ultimately, for taxpayers.

The federal stimulus

Another facet of the conversation that should be recognized is the role of the 2009 federal stimulus package. MacIver guest columnist Dan O’Donnell recently wrote about that issue here.

Walker’s opponents have long pointed to his first biennial budget, which cut spending to almost every state agency in the midst of a recession and multi-billion-dollar deficit. What Walker’s critics conveniently forget to mention is the fact that state support for K-12 schools was cut by Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle in his last state budget. Instead, those critics add in one-time federal stimulus dollars to the 2009-11 education spending total to make it seem like the governor’s first budget was a bigger cut to education than it really was.

Looking at just state aids to schools, Walker’s 2011-13 budget spent $162.1 million less than Doyle’s 2009-11 budget. A cut, to be sure—but benefits savings to districts since Act 10 have averaged $643 million annually. Those savings far outpace Walker’s first cut to state aids.

Still, by pointing to Doyle’s last budget and contrasting it with Walker’s first, critics miss one critical point: the stimulus.

Stimulus dollars were federal, meaning they don’t show up under state aid—but because so much of the stimulus sent dollars to education, the state cut back its own investment that year without school districts feeling much pressure. In the end, education spending fell by $284 million in Doyle’s last budget. Doyle also terminated the two-thirds state funding commitment to schools.

Supporters of high public funding always knew the stimulus was one-time money. That didn’t stop them from using the figure as a benchmark in the future. Ever since Walker proposed the Budget Repair Bill, followed by the 2011-13 budget, almost any level of spending could be portrayed as a cut. That’s because so much of the total funding in Doyle’s last budget was made up of extra stimulus money.

Walker, who at the time was Milwaukee County Executive, argued that using the temporary federal money would make it harder to balance the state budget in the future, according to a 2009 article. He was right.

As O’Donnell writes, in the second year of Walker’s 2011-13 biennial budget, education spending rose to approximately $400 million more than Doyle had spent if the one-time federal stimulus grant is removed.

To make an honest spending comparison on state aids, one must go back to the 2007-09 budget cycle. To do anything else is to move the goalposts.

State aids to schools are at the highest level of actual dollars in history. When accounting for inflation, those dollars dip below prior year investments when taking a traditional view of state aids as a line item. Yet, not accounted for in that metric is the savings to districts that they can now make, if they choose, through the tools of Act 10. Those savings add up, to the tune of $3.2 billion in just five years.

For the sake of the conversation, let’s use the same benchmarks. Consider that taxpayers’ dollars now go further in the classroom, since public employees contribute slightly more to their own health expenses. Consider, too, that the stimulus package offers a nice federal padding for high spenders to point to.

The state can’t force school districts to reform themselves, which explains why numerous districts still don’t require employees to pay any monthly premiums toward health insurance costs. At the same time, budgets are finite. Taxpayers do not have bottomless wallets – if they did, the population exodus from Illinois wouldn’t be so big. That school districts can now free up more dollars for classrooms is a good thing.

The more prominent an issue becomes, the likelier it is that misinformation spreads. That’s especially true for as complex an issue as school financing. We hope that this fact check helps elevate the debate.

October 2, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

Data Release: School Choice Students Outperform Peers on ACT

Statewide proficiency on Forward Exam falls to 42 percent in English, increases to 44 percent in math

A new data release from Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction shows that 42.4 percent of 3rd to 8th grade students are proficient in English language arts, and 43.8 percent are proficient in math.

Students improved in math by one percentage point over last year, when 42.8 percent were proficient. At the same time, they fared worse in English language arts. Last year, 44.4 percent of students were proficient on the same exam.

Students showed slight improvement in science, with 49.9 percent of students demonstrating proficiency. That’s up a hair from 49.7 percent last year. They also improved on social studies — 50.6 percent of students are proficient in the subject, up a full percentage point from last year’s result.

2018 marks the third year that students have taken the Forward Exam, after the state switched between three exams in three years.

The exam was taken by more than 715,000 Wisconsin students in public and private schools this past spring. Of the students taking the test, more than half are 3rd through 8th graders who take only math and English language arts. Another 196,100 students in grades four, eight, and ten take social studies. Finally, 130,100 students in grades four and eight take the science section.

Achievement gaps persisted in the data, especially between white and black students. The English language arts gap shrank slightly to 37 points, while the achievement gap in math increased from 39.8 points to 41 points.

Choice Students Outperform on ACT

The data release also showed that students in the parental choice programs outperformed their public school peers on the ACT for the third year in a row.

Students in the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP), also known as the statewide choice program, earned an average of 21.0 out of 36 points on the ACT Exam. Wisconsin students as a whole earned a score of 19.7 out of 36, lower than last year’s average of 20.0 points.

Participants in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) earned a composite score of 17.2 out of 36 on the ACT Exam. Economically disadvantaged students at Milwaukee Public Schools earned a score of 15.5, while MPS students as a whole earned 16.1 points.

Typically, outcomes in the choice programs are compared with economically disadvantaged students in public schools, since participation in Wisconsin’s choice programs is limited to impoverished students.

In the 2018-19 school year, families of four can earn a maximum of $73,800 annually to be eligible for the school choice program in Milwaukee or Racine — 300 percent of the federal poverty level. In the statewide program, the income cap is set at $54,120, or 220 percent of the federal poverty line.

Students in the Racine Parental Choice Program (RPCP) earned an average of 19.4 out of 36 points on the ACT. Economically disadvantaged Racine Unified students earned a score of 16.0, while RUSD students as a whole earned 17.2 points.

Jim Bender, President of School Choice Wisconsin, celebrated the results in a statement.

“The school choice programs outperformed their peers for the third year in a row on the ACT,” Bender said. “Higher scores. Lower cost. The continued growth of the programs is good for students and taxpayers in Wisconsin.”

Overall, approximately 66,300 students in 11th grade took the ACT this spring, paid for by the state of Wisconsin. Before offering the exam at no cost to students, about 72 percent of Wisconsin graduates took the exam. Wisconsin now has one of the highest participation rates for the ACT in the country.

ACT Aspire Shows Mixed Results

Students also showed slight improvements on the ACT Aspire, a type of “pre ACT” exam taken by freshmen and sophomores in high school to prepare them for the full ACT that they’ll use on college applications. This year, 58.3 percent of students were proficient in English on the ACT Aspire, up from 57.5 percent last year.

The same was true on the math section of the ACT Aspire, where 39.7 percent of students are now considered ready or exceeding, up from 37.1 percent in 2017.

Students fared worse in reading, with 36.8 percent showing proficiency in that subject, down from 38.6 percent last year. Scores also fell slightly on the science section, with 35.1 percent ready or exceeding, down a tick from 35.5 percent in 2017.

A DPI press release described the results as holding steady, with “some promising gains in mathematics achievement across most grade levels.” Third graders, the youngest students to take the test, showed the most striking improvements over last year. In English language arts, 39 percent of third grade students were proficient, up from 41.1 percent last year. Those students also improved in math, with 49 percent showing proficiency, up from 47.3 percent in 2017.

The data comes just over a month ahead of the release of Wisconsin’s latest school and district report cards, which are slated for a November release.

September 12, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski and Anna Stoneman

Early College Credits in Wisconsin Save Parents $60 Million a Year

An increasing number of Wisconsinites are earning college credit during high school, slicing thousands of dollars off the cost of a college degree

Earning college credits at a fraction of the cost might sound too good to be true.

Believe it or not, it’s real here in Wisconsin. Just ask the thousands of Wisconsin high school students who saved at least $60 million on college tuition in a single year by taking advantage of dual enrollment opportunities.

Early college credit is a great deal for Wisconsin parents looking to save on the cost of a college education.

The estimated savings come from three programs: the Early College Credit Program, the Wisconsin Technical College System, and Advanced Placement exams. Through these programs, students can take college-level courses at their high school or at an institution of higher learning.

If they succeed, students receive college credit while still in high school. If every Wisconsin high school student participating in these three programs redeemed the credit earned, parents would save an estimated $101 million a year on the cost of a college education in the state. However, not every college credit earned by a high school student will be redeemed at the UW System. Some Wisconsin high school graduates will not utilize the credits earned. If 75 percent of graduates use their credits in Wisconsin, savings would total over $80 million.

For our analysis, we estimate that approximately 50 percent of the credits earned will be redeemed. The UW does not track or publish some of the information needed to know the entire scope of savings. For that reason, we use the conservative 50 percent credit utilization estimate. Under that scenario, Wisconsin students would have saved an estimated $60.25 million in credits in the 2016-17 school year through these three programs.

AP exams

Perhaps the most familiar path to early college credit is the Advanced Placement (AP) program. The highly comprehensive AP program offers high school courses ranging from Latin and economics to computer science and studio art. In May of each year, AP courses nationwide culminate in standardized tests on their material.

AP Exams are the most popular way that Wisconsin students earn early credit for college, and they’re becoming increasingly popular. The number of AP exams taken by Wisconsin high school students has increased by 56% since 2011.

In May of 2017, Wisconsin students took 73,169 exams to demonstrate their aptitude. With a 56 percent increase in the number of AP exams taken by Wisconsin high school students since 2011, the exams are becoming more popular – and for good reason. AP exams are graded on a scale of 1-5, and any score of three or higher can earn its test-taker a number of college credits.

In the University of Wisconsin System, AP exams often translate into three credits, but can count for up to 10 in cases such as AP Calculus and AP Physics. All schools in the UW System give a minimum of three credits for a score of three on an AP exam. That makes Wisconsin rather generous compared to many other colleges, which might only accept scores of four or five for credit.

In 2017, Wisconsin high school students passed 48,218 of their AP exams (65.9 percent) with a three or above. If every AP credit were transferred to a University of Wisconsin institution at a rate of three credits per exam, thousands of students would save $63.5 million altogether while still in high school.

The UW System does not publish specific records on the number of students with early college credits. For example, we know exactly how many Wisconsin AP exams were scored a three or higher. However, we don’t know how many of those credit-earning students went on to attend the UW System and redeem the college credits earned in high school. For that reason, some basic assumptions must be made about the number of AP credits successfully used by Wisconsin students at the UW System.

If all of the credits earned by Wisconsin high school students in 2017 were utilized at the UW System at a conversion rate of three credits per AP exam, families would see savings of $63.5 million overall.

Some AP exams are worth even more than three credits, pushing potential savings up even higher. Still, not all of those high school students stay in the state. Historically, about one-third of Wisconsin high school students immediately go into the UW System. If three-quarters of the AP exams were utilized in the UW System, families would see savings of $47.6 million.

Finally, a conservative estimate that assumes just 50 percent of the exams were translated into credits at the UW System totals $31.8 million in savings. That is a basic minimum estimate.

Even if the students don’t attend a UW school, they could still use the credits elsewhere, maintaining some cost savings.

AP courses are efficient and effective, but they certainly aren’t the only way advanced high school students can get ahead.

Early College Credit Program

Through the statewide Early College Credit Program (ECCP), high school students can take university-level courses for college credit. Depending on the type of course chosen, families are responsible for a fraction of the cost of each course taken for college credit.

Dual enrollment is a fast track to significant advancement and savings for families. Costs are largely covered by the university, school, and state in a cost-sharing agreement – all depending on the type of course the student chooses. Some classes in the ECCP are taught at Wisconsin high schools at a rate negotiated by the high school and university. Students then pay the deeply reduced credit cost, saving money compared to what they would pay at a traditional university for the same credit. In other cases, the cost is shared by the school district and the state, relieving families of any financial responsibility for the courses.

In 2016-17, according to the most recent data from the University of Wisconsin’s Office of Policy Analysis and Research, students jumped at the opportunity to get ahead.

In that year, 7,809 high school students attempted a total 40,308 credits in the University of Wisconsin System for a value of nearly $18.5 million.

Millions, that is, that students and families don’t take on as college debt.

As with AP exams and credits, some basic assumptions help solidify the total dollar amount saved by Wisconsin students and parents. The UW System does not publicly report how many ECCP students continue on in the System after high school. They also do not track how many of those students successfully attain credits – just how many credits students “attempt.”

If three-quarters of the students utilize their credits at the UW System, savings would total $13.9 million. If just half of all ECCP students go onto the UW System, savings on college tuition total $9.25 million. Given that students who are motivated enough to take early college classes while in high school are likelier than the average student population to attend college, we believe that 50 percent credit utilization is a safe estimate.

That means through just a single program, Wisconsin parents and students saved more than $9 million on college tuition in one year. Of course, it’s far from the only way students can earn college credit in high school.

Wisconsin Technical College System dual enrollment

Even greater savings can be found in the Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS). WTCS employs qualified instructors to teach the WTCS curriculum at area high schools.

With programs ranging from business to manufacturing to public safety, WTCS dual enrollment allows students to rapidly advance through college or into the workforce.

The convenience of in-school instruction pays off. In 2016-17, over 36,600 high school students took dual enrollment courses through WTCS, earning 147,400 technical college credits valued at $19.2 million.

With millions in savings, it’s no wonder why dual enrollment participation has grown 57 percent in the past five years – and is still on the rise.

Unlike the ECCP and AP programs, WTCS publishes extensive data on its dual enrollment program.

In all, parents and students saved at least $60 million on college credits through the three programs in just the 2016-17 school year.

The total number is likely to be higher – if every student who participated in AP exams, the ECCP, and WTCS dual enrollment went onto the UW System, savings could total as high as $101 million. This figure doesn’t even account for programs such as International Baccalaureate (IB) and CLEP exams, driving overall savings even higher. Assuming that three-quarters of students utilized their early credits in Wisconsin, savings would add to more than $80 million.

Participation in these programs is on the rise, and for good reason. Outstanding student loan debt in America surpassed $1.5 trillion in early 2018, according to the Federal Reserve. In-state tuition at UW has been frozen since 2013 thanks to Gov. Scott Walker and the Legislature, but the cost of college is still high. Budget-conscious students and families should familiarize themselves with the number of ways they can get ahead of the curve by earning college credit before receiving their high school diplomas.

September 6, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

The MacIver Institute's State of Higher Education: 2018 Edition

It’s back-to-school week across the state. Students in the University of Wisconsin System are heading back into their lecture halls for another year of sifting and winnowing. On Tuesday, we reviewed the state of K-12 education, and now it’s a good time to take a look at how students in Wisconsin’s universities and colleges are faring.

Postsecondary Enrollment

As we wrote earlier in the week, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) released a large dataset for Wisconsin students in March of this year. Part of that data included figures on the percentage of students enrolled in postsecondary institutions after their graduation from Wisconsin high schools.

The trend is clear. Fewer and fewer students are choosing higher education.

Of all 2017 graduates, 55 percent are enrolled in a postsecondary institution. That’s down from 62 percent of 2016 graduates. The trend is even more clear when you look just a few more years back. Of 2013 high school graduates, 71 percent are enrolled in a postsecondary institution. That’s a 16-point swing in just a matter of a few years.

This figure measures the number of students who report being enrolled in an institution of higher learning today. That means the numbers are updated every year, and slowly tick up as students who take gap years end up in school down the road. The trend remains, however. More students are choosing not to move on to college.

This shift can be interpreted a number of different ways. A highly skilled, highly educated populace is a good thing, and college degree attainment almost always translates to higher wages. Yet, as the cost of college rises, more students are deciding that the cost-benefit analysis doesn’t work in their favor. The job market has improved significantly since 2011, so more students may have jobs lined up right out of high school.

Students from different areas of the state are making the same types of choices. Of Milwaukee Public Schools’ 2017 graduating class, just 40 percent are enrolled in postsecondary institutions—down from 49 percent of the class of 2016. Of those who graduated from Madison Metropolitan in 2017, 63 percent are enrolled at a postsecondary institution, down from 69 percent of 2016 graduates. Farther north, Green Bay Area Public graduates are continuing the trend in even greater numbers than the state average. Fifty-two percent of the class of 2017 are enrolled somewhere today, compared to 71 percent of 2013 graduates.

UW System Enrollment

As fewer Wisconsin students choose postsecondary education, UW System enrollment is still increasing over the long term—174,516 students attended the system in Fall 2017. Enrollment in the system has slowly decreased since 2010, but has grown substantially since its inception.

Student enrollment trends vary greatly at different institutions. UW-Madison, for example, has seen its overall headcount increase by 4.4 percent since the 2008-09 school year. At the same time, enrollment at UW-Milwaukee – the system’s other doctoral university – fell by 13 percent.

Traditionally, approximately one-third of Wisconsin high school students enroll in the UW System immediately after graduation. In 2016, the most recent data available, that number was at 31.7 percent.

One of the biggest changes in UW policy in recent years has been the state-imposed tuition freeze. That began with Gov. Scott Walker’s 2013-15 budget, and the policy has been renewed in every budget since. Read more about the UW’s current budget, which runs through 2019, here.

Remedial Education

We covered the issue of remedial education in yesterday’s State of K-12 Education, but the issue is important enough to revisit.

In the fall of 2016, according to the most recent data available, students from 184 Wisconsin high schools entered the UW System requiring remedial math or English. That’s an increase from 175 schools in 2016. What does that mean, exactly? It means those students graduated high school and were accepted into the UW while still needing additional help in subjects like algebra.

Fifteen high schools sent students to a UW school where 50 percent or more of their incoming class needed remedial math. Nine of those 15 schools are in Milwaukee. As for English, 27 schools had 10 percent or more of their graduating classes needing English remediation at the UW. According to a UW System report from 2013, more than 20 percent of new freshmen at the UW required math remediation.

In recent years, it appears that the UW System has worked more closely with K-12 schools to address the problem of remedial education. A June 2017 presentation to the UW Board of Regents showed new efforts to build bridges between the two educational systems. Goals include reducing the number of incoming freshmen who need remedial math, expanding the first year completion rate for remedial math, and expanding student success in first-year regular math courses.

Unlike many other states, Wisconsin does not require that high schoolers take four years of math. The UW System is now officially recommending that students take a fourth year of math in high school, noting that 20.7 percent of those who did not complete math their senior year were placed in remedial or developmental education. Just 7.5 percent of the students who did take math as high school seniors needed the remedial course.

It’s important to note, too, that remedial courses do not count for college credit. Students take remedial classes at the full price of tuition, but they earn zero credits. With all the discussion of college affordability these days, the prevalence of remedial education would be a good place to start.

The university system, by way of providing these courses, expends considerable resources to get students caught up to speed. Meanwhile, students and their families pay thousands of dollars for courses that should be their high school’s responsibility.

September 4, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

The MacIver Institute's State of K-12 Education: 2018 Edition

Back-to-school season is here, and it’s time to hit the books. Catch up on remedial education, AP score analysis, and all the rest you won’t see anywhere else.

Welcome back, everyone! It’s the first day of school for most kids across the state, which means it is time for MacIver’s annual look at the state of education in Wisconsin and how our children are faring.

In 2018, there are many—and we mean many—ways to track student achievement. There are, of course, other important issues to address as well, such as school choice participation and remedial class enrollment.

One of the most encouraging trends in Wisconsin education is AP Exam participation. The number of AP Exams taken by students has increased by a stunning 56 percent since 2011.

At the MacIver Institute, we always work to give our readers an unvarnished look at education. Much of this data— especially that on remedial education—is information you won’t see elsewhere. We believe that in order to make real progress on the state of education, you simply can’t sugarcoat the tough issues. Let’s dive in.

The Metrics: Student Performance

Every year, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) releases a slew of data measuring the performance of our schools in Wisconsin. The federal government and test-makers like the ACT also regularly release data. Let’s start with the newest-available data for this year.

ACT Scores

So far, the most significant data release of 2018 came in early March.

That data drop focused on the class of 2017, including ACT results. The ACT is a national, standardized exam that students use for college applications. The data show that Wisconsin’s class of 2017 scored an average of 20.3 out of 36 points on the ACT exam.

Compared to the class of 2016, test scores remained exactly the same for the overall composite score, as well as the subject areas of English, math, and writing. With 92.1 percent of public school students taking the ACT, participation also stayed the same compared to 2016.

Wisconsin is one of several states which pays for all high school juniors to take the ACT exam. 2016 was the first year the state did so, bringing a massive jump in participation. This particular data represent the average of all ACT exams taken by 2017 graduates, not just the exam taken their junior year.

Scores remained flat compared to the prior year in every subject area except reading, where the average score fell from 20.5 to 20.4. However, the percent of college-ready exam takers grew to 40.5 percent from 39.6 percent.

In English, students earned an average of 19.4 out of 36 points, while the percentage of college-ready students fell to 57.9 percent from 59 percent. In math, the class of 2017 scored an average of 20.3 points, and college readiness fell from 40.1 percent to 38.2 percent.

Scores varied significantly in Wisconsin’s largest public school districts. In Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), students scored an average of 16.5 out of 36 points, significantly below the statewide average. MPS’ class of 2017 fared better than the class of 2016 in every subject, though participation fell from 95.3 percent to 90.6 percent. Student college readiness improved in every subject over the previous year, though all scores are still lower than the state average.

Over in Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), students fared slightly better than the average, at 21.5 out of 36 points. Read more about the results in some of the largest school districts for the ACT, ACT Aspire, and graduation rates here.

AP Scores

Another part of March’s data drop was information on AP Exams. Advanced Placement (AP) courses are college-level classes students can take in high school. AP classes are great for getting students accustomed to more challenging, faster-paced material. There are also significant financial incentives for students, who can choose to take the AP Exam at the end of their class in May for a chance at earning college credit.

The exams are scored on a five-point scale. Many colleges and universities give credit for scores of four or five – but the University of Wisconsin System is quite generous in its AP policy. All scores of three or better earn students three credits in the related field of study. That means students come into college already having earned credit, not only saving them and their families thousands of dollars but also getting a leg up on those 120 credits to graduate. Plus, at the UW, students enroll in courses based upon how many credits they have already attained. If they come in with AP credits, they get further ahead in the line for course enrollment.

Of all the AP Exams that Wisconsin students took in 2017, 65.9 percent of scores were a three out of five or higher. The student participation rate has steadily increased, which is good news for young Wisconsinites and their families. In 2017, 16.4 percent of all students took an AP Exam, continuing the trend of annual one percent increases in participation. We hope to see that number keep increasing.

The most encouraging number in the AP dataset is the sheer number of AP Exams taken in 2017–73,169 in all. That’s more than a 56 percent increase from 2011. Well done, high schoolers.

Graduation Rates and Achievement Gaps

Wisconsin has long struggled with significant achievement gaps in four-year high school graduation rates, as well as almost every other performance metric. The gaps between white and black students, in particular, have regularly been the largest in the nation. Students have made some progress in closing the gaps, but they still persist.

As a whole, 88.6 percent of Wisconsin students graduated high school in four years. That number has slowly trended upwards since 2011, with some ticks up and down.

White students have long posted the best graduation rates in Wisconsin. Of the class of 2017, 92.7 percent of white students graduated in four years.

Hispanic students have shown the greatest improvement in graduation rates—80.3 percent of hispanic and latino students graduated high school in four years in 2017, up by more than 8 points from 2011’s rate of 72.0 percent. The achievement gap between white and hispanic students has fallen by seven points since 2011.

The largest achievement gap remains between white and black students. Sixty-seven percent of black students graduated in four years in 2017, constituting a 25.7-point gap between the two groups. The black-white achievement gap has fallen by just 1.9 points since 2011.

Some individual school districts saw striking improvements in this area. Most notably, the achievement gap between white and black students at Madison Metropolitan fell to 18 points—down from 31 points in 2016. At MPS, the achievement gap is 14.9 percent, down from 17.1 in the prior year.

While 2016’s graduation rate data was released several months later than usual – and was laden with mistakes – 2017 numbers came earlier than expected. Zero school districts reported data errata in 2017, compared to 21 in 2016.

While achievement gaps and graduation rates have slowly improved, there’s another side to this coin. The next dataset we’ll examine shows that plenty of students graduating from high school simply are not ready for college.

Remedial Education

This little-known facet of education costs students and parents dearly. Before entering the UW System—usually the summer before freshman year—students take placement exams for English and math. If they don’t pass, they still get to start college in the coming fall, but they have to take remedial courses in addition to their regular course loads. Those are classes covering subject areas in which students should be proficient during high school, or earlier, such as algebra.

The state began tracking who needs remedial education, and from what high schools they graduate, in 2016. The second remedial report was released in December of 2017 regarding students entering the UW System in the fall of 2016. That’s the most current data we have today.

The data show that students from 184 Wisconsin high schools were required to take remedial math or English at the UW System as new freshmen. That’s an uptick from 175 schools the previous year.

Some high schools sent high percentages of students to the UW System needing remedial courses, raising questions as to how those students graduated high school, and why they were accepted into the UW System. Hence, this issue lives squarely between the K-12 and higher education systems.

Fifteen high schools sent classes of students off to the UW wherein 50 percent or more of the class needed math remediation. Of those 15 schools, nine are in Milwaukee. Nine of the ten schools with the largest percentage of students needing math remediation are also in Milwaukee.

Perhaps most shocking in this report is the fact that many of the high schools in question are touted as high achieving. Nine of the schools included in the data report had received five-star rankings on the state report cards that were released just a month prior. A full 40 percent of the high schools that “significantly exceed expectations” had graduates who needed math or English remediation upon entering the UW System.

The issue extends to other rankings, like the U.S. News and World Report rankings of the best high schools in Wisconsin. Of the top ten schools on 2017’s list, nine of them sent students to the UW needing additional math. Only one of the top ten schools on that list, Carmen High School of Science and Technology, did not appear on the remedial education report. Carmen is a charter school at MPS.

Many more high schools had issues with math preparedness compared to English, but some schools struggled with both. More than half—52 percent—of the 87-person graduating class from Beloit Memorial High School needed math remediation at the UW System, and 24 percent needed English remediation. Back at MPS, nearly three-quarters—73 percent—of incoming Alexander Hamilton High School graduates needed math remediation, and 60 percent needed English remediation.

There are several implications in this data, not least of which are financial. Students pay full tuition for these classes, yet they don’t count for any credits. That’s right. Students actually pay hundreds of dollars per credit, that they must take to graduate, but the classes don’t even count towards the 120 credits required to graduate.

Ever wonder why student debt has exploded and many students have trouble getting out in four years? Remedial education is part of the reason why.

Report Cards

School and district report cards are perhaps the biggest education data release at the state level every year. This massive release gives every school and district in the state scores on a five-star scale, from “failing to meet expectations” to “exceeding expectations.” The last report cards were released in November 2017 for the 2016-17 school year, which means new report cards are just around the corner.

The big picture? There appears to be a significant disconnect between student performance and report card rankings. In 2017, zero school districts received a failing grade, down from five districts in 2016. At the same time, however, the number of failing schools rose from 99 to 117—an 18 percent increase. As a whole, the statewide achievement score is just 66 out of 100 points. MPS posted the lowest overall score of any district, at 56 points, though it just barely missed the official “failing” mark.

More than three-quarters—77 percent—of schools received three of five stars or more, signifying that they are doing well. The vast majority—94 percent—of districts fared the same.

However, almost 50,000 students attend 117 failing schools. That’s a population bigger than the city of Sheboygan, and just under the size of La Crosse. Within MPS, just four out of 138 schools received the highest ranking. These schools enroll more than 1,550 students. At the same time, nearly 25,000 students attend the 45 schools in MPS that received a failing grade.

The report card scores are calculated based on several priority areas for students, including achievement, growth, closing gaps, and post-secondary readiness. Major weight is given to English language arts and math progress, but variables such as attendance and test participation are also taken into account.

Last year’s report card release was also the first time that private choice schools received report cards with accountability scores. Some private schools had received report cards for participants in the year before, but none received any official accountability rating because of a lack of data.

In 2017, 251 private schools received a report card. Twelve private schools enrolling 2,319 students earned five stars. Unfortunately, many more schools received a failing mark—25 private schools enrolling 6,138 students got the lowest rank.

At the same time, it’s important to note that enrollment in the parental choice programs is limited to impoverished students. When comparing similar populations of students, those in choice programs tend to have higher growth than their peers in public schools.

More than 200 public charter schools also received report cards in 2017, and many posted excellent results. Compared to other groups, charter students tend to outperform. A full 20 percent of charter schools ranked on the five-star scale earned top marks, while another 31 percent exceeded expectations. Nine percent of charter schools failed to meet expectations.

Worth noting, too, is that three of the top four best-rated schools in MPS are charters. This is certainly a group worth watching.

For last year’s full report card analysis, check out this read, and go here for a deeper dive into individual districts and school choice performance.

Forward Exam

As you can tell, Wisconsin students take a number of standardized tests.

When fewer than half of all young students are proficient in major subjects, there’s not much to celebrate.

One of the most important exams, and metrics for student achievement, is the Forward Exam. The Forward is administered to 3rd through 8th grade students every spring. The most current data we have for this exam is from the spring 2017 administration, which was made public in late September 2017.

Last year’s data release in this area was significant because it was the first time in many years that the public could directly compare results with the prior year. That’s because the state of Wisconsin changed the exam three times in three years. Comparing proficiency across different exams is a no-go—so we hope the state sticks with the Forward Exam for some time to ensure that we can accurately track the growth and achievement of our students over time.

The 2017 results show that 44.4 percent of students are proficient in English language arts, while 43.8 percent are proficient in math. Those results are slightly better than the year before, when 42.7 percent of students were proficient in English language arts and 42.5 percent in math. Fewer than 50 percent of students scored proficient in both science and social studies.

As a whole, student results on 2017’s Forward Exam were rather worrisome. When fewer than half of all students are proficient in all major subjects, there’s not much to celebrate. At the same time, bright spots can be found.

MPS students posted slight improvements in both English language arts and math. The math achievement gap between black and white MPS students shrank slightly, to 28.9 points. A meager 8.4 percent of black MPS students were proficient in math.

This data release was where private choice students really shined. Students in all three parental choice programs – statewide, Milwaukee, and Racine – outperformed their peers in every subject on the Forward.

As we noted above, it’s important to reiterate that the school choice programs impose income limitations. As a result, larger percentages of choice students are economically disadvantaged than typical public school students. For that reason, it’s more accurate to compare choice school students with economically disadvantaged public school students.

ACT Aspire

Another part of March’s dataset included results for the ACT Aspire. The relatively new exam is taken by high school freshmen and sophomores to prepare for the real ACT. That makes the ACT Aspire less critical than the ACT, but it still provides an opportunity to see if students are on track to be college ready. Unfortunately, ACT Aspire results were perhaps the most bleak dataset of the March release. Fewer students demonstrated proficiency on the ACT Aspire in almost every subject compared to the prior year.

Students fared the best in English, with 57.5 percent of exam takers “ready or exceeding.” The prior year, 60.4 percent of students had earned the same distinction. In math, just 37.1 percent of students were ready or exceeding, down from 38.9 percent in 2016.

Writing was the only ACT Aspire subject area where students improved over the year before, though it was a small increase—51.4 percent of students were ready or exceeding, compared to 51 percent in 2016.

At Madison Metropolitan, students did worse in almost every subject on the ACT Aspire compared to the year before. Fifty-five percent of students scored “ready or exceeding” in English—a full ten-point drop to just two years prior. Just over one third, 36 percent, of students were ready or exceeding in math.

MPS students struggled more, with 8.3 percent ready or exceeding in math and 24.2 percent in English. Racial disparities persisted throughout the data. Half of all white MPS students were ready or exceeding on the ACT Aspire, while 15.8 percent of black students fared the same. Both groups of students earned worse marks than the prior year, and the achievement gap between them grew from 32.9 to 34.4 points.

ACT Plus Writing

We’ve already covered a few different ACT-related datasets, so we won’t go too deep into this one. The state of Wisconsin pays for all high school juniors to take the ACT exam once. Another part of the data release from September of 2017 included the test results for spring 2017’s administration. The ACT results covered earlier in this analysis are the average of all exams taken by class of 2017 students.

On the ACT Plus Writing, students scored an average composite score of 20.0 out of 36 points. That’s a small tick down from the 20.1 points students earned in 2016. Average scores in English language arts fell from 18.6 to 18.3, while math scores fell from 20.1 to 20.0. At 20.4 out of 36 points, students scored the highest average score on science – but even that subject area was a retreat from the previous year’s 20.5.

Read more about this particular dataset here.

Before moving onto other indicators, here’s a preview of what’s to come in the next few months. As you may be able to tell, late fall is always a busy time for education data releases. This year will be no different. The achievement data drops through the rest of the calendar year are:

• Spring 2018 Forward Exam results, slated for late September or early October
• National ACT results with state-to-state comparisons, slated for mid-October
• 2018-19 preliminary enrollment counts, slated for October
• 2017-18 report cards, slated for November release
• UW remedial education report for Fall 2017, slated for November or December release

Financial data will come out toward the end of the year, too. Speaking of finances, check out this analysis to get a refresher on last year’s budget, which set state funding levels for schools through 2019.

We’ve also done plenty of work on individual school district budgets, especially MPS. That district, and many others, will finalize their 2018-19 budgets this fall. Read our analysis on MPS’ preliminary budget, which was passed in June, here.

Still with us? Great. Let’s move onto other indicators of success. Test scores are important, but they’re not everything.

Enrollment

As a whole, Wisconsin’s K-12 student enrollment has stayed largely flat, while funding for education has trended upward. We haven’t seen a massive dip in the overall student population, but more students are opting out of the traditional public system.

Figures from 2017-18 showed that public school student enrollment fell by 0.41 percent, or 3,743 students. That continues a long trend of students leaving the traditional public school system for other options. Where are they going? That brings us to our next section…

School Choice in Wisconsin: Growth and Results

As we detailed earlier in this piece, school choice students tend to post stronger results than their peers. There are still too many schools that earned low scores on report cards, but it appears that students in these programs are trending in the right direction.

Aside from scores, Wisconsin has seen a remarkable increase in the number of choice participants in recent years.

Among parental choice programs in Milwaukee, Racine, statewide, plus the special needs scholarship program and public school open enrollment, 94,842 students across the state participated in a form of school choice last year. That’s a remarkable 71 percent increase from the 2010-11 school year.

Since the beginning of Gov. Scott Walker’s tenure, students trapped in failing schools have been given more and more opportunities to try alternative forms of education. Milwaukee’s parental choice program—the oldest in the country—has seen access opened up in a number of ways. The program no longer has any enrollment cap, is accessible for families earning up to 300 percent of the federal poverty line, and schools have no more geographic requirement. Milwaukee’s program is the biggest of the three parental choice programs, having enrolled 28,702 students last year.

The biggest and oldest form of school choice in the state is public school open enrollment. That allows students to attend a public school district outside of their home’s boundaries. That program has seen significant growth in recent years, with 69 percent more students participating since the 2010-11 school year.

The newest form of school choice in Wisconsin, the special needs scholarship program, is starting its third year. The program allows qualifying students to receive a voucher to attend private schools if they are not satisfied with their public school education. The program has seen stunning growth. This year, 84 schools are participating, including 56 that are new to the program.

This summer, the state’s Legislative Audit Bureau released a full audit on the SNSP. The report surveyed the parents of all 306 participating students. Parents were happier with the new schools. The survey reported decreased levels of behavioral problems and negative experiences as a whole compared to when their children had attended public schools. That’s great news for this young program. We hope to see similar results in the future.

State Comparisons: Enrollment, Graduation Rates, ACT, and Funding

While Packers fans know we’re the best there is (back to school, of course, also means back to the gridiron), Wisconsin doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It’s always good to know how we compare to other states, especially to our neighbors in the Midwest.

As it turns out, Wisconsin is in the middle of the pack when it comes to overall student revenue and spending. According to federal data from 2015, the most recent year available, Wisconsin spends $12,850 in revenue per pupil. That’s the median figure for the seven-state Midwest region, and is just below the Midwest and US averages.

At the same time, Wisconsin students achieve higher scores than their peers. Graduation rates are among the highest in the country, as are ACT scores for the class of 2017. Wisconsin is one of 17 states that tests all students on the ACT. Of those, Wisconsin’s average score of 20.5 out of 36 is the third highest behind Minnesota (21.1) and Colorado (20.8). (ACT’s own figures are slightly different from DPI’s ACT numbers that we discussed earlier in this piece.)

It’s important to note that Wisconsin can only be compared to other states that also administer the test to all students. In states where taking the ACT is purely voluntary, only the students who plan on going to college take the exam, pushing the average score upwards. That’s why we always expect to see a slight dip in scores whenever participation increases, whether it’s the ACT, AP Exams, or any other achievement metric.

Since the ACT began administering a new test every July for the first time this year, national comparisons will come out a bit later than usual. Look out for those numbers, and our reporting on them, in the coming months.

As for graduation rates in the Midwest, Wisconsin’s graduation rate of 88 percent is bested only by Iowa, where high schoolers posted a 91 percent four-year graduation rate. Those numbers come from the 2015-16 school year, the most recent data available from the National Center for Education Statistics. That year, the national average was 84 percent, and the Midwest’s average was 85 percent. In the same dataset, however, Wisconsin showed the largest achievement gap – 29 points – between the graduation rates for white and black students. As a whole, Wisconsin has one of the best graduation rates in the country, but that’s clearly not true for all of our students. We simply have to do better, and that means all of us. Kids – time to put down the Fortnite and hit the books. School is back in session.

August 6, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

Since Act 10, School Districts Have Saved $3.2 Billion in Benefits Costs

To say that the landscape for public sector health insurance has changed since Act 10 would be an understatement. Since the landmark bill’s passage, Wisconsin school districts have saved more than $3.2 billion in benefits costs.

Districts found savings by opening up bidding to new insurers for the first time in years, while others increased required employee contributions towards insurance plans. Overall, since 2011, districts have largely moved to more taxpayer-friendly health plans – freeing up more money for the classroom.

On the other hand, employees at more than 100 districts – approximately one-quarter of Wisconsin’s 422 public school districts – paid less than 12 percent towards their monthly health insurance premiums in the 2017-18 school year. Still, that’s a far cry from 2010-11, when 43 percent of all districts paid the the entirety of their employee premiums on single plans every month. Today, just 6.4 percent of districts pay employee premiums in full.

Across all districts, employee contributions towards premiums average 11.61 percent for single plans and 11.75 percent for family plans. Twenty-three school districts around the state, including Wauwatosa School District, New Berlin, and both districts in Lake Geneva, do not require employees to contribute anything to monthly premiums in either their single or their family plans.

That’s according to a new Department of Administration database, which consolidates district health plan information – the first time this information has been collected in one place. The dataset includes figures for 2017-18 employee health insurance plans, including employer and employee contributions towards premiums, deductibles, co-pays, and even out-of-pocket maximums for both single and family plans.

Introduced in 2011, Gov. Scott Walker’s landmark legislation required that public sector employees contribute at least 12 percent towards health insurance costs. Those “costs” were most commonly defined as insurance premiums, though increasingly popular high deductible HSA plans were also accepted under the spirit of the law.

Ultimately, the goal was to lighten the load on taxpayers, and that’s exactly what happened, according to the DOA. Its estimates show Act 10 saved taxpayers $3.2 billion on K-12 benefits plans alone, primarily in health insurance. That’s with only 74 percent of school districts complying with the 12 percent rule for premiums.

Figuring out who’s actually complying with the law has not always been easy, because the 12 percent covers total health care cost – not just premiums. However, using the state’s new database, it’s clear one-fourth of all school districts in Wisconsin offer healthcare plans that require employees to pay less than 12 percent of their monthly premiums. Three-quarters of all school districts require employees to pay 12 percent or more each month.

Of the 111 districts where employees pay less than 12 percent on premiums, 73 had reported their insurance data to the state in 2010. About two-thirds of those districts increased their required monthly premium contributions since Act 10 was passed. The rest kept the same levels, or in a handful of cases, lowered their required monthly premium payments for employees.

For example, in the 2010-11 school year, Middleton-Cross Plains Area employees paid zero percent towards their premiums. As of 2017-18, they pay 12 percent every month, or $72 under a single plan and $181 under a family plan. Employees receive a 3 percent reduction on premiums if they take an annual physical and health risk survey.

No matter the exact method of how districts get their employees to contribute towards their own healthcare expenses, taxpayers no longer shoulder the burden of covering premiums upwards of $1,000 for every district employee, every month, through their careers and into retirement. Prior to Act 10, benefits costs to districts had been increasing by 4.3 percent annually – a trend that, if it continued, would have taxpayers paying almost 60 percent more today.

That kind of money adds up, and in many cases, such as in Wauwatosa School District and Milwaukee Public Schools, freed up dollars went into the classroom, to building renovations, and to salary increases.

Even so – despite what organizations such as WEAC may say – these taxpayer-funded plans are still very generous. Many districts, including New Berlin and Port Edwards, make regular contributions to employee HSAs. Ten districts continue to have employees pay nothing towards monthly premiums, as they did in 2010.

Of the 111 districts where employees pay less than 12 percent towards their monthly premiums, 23 cover premiums in full every month for both single and family plans. More than half of those districts also offer high deductible health plans, which are typically coupled with health savings accounts (HSA). In those cases, employees set aside their own money, pre-tax, to spend on healthcare. That still meets the intent of Act 10 by ensuring public employees contribute towards their own health costs, saving taxpayer dollars and bringing standards closer in line with the private sector.

Other large districts whose employees pay less than 12 percent towards premium include Beloit, Madison Metropolitan, Milwaukee, Kettle Moraine, and several others.

As the MacIver Institute has previously reported, both Madison and Milwaukee Public School (MPS) employees use sliding scales for premium contributions. MPS employees pay between 2 and 14 percent, depending on salary and type of plan. In Madison, employees pay a percentage based on their role. Food service employees and educational assistants, for example, pay 1.25 percent of their monthly premiums, while teachers pay 3 percent. Administrators pay the most, at 10 percent. The only time employees may reach 12 percent is if they fail to take a district-required annual physical. Failing to do so adds a 7 percent penalty.

Some school districts are continuing their generosity at taxpayer expense by contributing to employee deductibles instead of monthly premiums. Thirty-five percent of districts contribute to deductibles, ranging from $150 on a single plan in Weston, to $13,900 on a family plan in Baraboo. On average, districts pay $624 towards single plan deductibles and $1,248 towards family plan deductibles, including all the districts who pay nothing.

Still, in the grand scheme of things, only a minority of districts seem to be testing the limits of the 12 percent rule. Two hundred and twenty school districts in the state – more than half – require employees pay between 12 and 13 percent of premiums. Of those districts that reported their health plans in 2010, just two of 145 had the same or higher employee premium levels back then.

Others require employees to pay beyond what Act 10 requires. Employees on Wilmot Union’s family plan pay 28 percent of their monthly premiums, while those in Westfield pay 22 percent and those in Neenah Joint pay 25 percent. All three school districts offer various levels of compensation for employees who participate in health screenings or who don’t use tobacco.

Health screenings or other wellness incentives are common in school districts. Dozens of districts use some type of wellness assessment to create a premium differential. Those incentives and how they’re structured also vary by district.

DePere, for example, uses a “carrot” approach: the district waives its required 12 percent premium contribution for employees and their spouses if they participate in a health risk assessment. Oshkosh Area, on the other hand, uses less of a carrot and more of a stick. Employees there pay 5 percent more if they don’t complete the health assessment.

Two-thirds of the districts that contribute to employee deductibles require that those employees pay more than 12 percent of their premiums.

Overall, 61 percent of all school districts offer one insurer, and 39 percent offer multiple insurers. Nearly three-quarters of districts are fully-insured, while 14 percent are jointly self-funded and 11 percent are self-insured. Preferred provider organization plans are the most popular, with 36 percent of all districts offering them. High deductible plans are the next most common, at 23 percent, followed by health maintenance organizations at 17 percent.

WEA Trust is the most common provider by far, covering 100 school districts. WCA Group Health Trust, Security Health, and Dean SSM Health are the next most popular providers.

In all, had health insurance spending continued along its trend prior to Act 10, taxpayers could be paying billions more for public sector health insurance and other benefits that far outpace private sector compensation. While certain gubernatorial candidates are running on increasing school employee benefits to their pre-Act 10 levels, taxpayers may want to take a look at how the game has changed.

Indeed, as the numbers show, the sky is not falling. In places like Wauwatosa School District, premiums have fallen by 0.32 percent in the past seven years, and the district still covers all of those premiums for their employees. Compare that with the so-called Affordable Care Act’s premium increases – a staggering 44 percent in 2017.

Healthcare in America is far from a free market. But as it turns out, opening up that market to even a little bit of competition has done wonders for district pocketbooks, and in turn, for all of Wisconsin’s taxpayers.

June 4, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

MPS Board Passes a Budget - and the Buck

Cuts to Central Office were long overdue, but the district isn’t out of the woods yet

Milwaukee Public Schools plans to cut millions of dollars from its central office, while other costs continue to spiral out of control in the district’s preliminary $1.173 billion budget passed late last month on a unanimous vote by the board of education.

The changes follow a contentious budget debate that included one hunger strike, one “go to hell,” and many more highly reported controversies. Former superintendent Dr. Darienne Driver’s budget would have made 5 percent spending cuts to schools and 15 percent cuts to Central Office.

Instead, new interim superintendent Dr. Keith Posley’s plan restructures and cuts 16.7 percent from Central Office, eliminating Driver’s proposed cuts to school accounts. Central Office is reorganized, cutting the Office of Innovation and merging its responsibilities with other departments, while eliminating almost 33 administrative roles.

In addition to the administrative changes, Posley’s budget differs from Driver’s proposal in a few small ways. The plan now include 50 new full-time supplemental teacher positions, which come with healthcare benefits. The district will begin offering part-time roles for hard-to-fill positions. Twenty more school safety aide positions are added, using money from the school operations account. And in a major win for the teachers’ union – and a loss for taxpayers – 75 new “substitute teacher on special assignment” roles are created. Those teachers will also get vision, health, and dental benefits as long as they work 30 hours per more per week, which is considered full-time at MPS.

The $13.2 million cut from administration amounts to a little more than a 1 percent cut from the entire budget. Put into a larger context, much noise was made about a relatively small percentage of taxpayer dollars. With no meaningful reform, the district does not move closer toward addressing its growing budget deficit. This detail is something taxpayers deserve to know.

In the end, the budget spends $10.9 million less than the prior year. Posley’s plan spends $2.9 million more than Driver’s plan because of increased federal aids. It retains the 2.13 percent salary increases for staff, and hastens the district’s path to a $15 per hour minimum wage from five to four years.

MPS’ teachers’ union, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association (MTEA), called the budget an “amazing victory.” Union leader Alex Brower ended his 21-day hunger strike after the board voted to approve the new substitute teacher positions.

Administrative bloat has been a massive driver of MPS’ budget problems for years. Many of the positions at Central Office have astonishingly high salaries and benefits packages, especially when compared to school-level positions.

As the MacIver Institute has previously reported, 78 administrators at MPS’ Central Office earn an average of $111,624. Of the 336 publicly reported administrator salaries at the district, 156 individuals earn more than $100,000. Average fringe benefits for MPS administrators total $26,555.

Posley’s budget cuts almost 33 full-time positions from Central Office alone, plus two more each at the Office of Accountability and Efficiency and the Office of Board Governance. However, not all of those roles were actually filled – some were vacant, with money set aside in case of a new hire.

By failing to address cost drivers including MPS’ massive benefits package and its expansive, half-empty facilities, the district all but ensured the battle would continue into future years.

More Retirees, More Fringe Benefits

Budget documents show the district’s projected growth in benefits spending. From fiscal year 2017 to 2022, MPS is estimated to spend 23 percent more in benefits alone, while spending on salaries and purchased services both stay close to a 6 percent increase.

In its budget documents, MPS itself recognizes the structural challenge at hand. Spending on medical costs and prescription drugs is expected to grow by 5 and 12 percent, respectively. Following 2011’s Act 10, the district was able to redesign benefits packages and begin offering both high- and low-cost plans. Employees pay between 2-14 percent of their healthcare premiums, based on the type of plan they choose and how much they earn, but this is far below the 12 percent minimum set under Act 10.

Should they decide to, MPS could revisit its healthcare packages once more. The district is slated to spend $123.4 million on healthcare benefits in 2019. That’s an 11 percent increase in spending since 2016. Act 10 gave them the tools to search for new healthcare providers. The question is one of will.

MPS also increased the hourly threshold to receive benefits from 20 to 30 hours per week post-Act 10. Still, the 30-hour baseline is below the standard 40-hour week. For 2018-19, MPS’ fringe benefit rate totals 53.8 percent, a considerable increase from 43.2 percent in 2015-16.

Clearly, despite recent changes, the district offers a considerable benefits package, both for current employees and retirees. As the number of retirees continues to grow, related line items will increase and crowd out other priorities. Spending on healthcare for retirees, which makes up much of the “other post-employment benefits” line item, has increased by almost 7 percent since 2016, adding up to $52.3 million in 2019.

Budget documents show that spending on retirement has increased from $83.9 million in 2016 to $90.1 million in 2019, a 7 percent increase. That spending includes MPS’ pension plan, social security, and early retirement supplements. MPS’ own pension fund, separate from the state’s retirement system, will cost the district – and taxpayers – $39.7 million in 2019. That plan could also be ripe for reform, if the district has the will to take on the politically heavy lift.

Teachers hired prior to July 1, 2013 and certificated administrators and supervisors hired prior to July 2, 2003 can qualify for the supplemental pension benefit. The program allows for early retirement once an individual is 55 or older and has worked at MPS for 20 years. Though the plan is now frozen and newer hires are no longer eligible, spending on early retirement will near $11.0 million in 2019.

Spending on healthcare benefits, including medical, dental, prescription drugs, dependent care, and the health care opt-out bonus also increased in recent years. Those line items went from $110.9 million in 2016 to a projected $123.4 million in 2019.

The health care opt-out bonus allows employees to receive $50 per month or up to $500 per year if they choose to use a different health insurance provider while eligible for MPS’ coverage. That benefit will cost MPS $125,000 in 2019. The opt-out bonus is an attempt to get MPS employees to choose healthcare plans outside of MPS’ system.

The medical, dental, vision, and prescription coverage is generous in itself. Depending on the type of plan they select, employees can pay $20 co-pays for doctor’s office visits, $35 for urgent care or specialist office visits, and $150 for emergency room visits. In network, 100 percent of preventive care is covered.

Earlier this year, Driver had proposed increasing employee co-pays and charges for dependents to use MPS coverage, but was rebuffed by the board. Under Driver’s plan, doctor’s visit co-pays would have increased to $35, urgent care visits to $50, and emergency room visits to $175. Coupled together, those changes would have saved the district an estimated $4.3 million.

All of Driver’s cost-saving proposals were turned down, save one – the elimination of a long-term disability program that cost the district approximately $2 million since 2017, which just four individuals utilized.

MPS also pays for group life insurance for almost all of its employees, at no cost to the employee. The current program began in 2016 and cost $537,418 in that year. For 2019, the benefit will cost $2.16 million – a 302 percent increase from 2016.

Other smaller line items aren’t significant but add up over time. The district budgeted $380,000 for severance pay in 2019. Another $450,000 was allocated for tuition reimbursement, wherein the district pays for the continuing education of certain qualifying employees in order to promote professional growth.

—

The new interim superintendent should be applauded for proposing long-overdue cuts from Central Office, but his changes don’t go nearly far enough to address the major challenges MPS continues to face. While much ado was made about benefits for substitute teachers, much less was made about the needs of students who continue to underperform.

The needs across the district vary to a great degree. So, too, vary the needs of students. By continually trying to be all things to all people, MPS ends up underperforming for both students and taxpayers.

Faced with declining enrollment and increased competition from other educational options, MPS has to face the facts when it comes to their structural issues. Left unreformed, benefits and facilities will continue to crowd out spending in classrooms.

As for the 2019 budget, it will be finalized in the fall when final enrollment numbers are set. As always, stay tuned for future coverage.

May 15, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

Public To Weigh In On Ugly MPS Budget This Week

Teachers contemplates a strike as they #fightforfunding, while board punts on savings

It’s showtime.

With school board meetings slated for Tuesday and Thursday evening, Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) will move closer to finalizing its $1.17 billion 2018-19 budget this week. Tuesday’s meeting will bring formal board approval of a small employee benefits change, while Thursday’s agenda includes a budget public hearing that’s sure to be packed.

On the backs of a teacher protest and a Democratic gubernatorial candidate forum on education over the weekend, the debate is heating up – and sparks are sure to fly. That’s not to mention remarks by Gov. Scott Walker that it may be time to “shake things up” in the state’s most troubled district, an off-hand remark that sparked a half-dozen editorials.

Plus, of course, the hunger strike. Substitute teacher and union leader Alex Brower has made headlines for his hunger strike protesting the lack of healthcare benefits for MPS substitute teachers who work more than 32 hours per week.

Yet amidst all this high-profile drama, almost all of the so-called “tough decisions” before the board do little more than punt MPS’ financial problems down the road.

The budget document provides cost-of-living increases of 2.13 percent for most employees. It speeds up the implementation of the “Road to 15” that’ll have every MPS employee making a minimum of $15 per hour in three years rather than in five. It makes no significant changes to exploding benefit costs.

The board members know it, too. At the May 3 budget hearing, numerous board members said they weren’t happy with the document in front of them, and that more fundamental changes would need to be made next year. For the time being, they called on the public to join them in Madison to protest for more funding (that particular rally never happened).

While the adults put off tough decision-making until “next year,” another class of MPS students are graduating woefully underprepared for the real world. Why? Despite a billion-dollar budget, MPS can’t help but spend in all the wrong places.

On Tuesday, the board will approve a recommendation to eliminate the district’s long-term disability plan for employees. Just four people used the plan last year, costing the district nearly $2 million. That was one of several cost-savers put forth by outgoing superintendent Darienne Driver last month, but it was the only one that the board approved – leaving more than $15 million in savings on the table.

Per the district’s own summary of benefits manual, employees generally receive benefits once they work 30 hours per week or more. That’s a far cry from the standard 40-hour work week. So, too, are many of the other standard benefits at MPS.

For example, most full-time employees have the option to get a bonus of $50 per month or $500 per year if they are covered by another employer’s health insurance and choose not to go with MPS’ coverage.

The district offers three main plans for health insurance. Depending on what kind of plan an employee chooses and how much they make, MPS employees pay between 2 percent and 14 percent of their health insurance premiums. That appears to be in violation of Act 10, which required that employees pay 12 percent of their monthly insurance premiums.

MPS’ own projections show the district will spend hundreds of millions more on benefits in the years to come, far outpacing spending on classroom initiatives and, you know, the actual teaching of children. Medical costs are expected to inflate by 5 percent annually, and prescription drug costs by 12 percent. The district’s five-year forecast estimates a 14 percent increase in overall spending by 2022. More than one-third of that hike will go just towards benefits. Compared to that, additional pupil services and classroom spending barely make a dent.

Both the number of bureaucrats at MPS and their pay is unsustainable. MPS employs 356 administrators, with an average total salary of $100,253. Average fringe benefits total $26,555.

Of the 336 administrators with publicly-reported salaries, a whopping 156 employees earn salaries of more than $100,000. At Central Office alone, 78 administrators earn an average total salary of $111,624.

Besides its financial structural issues, the district has actual structural issues, as well. A facilities study unveiled last month showed that the district’s 15.8 million square feet far outpace its enrollment, especially when looking at other large, urban districts. While 42 schools are over 110 percent enrollment capacity, another 42 are operating at less than 70 percent capacity. At the same time, the district has spent more than $10 million on utilities of empty school buildings over the last decade.

The facilities study presentation writes, in clear, bold font: “too many schools, too few students.”

Without a major change, the problem will only get worse. One so-called solution, offered by the facilities study, is spending $969.5 million to upgrade every school to an “85” or “good” rating.

The administration continues to insist that enrollment has stabilized – but a long-term view shows the district has lost more than 10,000 students in ten years, even while the population of school-aged children in Milwaukee grew. For many reasons, families are choosing to send their kids elsewhere.

Why wouldn’t they? Kumbaya only gets you so far. To people outside bureaucrat world, there’s no excusing cutting 80 teachers while adding 9 administrators. Breaking ground on a $5.7 million stadium, like the district did this week at Vincent High School, is questionable. And giving Central Office administrators $100,000 in raises without board approval while services to schools are cut? Downright sad, if not simply angering.

Of course, MPS administration provided a well-worded excuse for every one of those spending decisions, not that it matters. Milwaukee students still perform among the worst of any similarly-sized school district in the country with just 15 percent of fourth graders proficient in reading and math.

So while the adults point fingers at each other – with one hand always protecting their own pockets – the kids wait. Yet again.

April 23, 2018 | By M.D. Kittle

Transparency Troubles Plague UW System Foundations

While last month’s legislative audit raised serious questions about the financial relationships between University of Wisconsin System schools and their private affiliate organizations, the system’s transparency troubles may be a bigger concern.

UW’s accounting system was set up “in such a way” that prevented auditors from accurately determining the total amount of payments that UW institutions made to affiliated organizations.

The difficulty state auditors had in obtaining financial statements only drives home the importance of an external audit, approved in the most recent state budget, one lawmaker tells MacIver News Service.

“There’s still more work to do,” said state Rep. Dale Kooyenga (R-Brookfield). “The University of Wisconsin is the largest employer in the state, bigger than Walmart … This (the UW System) is a multi-billion dollar company. You really need to have people focused on the details of this financial system.”

Kooyenga was a member of the Legislature’s CPA Caucus, the accountant-legislators that five years ago discovered the UW System held some $650 million in cash reserves (a slush fund, as critics have described it), even as system officials cried poverty.

The Legislative Audit Bureau’s 112-page audit, released in March, notes foundations and other affiliated organizations playing an increasingly prominent role in the operations of Wisconsin’s 13 public universities and 13 two-year colleges. As of last year, there were 90 such assisting organizations, ostensibly established to lessen the taxpayer burden. Two-thirds of those, however, were not primary fundraising foundations, the audit found.

Over a 10-year span, from Fiscal Year 2007-08 through 2016-17, UW institutions paid $258 million to the entities, $168 million of that to affiliated organizations that were not primary fundraising foundations or real estate foundations.

The legislative audit was conducted in the wake of last year’s UW-Oshkosh Foundation scandal, in which the system ultimately sued UW-Oshkosh’s former chancellor and business officer on allegations that the men improperly transferred $11.3 million to help bail out the troubled nonprofit foundation. At $14.5 billion in debt, the foundation led questionable investments, including two bio-digesters, a hotel, and a sports complex.

Blurred Lines

Auditors found the blurring of operational lines between many of the UW institutions and the foundations examined, with university resources – staff, office space, materials – committed to foundations.

“We found that UW employees also worked as the executive directors of 10 foundations associated with four-year universities as of June 30, 2017. UW institutions indicated that 6 of these 10 foundations did not reimburse them for any salary and fringe benefits costs of these UW employees,” the audit report states.

The audit shows incestuous public-private relationships between some of the affiliate groups and the universities, with little separation in operations.

Five of 11 cross-over employees, including those at UW-Eau Claire, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Platteville, and UW-River Falls, did not have statutorily specified position titles that required them to file statements of economic interests in 2017,” the audit states.

Statements of economic interest give the public critical information on financial connections of state employees that could potentially place them in positions of conflict. Auditors suggest the Legislature could pass laws requiring these employees to annually file the statements.

The commingling of resources is where many of the transparency problems show up.

Policy indicates any foundation allocated UW office space must pay rent or provide in-kind payments at a fair-market rate, according to the audit. As of June 30, 2017, foundations used office space at 23 UW institutions, 21 of which did not provide auditors with information indicating that the foundations paid rent or provided in-kind payments.

Auditors identified $81.6 million in payments, or $45.1 million more than the $36.5 million UW System administration included in their October 2017 review. Almost all of the additional payments involved $44.9 million that UW-Milwaukee paid to its foundation – student rent and fees associated with two residence halls.

Trouble With Transparency

Auditors noted that while UW System employees responded to many of their requests for information, the government officials indicated that some information “did not exist or could not be easily located.” When considering the $258 million taxpayer-funded institutions paid to their affiliate organization over the decade examined, such responses are troubling.

Some UW employees told auditors that governing boards of foundations directed them not to provide certain information to auditors.

“In some instances, UW employees took extended periods of time to fully respond to our repeated requests for specific information,” the audit states. “In other instances, UW employees did not provide us with all requested information related to our audit that they possessed, and to which statutes grant us access.”

Auditors encountered administrative resistance from the foundations, the benefactors of so much taxpayer-funded support. Some UW employees told auditors that governing boards of foundations directed them not to provide certain information.

“However, there is no exception to our statutory authority that allows an outside governing board to restrict a UW employee’s responsibility to comply with our requests for access to audit-related information that they possess,” the report states.

Something To Hide?

Faced with continual challenges in obtaining requested information, auditors met with UW System President Ray Cross and followed up with a request in writing on Nov. 6. They were subsequently provided access to much of the information, including documents that system employees had previously declined to share.

“However, we were not provided all requested information,” the audit states. Specifically, officials failed to turn over documentation on funds that UW-River Falls had submitted to its foundation in fiscal year 2016-17.

“In addition, six months after we had requested the minutes of all meetings held by the board of directors of UW-Platteville Foundation over a 10-year period, UW-Platteville provided us minutes of meetings that took place in less than 2 years of this 10-year period,” the report states. There were other cases where universities failed to fulfill the Legislative Audit Bureau’s information requests.

Missing Information

Beyond its failure to provide state auditors with records, system administration’s accounting system proved problematic. It was set up “in such a way” that prevented auditors from accurately determining the total amount of payments that UW institutions made to affiliated organizations.

“We also found that UW System Administration’s October 2017 review of payments from UW institutions to their foundations did not include $45.1 million in payments that UW System Administration should have included,” the report states.

Transparency problems appear to be built into the contracts between UW institutions and affiliate organizations. Five operational agreements executed in 2017 “did not consistently comply with (UW Board of Regents) policy,” the audit states.

“The agreements did not consistently indicate the specific services and payments that foundations were required to provide for the time that UW employees worked for them, require foundations that use UW office space to pay rent or make in-kind payments at fair-market rates, or indicate the specific services and payments that foundations were required to provide for UW assets,” the report states.

The audit found several curious expenditures, such as an estimated $11.3 million paid to UW Medical Foundation that included payments for “medical staff to support UW-Madison athletics…”

‘Proactive Steps’

The UW System offered a sanguine response to the Audit Bureau report. A press release declared that the audit found financial transactions between UW institutions and foundations to be “appropriate, consistent with the UW System’s review issued in October 2017.”

“UW employees did not provide us with all requested information related to our audit that they possessed, and to which statutes grant us access,” the audit states.

“The proactive steps we announced last spring are a step in the right direction in providing additional accountability and transparency in the UW System’s relationships with its fundraising and real estate foundations,” Cross said in the statement. “While we have made significant progress, we appreciate the feedback from LAB in assisting us in those efforts. We continually strive to ensure the ongoing integrity, efficiency, and transparency of these organizations.”

But the response doesn’t really address the transparency concerns, or a number of questions apparently unanswered in system financial statements. For instance, what did the UW System do with the reported “foundation funds” not reported on the UW balance sheet or public financial statements? In one case, the audit references that the University of Wisconsin gave football TV revenue to the UW foundation. But there doesn’t appear to be a disclosure of what the foundation did with that money.

And the Audit Bureau made several recommendations, from establishing unique vendor identification numbers to drafting specific accountability measures. In short, the agency recommends the institutions come up with new agreements and figure out if the partners are following the rules. What is the UW System doing to address those recommendations?

The audit gives system administrators until June 29 to report on the recommendations.

System spokeswoman Stephanie Marquis noted that the Board of Regents last year outlined new requirements and standards governing foundation relationships, as the audit was being completed.

“We appreciate the work LAB did to help us focus and improve our processes and we believe this audit will help make institutional relationships with foundations more transparent,” she said in an email. “We look forward to updating the Audit Committee soon on our efforts to address the recommendations.”

Marquis did not comment on MacIver News Service’s questions on foundation funds in the audit that apparently were not reported on the UW balance sheet or financial statements.

State Rep. Samantha Kerkman (R-Salem Lakes), who serves as co-chairwoman of the Legislative Audit Committee, told the Wisconsin State Journal last month that strong policies are clearly warranted to “ensure taxpayers and students are protected.”

“In a snapshot, these relationships are historically clouded by smoke when what students, taxpayers and the Legislature want and deserve is absolute transparency,” she said.

National Problem

In many states, the relationships between foundations and the public institutions of higher education they were created to assist are “opaque and unaccountable,” according to Jenna Robinson, president of the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal, a conservative higher ed tracker based in Raleigh, N.C.

In a piece last month headlined, “University Foundations Enable Waste, Fraud, and Abuse,” Robinson notes the sheer size of the larger foundations leads to transparency and accountability problems. At least 170 universities have endowments worth over $500 million, she notes. UW Foundation net assets topped $3.5 billion last year, according to the state audit.

Robinson points to several universities where a lack of transparency and accountability created an environment of fraudulent activity.

And that’s why advocates of the external audit of the UW System say the outside examination is so important. Failing to dig deep into the records of this massive state employer could be costly to taxpayers.

“I think it will raise more concerns, new issues that have not previously been disclosed,” Kooyenga said.

April 25, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

The Real Controversy Surrounding the MPS Budget Debate

Forget ‘Go to hell’ Bonds. Let’s talk about the union’s ultimate goal: $2 billion on the taxpayer tab

Milwaukee Public Schools budget discussions made headlines last week when MPS board member Michael Bonds told teachers’ union vice president Amy Mizialko to “go to hell.” The remark spurred instant outrage and put a spotlight on the annual budget process of the state’s largest school district, which is facing exploding deficits.

As an elected official, Bonds’ comment was out of line – but Mizialko’s remarks are the real controversy, and deserve much more attention and critique. As the union leader testified against Bonds’ idea to swap a proposed $2 million in cuts to student transportation for employee raises, she showed her hand.

“The $2 million that it will cost to do that is nothing,” Mizialko declares. “This is a billion dollar budget. But MPS students need $2 billion.”

Now we know the labor leaders’ starting bargaining position. To the union, nothing short of $2 billion in taxpayer funding for MPS will suffice.

Mizialko’s funding fantasy would wring taxpayers dry.

Amidst falling enrollment and a deficit that'll approach $200 million in just a few years from now, a union leader has called for a budget that rivals the size of districts two to three times larger than MPS.

To put the imagined $2 billion for MPS in context, Dallas Independent School District has a budget totaling just over $1.9 billion. Their enrollment approaches 158,000 students, double MPS’ 75,539.

Hillsborough City Public Schools, in Florida, spends approximately $1.9 billion on its 197,000 pupils, a student body 2.6 times the size of MPS. Broward County Public Schools, also in Florida, has a $2.3 billion budget – and student enrollment more than three times the size of MPS. It’s worth mentioning that recent test results showed Florida public students demonstrating stronger improvement than anywhere else in the country, including Wisconsin, where results stagnated.

Mizialko laments falling taxpayer support for the district, a myth in itself. She highlights the coming November election and says that the public will get to cast votes for “a governor who will proudly fund Wisconsin public schools.”

Never mind that Democrat Gov. Jim Doyle’s last budget was built on the back of one-time federal stimulus money. After Gov. Scott Walker’s first budget, every bill since then has increased K-12 funding, culminating in a record-breaking, largest-in-a-decade $636 million increase in school funding just last year.

Yet as MPS’ enrollment has declined – dropping by approximately 10,000 students in 10 years – revenue per student has gone up. In the 2007-08 school year, the district enrolled 89,110 students, bringing in $13,305 from state, federal, and local sources. Ten years later, district enrollment is down 15 percent and revenue per student is well over $15,000.

Educrats lament the loss of the funding that comes with each student’s enrollment. They fail to mention that when a student leaves MPS, the district no longer incurs the cost of educating that child.

It’s no wonder the district faces growing deficits. With a stubborn refusal to do anything about major cost drivers for the district – namely, pension and healthcare spending – MPS is staring down a $38 million deficit in the next year. That number balloons to nearly $200 million just a few years down the road. As board member Terry Falk said at a recent budget hearing – “We will be bankrupt in about a year and a half.”

In that context, Mizialko’s $2 billion wish is even more ridiculous.

In the last ten years, MPS enrollment has fallen by more than 10,000 students. At the same time, the district has doubled the number of supervisory office staff and guidance counselors it employs.

It is long past time for MPS to take a serious look at its finances. In the last 10 years, district spending on long-term debt interest has spiked by 34 percent. Spending on community services has ballooned by more than 50 percent. Outstanding pension debt alone totals nearly $190 million as of 2017. Classroom spending directly competes with the benefits accrued by the growing army of school district retirees who collect hefty checks every month.

The truth is, no amount of state aid will ever be enough to prop up such cost drivers and an establishment that is more focused on employment than students.

Just look at the case of MPS’ former Superintendent Mark Thornton, who saw this first-hand when he made a call for outside contractors to examine food service inefficiencies. One estimate showed the district could save up to $13 million a year – one-third of the entire food service budget at the time – by privatizing school meals. Both board and union rejected the plan, preferring to provide for jobs – and big-ticket government benefits – rather than kids and classrooms. Thornton lost the debate and was universally slammed for even suggesting the idea.

The school board has the tools – including Act 10 – to get costs under control. The only question is whether it has the political will to make these tough calls.

Bureaucrats have also accumulated like barnacles on the bottoms of boats, adding considerable costs. The number of officials, administrators, and managers alone has doubled since 2008, as have the number of guidance counselors.

These mid-level managers and paper-pushers are crowding out more important hires, including teachers. While the district continued to hire support staff, it chose to employ 27 percent fewer elementary and secondary classroom teachers compared to 2008.

As more Milwaukee families move outside the district – which had some of the worst scores in the nation for large cities on recent national test results – MPS’ problems will only get worse. Even $2 billion, as absurd as the number is, will never be enough to cover the coming wave of debt payments. Only with serious spending and benefit reform does the district have a chance at getting its head above water.

April 10, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

Nation’s Report Card: Student Scores Mostly Stagnate, But Achievement Gaps Widen

Wisconsin eighth-graders score six points above national average in reading, four points higher in math

Performance in math and reading has stayed flat for most American students, according to a new national data release from the Department of Education. Students in Wisconsin scored above the national average in both subjects, with fourth-grade reading scores falling by one point and scores for both tested grades staying flat in math.

The results come from a statistically representative group of nearly 585,000 fourth- and eighth-graders across the country who took the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, in 2017.

Nationwide, the average reading score ticked up by one point for eighth-graders. No significant score change occurred for fourth-graders in reading, or for math in either grade.

A state-level analysis shows more stagnation in scores. The average scores for most states did not change compared to 2015 in either grade or subject. Wisconsin fourth-graders fared worse on reading than they did in 2015, while eighth-graders fared the same in reading, and math scores for both grades stayed flat. Despite the lack of growth, Wisconsin students fared better than the nation’s average, as they did in years past.

The average math score for eighth-graders in Wisconsin is six points higher than the nationwide average, and one point higher for fourth-graders. For both reading and math, Wisconsin eighth-graders tended to outperform most other states, landing in the top of the pack for state scores. However, the state's largest district, Milwaukee Public Schools, fared among the worst of all districts reported nationwide.

Fourth-grade Wisconsinites scored closer to the national averages. Forty-two percent of Wisconsin fourth-graders scored proficient or higher in math, not significantly different than the national average. Thirty-nine percent of Wisconsin eighth-graders were proficient or higher in reading, greater than the national average of 35 percent.

The data highlights a number of public school districts across the country, including Milwaukee Public Schools. MPS students in both grades and in both subjects fared worse than the state and national average.

Just 15 percent of MPS fourth-graders are proficient in reading and math, significantly underperforming other large urban districts, where an average of 31 percent of students are proficient across the board. Other large public school districts reporting results include Chicago, New York City, and 24 others across the country.

For both tested grades, MPS students received among the worst scores in the country in both reading and math, with only Detroit performing worse in every category.

MPS students did not take the exam in 2015, so the most recent data for comparison comes from 2013. Fourth-grade MPS students fared worse in math than they did in 2013. Scores were not significantly different for eighth-graders in either subject or for fourth-graders in reading, compared to 2013.

Not all MPS students or Wisconsin students take the exam. A sample of schools representative of the entire district and state is chosen, after which a random sample of students is selected to take the exam. Approximately 3,300 fourth-graders and 3,100 eighth-graders in Wisconsin took the exam.

At the national level, while overall scores stayed mostly flat, gaps grew slightly between the highest- and lowest- performing groups. High-performing eighth-graders – those in the 75th and 90th percentiles – improved their scores compared to the last test in both subjects.

Low-achieving fourth-graders in the 10th and 25th percentiles saw their scores fall compared to 2015 in both math and reading.

In reading, eighth-graders in public schools and in suburban schools increased their scores. Other groups with score decreases in mathematics included fourth-graders in urban schools, students with disabilities, and students eligible for the free lunch program. Those groups did not see a significant score change in reading.

Achievement gaps between ethnic and racial groups persist. The largest reported gap between any student group was for eighth grade math, where white students scored an average 32 points higher than black students. The fourth grade math gap between white and black students is smaller, at 25 points, pointing to growing disparities.

Those gaps have existed as long as the test has been administered, with the 1990 exam showing a 32-point gap in fourth grade math between white and black students. Nearly 30 years later, a 25-point gap between the same group of students exists today.

Scores in both math and reading have improved since the tests were first administered in 1990 and 1992, respectively, but have flattened out in recent years. Students in the fourth grade testing for math skills have improved the most since 1990, with a 27-point increase in the average score. In reading, the same group has seen a 5-point increase since 1992.

State Superintendent Tony Evers released a statement highlighting achievement gaps in the results. “Wisconsin’s NAEP results, and those of the past decade plus, show how desperate the need is for us to work together to close opportunity gaps for our kids,” Evers said. “As our population continues to diversify, we cannot afford to leave large numbers of our students behind their peers and expect the Wisconsin economy to continue without disruption.”

April 9, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

Spring School Referenda Raise Taxes $563 Million Statewide

Voters approved more than 80 percent of proposed school district referenda, raising taxes and issuing debt to pay for school projects across the state

Voters across the state agreed to raise taxes by $563 million during Tuesday’s spring election. Of a proposed $667 million overall tax hike, the vast majority – 84 percent – were approved.

A data release from the Wheeler Report compiled the results of the 66 referendum votes. Fifty school districts came to voters asking for more money for various projects, including the construction of brand new schools, building repairs, operations, staff raises, and other expenses. On Tuesday, voters approved tax hikes in 43 school districts.

The majority of tax increases approved Tuesday came in the form of new debt. Twenty-two districts will issue new debt or bonds totaling $438.7 million – 82 percent of the proposed new debt put before voters.

Voters approved 55 of 66 school district referenda in the 2018 spring election, hiking taxes by over $563 million statewide.

School districts have state-imposed revenue limits that protect Wisconsinites from constantly-increasing property taxes. However, districts can still ask voters for more by coming to them with referenda during regularly-scheduled primary and general elections.

In the past, districts could propose referenda during special elections and could repeatedly propose the same project in consecutive elections. Gov. Scott Walker and the state Legislature have shared a commitment to lowering property tax burdens, spurring referendum reforms to ensure more voters have a say in matters of large tax hikes.

The largest increase in any one district is in Chippewa Falls School District, which will issue $65 million in debt to build a new elementary school, update the middle school and add a new laboratory onto the high school. The district plans to pay off the debt over 20 years.

Residents of that district will see a $1.25 property tax increase for every $1,000 of total tax assessed value on their home. The owner of a property valued at $200,000 will see a $250 per-year tax increase.

After Chippewa Falls, the next largest new debt will be issued by DC Everest Area, where voters approved $59,875,000 in debt for a school building and improvement program.

River Falls voters approved two separate asks – one bond for $45,860,000, and another for $2,100,000 – totaling just under $48 million in debt. The larger bond will fund various upgrades and renovations in school buildings, while the $2 million bond will pay for new turf, outdoor lighting, and parking. Area taxpayers will pay off those bonds for the next 19 years, through 2037.

Sixteen school districts offered multiple referenda, splitting their “asks” into two questions. Of the 16, voters in just one district, Kiel Area, approved one while denying the other, showing that relatively few voters split their votes and tended to either approve or deny all proposed spending.

Voters in Alma, Benton, and ten other districts approved issuing debt for projects across two different referenda. In Delavan-Darien, Frederic, and Peshtigo, voters rejected both referenda proposed by each district.

A smaller proportion of the new tax hikes, $123.4 million overall, will come in the form of one-time spending, also known as non-recurring spending. Just two of 25 referenda failed in that category, with voters approving 97 percent of the total proposed $126.7 million in spending.

Howard-Suamico School District got voters’ approval to exceed the revenue limit for five years, beginning in the 2018-19 school year, to reduce class sizes, provide employee raises, and maintain facilities. That’ll cost area taxpayers $5.85 million every year for five years, adding up to more than $29 million. The district estimates that local property taxes will not increase because of old debt retiring at the same time.

Voters in La Crosse also approved a spending hike totaling more than $20 million over revenue limits. The debt is considered one-time spending, but the district is asking voters to extend a current levy limit override for another five years. Had they voted no, owners of a home worth $100,000 would have seen a $96 annual decrease in property taxes – but the referendum passed, keeping taxes at the same level. The district will use the money to maintain current operations and make various facilities upgrades.

Just six of the 66 referenda on the ballot Tuesday asked voters to approve recurring, ongoing spending increases over state-mandated limits. Four of them – in Alma, Almond-Bancroft, Benton, and Shullsburg – passed, totaling $1,250,000 in new spending overall. Those districts will begin exceeding their revenue cap, spending more than the limit beginning in the coming 2018-19 school year.

Last year, 40 of 65 school district referenda passed, totaling almost $700 million in tax increases. The MacIver Institute covered the votes here.

Stay tuned for continued coverage on school district referenda affecting taxpayers across the state.

Referenda data was provided by the Wheeler Report.

March 28, 2018 | By Abby Streu and Ola Lisowski

School Districts Want to Raise Taxes $667 Million on April 3rd

Across Wisconsin on April 3, 66 Wisconsin school districts will hold referenda asking local voters to raise property taxes. Voters will have to decide if they want to increase taxes by up to $667 million outside of regular revenue limits.

Data obtained from the Wheeler Report shows the extent of the financial burden that could be caused by these referenda if passed. The majority of the referenda would issue debt to taxpayers totaling $535.9 million. About 40 percent of the referenda up for votes would raise taxes on a one-time basis, totaling $126.7 million. Six others would raise taxes on an ongoing basis, adding up to $4.75 million per year.

School district spending projects would increase property taxes for the construction of new schools, gymnasiums, performance arts centers, weightlifting facilities, and other facilities upgrades. Others would raise money for general operations, education programming, and salary increases.

In the past, school districts could hold referenda during any election, and could repeatedly put the same project up for a vote in consecutive elections. Now, referenda can only be held on regularly scheduled general and primary elections.

Some projects would raise funds for basic safety measures, including one at Montello School District that would issue $3.75 million in debt to remove asbestos, replace parts of the roof and air conditioning systems, and bring the fire alarm system up to code.

Area families will need to choose whether or not to increase taxes to fuel spending for local school districts – but the increased tax base will also affect the rest of the state. Issuing additional financial strains in one area of Wisconsin raises the overall tax levy statewide.

Wisconsin lawmakers have worked to reform the referendum process to alleviate the burden on taxpayers. That goal has the support of Gov. Scott Walker, who has committed to lowering the average statewide property tax levy.

In the past, school districts could hold referenda during any election, and could repeatedly put the same project up for a vote in consecutive elections.

Now, referenda can only be held on regularly scheduled general and primary elections. The 2017-2019 Wisconsin State Budget further reformed referenda, limiting votes to regular general and primary elections to ensure more voters would have a say in local spending increases.

Thirty-five referenda totaling $535.9 million would issue debt to taxpayers.

Chippewa Falls School District is seeking $65 million – the biggest potential tax increase out of any one referenda up for a vote Tuesday. That money would build a new elementary school, update the middle school and add a new laboratory onto the high school.

DC Everest School District is seeking nearly $60 million for a district-wide school building and improvement program. In Plymouth, voters will consider $32 million in debt for a wide range of facilities and security upgrades, including a gymnasium, cafeteria, and academic additions, remodeling, roof replacement, and HVAC upgrades.

Beloit Turner is asking voters to approve $27 million in debt to construct a new elementary school and make additions and renovations to FJ Turner High School.

Twenty-five school districts, or 38 percent of the referenda up for consideration Tuesday, seek to exceed revenue limits on a one-time basis totaling $126.7 million.

The largest amount asked for is $29,250,000 by Howard-Suamico School District to reduce class sizes and increase employee compensation. The school district would raise taxes over revenue limits for five years, from the 2018-19 school year to 2022-23, by $5.85 million every year.

The La Crosse School District is asking voters to raise taxes by almost $21 million over five years. That additional money would go toward maintaining academic programming, facilities, and upgrading technology.

Six referenda will ask voters to raise taxes on a recurring basis. The lowest amount being sought on a recurring basis is $25,000 per year for Alma School District.

The highest is $3,000,000 per year in Darien-Delavan School District to maintain education programming. The school district is asking voters to approve two separate referenda on the same ballot. The other ballot question seeks $1.5 million in one-time spending for a new football and soccer turf field, improvements to the stadium, and new academic and vocational programming at the high school.

Last April, 65 referenda were put to a vote across the state. In the end, 40 passed, costing Wisconsin taxpayers nearly $700 million. The MacIver Institute compiled the data here.

Two-hundred-eleven referenda were brought to the ballot box between October 2013 and November 2015, according to Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction. Voters approved 142 of them. In April 2017, the Journal Sentinel reported that school districts in Wisconsin have passed $12 billion-worth of referenda since 1990. More than half of these referenda have occurred in the last decade.

Stay tuned for updates on referenda results on Twitter at @newsmaciver and @maciverwisc.

Referendum data was provided by The Wheeler Report.

March 14, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

Performance in Milwaukee, Madison, and Green Bay: A Deeper Dive

The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) recently released a massive amount of data on student performance across the state. The new data cover a slew of metrics from graduation rates, to the ACT scores of the class of 2017, to the ACT Aspire, to AP exams, and then some. We first covered the results here, but there’s plenty more to examine.

Achievement Gaps

Wisconsin has long struggled with significant achievement gaps in four-year graduation rates and other performance metrics, often posting the largest gaps in the nation. For the class of 2017, those gaps largely persisted, though the data shows some improvements.

White students graduated high school at the same rate as the previous year – 92.7 percent – while the rate for black students increased by 2.8 points to 67.0 percent. The four-year diploma achievement gap fell to 25.7 percent in 2017 from 28.5 percent in 2016.

The diploma achievement gap at MMSD now stands at 18.1 points, down from a 31-point gap in 2016.

The gap between white and hispanic students has closed at a much faster rate. While the diploma gap between white and black students was 27.6 points in 2011, it is just 1.9 points lower today. In the same time, the gap between white and hispanic students shrank by seven points. The achievement gap between white and hispanic students fell from 19.4 points in 2011 to 12.4 points in 2017.

Students at Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) saw striking improvements, though overall rates remain low. While the graduation rate increased by 1.2 points to 90.7 percent for white students, black students saw an impressive increase of 14.1 points to 72.6 percent. The diploma achievement gap at MMSD now stands at 18.1 points, down from a 31-point gap in 2016.

MMSD’s 18-point achievement gap between white and black students is smaller than the gap at Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), the state’s largest school district. At MPS, the achievement gap between white and black students is now 14.9 percent, down from 17.1 a year ago.

Though MPS’ achievement gap between large ethnic and racial groups is smaller than the state’s average, overall graduation rates are significantly lower. The district’s average graduation rate is 62.2 percent, with 58.4 percent of black students and 73.3 percent of white students graduating in four years.

The ACT Suite Exams

Standardized testing has gone through considerable changes in recent years, and the ACT is no exception. Last year was the first that the state of Wisconsin paid for all high school juniors to take the ACT, drastically bringing up participation rates from 63.5 percent to 92.1 percent statewide. In 2017 both the participation rate and average composite score of 20.3 out of 36 remained the same.

At the same time, students have begun taking the ACT Aspire, a new exam for freshmen and sophomores in high school. The ACT Aspire gauges students’ preparedness for the full-fledged ACT used for college applications. While ACT scores remained flat, ACT Aspire scores fell across the state.

At Madison Metropolitan, students did worse in almost every subject compared to last year on the ACT Aspire. Fifty-five percent of students were ready or exceeding in English and just 36 percent in math. The percent of students considered ready or exceeding on the ACT Aspire English section fell by ten full points from just 2015 to 2017, to 54.9 percent. That was more drastic than the nearly 8 point drop at MPS, or the 3.3 point drop statewide during the same time period.

MPS students struggled even more, with just 8.3 percent ready or exceeding in math. Just 24.2 percent of MPS students were ready or exceeding in English – less than half of the statewide figure.

Racial disparities persisted throughout ACT-related data. While 50.2 percent of white MPS students were ready or exceeding on the ACT Aspire, just 15.8 percent of black students fared the same. Both groups of students fared considerably worse than the prior year, and the achievement gap between them grew from 32.9 points to 34.4 points.

MPS graduates of the class of 2017 fared better on the ACT than the class of 2016 in every subject, though participation fell from 95.3 percent to 90.6 percent. Student college readiness also improved in every subject, with the biggestincrease occurring in the reading section, where 16 percent of MPS students are now considered college-ready, compared to 13.7 percent last year. Still, 16 percent is a low bar, and it’s far below the state average of 40.5 percent. While 35.9 percent of students statewide were considered college-ready in science on the ACT, just 10.9 percent fared the same at MPS.

While MPS students improved proficiency across the board – though scores were still lower than the state average in every subject – MMSD students earned the same or lower scores in some subjects. The average composite score at MMSD was 21.5 out of 36, a sliver higher than last year’s 21.4. Students’ reading score fell to 21.7 out of 36 points, and stayed flat at 21.3 in math. Scores in English, science, and writing all increased.

Students at GBAP fared worse on the ACT than their MMSD counterparts, with an average composite score of 18.4 out of 36, down slightly from 18.7 the prior year. The participation rate also fell from 86 percent in 2016 to 82.8 percent in 2017, raising questions about why both the participation rate and the average score fell. The percent of college-ready students fell from 42.4 percent to 38.9 percent in the English section, and from 33.5 percent to 28.7 percent in math. Neither Madison nor Milwaukee saw that kind of drop.

The full ACT is a much more important exam that carries significantly more weight than the ACT Aspire. While students are taking more college prep exams, they’re also taking more college prep courses.

Advanced Placement Exams

In high school, students can take Advanced Placement (AP) classes that are typically considered college or near-college level. AP classes are challenging and a great way for students to learn how to study – plus, they can choose to take the AP exam at the end of the course.

The exams themselves offer a chance at saving real money in college. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, for example, offers a minimum of three credits for a score of three or higher on any AP exam. If students know they want to move on to higher education, AP classes and exams are a great way to get a head start.

AP exams scores, student participation rates, and the number of exams taken in Wisconsin all increased in the last year. The participation rate is a particularly promising trend – just 16.4 percent of students took an AP exam, but that number has increased by a full percentage point every year for three years in a row. The number of exams increased by 7.9 percent in just one year, showing that more students are taking more than one exam.

MMSD students in 2017 took 23 percent more AP exams than they did the previous year, a stunning one-year increase. Nineteen percent of students took an exam, up from 16 percent in 2016. The only negative trend for AP exams in Madison was that the percentage of exams scored three or higher fell from 79 percent to 77 percent – but a score drop is almost always expected with such a massive increase in participation. The scores are also higher than the state average, showing that AP classes are by-and-large sufficiently preparing students for the big exam that actually gets them credits.

Up in Green Bay, more GBAP students took AP exams than last year, with a 12.6 percent participation rate in 2017, up from 11.1 percent in 2016. Scores are slightly higher than the state average at 68.7 percent of tests scored three or above. That’s an increase from last year, but overall, scores have stayed largely flat over the last few years.

Of the larger school districts, MPS students struggled the most on AP exams. Just 19.2 percent of exams earned a three or higher, far below the 65.9 percent statewide average. Just 9.5 percent of MPS students took an AP exam in 2017, up a hair from 9.1 percent in 2016. One shining light in MPS’ statistics – the one-year increase in the number of exams taken was 8.6 percent, higher than the state increase of 7.9 percent.

College Attendance

DPI also reports on the percentage of Wisconsin graduates who are enrolled in postsecondary institutions. These numbers are updated every year, so they slowly tick up as students who take gap years end up in school down the road. Even considering that, however, a trend is emerging: students are choosing not to move on to college. Just 55 percent of 2017 graduates are now enrolled at a postsecondary institution. In 2013, 71 percent had done so.

This number can stem from a lot of different things and could be spliced in different ways. A highly skilled, highly educated populace is certainly a good thing, and college degree attainment almost always translates to higher wages. However, costs have skyrocketed in recent decades, and the rate of return isn’t what it used to be. Students must now consider how and where they go to college perhaps a bit more carefully than the high school graduates of the 80s and 90s. As the job market improves, it’s also possible that more students are choosing to go right into the workplace rather than getting degrees.

Large school districts across the state saw a similar trend occur. Of 2017 MMSD graduates, 63 percent are enrolled at a postsecondary institution, down from 69 percent of 2016 graduates. Forty percent of 2017 MPS graduates are enrolled, down from 49 percent the year before. GBAP saw an even larger drop in postsecondary enrollment than the statewide average – 52 percent of 2017 graduates are enrolled somewhere today, compared to 71 percent of 2013 graduates.

Enrollment, Attendance, And Dropouts

Public school enrollment has been declining for years, driven by a mix of factors but largely by the fact that families are choosing alternative schools. As public school enrollment drops, private school enrollment increases year over year. Remember – the data reported here only applies to publicly funded students or those at public schools. Over 120,000 students attend private schools in Wisconsin today.

From the 2016-17 school year to 2017-18, public school enrollment fell by 0.43 percent, or 3,743 students. At the same time, funding for schools increased by over $600 million in the 2017-19 biennial budget – a historic increase.

The statewide dropout rate has held steady, at 1.5 percent in both of the last two years. Attendance fell slightly to 94 percent, from 94.9 percent.

Certain districts strayed from the norm – MPS’ dropout rate fell from 7.2 percent in 2016 to 6.2 percent in 2017, a considerable drop, but still much higher than the average. At 88.3 percent, MPS’ attendance rate is also considerably lower than the state average, and it fell by 1.1 points from the prior year. MMSD’s dropout rate ticked up a hair to 2.0 percent from 1.7 percent, while attendance fell slightly to 93.5 percent. GBAP’s dropout rate fell to 2.5 percent, trending downwards from a rate north of 3 percent for the last several years.

Worth noting is the issue of the Obama-era Department of Education’s “Dear Colleague” letter to schools and districts regarding dropout rates. That letter instructed locals to watch for racial disparities in suspensions, expulsions, and dropouts, potentially leaving federal funding on the line. Since then, reports such as Dan O’Donnell’s Blood on the Blackboard have revealed how violence in classrooms has increased as school officials refuse to remove violent students from school in fear of affecting suspension rates. As the Governor and legislative leaders call for a special session on school safety, the issue could become more prevalent.

March 8, 2018 | By Ola Lisowski

Education Data Release: More Wisconsin High School Students Graduating in Four Years, but Proficiency Rates Down Slightly

A large data release Thursday revealed generally poor trends for students as proficiency, college readiness continue to fall – but more students are taking AP exams, a clear positive

[Madison, Wis…] More Wisconsin high schoolers are graduating in four years and the number of students who drop out is staying steady, according to an extensive new dataset released Thursday by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). The data also show that the average ACT composite score and participation rate remains generally unchanged compared to last year, but more high school students are opting out of attending college.

The data, mostly focusing on the class of 2017, offers a mix bag of results. The release shows that 88.6 percent of students graduated in four years, up from 88.2 percent in 2016. The percent of students who dropped out of high school – 1.5 percent – was the same percentage as last year.

2017 graduates on average scored 20.3 out of 36 on the ACT exam, equal to last year’s average score.

Overall public school enrollment for the 2017-18 school year was down, falling by 0.41 percent, or 3,743 students. The percent of students enrolled in postsecondary institutions plummeted to 55 percent, a drastic drop from 71 percent in 2013.

ACT results for the class of 2017 were positive, though not groundbreaking. The scores, which are the average of all ACT exams taken by 2017 graduates, stayed exactly the same for English, math, writing, and the overall composite.

The participation rate also stayed steady at 92.1 percent, the same as last year, which was the first year that the state paid for all students to take the exam. Last year, the average score fell by 1.8 points, but nearly 46 percent more students took the exam compared to the year prior. This time around, both participation rates and overall scores stayed mostly steady.

In English, students earned an average 19.4 out of 36 points, the same as last year. The percent of college-ready students fell from 59 percent to 57.9 percent. In math, the average score was 20.3, also the same as last year, but college readiness rates fell from 40.1 percent to 38.2 percent.

The average score in reading fell from 20.5 to 20.4, but the percent of college-ready exam takers grew to 40.5 percent from 39.6 percent. Students stayed steady in science, earning an average 20.7 of 36 points with 35.9 percent marked college-ready, both the exact same results as last year.

In the writing section, students earned an average of 6.1 out of 12 points, the same as last year. There are no college readiness benchmarks for the writing section, but participation in the ACT + Writing grew from 71.1 percent to 76.1 percent last year, a good sign.

Another good sign for students came in the data on Advanced Placement (AP) exams. High school students can take AP exams to earn college credit, with many schools – including the University of Wisconsin-Madison – providing general education credits for a score of three or higher.

The participation rate among high school students taking an AP exam grew by a full percentage point in the 2016-17 school year, from 15.4 percent to 16.4 percent. The percent of exams graded three or higher also increased from 65.6 percent to 65.9 percent. Compared to last year, 7 percent more AP exams were taken in the state of Wisconsin. More students are considering these exams as a legitimate way to get ahead on general education credits and save money on future college expenses. While 16.4 percent is still a low participation rate, the year-over-year trend is promising.

While ACT and AP score results showed positive news for students, ACT Aspire data showed some retreats. Fewer students demonstrated proficiency on the ACT Aspire in almost every subject compared to last year. That exam is taken by 9th and 10th graders as they prepare for the full ACT exam that they submit with college applications.

With 57.5 percent of exam takers “ready or exceeding” in English, students fared the best in that subject area. Last year, 60.4 percent of students earned the distinction. In math, just 37.1 percent of students were ready or exceeding, down from 38.9 percent last year. Readiness in reading and science also fell, from 39.4 percent proficiency in reading last year to 38.6 percent now. Just 35.5 percent of students are proficient in science, down from 36.9 percent last year.

Writing was the only ACT Aspire subject area in which more students were proficient over last year, albeit by a small amount – 51.4 percent of students were ready or exceeding, up from 51 percent in 2015-16.

Last year’s data release on graduation rates was marred by questionable, asterisk-laden numbers. The department released 2016 graduation rates months after they were expected, and 21 school districts submitted “data errata” letters showing that their submitted data was wrong. For that reason, DPI warned the public to consider the data carefully as it reworked the numbers for the November report card release. DPI had originally published a four-year graduation rate of 88.4 percent, but that number later fell to 88.2 percent as corrections were made. Zero school districts submitted data errata letters for this release.

Another strong trend emerged in the data, showing how students are making different choices than those just a year or two before them. In the 2016-17 school year, 54.9 percent of graduates were enrolled in a postsecondary institution, down from 61.6 in 2015-16. That continues a steady drop in the percent of postsecondary enrollments among high school graduates – just five years ago, in the 2012-13 school year, 70.9 percent of students were enrolled in a postsecondary institution upon graduating high school. The 15-point swing is perhaps the single largest change in any measured indicator of Wisconsin students.

Declining public school enrollment continued a longstanding trend as more students choose K-12 schools outside the traditional public school system. In the 2017-18 school year, 860,138 students are enrolled, down from 863,881 the year before, a 0.41 percent decrease.

Students in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), the state’s largest public school district, generally fared worse than the state average, but showed some areas of improvement. The four-year graduation rate at MPS rose to 62.2 percent from 59.7 percent last year. That rate is considerably lower than the 88.6 percent statewide average. On the ACT Aspire, 24.2 percent of MPS students scored ready or exceeding in English, down from 31.7 percent last year. That’s less than half the statewide figure. In math, just 8.3 percent of MPS test takers scored ready or exceeding, down from 10.2 percent.

MPS graduates of the class of 2017 had a lower ACT exam participation rate than the class before them, with 90.6 percent of students taking the exam compared to 95.3 percent. That drop in participation could partly explain the increased average composite score, which grew from 16.1 out of 36 to 16.5. English composite scores increased from 14.7 to 15.1, and math scores increased from 16.3 to 16.4. The percent of students considered college ready also grew accordingly.

While fewer 2017 MPS graduates took the ACT exam, more took the ACT + Writing. That participation rate grew from 72.1 percent last year to 80.3 percent this year. At the same time, the average writing score increased from 5.3 out of 12 to 5.5, a commendable increase considering the large growth in participation.

MPS’ attendance and dropout rates both fell compared to the prior year, and both were notably higher than the statewide average. In 2016-17, the dropout rate was 6.2 percent, down from 7.2 percent the prior year. Attendance stood at 88.3 percent, down from 89.4 in 2015-16.

February 12, 2018 | By Abby Streu

UW Student: Hip Hop Social Justice Class "Is An Absolute Joke"

MADISON, Wis. – Should Wisconsin taxpayers pay for a class taught by a “radical socialist” that believes “HipHop culture can help make the world more just?”

As first reported by Vicki McKenna on WIBA on Feb. 5, UW offers a class called “Global HipHop and Social Justice,” which aims to study how HipHop has influenced political movements across the world.

The class is taught by Professor Damon Burchell-Sajnani, also known by his rapper name, ProfessorD.us. Apparently, his rapper name is also a website domain name. ProfessorD.us has been an assistant professor at UW-Madison since Fall 2016. ProfessorD.us also teaches “The Problem of Whiteness,” a course that’s drawn controversy.

"ProfessorD.us warned students, 'don’t write about how I’m forcing my liberal views on you–I’m a radical socialist. At least get that right.'"

ProfessorD.us explains in his course syllabus that the class “explores how HipHop, a quintessential manifestation of African American culture, is adopted and adapted by African youth to fight for social justice and democracy in their local contexts.”

The class sets out to answer some of the greatest questions facing humankind.

“We begin by asking what is ‘HipHop,’ what is ‘social justice,’ and what is their relationship.”

Some, however, are not thrilled that taxpayers’ support of the University of Wisconsin system is being used to offer this course.

“Why are you paying for it? Why am I paying for it? Why does the Legislature refuse to address this problem?” asked conservative talk radio host Vicki McKenna.

A student enrolled in ProfessorD.us’ class shared with MacIver what students experienced during the lecture.

“Professor Sajnani made it clear on one of the first days of classes that if you had a problem with his teaching that you should just write it on the teacher evaluation form at the end of the semester. [He also said] “don’t write about how I’m forcing my liberal views on you–I’m a radical socialist. At least get that right.”

The mother of a student enrolled in the class also questioned the appropriateness of the class. “They should then pull funding or any costs provided by taxpayers for such courses,”

The MacIver Institute is not naming the student or the parents because they fear there will be retaliation if they speak out. The student is afraid to speak out because there are many on campus “who are not shy about bashing anyone and anything conservative or Republican.”

This is not the first time that a class at the UW has been questioned as a waste of taxpayer money.

During deliberations over the past state budget, the MacIver Institute published the “Top Five Wasteful Classes in the UW System.”

UW student and MacIver intern Jessica Murphy, the author of the article, was threatened online for daring to question such classes as “Teaching for Social Justice” and “Exploring White Privilege.”

Students enrolled in “Global Hip Hop and Social Justice” are required to purchase ProfessorD.us’s album as class material, and it is recommended that they purchase the CD from his website. The website also sells t-shirts stating “Bush is the real terrorist.”

ProfessorD.us has worn a t-shirt in class with the words “Not My President” and the Republican Party elephant with Trump hair on it.

In addition to exploring the professor’s own political beliefs as expressed in his music, the class also takes an entire week to scrutinize the cultural appropriation of white and non-black artists who dare perform HipHop.

Professor Sajnani was paid nearly $78,000 in his first year as an assistant professor of UW-Madison, according to the Wisconsin State Journal database. In addition to his salary, ProfessorD.us receives generous benefits paid for by Wisconsin taxpayers.

“This class is an absolute joke. It’s just a platform for Professor Sajnani to whine and complain,” the student said.

The mother put it bluntly.

“This class is not, in my opinion, anything worthy of taxpayer and student financial support.”

January 22, 2018 | By Jake Lubenow

As Spring Semester Starts, Conservatives Should Keep Pressing Free Speech Cause

A MacIver Perspective

From waving dildos in the air, to shutting out conservative organizations, to hating all white men, the campus left in Wisconsin truly had a banner fall semester. The radical leftists at our universities continue to trip over their extraordinarily low bar for being considerate participants in political debate and restraining from indoctrinating Wisconsin students.

Although new free speech protections offer more liberty for students to express their beliefs, more must be done to liberate students of the quasi-socialist utopia at our Wisconsin colleges and universities.

The Good

While activists, professors, and administrators continue to do their best to suppress opposing views from the right side of the aisle, progress has been made to protect the liberties of students.

Today’s college students never saw the days of the Soviet Union and the Tiananmen Square protests, and they’ve become more inclined to discount the importance and significance of our right to free speech.

The biggest story in campus politics this fall was by far the free speech bill passed by the Wisconsin Assembly and later implemented by the Board of Regents. The policy punishes students who disturb events and speakers twice with a suspension. If a student still doesn’t get the hint, the third disturbance ends in expulsion.

The policy curbs the use of the unconstitutional heckler’s veto after the practice was utilized nationally by progressive activists last year. Ben Shapiro’s speech last fall at UW-Madison to the Young Americans for Freedom chapter was put on hold when protesters rushed the stage and showed off their stranglehold on campus conservatives and proved what dilatants the “tolerant” left are.

Today’s college students never saw the days of the Soviet Union and the Tiananmen Square protests, and they’ve become more inclined to discount the importance and significance of our right to free speech. MacIver’s own Matt Kittle sat down with José Delgado, a Cuban Native and UW System Regent, to discuss his reflections on growing up in Castro’s Cuba and the impact of free speech on the furthering of our democracy.

Despite the policy being hotly debated across the state, and even in national press, free speech has made progress since the policy was implemented. Just take a look at the Young Americans for Liberty event at UW-Madison this past fall.

On another good note, in-state students will see their tuition at the same level for the fifth straight year with the tuition freeze by way of the budget process. Unfortunately for students in need of some extra beer money, or perhaps cash for textbooks, Governor Walker’s proposed 5 percent tuition cut was struck by Republican legislators content with just a freeze. The campus left’s so-called “student loan voters” lack of praise for the freeze is deafening.

The Bad

UW-Stevens Point’s Student Government Association voted to deny the formation of a Turning Point USA campus group, a nationwide conservative organization, to maintain their campus-wide safe space. The decision provoked a statewide rebuke and the threat of a lawsuit, forcing the reversal of the decision by the Student Affairs Office. At the testy meeting, student senators called the organization and, perhaps more shockingly capitalism, racist. It turns out the protection of safe spaces does not stand up to the primacy of the freedom of association and a win was notched for conservatives at UW-Stevens Point.

Also, a leader of the Wisconsin College Democrats and student at UW-La Crosse had to resign after tweeting “I f—ing hate white men” and sharing her joy of tearing down Christian pregnancy center posters on campus. The ever-tolerant College Democrats stood by the member of their board until national media attention was drawn to the organization over the matter. Her resignation was a silver-lining, but the media attention required exposed the hypocrisy of the campus left.

The Ugly

After this past semester, students on the right may be reconsidering their position on safe spaces and trigger warnings with how radical and, frankly, bizarre the campus left went this fall.

"It’s not hard to imagine why parents across the state hesitate to send their students to Madison, knowing they’re at risk of harassment just for attending an event consistent with their values."

Nothing epitomized liberal activism like a small group of misfits at UW-Madison screaming “cocks not glocks” and “this is what democracy looks like” while waving facsimiles of male genitalia in the air in protest. It’s possible the students thought they were living in the French democracy, but probably not.

The protesters tried to trivialize a speaker discussing the need for campus concealed carry to empower women to protect themselves, especially from the increased threat of sexual assault. The mocking, rather than engaging in debate, not only exposes how inept campus progressives are at responding to opposing ideas, but also how insensitive they are to the plight of rape victims on our campuses if they disagree with a speaker’s politics.

It’s not hard to imagine why parents across the state hesitate to send their students to Madison, knowing they’re at risk of harassment just for attending an event consistent with their values. You really have to wonder if these champions of the victimized realize what damage waving dildos in the face of a student impacted by sexual assault could do.

Forward

It really is a mystery whether the campus left can top the lunacy of the past semester. It should be difficult to usurp waving dildos in the air, but never underestimate the determination of some liberal students with too much time on their hands.

The free speech debate should remain at center stage as the Senate and the Governor may take up the Assembly bill that led to a Board of Regents policy. We’ll also certainly see further evidence that the policy respects the freedom of speech with no evidence of a chilling effect opponents predict. It shouldn’t be hard to explain to students the difference between protesting outside and disturbing an event inside, but you never know with the campus left’s warped perceptions.

Governor Walker wrote an ambitious budget in 2017 with respect to UW reforms and he should be applauded for the effort. The Joint Finance Committee’s insistence that the budget stick to fiscal matters shouldn’t halt the ambition to reform poor UW policy.

Governor Walker proposed the university create pathways by 2020 for most degree plans for finishing an undergraduate program in three years. Most UW schools are eager to pick the pockets of students stuck in school for a fourth year. Meanwhile, their mountain of debt climbs higher as students finish their degrees in underwater basket weaving. JFC’s striking of the proposal shouldn’t deter the governor and legislators from helping UW students complete school with a little more in their wallet.

In a step toward transparency, Governor Walker also proposed a policy where all workloads by faculty are reported and professors are rewarded for spending time in the classroom. While some research certainly benefits the state, it’s time we reward professors who do what they’re paid to do: teach. Students should jump at the opportunity to have more teaching hours, opening more classes and making it simpler to fulfill graduation requirements.

"Students at UW-Madison should be outraged that nearly $105,000 each year is allocated to condoms and over $67,000 promotes an organization called Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics."

Campus conservatives should also resume their call for a student fee opt-out. Allocable segregated fees force all students to pay a hefty sum to fund organizations and programs they usually neither use nor participate in and, in some cases, don’t agree with. Students at UW-Madison should be outraged that nearly $105,000 each year is allocated to condoms and over $67,000 promotes an organization called Atheists, Humanists, and Agnostics. Or perhaps they’d be furious that their student representatives receive thousands of dollars to offend Jewish students and suggest that African-American students should receive free tuition.

The opt-out was included in Governor Walker’s budget but later removed by the Legislature. To get serious about college affordability and real liberty for students, the Legislature should reconsider the idea. Lawmakers did mandate that segregated fees be standardized across campuses with regard to how each school structured their allocation. That move should make an opt-out a simpler adjustment for universities.

With each passing semester of lunacy from the left, conservative organizations and students grow in number and strength. Those liberty-oriented students need to continue to expose the hypocrisy of the left, grow the movement on campus, and call for reforms from our Legislature. The battle will never be easy, but altering increasingly radical universities and students is a worthy and imperative pursuit.

January 8, 2018 | By Bill Osmulski

UW Madison Hate and Bias Reporting System Clogged With Pettiness and Tattling

MADISON, Wis. – Here’s how out of control the political correctness police have gotten at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

A student complained that a white homeless man who yelled “racist” at passersby at the student union was himself engaging in racism because he was hiding behind his “white privilege.”

That’s just one of the many acts of pettiness and tattletaling found in the liberal university’s “hate and bias” incident reports.

The UW-Madison’s Division of Student Life includes these highly questionable hate claims in its “Bias Reporting” database. That’s a shame, really. Such outlandish complaints diminish the legitimate cases of racism, discrimination and harassment that truly have occurred on campus.

Flaws within UW-Madison’s bias reporting system are creating an exaggerated picture of hate and bias, MacIver Institute investigation has found.

Broad Bias Definition

Three years ago the university introduced the “Bias Reporting Process.” Students who are “hurting after experiencing a bias or hate incident on campus” are encouraged to file an incident report with the Division of Student Life. The reports can be filed online or in person at about a dozen locations on campus.

In one report, a white homeless man was yelling "racist" at everyone who walked past him at the union. The student who filed the report said something needed to be done about the man and that he was hiding behind his "white privilege."

Altogether, since the introduction of the reporting system in the fall of 2015, the university has received reports on 256 separate incidents. The MacIver Institute obtained 88 bias incident reports through two open records requests that stretch from January through August 2017.

What exactly counts as “bias?” The university maintains a very broad definition that includes “single or multiple acts toward an individual, group, or their property that are so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that they create an unreasonably intimidating, hostile, or offensive work, learning, or program environment, and that one could reasonably conclude are based upon actual or perceived age, race, color, creed, religion, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, national origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, political affiliation, marital status, spirituality, cultural, socio-economic status, or any combination of these or other related factors.”

The reporting form provides plenty of space for students to articulate their specific grievance and provide evidence. The reports are then collected by the Bias Response and Advocacy Coordinator, which is a full-time position with an annual salary of $42,000. Ultimately, they are compiled into summary reports that track the trends from semester to semester.

There is also a Bias Response Team made up of students, faculty and staff.

“[The Team] has been charged with addressing any issue related to bias or hate,” according to the summary reports. That seems to mostly involve organizational training sessions. The team has conducted 18 workshops for student organizations, departments, and programs reaching about 550 people in the spring/summer of 2016. Members have led various informational campaigns. Those efforts have yielded mixed results. The university’s summary reports indicate the number of incidents are increasing, but speculates the reason is increased awareness of the reporting system.

Some of the reports seem to indicate genuine problems on campus. Unfortunately, they can get lost in a cacophony of classroom disagreements, roommate squabbles, personal vendettas, arguments over workout room equipment, and Facebook fights. The university takes all reports seriously, and so there is no differentiating between reports that seem to indicate serious problems of hate and bias on campus, and reports that seem to be motivated by something else.

High School Grudges

For example, in March a male student posted a picture of himself on Facebook cradling a blue fanny pack pretending to be pregnant. His friends joked in the comments, “What’s the gender?” “It’s blue so I’m assuming it should be a girl that’s how it works these days right,” and “Non-binary I’m hoping.”

The person who filed the bias report stated, “I have known these boys for years. I went to high school with them. They are generally very mean people. They have specifically attacked my friends, although not in this instance. They need to stop their hateful, ignorant and offensive comments.”

The male student told MacIver News he was aware of the report, but the university never contacted him about it. The Office of Compliance told MacIver News there is almost never any follow up with the alleged perpetrators. The focus is on the victims and providing them support.

Bias Reports Are Not Police Reports

Many who file the reports aren’t seeking help. They just seem to think something good will come from reporting. For example, a woman who says she was heckled for being a lesbian wrote, “I’m filing this report because I believe the perpetrators should be identified and held accountable for harassment and hate speech on University property.”

There’s good reason to think that would happen. The website says, “The Bias Response and Advocacy Coordinator refers investigation and adjudication to the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards and University Housing; criminal investigations are managed by UWPD and/or Madison Police Department. The Bias Response and Advocacy Coordinator also refers incidents involving employees to the Office of Compliance and/or the Office of Human Resources.”

MacIver’s research found that simply doesn’t happen. First of all, the university admits, “Although the expression of an idea or point of view may be offensive or inflammatory to some, it is not necessarily a violation of law or university policy.”

And even if a report were referred to the Office of Student Conduct, the results would potentially be swift and controversial. The Division of Student Life’s assistant deans are responsible for conducting any required investigations in addition to their other duties.

“The campus process does not use the same procedures, burdens of proof, or rules of evidence as local, state, or federal legal systems,” its website explains. “University staff make decisions based on a preponderance of the evidence—information that persuades a reasonable person that is is more likely true than not true that misconduct occurred. In certain cases, clear and convincing evidence—information that would persuade a reasonable person to have a firm belief that the misconduct occurred—is necessary to remove a student from campus or restrict them from a course or program.”

Many students seem confused by the difference between criminal law and university policy. Subsequently, they’ll report an incident to the university as bias, when they should be reporting it to the police as a crime. Last year, someone shot a student at a bus stop with an airsoft gun. She stated in the bias incident report that she felt she was targeted because she’s “visibly gender non-conforming.” She included a picture of a large bruise on her leg with the report, but did not contact law enforcement about it.

Real Racism on Campus

There are some reports that seem to indicate a genuine problem with racism on campus, specifically targeting Asian students. For example, according to the reports, an employee at the rec center was overheard saying “Chinese are idiots” in the presence of Chinese students. A man on State Street yelled at an Asian American, “If you don’t speak English, go back to your f—ing country.” A man on Johnson Street physically assaulted an Asian woman, yelling “You do not belong here. Go back to your f—ing country and get out of the States!”

But serious reports like these seem to get lost within reports like: “I’m reporting a Facebook page called ‘UW – Meme County.’ Specifically, the page uses an image of Bucky Badger adapted to look like Pepe Frog.”

Then there’s the Jill Stein poster that was torn down – supposedly due to anti-semitism on campus. And then there was a series of crudely arranged lines scratched in a stall in the men’s room at the rec center, which was determined to be a swastika. (Police were called for that last one, by the way.)

Reporting Your Professor

It’s also not unusual for students to report their professors for objectionable classroom instruction. At least one student was offended when her literature teacher read a passage from a Joseph Conrad novel; n-word and all.

Another student was dismayed at her gender studies professor, who was not satisfactorily respectful when using the term “transsexual” and taught “that while gender is a cultural construct, sex is a universal, biological trait which is not culturally influenced. This is simply untrue. I fear that this will lead to confusion and misunderstanding about trans people and our experiences, which can further the violence that we experience.”

In another report, a student described a biology lecture where the professor provided a handout of different types of organisms. A palm tree represents land plants, a mushroom represents fungi and, in a bizarre attempt to be inclusive, she used the picture of a black woman to represent animals.

Complete Irony

The irony of some reports borders on the absurd.

In one report, a white homeless man was yelling “racist” at everyone who walked past him at the union. The student who filed the report said something needed to be done about the man and that he was hiding behind his “white privilege.”

Then there’s the incident report about the pizza slice-of-the-day at the student union called the “Buffalo Soldier.” (Historical note: “Buffalo Soldier” was a racist term the plains Indians called black Soldiers, claiming they looked like buffalo). Ironically, the person offended by the name was a native American. She mistakenly thought the term was simply “what they called soldiers that were meant to kill indians and buffalo.”

Report Anything, Just Claim It's Bias

The most recent reports the MacIver Institute collected are from the summer of 2017, and they generally seem to depart from the original purpose of the bias reporting system. There are reports about someone hogging weights at the gym, a female student who didn’t feel comfortable with her roommate sub-leasing to a male, someone yelling the f-word at someone on the street, the man who illegally docked his boat at the pier, the landlord who evicted a student for having a dog, and the students who moved out of their apartment without telling one of the roommates. Typically, the person filing the report believes the incident is race-, ethnicity-, or gender-based discrimination.

Fishy labeling like that not only detracts from genuine cases of hate and bias, it also creates statistics that exaggerate the problem on campus. During the summer 2017 semester, 72 percent (8 out of 11) of reported incidents were supposedly race related. However, five out of the six examples above were among those labeled as race-based incidents, and another report that summer about a student commenting on a new university staff member hired to address sexual orientation issues on campus was also labeled as race-related.

Creating Bad Statistics

All that bad data is now being shared to a national database organized by ProPublica for a project called “Documenting Hate.” Needless to say, by incorporating data from the university’s bias reporting system, its results will be suspect.

If you think the university’s starting to look a little like George Orwell’s classic novel “Animal Farm,” you’re not alone. One student filed a bias report against the bias reporting system. The anonymous complainant wrote, “I’ve noticed that the University of Wisconsin–Madison asks students to rat on other students for opinions that ‘offend’ them for one reason or another. This goes against the very foundations upon which the United States is grounded. Such Orwellian censorship practices are very reminiscent of the tyrannical East-German Stasi and make free speech & free thought completely impossible.”

Indeed, there is nothing about the bias reporting system that casts the university in a good light. The reports generally reveal a petty, immature, and, oftentimes, poorly educated student body. Even when credible incidents of hate and bias are discovered, the university’s response is clearly not working. The statistics that come from the reports are produced from unfiltered data that is, in itself, biased. Ultimately, the bias reporting system does little more than justify the reporting system’s own continued existence while feeding popular liberal narratives.

December 20, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

Students from 184 Wisconsin High Schools Needed Remedial Classes at UW System

MADISON, Wis. – A new report shows that in the fall of 2016, students from 184 Wisconsin high schools were required to take remedial math or English at the UW System as new freshmen.

The issue is part of a growing trend across the state and country, contributing to high levels of student loan debt and an increase in the time it takes college students to earn a degree.

The report, published earlier this month, documents the number of Wisconsin high school students who are not academically prepared for the rigors of college despite earning a diploma and supposedly mastering the subject matter in high school. It reveals the extent to which our K-12 education system is failing our children.

Remedial classes are taken by students for zero credits, but at the full cost of university tuition. The classes do not count toward a degree, but students who fare poorly on college placement exams are required to pass a remedial course before moving on to regular college coursework. The issue is part of a growing trend across the state and country, contributing to high levels of student loan debt and an increase in the time it takes college students to earn a degree.

The 184 schools making the list include 14 private schools and 18 schools within Milwaukee, an increase from the 175 schools on last year’s list. Of the 184 schools, 172 had 10 percent or more of their incoming UW students needing math remediation, and 27 schools had 10 percent or more of their graduating classes needing English remediation.

Fifty percent or more of the graduating classes from 15 high schools needed math remediation as freshmen at UW campuses. Of those 15 schools, nine are in the state’s largest school city, Milwaukee. Nine of the ten schools with the largest percentage of students needing math remediation are also in Milwaukee.

Surprisingly, eight of the schools with the largest math remediation problem by percentage were not on last year’s list, including the Milwaukee School of Career Technical Education, South Division High School, CEO Leadership Academy, and Saint Anthony High School, all within Milwaukee. Eight in ten or more of the graduates from those schools who went to UW needed math remediation.

The data report offers a new aspect of transparency on this issue. Many of the schools on the list are nationally ranked and touted as some of the best schools in the state or country – a deeper dive, however, showed that they don’t adequately prepare students for college.

Nine of the schools included in the data report received five-star rankings on state report cards released just last month. A full 40 percent of the high schools that “significantly exceed expectations” had graduates who needed math or English remediation upon entering the UW System.

Of the top 10 schools on U.S. News and World Report’s 2017 ranking of the best high schools in Wisconsin, nine sent students to the UW System needing additional math. Carmen High School of Science and Technology, a charter school at MPS, was ranked the best high school in Wisconsin by U.S. News and was the only one that did not appear on the remedial education report.

Kimberly High School sent the most students needing math remediation from any one class: 53 of 148 incoming UW freshmen, or 36 percent of the class, required the zero-level classes. Nathan Hale High School sent 138 graduates to the System, and 50 of them required remedial math.

While many more schools had issues with math remediation than with English remediation, some schools struggled with both subjects, sending large numbers of their graduates to college unprepared. More than half – 52 percent – of the 87-person graduating class from Beloit Memorial High School needed math remediation at the UW System, and 24 percent required English remediation. In Milwaukee, nearly three-quarters – 73 percent – of incoming Alexander Hamilton High School graduates needed math remediation, and 60 percent needed additional English.

Of the 49 Wisconsin schools that sent students needing English remediation at the UW, just one is a private school. All except two of those schools also had students who needed math remediation. One school, Alexander Hamilton, sent more than half of its graduating class to UW needing additional English classes, though that school was an outlier. Ten percent or more of graduates from 27 schools needed English remediation at UW.

This year, 18 more schools made the list for needing remedial English.

Compared to last year, nine more schools made the list this time around. However, many high schools who sent substantial numbers of unprepared graduates off to UW – including Bradley Tech, Pulaski, and James Madison University – were not included on the list this year. That would suggest that each of those schools sent fewer than six students to the UW System needing remedial classes, marking substantial improvements. Last year, 77 percent of James Madison University High School’s incoming UW System freshmen class required math remediation.

Out of any single school district, MPS showed the most difficulty in this area, suggesting that many students are graduating and moving on to college without demonstrating proficiency.

Nine of the schools included in the data report received five-star rankings on state report cards released just last month.

A 2015 state law required that this report be published annually. Rep. John Jagler (R-Watertown) discovered that 20 percent of all new freshmen at the UW System require remedial classes in English or math, but the System did not systematically track from where those students came. Now, the annual report lists all high schools that sent six or more students to the System needing such classes.

With all the discussion about college affordability these days, the prevalence of remedial classes may be a good place to start. The cost of in-state tuition averages thousands of dollars per semester, and students pay full price for remedial classes despite receiving zero credits toward their degrees – essentially paying cash for their high school’s failure to prepare them for college.

The MacIver Institute will continue to update this story as more reactions become available.

December 6, 2017 | By Tyler Brandt

Keep UW Out Of National Campus Thought Criminal Database

If George Orwell stepped foot onto the UW-Madison campus in 2017, he would think that “1984” has come to pass. The author of the 1949 dystopian novel couldn’t have written a more daring Big Brother chapter than what the speech police have come up with on Wisconsin’s left-wing, flagship university.

It was recently announced that an independent campus newspaper, The Badger Herald, has struck up a partnership with ProPublica, a left-leaning investigative journalism nonprofit. The reason? To take UW-Madison’s “Hate and Bias” reporting system to a national database.

If you criticize another student on something as benign as age, political affiliation, or spirituality then your name could end up in a national system of hate and bias incidents.

The project is called “Documenting Hate” and involves numerous college newspapers across the country with the goal of creating a national database of hate crimes and bias incidents. The Badger Herald encourages students to share their experiences. And this Social Justice League insists that, “Just because something is not considered a crime under the law, does not mean it is not a crime against your humanity”.

That’s right. The thought police are coming after you for things not considered to be criminal, while systematically abusing the definition of crimes against humanity. They want to equate potentially offensive language to the level of ethnic cleansing, war crimes, rape, and other unspeakable acts. That seems to be doubleplusbad, to borrow from Orwell’s Newspeak.

For those unfamiliar with UW-Madison’s local Hate and Bias reporting system, students and campus members are encouraged to report incidents to an online database if they think they have been a victim of a bias or hate.

UW-Madison has one full-time “Bias Response and Advocacy Coordinator” who earns $42,000 a year. There is also a 12-member board comprised of UW officials who serve full-time positions in other areas.

This group of people processed 87 reported incidents from July 1, 2016 to Dec 31, 2016. Out of these reported incidents only five were processed through the UW System non-academic misconduct policy. Of those, two individuals were convicted on misconduct charges.That’s $42,000 a year and wasted time of other campus employees to catch two cases of misconduct.

So what constitutes a bias incident? The definition, according to the University is:

“Single or multiple acts toward an individual, group, or their property that are so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that they create an unreasonably intimidating, hostile, or offensive work, learning, or program environment, and that one could reasonably conclude are based upon actual or perceived age, race, color, creed, religion, gender identity or expression, ethnicity, national origin, disability, veteran status, sexual orientation, political affiliation, marital status, spirituality, cultural, socio-economic status, or any combination of these or other related factors”

That’s enough protected classes to make the late Justice Antonin Scalia turn over in his grave.

Out of 87 reported incidents, only five were processed through the UW System non-academic misconduct policy. Of those, two individuals were convicted on misconduct charges.That’s $42,000 a year-plus to catch two cases of misconduct.

The odious part of this definition is that if you criticize another student on something as benign as age, political affiliation, or spirituality then your name could end up in a national system of hate and bias incidents, leaving you to be defamed for something that could be a simple political disagreement.

What if you criticize someone who legitimately believes that horoscopes are scientific fact? Is that an offense against spirituality? It could be, according to the university hate and bias cops.

This neo-Bolshevik list encourages students to settle disputes by telling on each other and appealing to a higher authority, rather than trying to settle the problem themselves through reasonable discussion. If we want to get the best out of the university experience, which is preparing young people for the adult world, then we should encourage them to work out their problems like adults instead of tattling.

In “Documenting Hate,” the thought police rely on an “objectively offensive” standard. Of course, they have turned the subjective into the objective. What might be offensive to one person is not necessarily offensive to another. It can be very difficult to pin down something as “objectively offensive.”

The result of this system is a Big Brother database. Its core principle often confuses hatred or bias with disagreement, confrontation, even alternate points of view. It undermines the whole point of a liberal arts education, which is to allow for open – and sometimes offensive – inquiry in the pursuit of knowledge. Some offense must be tolerated and dealt with to receive the best and most truthful education you can.

The reason this whole system is so egregious is because it is a devolution from the principles and values the university holds dear and replaces those values with this theme of coddling impressionable minds from the reality of the world. The bubble wrap campus is devouring the character and strength that people need to thrive in a country that chooses freedom over Big Brother-style protection. It is a step away from a strong individualist mentality which built this liberty-loving nation we are so lucky to call home.

The waning tide of strong character is giving way to a flood of reliance on authority and protection from the outside world. In 2017, we are drowning in “1984.”

Tyler Brandt is a MacIver Institute intern and president of the UW-Madison chapter of Young Americans for Liberty.

November 17, 2017 | By Chris Rochester

University Overturns UW-SP Student Senate Rejection of Turning Point Request

MADISON, Wis. – Administrators at UW-Stevens Point have overturned the campus student government’s decision to deny a young conservatives group’s request to become a recognized student organization.

The campus Student Affairs Office made the announcement that Turning Point USA would be recognized as a campus group at noon Friday. The announcement cited media scrutiny over the student senate vote Nov. 9 and a failure of the body to re-consider its decision at its Nov. 16 meeting, which vice chancellor for student affairs Al Thompson had requested.

Among other factors, Thompson cited “a UW Board of Regents policy on academic expression” in his announcement:

Our campus community has been the focus of local and state media reports this week following SGA’s vote to deny a group’s recognition as a student organization. We will send the following statement today to media that have inquired:

The Student Government Association at UW-Stevens Point voted to deny Turning Point USA’s request to be recognized as a student organization at SGA’s weekly meeting on November 9. I asked SGA to reconsider its action on November 16, based on UW-Stevens Point and UW System policies recognizing student organizations, SGA guidelines on viewpoint neutrality and a UW Board of Regents policy on academic expression. In the absence of further SGA action on November 16, I have determined that Turning Point USA meets the requirements to be recognized as a student organization at UW-Stevens Point.

The university came under intense criticism after the vote to deny a petition by a group of conservative students seeking to set up a campus chapter of Turning Point, which has more than 1,000 campus chapters around the country.

Opponents cited the fear of of feeling “targeted” for their liberal positions if the request was approved.

But the students’ decision prompted an avalanche of scrutiny by conservatives and free speech advocates who said the decision shut down the right of free speech for a mainstream conservative group. The possibility of legal action was also raised by Turning Point supporters.

The UW-SP College Republicans have spoken out in defense of Turning Point. After the university announced it would overturn the student government’s decision the group said it’s pleased with the move but added the administration shouldn’t have been forced to step in.

“I, along with the College Republicans are pleased with the decision given by the office of Student Affairs to officially recognize Turning Point USA as a student organization on campus. This win for freedom of speech benefits both current and future students who attend this university,” said UW-SP College Republican chair Amelia Heup in a statement.

“Unfortunately, this is a decision that should have been made earlier by the Student Government Association. I urge the SGA to recognize students’ right and the diversity of voices on this campus. A student’s rights do not end when entering a public university.”

This story will be updated as responses are received.

October 17, 2017 | By M.D. Kittle

UW Student: My Friend Was Raped, Gun-Control Laws Left Her Defenseless

Madison, Wis - Just when you thought the extreme left couldn’t get any more surreal, well, enter Cocks Not Glocks.

As MacIver News Service reported last week, the University of Wisconsin-Madison chapter of the anti-gun student group demonstrated against the Second Amendment – and the “rape culture” – by waving around plastic penis sex toys.

The thin line of phallus wielders protested national conservative commentator Katie Pavlich’s address, “Trigger Warning: Second Amendment Rights and Self Defense.”

They shrank, however, when confronted with some inconvenient truths.

Michelle Walker, a UW Madison sophomore and member of Young Americans for Freedom, the student organization that sponsored Pavlich’s speech, stood up Tuesday to the protesters’ cry to keep guns off campus.

“So you want to be raped?” Walker asks the 20 or so demonstrators. Watch the video of the exchange here.

A young woman, seemingly stunned by the question, screams, “No one said that!”

“Nobody said that. Stop insulting survivors,” yells another demonstrator, wielding a dildo while holding a “Disarm hate” sign.

“You guys are insulting survivors by not allowing them to defend themselves,” Walker shoots back.

“I have a friend who was raped on campus,” Walker continues. “She wasn’t allowed to have her concealed carry (gun) with her. She was raped because of that. If she would have had her concealed carry I guarantee she wouldn’t have been raped.”

There is a stunned pause by the anti-gun crowd, as if they’re not sure how to process the information they’ve just received.

Suddenly, the lead sex toy wielder snaps out of her protest paralysis, turns to her fellow demonstrators and conjures up a familiar left-wing chant: “Show me what democracy looks like!”

“This is what democracy looks like!” the small crowd chants back.

Walker, exhaling a plume of cigarette smoke, futilely tries to reengage. The sex toy army only shakes their plastic penises in the air and chants, “Cocks not Glocks,” like some perverse Tiananmen Square scene.

“I decided to ask them why they were against having guns on campus for the sake of having self-defense for women, because these are the people that also claim they want to end the rape culture and educate men on how to not rape women and things like that,” Walker told MacIver News Service last week on the Vicki McKenna Show, on NewsTalk 1310 WIBA. “So I figured it would be a valid question for them. And they didn’t really have an answer for me. All they did was ask me why I wanted to shoot people and kill people instantly.”

“They basically asked me why I wanted to defend myself against a rapist with a gun,” she added.

In Wisconsin, law-abiding citizens may carry a concealed weapon, with a permit. A bill pending in the Legislature would end the permit requirement, adding Wisconsin to the 12 states that have constitutional carry laws.

Public schools still could prohibit carrying concealed weapons in buildings, but only under the state’s trespassing laws.

Only Utah has a statute specifically declaring that public colleges and university do not have authority to ban lawful concealed weapons on their property, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Walker said she knows students who have been caught defenseless in assault situations because of the prohibition on guns on college campuses. She recounted the story of her friend who was raped on another college campus.

“She had her concealed carry permit given to her by her state. She’s not from Wisconsin,” Walker said. “Since her campus banned guns, she was not allowed to have it at the time she was attacked and therefore she was attacked and faced all of the negative consequences in dealing with that, including dropping out of school and what not.”

Kat Kerwin, UW student and organizer of the “Cocks Not Glocks” event, told the Capital Times that such rhetoric is “divisive” and that Pavlich’s speech was designed to “divide campus.” Kerwin describes herself on Twitter as an “alternative right troller” and “gun violence prevention advocate.”

Gun control supporters insist concealed carry on campus – permit or otherwise – would lead to more gun violence.

The assertion isn’t borne out by experience.

More than a year ago, Texas adopted campus carry on its public universities. Authorities say the law has had little impact on day-to-day college life.

“We have had no incidents since the law passed or since the law went into effect of criminal acts by license-to-carry holders,” Ed Reynolds, chief of the University of North Texas Police Department, told the Denton Record-Chronicle last month.

In fact, the Texas Democratic Party apologized earlier this month for trying to link the fatal shooting of a Texas Tech police officer to the state’s campus carry law.

“Hollis Daniels III, the 19-year-old freshman arrested in the shooting, could legally possess a pistol under Texas gun laws. But under campus carry, he would still be prohibited from carrying a concealed handgun into campus buildings or Texas Tech dorm rooms” because he isn’t over the age of 21, the Dallas Morning News reported.

Walker said she and her conservative friends will continue to push for campus carry. The outspoken sophomore says she refuses to be silenced by the left.

“I don’t want to let the university win in silencing me or progressive students at all,” she said. “I try to go out of my way to make sure they don’t silence me.”

July 19, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

Senate K-12 Plan: More Money for Low-Spending Schools, Modest Statewide School Choice Expansion Compared to Governor

Madison, Wis - After weeks of delays, the Senate Republican Caucus released a full budget proposal on Tuesday. Transportation remains the hot topic – read our full rundown right here – but the Senate plan also includes substantive tweaks to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal for the Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

The Senate plan spends $24 million more than Walker’s already-generous education proposal, which sent $648 million more to public schools than current funding levels. It also adds six more positions to DPI compared to the governor’s plan. The biggest chunk of that spending increase comes in the form of categorical per pupil aid, which is the same in the Senate plan as in Walker’s proposal. Senate education text box.png

Categorical per pupil aid is money that all districts receive if certain criteria are met. This aid is sent to districts outside of normal revenue limits. The governor and Senate both propose investing more than $500 million into categorical per pupil aid increases consisting of $200 per pupil in 2017 and another $204 per pupil in 2018.

One place where the Senate shifts away from Walker’s proposal is the low-revenue adjustment, allowing certain school districts to levy higher property taxes. The low-revenue adjustment is currently set at $9,100 per pupil, and Walker’s budget proposal maintains the same level. The Senate plan would increase that number to $9,300 in 2017, then by another $100 per pupil each year until it hits $9,800 in 2022-23.

That would increase certain school districts’ levy authority by $23.2 million statewide, allowing those districts to increase property taxes at the local level.

The idea is similar to one floated by the Assembly Republican Caucus in June. The Assembly package, championed by Rep. Mary Felzkowski (R-Irma) and Joint Finance Co-Chair Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette), would have raised the low-revenue adjustment to $9,800 in the second year of the budget. That adjustment would raise the statewide revenue limit authority by $92.2 million overall.

“I don’t think anybody will dispute the fact that it’s a huge inequality. It’s lack of opportunity. If you’ve got a large district, they’re levying at over $10,000. There’s more opportunities for kids,” Felzkowski said at the time of the Assembly proposal’s release. Looking at school districts like Elkhorn or Merrill, she said, “where their levy limits are locked down at $9,200, they’re struggling to meet the requirements to get these kids into college. The opportunities aren’t there. I don’t think anybody can say that’s fair or that we’re doing a good job.”

Sen. Leah Vukmir (R-Brookfield) praised the Senate plan, which also repeals the state property tax, the personal property tax, and state prevailing wage, and announced that she would support it.

“Our constituents sent us here to hold the line on taxes. This budget does that and more,” Vukmir said in a press release. “Not only are we eliminating the state property tax, but we are also abolishing the personal property tax, which will give much needed relief to small businesses and startups.”

As for school choice, the plan would increase the statewide voucher program’s income limits to 220 percent of the poverty line in 2018-19, or $53,460 annually for a family of four. Under current law, families making up to 185 percent of the poverty line are eligible for the statewide program, far below the 300 percent limit for Milwaukee and Racine. Assembly leadership said in a press release that the Assembly would remain committed to increasing statewide income limits to 300 percent, creating equity across the state.

An estimated 550 more pupils will enroll in the statewide program as a result of the changes. Other changes to the programs include prorating summer school payments for schools, allowing private choice schools to establish virtual education programs, and increasing the public school open enrollment transfer amount by $100 per pupil starting in 2017-18 and again each year until 2020-21.

The Senate plan also removes some bureaucratic barriers to the choice program in the second year of the budget. For example, one regulation says that students can only apply for the Special Needs Scholarship Program if they are first denied from public school open enrollment. Students can only apply for the scholarship if they are currently attending a public school. The Senate proposal does away with both barriers, bringing in an estimated 250 more pupils.

In a May interview with MacIver News Service, Bill Koehn, administrator and head teacher at St. Coletta Day School of Milwaukee, said such rules pose “significant” barriers for families struggling to provide a quality education for their children.

The proposed spending plan also authorizes a state charter school office to create charter schools statewide without the approval of local school boards. Currently, the office is limited to creating the schools in Madison and Milwaukee.

Rather than requiring school districts to verify that employees are paying at least 6 percent towards pension plans and 12 percent towards healthcare, the Senate plan would instead have districts annually report details of employee healthcare plans. The so-called “Act 10 requirement,” a contentious provision introduced in Walker’s budget, is aimed at tracking Act 10 savings across the state and links compliance with Act 10 to increased state aid.

Some will likely be disappointed in Act 10 compliance no longer being linked to additional state aid. However, the reporting requirement is still significant – for the first time, districts will regularly report true Act 10 savings, allowing the public to accurately track the law’s immense impact.

The Senate plan would limit school district referenda to regular election days, except in cases of emergency. That idea is adopted from a legislative package introduced earlier this year by Sen. Duey Stroebel (R-Saukville) and was also included in the Assembly Republican plan.

Other changes are less likely to be embraced by the Legislature’s staunch conservatives, including $9.2 million in state spending for laptops for every high school freshman, regardless of income. The program would start in 2018 and would require schools to match $125 contributions in order to receive funding. The Assembly’s K-12 plan also included free laptops for students, but would have started the program one year earlier, to the tune of $18.4 million in the biennium.

The plan pulls back on performance-based funding for Milwaukee’s schools. Walker’s plan would have spent $5.6 million for public, charter, and private choice schools in the City of Milwaukee. Of that, nearly $2 million would be set aside for the best-performing schools, who would receive awards based on their total number of pupils.

Instead, the Senate plan deletes the $2 million allocation for top schools, sending all of the performance-based funding to schools located in failing school districts in addition to any schools in the City of Milwaukee. In order to receive the extra funding, schools would have to develop a school improvement plan targeting math and reading, and must have increased their overall report card score from three years prior.

Walker’s proposal would have eliminated renewal requirements for teacher and administrator licenses, effectively creating so-called “lifetime licenses.” The Senate plan would instead create provisional three-year licenses for new employees, followed by a lifetime license upon the successful completion of six consecutive semesters.

While the Senate plan would spend $24 million more than Walker overall, it cuts back on certain allocations while creating several new programs.

Walker’s plan would have created a new “level” of sparsity aid funding for districts with 745-1,000 pupils or only 10 pupils per square mile, and would have increased current sparsity aid funding by $100 more per pupil. The Senate saves $18 million over Walker’s plan by cutting back on the governor’s proposed changes to sparsity aid, instead providing school districts that have grown too large to receive sparsity aid 50 percent of the funding they received in the prior year.

Brand new allocations include $2 million for a pilot program for shared services, $750,000 in incentives grants for districts that participate in whole grade sharing or who consolidate with other districts, and $1 million for a rural school teacher talent program.

The Senate plan also includes several provisions that had been proposed by Walker but were tossed out by the Joint Finance Committee as non-fiscal policy items. One restored provision would require schools to include more information on annual report cards, such as the number of students participating in early college credit programs, youth apprenticeships, and AP courses offered and credits taken.

July 12, 2017 | By Jessica Murphy

UW-Madison Honors Tariq Ali, Advocate of Socialist Dictators

UW-Madison is bestowing an award to Tariq Ali, a far-left activist with a long history of praising socialist dictators. What’s concerning is his blatant disregard of the current crisis in Venezuela, a degenerative socialist nation with the state-controlled economy in ruins and millions of people starving.

The A.E. Havens Center for Social Justice at UW-Madison, a taxpayer funded entity, selected Marxist journalist, author, and filmmaker Tariq Ali as the recipient of their 2017 Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship Award. The award is presented to those with a “distinguished and extensive record of scholarly achievement in the critical tradition of social thought,” according to the UW.

Ali previously spoke at a Havens Center event in fall of 2007 and will return to UW-Madison’s campus on October 19 for his award lecture entitled “1917-2017: Wars and Revolutions.”

Ali is a British-Pakistani writer who is well known in left-wing activist circles. He has met late Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez and current President Nicolás Maduro on multiple occasions and has spoken highly of both of them, specifically referencing Chávez’s apparent “victories” in various publications and lectures. He was also invited to speak at the inaugural Hugo Chávez Memorial Lecture in 2014 hosted by the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign, an organization that supports the tyrannical reigns of Chávez and Maduro.

Ali joined the International Marxist Group in 1968. The International Marxist Group, today known as Socialist Action, is a Trotskyist group based in the United Kingdom that launched various newspapers to spread Marxist ideas. Ali has been writing for the Guardian since the 1970s, is a long-standing editor of New Left Review, is a founder and current vice president of the Stop the War Coalition, and co-wrote the screenplay for South of the Border, a documentary that honors left-wing Latin American leaders such as Chávez. At the 2005 World Social Forum in Brazil, Ali was one of the “Group of Nineteen” to sign the Porto Alegre Manifesto, which consists of twelve socialist proposals ranging from implementing an international tax to canceling all debt of developing nations.

In a column for the Guardian, Ali glorifies Chávez’s fight for social rights, the poor, and the underprivileged. In reality, Chávez left a legacy of corruption. His administration was known for exchanging favors and gifts for votes come election time, mismanaged the potentially lucrative oil industry (output fell by almost a third), used oil money for social programs, forced all media stations to cover his speeches under threat of termination, rigged elections so that he could decide who could and couldn’t run, and more.

Chávez’s love of literature was of particular interest, and Ali admired how Chávez distributed a million “free” copies of his favorite book, Don Quixote, to the poor. This act is more self righteous than charitable – people were starving and Chávez cruelly chose to buy a million books that would never be read rather than feed his people. Chances are the books were burned as kindling rather than read. This clearly shows greater passion for his personal ambition than the livelihoods and health of his people – a disconnect between the socialist elite in power and the suffering Venezuelans.

Ironically, Ali commented that Chávez “had a punctilious sense of duty to his people.” Ali couldn’t be more off base considering the tyrannical government led by Chávez lacked any sense of integrity or commitment to its people. Adoration of an ideology should not blind one to the atrocities and suffering real people are enduring.

Ali often calls out western media for portraying the situation in Venezuela as a transition to a communist-style dictatorship, when it’s clear this is exactly what’s happening. Most notably, Chávez usurped all private businesses, effectively taking control over the entire economy. People knew that if they wanted to keep their jobs, they would stay silent and not disagree with the regime. It’s difficult to find dissent when everyone who speaks out is intimidated, threatened, jailed, or killed.

Venezuela, with the world’s largest oil reserves, once had potential to be the richest country in Latin America. Today, the country is in shambles – facing severe food and medicine shortages, looting and violence, deadly mass protests, and a leader who attempts to silence any dissenters by force. Latest estimates of the anti-government protests put the death toll at 90 people, the majority of them under the age of 30. The country is spiraling out of control – people are rationing toothpaste and imprisoned protesters say they are forced to eat raw pasta mixed with human excrement. Apparently this is a socialist’s paradise?

Venezuela is a poignant and relevant example of the failures of socialism. Socialists hide under a façade boasting equality, yet in practice it leads to egregious human rights violations, disintegration of democracy, and extreme poverty. Is this the equality they desire?

The strength and the courage of the Venezuelan people is immeasurable. They withstand threats, beatings, jail, starvation, intimidation, and more, and are still determined to fight. They fight for their lives, for their families, and for a better future.

I reached out to Jorge A. Jraissati, a Venezuelan student activist who has been at the forefront of the protests and fight for freedom in his country. When I told him that the UW intends to give an award to Ali, he commented that it is unfair to give an award to someone who doesn’t know what he is talking about.

Jraissati conveys the truth of his experiences and the hardships Venezuelans have endured for years under the socialist dictatorship Ali extols:

“Venezuela is a country sunk in misery, a country in which our people don’t have access to food, medicines, and jobs. Venezuela is a country with no freedom of speech, no human rights, and no opportunities to provide for our families with minimum wage less than $50 per month. A country divided, collapsed, and injured thanks to Hugo Chávez and Nicolás Maduro.

Every time I visit the poorest sectors of my country and I see the misery in their lives, I feel disappointment. Chávez betrayed those who believed in him the most; those eager for hope. The people Chávez promised to help are the most exposed to the violence and hunger my country is living at the moment.

Today, we have been fighting for our freedom for three months, and despite the brutal repression of the dictatorship, we will keep fighting. In three months, more than 80 students have been killed by the regime, and more than 3,000 incarcerated.”

In the coming months, Jraissati will be speaking with United Nations officials, in front of the European Parliament, and at various conferences to implore them to take action for the people of Venezuela and denounce the situation in Venezuela internationally.

Why is the University of Wisconsin honoring Ali, who shares anti-West conspiracies in favor of fighting for human freedom in Latin America? Ali is an anti-war activist and speaks out against human rights abuses such as honor killings, but he doesn’t bat an eye when it comes to the human rights violations in Venezuela. It shows a lack of principle to stand for values such as human rights and independence while unabashedly supporting a socialist regime that is violating all of the above. Perhaps current supporters of the socialist Venezuelan regime are too prideful to admit that they were incorrect, and rather than retreat to silence, choose to stick to their guns and support the cruel and power hungry Venezuelan leader regardless of moral qualms.

Maduro’s own administration is revolting. Venezuela’s attorney general Luisa Ortega Díaz, once loyal to the Maduro regime, is now one of his most outspoken critics. Speaking out in the name of justice and democracy has consequences in Venezuela – Díaz had her assets frozen and was banned from leaving the country last week.

Past recipients of the Lifetime Contribution to Critical Scholarship Award include far-left activists Eduardo Galeano, Noam Chomsky, and Howard Zinn.

Galeano, an Uruguayan historian and writer who openly supported the Bolivarian revolution taking place in Venezuela, also had connections with both Chávez and Maduro. An official statement released by the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry after Galeano’s death lamented that “the Venezuelan people will always remember the commitment that Eduardo Galeano always showed towards the Bolivarian Revolution and to our eternal commander, Hugo Chávez.” In honor of his dear comrade, Maduro created a special education plan for fifth and sixth graders to focus on Galeano’s works. His novel about Latin America’s exploitations by the West, The Open Veins of Latin America, gained popularity after Chávez famously offered a copy to Barack Obama at the Summit of the Americas in 2009.

Chávez considered Chomsky one of his best friends in the west, who commented “what’s so exciting about at last visiting Venezuela is that I can see how a better world is being created.” In 2011, Chomsky raised concerns that Chávez was concentrating too much executive power, which he viewed as a risk to democracy. This story is familiar – the far-left praising a socialist paradise until it starts crumbling, and then they spin the story that it was never truly socialist in the first place.

It is incredibly disheartening to see UW-Madison honor someone who callously disregards human rights violations and proudly supports the chaos, hunger, death, and despair in Venezuela – all for a political ideology.

With all odds against them, Venezuelans remain hopeful and Jorge’s words inspire those fighting for liberty:

“In these difficult times of long nights and great suffering, never stop resisting, never stop believing, and never stop fighting. We will be free.“

If you want to take real action and help Venezuelans, please consider donating to Jorge’s fundraiser for food and medicine.

You can follow Venezuelan activist Jorge Jraissati on twitter (@JraissatiJorge) for updates on their efforts to fight for freedom.

July 7, 2017 | By Brett Healy

ChartSmart: Focus on Milwaukee and School Choice

In our final K-12 edition of ChartSmart, a focus on Milwaukee and school choice in Wisconsin

Welcome back to ChartSmart! After examining funding levels for the Department of Public Instruction over time and diving into student achievement and outcomes, today we hone in on Milwaukee and the school choice programs.

As the state’s biggest and most troubled school district, MPS deserves a bit of special attention. Just 58 percent of MPS students graduate high school in four years – over 30 percent lower than the statewide average. When they do graduate, many students require remedial education upon entering the UW System. However, programs such as open enrollment and the state’s school choice programs allow students and parents options outside the traditional system.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

June 26, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

Democrats’ K-12 Plan Would Spend Nearly $730 Million More than Governor

Proposal repackages and adds to parts of Walker’s and Assembly’s already-generous plans, resulting in a massive price tag

Madison, Wis - Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee released their own K-12 education funding plan to counter competing proposals by Gov. Scott Walker and Assembly Republicans. The plan would spend $728 million more than Walker’s proposal over two years by eliminating two key tax credits that help keep property taxes at bay.

The proposal, which the four JFC Democrats introduced at a June 22 press conference, takes several ideas from both the Walker and Assembly plans, though it would put more money into nearly every line item.

Democrats propose paying for the spending increase by eliminating the school levy tax credit and the first dollar tax credit, instead sending the over $1 billion the two credits generate through the general school aids formula. The majority of general school aids are funded through the equalization aid formula, sending more money to property-poor districts. General school aids would also increase by $525 million.

Both credits contribute to substantial property tax relief across the state by offsetting local property tax hikes. One Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo estimates that the property tax bill on a median-valued home would fall by $3 in 2017-18 and by $5 in 2018-19, compared to Walker’s plan. However, since the credits are paid on a delayed basis, the impact on property taxes would only be made clear later down the line, though they would almost inevitably increase.

The plan keeps Walker’s proposed per pupil categorical aid increase of $200 per pupil in the first year followed by a $204 increase in the second year. The plan also raises the low-revenue adjustment to $9,500 in the first year and $9,900 in the second. Just a few weeks ago, Assembly Republicans released a plan which would raise the low-revenue adjustment to $9,800 in the second year of the biennium.

The Assembly Republican plan would increase the authority of certain school districts to raise local property taxes by $92.2 million across the state. Combined with an even bigger change to the low-revenue adjustment and the elimination of the two major tax credits, the Democrats’ plan would affect property taxes even more.

Speaking to MacIver News on Friday, Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), chairman of the Senate Committee on Education, noted that the Democrats were looking at similar issues, such as per pupil aid and the low-revenue adjustment, but found the final price tag unrealistic.

“It’s really easy to spend money when you don’t have to sign the check,” Olsen said. “It’s sort of like they’re kids at Christmas, picking out everything they want out of the catalogue and knowing that they’ll never have to pay for it.”

The plan would weigh students who are eligible for free- or reduced-price lunches more heavily in the funding formula, counting those students as 1.2 pupils rather than 1.0, to send more money to schools with higher rates of poverty. It also increases sparsity aid, high cost pupil transportation aid, and special education aid. The only place where the Democrats’ plan spends less money than the governor as a result of a policy change is in the high poverty aid fund, which it eliminates and sends through the general school aid formula.

The plan would cap enrollment in the state’s school choice programs to 2 percent of each public school district’s pupil enrollment. Under current law, the cap in choice participation is 2 percent per district in the coming 2017-18 school year, after which it increases by 1 percent annually until it is eliminated in 2026. It would also limit participation in the program by dictating that no more than 49 percent of a private school’s enrollment be voucher students.

Other provisions of the plan – such as requiring background checks for choice employees – have already passed the Assembly and Senate floors. Senate Bill 293 requires private choice schools to complete criminal background checks on prospective employees before extending offers of employment. Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) is a co-sponsor of the bill and voted for it. Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton) voted for the bill after asking if DPI supported it.

Reps. Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point) and Gordon Hintz (D-Oshkosh), the Assembly Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee, both voted against the legislation on the Assembly floor.

June 23, 2017 | By Jessica Murphy

Wisconsin Assembly, U.S. Supreme Court Reaffirm Free Speech

In the case Matal v. Tam, an Asian-American dance-rock band was denied trademark rights to their band name “The Slants” because it was deemed a racial slur. On Monday, the Supreme Court stood up for free speech, striking down the law that allowed “disparaging” trademarks to be blocked by the Patent and Trademark Office. The unanimous 8-0 vote shows that free speech is indeed a nonpartisan issue – something Wisconsin Democrats would do well to learn.

On Wednesday, Rep. Jesse Kremer’s (R-Kewaskum) campus free speech bill passed the Assembly on a 61-36 vote after almost five hours of heated debate. Democrats fought tooth and nail to kill the bill, calling it unconstitutional, a “gag order,” and even anti-free speech.

Some Democrats expressed concerns that the free speech bill would favor conservatives and silence protests against conservative campus speakers. Perhaps more worrisome is the fact that many Democrat legislators argued that free speech is not an issue on UW campuses, apparently tuning out many of the student testimonies delivered at the May 11th public hearing in front of the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities.

Students at UW-Oshkosh encouraged people to write on a giant beach ball they were rolling around on campus last fall. This was an effort to promote free speech and raise awareness about campus policies that violate the first amendment. Campus police stopped and questioned the students after receiving complaints of offensive messages on the ball. Officers also took one of the student’s IDs to search for existing warrants.

Since when has exercising the first amendment been a crime?

A UW-Green Bay student recalled an incident from December 2015 when students raising awareness about sexual assault were forcibly removed from the University Union to the “free speech zone” – a small area restricted for speech. The free speech zone at UW-Green Bay is out near the main entrance of the Union, by the bell tower on a small hill, surrounded by bushes, and fenced off from the main walking paths. Lack of access is a concern, but more importantly, that students had no other option than to go outside in the middle of a Wisconsin winter to express themselves reveals a sad state of affairs on our campuses.

Free speech zones do not preserve free speech, but rather limit the reach and stifle the voices of students who wish to hold demonstrations. The constitutionality of speech zones is questionable at best. Many universities and states have passed rules or legislation to ban them, yet UW-Green Bay, UW-Parkside, and UW-Oshkosh have these zones.

The intolerance for different viewpoints is pervasive on college campuses as well, with invited speakers being shouted down, physically assaulted, or banned from speaking. However, there’s a difference between voicing a dissenting opinion and restricting another’s first amendment rights.

This is highlighted by the protest at Ben Shapiro’s speech at UW-Madison in November where protesters jumped on stage and disrupted the event with chants for almost 20 minutes before being escorted out of the room.

Conservative talk show host Vicki McKenna followed the protesters to the lobby and as she was filming, protesters surrounded her, aggressively got in her face, called her a white supremacist, and attempted to knock her phone out of her hand. One even had the audacity to comment that they had to interrupt Shapiro’s speech because “the presence of this event on this campus is violent,” which is ironic considering they were the only ones at the event acting violently.

Some think the UW administration did not reprimand the disruptive student protesters harshly enough. It is clear that these students are in need of a lesson in Free Speech 101. They are evidently unaware that Wisconsin is a one-party consent state, which means that people can film you without your permission. They also have the mindset that throwing a temper tantrum is the most effective means to relay their message.

Their chants of “shame” and “safety” accomplished nothing except making themselves look obnoxious and disrespectful to the students who spent months planning the event. If they have valuable ideas or wish to share dissenting opinions, they should engage with speakers during Q&A or create their own platform.

Is contentious speech protected by the first amendment? Yes. Is protesting protected by the first amendment? Of course. Is attempting to shut down a private event by violating someone else’s speech rights protected by the first amendment? No.

Rep. Dave Murphy (R-Greenville) referenced the famous Louis Brandeis quote – “sunlight is the best disinfectant” – in his floor speech to highlight that silencing and disrupting speech you do not agree with does not accomplish anything.

Silencing certain speech, even those deemed as hate speech, will not stop those thoughts from existing. Allowing these ideas to be debated is the only way to effect change. Rather than shielding oneself from differing views, people should embrace them as an opportunity to solidify or tweak their own viewpoints.

In his floor speech, Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) summarized attacks on free speech that have happened recently across the nation as well as some of these cases that happened on UW campuses. He went on to encourage his fellow legislators to drop their personal rhetoric because “freedom of speech should know no political divide.”

The Supreme Court decision reiterates an idea that many people, especially some college leftists, seem to have forgotten – you have a right to free speech, but you don’t have the right to not have your feelings hurt. Kudos to the Assembly for following suit and upholding UW students’ first amendment rights.

June 22, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

The Democrats vs. the Department of Public Instruction

On Wednesday, the Assembly passed a long, technical bill making changes to Wisconsin’s school choice programs. If signed into law, choice schools will be required to – for the first time – conduct background checks on employees. The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is supportive of the bill and twice testified in favor of it.

And yet, 30 Democrats in the Assembly and five Democrats in the Senate voted against the legislation. Why? Because choice schools like it.

The bill creates a more clear pathway for the Department of Public Instruction to kick schools out of the private choice programs if they commit fraud, fail to provide required financial information, or if they fail to conduct the required background checks. DPI asked for this provision in its budget request.

The legislation also revises the funding formula for the Special Needs Scholarship Program, sending more money to public schools, another idea asked for by DPI.

The required background checks? You guessed it – included in DPI’s budget request. Many of the bill’s provisions were originally requested by DPI but tossed by the Joint Finance Committee as non-fiscal policy items.

At the public hearings and executive sessions in both the Senate and Assembly committees, several Democrats spoke against the bill, asking why it moved so fast and why traditional public schools don’t get that kind of treatment.

Never mind the fact that the Assembly Committee on Education has worked for months cleaning up various program rules for public schools, that those rule changes passed the bipartisan committee unanimously and were also passed by the full Assembly this week.

Never mind that representatives of DPI sat directly in front of each committee, on the testimony stand, explaining why the department asked for the changes.

Never mind that if you eliminate a rule that was a never-before-used, worthless test of “accountability” to begin with, it’s still described by some as removing accountability standards.

It’s too close to those pesky choice programs, so even if it saves our otherwise beloved department time or money, it’s best to take the high road. Or something.

A few legislative sessions and many moons ago, Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee introduced amendment after amendment on the 2013-15 state budget, including one that would require background checks for prospective choice school employees. In a letter to supporters, Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) called those amendments “common sense” motions that would “increase accountability and transparency.”

The very same senator even introduced a standalone bill on the issue. Yet a few years later, given the opportunity to bring the requirement into law, he and four other senators voted against the very same idea. How times change.

June 7, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

MacIver Analysis: The Assembly GOP Education Plan

Madison, Wis. - Late last week, MacIver News Service broke news of a Assembly Republican-led plan for K-12 education spending under the 2017-19 biennial budget. On Tuesday, Republicans formally introduced the proposal to the media.

While the proposal spends over $70 million less in General Program Revenue (GPR) compared to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal, the plan’s authors says classroom spending would stay about the same, if not slightly more.

The plan would increase revenue limits for certain school districts. It also does away with a proposed requirement to have school districts certify that employees are paying at least 12 percent of their health care costs.

Under Walker’s budget proposal, the so-called “Act 10 requirement” would ensure that school districts are following the law in requiring their employees to contribute a certain amount towards health care plans. The Assembly plan strips out that idea after months of complaints from school districts across the state.

Other changes to Walker’s education package include one requirement that would limit school district referenda to spring elections or general election days, except in the case of special circumstances such as a natural disaster.

Another provision would create a grant program to fund personal computers for high school freshmen. That would cost $125 per pupil to the tune of $18.4 million over the biennium.

“As Republicans, we have always believed in the idea of local control,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Burlington) said. “That’s why we have said, if voters need to spend more money inside the classroom or in local governments, we believe they should go to referendum. Under the proposal that Governor Walker has laid out, basically when a local district or a local municipality decides to increase their levy…the state of Wisconsin, through income and sales tax dollars, is buying down that increase.”

Felzkowski ARC plan pull quote.png Speaking with MacIver on Friday, Rep. Mary Felzkowski (R-Irma) said the Assembly plan would provide more opportunities for children in Wisconsin schools while addressing lowrevenue limits, an issue she says has been a concern for officials around the state for years.

“We’re still putting more money into the classroom that’s spendable, but we’re reallocating it,” Felzkowski said. “It’s a way of giving to even out the opportunity base.”

The plan would increase the low revenue adjustment for school districts to $9,800 per pupil in the second year of the biennium, up from $9,100 under current law and in Walker’s proposal. Statewide, that would increase the ability of low-spending school districts to raise local property taxes by a combined $92.2 million, according to a nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo.

Current law sets revenue limits that dictate how high-spending school districts can levy local property taxes. The system was created in the early 1990s, and Felzkowski says frugal districts that were locked into low rates have since struggled to provide sufficient services for their students.

“I don’t think anybody will dispute the fact that it’s a huge inequality. It’s lack of opportunity. If you’ve got a large district, they’re levying at over $10,000. There’s more opportunities for kids,” Felzkowski said. Looking at school districts like Elkhorn or Merrill, she said, “where their levy limits are locked down at $9,200, they’re struggling to meet the requirements to get these kids into college. The opportunities aren’t there. I don’t think anybody can say that’s fair or that we’re doing a good job.”

Sixty percent of K-12 students in Wisconsin attend low-spending school districts, according to Felzkowski, who said another fiscal memo showed that “54 percent of the districts in the state of Wisconsin would benefit more under our program than the way that Governor Walker has it.”

Under the plan, the Green Bay Area school district would see the biggest funding increase – an estimated $5.9 million increase from the low revenue adjustment, according to a fiscal bureau memo. Many suburban districts in southeast Wisconsin, as well as Milwaukee Public Schools, the state’s biggest district, would not see any additional dollars from the change, and would see significantly less categorical aid, compared with Walker’s plan.

The proposal could put Walker’s pledge to lower property taxes every year in danger. While revenue limits aren’t equal across the board, other sources of funding, such as categorical per pupil aid, are. Those funds have allowed school districts to get extra dollars distributed equally, based on enrollment, that don’t affect the property tax base.

The plan pulls back a major increase in the school levy tax credit compared to Walker’s proposal, deleting $35 million from a proposed $87 million allocation in the first year of the biennium, but increasing funding in the second year by $60 million. That credit goes to homeowners and helps keep local property tax levies low.

Under the Assembly plan, property taxes would remain lower than current rates, though not as low as under Walker’s plan. Tax bills on the median household would be $10 higher in 2018 and $11 higher in 2019 compared with Walker’s budget proposal, or $10 lower in each year compared to current tax levels.

Property taxes remain a top priority for Walker, who recently said he would veto a budget with any property tax increase for homeowners.

In order to help pay for the increased revenue limits, the Assembly plan would cut back on some of Walker’s proposed increases for per pupil categorical aid.

The Assembly plan proposes increasing that pot of money by $150 per pupil in 2018 and by another $200 in 2019. Walker’s plan would have increased per pupil aid by $200 in the first year, and $204 in the second. Overall, the increase to per pupil aid is significant compared to the current budget – the Assembly plan would spend $418 million more than current levels on per pupil aid alone.

General school aids, largely distributed through the equalization formula to help more property-poor districts, are increased by $102.8 million across the biennium in the plan compared to current spending levels. That would be a $30 million increase to Walker’s suggested spending.

The Assembly plan doesn’t make significant changes to any of Wisconsin’s private school choice programs, though current law requires any per pupil aid increases also go to those students. For that reason, parental choice students wouldn’t receive as much funding as under Walker’s plan.

New school choice enrollment numbers have thrown off some of the numbers in Walker’s budget, originally proposed in February. Since then, re-estimates show 800 more students are expected to participate in 2018, and 1,200 more in 2019. For that reason, total spending on the school choice program will increase compared over the two-year budget cycle.

Some in the Senate, including Sen. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau), have said they hope to see more significant changes to Wisconsin’s school choice programs in this budget.

“The State Senate remains committed to fully funding K-12 education as Governor Walker proposed in his administrative budget,” Fitzgerald wrote in a statement released Tuesday. “We will continue to look for ways to support low spending districts, but a proposal that both raises taxes and picks winners and losers within our school districts is a move away from the position of both the Governor and the Senate Republican caucus. The Assembly package that was endorsed today is simply not the direction the budget is headed.”

As for Felzkowski, the tough decisions Wisconsin made in the past few years have allowed for significant investments this time around. The issue of revenue limits has been around for years, and it won’t likely go away soon.

“We just felt that this was the time that we needed to bring up those low-spending districts. With this amount of dollars going into education, this is really the primetime for us to be able to do it,” she said.

“We just have to make sure that all kids have opportunities and that’s what we’re trying to do here.”

June 6, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

Wisconsin Average ACT Score Falls, but Participation up by Half

Other numbers in the fresh data release: enrollment continues to fall, more students are taking AP exams

(ALL THE IMAGES ON THIS LINK ARE BROKEN)

Madison, Wisc. - More than 92 percent of 2016 Wisconsin high school graduates took the ACT exam, according to a new dataset released by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI). The average score among the graduating class of 2016 was 20.3 out of a possible 36 points.

That’s down from the class of 2015, which scored an average of 22.1. However, participation rates hovered below 64 percent that year. In 2016, nearly 20,000 more students took the exam compared to the year prior, nearly a 46 percent increase.

The new data also includes information on enrollment for the 2016-17 school year. New information on the 2015-16 school year includes ACT Aspire scores, attendance and dropout data, as well as AP exam scores. Graduation rates for the 2015-16 school year have not yet been released and are expected to be forthcoming within the next few weeks.

This was the second year that ACT Aspire scores have been reported. That exam, administered to high school freshmen and sophomores, tests college readiness before those students take the ACT exam for their college applications.

Proficiency rates stayed mostly steady on the ACT Aspire, dropping 0.4 percentage points for English but increasing 0.5 points in math over last year. When examining college readiness, 60.4 percent of 9th and 10th graders earned scores of “exceeding” or “ready” on English, while 38.9 percent of students tested achieved the same level in math.

Students in Milwaukee Public Schools had lower rates of college readiness on the ACT Aspire exam compared to students statewide. Just 10.2 percent of MPS students showed readiness in math, up slightly from 9.6 percent the year prior. Nearly one-third – 31.7 percent – of MPS students showed readiness in English.

MPS students also had higher rates of truancy and dropouts compared to the statewide averages. Across the state, the dropout rate was 1.5 percent in 2015-16. At MPS, that number was 7.2 percent. It also grew more steeply compared to the statewide rate. Statewide attendance and dropout rates have largely stayed steady over the past five years – in 2015-16, the statewide attendance rate was 94.9 percent. That’s the exact same number as four years prior, though it has wavered slightly in the years between.

One bright spot for MPS? A larger percentage of students who graduated in 2016 took the ACT – 95.3 percent in all. That’s 3.2 percentage points higher than the statewide average. MPS students clearly struggle more when it comes to proficiency, but any efforts to help ensure more students take the test are positive.

The average ACT composite score for MPS students was 16.1. Over in Madison, the average score was 21.4.

Total pupil enrollment fell slightly, from 867,137 students in the 2014-15 school year to 863,881, continuing a trend of slowly declining public school enrollment statewide.

Also, more students across the state took AP exams compared to the year prior, though the percent of students earning scores of three or higher fell. In the 2015-16 school year, 15.4 percent of students took an AP exam, compared to 14.4 percent in the year prior. Sixty-five percent of exam takers earned a three or higher, down from 66 percent in the previous year.

An AP score of three or more typically means the student will receive college credit for the exam. At UW System schools, that typically amounts to three credits, depending on the subject. An even higher score can earn students more credits.

At press time, a DPI spokesman had not returned a call seeking comment on the data release.

June 2, 2017 | By M.D. Kittle and Ola Lisowski

GOP Assembly Education Package Spends $100M Less Than Walker Plan

Statewide property taxes would go down – $10 – but lower-spending districts would be allowed to raise property taxes by $92 million

[Madison, Wis…] Assembly Republicans are pushing a K-12 funding plan that cuts Gov. Scott Walker’s state education spending proposal by more than $100 million, raising property taxes slightly compared to the governor’s budget and cutting spending to private school choice to get there, according to legislative documents obtained by MacIver News Service.

At a press conference in Fitchburg, Walker said Monday he was concerned that the proposal could raise property taxes.

“Bottom line is, I don’t want to see property taxes go up.”

Walker’s education spending plan proposes a $648 million increase over the next biennium, which delighted the public education establishment.

The GOP Assembly plan still significantly increases K-12 spending, just not as much as Walker’s generous proposal. Some fiscal hawks in the Legislature have voiced concerns about the governor’s generosity to a public education system marked by widespread failure in Milwaukee and other areas of the state.

More so, the Assembly proposal frees up $100 million that could – and most likely will – find its way into other priorities, particularly the state’s troubled Department of Transportation.

The GOP Assembly plan cuts $23.7 million from Walker’s education spending blueprint in 2017-18, and $76.4 in 2018-19, according to a review by the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau.

Assembly Republicans would add $20 million to Walker’s proposed increase in general school aids in 2017-18 and another $10 million in 2018-19. Overall, the plan would increase general aids nearly $103 million over the biennium – $20 million in the first year, $82.8 million in the second, compared to the base budget.

The plan also attempts to reward frugal school districts. It raises the annual low revenue adjustment at $9,800 per pupil beginning in 2018-19, up from $9,100 per pupil. Statewide, the increase would generate an extra $92.9 million in revenue limit authority used by school districts. Another memo authored by LFB describes potential changes by school district, according to the Assembly proposal.

State Rep. Mary Felzkowski, R-Irma, said the Assembly plan is simply reallocating aid to districts she says have been locked out by 25-year-old revenue limits. She pointed to GOP Assembly estimates that show 54 percent of districts would benefit more under the proposal compared to the governor’s K-12 plan.

The GOP proposal slices $35 million from Walker’s proposed $87 million increase in the school levy tax credit distribution in the first tax year, lowering the overall increase to $52 million. Compared to current budget base, the Assembly Republican plan would provide an additional $60 million above the $87 million increase. Levy credits are paid on a delayed basis, so the proposal would cut general fund expenditures by $35 million in 2018-19 and hike spending by $60 million in 2019-20, compared to Walker’s budget proposal.

Walker’s budget is more generous in per pupil aid. The Assembly plan would raise the categorical per pupil aid payment from $250 this budget year to $400 in 2017-18 and $600 the following fiscal year. Walker’s plan calls for $450 per pupil in the first year of the biennium and $654 in the second. It comes with a carrot and stick. Schools districts would have to certify they are following the employee health care provisions of Act 10.

A top Senate Republican rejected that alteration in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal.

“We are sticking with the governor’s (proposed per-pupil increase). That is nonnegotiable,” Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, said. Olsen is a member on JFC as well as the chair of the Senate Committee on Education.

Walker’s per pupil spending increases, however, are tied to his plan to move public employees to a state health insurance plan, estimated to save at least $60 million. Assembly Republicans have all but rejected the self-insurance idea.

The GOP Assembly plan would cut per pupil aid by a total of $42.7 million in the first year of the biennium, and $48.1 million in the second year, compared to Walker’s plan. That is assuming maximum per pupil payments would be provided to all districts under both Walker’s plan and the Assembly proposal, according to the LFB memo.

Because the state’s school choice program is tied to the hip of the public education funding formula, school choice takes a cut under the Assembly plan.

Re-estimated enrollment in the statewide private school choice program is projected to increase by $6.17 million in 2017-18 and $9.52 million in 2018-19 compared to Walker’s proposal. But revenue limit adjustments and associated aid reductions and levy for the program are estimated to increase by nearly $6 million in the first year, and $11.47 million in the second, according to LFB. Parental Choice comes out with an increase in funding, just not nearly as much as the program would under Walker’s plan.

Property taxes would still decrease slightly, in the first year, under the Assembly budget proposal, but it would increase the property tax on the median-valued home by $10 and $11 over Walker’s budget proposal, according to LFB. The net levy would decrease under the Assembly proposal, by $10 to $2,842 in the first year of the biennium, holding flat in the second year.

The governor said he would be willing to make concessions in his budget as long as his priorities are maintained, including funding increases for K-12 education, fixing the troubled Department of Transportation, and holding the line on taxes.

JFC Co-Chair Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, also said she wouldn’t support the proposal. Walker has been promoting his budget’s proposed $649 million increase in state aids for months, and walking back from that increase will be tough, Darling said.

Despite their hesitations for the overall package, both Darling and Olsen said they were supportive of the concept of raising levy limits for low-spending districts.

“I give them credit for looking at how to get money into the lower-spending districts and I agree with the strategy but I mentioned to them, usually you need new money,” Darling said. “Taking money away from other districts is usually a big issue. That will be a very tough call for most in our (Senate) caucus.”

For his part. JFC Co-Chair Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, also expressed support for the concept, though he didn’t commit to a position on the proposal, calling it a “work in progress.”

“I think the concept of it is something we generally support – to put more of our resources back toward schools that have actually been held back over the years.”

May 30, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

Study of Studies: Research Shows Positive Results for Voucher Students

A new review of 22 major voucher studies has found that the majority of studies nationwide found positive effects on students in private school choice programs. The report, titled “The Wisconsin Role in the School Choice Movement,” was released in conjunction with the Tommy@30 event on May 23, celebrating former Governor Tommy Thompson.

Of the 22 studies surveyed by researchers John F. Witte and Patrick J. Wolf, 13 showed positive educational effects for voucher students compared to control public school students. Five studies found no statistical effects, and four found negative effects.

The report highlights two major studies that compare outcomes for students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). Study I was conducted from 1990 to 1995, and Study II began in 2006 and is partially still ongoing. The researchers write that the latter is considered to be superior, as it had a larger study sample, stronger statistical methods and more available resources.

Neither study found statistically significant differences in test scores between traditional public and voucher students, but a lookcollege attendance Tommyat30 pullquote.png into other important outcomes such as graduation rates and attainment shows positive results for choice students. Compared to their public school counterparts, choice students graduated high school and attended four-year colleges at higher rates. The colleges that MPCP graduates attended also “appeared to be of higher status,” the according to the report.

Just 21 percent of MPS students surveyed attended a four-year college, compared to 27 percent of MPCP students. That amounts to a near-30 percent increase in the likelihood of college attendance for choice students.

Voucher students were also more likely to continue into their sophomore year of college, boding well for degree attainment.

Behavior outcomes, often considered “soft measures” compared to hard numbers such as test results and graduation rates, show positive results in both Milwaukee-focused studies. Parent surveys revealed much stronger satisfaction with their child’s education among voucher families than those in the public school control group.

Parents that sought vouchers consistently named education quality, teacher quality, and superior discipline and safety in private schools as the most important factors in their decisions. They also reported higher satisfaction on “almost all dimensions of schooling – the largest difference being in the areas of highest priority they list for why thparent satisfaction pullquote.pngey sought vouchers – educational and teacher quality and discipline in the school” compared to public school parents surveyed.

MPCP families tended to have lower incomes than MPS families, but had higher education levels and were more religious.

The report delves into a brief history of MPCP’s beginnings and highlights the subsequent spread of voucher programs to other states. The overall survey of 22 different studies includes research on programs all over the country.

One study, focused on D.C.’s Opportunity Scholarship Program, found remarkable results for voucher students. While 70 percent of public school students surveyed graduated high school in four years, 91 percent of students who used a voucher achieved the same.

Other reports released in conjunction with the Tommy@30 project include research on the Wisconsin Works program as well as other economic reforms championed by former Governor Tommy Thompson.

May 25, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

JFC Continues Tuition Freeze, Rejects 5% Tuition Cut at UW System

The budget also calls for an independent audit of the UW System

Madison, Wis. - The Joint Committee on Finance (JFC) voted along party lines to continue the University of Wisconsin System tuition freeze in the 2017-19 state budget, opting to reject Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed 5 percent tuition cut for the 2018-19 academic year.

The committee was originally scheduled to take up portions of the UW System budget on Tuesday, May 23, but co-chairs Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) said that the Senate and Assembly had not come to an agreement on the tuition cut. Neither house wanted to raise tuition, but Nygren said that the Assembly was not sold on the idea of cutting tuition across the board to the tune of $35 million.

Instead, the committee voted to strip the $35 million allocated for the tuition cut and spJFC UW System pull quote.pngend it on other initiatives, including a new engineering school at UW-Green Bay and $3 million for the Tommy G. Thompson Center on Public Leadership on the Madison campus. That project was announced Wednesday by legislative leaders alongside UW-Madison Chancellor Becky Blank.

Walker’s proposal would have sent nearly $2.2 billion to the System over the two-year budget period, a $77 million increase from the prior budget. On Thursday, JFC agreed to send the system $36 million more compared to the last budget, a $42.5 million cut from Walker’s proposal.

The most contentious provision by far was the governor’s plan to cut tuition by 5 percent in the 2018-19 academic year. On Wednesday, Walker indicated he would be open to eliminating the cut and continuing the freeze, calling it a win for students regardless.

For the second straight budget, JFC included a provision calling for a full independent audit of the UW System. It also prohibits the Board from transferring any funds to the UW-Oshkosh Foundation unless that transfer is first approved by JFC. That’s following a scandal at the Oshkosh campus in which administrators are alleged to have funneled millions of dollars into the financially troubled Foundation for university building projects.

Another major policy change involves a plan to move System schools to performance-based funding, a model that would reward schools’ funding based on outcomes on state priorities such as success in the state workforce and efficiency. The Governor’s proposal would have spent $42.5 million over two years on the initiative, which would then be distributed based on a formula created by the Board of Regents.

Instead, Joint Finance opted to cut down the total amount spent on performance-based funding to $26.25 million, a $16.25 million cut from the Governor’s proposal. The plan also gives more flexibility to the Board of Regents in deciding what kinds of performance measures best apply to the universities.

Under the governor’s proposal, the Board would be charged with coming up with a formula for distributing funds based on five major state priorities: affordability and attainment, student success in the state workforce, work readiness, efficiency, and service.

JFC voted to change the state priorities to 1) grow and ensure student access, 2) improve and excel at student progress and completion, 3) expand contributions to the workforce, and 4) enhance operational efficiency and effectiveness. The Board will also be charged with identifying at least four metrics to measure progress on those goals.

Rather than being approved by the Secretary of the Department of Administration, as under the governor’s proposal, JFC will approve the plan, which the Board of Regents must submit by Feb. 15, 2018.

Co-chairs Rep. John Nygren (R-Marinette) and Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) said the committee would approve a provision to increase UW employee salaries by 2 percent in 2018 and again in 2019, but did not vote on that measure on Thursday. It will be taken up on another day. The wage adjustments would cost $11.6 million over the biennium.

The motion passed by JFC on Thursday includes the governor’s proposal to increase the number of UW Flexible Option programs, though it modifies his plan slightly. The governor’s plan would have increased the programs available through the UW Flexible Option by at least 50 percent by Dec. 1, 2019. Instead, the Board of Regents must ensure that the number of options increases by at least 25 percent.

According to the Flexible Option website, the program is “made for busy adults” and is catered towards individuals who want to get their degrees but may already be working full time, supporting a family, or otherwise unable to attend traditional college courses.

The plan also deletes a requirement that at least one program assist certified nursing assistants in becoming registered nurses. It requires the Regents to ensure at least one UW System School of Education partner with a school district to develop a teacher residency program by Dec. 1, 2019.

JFC’s omnibus motion also includes $5 million in state money for UW institutions to increase enrollments in high demand degree programs. The funds would be distributed to individual institutions on a competitive basis involving requests for proposals.

Among other line items approved by the committee: nearly $1 million more for the UW Carbone Cancer Center and $10,000 in GPR for the UW System to review and revise policies related to academic freedom.

The budget includes several initiatives to assist veterans. A remission of tuition and fees for certain children and spouses of deceased or disabled veterans is included, as well as an exemption from nonresident tuition for certain Wisconsin National Guard members. The UW System and Wisconsin Technical College System will also be required to approve academic credit for military training.

The budget includes significant re-estimates for tuition revenues and positions compared to the governor’s proposal put forth in February, freeing up more than $200 million in general revenue. The budget also approves a UW System request to delete over 222 state-funded university staff positions.

In March, JFC threw out all non-fiscal policy items from the budget proposal, which means if those provisions are to pass, they must be introduced as separate legislation. Some of the governor’s more innovative new policy proposals were part of that group, including one that would require UW institutions to create pathways to three-year degrees for 10 percent of undergraduate programs by 2018 and for 60 percent of programs by 2020.

One proposal tossed by JFC would have allowed students to opt-out of paying segregated fees. That idea made its way back into the UW motion, though slightly altered. Instead, the Board of Regents will be required to ensure that the classification of allocable and non-allocable segregated fees are consistent across campuses. The Board will submit those policies to JFC for passive review, and will not be allowed to increase allocable segregated fees at any institution unless approved by JFC.

Only one proposal that was pulled from the UW System’s budget has been re-introduced as separate stand-alone legislation, championed by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester). That measure seeks to protect free speech at UW Campuses. Assembly Bill 299, which would increase penalties for students who physically block or stop visiting speakers from speaking on campus, had a public hearing in the Assembly Committee on Colleges and Universities in early May. An executive session has not yet been scheduled.

May 25, 2017 | By Jessica Murphy

Four Years After the Slush Fund Scandal: Where Does the UW Stand?

Today, the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) will vote on the 2017-19 UW System budget. One key concern that will reappear in this decision – the millions in surplus funds that the UW System has left almost untouched, even after the legislature’s requirement to spend more of this “slush fund.”

The UW System came under fire in 2013 after members of the CPA Caucus uncovered a hidden $1 billion “slush fund” made up of program revenue (PR) balances. Legislators were livid that the UW System continued to increase tuition and ask for more state funding if they had these surplus funds hidden away. What do these balances look like today?

In their report on the UW System (FY 2015-16) released in April of 2017, the Joint Legislative Audit Committee highlights a rather large Program Revenue (PR) balance in the UW System. The total PR balance increased from $1.182 billion in FY 2015 to $1.188 billion in FY 2016 – a 0.5% growth.

You read that right – four years after being required to start spending down the slush fund, or unrestricted PR reserves, the total balance actually grew in the last year. That’s why it’s still important to ask for an independent, comprehensive audit of the entire UW System.

The report also notes that unrestricted program revenue – which includes tuition, auxiliary operations, general operations, other unrestricted program revenue, and federal indirect cost reimbursement – has decreased by $40.6 million from 2015 to 2016. This unrestricted revenue is the value of the so-called “slush fund,” which amounted to $883.3 million at the end of FY 2016.

It seems as though the UW System is taking steps to bring down the surplus funds, but considering it still has $883.3 million cash on hand, there’s still plenty of room to improve. For perspective, this slush fund value is equivalent to more than 85 percent of the state support given to the UW in FY 16.

Below is a graph of the total program revenue values, broken down by unrestricted and restricted balances. Before the CPA Caucus discovered the surplus funds in 2013, there was no official reporting system to track the UW System program revenue.

Note: Unrestricted program revenue balances are different from our past coverage for FY 2012 and FY 2013 due to a change in UW System reporting policies. The values presented here come from the latest Legislative Fiscal Bureau Informational Paper, published in January 2017.

Since the scandal broke in 2013, UW System officials have continued to argue that they only have access to unrestricted program revenue and that the majority of those funds are set aside for specific projects already. The UW System has an incentive to manipulate these numbers – the smaller their surplus funds, the stronger case they can make for more state funding to the UW.

After discovering the slush fund, the Wisconsin Legislature took action and created a set of rules and guidelines for the UW System to follow to improve financial transparency. The Board of Regents was officially required to create a reporting method for program revenue balances with Act 20, the 2013-15 biennium budget bill. They adopted policy 21-6, which requires any UW institution with balances over 12 percent of their expenditures to submit a spending plan and any university running a deficit to submit a cost savings plan.

These surplus funds were the main impetus for Gov. Scott Walker’s tuition freeze that began in 2013, as well as a number of budget cuts made that same year. The logic behind this was if the UW System has such robust balances, they can afford to pay for new initiatives themselves rather than riding on the back of the taxpayers. If the UW System has healthy balances and money laying around, then why do they continue to cry poverty and beg the state for more funding?

“More than 2/3 of this surplus was generated by unjustified tuition increases over the last three years. In other words, [then-UW President] President [Kevin] Reilly and the Board of Regents knowingly jacked-up tuition by 16.5% on Wisconsin families over three years even though the funds weren’t needed. These actions are nothing short of a betrayal of the public trust,” then-Representative Steve Nass (R-Whitewater) commented after the slush fund discovery in 2013.

The report indicates that the UW System’s net position, a measure of the overall financial condition, decreased slightly – $6.7 billion to $6.6 billion from FY 2015 to FY 2016. The UW System may try to use this as leverage to obtain more state funding, but this small change was largely attributed to new pension accounting standards.

There are still some flaws with the reporting system, as the LAB noted there are inconsistencies in program revenue values due to some universities incorrectly categorizing certain balances.

For the 2017-19 Operating Budget, the Board of Regents requested $42.5 million biennially in GPR for their “2020FWD” initiatives. Overall, Gov. Walker’s proposed 2017-19 budget would send $2.2 billion in GPR to the UW System across the biennium.

MacIver will keep you posted as Joint Finance Committee deliberations continue this week.

May 8, 2017 | By James Wigderson

Free Speech Bill Would Combat National Pattern of Suppression

Governor Scott Walker reiterated his support for free speech on the University of Wisconsin campuses in an interview with Mike Gousha on Up Front on WISN-TV.

“DIsagreeing or even protesting is one thing,” Walker said. “If you come into an auditorium where they’re having a discussion or a conversation on this, and you want to hold signs up, you want to protest that, you want to have a rally out front, perfectly fine.”

“But the minute that you shut down a speaker, no matter if they’re liberal or conservative or someone in between, I just think that’s wrong,” Walker said.

Walker was responding to a question about legislation that would require the UW System universities to punish students and administrators that interfere with a speech by an invited speaker. The legislation is not dealing with a hypothetical.

In November, approximately twenty campus radicals attempted to shout down conservative speaker Ben Shapiro during a speech at UW-Madison. The demonstrators broke into chants of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” and “Safety! Safety! Safety,” while campus police looked on without responding. Outside the room, people there to see Shapiro were harassed, including conservative radio talk show host Vicki McKenna.

After Shapiro’s appearance, a group of left-wing activists even tried to have the sponsoring organization, the Young Americans for Freedom, barred from campus.

It’s part of a pattern nationwide. Shapiro is frequently the target of disruptive protests and was even prevented from speaking at DePaul University. At Claremont McKenna College, protesters prevented an audience from seeing Heather Mac Donald by barring the entrances and campus police did nothing. At Middlebury College, protesters violently attacked Charles Murray and a professor at the college, causing her to be hospitalized.

From coast to coast, the new leftist chant has become “shut it down!” The leftists chants accompanied the burning of UC-Berkeley to prevent alt-Right gadfly Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking.

It’s hard to imagine it was possible, but the situation on college campuses has grown so bad, Senator Bernie Sanders spoke out in defense of Ann Coulter’s right to speak at Berkeley, even as the security threats prevented her from appearing.

“To me, it’s a sign of intellectual weakness,” Sanders said at an appearance in Omaha, NB. “If you can’t ask Ann Coulter in a polite way questions which expose the weakness of her arguments, if all you can do is boo, or shut her down, or prevent her from coming, what does that tell the world?”

“What are you afraid of ― her ideas? Ask her the hard questions,” he concluded. “Confront her intellectually. Booing people down, or intimidating people, or shutting down events, I don’t think that that works in any way.”

But, of course, the intimidation does work, and university administrators cave. Middlebury College is still investigating the Murray incident to see which students should be punished, but such incidents rarely result in any disciplinary actions. Despite the destruction, the protesters that shut down Yiannopoulos’ speech remain unpunished, and the “lesson” Berkeley learned was to prevent conservatives like Coulter from speaking on campus.

Meanwhile, many on the Left are now trying to justify attempts to silence free speech on college campuses. From the op-ed page at the New York Times, to the New Republic, to even former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, the political Left has decided that they have heard enough.

Which is why it is so important for Wisconsin’s legislature to act now to ensure that both conservatives and liberals on college campuses have the right to be heard. The “heckler’s veto,” whether it is disruption of the event by shouting or actual acts of violence, has no place on our state-funded college campuses.

Because the target of these protests right now is conservatism, some Democrats are claiming that such a bill is unnecessary. Rep. Terese Berceau, D-Madison, actually told the Wisconsin State Journal, “I frankly think it’s an artificial, political controversy — and as long as we perpetuate artificial, political controversies we won’t solve problems.”

Rep. Dianne Hesselbein, D-Middleton, told the Cap Times, “I believe strongly in free speech, and I think we have it now.”

One is tempted to remember how many Democrats were more than pleased when protesters streamed through the Capitol office window of state Rep. Cory Mason, D-Racine, in an attempt to prevent the legislature from acting on Act 10. Perhaps a few of them remember that attempted disruption by protesters a little too fondly.

But even the ACLU, which normally sees threats to free speech everywhere, suddenly is turning a blind eye to what’s happening on college campuses.

“A heckler can be legally removed from an invited speaker’s presentation, but the extreme sanction of suspension or expulsion could chill legitimate, but pointed, questions from the audience,” Larry Dupuis, legal director for the ACLU of Wisconsin, told the Capital Times.

Except no hecklers were removed at the Shapiro speech, and are rarely removed elsewhere. And of course nobody is suggesting that punishment should be applied to a question the speaker invites from the audience. Dupuis is hiding behind a hypothetical that is false upon its face to justify the continued attacks on campus free speech.

The governor and Republican leadership in the Legislature is right to support legislation that protects free speech on campuses. The Left can pretend that there is no threat to free speech on campuses while giving violent protesters a quick wink at their activities, but there is no reason the state Legislature should go along.

March 20, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

K-12 Education in Walker’s Proposed Budget

April 6, 2017 Update

The Joint Finance Committee has scrapped all non-fiscal policy items from the Governor’s budget proposal, including many items described in this piece. Read more about the latest move out of the budget committee here. In the below piece, any policy items with an asterisk beside them are now struck from the budget and may be introduced as separate bills.

A deep dive into the numbers

Madison, Wis - Now that the nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s budget analysis is finally available to the public, let’s look back at Gov. Scott Walker’s K-12 education proposals for the 2017-19 biennial budget. First, the numbers:

Overall, the Department of Public Instruction sees a large increase of overall funding – $648.2 million more in total school aid than the last budget, a 6.0 percent increase. The biggest single increase comes in the form of $508.7 million for per pupil aid.

Currently, districts receive $250 per pupil in aid. Under the Governor’s budget proposal, they would receive $450 per pupil in 2017-18 and $654 per pupil in 2018-19. One major caveat, though, is that districts will need to prove that they’re in compliance with Act 10’s requirements on employee healthcare contributions in order to receive the extra bump in funding. Act 10 required many public employees to begin paying at least 12 percent of total health care costs, but certain districts, such as Madison Metropolitan, extended their old contracts rather than moving into compliance immediately.

Under the provision, districts will need to certify to DPI that school district employees are paying at least 12 percent of their total health care costs for that school year. If districts don’t or can’t ensure that their employees are contributing to heath care coverage, they could miss out on the new funding. Madison Metropolitan and Beloit School District are among the districts that are currently not in compliance.

Rural Schools

Behind per pupil funding and general school aids, the single largest line-item increase in Walker’s proposal is over $20 million for sparsity aid. Under current law, districts qualify for an additional $300 per pupil if they have an enrollment of fewer than 745 pupils and a population density of fewer than 10 pupils per square mile of the district’s attendance area. Under the budget proposal, district payments increase to $400 per pupil, and districts with an enrollment of up to 1000 students with the same population density will also qualify.

Rural schools also receive over $10 million for high cost transportation aid and increased transportation reimbursement rates to the tune of $92,000 over the biennium. Pupils that are transported more than 12 miles between home and school would receive a $65 reimbursement increase up to $365 beginning in the 2017-18 school year. Summer school reimbursement rates would also increase from $4 to $10 for students traveling between two and five miles, and from $6 to $20 for students transported more than five miles.

Special Education

Another $6 million is sent to special education transitions incentives grants. Last budget, these grants received just $100,000, making this fund the single largest percentage increase in Walker’s DPI budget, at 3,050 percent more than the base year funding. This proposal would provide an additional $1,000 per pupil for children who meet the following criteria:

• attended school in the district or charter school in the 2014-15 or 2015-16 school years
• had an individualized education program (IEP) in place
• has been enrolled in a higher education program, postsecondary education or training program, or employed for at least 90 days

Currently, DPI estimates that schools receive $60 per pupil under this program. Gov. Walker’s budget also includes an additional $1.5 million for special education transition readiness investment grants in the 2018-19 school year.

Other focuses on children with special needs in this budget include a provision that requires a DPI ombudsman to ensure that private school pupils have equal access to special education services. To that end, the provision creates a new “fiscal agent” to ensure that private schools receive federal funding for special education services and other benefits.

Along the same lines, the budget also specifies that independent charter schools and noninstrumentality charter schools would be allowed to employ personnel and create special education programs on the basis of demonstrated need. DPI would be required to certify to the Department of Administration the amount expended by each school for salaries and related services, and would be reimbursed for such expenses. Entities such as school boards and the board of control of cooperative educational service agencies (CESAs) would also be required to provide special or additional transportation for students with disabilities, as required in any pupil’s IEP.

The State Superintendent is also required to certify reimbursement costs for special education aid, if satisfied with the services provided. The State Superintendent would be allowed to audit costs related to special education transportation services in order to ensure that reimbursements are limited to the actual costs.

Focus on Milwaukee

Schools in Milwaukee receive extra attention in this budget, with $5.65 million provided for Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), district charter schools, independent charter schools, and private schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP).

About 35 percent of that funding is earmarked for distribution among eligible schools that received scores of “significantly exceeds expectations” or “exceeds expectations” on the most recent school report cards. Each school would receive a payment directly proportional to the number of pupils in that school.

The remaining 65 percent of performance-based funding would be allocated to schools that show performance increases of three points or more over two years prior on their report cards. This funding would also be split directly proportional to the number of pupils in each school.

MPS also receives an additional $2.8 million for summer school grants, split evenly across the biennium. The MPS Board is charged with creating a program to annually award grants for summer school programs to increase pupil attendance, improve academic achievement, and expose pupils to innovative learning. This pot of money is specifically allocated for public schools in the city of Milwaukee, except for independent charter schools.

Mental Health and Bullying

With an increased focus on mental health care throughout the Governor’s budget proposal, DPI sees extra funding in this issue area as well. A new $3 million categorical aid program is created to reimburse school districts and independent charter schools for social workers. Another $2.5 million is provided in 2018-19 for community and mental health collaboration grants. DPI is charged with creating a new grant program for the purpose of collaborating with mental health professionals to provide mental health services to pupils.

Another new program is funded to the tune of $300,000 across the biennium to provide and create an online training curriculum for bullying prevention. Students in grades kindergarten through eight are expected to benefit from this program.

One full time position and $1 million is provided across the biennium to fund training for school districts and independent charter schools to provide mental health screening and intervention services for students.

School Choice Programs

As I wrote here, there are no substantial changes to any of Wisconsin’s school choice programs, which are known formally in law as the Parental Choice Programs. Plenty of new regulations, however, are proposed:

• **Requirements for annual hours of instruction for public schools and private schools that participate in a choice program are deleted. However, current law requiring that private schools offer at least 875 hours of instruction would be maintained.
• **Private choice schools would be required to conduct a background check for all potential teachers and administrators prior to extending an offer of employment. Private choice schools would also be required to conduct background checks on all individuals already employed by the school, and would have to regularly conduct such checks at least once every five years after the initial background investigation.
• Students would be able to participate in the statewide choice program if they attended a school in another state in the previous school year. Such students are not currently eligible for participation in the statewide program.
• **Pupil parents or guardians, as well as private schools, would be allowed to submit financial information to DPI for the purpose of verifying student eligibility. Under current law, only private schools are able to submit parental income information.
• **A school would be able to be barred from participating in a private school choice program for two years if it is found to misrepresent any information to DPI. Schools may also be barred from participating in the special needs scholarship program if the school is found to misrepresent any required information.
• **Change private school reporting requirements so that schools may submit information prior to the first year of participation in any of the choice programs rather than annually. Schools would still be required to provide copies of any policy – such as the school’s policy for awarding a high school diploma – upon request of DPI.
• **Certain members of school governing bodies will be required to submit signed statements to DPI verifying that the individual is a member of the governing body.
• **DPI will be explicitly prohibited from requiring any private choice school that is not a new school and that is in good standing with DPI to submit an annual operating budget as evidence of financial viability.
• **Pupils attending a private school in a nonresident district will be able to be reevaluated by an IEP team appointed by the nonresident district if the parent or guardian provides written consent. Under current law, pupils who participate in the special needs scholarship program may only be reevaluated by an IEP team appointed by the pupil’s resident school district.
• The part-time open enrollment program, which the 2013-15 biennial budget transformed into the course options program, would be gradually restored as the open enrollment program once more.
• The youth options program would be modified into the early college credit program, allowing public high school pupils to enroll in higher education institutions to take extra classes.

All the Rest of It

Other odds and ends in Gov. Walker’s K-12 budget proposal include:

• **Eliminating the required hours of instruction for public schools.
• **Deleting the requirements that school boards meet at least once per month, that common school districts hold an annual meeting on the fourth Monday in July at 8pm, and that union high school districts hold an annual meeting on the third Monday in July at 8pm.
• **Eliminate the current rule that school district’s employment contracts not exceed two years.
• **Allow school boards to contract with each other and to offer shared services required under state law. Such services would include a shared bilingual-bicultural program, emergency nursing services, guidance and counseling services, among others.
• **School boards would be allowed to compensate student teachers for classroom time spent directly with students.
• **Delete the requirement that school districts provide statements showing bonded and all other indebtedness of the district.
• Specify that the Department of Children and Families (DCF) can inspect the premises and records of any child care program established or contracted for by a school board that receives childcare subsidies. DCF is also permitted to investigate and prosecute any alleged violations at such programs.
• **Exclude school districts from a law requiring local units of government to maximize the purchase of recycled materials when possible. School districts are also exempted from law requiring local units of government to award contracts for material, supplies, and equipment based on life cycle cost estimates.
• A new renewable energy appropriation of $29,000 across the biennium is created for the generation or purchase of electric energy.
• The Very Special Arts program, which provides arts activities for children and adults with disabilities, is provided $23,400 across the biennium, restoring funding levels to the 2008-09 fiscal year.
• The five-year renewal requirement for teaching and administrator licenses would be eliminated. However, school boards would be required to conduct background checks on all employed individuals at least once every five years.
• A teacher development program grant program is created to increase collaboration between the Department of Workforce Development and schools of education in the UW System.
• **A faculty member of an institution of higher education would be allowed to teach in a public high school without a license or permit from DPI.
• **The requirement that an individual receive an offer of employment from a school in Wisconsin to be eligible for a teaching license based on reciprocity is eliminated.
• An additional $52,200 across the biennium is provided for a program that provides newspaper access to the blind.
• The State Superintendent will be required to work with DCF to develop success sequence-related materials to be incorporated into academic and career services. The document defines the success sequence as graduating from high school, maintaining a full-time job or a partner who does, and waiting until after age 21 and marriage to have children. Every school board is required to incorporate success sequence information into its career services materials by the 2019-20 school year.
• **School report cards will be required to include additional information, including: the number and percentage of pupils participating in early college credit programs, the number and percentage participating in a youth apprenticeship, the number of community service hours logged by pupils, the number of advanced placement courses offered and the amount of credits earned, and the number of pupils earning industry-recognized credentials through a technical education program.
• Finally, DPI is required to create a report on the population overlap of families that receive public benefits and children who are absent from school for 10 percent or more of the school year. The report must be submitted on or before December 30, 2018.

—

Phew! That was a lot, wasn’t it? As always, follow our budget coverage here at maciverinstitute.com and on twitter at @MacIverWisc. Comment below and let us know what you think about the Governor’s K-12 budget proposals!

** indicates that the item has been removed from the budget, as of April 6, 2017.

March 16, 2017 | By Brett Healy, MacIver President

No Surprise Here: MPS Blames $12 Million Less In Federal Title I Funding On School Choice

Just one problem – Congress changed the law so more federal funding would go to actual services and less to administrative bloat at MPS

Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Darienne Driver recently announced that the district could face significant financial challenges, once again, as she begins her work preparing for the upcoming 2017-2018 budget deliberations. During an interview with Mike Gousha at a Marquette Law School program, Driver discussed the $1.2 billion dollar budget she will present in May and a potential $50 million dollar shortfall facing MPS. While a $50 million budget gap would normally cause concern, anyone who has followed the trials and tribulations of Wisconsin’s largest and most troubled school district just shook their head in disbelief.

One source of MPS’ budget trouble? Less Title I funding. The Title I program provides extra federal funding to school districts with high percentages of poor children. The Journal Sentinel covered Driver’s comments this way in a March 8th article:

“Driver said she is anticipating a cut of about $12 million in federal Title I funds for low-income students under the new Every Child Succeeds Act, in part because it would allow some of those funds to flow to non-public schools.”

The way Driver describes the situation, or maybe the way the Journal Sentinel reported the conversation, leaves the reader with the impression that federal Title I funds have been cut by $12 million dollars compared to last year.

The problem is that the assertion that Title I funding will be cut by $12 million doesn’t appear to be true. According to MPS’ own budget, chart 3.39 found below, MPS is anticipating an $7.6 million dollar increase in Title I funding in 2016-2017.

See the full MPS budget here, and see the above chart on page 3-38.

What did change? Congress and former President Obama made it clear that more of your federal tax dollars should go to help actual children and less should go to pay for bureaucrats at MPS. Oh my goodness! How could President Obama be so heartless and treat bureaucrats in such a callous and uncaring way?

Title I requires school districts to provide equitable funding for children regardless of what kind of institution they attend – public or private. This is not new – equitable funding for public and private students has existed at least since the No Child Left Behind law was passed back in 2001. When President Obama signed into law the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), his cornerstone education reform bill, ESSA required that school districts equitably distribute Title I funding among all low-income students residing in the district. Rather than treating certain students preferentially, the ESSA calculation requires funds to be allocated the way they always should have been allocated – equally for every child. No skim for public school bureaucrats.

Of course, neither Driver nor the writers of the Journal Sentinel piece took the time or care to explain this. Readers are left once again with the false notion that school choice takes funding away from MPS.

Our education system exists to serve all of our students. Education funding should follow the child, regardless of where they choose to receive the education that best fits their needs. Education funding of any kind – Title I, equalization aid, categorical, etc. – should NEVER go to fund bureaucrats or buildings. And MPS would be best to stop blaming everyone else for their continuing troubles. If MPS spent less time looking to blame others and spent more time actually working to fix their problems, the children of Milwaukee would be much better off.

March 10, 2017 | MacIver News Service

Chart of the Day: Parent Satisfaction with District, Charter, Private Schools

The research group Education Next has released a report that surveys parent satisfaction across different types of schools, including traditional public schools, charter schools, and private schools.

The survey, which is administered by the National Center for Education Statistics, found that charter school parents are 13 percentage points more satisfied with expectations for student achievement than district school parents. Overall, private school parents report the highest satisfaction with expectations for student achievement, with 87 percent of respondents reporting that they are satisfied or very satisfied.

District school parents are most dissatisfied with teacher quality, instruction in character or values, and school discipline compared to private and charter school parents. District school parents also reported the highest levels of dissatisfaction with school safety.

Such results are not a new phenomenon – as MacIver News reported, despite years of efforts and billion of dollars spent, federal efforts to improve public schools through carrot and stick incentive systems often fail to have any meaningful impact on academic outcomes.

For more information, check out the interactive map at Education Next to view parent satisfaction with teacher quality, school discipline, safety, and more.

Note: The survey reports both raw and adjusted values. In this piece, we utilize the adjusted response values.

March 6, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

With “Surplus” Revenue, Why No Further Expansion Of Choice?

[Madison, Wis…] Back in January, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau set the context for the coming budget debate and published its latest revenue forecast for the next few years. According to director Bob Lang, the state of Wisconsin is expected to have $714 million more in its coffers than it anticipated in November. One might spend time debating how close this projection will be to reality, but the real debate for the purposes of this biennium, of course, is how that money will be split up.

Other than an increase in per-pupil aids, Gov. Walker’s 2017-19 budget proposal includes no substantial changes to any of Wisconsin’s school choice programs. After two budgets that included considerable wins for school choice – the creation of the Racine program in 2011 and statewide expansion in 2013 – choice advocates are asking themselves what happened.

Many in the school choice movement had hoped the Governor would use some of the state’s expected budget “surplus” to lift the last remaining enrollment cap.

After Governor Walker released the details of his budget proposal, pro-choice groups School Choice Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Federation for Children released a joint statement, writing:

“We are disappointed that none of these funds will be used to help hundreds of families get their children off of waiting lists and into the school of their choice. Across Wisconsin, demand for the Parental Choice Programs and the Special Needs Scholarship continues to grow. Unfortunately, program caps and limitations constrain supply and restrict access to quality schools by parents and students.”

The expected “surplus” amounts to $21 million across the biennium, according to the memo.

Student enrollment in the statewide program – formally known as the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP) – remains limited by district. Currently, no more than 1 percent of pupils residing in a public school district can participate in WPCP. Once the current school year ends, that limit will increase by 1 percent each year until the 2025-26 school year, when a 10 percent threshold is reached. The following year, the caps will be removed entirely.

Neither the Racine nor the Milwaukee programs utilize such caps. While pro-voucher groups have pushed for other administrative measures that would increase efficiency within the programs, WPCP’s district enrollment caps are one of the last substantial barriers for the growth of school choice in Wisconsin.

The ultimate goal? Ensuring that access to school choice in this state does not hang at the whim of one election. Though with over 33,000 students and more than 200 schools currently participating, that goal seems to be getting further and further away.

From the perspective of the Governor’s office, choice schools do just fine under the budget proposal, with a $217 per pupil aid increase.

“There’s been no greater advocate for choice and charter schools across the nation than Governor Walker over the last six years,” Tom Evenson, a spokesman for the Governor, said. “We think that with this increase, they do well.”

When funding goes up for children in traditional public schools, per pupil funding must go up an equal amount for students in the choice programs. In other words, the additional per-pupil funding is required by law.

“Hopefully, the legislative process will produce solutions for parents on waiting lists across Wisconsin,” School Choice Wisconsin and Wisconsin Federation for Children’s joint press release reads.

Hope exists in the Legislature, where Majority Leader Sen. Scott Fitzgerald said that lifting the enrollment caps in choice programs would “absolutely” be part of the discussion moving forward. During a wispolitics.com luncheon, Fitzgerald said that Republican lawmakers were interested in continuing their substantial efforts towards school reform this budget.

School choice in Wisconsin is not going away. Demand on the side of students and of schools is constantly growing, with many districts already hitting their artificial caps on enrollment. Choice schools are posting ever-improving academic outcomes, in some cases even outperforming their full-income public school counterparts. The Governor knows this, having nodded to the movement in his budget address when he said that he trusts parents.

For now, the budget moves onto the Legislature.

March 6, 2017 | By Jason Crye, Executive Director, Hispanics for School Choice

Crye: An Idea for the President – Trump Student Success Zones

The following column originally appeared at The Fordham Institute.

20 billion dollars.

With that kind of investment in education President Trump can create a program more recognizable than that omnipresent comb over. Sure, some will argue that it shouldn’t be done, but this is Wonkathon 2017 and we’re going to spend that money like we’re at the Trump Taj Mahal–before it closed.

So let’s create Trump Student Success Zones!

The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to identify schools that perform among the bottom 5 percent on their accountability systems and where fewer than 67 percent of students graduate from high school. Such designations have to be made at least every three years and are based on both academic and nonacademic criteria. If underperformance persists for four years, states are required to intervene.

The Trump Student Success Zones will be geographic areas that include the schools the ESSA mandate identifies and their surrounding neighborhoods. No one relishes telling individual schools they are failing, and increasing student success in a larger, multi-school area will avoid the political wrangling that often stalls individual school turnaround efforts.

Trump zone czars would be appointed to manage each zone. The czars would execute their duties in cooperation with a volunteer advisory board they form composed of leaders representing participating schools and community leaders in each zone. Metro areas may have more than one success zone. Instead of closing struggling public schools, the success zones will provide the resources to turn them around. At the same time, the capacity of high quality, high potential, and start-up success zone schools in all sectors will be fostered.

This would be an optional federal program, but the Trump administration would incentivize state participation by providing all schools within designated success zones a “huge” per pupil funding increase if they commit to the implementation of any number of recommendations for their zone. This could include, for example, an overhaul of teacher recruitment and training, extended school years, or the establishment of zone wrap around services to assist families. The Trump zone per pupil increase subsidy would pay for program reforms and help finance school expansion and start-ups.

The Trump Student Success Zones would also include two additional educational savings account (ESA) programs.

The first would provide funding for out-of-school educational, arts, and recreational activities within the success zones. This ESA would be made available to all students attending schools in the success zones.

The second ESA would provide funding for success zone students who have been identified as gifted. Individual schools cannot be expected to develop programming appropriate to every gifted child they serve. This ESA would enable parents to tend to the individual needs of their gifted children. Tutors and non-public online learning programs are examples of how this program would help underserved gifted students maximize their potential.

In sum, the Trump Student Success Zones will support traditional public schools by providing a framework to turn around consistently underperforming schools, support poor families via wraparound services and neighborhood cooperation, and advance the principles of school choice while improving educational opportunities for all students.

While efforts in each success zone will vary greatly, all Trump Student Success Zones will share the following guiding principles:

Community engagement

Community members will be included in the process. The zone czars shall include parents and community members among the appointees to the success zone boards to help guide program development and ensure community input is considered at all stages. Church and business leaders within the zones would be natural advisors and organizers.

Research supported reform

Under ESSA, districts are required to design “evidence based” strategies to turn around their perennially underperforming schools. As we know, there’s been some discussion about what constitutes “evidence,” but the Trumps zones will help states seize the day and encourage innovative, research-based ways to improve schools.

All sector participation

In addition to members of the community, no success zone will be successful if it fails to meaningfully involve all types of schools within its borders. While the goal is to have every zone school fully participate in the program, realistically that may not always be possible. In such cases the success zone czar and board will actively find ways to include non-participating schools.

Jason Crye is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

March 2, 2017 | By Ola Lisowski

National Study: University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Underserving Black Students

A recent study has revealed that only 1 in 5 black students at UWM graduate in six years

Washington, DC - Only one in five black students graduate from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in six years, a new study from the Education Trust has revealed. The survey, which uses data from the national Center for Education Statistics, examined graduation rates among black students at 676 colleges and identified UWM as one of 21 universities with the worst academic outcomes for black students.

The study shows that just 21 percent of black students, or one in five, graduate the university in six years. That’s about half the overall six-year graduation rate – 41 percent for black students – observed across the entire study. Overall, the study found that white students are more than 20 percent more likely to graduate in six years.

UWM also posts particularly large achievement gaps between black and white students, another reason that the institution made it on the lost of bottom-performing colleges in America for black students.

Eighteen schools are identified as high-performing institutes for black students, with Georgia State University posting the best results. None of the top-performing schools are in Wisconsin or even in the midwest, but are scattered across the south and the eastern seaboard. By contrast, nearly all of the bottom-performing institutions are in the midwest.

The findings fall in line with past trends in Milwaukee, where high schools are now working more closely with colleges to align curricula and better prepare graduates for success in higher education. Last year, the University of Wisconsin Remedial Course Report showed that 175 Wisconsin high schools sent more than six graduates to the UW System who needed remedial education. In 12 schools, 50 percent or more of the graduating class who went to the UW System needed remedial education.

The issue runs deep at Milwaukee Public Schools, where some high schools typically touted as high-performing were revealed to be graduating kids who are woefully unprepared for the real world. Reagan High School, for example, was named 2nd best high school in the state by U.S. News and World Report – but sent nearly 43 percent of graduates to college needing math remediation.

Milwaukee’s issues with education black children start early – just 7.5 percent of black students in the third through eighth grades are proficient in math. Just over half of black students, or 55 percent, graduate from MPS high schools in four years. By contrast, 68 percent of white students graduate MPS in four years. And yet, as the MacIver News Service has reported, MPS dropped off the list of failing school districts last year.

The report’s authors point to institutional barriers as a main reason for such underperformance, pointing to institutions with similar statistics such as SAT score, enrollment, percent of Pell Grant recipients, but with vastly different academic outcomes for black students. Notably, the authors strongly reject the notion that the differences in graduation rates are a result of factors that institutions cannot control.