By: Cori Petersen On Monday, the U.S. Department of Education made funding available to state governors to distribute for education purposes. The money is called GEER funds, which stands for Governor’s Emergency Education Relief Fund. This is similar to the funds governors were authorized to distribute last spring as part…

By: Will Flanders and Jessica Holmberg On Dec. 30, amidst the holiday hubbub, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) released the results of a statewide survey of school districts regarding their experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. …

By: Will Flanders and Kyle Koenen This week, Republican members of the Assembly put forth a plan to get Wisconsin back to business in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. While there may be reasons to be reticent about passing the entire package, the bill includes a number of key…

By: Will Flanders Flying under the radar amidst the continuing pandemic is the news that the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) finally released school-level spending data for Wisconsin’s public schools. Required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), DPI appears to have dragged its feet as long as possible…

Will Flanders, Research Director The results for the 2019 administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have just been released. The NAEP is given to samples of students around the country on a biannual basis and provides the best method for comparing performance among students in different states…

By: Jillian Ludwig In late July, the University of Wisconsin-Madison joined the rest of the UW System in receiving a waiver from the Board of Regents to suspend ACT and SAT score requirements for admissions in response to COVID-19. The original waiver was set to expire on December 31, 2020…

Will Flanders, Research Director Last week, a Jefferson County Circuit Judge ruled that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) violated the law when it came to releasing data on the state’s private school choice programs. Along with Jim Bender of School Choice Wisconsin and Matt Kittle of Empower Wisconsin…

Will Flanders, Research Director The question of “systemic racism” in policing has been brought home in recent weeks by events in Kenosha Wisconsin. The shooting of Jacob Blake has led everyone from the Governor to the Milwaukee Bucks that policing in this state is fundamentally unfair to African Americans. The…

By: Will Flanders Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers instituted a statewide mask mandate on July 30. The mandate is likely unconstitutional, as the governor only has the power to declare an emergency declaration for 60 days for a particular crisis, and he already used that power in March. But perhaps an…