Wisconsin Right Now

  (The Center Square) – New research shows that school enrollment has declined in over 5,000 public schools in the U.S., suggesting families are rejecting traditional schools because of the pandemic. The Fordham Institute's new study , conducted by researcher Sofoklis Goulas from the Brookings Institution, released Wednesday, found that families were over twice as likely to leave low-performing public schools. “These declines do not seem to be explained by declining birth rates or any changes in the enrollment of charter schools or private schools,” Goulas said. “There is something else going on.” The enrollment declines aren’t random, which leads Goulas to suspect that students aren’t just missing but instead are seeking alternatives. “This new research allows us to see whether these declines are random across schools or whether it could be something related to the efficacy,” Goulas said. “And we find that the big low-performing schools experience larger enrollment decl...

It’s not that Republican lawmakers don’t want to give the University of Wisconsin any more money, one legislator says the problem is the university is reluctant to tell the legislature where the money it currently gets is being spent. Rep. Amanda Nedweski, R-Pleasant Prairie, was on News Talk 1130 WISN Wednesday, and said the UW System is likely not getting more money until school leaders improve their relationship with the legislature. “It's hard to be confident in institutions that are seeming so reluctant to share simple information with the legislature,” Nedweski said. “I mean, the lack of transparency and accountability shown by the system in the last two decades has resulted in so much distrust between the legislature, the system and the taxpayer.” University President Jay Rothman earlier this week announced plans to ask the legislature for $914 million in the next state budget. Rothman said the UW needs the money to cover the costs of pay raises, to provide wrap-ar...

Act 10, the law that fundamentally weakened Wisconsin’s public school teachers’ unions, is headed back to court. And again there is an effort to save it. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on Monday filed a motion to join the new case that seeks to end Act 10. That case claims there was “no conceivable rational basis” for Act 10 to begin with. “There is no question that 2011 Wisconsin Act 10 significantly changed labor relations in Wisconsin. But since Act 10’s enactment over a decade ago, state and federal courts have repeatedly rebuffed constitutional challenges to the law by those who oppose it,” WILL wrote in its memo to the court. “Both the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin and Seventh Circuit in [the Walker case] had little trouble concluding that Wisconsin was free to distinguish between public safety and general employees, with the latter labeling this conclusion as ‘uncontroversial.’” The latest challenge to Act 10 comes is a claim the...

  Nearly 70% of Americans say that expanding educational choices for families will help improve education overall in the U.S., according to new polling. A vast majority of Americans across all demographics support more school choice options, the poll conducted by YouGov for the yes. every kid. foundation found. When asked, "If we make K-12 education more flexible for families, do you think this would improve or weaken our nation's overall education system?," 69% of respondents said it would either "stongly" improve (33%) or "somewhat" (36%) improve education. “Americans believe more education options will improve our nation’s education system,” Matt Frendewey, vice president of the yes. every kid. foundation , said in a statement released with the polling data. “A child’s access to a great education should not be determined by their family’s income or where they live. By expanding opportunities for families to customize the education to me...

The slivers of information that Reince Priebus is seeing in Wisconsin have him expecting Republican wins up and down the ballot. Priebus, who used to lead both the Wisconsin Republican Party and the RNC, told Jay Weber on News Talk 1130 WISN Monday that data collected by both organizations show independent and undecided voters breaking for Republicans. “They are leaning overwhelmingly to Tim Michels and Ron Johnson,” Priebus explained. “When given the choice between Tony Evers and Mandela Barnes on the issues of education and crime – and in the case of Ron Johnson, inflation, gas, groceries – all of these things that are at the forefront of voters’ minds, by a longshot the Republicans are doing much better.” Priebus says he doesn’t have an early or absentee vote count in the state, but said Republicans appear to be doing better than in 2020 when there was a flood of Democrats who voted early. Priebus said Republicans, by and large, do most of their voting on Election Day. Pol...

A working paper that examined how U.S. states responded to the COVID-19 pandemic found that states with strict lockdowns and other COVID-19 policies did little to prevent COVID-19 deaths, but those economic restrictions and pandemic school closures proved costly in other ways. "School closures may ultimately prove to be the most costly policy decision of the pandemic era in both economic and mortality terms," University of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan and fellow authors Stephen Moore and Phil Kerpen of the Committee to Unleash Prosperity wrote in the paper . "One study found that school closures at the end of the previous 2019-2020 school year are associated with 13.8 million years of life lost. An [National Institutes of Health] analysis found that life expectancy for high school graduates is 4 to 6 years longer than high school dropouts," the authors wrote. "The [Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development] estimates that learning losses f...