The Wisconsin Education Comeback

A Roadmap for Student Success

The State of Wisconsin Education 

Education in Wisconsin stands at a crossroads. Wisconsin has a strong educational foundation, an established system of public schools, and educational options that give families choices beyond their assigned district schools. But Wisconsin should aspire to more. After important reforms in the 2010s, progress on student achievement has slowed, and the state has lost ground on several national measures. At the same time, Wisconsin faces renewed efforts to roll back policies like school choice and Act 10 that have expanded opportunity and strengthened the state’s educational system.

For decades, Wisconsin was regarded as one of the nation’s strongest performers on measures of academic achievement. The goal should be to build on Wisconsin’s strengths and ensure that the state is once again among the nation’s leaders. The Wisconsin Education Comeback offers an optimistic agenda for doing exactly that.

In terms of raw national rankings, Wisconsin continues to perform respectably. But Wisconsin’s scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have declined from their pre-pandemic levels, reflecting a broader national decline in student achievement.ⁱ  Wisconsin remains above average in eighth-grade performance, while in some earlier grades and subjects it has fallen behind its previous performance.  Wisconsin’s relative performance also does worse when results are adjusted for student demographics. Wisconsin continues to have one of the largest black-white achievement gaps in the country.ⁱⁱ

Wisconsin’s recovery from pandemic-era learning losses also has been slower than in many other states. Wisconsin’s approach to COVID of closing public schools has been devastating for Wisconsin students.  Among states with available data, Wisconsin ranks 33rd of 38 states in math recovery and 30th of 35 in reading recovery since 2022.ⁱⁱⁱ  Wisconsin students remain roughly a third of a grade level behind their 2019 peers in math, and more than half a grade level behind in reading. Wisconsin is hardly alone in confronting these challenges, but the experience of states recovering more quickly provides an opportunity to identify policies that could accelerate improvement here.

At the same time, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has made it increasingly difficult for Wisconsinites to understand where the state stands academically. In the past, Wisconsin aligned its state assessment (Forward Exam) proficiency standards with NAEP proficiency benchmarks, providing a useful point of comparison with a consistent, independent national measure. In 2023-24, the DPI altered this approach and since the new proficiency levels are not directly comparable with prior years, it is more difficult to evaluate long-term trends in state assessment results. Wisconsin should prioritize transparency and comparability so that parents and policymakers can accurately understand both the state’s progress and the opportunities for further improvement.

Wisconsin is also confronting significant demographic and financial changes. The state’s school-aged population has declined by 5.8% since 2013–14, and state demographic projections forecast an additional 11% to 16% enrollment decline over the next decade.   Despite this fact, the number of non-charter public schools has declined by only about 2%, while public school staffing has actually grown by 13.5% over the same period. Districts have also gone to referendum at record rates to raise additional local revenue, while meaningful school district consolidation is avoided.^iv These trends raise important questions about how Wisconsin can organize and fund its schools most efficiently as enrollment continues to decline. 

Wisconsin is addressing these issues from a position of substantial investment in public education.  Average revenue per student across the state now stands at $18,746 annually, putting Wisconsin in the middle of the pack nationally in education spending.^v The experience of states like Utah and Mississippi demonstrates that strong or improving academic results do not necessarily require the highest levels of per-pupil spending.^iv Mississippi, which spends well below the national average per pupil, moved from 49th to 9th in the nation in fourth-grade reading between 2013 and 2024.^vii Utah spends less per pupil than almost every state in the country, yet consistently ranks among the top states nationally for education quality.^viii Both examples, and a plethora of research, suggest that how education dollars are used matters more than how much is spent. 

Wisconsin should also preserve and build upon the educational options available to families.  Wisconsin parents have meaningful options beyond their assigned public school, including private school choice programs, a sizeable charter school sector give families a genuine say in where their child learns, and open enrollment. Research has found positive academic outcomes for participants in Wisconsin’s private school choice programs, which also operate at a lower public cost per student than traditional public schools. (about $5,980 less total state and local revenue per student for K-8 and $3,486 for high school). Rather than retreat from these options,^ix Wisconsin should continue expanding opportunities for families while ensuring strong accountability across the education system. 

No single recommendation in this agenda is a silver bullet, nor does Wisconsin need to start over. The state has a strong foundation on which to build. The opportunity before policymakers is to set a higher bar for student achievement, accelerate Wisconsin’s recovery from pandemic-era learning loss, make educational spending more effective, strengthen transparency and accountability, and expand educational opportunity.

The Wisconsin Education Comeback is an agenda for moving Wisconsin from good to great. With thoughtful reforms and a sustained focus on results, Wisconsin can build on what is working, address areas where improvement is needed, and once again become a national leader in education.

WILL’s Guiding Principles of Education 

Strong education policy should focus on students, not systems. The Wisconsin Education Comeback envisions a Wisconsin where every child, regardless of zip code or family income, has access to a school that works for them, where parents are trusted as the primary decision-makers in their children’s education, and where a diploma is proof of meaningful preparation for what comes next. Wisconsin’s education system should be guided by a consistent set of principles that place student success at the center of policymaking. This agenda’s recommendations are grounded in seven core principles:

Expand Educational Opportunity

Parents should have the freedom to choose the educational environment that best meets their child’s needs. Wisconsin should remove unnecessary barriers to school choice and ensure that every family has access to high-quality educational options.

Respect Parental Authority

Parents, not the government, are the primary decision-makers in their children’s education. Wisconsin should give families clear information and a real voice in their children’s schooling.

Put Students Before Systems

Education policy should be driven by what is best for students, not by preserving existing systems. Funding, governance, and regulation should encourage innovation, reward results, and ensure that every child has the opportunity to succeed. 

Increase Transparency and Accountability

Parents, taxpayers, and policymakers deserve clear, accurate information about school performance and spending. Stable standards and meaningful accountability should encourage higher achievement and allow progress to be measured over time.

Fund What Works

Wisconsin is spending near-record amounts on education, and taxpayers deserve to know that money is being used effectively. Wisconsin should root out waste and prioritize strategies proven to improve student outcomes over programs that lack evidence of effectiveness.

Form Capable Citizens

Schools do more than prepare students for college and careers. They transmit the civic knowledge necessary for informed citizenship and self-government. A strong education prepares students not only to succeed, but to participate responsibly in a free society.

Empower Excellent Educators

Teachers should be supported in helping students succeed. Wisconsin should strengthen the teacher pipeline, remove unnecessary barriers to entering the profession, and give educators real authority and administrative backing to maintain safe, orderly classrooms that are free from disruption.

The Format of This Report 

The Wisconsin Education Comeback contains 26 recommendations, organized under the seven guiding principles above. Each recommendation follows the same format: a description of the problem, a specific policy solution, and an explanation of why the reform is important for Wisconsin students and families. Where WILL or other organizations and researchers have published deeper analysis on a topic, a “Read More” section points to that underlying research. Readers looking for a starting point should begin with the principle that matches their priorities. Together, the recommendations share the common goal of expanding access to a high-quality education for every Wisconsin student.

Expand Educational Opportunity

Expand Parental Choice Options 

The Problem:

Wisconsin is home to the oldest school voucher program in the nation, with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program dating back to 1990. Since then, the state has added several additional successful school choice programs covering the rest of the state, including the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program, Racine Parental Choice Program and Special Needs Scholarship Program. But income and entry point limitations on the programs mean that many families that cannot afford private school options remain trapped in schools that may not work for them.  

Currently, families must have incomes below 300% of the federal poverty level to participate in the Milwaukee or Racine parental choice programs, and families in the statewide program face a much lower limit of 220%. For example, a single parent living outside Milwaukee or Racine must earn less than $46,530 to qualify—an income at which paying the average cost of private school tuition would be out of reach for many families. Table 1 below shows the income limits at varying family sizes for the 2026-27 school year.^x

Eligibility is also limited based on where a student attended school the previous year.  A student who attended private school the previous year generally may only enter a choice program in kindergarten, first grade or ninth grade.^xi Although this restriction is designed to prevent families already paying private school tuition from receiving a voucher, it creates an arbitrary barrier for families who may no longer be able to afford tuition or who otherwise become eligible for the program.

Solution:

The Legislature should remove income caps from Wisconsin’s parental choice programs, creating universal eligibility.  The State should not reinstate enrollment caps based on the total enrollment of local school districts that ended with the 2026-27 school year.^xii  Moving towards a vision of backpack funding—where every student in the state has the same amount of taxpayer funding regardless of where they attend school—limitations on accessing school choice from prior private school students should also be removed. 

Why it Matters:

According to the most recent estimates from EdChoice, only about 31% of students are eligible for the statewide program (WPCP), meaning nearly 70% of Wisconsin families are excluded from accessing the same educational options currently available to some of their neighbors.^xiii In other states, like Texas and Iowa, eligibility is now 100, meaning Wisconsin has fallen from a leading innovator in education reform to a dinosaur.^xiv 

A child’s access to educational opportunities should not depend on their ZIP code, family income, or whether their parents can afford to effectively pay tuition twice—once through taxes and again through private school costs. A truly universal choice system would treat all families equally, providing every student with a publicly funded education benefit that can be used at the school that best meets their needs.

Wisconsin has already begun moving toward this model, but the state’s existing programs remain targeted rather than universal. Income limits and other artificial barriers mean that many middle-income families who cannot realistically afford private school tuition are excluded from choice programs despite paying taxes that support them. The result is a system where eligibility is often determined less by educational need and more by whether a family falls below an arbitrary income threshold. Existing and forthcoming peer-reviewed academic research has found benefits for school choice ranging from lower involvement in criminal activity to a higher likelihood of enrolling and continuing in college.^xv School choice has even been found to help public schools through competition as well. 

Expanding choice eligibility would aid the transition from a system of government-assigned schools to one centered on families. Universal eligibility would not guarantee that every family chooses a private school, nor would it eliminate traditional public schools. Instead, it would allow all parents to consider the full range of educational options available and encourage every school—public, charter, and private—to compete for students by delivering the education that families value. Educational opportunity should be determined by the needs of students, not arbitrary eligibility rules or a family’s ability to pay. Universal choice would move Wisconsin closer to that goal.

Read More: 

Apples to Apples: A Look at School Sector Performance for 2025 by Dr. Will Flanders – February 2026

A Matter of Time: What New Research Says About Wisconsin’s School Choice Programs by Dr. Will Flanders and Dr. Scott Niederjohn – August 2026 

Protect School Choice Autonomy 

The Problem:

Wisconsin’s private school choice programs and independent charter schools give families access to education options outside their assigned public school. An important feature of these programs is autonomy. Participating schools generally have greater flexibility over staffing, curriculum, operations, and spending, allowing them to offer educational models that may not be available in the traditional public school system.

That autonomy regularly comes under pressure. In the 2023-24 legislative session, 33 bills affecting Wisconsin’s private school choice programs were introduced. In the 2025-26 session, lawmakers proposed legislation that would:

• Prohibit virtual private schools from participating in choice programs;¹
• Require DPI licensure for teachers and administrators at choice schools;²
• Require annual income verification for participating families;³ 
• Require single-sex choice schools to enroll students based on gender identity and expression rather than sex;⁴
• Subject choice schools to Wisconsin’s open meetings and public records laws.⁵ 

These proposals share the common approach of imposing requirements modeled on the public school system on private schools that families deliberately chose as an alternative to that system.

Accountability is important, but Wisconsin’s choice schools are already subject to significant accountability requirements. Participating schools must meet statutory eligibility requirements, comply with DPI oversight, undergo financial audits, and satisfy other program requirements. These proposals do not close an accountability gap. They restrict the specific autonomy that makes these schools different from the public system. 

Wisconsin should ensure that choice schools and independent charter schools preserve appropriate accountability without regulating away the independence that allows these schools to offer meaningful alternatives. Research shows that extensive regulation can discourage private schools from participating in choice programs and may reduce the quality of the options available to participating families.^xvi

The Solution: 

Wisconsin should protect the autonomy of private schools participating in the choice programs and independent charter schools. Before imposing new regulations, policymakers should consider whether an identified problem is already addressed by existing accountability requirements, whether the proposed regulation is necessary to protect students or taxpayers, and whether it would discourage schools from participating or limit their ability to offer distinctive educational models.

A balance between autonomy and accountability must be maintained in order to promote the growth and success of the choice program. Not only do choice schools see better results for students over time, but they also cost the state less per pupil. The figure below demonstrates the academic gains over time that students participating in a choice program make in comparison to similar students not in a choice program. 

Why It Matters:

Private schools participating in a choice program in Wisconsin should not be pushed to operate like public schools. The unique schooling opportunities that private and independent charter schools offer to participating students continue to drive student achievement. Increasing administrative burdens while limiting freedom and restricting the reach of the choice program will harm students and halt the growth that students across Wisconsin have been benefiting from.  

Autonomy is a feature, not a flaw, of school choice.  A parent who selects a classical school, a faith-based school, a Montessori program, or another model is choosing an educational approach that better matches the needs of their child. When the state regulates away the distinctiveness that drew a family to a school in the first place, it does not make the choice program better. It makes the choice program indistinguishable from the system that family opted out of.

Read More: 

A Matter of Time: What New Research Says About Wisconsin’s School Choice Programs by Dr. Will Flanders and Dr. Scott Niederjohn – July 2026

The High Cost of Overregulation: How Excessive Government Control Threatens School Choice in Wisconsin by Dr. Will Flanders—February 2025

Establish a Statewide Equitable Services Option

The Problem:

Although many federal education programs are intended to benefit eligible students regardless of whether they attend a public or private school, the administration of those funds is often inefficient and inequitable. Under current federal law, local public school districts serve as the intermediary responsible for administering Title services for eligible private school students, even though those students are educated elsewhere. As a result, the entity controlling the federal funds is not the entity directly responsible for educating the students those funds are intended to serve.

This structure frequently creates administrative burdens, inconsistent implementation, and missed opportunities to maximize available federal resources. Private schools must rely on their local school district to administer “equitable” services, while independent public charter schools receive federal funds directly but often lack the administrative capacity to efficiently manage complex federal grant requirements. In both cases, significant time and resources are devoted to compliance and administration rather than student services.

The Solution:

Wisconsin should establish a Statewide Choice Services Agency (or “Statewide LEA”) to administer federal education funds for participating private schools and independent charter schools that choose to participate and seek any necessary federal approval or waiver to implement the model. The U.S. Department of Education recently issued guidance encouraging states and local educational agencies (LEAs) to use existing flexibility to provide equitable services to private school students more efficiently.^xvii

Participation should be voluntary. Private schools could choose to receive federally funded equitable services through the Statewide LEA or continue working through the local public school district, as permitted under federal law. Providing both options would allow schools to select the administrative structure that best serves their students without disrupting arrangements that are already working well.

The Statewide LEA would function as a public LEA responsible for administering federal Title programs for participating schools. Rather than requiring each private school to navigate consultation with multiple resident school districts—or requiring each independent charter school to individually manage federal compliance—the Statewide LEA would provide centralized expertise in grant administration, vendor management, reporting, and regulatory compliance.

Participating schools would retain the flexibility available to them under federal law in identifying the services that best meet their students’ needs, while the Statewide LEA would handle the administrative and compliance responsibilities associated with providing those services. Centralizing these functions could reduce administrative burdens, improve consistency, and help ensure that available federal resources are effectively used to serve eligible students.

Why It Matters:

Federal education dollars should be used as efficiently and effectively as possible to support students. A centralized administrative model would reduce unnecessary bureaucracy, improve consistency in the delivery of equitable services, and allow school leaders to devote more time to educating students. It would also benefit public school districts by relieving them of responsibility for administering equitable services for private schools that choose the statewide option.

Creating a Statewide LEA would also position Wisconsin as a national leader in modernizing the administration of federal education programs. By aligning the administration of federal funds more closely with the schools serving eligible students, Wisconsin can improve accountability, reduce administrative costs, and ensure that federal resources are directed toward student learning rather than unnecessary layers of bureaucracy.

Reform the Charter School Environment 

Charter schools across Wisconsin provide innovative models of education for the students they serve. From Montessori classrooms, virtual learning, and dedications to STEM, to college preparatory schools, fine arts academies, and nature-based learning models, charters give Wisconsin families options in K-12 education. While they have more freedom in operating procedures, charter schools are held accountable to the high standards set forth in their authorizing charter contract. 

Over the past two decades, Wisconsin’s charter landscape has seen a moderate increase in enrollment and stagnant growth in the number of schools. The figure below shows the increase in charter school enrollment in relation to the amount of charter schools and addition of new charter schools from 2003-04 to 2025-26.^xviii

The Problem:

Charter schools face challenges in funding, authorizing, facilities, governance, and regulations that place barriers in the way of true expansion. 

Funding: Though both publicly funded, charter schools operate with less per-pupil funding than traditional public schools. The average per-pupil amount for independent charter schools is roughly $12,797 for the 2026-27 school year,^xix while the average per-pupil revenue at traditional public schools is at $18,746.

Authorizing: Institutions that have been granted legislative authority to authorize charters are held to no standard to do so, with several having no currently authorized charters. In fact, many charter authorizers have become less active in recent years. 

Facilities: Procuring a building for a new school or constructing one is made more challenging with a lack of vacant school building laws in Wisconsin and a lack of state-backed facilities funding. Without financing mechanisms in Wisconsin law, prospective independent charter operators must rely on private donations and base per-pupil funding to break ground and open their doors. 

Governance: Wisconsin licensure requirements limit charter operators from hiring the staff they deem best-fit to teach their model. The state’s licensing regulations restrict unique pathways into the classroom and lack streamlined processes towards licensure. 

Regulations: In other states, charter schools operate under accountability in performance and student success. In Wisconsin, charter schools operate under stricter curriculum, compliance, and staffing requirements, stifling the very foundation of freedom for innovation that supports charter schools. 

Beyond this, partisan politics create instability for prospective charter school founders. As political support for charter schools shifts across party lines, DPI superintendents, governors, and authorizers, Wisconsin is not providing the consistent environment needed for a long-term investment.

The Solution: 

Wisconsin should strengthen its charter school environment by removing unnecessary barriers to growth while creating a stable policy framework that encourages long-term investment in high-quality charter schools.

Funding: Independent charter schools should receive funding that more closely reflects the resources available to traditional public schools. The Legislature should continue moving toward funding models that allow education dollars to follow students and ensure charter schools have access to the resources necessary to serve them effectively.

Authorizing: Wisconsin should establish a truly independent, statewide charter authorizer to provide a stable and consistent pathway for approving high-quality charter schools. Unlike the current Office of Educational Opportunity, which operates within the UW System and is subject to the shifting political priorities of the Board of Regents, a standalone statewide authorizer should be governed through bipartisan appointments and held to clear performance standards. At the same time, Wisconsin should encourage existing authorizers to become more active by:

• Requiring authorizers to publish clear application procedures, designate a contact person, and annually report the number of applications received and approved;
• Providing a one-time grant to the Wisconsin Resource for Charter Schools to provide technical assistance to authorizers in establishing an application process; and;
• Allow charter operators with a proven record of success the opportunity to expand to additional campuses via a “fast-tracked” process with fewer bureaucratic hoops to jump through. 

Facilities: Wisconsin should make it easier for charter schools to secure suitable facilities by:

• Establishing per-pupil facilities aid for independent charter schools, making Wisconsin eligible for additional federal charter facilities funding such as the Charter School Facility Incentive grant;
• Adopting a statewide vacant school building law (as recommended later in this agenda) that gives educational operators a meaningful opportunity to purchase surplus public school buildings;
• Expanding access to low-interest financing by giving high-performing charter operators priority in accessing financing through the Wisconsin Health and Educational Facilities Authority (WHEFA);
• Creating a state-backed credit enhancement program; and
• Establishing a competitive facilities grant program to help high-performing charter schools expand.

Governance: Charter schools should have greater flexibility to hire educators who best fit their educational model. Wisconsin should create streamlined alternative licensure pathways that allow charter schools to recruit qualified professionals while maintaining appropriate accountability. The Legislature should also allow charter authorizers greater flexibility in determining charter contract lengths to encourage long-term planning and investment.

Regulations: Wisconsin should restore the operational flexibility that distinguishes charter schools from traditional public schools. This includes eliminating unnecessary regulatory burdens, allowing virtual charter schools to operate where families demonstrate demand, and permitting independent charter schools to participate in part-time open enrollment. Charter schools should remain accountable for student outcomes while retaining the freedom to innovate in curriculum, staffing, and school operations.

Finally, Wisconsin should provide greater long-term policy stability for charter schools. Charter school founders, educators, and investors are less likely to commit to opening new schools when the regulatory environment changes dramatically with shifts in political leadership. Establishing clear statutory protections and stable governance structures would create a more predictable environment for long-term educational investment.

Why It Matters:

Ensuring that charter schools have the freedom and support to operate in Wisconsin can bolster the creation and expansion of more educational choices for Wisconsinites. WILL research has found that charter schools—particularly independent charter schools—produce better outcomes even after controlling for demographic characteristics. Prospective charter operators should not have to face political gridlock when trying to open a school.^xx Unique and targeted education models can flourish in Wisconsin with the proper financial support and by cutting regulatory burdens for charters. 

Read More: 

Charting a New Course: Improving the Charter School Sector in Wisconsin by Dr. Will Flanders, Kyle Koenen and Maellie Lewna – August 2026

Reform Open Enrollment Laws

The Problem:

Wisconsin’s open enrollment program is the state’s most widely used school choice option, allowing 75,126 students to attend a public school outside their resident district in 2024-25. But despite the program’s popularity, several features of current law limit families’ ability to participate.

A 2025 fifty state analysis by the Reason Foundation gave Wisconsin’s open enrollment laws an overall grade of B-.^xxi  The Reason analysis identifies three specific improvements for Wisconsin’s program: require all districts to participate in in-district open enrollment, make public schools open to all students regardless of disability, and require districts to post their available capacity by grade level and all open enrollment policies on their website. 

First, districts have significant discretion over how many seats they make available for open enrollment. Wisconsin law does not require districts to open all available seats to nonresident students, and families may have little information about why a district has determined that space is unavailable. Without clear and objective capacity standards, parents cannot easily determine whether a school is genuinely full or has simply chosen not to accept additional students.

Second, students with disabilities face additional barriers. Receiving districts may deny an application based on the availability of the special education programs, services, or space required by a student’s IEP. Under current law, parents must provide a potential receiving district with a copy of the student’s IEP, and the district may determine that it does not have the necessary special education services or space to serve the student.⁶ Yet receiving districts may receive additional funding when the cost of providing a student’s required special education services exceeds the standard open enrollment transfer amount. Despite that funding mechanism, special-education-related reasons remain an important source of open enrollment denials.

Of the total amount of denied applications, Figure 2 below demonstrates the higher rate at which applications are denied for “special education related reasons”.^xxii

Third, Wisconsin has an unusually restrictive application window. Regular open enrollment applications must be submitted within a three-month window each year, from February through April.  Families can apply outside that window only for specified circumstances, such as custody changes, moves into the state, military orders, or documented bullying. A family that determines at another point in the year that its child’s school is simply not working out may have to wait months for another opportunity to apply.

Finally, the funding that follows an open enrollment student remains substantially below average per-student revenue. The regular open enrollment transfer amount is $11,030, compared with average per-student revenue of approximately $18,746 statewide. Because the receiving district is responsible for educating the student but receives substantially less than average per-student revenue, the current funding structure may discourage districts from making additional seats available.  

The Solution:

State law should require districts to base seat availability on objective classroom capacity. Wisconsin should reduce barriers that unnecessarily limit open enrollment opportunities for students with disabilities and give more families the ability to choose the public school that best meets their child’s needs. If a school district has classrooms with enrollment below the established student-to-teacher capacity ratio but does not make those open seats available through open enrollment, state law could require the district to justify that decision or offer those seats to open enrollment applicants.

Some argue that open enrollment should remain a “win-win” for both the sending and receiving districts, but under the current system, the amount of funding ($11,030 for a regular education student in 2026-27) is substantially less than the average per-student revenue available to school districts. This gap likely undermines the interest and ability of districts to accept additional open enrollment students.

We recommend increasing the per-student open enrollment transfer amount to 90% of the average per-student revenue statewide. Based on the most recent DPI data, this would increase the transfer amount to approximately $16,871 per student, while still allowing the student’s resident district to retain approximately $1,875, or 10% of average per-student revenue. 

Wisconsin should reduce barriers that unnecessarily limit open enrollment opportunities for students with disabilities and give more families the ability to choose the public school that best meets their child’s needs.  Districts denying a transfer for lack of special education space should be required to document and justify that determination to DPI, similar to the seat-availability justification already proposed above, rather than being able to deny a transfer without scrutiny. Categorical aid earmarked for a student with disabilities should follow that student to their new school, alongside the standard transfer amount, removing the financial disincentive districts currently have to accept students who require additional services. 

Wisconsin should also move to a year-round or rolling open enrollment model, following the lead of Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, so families are not locked out of alternatives for up to a year over circumstances the current exception list doesn’t cover.

Why It Matters:

Wisconsin’s open enrollment program already gives tens of thousands of families access to public schools outside their resident districts. These reforms would build on that success by making available seats easier to access, giving students with disabilities a fairer opportunity to participate, allowing families to seek alternatives when they need them, and ensuring that funding more closely follows the student.

A family’s address should not unnecessarily determine which public school a child may attend. Wisconsin should make it easier for families to choose the public school that best meets their child’s needs.

Read More: 

Reason Foundation: Public Schools Without Boundaries by Jude Schwalbach – October 2025

Expand Course Choice

As high school students discover their interests, plan their next steps, and prepare for success in their future careers, the courses they take can propel them in the right direction. Courses that offer career and technical certifications or college credits allow students to get a head start while in high school. Families should be able to customize their student’s education, and students should have the opportunity to grow their skillset, explore their interests, and prepare for success after graduation. 

The Problem:

Part-time Public School Open Enrollment allows public high school students to take up to two courses at a non-resident public school.^xxiii In 2018, Wisconsin limited this program by restricting students from taking courses at private schools and by not allowing private school students to take courses at non-resident public schools. This leaves students limited to the courses that their school happens to offer.  For example, in the 2024-25 school year, the 923 students attending South Division High School in Milwaukee had a total of 2 Advanced Placement courses to choose from. Less than 6 miles west, at Pius XI Catholic High School, the 725 students in attendance can choose from 20 Advanced Placement courses.^xxiv

If a private school has any open seats in their classes, they currently cannot make those spots available to students from other institutions. As a shortage of teachers continues to leave districts struggling to fill certain positions, students in urban areas across Wisconsin are affected the most, with “large city” districts facing higher rates of teacher shortages compared to rural and suburban districts.^xxv Students in these districts are only a short drive away from being able to take a course that their resident district public school does not offer. 

The Solution:

Course choice extends the same basic principle behind Wisconsin’s open enrollment and private choice programs, that a student’s educational opportunities shouldn’t be limited by which building they’re assigned to, down to the level of individual courses. We propose the following to expand course options for students around the state: 

• Amend Wisconsin State Statute 118.52 to expand part-time open enrollment into a statewide course choice program in which students can enroll in courses at other educational institutions outside of their resident district.⁷
• Allow private schools to opt in to course choice by opening vacant seats up to students from other schools.
• Establish a funding formula in which funds follow the student and are prorated based on the course that the student is enrolled in.
• Require public schools to list any courses with open seats.
• Require public schools to allow private school students to take AP tests they are already administering on their campuses, if space is available. 

Why It Matters:

By expanding course choice in Wisconsin, students can have greater freedom to tailor their education to their aspirations. When low demand or lack of facilities may make adding a new course unsustainable for districts, course choice can ensure that interested students still have strong educational opportunities. Course choice ensures that funds follow the student as they pursue personalized educational attainment, and that qualified teachers can instruct their expertise to a full classroom. Parents should face fewer limitations and greater options when customizing their child’s education, and that includes access to AP or CTE classes. If a school, private or public, has available seats, they should have the freedom to fill them, and students should be able to access such instruction regardless of residential boundaries and school type.

Create a Unified Enrollment System

Problem:

Wisconsin families have more educational options than ever before but finding and accessing those options can be complicated. Depending on where they live, families may be able to choose among their assigned public school, other schools within their district, open enrollment, charter schools, and private schools participating in Wisconsin’s parental choice programs. Yet these options are not presented to families in one place, and each may have different applications, deadlines, eligibility requirements, and enrollment procedures.

As a result, accessing school choice often depends on how much a parent already knows about the options available and how much time the parent has to navigate them. Even after 30 years of school choice in Milwaukee, some eligible families remain unaware that their children may attend participating private schools at no tuition cost to them. 

Meanwhile, enrollment in a child’s assigned public school generally requires the least amount of effort. Families who want something different must first learn what alternatives exist and then determine how and when to apply. In most instances, the default choice is the traditional public school, which may or may not be the best option to meet the needs of the child. 

Solution:

Wisconsin should make choosing a school simpler by giving families a single place to learn and apply to available educational options.

Under a unified enrollment system, the school choice process would be centralized so that rather than filling out separate applications for each school, families would use a single application to learn about and apply to schools across sectors that they are interested in. Behind the scenes, the system uses a placement algorithm to match students to schools based on family preferences, available seats, and agreed-upon priorities (such as sibling placement or proximity). This reduces the administrative burden on parents and levels the informational playing field so that those with limited time or capacity aren’t disadvantaged by having to navigate multiple deadlines, processes, and lotteries. 

Standardized information about school features and performance would be provided so parents can compare options more easily and make a thoughtful choice. Beyond test scores, this might include information about academic growth, extra curriculars, safety, specialized programs (dual language, gifted, STEM, IB/AP), special education services offered and class sizes. This kind of system would make enrollment easier and more transparent.

Examples from cities that have implemented unified enrollment systems illustrate the potential benefits for parents. In Denver, the School Choice unified enrollment system lets families apply to district, charter, and magnet schools through one portal, helping parents consider a range of options they might otherwise overlook and simplify the decision process.^xxvi Over time, Denver’s system has been used as a tool to increase access to high-performing schools and support socio-economic diversity by embedding priorities like sibling attendance and walking distance into the placement process. In Chicago, a unified high school enrollment system allowed families to rank preferences across schools in one place and boosted the share of families receiving an offer at their top choice, while also reducing the “grey markets” where only more informed or resourced families could successfully navigate complex, separate applications.^xxvii These examples show that when families are presented with all options clearly and are required to actively choose rather than default into the neighborhood school, the system can help them make more informed decisions that better match their children’s needs. 

This could be implemented statewide all at once, or it could be piloted in Milwaukee—which has a wealth of options available to families that vary greatly in the quality of their results. 

Why It Matters:

Consistent with many of the school choice-focused reforms in this paper, a unified enrollment system would aid in breaking the chain between arbitrary ZIP-code based school assignment and students.  Such a system would signal clearly to families that they do have options, and that a charter, voucher, or alternative public school is equally as accessible as the school their child has been zoned to attend. 

More importantly, a unified enrollment system would help ensure that access to school choice is not limited only to families with the time, resources, or knowledge necessary to navigate a complicated system. Today, the families most likely to benefit from alternative options are often the ones who must overcome the greatest informational barriers to discover and access them. By presenting all available options in one place, with clear information about school offerings and performance, a unified system would transform school choice into a more meaningful opportunity available to every family.

Remove Barriers to Microschools

The Problem: 

Microschools are small, personalized learning environments that typically serve a handful to a few dozen students, often across multiple grade levels. There is no single microschool model.  Some charge tuition, employ one or more educators and operate from a dedicated location, while others use shared or nontraditional spaces. Their small size and flexible structure allow them to adopt a wide variety of instructional approaches. As a result, microschools across the country have developed distinctive models centered on self-directed learning, classical education, faith-based instruction, project-based learning, and other innovative models.

Microschools exist within a broader landscape of flexible educational options from homeschooling to traditional private schools. For purposes of this proposal, “microschool” refers generally to a small, independently operated educational program serving students from multiple families. Nothing in this proposal is intended to alter Wisconsin’s existing home-based education laws or increase regulation of homeschooling families.

Microschooling has grown significantly in recent years. The National Microschooling Center’s May 2026 sector analysis, surveying 1,000 microschools across all 50 states, estimates that approximately 1.5 million students nationwide now attend roughly 75,000 microschools.^xxviii

Some microschools in Wisconsin may already qualify as private schools under existing law. Wisconsin’s private school definition does not establish a minimum enrollment or prohibit a school simply because it is small or uses an innovative instructional model. A microschool that satisfies the requirements of Wis. Stat. §§ 115.001(3r) and 118.165(1) may therefore operate as a private school under existing Wisconsin law.

But laws and regulations designed for conventional schools may create disproportionate barriers for very small educational programs. Microschools may operate in homes, churches, community spaces, or small commercial buildings rather than traditional school facilities. Depending on how a program or its location is classified, a microschool may encounter zoning, permitting, building-use, occupancy, or other requirements that can be costly or difficult to navigate. Compliance costs that may be manageable for a school serving hundreds of students can prevent a microschool serving a dozen students from opening at all.

Wisconsin should ensure that its laws provide room for these small educational models to develop without subjecting them to unnecessary regulation or disturbing the flexibility already available to homeschool and private school families.

Solution: 

Wisconsin should establish clear protections for microschools while preserving the flexibility that allows these small educational models to innovate. The goal should not be to create a comprehensive new regulatory regime. Rather, state law should provide enough clarity and protection to prevent unnecessary regulatory barriers from making small educational programs impractical.

Other states have begun addressing this issue. West Virginia and Utah, for example, have adopted statutory provisions recognizing microschools and distinguishing them from other educational arrangements. Utah has also addressed zoning, occupancy, and facility barriers that can make it difficult for microschools to operate in homes and other nontraditional spaces.

Wisconsin should take a similar approach. First, the legislature should create a statutory definition of “microschool,” distinct from both the private school definition under Wis. Stat. § 118.165(1) and the home-based education definition under § 115.001(3g). This would give founders a clear legal pathway rather than forcing microschools into categories designed for other educational models. Second, Wisconsin should reduce unnecessary facility barriers. A microschool operating in a building that already meets basic health and safety standards should not face additional zoning or building requirements simply because a small number of students receive instruction there. State law could establish reasonable protections for microschools operating in residential, religious, community, or commercial spaces while preserving generally applicable health and safety standards.

Any microschools legislation should also include clear protections for existing educational options. A microschool that qualifies and chooses to operate as a private school should remain free to do so, and nothing in the law should expand regulation of home-based private educational programs.

Why it Matters:

Microschools give educators and families room to develop new approaches without the infrastructure and expense required to establish a conventional school. Their size can make it easier to experiment with curriculum, scheduling, staffing, mixed-age instruction, and other features that may be difficult to implement in larger schools.

Wisconsin law should make room for these models without regulating away the flexibility that makes them valuable. Removing unnecessary barriers would give microschool founders greater certainty, protect existing educational options, and allow new models to develop in response to the needs and preferences of Wisconsin families.

Respect Parental Authority

Establish a Parental Bill of Rights

The Problem:

For more than a century, the Supreme Court has recognized that parents, not the government, have the fundamental right to direct the upbringing, education, and care of their children. Beginning with Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Pierce v. Society of Sisters (1925), and reaffirmed in decisions including Prince v. Massachusetts (1944), Wisconsin v. Yoder (1972), Parham v. J.R. (1979), Troxel v. Granville (2000), and most recently Mahmoud v. Taylor (2025), the Court has consistently held that parents possess a constitutionally protected liberty interest in making decisions concerning the care, custody, education, and religious upbringing of their children. These principles are not merely aspirational—they are binding constitutional law. 

Federal law likewise recognizes that parents, not school officials, are the primary decisionmakers for their children. Statutes such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (PPRA) grant parents important rights to access their children’s education records, receive notice before schools collect sensitive personal information, and consent to certain surveys and activities. These laws are consistent with the decisions by the Supreme Court and reflect the principle that parents are presumed to act in the best interests of their children and should have the information necessary to fulfill that responsibility.

The challenge is that parental rights are scattered across constitutional doctrine, federal statutes, and isolated provisions of state law, making it difficult for parents to understand, exercise, and enforce. Unfortunately, school districts have adopted policies that conflict with these longstanding principles by withholding important information from parents, limiting access to instructional materials, or otherwise treating parents as secondary participants in decisions involving their own children. When those disputes arise, parents are often left with few practical options beyond filing public records requests, pursuing administrative complaints, or initiating costly constitutional litigation.

The Solution:

Wisconsin should not require parents to resort to litigation to vindicate rights that have long been recognized under the Constitution and federal law. Instead, the Legislature should provide a clear statutory framework that identifies those rights, establishes consistent expectations for school districts, and creates meaningful mechanisms to ensure they are respected. A Parent Bill of Rights would not create new constitutional rights; It would codify and reinforce existing ones, providing clarity for families, guidance for school districts, and accountability when those rights are violated. WILL supported the Parent Bill of Rights legislation introduced in 2022 and in 2023.^xxix

At a minimum, the legislation should guarantee parents timely access to instructional materials, curriculum outlines, education records, and other information relating to their child’s education. Schools should be required to provide advance notice before administering surveys or providing instruction involving sensitive topics and should clearly inform parents of any available opportunity to excuse their child from controversial instruction. Parents should receive timely notice regarding significant disciplinary actions, serious safety incidents, and other events that materially affect their child’s safety and wellbeing while at school.

The legislation should also clarify that school officials may not withhold information from parents relating to significant decisions affecting their child absent a legal obligation to do so. Finally, any statutory recognition of parental rights should include an appropriate enforcement mechanism to ensure that those rights are meaningful. Clear legal standards benefit both parents and school districts by reducing uncertainty, promoting consistency, and resolving disputes through an established framework.

Why It Matters:

Education is most effective when schools and parents work as partners rather than adversaries. Transparency fosters trust, encourages parental engagement, and allows families and teachers to address concerns before they escalate into conflict. Conversely, when parents are denied access to information or excluded from important decisions involving their children, public confidence in educational institutions suffers.

A Parent Bill of Rights would establish a uniform baseline of parental protections applicable throughout Wisconsin. The Legislature should reaffirm the foundational principle that public schools exist to educate children, not to supplant parents. By clearly defining parental rights, establishing transparent procedures, and providing meaningful accountability when those rights are violated, Wisconsin can strengthen the partnership between families and schools while ensuring that the fundamental rights of parents receive the protection they deserve.

Read More: 

WILL Parental Toolkit by Cory Brewer and Lauren Greuel – August 2025

Require Curriculum Transparency

The Problem:

Trust in public education is undermined when parents, taxpayers, and even locally elected school board members cannot easily determine what students are being taught in the classroom. While Wisconsin’s public records law provides one avenue for obtaining instructional materials, it is often inadequate and burdensome. Parents and taxpayers have encountered significant delays, prohibitive fees, inconsistent responses, and outright refusals when seeking access to curriculum, lesson plans, and other classroom materials.

The need for greater transparency has become increasingly apparent as debates over instructional content have expanded beyond Wisconsin’s largest school districts into suburban and rural communities. Public confidence suffers when communities must rely on isolated examples rather than complete and accurate information about what is actually being taught.

The Solution:

Wisconsin should require every public school district to maintain an online curriculum transparency portal that provides parents, taxpayers, and school board members with meaningful access to instructional materials and educational activities used in student instruction. WILL supported curriculum transparency legislation in 2022.^xxx

School districts should publicly identify instructional materials by grade level, subject, and teacher; provide bibliographic information for textbooks and other assigned resources; make available teacher-created instructional materials such as lesson plans presentations where legally permissible; and link to information about district-adopted curricula. Districts should update this information on a regular schedule and notify parents when updates occur. The legislation should also include an appropriate enforcement mechanism to ensure compliance while respecting copyright protections for published materials.

Why It Matters:

Curriculum transparency is not about dictating what schools may teach. It is about ensuring that the public can see what government schools are teaching. Public schools are taxpayer-funded institutions, and instructional materials used to educate Wisconsin’s children should not be hidden behind public records requests, excessive fees, or inconsistent local practices. Parents are better equipped to partner with educators when they understand what their children are learning, and school boards can more effectively fulfill their responsibilities when instructional materials are open to public review. Simply put, transparency builds trust, and trust is essential to a successful public education system.

Read More: 

Opening the Schoolhouse Door: Promoting Curriculum Transparency by Dr. Will Flanders and Jessica Holmberg – May 2021

Put Students Before Systems

Establish Weighted Student Funding

The Problem:

Wisconsin’s school funding system has developed over decades and reflects a series of policy choices about state aid, local revenue, property wealth, and enrollment. The result is a complex system in which funding is distributed through multiple mechanisms, including equalization aid, categorical aids, and local revenues.

At the same time, the way Wisconsin students receive an education has changed. Families increasingly choose among traditional public schools, charter schools, open enrollment, and private schools participating in the state’s parental choice programs. Students also have different educational needs that can affect the resources required to serve them, including students with disabilities, English learners, and students from low-income families.

Wisconsin has an opportunity to build on its existing funding framework by moving toward a model that is simpler, more transparent, and more directly connected to the students being educated. A weighted student funding model could make it easier to understand how resources are allocated, allow funding to respond more directly to enrollment and student needs, and better accommodate Wisconsin’s increasingly diverse educational landscape.

The Solution:

We propose that the Wisconsin Legislature move toward a weighted student funding (WSF) model, under which every student is funded at a common base level regardless of district or school sector, with additional “weights” providing extra resources for students with greater needs. For instance, Figure 3 depicts the weighting system used in Nashville Public Schools.^xxxi 

Importantly, this model would include public schools, charter schools, and private choice programs, ensuring that education dollars follow students to the school they attend. Funding would adjust more dynamically as students move, replacing the current three-year rolling enrollment average with a system better aligned to real-time enrollment. There are levels of implementation possible here. 

Tier 1: Distribute selected categorical aids using student-based weights, directing additional resources according to identified student needs.   

Tier 2: Incorporate additional categorical funding into general aid and distribute those state resources using weighted student funding principles.

Tier 3: Consider broader changes to the state aid formula that incorporate weighted student funding while providing a gradual transition for districts and taxpayers.

Any transition should be designed carefully to avoid abrupt funding changes for schools and districts and unintended increases in local property taxes.

Why It Matters:

Wisconsin’s existing school funding system supports students across more than 400 school districts and a growing range of educational options. Weighted student funding offers an opportunity to build on that foundation with a system that is easier to understand and more directly connected to enrollment and student needs.

A student-centered formula could make the flow of education dollars more transparent, direct additional resources to students with greater needs, and better reflect the choices Wisconsin families make about where their children are educated. The goal is not simply to spend more or less, but to make the connection between students, their needs, and the resources devoted to their education clearer.

Read more: 

Fund Every Kid: Reforming Wisconsin’s School Funding Formula by Dr. Will Flanders – July 2021

Decouple Funding Systems

The Problem:

Wisconsin’s parental choice programs are state-created programs, but outside of Milwaukee, their funding currently interacts with the Wisconsin school district finance system. When a student participates in a choice program, the state makes a corresponding adjustment to the resident school district’s aid. The district may then use its existing revenue authority to replace that amount through the property tax levy.

This funding mechanism preserves district revenue authority while providing funding for students participating in choice, but the interaction between state aid, district revenue limits, and property taxes is complicated and can make it difficult for taxpayers to understand which level of government is ultimately financing the choice programs. It can also lead to increases in local property tax levies associated with participation in what is fundamentally a state program.

Wisconsin has already begun moving toward a simpler model in Milwaukee. Under a phased-in reform, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program moved towards being funded directly by the state. Wisconsin should extend that approach statewide.

The Solution:

Wisconsin should fund the parental choice programs directly through state General Purpose Revenue (GPR) rather than through adjustments to school district state aid. Choice students would no longer factor into the corresponding district aid adjustment, while existing district revenue authority would be preserved.

This approach is sometimes referred to as “decoupling” and would change how choice programs are funded, not reduce the resources available for public schools. Property taxes would also fall because districts would no longer backfill choice aid reductions. 

Recent spending figures released by DPI suggest that decoupling the WPCP and RPCP could provide more than $305 million in property tax relief annually. Decoupling independent charters and the Special Needs Scholarship could provide an additional $88 million in property tax relief,^xxxii meaning that both reforms together would save property taxpayers almost $394.5 million annually. The ten districts that could see the largest savings are show in Table 3 below.

Table 3. Potential Savings from Decoupling WPCP, RPCP, SNSP and Independent Charters

Milwaukee has already adopted this decoupled approach for the MPCP through a phased-in reform, demonstrating that decoupling is both feasible and administratively workable in Wisconsin’s funding framework. However, because the SNSP and independent charter schools are not decoupled in Milwaukee, district taxpayers are still impacted.

Direct state funding would also provide greater predictability for both school districts and choice programs. Districts would no longer see state aid reduced when resident students participate in choice, while choice programs would be funded through a clear and direct state funding mechanism.

Why It Matters:

Direct state funding would make Wisconsin’s education finance system easier for taxpayers to understand. Public school districts would continue to operate under the state’s established funding framework, while the state would assume direct responsibility for financing its parental choice programs.

The approach also has genuinely bipartisan roots. Then-State Superintendent Tony Evers supported the concept as early as 2014, explaining that vouchers are “a state program. If we’re going to have vouchers, it should be paid for by the state.”^xxxiii Democratic and Republican legislators have since introduced legislation in recent years to move toward direct state funding.⁸

Direct funding would preserve resources for public schools, reduce property taxes, and create a clearer connection between the state programs the Legislature has established and the state funding that supports them.

Implement the Federal School Choice Tax Credit

The Problem:

Wisconsin has a unique opportunity to expand educational support for all families across the state by opting into the new Federal Tax Credit Scholarship Program.^xxxiv This policy allows individuals to receive a 100 percent federal tax credit—up to $1,700—for donations to nonprofit Scholarship Granting Organizations, which then provide scholarships to eligible K–12 students. Importantly, this program comes at no cost to the state: it is entirely funded through private donations incentivized by federal tax policy. 

Unlike Wisconsin’s existing private school choice programs, which are tied to stricter income thresholds and can only be used for tuition at private schools, the federal program is available to a much broader range of families and applies across educational settings including public schools, charter schools and private schools.

The policy is especially attractive because of its flexibility and reach. Scholarship funds can be used not only for tuition, but also for tutoring, special education therapies, transportation, curriculum, technology, internet access, and other educational supports that families often struggle to afford. 

Importantly, in order for Wisconsin students to see this benefit, the governor must opt the state in. During his last year as governor, Governor Evers has stated that he will not opt Wisconsin in to the program.^xxxv If Wisconsin fails to opt in, state residents can still claim the federal tax credit by donating to SGOs in other states, effectively sending potential scholarship dollars elsewhere while Wisconsin students receive nothing.

The Solution:

Opting in is simple and time sensitive. All that is required is for the Governor to notify the U.S. Department of the Treasury and submit an annual list of qualified Scholarship Granting Organizations by January for SGOs to be able to provide scholarships in the state in that year.^xxxvi Given that Governor Evers has said he will not opt Wisconsin in, it likely means it would fall to a new Governor to make the notification and submit the list by January 2028, or as soon as possible, depending upon forthcoming regulations from the Treasury Department.  

Implementation across the country has seen bi-partisan support. Democratic Governor Jared Polis of Colorado has stated that it would not be sensible to turn down “free” money for education.  Governor Josh Stein in North Carolina, has said that he will opt the state in pending “sound federal guidance.”^xxxvii Even New York Governor Kathy Hochul, despite facing pressure from her state’s powerful teachers’ unions, announced in May 2026 that she intends to opt New York into the program as well.^xxxviii

Why It Matters:

Eligibility is set at 300 percent of area median income, meaning many middle-class families who are currently excluded from Wisconsin’s choice programs (set at 220-300 percent of the federal poverty level depending on the program) would qualify.^xxxix Unlike Wisconsin’s existing choice programs, this one is not limited to private school tuition or to families leaving the public system. Funds can cover a variety of services, including tutoring, technology, and other supports for any eligible child, public and private alike, putting resources directly in parents’ hands at no cost to the state.  Assuming Governor Evers does not follow the actions of his fellow Democrats in other states, it is vital that the new governor does not squander this opportunity for Wisconsin kids.

Read More: 

Unleashing Opportunity: Why Wisconsin Should Opt in to the Federal Tax Credit Program by Dr. Will Flanders and Cory Brewer – August 2025

Promote Referenda Best Practices

School district referenda serve as an opportunity for taxpayers to make democratic decisions at the local level, and Wisconsin districts use that tool constantly. Since 1990, 418 of Wisconsin’s 421 school districts, 99.3% of all districts in the state, have gone to referendum at least once, and voters have approved more than $25.5 billion in referendum spending over that period.^xl In 2024 alone, Wisconsin districts asked voters to approve a record 241 referenda, seeking a record $5.9 billion, and voters approved 169 of them for a record $4.4 billion in new funding.^xli

Referenda are an important tool for local decision-making, but because they can affect property taxes for years or even decades, voters should receive clear and consistent information about the financial consequences before casting their ballots.

The Problem: 

Wisconsin law gives voters the final say on many significant school district spending decisions, but the financial information presented to voters is not always standardized or easy to understand. Referendum costs may be described in terms of mill rates or the amount borrowed without giving voters a complete picture of long-term cost or impact on individual property tax bills.

These issues are increasingly important as districts make frequent use of referenda. A February 2026 Marquette Law School poll found that 57% of Wisconsin voters said they would be inclined to vote against a referendum to increase taxes for their local schools, and 60% said reducing property taxes mattered more to them than increasing school funding, a reversal from previous years where voters favored additional funding over tax relief.^xlii Figure 4 shows the growing number of referenda by year in Wisconsin (years with fall elections tend to have more referenda). 

Real examples, detailed in a 2024 report from WILL, illustrate why clearer and more consistent disclosures would help voters.^xliii 

Property valuations can complicate estimates of the tax impact. In Monroe, the district projected a referendum would raise taxes by about $13 per $100,000 of home value. Because of valuation changes the district didn’t disclose, the true increase for some homeowners ran 10 to 15 times higher. One homeowner expecting an increase of $39 reported an increase of $677.

Debt structures make the first-year cost different from the long-term cost. In Augusta, the district structured referendum payments to grow from $381,169 in year one to $1,106,431 by 2036, a 190% increase that added nearly $7 million in cost beyond the $10.5 million actually borrowed. District marketing materials emphasized only the low first-year impact. Providing voters with both the initial tax impact and the total projected principal and interest would give them a more complete picture of the commitment.

A tax decrease does not necessarily mean a referendum has no cost. In Green Bay, a 2022 referendum was marketed as lowering taxes because a bond issuance from a previous referendum was expiring. Voters therefore needed information not only about the projected tax rate if the referendum passed, but also about what the rate would be if it failed.

The Solution: 

Wisconsin should establish straightforward, uniform disclosure requirements for school district referenda. Before voting, taxpayers should be able to answer three basic questions:

• What will this mean for my property taxes? Require districts to present the estimated net tax impact per $100,000 of property value.
• What is the total cost? Require districts to present the total estimated cost of the referendum, including principal and interest. 
• What happens if it does not pass? Require districts to present a disclosure of how taxes would decrease if the referendum did not pass.

These requirements should not be buried in the fine print on a district website. Districts often spend significant sums marketing referenda through mailers, newsletters, dedicated websites and social media campaigns. Any district-produced materials promoting a referendum should be required to include all three disclosures above, not just official notices few voters ever see. The estimated net tax impact per $100,000 of property value should also be included directly in the ballot question itself, so no voter can cast a vote without seeing the number that matters most.

Why It Matters: 

For democracy to operate in its full capacity, taxpayers cannot be misled or misinformed when voting on impactful decisions such as school referenda. Wisconsin voters are trusted with billions of dollars in local taxing authority every election cycle. Voters deserve access to the same information they would expect before signing a mortgage or a car loan, especially when the decision shapes tax bills across the entire district for decades to come. The facts of a referendum’s financial implications are already available to district officials. They should not be hidden from the very taxpayers being asked to approve them.

Read More: 

Piercing the Fog: Shedding Light on School District Referenda in Wisconsin by Dr. Will Flanders and Kitalya Spencer – April 2024

Create a Statewide Vacant Buildings Law

Enrollment in K-12 schools is declining. From 2015 to 2025, 73.6% of Wisconsin school districts saw a decline in students as enrollment statewide decreased from 867,137 to 805,881 students.^xliv With over 61,000 less students enrolled across the state, districts are left with underutilized and vacant buildings as they consolidate schools. When these buildings remain underused and unused, taxpayers continue to foot the bill without the benefits. Once a district determines that a building is no longer needed for educational purposes, its responsibility should be to sell or use the property in a manner that maximizes value for taxpayers and returns the property to productive use. 

The Problem: 

School districts have attempted to use deed restrictions or other conditions of sale to prohibit purchasers from using former school buildings as schools. These restrictions are designed not to preserve a public purpose, but to prevent lawful competition from private schools, independent charter schools, or other educational providers. In some instances, districts have even refused full-price offers solely because the purchaser intended to educate students. 

Wisconsin currently lacks a statewide law that would direct districts to confront this issue. While the Milwaukee Public School District (MPS) is required to identify their vacant buildings and prioritize sales to education operators in accordance with Wisconsin State Statute 119.61, they steadily fail to meet these requirements. A WILL study found that from 2006 to 2017, Milwaukee taxpayers spent over $10 million on utilities for vacant buildings in MPS alone as the district held onto 15 vacant buildings and neglected sales to charter operators.^xlv To date, MPS reports that 49% of buildings have a low or very low utilization rate.^xlvi As enrollment falls statewide, this concern extends far beyond MPS.  

This practice harms taxpayers and communities alike. Anti-competitive deed restrictions reduce the market value of public assets, discourage potential buyers, prolong the vacancy of unused buildings, and can leave taxpayers responsible for ongoing maintenance, security, and insurance costs. Public property should not be retained or encumbered simply to insulate a school district from competition. 

The Solution:

Wisconsin should establish a statewide process for identifying and returning surplus school property to productive use. Once a district determines that a building is no longer needed for school district operations, state law should require the district to take reasonable steps to sell or otherwise put the property back into use.

Specifically, Wisconsin should:

• Prohibit anti-competitive deed restrictions. Districts should not be permitted to impose deed restrictions or other conditions that prevent former school properties from being used for lawful educational purposes after the district has determined the property is no longer needed for public school operations. School districts should remain free to negotiate commercially reasonable terms of sale that protect legitimate public interests. 
• Require annual facility reporting. Each district should report to DPI the use, enrollment capacity, utilization rate, condition, projected maintenance needs, and utility costs of each district-owned building. This would mirror a requirement that currently only applies to Milwaukee Public Schools. DPI should publish this information through a statewide, searchable dashboard so taxpayers and potential purchasers can identify vacant and underutilized properties.
• Give educational operators an opportunity to purchase surplus schools. Before selling a former school building for a noneducational use, districts should provide private schools and charter school operators an opportunity to purchase the property on equivalent terms. A district should not be permitted to reject an otherwise qualified offer solely because the purchaser intends to continue using the property as a school. 
• Require action on long-vacant buildings. If a vacant building remains on the market for a full year without a sale, require the district to make it available for lease to a private or charter school at $1 per year, similar in spirit to Indiana’s long-standing law requiring districts to offer unused buildings to charter operators, though structured around a market-testing period rather than immediate availability.

Why It Matters: 

School districts exist to educate students, not to suppress educational competition. Taxpayer-funded assets should be managed for the benefit of the public. Prohibiting anti-competitive deed restrictions would encourage the productive use of vacant school buildings, reduce unnecessary costs associated with maintaining unused facilities, increase returns to taxpayers through competitive sales, and expand opportunities for educational innovation within Wisconsin communities. 

Requiring districts to publicly report building inventory can increase transparency to taxpayers and hold districts accountable in actively seeking a solution to mitigate the financial impacts of holding onto vacant schools. By enforcing surplus property legislation statewide, vacant school buildings can be put to beneficial use for students, rather than continuing to sit empty at the cost of taxpayers.

Read More:      

Empty Handed: How Milwaukee Thwarted a State Law Meant to Help Schools by Libby Sobic—October 2020

Increase Transparency and Accountability

Increase Fiscal Transparency and Efficiency 

The Problem:

Wisconsin makes a substantial investment in K-12 education. According to the most recent analysis from the non-partisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau released in 2025, the State has provided two-thirds of the education funding available to Wisconsin schools in every year since 2020.^xlvii In 2025-26, Wisconsin allocated $8,741,999,500 in state general purpose revenue (GPR) to K-12 education.^xlviii During the 2024-25 school year, per-pupil revenue reached an average of $18,746 across the state. With that level of public investment, parents, taxpayers, school boards, and policymakers should be able to easily understand how education dollars are being spent.

Wisconsin already requires extensive school district financial reporting, and DPI makes significant amounts of financial information publicly available. In 2025, DPI took an additional step toward greater transparency with the Wisconsin School Finance Public Reports (WSFPR) system. But there is room to make that information easier to find, understand, and compare.

Currently, financial information is spread across multiple DPI websites and reporting systems. For example, school-level expenditure data is available through the ESSA section of the WiseDash portal rather than within WSFPR.^xlix  A parent or taxpayer trying to understand how much a district spends, where that money goes, or how spending compares with similar districts may therefore need to navigate multiple systems and specialized school finance terminology.

The information could also be presented in more intuitive categories. Other states, including Georgia, provide public-facing financial tools that organize expenditures into recognizable categories.^l Wisconsin can build on its existing reporting infrastructure to make school finance information more accessible and useful to the public.  

The Solution:

Wisconsin should build on its existing financial reporting system by making school finance information easier to access, understand, and compare. Specifically:

1. Create a one-stop school finance dashboard. Bring district- and school-level financial information together in one place, allowing users to view revenues, expenditures, enrollment, per-pupil spending, and historical trends without navigating multiple state databases. 
2. Present spending in plain-language categories. Show how education dollars are allocated among instruction, administration, facilities, transportation, student services, and other major categories. The Georgia Department of Education website offers a breakdown of spending that are descriptive of what they represent. The WSPFPR page offers no such breakdown, instead only identifying spending within various Funds.  A snapshot of the Georgia page is included in Figure 6.
4. Add comparative financial indicators. Allow users to compare districts with similar enrollment and characteristics on measures such as per-pupil spending, instructional spending, administrative costs, staffing, and fund balances. This would help school boards, taxpayers, and policymakers identify trends and opportunities to use resources more efficiently. 
5. Reduce the cost of accessing school financial records. Wisconsin should eliminate location fees for public records requests specifically related to school district financial records, including expenditures, revenues, and budget documents. Under current law, districts may charge requesters for the actual, necessary costs of locating records, a cost that can discourage taxpayers, parents, and journalists from seeking information to hold their district accountable. 

Why it Matters:

Wisconsin spends substantial amounts on K-12 education and taxpayers are entitled to understand what results are being achieved with that money. That makes it especially important to understand where education dollars are going and whether they are being used effectively. Better financial transparency would give taxpayers, school boards, and policymakers the information they need to evaluate spending, identify opportunities for improvement, and make better-informed funding decisions.

End Grade Inflation

The Problem:

Increasingly, there is a disconnect between the grades students earn in school and their mastery of the corresponding subjects. DPI reported that 51%-53% of students met or exceeded expectations on the 2024-2025 English language arts and math Forward Exams, which are the state’s primary standardized accountability tests.^li Wisconsin’s graduation rate also reached 91.1%, a record high and also above national averages.^lii However, Wisconsin’s National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores have not shown a similar improvement in student achievement.^liii Only 31% of Wisconsin students scored at or above the “proficient” level in reading, with similar results in mathematics. These scores changed little from 2022, suggesting that gains in graduation rates and state-reported proficiency have not been accompanied by comparable gains on an independent national measure.

As reported by the MacIver Institute, the number of schools with students needing remedial education when they reach college has increased significantly over time, from 196 in 2017 to 486 in 2024.^liv This raises additional questions about whether high school grades and diplomas consistently reflect readiness for college or the workforce.  

Minimum Grading Floors Can Inflate Student Grades

Some Wisconsin districts have adopted grading floors that guarantee students a passing-adjacent score regardless of actual performance. The Madison Metropolitan School District is a prime example:  the policy, first implemented in 2020, makes it so the lowest grade that a student can receive is a 50%, even if they submit no work.^lv These policies institute minimum floor systems that can raise course averages mechanically. By preventing teachers from assigning grades below an established floor, even when work is not completed, these policies can raise a student’s course average without a corresponding improvement in performance.

Standards Based Grading Can Obscure Student Performance

A second, more widespread shift in Wisconsin classrooms is the move toward standards-based grading.  Wisconsin Public Radio reports that districts such as Milwaukee, Baraboo, McFarland, and Racine have implemented so-called “Standards Based” grading, where traditional A-F grades are replaced with an assessment of mastery.^lvi Critics of standards-based grading argue that some implementations can make overall academic performance harder for parents to interpret, particularly when traditional grades, homework completion, or other measures are removed from the grading system.^lvii Depending on how the system is designed, this can also make comparisons across classrooms or schools more difficult and create confusion about a student’s overall academic standing.

Credit Recovery Can Award Credit Without Demonstrating Comparable Mastery

 A third driver of grade inflation operates outside the classroom entirely: course credit recovery. Course credit recovery programs allow students to earn full course credit through shortened, self-paced, or alternative coursework that may differ substantially from the original course in instructional time, format, and assessment.^lviii This means the recovered credit is not equivalent in instructional time, depth, or assessment difficulty. Many programs rely heavily on multiple-choice tests, automated grading, or answer-until-correct formats, which can inflate scores without demonstrating durable learning, while generous retake policies and minimal penalties for prior failure further raise final grades.  Because credit recovery often replaces an “F” with a passing grade rather than recording both attempts, GPAs can rise even when mastery remains weak.

For example, in Milwaukee, the Edgenuity program is used for course credit recovery.^lix This program is described as “self-paced,” where students can test out of units by passing an exam. It is noted that student’s grades are “updated to reflect student proficiency.”  But the availability of accelerated or test-out options raises an important question as to whether recovered credit demonstrates mastery comparable to successful completion of the original course.

The Solution:

Prohibit school districts from requiring teachers to assign a minimum grade that does not reflect a student’s actual performance. Similar legislation has been introduced in other states, like South Carolina. Specifically, the bill would prohibit school districts from requiring teachers to give grades that do not reflect the student’s actual level of performance in the class. Similar legislation should be considered in Wisconsin to ensure that grades accurately reflect demonstrated student performance.

Wisconsin could also consider incentives tied to objective measures of postsecondary readiness, such as ACT performance or the share of graduates requiring college remediation.

Wisconsin should limit opportunities for credit recovery. Students should continue to have the ability to make up classes that they may have failed for any number of reasons or life circumstances.  But that failure ought to still be reflected in the academic record. To control the impact of credit recovery on grading and GPA, the legislature could consider limiting grade replacement and ensure that credit recovery courses maintain equivalent standards to the original course. Policies could require that recovered grades are not weighted higher than the original performance or record them as “CR” (credit recovered) rather than replacing the failing grade in GPA calculations. The state could also cap the number of credits recoverable per semester or implement teacher-approved portfolios or competency-based assessments instead of purely online modules to verify true mastery. 

Wisconsin does not currently have a clear picture of how much grade inflation is actually occurring across its schools, largely because the data needed to see it does not exist in a usable, public form. Wisconsin should require high schools to publicly report grade distributions by course, alongside the school’s corresponding performance on the ACT or other standardized measures where available. This would allow parents, school boards, and policymakers to identify courses or departments where GPAs are rising without any corresponding gain in objective, independently verified performance. Transparency alone will not fix grade inflation, but it ensures that when a school’s grades and its standardized results diverge sharply, that gap is visible rather than hidden, and that parents and school boards, not just administrators, get to decide what to do about it.

Why It Matters:

When grades no longer reflect what a student has learned, families lose the ability to make informed decisions, and students lose an honest assessment of their own readiness. A diploma is supposed to certify that a student is prepared for what comes next, whether that is the workforce or higher education and grade inflation breaks that connection.  Minimum grading floors, credit recovery programs that do not require comparable mastery, and grading systems that make academic performance difficult to interpret can create the same problem of grades and credentials that may tell families a student is on track even when independent measures suggest otherwise.

Left unaddressed, this disconnect does not just mislead individual families. It also makes it harder for school boards and policymakers to accurately assess student performance and identify areas for improvement. Students deserve grades and credentials that clearly communicate what they have learned and whether they are prepared for what comes next.

Align Forward Exam Proficiency Categories with NAEP Achievement Levels

The Problem:

In 2023-24, Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) made substantial changes to the Forward Exam scoring and performance categories, altering both the labels and cut points used to classify student achievement. Traditional performance levels were relabeled in in 2023-24, a shift DPI described as less “insulting,” but is actually just less informative for parents and educators. Those shifts are depicted in Table 4 below. 

These adjustments broke the prior alignment between Forward Exam proficiency and NAEP achievement levels, making Wisconsin’s state-reported proficiency rates less directly comparable to NAEP and disrupting comparisons with prior years of Forward Exam results.

The practical impact of these changes has been dramatic: statewide achievement rates for English Language Arts and math spiked by more than 10 percentage points overnight. This was not because student learning suddenly improved, but rather because the bar for achievement on the Forward Exam was lowered. As a result, long-term trend data was disrupted—Wisconsin’s own WiseDash reporting platform now issues disclaimers that 2023-24 results can’t be shown in trend graphs because the standards changed. This undermines the ability of parents, researchers, and policymakers to accurately assess how students are actually performing compared to previous years.

The Solution:

To fix these issues, Wisconsin should write assessment standards directly into statute. Specifically, statutorily aligning Forward Exam proficiency categories with NAEP achievement levels in statute would provide a stable benchmark for comparing Wisconsin performance over time and against an independent national measure. Major changes to those benchmarks should occur through a transparent process rather than through administrative action alone.

The legislature made restoring these standards a priority during the 2025-26 session.  2025 Assembly Bill 1 was vetoed by the Governor, despite him previously saying that he did not agree with the changes that DPI made.¹⁰ Ensuring that any future adjustments to examination standards and accountability measures go through formal public procedures would help maintain trust in the assessment system and provide families and communities with clearer, more useful information about student achievement.

Why It Matters:

Parents, educators, and policymakers rely on assessment data to understand whether students are performing and where there is room for improvement. When performance standards change, it becomes difficult to distinguish between genuine academic improvement and changes caused by moving the goalposts. Accurate and consistent measures are essential for identifying where students need additional support and directing resources effectively. Maintaining clear and meaningful benchmarks ensures that families and policymakers have reliable information while encouraging Wisconsin schools to aim even higher.

Read more:

Gaming the System: Wisconsin’s Forward Exam Scores Now Useless by Dr. Will Flanders – October 2024

Strengthen Wisconsin’s School Report Cards

The Problem:  

Wisconsin has an established statewide system for measuring and reporting school performance. State law requires the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) to publish annual accountability reports for every public school and school district.¹¹ These report cards incorporate multiple measures of school performance, including student achievement and growth in reading and mathematics, graduation rates, and other indicators, and assign schools and districts to one of five performance categories. DPI reviews and publishes these results annually.  

Wisconsin’s report cards provide an important measure of how schools and districts are performing against the expectations established by the state. Under the Wisconsin Constitution, Wisconsin students are entitled to the opportunity to receive a sound basic education.  That is the constitutional minimal requirement for education adequacy in this state, and the DPI report cards can be considered to meet that standard of that minimal requirement. 

And, by those measures, the overwhelming majority of Wisconsin school districts are meeting the state’s educational expectations as set by the Legislature and the DPI under the supervision of the Superintendent of Public Instruction. In 2024-25, 395 of the 420 districts receiving an accountability rating (94%) were rated “Meets Expectations” or above.^lxii Only 25 districts were rated “Meets Few Expectations,” and no district received the lowest rating of “Fails to Meet Expectations.”  

Based on the Legislature’s selected metrics and DPI’s algorithms and formulas, Wisconsin public schools are meeting existing minimum expectations, but that should not end the conversation.  There are significant gaps in the performance between school districts and there is substantial room for improvement.  It is a fair question to ask how Wisconsin can improve student achievement beyond the constitutional minimum. An effective accountability system can both provide a meaningful assessment of current school performance against the constitutional standard and encourage continued improvement.  

Wisconsin should build on its existing framework by ensuring that:  

(1) parents and school administrators can easily understand what the ratings mean,  

(2) results can be meaningfully compared across schools and over time, and  

One area worth examining is the relative weight assigned to student achievement and student “growth.” Both are important measures of school performance. “Growth,” in this context, captures whether students are making academic progress, including students who may begin significantly behind grade level. Achievement measures whether students are meeting the state’s academic expectations. Under Wisconsin’s current methodology, however, the relative weight assigned to these measures can vary substantially depending on the percentage of economically disadvantaged students in a school or district. In some districts, growth can account for as much as 45% of the overall score, while achievement accounts for as little as 5%.  

The report cards could also do an overall better job of communicating their results to parents and taxpayers. The Center on Reinventing Public Education at Arizona State University graded all 50 states’ school report card systems based on how easily a parent could access and understand school performance information and gave Wisconsin a D.^lxiii Wisconsin’s five-star system also requires parents to understand what categories such as “Meets Few Expectations” or “Exceeds Expectations” mean. A more intuitive presentation could communicate the same underlying accountability information more clearly.  

Finally, Wisconsin should make it easier to understand changes in student performance over time. Parents and policymakers should be able to determine whether Wisconsin students are performing better or worse than students in prior years and how Wisconsin compares with national performance. Changes to state assessments, academic standards, proficiency thresholds, or accountability methodologies can complicate those comparisons. Wisconsin should therefore prioritize consistency and transparency when changes are made to its accountability system and clearly explain when results are not directly comparable with prior years.   

The Solution:  

Wisconsin should build upon its existing accountability system with reforms designed to make school report cards understandable, transparent, and comparable and by providing customized road maps for individual low performing school districts as to appropriate changes to be made within the district to improve future performance.  

Implement an A-F Report Card  

Wisconsin should replace its current five-star rating system with straightforward A-F school grades. Florida pioneered A-F school grading in 1999, and roughly 15 other states have adopted similar systems.^lxiv

An A-F system would not replace Wisconsin’s existing accountability measures. Instead, it would communicate the results of those measures in a format that parents and taxpayers can more readily understand. Detailed achievement, growth, graduation, attendance, and other data should remain available so users can understand the measures underlying a school’s grade.  

Research on accountability systems has also found evidence that clearly identifying low-performing schools and holding them accountable can produce academic improvement. Research suggests that accountability systems are more effective at improving student achievement when poor performance carries meaningful consequences—such as targeted state intervention or additional oversight of local school district administration—rather than simply reporting results to the public.^lxv Wisconsin should pair understandable school grades with goal setting for future performance and proposed steps to get there for persistently low-performing schools.  

Re-Weight Academic Performance and Growth  

Wisconsin should review the weighting of achievement and growth within its accountability formula to ensure that schools receive appropriate credit for helping students improve while maintaining ambitious expectations for student achievement.  

There are several potential approaches. Wisconsin could establish more consistent weights for achievement of expectations and growth across districts (perhaps 40% for achieving the expectation and 10% growth), narrow the existing range of permissible weights (perhaps at least 25% for achieving academic expectations and no more than 25% growth), or establish a minimum weight that achievement must receive in every school district.  

The precise formula warrants further study, but Wisconsin’s accountability system should continue to recognize student growth while ensuring that maintaining the constitutional minimum remains a requirement and future improvement for poor performing schools is quantified with suggested methods included.  

Create a Grading Integrity Metric  

Wisconsin should consider adding a grading-integrity indicator that allows parents to compare students’ classroom performance with objective measures of academic achievement. For example, report cards could identify substantial school-level disparities between course grades or GPA distributions and performance on measures such as the Forward Exam or ACT/PreACT. This would allow for a system of conceptualizing grade inflation that is accepted by researchers of the subject and makes the topic measurable rather than anecdotal.  

The purpose would not be to second-guess individual student grades, but to provide parents and school leaders with additional context when high course grades coexist with comparatively lower performance on statewide assessments. Additionally, this metric could give alert DPI and school districts to potential grade inflation and prompt a review of grading practices, rather than allowing higher grades or pass rates to mask underlying achievement problems.  

Require Transparency on Reading Curriculum  

School report cards should identify the reading curriculum used by each elementary school and provide information about its alignment with evidence-based reading instruction. Wisconsin’s Act 20 requires DPI to maintain a list of curricula that satisfy state requirements, but approved curricula can vary in quality and approach.^lxvi Providing curriculum information directly on the school report card would make it easier for parents to understand how reading is taught in their child’s school and compare approaches across schools. The Reading League independently evaluates many commonly used reading curricula for alignment with evidence-based reading instruction, which could help inform how Wisconsin presents this information to parents.^lxvii

Improve Report Card Usability   

Wisconsin should develop an easy-to-use interactive dashboard that allows parents and taxpayers to compare results among schools and districts and across school years. This could be paired with the financial transparency measures recommended elsewhere in this agenda, creating a single source for understandable academic and financial information.  

The dashboard should also provide descriptive information families may consider when evaluating schools, including:  

• Specialized programs (including AP, IB, gifted and talented, STEM, and career and technical education);  

Class sizes and student-to-teacher ratios;   

Disciplinary incident rates;  

• Teacher retention or turnover;   
• Chronic absenteeism rates; and  
• Extracurricular offerings.  

• These measures need not factor into a school’s accountability rating. Rather, they would supplement the state’s objective measures of school performance with additional information that helps families understand and compare their educational options.  

Why It Matters:  

Wisconsin already has an established accountability system, required by state law and administered by DPI, that provides objective measures of school and district performance as against the constitutional minimum – the opportunity for a sound basic education. By those measures, the overwhelming majority of Wisconsin districts currently meet or exceed the state’s expectations. Zero districts fail to meet expectations. Making ratings easier for families to understand, preserving meaningful comparisons over time, and providing additional information about schools would make an already important accountability system even more useful. 

These reforms would give parents, taxpayers, and policymakers a clearer and more accessible picture of school performance while continuing to measure Wisconsin schools against the objective accountability standards established by the state.  

Fund What Works

Protect Act 10

The Problem:

Wisconsin’s 2011 Budget Repair Bill, better known as “Act 10,” was extremely important in helping school districts close budget holes in the aftermath of the Great Recession.^lxviii  Among the most important reforms within the law was requiring that most public employees of local governments (including school districts) contribute 12.6% of their healthcare premiums and 50% of their retirement costs.^lxix  The law also limited the power of collective bargaining for public sector labor unions, allowing them to only bargain for salary increases up to the rate of inflation. More than just a change in the ledger, the law gave local governments greater flexibility to manage their workforce and direct limited resources toward local priorities rather than automatically increasing compensation costs.

While Act 10 has been law for fifteen years, it faces stronger political and legal headwinds today than at any point since its passage. Every Democratic candidate for governor in the 2026 race has vowed to repeal the law if elected. At the same time, Act 10 is once again before the courts: after the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld the law in its entirety in 2014, a Dane County judge ruled parts of it unconstitutional in December 2024, only for a state appeals court to reverse that decision and reinstate the law in July 2026. That ruling is expected to be appealed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, setting up another high-stakes test of the law’s future.

The Solution:

Efforts to repeal Act 10 should be resisted. These efforts could take the form of a single bill to reverse the law, or a more piecemeal approach that would repeal individual parts of the law on their own.  On the lawsuit side, proponents of the law should make known how important the law has been for their school districts and municipalities, and how devastating a repeal would be for their communities. 

Why It Matters: 

There is little doubt that a repeal of Act 10 would blow a gaping hole in the budget of local governments around the state.  The MacIver Institute has estimated that Act 10 has collectively saved local governments more than $35 billion since its passage. ^lxx WILL quantified the cost of a repeal to school districts and other local governments at more than $2 billion annually.^lxxi

A separate 2025 analysis by WILL estimated the increase homeowners would see on their tax bills if Act 10 were to be repealed.^lxxii The chart below shows the potential tax increases on a $300,000 home across various school districts.^lxxiii

At a time when school districts claim to be strapped for cash and are suing the state over it, they can ill afford to take on this level of new costs. Wisconsin has enjoyed fifteen years of greater fiscal stability and local flexibility under Act 10.  There is little evidence that Act 10 had the dire consequences that were initially forecasted and may have even had some benefits to students by allowing school districts to reward effective teachers.^lxxiv Reversing those reforms would force difficult choices between higher property taxes, reduced public services, and cuts elsewhere in local budgets.

Read More:

The Cost of Repealing Act 10: WILL Unveils New Property Tax Calculator by Dr. Will Flanders – February 2025

Back to the Past: The Fiscal Threat of Reversing Act 10 in Public Education by Dr. Will Flanders – April 2024

Reverse the 400-year Veto

The Problem: 

In 2023, Governor Evers used his partial veto power to transform what the legislature passed as a two-year, $325-per-pupil increase in school district revenue limits, covering the 2023-24 and 2024-25 school years, into a 400-year increase. As shown in the Figure below, by striking individual digits from “2023-2025,” he changed the law’s expiration date from 2025 to 2425, allowing school districts to raise their levy limits by $325 per pupil every year until the year 2425.

This puts taxpayers on the hook with zero accountability or targeted reform for school districts. The figure below^lxxv shows the snowballing potential increases in revenue limit authority per pupil that taxpayers face from 2023-2034. Without reform, similar vetoes could be possible when Governors evaluate future budgets. 

The Solution: 

Reverse the 400-year veto and ensure Wisconsinites are not subjected to exponential increases in their taxes. While a proposed constitutional amendment prohibiting the Governor from abusing their partial veto power to increase any tax or fee will be presented to voters this fall in November of 2026, passing that constitutional amendment will not undo the lasting effects of the partial veto. The legislature would need to take separate action to reverse the effects of this specific veto, which it attempted in 2025 with Senate Bill 389.

Why It Matters:

When the legislature passed the original legislation, the intent was to address prevalent concerns in K-12 funding for that upcoming year, not for the next 400. Yet, Governor Evers strayed from the original intent of the legislation, allowing increased spending with neither accountability nor targeted reform. As revenue per pupil hit an all-time high in the 2024-25 school year at an average of $18,746 across the state, proficiency continues to falter. K-12 dollars should be tied to true reform, accountability, and transparency that lead to increased student achievement.

Read More: 

Tax Calculator: Your Tax Bill in 2030

Analysis: Evers 400 Year Veto by Dr. Will Flanders and Rick Esenberg – July 2023

Form Capable Citizens

Improve Early Numeracy 

The Problem:

Wisconsin should build on the approach it has already taken to early reading through 2023 Act 20. Just as Act 20 established a statewide framework to strengthen early literacy, Wisconsin should adopt a similar approach to early numeracy, essentially, an “Act 20 for math.” Some states have already passed similar legislation.

The United States is falling behind in mathematics. Recent results from both the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) show that student math achievement remains well below pre-pandemic levels, with the largest declines occurring among the nation’s lowest-performing students. Between 2019 and 2023, U.S. fourth-grade math scores on TIMSS fell by 18 points and eighth-grade scores dropped by 27 points—the largest decline since the assessment began in 1995.^lxxvi

Wisconsin students are not immune to these troubling trends. Recent NAEP results reveal areas where Wisconsin can improve foundational math skills. As displayed in Figure 9, fourth grade NAEP math proficiency^lxxvii has declined by 10% from the high point in 2011. For example, nearly one-third of Wisconsin fourth graders could not distinguish odd and even numbers, and nearly four in ten eighth graders could not identify the next number in a simple counting sequence, even with the use of a calculator.

Yet many parents remain unaware that their children are struggling with particular skills because they do not receive clear or timely information about their academic progress.

This matters because strong math skills are essential for success in today’s economy. Workers with stronger numeracy skills earn significantly higher wages and experience lower unemployment than those with weaker skills. Wisconsin’s fastest-growing industries—including advanced manufacturing, healthcare, information technology, and the skilled trades—depend on employees with solid quantitative skills. Yet employers report that many graduates enter the workforce unprepared, and 17 percent of UW System first-year students still require remedial math before beginning college-level coursework.

The Solution:

Some states have adopted early numeracy reforms modeled on the same basic principle as 2023 Wisconsin Act 20 but for math. The goal is to identify struggling students early, equip teachers with evidence-based instructional tools, and provide targeted support before students fall further behind. Wisconsin should consider a similar approach in mathematics.

Numeracy, which is similar to literacy for reading and writing, entails a disposition to “recognize, understand, and apply mathematical ideas” in a way that is so foundational and ingrained in students that it can be used “in a wide range of contexts” beyond what is learned in math class. It differs slightly from mathematics in that it does not necessarily grow in complexity and abstraction, but is rooted in real-life, daily use, and is essential to participating in society.

States that have implemented numeracy support for struggling students have improved their math scores. On the 2024 NAEP results, Alabama was the only state where 4th graders outperformed their pre-pandemic scores in 2019. They also saw a dramatic increase in their 4th grade math ranking, moving from 52nd in 2019 to 32nd in 2024.

Wisconsin should pass legislation, similar to Act 20, with four key components: 

• Early Screening and Identification: Mandate the use of math screeners in grades K–2 to help teachers identify students who are struggling with core math concepts like magnitude. These screens should be brief and given at least twice a year.

• Numeracy-Focused Professional Development: Require professional development for K–5 math educators that focuses specifically on how children acquire early math skills. This training should be grounded in cognitive science and early learning research. Building educator confidence and expertise in teaching early numeracy is critical to improving instruction and student outcomes.

• Dedicated Numeracy Coaches: Support the development of a statewide network of numeracy coaches who can assist elementary teachers with math instruction and intervention. Any coaching initiative for numeracy should be designed to build gradually, maximize existing personnel, and provide flexible support models that schools can adapt to their local context. Wisconsin should focus on utilizing regional expertise, professional learning communities that promote objective research, and coaching resources that are accessible to schools. 

• Data-Driven Supports: Require districts to report student numeracy data annually, including the results from early screeners, the types of interventions implemented, and student progress over time. This transparency can guide both local improvement and statewide policy adjustments. 
  

Why it matters: 

Numeracy is about more than success in math class. It is the foundation for problem-solving, financial literacy, career readiness, and informed participation in everyday life. Just as Wisconsin recognized that early literacy is essential to long-term academic success through Act 20, early numeracy deserves the same attention. 

By equipping teachers with evidence-based tools, providing parents with meaningful information about their child’s progress, and intervening early when students need additional support, Wisconsin can improve student outcomes while strengthening its future workforce. Early intervention gives students a better chance to succeed in school, reduces the need for costly remediation, and helps prepare the next generation for high-demand careers that drive Wisconsin’s economy. 

Read More:

Closing Wisconsin’s Math Gap: A Call for Early Numeracy Reform by Lauren Greul, Kyle Koenen and Miranda Spindt – September 2025

Limit Technology in Classrooms

The Problem:

One-to-one computing initiatives expanded rapidly during the 2010s, putting a laptop or tablet in front of nearly every student. Since then, evidence has raised serious questions about whether this level of classroom technology is detracting from student learning rather than enhancing it.  One study investigated the results of a program that aimed to provide a laptop per student in schools across more than 40 countries.^lxxviii With several years of data, there was no significant evidence of improved outcomes for students. Teachers have also attributed declining handwriting skills to laptops.  As one teacher noted, “You can’t learn handwriting on the computer. … those fine motor skills … their handwriting sucks compared to how it used to be.”^lxxix

One reason technology may fail to improve academic outcomes is that individual devices introduce a constant source of distraction into the classroom. In a 2008 study, 40% of teachers in a middle school using one-to-one tech reported that it was harder for students to concentrate. Students use their laptops for all manner of things unrelated to education, including looking at social media sites or even pornography.^lxxx

The use of school-issued devices for social media is of particular concern because it can undermine the purpose of Wisconsin’s new restrictions on student cell phones. A phone-free classroom accomplishes little if students can access the same distractions through a school-issued laptop or tablet.  Said one parent in the Los Angeles recently,“It makes no sense to me. We’ve banned the cellphones, but it doesn’t matter, because the kids are using the school-issued devices in exactly the same way.”^lxxxi

Research has found significant, negative effects on mental health for children from the excessive use of social media—something even the NEA recognizes as a huge problem.^lxxxii More use of social media has also been associated with lower academic outcomes for students at both the middle and high school levels.^lxxxiii 

Students should leave school capable of using modern technology effectively. But learning how to use technology does not require using a device throughout the school day or making screens the default means of delivering instruction. Digital literacy can be taught deliberately, while computers remain tools used when they add educational value rather than substitutes for books, handwriting, direct instruction, or face-to-face interaction.

The Solution:

State Level Solutions 

Set Benchmarks on Technology Usage: Wisconsin has already set a minimum standard as it applies to the use of cell phones in classrooms. Under 2025 Wisconsin Act 42, school boards must adopt their own policy prohibiting wireless communication devices during instructional time, with limited exceptions for emergencies and health needs, while retaining the flexibility to impose stricter rules than the statutory minimum.¹²

Wisconsin should take a similar approach to the use of one-to-one technology by stablishing age-appropriate limits on unnecessary classroom screen time, particularly in elementary grades. State law should make clear that technology should be used when it serves a defined instructional purpose rather than as the default method of instruction. Districts could adopt stronger limitations based on local needs. Any standard should include explicit carve-outs protecting technology required by a student’s IEP or 504 plan, so necessary accommodations are never mistaken for unnecessary screen time.

Other states have taken similar approaches to classroom technology more broadly. Utah now requires grade-specific technology rules, including a near-total prohibition on screen time in kindergarten through third grade.¹³ Tennessee requires every district serving K-5 students to adopt a policy minimizing unnecessary screen time in those grades.¹⁴ Iowa capped daily instructional screen time at 60 minutes for grades K-5.^lxxxiv

Wisconsin currently has no mechanism requiring districts to disclose how much they spend on classroom technology or what that money is spent on. Districts should be required to annually report technology spending and usage by category, including hardware, software, digital curriculum, and technical support. Districts should also report how extensively technology is used for instruction at different grade levels, giving parents and taxpayers a clearer picture of both the cost and educational role of classroom technology. 

School District Level Solutions  

Here, we offer three best practices that vary in the extent to which they limit technology in classrooms. These can be viewed as moving from the least to most restrictive and should be implemented at the school district level: 

1. Control Access on School-Issued Devices: At a minimum, districts should prevent students from accessing noneducational apps, websites, social media, games, pornography, and other inappropriate content on school-issued devices. Districts should regularly review their filtering and device-management systems as students find new ways to circumvent existing controls. 

2. In-Class Only Computers: Laptops are controlled by the teacher and distributed in class as needed. A school district in Kansas has recently implemented a system like this.^lxxxv One Middle School Principal in the district said, “Technology has a wonderful place in education, but what we have found is that we’ve just simply immersed students too much in technology. It’s too readily available and therefore there’s a lot of distractions.”

3. A Move to Computer Labs or Shared Computers Only: Classrooms should return to books, paper, handwriting, and direct teacher instruction as the default modes of classroom learning, with computers available through shared devices, computer labs, or carts when they serve a specific instructional purpose. While such a system may sound antiquated, there are school districts moving in this direction.^lxxxvi

Why It Matters:

Instructional time is one of the scarcest resources in education, and the design of classroom technology policy directly shapes how effectively that time is used. If one-to-one devices are not producing measurable gains in learning while simultaneously introducing new forms of distraction, then districts are potentially substituting lower-productivity activities for higher-productivity ones like writing, sustained reading, and direct teacher interaction.

Research has found that students comprehend more and learn more when they read and write by hand.^lxxxvii These essential parts of learning, along with sustained attention, discussion, and direct interaction, should not be displaced simply because a digital alternative exists.

At the same time, the goal is not to eliminate technology from education but to right-size its use. Students do need digital literacy, but that need does not necessarily require constant, unrestricted access to individual devices in every classroom. Technology should be used deliberately when it improves education, not simply because it is available. Reconsidering one-to-one device policies is not about resisting modernity. It is about putting learning, rather than technology, at the center of the classroom. 

Empower Excellent Educators

Implement a Teacher Bill of Rights 

The Problem:

There’s a well-documented teacher shortage in Wisconsin. The DPI itself claims that “Wisconsin’s education workforce is in crisis.”^lxxxviii According to the DPI, nearly half of new teachers leave the state or the profession within six years, and only 68 percent of aspiring educators who complete an education preparation program were ultimately employed in a Wisconsin public school.

When surveyed on why they are leaving the profession, teachers typically cite student behavior as a top reason. Nearly half of teachers report that administrators only sometimes, or never, enforce student conduct rules.^lxxxix Over one in four teachers say they sometimes fear for their physical safety at school. A recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis found that “personal safety” was among the top reasons cited by the 887 staff members who have left Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) in recent years.^xc Wisconsin schools report thousands of incidents of disorderly conduct, fighting, and threats each year, with many more low-level disruptions not captured in official data. 

These conditions affect student achievement and learning. As State Superintendent Jill Underly acknowledged, “Wisconsin’s kids are suffering from losing quality teachers.” When teachers do not feel safe and cannot manage their classrooms, learning suffers.^xci

Teachers that stay in the profession feel as though they are not being supported by their administrations when it comes to discipline and it puts them in an impossible position. Do they allow classroom disruptions and poor behavior continue at the expense of the learning environment for the rest of the class? Or do they put their jobs on the line to address student behavior and keep the focus on learning?

The Solution:

The Wisconsin legislature should pass a Teacher Bill of Rights.^xcii This legislation creates protections for teachers and students by strengthening teachers’ authority to manage their classrooms, requiring parental notification when serious incidents occur and establishing clear accountability so teachers can focus on teaching. 

The Teacher Bill of Rights address specific problems that teachers have raised for years about inconsistent discipline and lack of administrative support, including: 

1. Requiring schools to adopt a policy on reasonable safety measures to address incidents that materially and substantially interrupt instruction or compromise safety, persistently disruptive students and violent incidents;

2. Requiring clear re-entry procedures so students are not automatically returned to class without a plan to address the underlying cause of their behavior;

3. Mandatory parental notification when there are substantial or violent disruptions as a result of student behavior;

4. Teacher protection against retaliation when they act in good faith to maintain classroom safety and order; and

5. A limited enforcement mechanism for parents if districts fail to comply with notification. 

Why it matters: 

Every child deserves a classroom where learning is the focus, and every teacher deserves a safe environment to do their job. When disruptive behavior goes unaddressed, it affects far more than the individual student involved. It reduces instructional time, contributes to teacher burnout, and drives experienced educators out of the profession, leaving students with fewer teachers and less stable learning environments. By restoring teachers’ authority to maintain order, ensuring administrators consistently support classroom discipline, and requiring transparency with parents, Wisconsin can create schools where teachers are empowered to teach and students are free to learn.

Read More:

WILL Supports a Teacher Bill of Rights

Strengthen Alternative Pathways to Teacher Licensure

The Problem:

Operating on a tiered licensing system, the state offers pathways for professionals looking to become teachers and for those still working towards the full requirements for a Tier II license. Current licensing regulations require professionals that are looking to teach their expertise to complete “an alternative teacher training program” before starting in the classroom. Yet, DPI lists “no currently approved providers.”^xciii For those with a bachelor’s degree in any subject aside from a teacher-preparation program, the American Board teaching certification program can be completed, which can take up to a year and costs $1,900.^xciv Experts in a trade or vocation must complete pedagogical training before getting a Tier I 3-year license that allows them into the classroom.^xcv Currently, a shortage of EPP programs persists in areas such as business education, agriculture education, CTE, and more.^xcvi

The Solution:

Strengthen alternative pathways to teaching. Reform Tier I license requirements to support the growth of in-district training programs and short-term licenses with stipulations for professionals entering the teaching workforce. Non-teacher professionals seeking teaching positions could qualify for a Tier I 1-year license based on qualifications such as industry experience, industry certifications, and relevant post-secondary education. Hiring districts can endorse the candidate for a license renewal and provide pedagogical training until the candidate demonstrates multiple years of successful teaching, in which they could qualify for a Tier II professional license.

Why it Matters:

Allow districts to educate prospective teachers in-house. When a candidate has worked in their profession for multiple years, or is certified in a trade/vocation, or already possesses a bachelor’s degree in the subject area, they can gain teaching skills in a hands-on environment while they instruct on their expertise. Licensure reform can expand districts’ abilities to fill hard-to-staff positions with knowledgeable professionals and can alleviate the shortage of EPP programs.

Read More:

Let Them Teach: A National Review of Teacher Licensure by Jessica Holmberg – January 2021

Establish a Statewide Teacher Apprenticeship Program

The Problem:

Wisconsin is facing a teacher shortage. DPI’s 2024 Educator Preparation Program and Workforce Analysis Report found that 5,256 prospective new teachers completed educator preparation programs in 2023-24. Only 3,568 of those began working as educators in Wisconsin. Districts across the state were unable to find Tier II licensed educators for over 3,800 open positions.^xcvii

The Solution: 

Establish a strong statewide teacher apprenticeship program. Get educators into the classroom sooner and create a direct pathway for other school professionals to advance into licensed teaching positions. 

By shifting to an apprenticeship-based teacher preparation model, Wisconsin can combat the teacher shortage and create a direct pipeline from Wisconsin educator preparation programs (EPPs) to Wisconsin classrooms. Apprenticeship models are flourishing in several states. When Tennessee implemented a state-approved teacher apprenticeship program in 2022, 158 candidates participated. By 2024, 846 total candidates had enrolled.^xcviii Tennessee’s program is now approved at the federal level, allowing the state to receive federal grants to support the program’s growth over time. Colorado recently passed a bill creating a statewide apprentice program in 2023, supporting apprentices in special education and spanning positions in grades PK-12.^xcix

When a bill that would have expanded and solidified a teacher apprenticeship program in Wisconsin was presented in 2024, Governor Evers vetoed the legislation, claiming that it would interfere with the Department of Workforce Development’s program.^c The DWD program took on 8 total apprentices that same year.^ci Growing a teacher apprenticeship program statewide can support the efforts of school districts and educator preparation programs in alleviating the teacher shortage. By strengthening partnerships between EPPs, school districts, and the state DPI and DWD, Wisconsin can support aspiring teachers and ensure students receive a high-quality education from a high-quality educator. 

Prospective teachers new to the profession can apply to a district that supports apprentices, as well as an accredited EPP. Students can take courses through the EPP, complete observations in the classroom, and receive mentorship within the district. In the final two years of the program, students are able to teach as paid apprentices while earning credits towards a full degree. Upon successful completion of the 4-year EPP + apprenticeship program, candidates become qualified for a Tier II professional teaching license. 

Why It Matters:

Apprentice programs allow candidates to learn hands-on while supporting labor needs. Districts and students need more teachers, and prospective teachers need effective experience in the classroom. By establishing a statewide teacher apprenticeship program, Wisconsin can meet the growing demand for strong teachers. 

Read More: 

Addressing the Teacher Shortage: A Pathway to Innovation in Education by Miranda Spindt – January 2024

Teacher Apprenticeships: Where Wisconsin is Now by Quinton Klabon at the Institute for Reforming Government – May 2025

Closing Statement

This is a broad agenda for education reform. While no one of these policies—or even all of them together—is a silver bullet, we hope these recommendations will serve as a resource and starting point for policymakers seeking to improve student outcomes and restore Wisconsin’s place as a national leader in educational progress and reform.

The common thread running through these recommendations is simple: Wisconsin should put students and families ahead of systems. That means giving parents greater authority to choose the education that works best for their children, directing education dollars toward the students they are intended to serve, demanding honest information about school performance and spending, and giving educators and schools the freedom to innovate while holding them accountable for results. Wisconsin does not need to choose between strong public schools and educational choice, or between accountability and autonomy. A system built around students can embrace all of these principles.

Improving student outcomes will require sustained attention beyond a single legislative session. But the state has demonstrated before that meaningful reform is possible. A coalition of Democrats and Republicans came together to create the nation’s first modern school choice program in 1990. The reforms of the 2010s helped establish Wisconsin as a national leader in educational choice and public-sector reform. With the same willingness to challenge outdated assumptions, remove barriers to innovation, and empower families, Wisconsin can build on those successes and once again become a national leader in education reform, creating better opportunities for every Wisconsin child.

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97. Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, “2024 Educator Preparation Program and Workforce Analysis Report,” April 2026, https://www.wpr.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/04/2024_WI_EPP_Workforce_Analysis_Report.pdf.
98. Tennessee Higher Education Commission, “Academic Supply for Occupational Demand Report,” 2025, https://www.tn.gov/content/dam/tn/thec/bureau/research/other-research/supply-demand/2025/2025%20Supply%20and%20Demand%20Report.pdf.
99. Colorado Department of Education, “Teacher Degree Apprenticeship,” 2024–25, https://www.cde.state.co.us/educatortalent/tdadcdata.
100. Tony Evers, “SB 917 Veto Message,” March 29, 2024, https://content.govdelivery.com/attachments/WIGOV/2024/03/29/file_attachments/2831174/SB%20917%20Veto%20Message%20for%20Signature.pdf.
101. Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development, “2025 Year in Review,” April 2026, https://dwd.wisconsin.gov/apprenticeship/pdf/BAS-2025YearInReview.pdf?v=2.