Search results for: Foundations of Reading

Scott Niederjohn & William Flanders: This study examines the association between participation in Wisconsin’s private school choice programs and English Language Arts achievement using longitudinal administrative data from 96,241 students tested in 2018–2019 and 2022–2023. Propensity score matching compares voucher participants with similar public-school students, with exposure measured by years of participation. Sustained participation is […]

James Traub: Earlier this summer, the Texas State Board of Education approved a mandatory reading list for public school students that includes fairy tales and nursery rhymes for little children, stories of America’s founders and Aesop’s fables for elementary schoolers, poems by Rudyard Kipling and Langston Hughes for middle schoolers, Shakespeare’s plays and Dante’s “Inferno” for high […]

Via a kind reader, amidst our long term, disastrous literacy crisis: Joe Gothard, Becky Kundert and Sonia Spencer Remarks on Madison’s K-12 Literacy Crisis. 2026-2027 Madison K-12 $pending continues to grow, fueled by a 9.7% (!) property tax increase. Total spending will be at least $706,000,000 for 25,003 students, or $28,236 per student. May 2026 Madison […]

Will Flanders and Brooke Smith: As students prepare for the 2026-27 school year, DPI has finally released spending data for the 2024-25.  While this continues a pattern of the DPI seemingly dragging it’s feet in releasing public school spending information, the data is still illuminating.  Despite the continual refrain that public schools are “underfunded,” the data reveals—yet again—spending that is near all-time highs.  On […]

Mitchell Schmidt: All five Democratic candidates in the race for governor — former Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, former state Department of Administration secretary Joel Brennan, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley, state Rep. Francesca Hong and state Sen. Kelda Roys — told the Wisconsin State Journal they support a full repeal of Act 10. The winner of […]

29 July, 2026 Madison Rotary Club [mp3 audio // machine generated transcript] Club notice: Dr. Joe Gothard, Becky Kundert, Sonia Spencer; Literacy: It Takes a City Join Dr. Joe Gothard, Superintendent, Becky Kundert, Senior Executive Director of Curriculum & Instruction, and Sonia Spencer, Senior Strategic Partnerships Coordinator, as they present the Madison Metropolitan School District’s […]

Kids Win Wisconsin: Find out where your Gubernatorial Candidates stand on the Literacy Crisis and how they plan to address it, if elected Governor of Wisconsin. —— Megan Novak: Your daily reminder that Francesca Hong voted against legislation making child grooming illegal. Disgusting. ——— 2026-2027 Madison K-12 $pending continues to grow, fueled by a 9.7% (!) property tax […]

Dear Sonia, Becky and Joe: Thank you for taking the time to discuss our city’s long term, disastrous literacy results this Wednesday. Decades go by. I look forward to hearing about the 4k-3rd grade early literacy screener outcomes from 2024,  2025 and the first half of 2026 (with cut score changes), parent notification of same and […]

Corri Hess: Homeschooling is the fastest growing education option in Wisconsin.  Recently released numbers from the Department of Public Instruction show the number of students being homeschooled in the state grew by nearly 6 percent since 2025 to 32,891 children. Meanwhile, the number of private school students is up 0.1 percent and the number of […]

Quinton Klabon: Superintendent Underly is fundraising for @WiscEdNetwork in gorgeous Superior. @uwgb and @UWMadison @ELPAUW are listed as sponsors, as is CESA 10. @WisconsinDPI is depicted on the sponsorship slide but was not thanked by name nor listed as a sponsor on the website. ——- Notes and links on Jill Underly. 2026-2027 Madison K-12 $pending […]

Colleston Morgan: That’s why we’re sharing two new resources to help Milwaukee voters make informed decisions: This spring, we laid out CFC’s student-first policy priorities for the state’s next leaders: All year, we’ve engaged directly with candidates for governor and in contested Milwaukee legislative races, asking where they stand on that agenda. Some answered. Some went quiet. […]

Ed Finkel: Dive Brief: Dive Insight: “It seems like a good time, regardless of the state and its achievement profile, to join in and ensure the resources that support instruction are there to make sure students have access to early literacy,” Davis said. The new law will require significant training on evidence-based phonics instruction that […]

Tosin Akintola: Since 2019, public school enrollment has fallen by 2.84 percent nationwide, an exodus of roughly 1.4 million. K-12 students, according to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). Yet the amount spent on public schools nationwide grew by 34 percent from 2019 to 2024, according to NCES data. Much of that is thanks to the nearly $190 billion Congress […]

Quinton Klabon Summary: ——- 2026-2027 Madison K-12 $pending continues to grow, fueled by a 9.7% (!) property tax increase. Total spending will be at least $706,000,000 for 25,003 students, or $28,236 per student. May 2026 Madison School District Presentation: 7,095 adults for 25,003 students (3.52 students per adult!) Early Literacy Screener Map. Map: Foundations of Reading Results: 2015–2024 Where have […]

Chad Aldeman In April, the National Center for Education Statistics reported that the 50 states and Washington, D.C., took in $1 trillion in federal, state and local revenue for K-12 public education in the 2023-24 school year. One. Trillion. Dollars.  That’s a remarkable milestone. And while it doesn’t tell the whole story — it represents only revenues, […]

Amanda Geduld: There’s a prevailing principle in the U.S. that funding disparities are at the root of education inequality, with poorer districts receiving less money than their wealthier counterparts. But a recent study has actually found the opposite, documenting that over the past nearly 50 years high-poverty and predominantly non-white districts across all 50 states actually […]

Megan Greenwell: It’s three weeks until Mississippi’s standardized test season begins, and Candace Hamberlin is feeling the pressure. Evidence of what’s at stake hangs all around Jefferson County Middle School, where Hamberlin is in her first year teaching eighth-grade English. Inside her classroom, a large piece of black polyester with clear pouches labeled “Data Wall” shows the current […]

Erin Gretzinger: Two ad hoc committees plan to hold virtual public hearings Thursday to get feedback on a list of community proposals submitted for renaming Lindbergh Elementary on the northeast side and Elvehjem Elementary on the east side. Both schools are named after controversial figures. Charles Lindbergh, a pioneering American pilot and former University of Wisconsin-Madison student, made antisemetic […]

Paul Vallas: When word spread the Chicago Board of Education was planning cuts to teaching staff to narrow the $732.5 million budget deficit, Chicago Teachers Union President Stacy Davis Gates declared their plan was “unsatisfactory and dead on arrival.” She alone demanded Governor JB Pritzker and the Illinois General Assembly address the shortfall claiming CPS […]

Carl Campanile: New York is spending more on education than any state in the nation despite shrinking schools and 12% fewer students than 15 years ago, an eye-opening new report found. Empire State enrollment could see another double-digit decrease by 2031 as population growth stagnates and birth rates plummet — which would mean New York is […]

Peachy Keenan: If the illiterate Dark Ages are indeed coming, at least we will have our stacks of hardcovers to comfort us. A recent essay in The Atlantic tells us what most of us have already surmised: reading is dead, and it’s not coming back. In “The Age of Reading Is Over,” we learn that not only […]

Nell Gluckman: In February, several University of Wisconsin regents were so frustrated with the system’s president during a presentation on artificial intelligence that they started texting one another. “Pulling teeth to get him to get proactive with strategy and now this is what we get,” one texted to another. The exchange, which surfaced in public […]

William Flanders This study examines the association between participation in Wisconsin’s private school choice programs and English Language Arts achievement using longitudinal administrative data from 96,241 students tested in 2018–2019 and 2022–2023. Propensity score matching compares voucher participants with similar public-school students, with exposure measured by years of participation. Sustained participation is positively associated with […]

Mary Harrington The age of post-literacy is upon us. The dismayed warnings from teachers and professors have been growing in volume for some years; now, The Atlanticreports in its latest cover story that one Harvard student needed a set text translated from “Old English” in order to read it. The book in question? A Clockwork Orange. The digital revolution, […]

Vivek Sen: PALANTIR CTO: “FOR $10 BILLION, ELON MUSK PUT 300 ROCKETS IN ORBIT.” “FOR $11 BILLION, THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA HAS BUILT 1,600 FEET OF ELEVATED RAIL… WITH NO RAIL.” ——— 2026-2027 Madison K-12 $pending continues to grow, fueled by a 9.7% (!) property tax increase. Total spending will be at least $706,000,000 for 25,003 […]

Chad Aldeman: If a district has low reading scores and uses instructional practices that are inconsistent with what has been well documented about how children learn to read, the case is clear for switching to an evidence-based science of reading approach. But Lexington’s young readers are not struggling. They have relatively strong test scores. So, perhaps not surprisingly, […]

Carl Hendrick: In 1997, American Airlines captain Warren VanderBurgh gave a lecture warning about the dangers of autopilot. He titled it “children of the magenta line,” after the magenta coloured course line the flight computer draws across a cockpit display. He noticed that pilots were so used to following that line, to managing the automation rather […]

NY Times Editorial Commentary: In 1970, only 7 percent of college freshmen nationwide had a high-school grade average of A or higher; today, the share is roughly 40 percent. ———— 2026-2027 Madison K-12 $pending continues to grow, fueled by a 9.7% (!) property tax increase. Total spending will be at least $706,000,000 for 25,003 students, or $28,236 per […]

Alex Tabarrok summary: The health service now has to spend more money settling maternity-malpractice claims than it does on actually providing maternity care. Many Brits can neither obtain an appointment with a publicly funded dentist nor afford a private one; in a 2023 survey, one in 10 reported doing DIY dental work, in extreme cases extracting their […]

NCES: In 2019, the United States spent $15,500 per full-time-equivalent (FTE) student on elementary and secondary education, which was 38 percent higher than the average of Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) member countries of $11,300 (in constant 2021 U.S. dollars). At the postsecondary level, the United States spent $37,400 per FTE student, which […]

Nicola Mastrorocco & Edoardo Teso We investigate how technologies that reduce the costs of monitoring by central authorities have shaped the historical transition from small patrimonial states to large bureaucratic organizations. Our analysis is based on a novel dataset that traces changes in the organizational structure and geographic presence of the U.S. federal government over […]

The Economist: America’s scores, by contrast, are among the most disappointing. One in seven of its tertiary students scored at or below primary-school level in the literacy tests, up from about one in twenty a decade ago. The share at or below the bottom level for numeracy, meanwhile, was almost one in five. What is […]

The Economist: cademics have always moaned about their students. “Scholarly effort is in decline everywhere as never before,” complained Egbert of Liège, an 11th-century know-it-all, in an age when not even a tenth of humans could read. Recently there have been lots of new worries about standards in colleges and universities—especially in America, home to […]

Heather Peske It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. More than ever before, our newly released Teacher Prep Review: Decoding Progress in Reading Preparation tells a tale of two completely different approaches to how teacher preparation programs across the country are giving future teachers the knowledge and skills to implement scientifically based reading […]

Erin Gretzinger: Madison schools and other districts still have more work to do, though. Less than half of Madison students didn’t meet grade-level expectations in reading and writing in the 2024-25 school year, slightly fewer than the average statewide, according to state data. About 18.5% of Black students in Madison scored proficient in reading, compared […]

David Randall The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) just published Will Flanders’ The FORT Gap: How Inconsistent Teacher Preparation Is Fueling Wisconsin’s Literacy and Educator Crises, a report on how results on Foundations of Reading Test (FORT) show that Wisconsin’s teacher candidates aren’t sufficiently prepared in the Science of Reading, which is the gold-standard in reading instruction. […]

Nuria Martinez-Keel: Mississippi also has raised its standards for how it defines a proficient reader. A state law requires Mississippi accountability standards to increasewhenever 75% of students make a proficient score on yearly tests or when 65% of schools or districts make a grade of B or higher on annual A-F evaluations. “We have increased that […]

Eric: The vast majority of new education funding for years now has gone to grift: more administrators, fancy new buildings built way over budget under union contracts, and especially Special Education (SPED). For those unfamiliar, federal law requires schools to integrate special education students into general education classrooms to the “maximum extent appropriate.” For students […]

Teagan King: The Madison School Board on Monday approved $613 million in spending for the 2026-27 school year, including an average 5.3% raise for district teachers. The $39 million increase over this school year will be largely funded by an 8.5% increase in revenue from property taxes, most of which was authorized by voters in […]

Teagan King: Madison’s kindergarten through 12th grade students will face new restrictions on phone use next school year, after the Madison School Board approved a districtwide cellphone policy Monday. The district’s new policy includes a bell-to-bell cellphone ban for kindergarten through eighth-grade classes, prohibiting any access to devices during the school day, including free times […]

Teagan King: A new boundary review was needed due to increasing housing developments expected to bring in new students, some already overcrowded schools and a desire to have more students attend schools closer to home instead of being driven across town, which could also ease transportation concerns, Green said. Will any schools close? Madison is […]

Teagan King: The district had 25,029 students enrolled for the 2025-26 school year, a 126-student drop from the previous year. It expect 379 fewer this fall. Overall 4K-12 enrollment in Madison schools is also projected to decrease about 3% over the next five years and 7% over the next 10 years, according to MGT’s forecast. […]

David Blaska: Fully state-funded requires assuming $6.1 Billion in school property tax levies across Wisconsin’s 432 school districts — an 11 percent increase in state spending right there! Of course, Governor Hong would tax Wisconsin’s few billionaires — who have all that cash stuffed in mattresses instead of invested in the economy. (She’d also let Madison […]

Corrinne Hess: About 36 percent of Wisconsin’s youngest students score below the 25th percentile for reading.  Statewide standardized tests show that fewer than 40 percent of students are considered proficient, and adult literacy rates indicate that over half of Wisconsin adults read below a sixth-grade level. Jackson said the states that are seeing improved reading scores are seeing […]

Teagan King; Lindbergh and Elvehjem were first suggested for renaming in proposals submitted in spring 2023 and fall 2022, respectively. In the past six years, the district has already renamed three elementary schools — now known as Carey, Henderson and Anana — as well as Gillespie Middle School and Memorial High School. Elvehjem was suggested […]

Pat Garrett The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) has launched “The Wisconsin Education Comeback: A Roadmap for Student Success” a series of reports to reform education in Wisconsin. The roadmap will aim to provide a comprehensive set of K-12 education reforms for the next Governor and legislature to tackle. The first report […]

Aaron Brown, Michael Mendelson and Clifford Asness: The cost-disease sectors generally—healthcare, higher education, anything where Baumol’s curse (upward salary pressure in fields without productivity gains) meets a regulatory cartel. These will not be fixed by any single intervention because the political coalition that benefits from the status quo is too large and too local. Housing in San […]

(42 minutes); paraphrased:30 years ago, Massachusetts adopted teacher content knowledge requirements (MTEL) and increased pay: Roberta Schaefer: Massachusetts undertook sweeping education reforms in 1993 that linked funding increases to comprehensive reforms, ranging from curriculum and accountability changes to a new three-part teacher licensure test whose pass rate was initially just 41 percent. Today, Massachussetts has […]

Roberta Schaefer: Massachusetts undertook sweeping education reforms in 1993 that linked funding increases to comprehensive reforms, ranging from curriculum and accountability changes to a new three-part teacher licensure test whose pass rate was initially just 41 percent. Massachusetts has put greater emphasis than New York on high-quality curriculum. In fact, the standards and curriculum frameworks […]

Office of Literacy, Office of the State Superintendent, Barb Novak: Reporting for Wis. Stat. §§ 115.39(4)(g) Administrators and Educators DPI is required to report (for the 2023 – 24 and 2024 – 25 school years), the number of individuals who completed the mandatory professional development training under 2023 Wisconsin Act 20, section 27 (2), which […]

Karen Vaites: This week, the Massachusetts House passed legislation that would give its department of education – known as DESE – the right to mandate use of state-approved curriculum. A similar bill failed last year, yet Massachusetts outcomes have continued to slide: In October, the Boston Globe proclaimed a “Northern Nosedive” in reading scores, and finally, Massachusetts leaders are willing to touch a […]

Will Flanders Last yr, DPI met behind closed doors to lower the standards for the Forward Exam. Now, they will apparently do the same thing for the state report card. We need transparency in these meetings. Why are these standard settings that effect all WI families held behind closed doors? —— Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin […]

Samantha Smylie The Illinois State Board of Education agreed Wednesday to move ahead with a process to change the state’s testing system, though the exact details still are being worked out. That process will include creating new “cut scores,” or the lowest score needed for a student to be sorted into broad categories of achievement […]

Mike Dowd But if you thought that was an honest measure of how many kids are passing, I have bad news. High-school grading policies have become so corrupt, class credits have become almost meaningless. In recent years, the Department of Education and many individual schools, have adopted “equity grading” practices intended to benefit disadvantaged students. But […]

Will Flanders Last year, (taxpayer funded Wisconsin) DPI changed Forward Exam standards-lowering the bar for proficiency in WI. Curiously after the election, DPI released data that “unrigs” the results to show what trends would have been. We put that data into district-by-district graph. 🧵 —- 14% reading proficiency in Beloit on the Forward Exam turned […]

Will Flanders DPI still claims they didn’t lower the standards, but this data release proves that to be a lie. It’s time we stopped allowing DPI to lie to us on the continuing failures of our public schools. —— Quinton Klabon: DPI uploaded scores in the least usable way possible, so I did it for […]

Andrew Waugh The government says it’s going to lower provincial assessment targets in New Brunswick schools because it deflates everyone involved when they aren’t hit. Article content The current target is for 90 per cent of students to “achieve appropriate or higher levels on provincial language, mathematical and scientific literacies on provincial assessments at the […]

Limited background amidst Wisconsin (and Madison’s) long term, disastrous reading results: Did taxpayer funded Wisconsin DPI Superintendent Underly Juice Test Scores for Reelection? notes and links on Incumbent DPI Superintendent Jill Underly (back story). Underly supports eliminating our one elementary teacher content knowledge requirement, the Foundations of Reading (FORT). Perhaps this forensic thread offers a […]

Quinton Klabon summary NEW DPI 2023 TEACHER REPORT —— Underly: “I support Eliminating the Foundations of Reading (FORT)” Teacher Test

Quinton Klabon: —— Commentary. MTEL and the Foundations of Reading —— Madison taxpayers of long supported far above average K – 12 spending. The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic” My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results […]

Alan Borsuk: Before the 2012 changes in cut scores, Wisconsin was regarded by some national education experts as having some of the lowest bars in the country for defining students as proficient or advanced. For example, the percentages of Wisconsin students who were categorized as proficient in reading and math, using the state’s definitions, were […]

Barbara Dittrich Representative Barbara Dittrich (R – Oconomowoc) issued the following statement regarding the MPS fiscal scandal and its impact on local school districts: “Aside from the fact that the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) leadership have deceived the public and hurt some of Wisconsin’s most underprivileged students, there is […]

Molly Beck, Rory Linnane And Kelly Meyerhofer The review proposed by Evers would be funded through federal dollars allocated for MPS but yet used or funding leftover from previously awarded contracts, according to the governor. The audits would produce “a comprehensive review and evaluation of the district’s systems, processes, and procedures to identify areas for improvement,” and […]

WILL: The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) strongly condemns the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) for changing the terminology regarding student performance as well as once again considering changing the cut points for proficiency on the state’s Forward Exam. This represents a blatant effort to conceal lackluster academic performance for Wisconsin students. […]

Quinton Klabon: Dean Haddix will oversee science of reading rollout at UW-Madison. Her literacy research focused elsewhere, but the group of which she was president wrote a nuanced defense of balanced literacy and called out UW’s Mark Seidenberg. How does she feel? —- DPI Superintendent Underly: “I support Eliminating the Foundations of Reading (FORT)” Teacher Test […]

Quinton Klabon: Good news! DPI fixed Milwaukee Public Schools! No, I don’t mean MPS’ finance crisis. The Forward Exam categories were OFFENSIVE.YUCKY: Below Basic, Basic, Proficient, AdvancedHAPPY: Developing, Approaching, Meeting, Advanced So, 68% of Black students are Developing. ✨ Will Flanders Changing terms for student performance on the Forward Exam will only serve to cloud […]

Will Flanders: The person put in charge of implementing the Science of Reading in Wisconsin apparently wrote positively about Lucy Calkins. More. Quinton Klabon: GENUINE QUESTION: She was the 2017 president of the Wisconsin State Reading Association, which lobbied against Act 20 in 2023! Many know her, so can someone explain? DPI Superintendent Underly: “I […]

Quinton Klabon Nancy Carlsson-Paige, former Lesley University education professor/Matt Damon’s mom from that 1 Reason video: “I could barely stand [Sold A Story]…full of false information, misconceptions, and distortions of 3-cueing. She didn’t even understand it.” More from Dr. Tim Slekar: Mary Kate McCoy: We’re concerned about equity in education. You will never achieve equity […]

Mitchell Schmidt: The Legislature argues Act 20 is the mechanism that empowers the state’s GOP-controlled budget committee to directly fund the literacy programs with dollars already approved in the state’s biennial budget, which Evers signed last summer. The committee has not yet allocated the $50 million in state funds. “Act 100, as passed by the […]

Austin Browne: Massachusetts will no longer require a college degree for a large majority of government jobs due to a new state executive order intended to make the commonwealth more “inclusive.” Governor Maura Healey signed the order, titled “Instituting Skill-Based Hiring Practices,” on Jan 25. The document asserts that “skills-based hiring practices will strengthen the […]

Scott Girard: “Wisconsin’s Teacher Pay Predicament,” published today by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Policy Forum, says it’s likely to get more challenging for districts to match the rising cost of living, even as many of the largest school systems gave out record wage increases ahead of the 2023-24 school year. That includes the Madison Metropolitan School […]

WisPolitics: Underly road a historic wave of cashflow to win in 2021, marking a significant win for Dems of the GOP. While the race was officially nonpartisan, the Dem Party contributed $949,844 to Underly’s campaign, which spent $1.53 million over the election. In all, candidates and outside groups spent $3 million on the race, a […]

NCTQ: Among the four core subjects, the greatest number of test takers pass the mathematics subtest, both on the first-attempt—the focus of this brief—and after multiple attempts (the “best-attempt” pass rate).2 This is surprising, perhaps, given the familiar anecdotes documenting elementary teachers’ math anxiety. Where do aspiring teachers struggle the most? It is the social studies subtest which test […]

Joanne Jacobs: Only 45 percent of would-be elementary teachers pass state licensing tests on the first try in states with strong testing systems concludes a new report by the National Council on Teacher Quality. Twenty-two percent of those who fail — 30 percent of test takers of color — never try again, reports Driven by […]

For a research project 1.Which belief, currently deemed true by scientific consensus, is most important for teachers & faculty at schools of ed to know? 2.Which belief, currently deemed false by scientific consensus, is nevertheless often believed by Ts & faculty at schls of ed? — Daniel Willingham (@DTWillingham) December 15, 2020 2010: When A […]

Max Eden: This June, pandemic conditions permitting, Harvard University will host a conference—not open to the public—to discuss the purported dangers of homeschooling and strategies for legal reform. The co-organizer, Harvard law professor Elizabeth Bartholet, believes that homeschooling should be banned, as it is “a realm of near-absolute parental power. . . . inconsistent with a […]

UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALSFOR THE SIXTH CIRCUIT, via a kind reader: “The recognition of a fundamental right is no small matter. This is particularly true when the right in question is something that the state must affirmatively provide. But just as this Court should not supplant the state’s policy judgments with its own, neither […]

Logan Wroge: “I don’t think that actually stating they’re supporting these policies actually means that anything will change,” said Mark Seidenberg, a UW-Madison psychology professor. “I don’t take their statement as anything more than an attempt to defuse some of the controversy and some of the criticism that’s being directed their way.” While there’s broad […]

WILL: Waukesha Circuit Court Judge Bohren issued a summary judgement order Tuesday in favor of School Choice Wisconsin Action (SCWA), a WILL client, that sued the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the state education agency, for their unfair, illegal treatment of private schools in Wisconsin’s choice programs. WILL filed the lawsuit on behalf of […]

Wisconsin Legislature: –State Representative John Nygren (R-Marinette), Co-Chair of the Joint Committee on Finance and State Representative Jeremy (R-Fond du Lac), Chair of the Assembly Education Committee released the following statement calling for an audit of the Department of Public Instruction: “Representing nearly one-fifth of the entire state budget, the Department of Public Instruction budget […]

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction: State Superintendent Carolyn Stanford Taylor announced her decision today not to run in the 2021 election for state superintendent of public instruction. Gov. Tony Evers appointed Stanford Taylor to the office in January 2019, and her term ends July 2021. “I am honored to have been appointed by Governor […]

Daniel Willingham: American students remain stumped by math. The 2019 scores for the National Assessment of Educational Progress test — known as NAEP — were published last month, showing that performance for fourth- and eighth-graders hasn’t budged since 2009. That’s a year after the National Mathematics Advisory Panel, convened by President George W. Bush, concluded that […]

Matthew Ladner: Americans thus seem to see their public education system as falling short in a variety of ways and aren’t especially optimistic about future improvement. Republicans exhibited the greatest amount of optimism, with 24 percent forecasting that the American public school system would be a “model of excellence around the world” in 20 years. […]

Molly Beck: Less than half of Wisconsin students again this year are considered to be proficient in reading and math — a trend Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Thursday called “disturbing.” The percentage of students in public and private voucher schools scoring well in reading and math on state tests dropped slightly during the 2018-19 […]

Judith Siers-Poisson: An education expert explains why he thinks that teachers leaving the profession is at the heart of the current teacher shortages. And he offers advice on how to retain experienced educators, while making it a more attractive career to young people. Tim Slekar notes and links. Additional Wisconsin Public Radio appearances: February, 2019. […]

: More than 2,500 teachers in Wisconsin worked in schools using emergency licenses during the 2017-18 school year, according to DPI data. In the Madison Metropolitan School District, 109 teachers were on emergency licenses during the 2016-17 school year after 67 the preceding school year. Teachers who work with some of the state’s most vulnerable […]

Dana Ansel: Last year, the Massachusetts Legislature decided that the time had come to understand the state of education that gifted students receive in Massachusetts. They issued a mandate for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to review the policy and practices of education in public schools for gifted students as well as for […]

Mark Seidenberg Wisconsin legislators are considering an important issue: how to help dyslexic children who struggle to read. You might think that helping poor readers is something everyone could get behind, but no. Dyslexia was identified in the 1920s and has been studied all over the world. It affects about 15% of all children, runs […]

Jenny Peek: Mark Seidenberg, a UW-Madison professor and cognitive neuroscientist, has spent decades researching the way humans acquire language. He is blunt about Wisconsin’s schools’ ability to teach children to read: “If you want your kid to learn to read you can’t assume that the school’s going to take care of it. You have to […]

Michelle Obama: Without telling me, she went over to the school and began a weeks-long process of behind-the-scenes lobbying, which led to me and a couple of other high-performing kids getting quietly pulled out of class, given a battery of tests, and about a week later reinstalled permanently into a bright and orderly third-grade class […]

Bethany Blankley: The documents DPI sent to school superintendents are the very documents WILL requested. DPI also sent school superintendents the final “joint federal notification packets” on ESSA, which also stipulated that the information not be made public before March 5. As a result, DPI could be applying a federal accountability system to schools and […]

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction: The Every Student Succeeds Act – a major federal education law – requires DPI to identify the lowest performing public schools and schools with low performing student groups in each state. Each state outlined their plans for this new federal accountability system, in which the state detailed their accountability indicators, […]

NCTQ: Our nation’s schools employ 3 million teachers and rely on 27,000 programs in 2,000 separate institutions for training those teachers. Since 2006, NCTQ has reviewed programs, made recommendations, and highlighted the best we’ve seen of key elements for undergraduate and graduate programs for elementary, secondary and special education. Wisconsin DPI’s ongoing efforts to weaken […]

Will Flanders: Perhaps the most egregious omissions are in the discussion of school funding and its effect on student outcomes. While the author cites one study – not yet peer-reviewed — the preponderance of evidence for decades has suggested little to no impact of per-student funding on educational achievement. This study, and others like it […]

Patrick Marley: In November, DPI provided some records but declined to fulfill parts of the request because it said WILL’s request wasn’t specific enough and was too burdensome, according to the lawsuit. WILL filed a narrower request in December but has not received additional records. The lawsuit could be just one stage in a protracted […]

Alan Borsuk: To set the context briefly: Comparing three years ago to last year, the percentage of students statewide who are rated as proficient or advanced in language arts, math and science has gone down. Just above 40% of Wisconsin kids are proficient or better in each subject, which means close to 60% are not. […]

Michael Crawford: Among the 29 countries and economies of the East Asia and Pacific region, one finds some of the world’s most successful education systems. Seven out of the top 10 highest average scorers on internationally comparable tests such as PISA and TIMSS are from the region, with Japan, Republic of Korea, Singapore, and Hong […]

<a href=”https://madison.com/ct/news/local/education/democratic-legislators-look-to-make-big-changes-to-state-education/article_882a0ddd-3671-5769-b969-dd9d2bc795db.html”>Negassi Tesfamichael</a>: <blockquote> Many local Democratic state legislators say much of the future of K-12 education in Wisconsin depends on the outcome of the Nov. 6 election, particularly the gubernatorial race between state superintendent Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Legislators spoke at a forum at Christ Presbyterian Church Wednesday night, […]

Will Flanders: Less discussed in Wisconsin is the tremendous impact that economic status has on student achievement. A school with a population of 100% students who are economically disadvantaged would be expected to have proficiency rates more than 40% lower than a school with wealthier students. Indeed, this economics achievement gap is far larger in […]

Emily Hanford: Balanced literacy was a way to defuse the wars over reading,” said Mark Seidenberg, a cognitive neuroscientist and author of the book “Language at the Speed of Sight.” “It succeeded in keeping the science at bay, and it allowed things to continue as before.” He says the reading wars are over, and science […]