Cavalier Johnson, Howard Fuller, Gregory Wesley and JoAnne Anton
- Milwaukee’s fourth-grade reading scores are among the worst for large urban districts in the nation.
- A coalition of public, charter, and private schools was formed to train educators in the science of reading.
- Wisconsin Act 20 mandates science-based literacy instruction and allocates state funding for it.
- The Milwaukee Reading Coalition says the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction is needlessly delaying the release of funds.
In Milwaukee, nearly three out of four fourth graders cannot read at a basic level. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — the nation’s most respected measure of student achievement — only 9% of Milwaukee’s fourth graders scored as proficient in reading, and the city posted the largest decline in fourth-grade reading scores among major urban districts since 2019. Of the 25 large urban districts tested, only Detroit performed worse than Milwaukee.
Behind those numbers are thousands of children being failed by a system that knows this, and yet refuses to act. Wisconsin has the widest achievement gap between Black and White students of any state in the country — a distinction it has held for decades. Black fourth graders in Wisconsin score an average of 50 points below their White peers on the NAEP reading assessment. In Milwaukee, where Black students make up a significant share of enrollment, this gap represents not just a statistic but a generational crisis.