Wisconsin

Parents in the nation’s leader in school choice took its program to the United States Supreme Court and won. Wisconsin has enacted a moderate charter law and provides a number of digital learning opportunities. Now Wisconsin needs to take parent power seriously and provide user-friendly report cards to parents to guide their choices.

Both of Wisconsin’s voucher programs, The Milwaukee Parental Choice program and the Parental Private School Choice program (Racine), are income-qualified programs. The Milwaukee Parental Choice program is capped at $154.8 million in funding which results in over 24,000 students receiving scholarships. The state permits parents some choices among traditional public schools, which permits students to attend any public school in the state, but to move from one district to another requires the districts to agree to such transfers.

SOURCE: The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice

Charter schools in Wisconsin have a large amount of freedom from rules and regulations. No legal limit dictates the number of charters that can exist. The state law suffers from only having school boards act as authorizers (except in Milwaukee), and a from vague funding formula that results in inequity.

SOURCE: The Essential Guide to Charter School Law 2013 National Ranking and Scorecard

Wisconsin could provide more students with access to online learning options by eliminating the state-mandated cap of 5,250 virtual charter students. The state does provides a range of full-time and supplemental online learning options to students and enrollment in both full-time and part-time courses online has been steadily increasing over the past five years.

SOURCE: Digital Learning Now!

Wisconsin’s teacher evaluations measures teacher effectiveness using a variety of criteria, and at least half of the evaluation must be based on student growth data. Neither tenure decisions nor licensure advancement and renewal are based on teacher effectiveness. There is no assurance that tenured teachers who receive unsatisfactory evaluations will be placed on improvement plans or that they will be eligible for dismissal. The law mandates that seniority determine layoffs.

The state does not mention in law how teachers should be paid, performance pay or additional compensation.

SOURCE: National Council on Teacher Quality

Parent-friendly school performance data is very accessible and easy to understand on the state’s website. Information on the choice programs is available, but a little cumbersome to maneuver. Elections are held on the 1st Tuesday of April each year for the 426 local school boards in Wisconsin.