The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has flatly stated that the most pressing challenge currently facing the state education system is teacher retention. Many Wisconsin school districts, according to the DPI, struggle to keep qualified teachers in the classroom and to replace the ones that leave.

Two different analyses conducted by the Badger Institute at a statewide level appear to contradict the DPI’s findings.

When examining district-level data, however, the wrinkles begin to emerge.

We submitted testimony in favor of the Assembly’s Number One piece of business this week because, no matter how lousy our kids’ and schools’ test scores are, it’s both counterproductive and plain wrong to pretend otherwise.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction recently lowered proficiency test cut scores, detached our standards from National Assessment of Educational Progress proficiency levels, and modified the tests of students’ ability to read and to do math in ways that render comparisons to previous testing data impossible.

In short, the changes force Wisconsin to start over with education data after lowering the bar.

Ridership on Amtrak’s “Hiawatha” service between Milwaukee and Chicago grew only 4.7% in fiscal year 2024 compared to the year prior, according to the railroad’s end-of-year report.

Approximately 665,300 people rode the line between Oct. 1, 2023, and Sept. 30, 2024. While that represents an increase of more than 30,000 people compared to fiscal year 2023, it still falls short of the line’s historical peak ridership of more than 873,500 in fiscal year 2019. Ridership on the line cratered during the COVID-19 pandemic and has yet to fully recover.

“As a former teacher, I watched children throw out perfectly good food EVERY DAY. Children who received lunches were required to have everything offered that day placed on their tray, even if they told the lunch workers they wouldn’t eat it. Free school lunches are a waste of taxpayer dollars. The food is garbage with little to no nutritional value.”

— Sandra Bingham, Florence, WI

“Officials have discussed an executive order that would shut down all functions of the agency that aren’t written explicitly into statute or move certain functions to other departments, according to people familiar with the matter. The order would call for developing a legislative proposal to abolish the department.”

Among school administrators and school board members in Wisconsin, more than 65 percent of those who responded to a Badger Institute survey in the summer of 2017 said the federal role in education should be reduced or eliminated.

“I would like to see the federal government out of education completely,” said a central Wisconsin school board member. “We send our money to Washington to give bureaucrats a job, only to have them send a smaller allotment back to us.”

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