This week, I want to start with the one that tends to generate the most heat and the least light: school funding.

Let’s start with money.

There’s A LOT to unpack on this topic, so let me start with the bottom line up front: Wisconsin’s school funding system is broken, and in dire need of an overhaul — one that puts students, not systems, at the center.

Our state’s Frankenstein of a funding formula for districts is uniquely complex — indeed, in 50 state school funding comparisons, Wisconsin usually requires its own color. The revenue limit at its core was put in place in 1993 as a temporary patch — a bridge to buy time for a full overhaul. It’s based on an arbitrary number — how much each district spent that year — that bears little relationship to student needs.

Fundamentally, it was supposed to do two things: hold the line on property taxes and ensure districts had stable funding through a short-term transition. Clearly, it’s failing at both jobs. I said so in recent interviews on local and statewide media, and I meant it.

Yet, thirty-three years later, it’s still here — distributing resources unevenly, failing to align dollars with student needs, and straining under both an evolved educational landscape and an economic reality it was never designed to accommodate.

Between its reliance on rolling membership averages, the various hold harmless provisions piled on top of each other, and an incomprehensibly opaque set of mechanics — just ask any school finance offical or advocate, no matter their side, about their thoughts on the “school levy tax credit”, to try and explain “negative tertiary aid, or about the laughably-misnamed “low revenue ceiling” that’s actually a floor — it’s a stopgap that’s long outlived its usefulness, and is particularly ill-suited to the challenges of the current moment.

And, the current moment is a particularly challenging one for a system that was under strain even in the best of times:

• Declining enrollment means Wisconsin has fewer students than ever before — and all the indicators suggest this trend is accelerating.

• Voters have hit their limit on property tax hikes, and they’re feeling the anxiety and fiscal strain from economic uncertainty. As the Wisconsin Policy Forum pointed out last week, referendum passage rates are hovering near decade lows, and the Marquette Law Poll now shows clear majorities prioritize property tax reductions over K12 spending.

• And, even with state and local spending on K12 education near record high levels, ever-increasing cost pressures mean schools — of every type — are feeling the pinch.

That last point, especially, may come as a bit of a surprise. In total, Wisconsin spends nearly $14 BILLION in tax dollars on K12 schools each year. K12 school aids are the largest single area of direct state expenditures – just under $9 billion of that total – with the remainder largely coming from local property taxes. In each of the last two budgets, Governor Evers and legislative leaders forged compromises that included billion-dollar-plus increases in school spending.

And contrary to the rhetoric, the overwhelming majority of that spending goes to public school districts — less than 5% goes to private school choice programs.

There’s more to be done — special education funding and full-day 4K for low-income and working-class families are real gaps that deserve real answers. But the notion that Wisconsin isn’t investing in its kids doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. Some special interest groups keep moving the goalposts, pitting students and schools against each other to obscure that basic fact.

Wisconsin’s funding structure is a leaky pipe. Pouring more money into it will only make the leaks larger. We’re investing in our kids. That investment just isn’t reaching them.

Those making the case for fair school funding are asking some of the right questions - though not always in the right venues. They’re right that our broken approach to school funding demands a serious, structural response — even if the current school funding lawsuit is an ill-considered means to fix what’s broken.

But raising the right problem and proposing the right policy solutions are two different things. And as proposals like AB 1176 — championed by “progressive” Democrats like Representative Francesca Hong and Senator Chris Larson, the ranking members on the legislature’s Education Committees — illustrate, it’s possible to get the diagnosis right and the prescription badly wrong.

The answer has to be student-based budgeting — a model where funding follows the child, increases based on the child’s actual needs, and goes to whichever publicly funded school the family chooses. A student living in poverty, a student with a disability, a student still learning English — each of them brings the resources they need to whatever school serves them. That’s equitable. That’s defensible. It’s an approach with cross-partisan support, one that’s been adopted in more than 30 other states — red, blue, and purple.

And unlike the approach in AB 1176, it’s a solution that’s honest about the Wisconsin that actually exists in 2026.

Ensuring our state’s investments in K12 education are focused on students – not systems, and not special interest groups – isn’t a radical idea. The reason it hasn’t happened in Wisconsin isn’t a lack of good policy arguments — it’s a lack of political will. That’s what this moment demands. And it’s the standard we should apply to every candidate who wants Wisconsin families to trust them on education.

Rarely have so many levers of education policy been on the ballot at the same time. And rarely has the question of who leads on education mattered more.

I recently published an op-ed calling on Wisconsin Democrats specifically to step up. I meant every word of it. Democrats have historically been the party of education; they’ve lost significant ground with families on this issue, and the road back runs through honest, student-centered reform. That case still stands.

When some legislative Democrats recently put forward a school funding proposal that excluded more than 45,000 of Milwaukee’s publicly funded students simply because they attend public charter or choice schools, it sent exactly the wrong message. Governor Evers has done more than most to find pragmatic common ground on education funding, and that record deserves credit. But his decision to veto the federal tax credit scholarship — before program regulations were even finalized, against polling showing broad and cross-partisan support, and in an over-the-top manner that was more performative than practical — meant Wisconsin families will lose access to tens of millions of our federal tax dollars that are now likely to flow to other states. That’s not a student-first decision.

But the agenda I will lay out over the next few weeks isn’t a Democratic agenda. It isn’t a Republican one either. It’s a student-first agenda. And it belongs to whoever has the courage to champion it — governor or legislator, school board member or state superintendent, Democrat, Republican, or independent. Any elected official in Wisconsin who wants to move past soundbites and lead the serious conversations about education that our students, families, and communities deserve has a path forward here.

And the facts make the case for why. Enrollment across the state has been declining for years, yet staff levels and spending demands keep climbing — a mismatch that strains budgets and credibility as calls for more money keep coming.

For the first time in almost a decade, the venerable Marquette Law Poll shows voters’ concerns about rising property taxes outweighing their desire for more school funding. Last week’s election results reaffirm that concerns about affordability and property taxes are real and widespread: just 61% of school district referenda on the ballot on Tuesday passed — near decade-low levels. And, the mixed results cross both regional and partisan divides: just in our part of the state, high-profile referenda in areas as wealthy and blue as Whitefish Bay, and as rural and red as Hustisford both were defeated by voters.

Families aren’t satisfied with the status quo — nor should they be. They’re making different choices because of it, and the data shows that in many instances, those choices are working better for them. More than 160,000 students statewide — roughly one in five — now attend a school other than the one assigned by their home district.

And here in Milwaukee, it’s nearly one in two.

While nearly half of MPS students attend schools not meeting the state’s lowered expectations on the most recent state Report Card, just 16.5% of Milwaukee Parental Choice Program students and 9% of public charter school students are in such schools — including no Milwaukee public charter school students in one-star rated schools.

The polling also backs this up. A new survey from 50CAN and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty finds that 55% of parents using choice options say they are very satisfied with their school, compared to 43% of public school parents. When asked if they’d choose the same school again, 78% of choice parents say yes, versus 62% of public school parents. And only 31% of Wisconsin parents are extremely confident their child will be prepared for the workforce.

None of this is about rejecting investing in our state’s students, or in public education. Voters are instead rejecting elected officials of any stripe who write bigger checks without demanding better results, who defend systems over students, who treat the choices families have already made for their children as something to be reversed rather than respected.

Over the next two weeks, I’m going to lay out four priorities that any Wisconsin leader in any party or office can and should champion — an agenda that puts ALL our students back at the center of the conversation, where they belong:

1. Fair, student-based funding that follows every child to whatever publicly funded school they choose attend.

2. Embracing and making school choice work — all of it, including the reality that families in Milwaukee and across the state deserve leaders who honor their agency, not try to take away choices they’ve enjoyed in some cases for more than 30 years.

3. Real accountability for student outcomes across every publicly funded school: not just talk but action when students aren’t learning, and schools aren’t serving them well.

4. And an honest reckoning with Milwaukee Public Schools: both the district’s ongoing fiscal challenges – and MPS’ worst-in-the-nation academic performance.

None of these are new ideas. None of them are particularly partisan — agreement cuts across the political spectrum if you’re willing to look for it. Education should be where we find common ground around a shared priority: Our kids, and the future we want for each and every one of them.

This bill purports to use a portion of the state’s surplus to fund schools while lowering property taxes – two worthy goals. Increased special education funding, in particular, is something we’ve long called for at CFC, and it may be the only thing everyone in Madison agrees should be done with the surplus.

But the authors inserted a provision, intended to “block the automatic increase for vouchers”, that would instead defund nearly 1 in 5 publicly funded Wisconsin students:

• Students participating in public school open enrollment,

• Students with special education IEPs, mainly in rural areas, who receive services through interdistrict cooperation agreements,

• Students in public charter schools, and

• Students in the state’s Parental Choice programs, including the Special Needs Scholarship Program

Add it all up, and you’re talking about 168,244 students statewide who would be left out. That includes more than 45,000 students in the city of Milwaukee — 48% of the city’s publicly-funded K12 enrollment. And, it includes some of the most vulnerable students across our state’s rural school districts, which are already facing pressures from both rising costs and declining enrollment.

That’s not a “common sense fix” – and it’s certainly neither fair nor responsible.

Why it matters: The (Bad) Message & The (Significant) Messengers

Normally, I wouldn’t use this space to highlight a late-session “messaging bill” with no chance of becoming law. But in this case, both the message AND the messengers matter.

First, the message: Milwaukee faces an ongoing educational crisis, with fewer than 1 in 5 students meeting lowered expectations. And our city faces real school funding challenges: yes, the ongoing fiscal mess at MPS, but also the persistent unequal per-pupil funding gaps for students in public charter and private schools — this year, costing Milwaukee more than $200M in total.

Yet, this proposal would exclude nearly half of Milwaukee’s students from the benefits of the state’s surplus—defunding thousands of our city’s families—simply because of a parent’s choice of school for their child.

And, that’s just how this bill fails Milwaukee: in their rush to “defund vouchers”, the bill’s authors also do harm to tens of thousands of public school students, including special education students in rural districts across the state. I suspect this is an unintentional oversight — but it speaks to just how unserious, unfair, and fundamentally flawed this proposal is.

Then, consider the messengers:

• One of the bill’s primary co-sponsors is Representative Francesca Hong, the ranking Democrat on the Assembly Education Committee and one of the leaders in the Democratic primary field for governor.

• The lead Senate author (and enthusiastic champion) is Chris Larson, a Milwaukee legislator and ranking Democrat on the Senate Education Committee.

• Among the other legislators who’ve publicly trumpeted this bill is Rep. Greta Neubauer – the Assembly’s Minority Leader.

Wisconsin is guaranteed to have new legislative leadership, in addition to a new Governor, and partisan control is up for grabs. There’s an outcome in which the next Assembly Speaker and the chairs of both chambers’ Education Committees have endorsed a proposal to defund half of Milwaukee’s students, as well as special education students in rural areas across the state.

That should be a real concern for all of us — no matter our partisan affiliation.

“Defund Milwaukee Students” Is Bad Policy AND Bad Politics

Governing by soundbite usually yields bad policy – and often, it’s bad politics too. AB 1176 is a perfect example of why.

This year, CFC’s District Profiles show seven separate Democratic legislators represent districts, anchored in the city of Milwaukee, in which 48% or more of students are enrolled in schools that would be excluded from AB 1176:

• Assembly District 8 (Sylvia Ortiz-Velez): 61% of publicly-funded students excluded

• Assembly District 12 (Russell Goodwin Sr.): 58%

• Senate District 4 (Dora Drake): 50%

• Assembly District 10 (Darrin Madison): 50% (of MKE portion - district includes Shorewood)

• Assembly District 18 (Margaret Arney): 50% (68of MKE portion - district includes portions of Wauwatosa)

• Senate District 3 (Tim Carpenter): 48%

• Assembly District 9 (Priscilla Prado): 48%

All of these seats, except Dora Drake’s Senate seat, are on the ballot this fall. And each of these legislators, except for Senator Drake and Representative Ortiz Velez, is listed as a cosponsor of AB 1176.

Of note, a number of Democrats — including most of the Senate leadership — (wisely) chose not to sign on to this bill. Not all are supporters of parental choice, but at least they had the common sense to reject this sloppy and harmful bill.

In following the misguided efforts of a few colleagues to appeal to a narrow set of special interest groups, each of these legislators will now have to explain to their constituents—Milwaukee’s families who use school choice—why their children aren’t worthy of benefiting from additional state funding.

What we actually need: ideas, not ideology

AB 1176 isn’t a one-off: several of the same legislators tried the same maneuver in the Joint Finance Committee this past June, when the K12 portion of the state budget was under debate. Nor is this just about the Legislature: we’ve already seen Hong propose an immediate repeal of the Parental Choice Program as part of her gubernatorial campaign, and at least one other Democrat suggests the program should “eventually” go away.

The common thread is this: the open hostility of a small but noisy subset of special interest groups towards parental choice, despite the fact that the majority of Wisconsin residents support these options and nearly half of Milwaukee’s families now use them.

Let’s be clear: School choice in Milwaukee isn’t an experiment. It isn’t a fad. It has been here for three decades. You cannot just end it. You cannot wish it away. And you certainly cannot build a credible education funding reform proposal on the premise that nearly half the students in Wisconsin’s largest city simply don’t count.

The serious policy conversations Wisconsin needs to have – how to improve stagnant student achievement statewide, how to address the crisis on Milwaukee’s North Side and eliminate the state’s Black-White performance disparities, how to actually fix our state’s broken school funding system – deserve serious policymakers, not ideologically-driven talking points being written into state statutes.

Milwaukee’s students deserve real solutions from elected leaders, not special-interest sound bites. AB 1176 — and any other proposal that would leave out half of Milwaukee’s students to serve ideological purposes— should be rejected. Legislative Democrats must do better — by ALL of our city’s students — if they want to prove themselves worthy of the mantle of leadership.

As an organization, we at CFC have long chosen to de-emphasize graduation rates, in favor of focusing on more rigorous metrics like ACT scores — metrics that are less easily gamed and that more accurately reflect students’ preparation for college, career, and life.

In today’s guest Corner, CFC Senior Advisor Robert Rauh, the founding leader of one of Milwaukee’s highest-performing public charter school networks, Milwaukee College Prep, shares his take on the recent results and why there’s more to the graduation rate story than the headlines might suggest.

A record graduation rate, a 46% chronic absenteeism rate, and the difference between being educated and being processed…

When the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported last week that Milwaukee Public Schools had achieved its highest graduation rate since 2009 — 72% for the class of 2025 — district officials wasted no time celebrating. “We want to thank the students, teachers, support staff and administrators who helped drive this sustained growth,” said Milwaukee Board of School Directors President Missy Zombor. “Now our charge is to focus on and expand the strategies that are working – and add additional proven strategies to help all students graduate on time.” The district’s research director told the school board that MPS was “successfully accelerating outcomes for the students who need it most.” State Superintendent Jill Underly praised “the tireless work of educators.”

While kudos to hard-working educators and students are certainly warranted, it is also worth asking what, exactly, is being celebrated — and whether that celebration is warranted or premature.

The Number That Just Doesn’t Add Up

Start with the most basic comparison. Wisconsin’s statewide graduation rate for 2025 is 92% — itself a record high. MPS’ rate is 72%. That 20-point gap means more than one in four MPS students does not graduate on time.

Finishing 20 points behind the state average is not a milestone. It is an indictment dressed up as good news.

But the graduation rate is only the beginning of the problem. The deeper question — the one MPS is not asking loudly enough — is what graduation actually represents.

A Credential Without Content

Only 9% of MPS fourth graders scored at or above proficiency in reading on the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). In math, only 8% of MPS eighth graders reached proficiency. On the ACT, only 12% of MPS students were proficient in math and 22% in English Language Arts (ELA). Black students in Wisconsin now score below their peers in every standardized measure. As a state, Wisconsin holds the worst Black-white academic gap in the country, and Milwaukee’s North Side is the epicenter of this disaster.

A graduation rate of 72% and a reading proficiency rate of 9% cannot be both true reflections of the same students’ preparation. One of those numbers is lying — and my money is that it isn’t the Nation’s Report Card or the ACT.

The Journal Sentinel reports that the district is driving graduation growth through “credit recovery opportunities such as summer school,” improved transcript monitoring, and alternative pathways. These are academic interventions — but they are also well-documented mechanisms by which districts inflate graduation metrics without improving actual learning.

When a diploma no longer requires demonstrable proficiency in reading or math, it stops being an academic credential. It becomes a bureaucratic output, a process metric — the result of a system optimized to generate completions rather than competence.

The Data They Aren’t Celebrating

This Journal Sentinel article notes several other data points released alongside the graduation rate — and they tell a very different story:

• MPS’ attendance rate last year was 84%, compared to 92% statewide.

• More than 46% of MPS students were chronically absent — missing more than 10% of possible school days. The statewide chronic absenteeism rate was 17%.

• MPS’ dropout rate was over 4%, compared to roughly 1% statewide.

Read those numbers together. Nearly half of MPS students are missing so much school they are considered chronically absent. More than 4% are dropping out entirely. These figures are not incidental — chronic absenteeism is one of the strongest predictors of academic failure and dropout. A student who is absent more than 10% of the year is not receiving the instruction needed to build genuine proficiency, regardless of what their transcript ultimately shows.

And yet the district’s graduation rate is being celebrated as evidence of progress.

The Crisis Behind the Curtain

The celebration rings especially hollow for students on Milwaukee’s North Side. As our recent report highlighted, nearly 55,000 students enrolled in North Side schools, only 18% attend schools meeting a CFC’sdefinition of high quality.

For high school students, that number drops to just 14% — students at just 3 high schools, none of which are operated by MPS, and whose collective enrollment includes only 3% Black students.

Fifty-seven percent of Wisconsin’s Black students attend North Side Milwaukee schools. These are the students receiving those diplomas. And the system celebrating their graduation is the same system that failed to teach most of them to read.

What Celebration Costs

The danger of celebrating 72% is not simply that it sets a low bar. It is that it provides political cover for a system that has not solved — and is not close to solving — its core failure: the inability to give Black children on Milwaukee’s North Side an education that prepares them for life.

Instead of self-congratulatory plaudits and press releases, MPS leaders should be focused on the hard, necessary decisions to drive sustained progress: consolidating half-empty, chronically underperforming buildings; redirecting those savings into academic programs and teacher quality; and holding every school accountable for results with real consequences for chronic failure.

The downstream cost of MPS’ inaction are not abstract. A 22.5% youth disconnection rate among young Black Milwaukeeans. Black men incarcerated at 14 times the rate of white men. A wealth gap, a health gap, a life expectancy gap — all among the worst in America. These are not separate crises. They are what a 9% reading proficiency rate looks like twenty years later.

A child who cannot read in fourth grade, misses nearly a quarter of the school year, and receives a diploma at eighteen anyway has not been educated. They have been processed. Celebrating the processing rate is not leadership. It is the normalization of failure — and Milwaukee’s children deserve far better.

Sources: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, “Wisconsin, MPS graduation rates hit record highs in 2024-25” (March 12, 2026); NAEP 2024; City Forward Collective, “Milwaukee’s North Side Education Crisis” (2025); Wisconsin DPI; Wisconsin Legislature, State of Black Wisconsin Report (2025).

I know firsthand just how hard — and important — what’s happening in Indianapolis will be: I was in the proverbial room where it happened, on the floor of the Louisiana Legislature the day Act 91, the New Orleans reform bill passed almost a decade ago. As a district administrator, I helped lead the development and implementation of the district’s plan to return to local governance.

When we did our work in New Orleans, we weren’t thinking about talking points or sector share. We were thinking about what our students, families, schools, and community actually needed. We laid out a set of values and guiding principles, and then we tried to make decisions in line with those beliefs. We focused on the pragmatic, unglamorous, yet crucial work of ensuring that the law that was passed, actually worked in practice. I’m certain we didn’t get everything right — but we built a governance structure that not only endures, but that has proven effective in creating the conditions for sustained improvements in outcomes for students & schools.

Consider: Today, New Orleans has zero schools in the lowest performance rating level on its state Report Card. New Orleans was top ten among urban districts in post-pandemic academic recovery, and its sustained progress is fueling Louisiana’s trend-breaking gains on the Nation’s Report Card, as part of the Southern Surge.

Think about what something similar could mean for Milwaukee, and for Wisconsin.

That experience shapes how I think about education governance, and it’s why what’s happening in Indianapolis caught my attention — why I believe it’s work we in Milwaukee should be paying close attention to.

Indy’s legislation creates the Indianapolis Public Education Corporation — a mayor-appointed board that will manage facilities and transportation for all public schools, levy property taxes equitably across the system, and establish a common accountability framework that applies to both charter schools and IPS, including closure of persistently low-performing schools.

This wasn’t rash reaction. It was the product of a nine-member civic alliance, and it came after years of methodical work. While no change of this nature is easy, this set of reforms was done with real support from parents and grassroots community leaders. The legislators and civic leaders who worked to pass this plan deserve real credit for their bold, outside-the-box thinking.

The driving logic behind Indy’s new structure is straightforward. Separate the education of children from the stewardship of public resources. Let educators focus on what happens inside classrooms and school buildings. Put facilities, transportation, and performance expectations under a single structure that’s accessible on equal terms to all schools, one that’s publicly accountable, and one that’s more insulated from the dysfunction that’s made reform impossible at the school board level.

The precipitating events in Indy were also real. A majority of students within Indianapolis Public Schools’ boundaries now attend public charter schools, and IPS is running a $44 million structural deficit this year, one projected to grow until the district exhausts its reserves and risks state takeover. Underused buildings and inefficient operations are eating up the budget.

All of this should sound very familiar to us in Milwaukee — down to the size of MPS’ current $46 million deficit, and the district’s projected five year, $420M+ budget hole. We’ve reached the same financial precipice, and the same enrollment inflection points. This year, fully 48 percent of Milwaukee’s publicly funded students attend schools outside of MPS.

Let that sink in: today, in Milwaukee, you’re as likely to encounter a student educated in a public charter or private school, as one who attends MPS.

The structural and financial pressures facing MPS aren’t going away; they will only intensify in the months and years ahead. You simply can’t fund or run a system built for 80,000 students when you’re serving 50,000 — and you certainly can’t do it while maintaining buildings, managing transportation, and trying to improve worst-in-the-nation academic outcomes all at once.

More money isn’t the solution, because funding isn’t the root problem at MPS — a generationally broken system is.

Governor Evers’ audits have documented the depth of MPS’ institutional dysfunction in exhaustive detail. The board’s own budget hearings - as recently as last night — tell the same story: A district facing a growing structural deficit, a facilities portfolio it cannot afford to maintain yet refuses to rightsize, and a governance structure that cannot get out of its own way.

More than fifteen years ago, Democratic leaders agreed that Milwaukee needed major structural change. In the years since, by almost every metric that matters — academic outcomes, financial stability, enrollment — things have gotten worse. In some cases, far worse.

Milwaukee has avoided this conversation for a long time.

Our city’s leaders have been frozen in inaction, quick to point to the failures of the past to avoid accountability in the present. The ongoing fiscal saga at the School Board is yet more evidence that waiting isn’t working. And, as our recent report on the North Side laid out, this isn’t just about money — academic outcomes for our city’s students are “devastating”. The system is proving, once again, that it cannot fix these problems from the inside.

We’ve learned a lot in the intervening years. We now have models for what a better system could do and should be — and its past time for our leaders to act. Our students have one chance, and they deserve better than the broken status quo.

But this isn’t a call to copy-paste Indianapolis’ legislation into a Wisconsin bill draft. What we passed in New Orleans was designed for New Orleans. What just passed in Indiana was designed for Indianapolis. The right answers for Milwaukee are going to be designed here, by Milwaukee leaders, with Milwaukee families and students and schools at the center.

The lesson that transfers isn’t the specific legislative architecture. It’s the underlying idea that at a certain point, structural change must happen — that sustaining the status quo of a fundamentally broken governance structure no longer works. Resource allocation needs to focus on students, not systems. Accountability has to be real, apply equally to all schools that receive public dollars, and sit with someone who answers to the public. And focusing on the district in isolation isn’t enough when half your students are educated outside of it.

Indianapolis just showed us that another path is possible, as New Orleans did before. It took courage, years of groundwork, and leaders willing to clearly articulate values, do the hard and necessary work of translating them into practice, and put students ahead of institutions.

As Dr. Howard Fuller has put it, “we need to love our students more than we love the sectors and structures that operate schools”. It’s time for Milwaukee to start having that conversation.

Here’s what the data tells us is happening: Of the roughly 55,000 students enrolled in North Side Milwaukee schools, less than 20% attend schools that meet CFC’s definition of high quality. For high school students, that number drops to 14% — and every single one of those students attends one of three schools, none of which serve significant Black populations. Meanwhile, 22 of Wisconsin’s 50 lowest-performing schools sit on the North Side. Seventeen of them are MPS district-operated.

The statewide implications are just as stark. Fifty-seven percent of Wisconsin’s Black students attend Milwaukee schools. The North Side’s educational crisis is the primary engine behind one of the most shameful statistics in our state: Wisconsin’s largest-in-the-nation gap between Black and White student proficiency rates. And the most recent NAEP results tell us these gaps aren’t closing — they’re growing, driven by outright declines in Black student proficiency right here in Milwaukee.

As I’ve said before: When will it be enough?

We’ve known this for decades. We’ve commissioned study after study, formed task forces and issued reports. And generation after generation of North Side children has grown up in schools that failed them while adults argued over process and politics, frozen into inaction that’s calcified into complacency.

As Dr. Howard Fuller said in response to this report:

“For decades, we have failed to ensure that our children on the North Side of Milwaukee get the quality education they need and deserve. The data contained in this document is DEVASTATING!! The question is, when will we muster the political will to change this unacceptable reality for our children? When will we set aside our differences and unite to make sure all of our children receive the education they need to prepare them to engage in the practice of freedom- to be able to be full participants in the effort to transform their world. It’s time to quit making excuses and living in denial. We MUST act NOW!!!”

Here’s what bothers me most: this isn’t even part of the conversation.

You can watch candidate forums, scroll through campaign mailers, and read the coverage from Milwaukee’s political press, and you will struggle to find anyone treating this as the emergency it is. No bold plans. No urgency. No moral outrage. Just silence — and the vague call for “more resources” that never comes attached to an actual plan.

That silence is a choice, and it should disqualify people from leading.

Every candidate running for office — from the Governor’s race to the state legislature, from the Mayor’s office to the MPS school board — should be required to answer one simple question: what, specifically, will you do to improve school performance and student outcomes on Milwaukee’s North Side? Not platitudes. Not finger-pointing and blame-shifting. Not vague handwaving that “we need to address the root causes.” Specific. Concrete. Accountable.

The media should be asking that question too. Milwaukee has talented journalists covering education, and some of them do excellent work. But the North Side’s educational catastrophe rarely breaks through as a sustained story — the kind that follows candidates, shapes debates, and demands accountability. That has to change. The data in this brief is news. Tens of thousands of children trapped in failing schools, a system operating 25 more buildings than it needs while those buildings drain tens of millions of dollars every year in resources from classrooms, enrollment declining because families have lost faith and are leaving. That’s an accountability story – and it’s a story that cannot be ignored.

Our brief lays out a path forward built on three things:

1. rightsizing MPS so that savings from consolidation flow into academic programs, rather than heating half-empty buildings and shuffling staff between them;

2. real accountability for persistently failing schools – regardless of sector; and

3. governance reform that stops putting adult politics over student performance.

None of this is radical. All of it requires political courage that has been absent.

Schools like St. Marcus Lutheran and Milwaukee College Prep prove that zip code doesn’t have to determine destiny. That the same kids, in the same neighborhoods, can thrive when they have access to high-quality schools. The North Side doesn’t lack for capable students – as a proud child of the North Side myself, I know this first-hand. It lacks leaders willing to tell hard truths and act on them.

The brief is out. The data is clear. What Milwaukee needs now is the political will to do something about it.

READ THE FULL REPORT

One of the privileges of this role is that I get to spend time in proximity to Dr. Fuller. Dr. Fuller was my Superintendent when I was an MPS student in the early 90s, and has been a mentor and inspiration for me throughout my professional career, both as a district leader in New Orleans and now in my policy & advocacy work at CFC. Dr. Fuller is a giant in this work, far beyond Milwaukee. It’s often the first question I get when I mention my hometown during national conversations. I feel truly fortunate to be one of the many leaders who benefit from his influence and expertise.

I never fail to leave my conversations with Dr. Fuller challenged, provoked, and inspired. Doc’s ability to connect the past to the present, to give context in moments that feel like a crisis, and to move fluently between the people and the pinnacles of power — is a true gift. His history and boundary-spanning journey — the moral clarity of cause and purpose he brings, even as he teaches us to grapple with the complexity and contradictions inherent in this work — would take far more than this space allows me to say. The documentary is well worth the hour of your time.

This time, I was able to share the gift of Dr. Fuller’s wisdom with my oldest daughter, who joined me at the film screening and talkback. As the event finished, she had a question for Doc — and in the midst of everything, he took a moment to share a thoughtful and inspiring response with her. In the car, I asked her what she took away from the experience, and her words captured so much: “My worst fear is to be a follower. I want to make change, not just do change.”

I don’t know if I could encapsulate the movie - or Dr. Fuller’s legacy - any better: He makes change.

Earlier this year, I had the opportunity to attend an event at Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy, his namesake school, where an installation honoring former state Representative Annette “Polly” Williams was unveiled in the lobby. As he often does, Doc reminded those of us in attendance that, in his opinion, he gets too much credit for the start of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and the modern school choice movement - and other leaders like Polly don’t get enough.

So, in Dr. Fuller’s honor this Black History Month, I’m heeding his admonition, and resharing one of the first Corner posts we published— and a call that rings as true now as ever: “We need more Polly Williams choice people”:

This Black History Month, I’m lifting up the legacy of Black women like former State Rep. Annette “Polly” Williams, the “mother of school choice.”

Polly was a single mother who worked multiple administrative jobs to pay for her children’s grade school tuition. She then had to fight an initial rejection to send her children to the high school she thought would best serve them. Later, when she became a Wisconsin state legislator, Polly championed the pioneering Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), despite resistance within her political party. Today, almost one-fourth of publicly-funded Milwaukee students attend a school using the MPCP.

Her tireless advocacy - for her children and her constituents - was not driven by rigid ideology but by a profoundly pragmatic focus on serving her community. She fought hard to ensure others like her were empowered with the same opportunity she had to struggle for herself: “That a parent ought to be able to get the best, whatever they decide for their children, whatever it is, whether it is all-white, predominantly black, Hispanic … good quality education ought to be there.”

Yet as the Milwaukee choice program evolved into a national movement, Williams grew disillusioned, feeling it had become beholden to ideological interests and no longer served the families she sought to uplift. She pragmatically acknowledged shortcomings in the program – “I’m not going to be an ostrich with my head in the sand pretending we don’t have a problem” – and argued for meaningful accountability for MPCP schools, to ensure that Black children were receiving the education they deserved.

In turn, she was dismissed and marginalized by some within the movement, who had their own ideological agendas — an unfortunate reality we see repeated far too often. The perspectives and lived experiences of Black women, and Black parents & caregivers, are often overlooked, leading to policies that do not address their realities and improve outcomes for their children.

That’s why a recent poll illuminating Black single mothers’ perspectives on K12 education is so vital. An overwhelming majority want political support for school choice and parental empowerment. The poll highlights the practical and grounded approach of Black single mothers in addressing multifaceted socioeconomic challenges, where educational equity interlinks with societal progress.

As the child of a Black single mother, I’m also the product of this powerful, pragmatic, and fierce determination to fight on behalf of their children. As a Black parent, I strive to honor this legacy in raising my girls. And, through our advocacy efforts, I’ve been honored to stand with another generation of Black parents and caregivers, like Polly and my mother, as we advocated for fairer funding for every Milwaukee child.

Fewer than 1 in 10 Black students in Milwaukee are performing on grade level in Reading and Math. Meanwhile, our education discourse is often stuck in stubborn ideology, with the voices and lived experiences of parents and caregivers absent or marginalized. Our city’s students and schools need more ‘Polly Williams choice people.’

We would all do well this Black History Month to reflect on her legacy — and commit ourselves to truly listen to, learn from, and be led by the voices of Black mothers, parents, and caregivers.

As I’ve said publicly, MPS’ late audits being done are good news: while it never should have come to a crisis, the district at least has now finished “the bare minimum that’s required,” as one elected official put it.

But, the audits are far from the end of the story – and as today’s headlines about MPS overspending demonstrate, there’s a lot of hard work ahead to fix MPS’ finances. In a recent letter to staff, Superintendent Cassellius acknowledged what many of us have been saying for years: “decisions about next year’s budget will not be easy.”

That’s putting it mildly. Anyone paying attention saw this coming from miles away.

Back in 2024, when Milwaukee voters narrowly approved a $252 million annual property tax increase—a staggering 30% hike—we warned that “a quarter of a billion dollars still isn’t enough.” The district, we said then, cannot afford to keep kicking the can down the road, and Milwaukee’s families, residents, and taxpayers can’t be asked to foot an ever-increasing bill without a plan to balance the district’s revenues and expenses.

Two years later, those words ring truer than ever.

The Numbers Don’t Lie—MPS Has A Spending Problem

This week, the School Board is receiving initial budget projections, as a formal start to budget work. Over the next few months, more details will emerge before the Board considers a full FY27 spending plan in May.

What’s been made public thus far, while early and incomplete, paints a stark picture:

• MPS reports a $46.6M current year “gap between revenues and expenditures” - a budget deficit, in layman’s terms.

• This doesn’t include some big-ticket items like the $55M for pay raises for staff and up to $75M to end overreliance on “vacancy adjustments.” This is a budget gimmick that the Wisconsin Policy Forum has criticized. And it means the true scale of the shortfall for next year is likely much greater than the official number.

The long-term financial outlook for MPS is quite concerning. The district projects a cumulative deficit of $420 million by the end of the 2030-31 school year if it continues on its current trajectory. This shortfall is primarily attributed to an additional $185 million in spending on salaries and benefits over the next five years.

Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) has a budget of $1.6 billion, exceeding $18,000 per student. As the highest-funded local government unit in Wisconsin, MPS receives the largest share of Milwaukee residents’ property taxes and ranks in the top 10 districts for per-pupil funding. Overall, MPS is well-funded.

Yet, we’re already seeing MPS crying poor. The refrains are familiar to us all: we need more money, it’s the state’s fault for underfunding us – and most troublingly, “we’ll be going back to the public for additional revenue.”

Here’s the bottom line: MPS has a spending problem — and until that problem is fixed, no amount of money is ever going to be enough.

MPS Has A Spending Problem - Not A Revenue One

What’s missing from MPS is an acknowledgment that its issues aren’t on the revenue side of the ledger. MPS’ financial mess is one of its own making, the direct and predictable result of the School Board’s failed stewardship and the district’s reckless spending & catastrophic mismanagement of its finances.

Instead of accountability, we continue to get regurgitated talking points that fail to reflect MPS’ financial realities. Consider the following:

• MPS saw a $105M increase in general state funding this year — despite district enrollment falling by 1,300 students — yet it continues to echo talking points about “$0 state aid increases” that simply don’t apply.

• MPS’s two property tax hikes have vaulted it firmly into the upper echelon of Wisconsin school districts on a per-pupil basis — yet it continues to repeat ubiquitous – and misleading – claims about not keeping up with inflation.

I understand it’s election season, but MPS must do better than rehashing rhetoric from special interest groups. Milwaukee voters deserve more than finger-pointing and stock talking points — what’s needed is a frank accounting for how the district is still in this position, even as its revenues are at an all-time high.

MPS Has A Spending Problem - Not A School Choice One

MPS has made a bad fiscal situation worse with its ideological hostility to public charter schools. The district now stands to lose more than $40 million in topline revenue from roughly 3,500 students at Carmen and Milwaukee College Prep exiting its enrollment, at an estimated $18,500 per pupil.

Importantly, this includes $12-15 million in funds subsidizing district operations – reflecting a “skim” of about $ 3,500 per public charter school student, because MPS pays its charters less per pupil than it receives for those same students. In the case of Carmen, it also includes lost facilities lease revenues – for a building they are forcing Carmen to vacate, and for which MPS has no credible future plans.

Nor, to be clear, is MPS’ budget problem about vouchers: total statewide spending on all the state’s private school choice or voucher programs is about $700M – less than half of MPS’ annual budget. The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program accounts for about half of the statewide total ($313M) – and notably, none of this comes from local property taxes.

MPS Has A Spending Problem - And We Still Need A Plan

The School Board has spent the last decade ducking hard choices, engaging inprofligate spending without a coherent plan to improve outcomes or achieve fiscal sustainability.

Just in the past month, we’ve watched this board slow-walk a modest school consolidation proposal, while simultaneously twisting itself into knots trying to appease their special-interest group patrons by pre-awarding salary increases – literally before they even knew the budget numbers!

I want to be clear: Educators should be fairly compensated for their vital work. Every Milwaukee student deserves safe, modern facilities. But even on these fronts, it’s still clear that MPS has a spending problem:

• After multiple rounds of salary increases, MPS teacher salaries are now 35% higher on average than Milwaukee public charter and private schools, and 10-15% higher than most suburban Milwaukee districts.

• Meanwhile, after two decades of delays on rightsizing, MPS is losing tens of millions per year operating half-empty buildings, while a multi-billion-dollar deferred maintenance backlog continues to fester.

MPS Has A Spending Problem - Here’s What Must Come Next

MPS needs dramatic rightsizing, and it needs it now. The math is straightforward: with a 30,000-student enrollment decline, and an average school size of 485 students, MPS is operating at 20-30% excess capacity – or at least 25 more schools than it needs. That’s in line with what the district’s own consultants at Perkins Eastman identified 18 months ago, and it mirrors what other cities (Cleveland, Philadelphia, San Antonio) experiencing similar demographic shifts are undertaking.

We know what needs to be done – and so far, what’s on the table is far from sufficient. As I’ve said before, 5 or 6 schools, a year or two from now, simply isn’t enough.

Milwaukee has run out of patience for process without progress at MPS; a majority of voters support state intervention if the district can’t or won’t clean up its financial house. The bill for decades of denial, delays, and deferrals has finally come due. Whether the School Board is willing to pay the cost remains to be seen.

The School Board continues to delay delivering a plan first promised to voters more than two years ago as part of the campaign for that April 2024 referendum. Now, the School Board is ducking difficult decisions and stretching out timelines to 2028 and beyond.

Meanwhile, MPS continues hemorrhaging both students and money, while the impacts of two realities compound:

• Milwaukee continues to experience a decade-long trend of declining enrollment - one that even MPS now projects to accelerate over the next five years.

• Two tax hikes and hundreds of millions in state funding increases later, MPS still faces a $100M+ deficit and a multi-billion-dollar maintenance backlog - with no clear plan to resolve it.

The “Plan”: Good, Bad, & Ugly

This month’s update on the Facilities Master Plan runs to 75 slides, not including a separate briefing from the district’s new demographers on enrollment trends. That’s A LOT of information to cull through in three days - here’s our key takeaways:

• The good: MPS is using and sharing data with unusual transparency, though many of the most important figures are buried deep in the presentations.
  
  The update is clear about MPS’ long-term enrollment declines: 25-30% since 2004, with birth rates suggesting further declines ahead. The average MPS school now serves only 454 students - nearly 25% below national benchmarks. The costs of subsidizing the district’s 26 most underenrolled elementary schools are detailed, and they are staggering: 15-30% higher costs at each school, with up to $5,000 more per pupil in operating subsidies, and triple the per-pupil spending on facilities maintenance.

• The bad: The rightsizing proposals included in the update fail to meet the moment - in some cases, farcically so. MPS rightsizing 5 or 6 schools, 2-3 years from now simply isn’t enough: Every single one of the 6 proposed consolidations still yields an underenrolled school — in each case, one-third or more of the consolidated school would still be left empty.

And then, there’s this: a proposed consolidation of 3 schools — Auer Ave, Keefe Ave, and Douglas, each with fewer than 200 students (and two of which are on the same city block!) — onto a single campus. Only, after this merger — and millions of dollars of proposed spending on the building — the consolidated Douglas campus would STILL be 68% unused!

Two years into this process, Milwaukeeans rightly should demand better from MPS than half-baked ideas – and plans for half-empty buildings.

• The ugly: As underwhelming as the rightsizing plan is, it’s not the most troubling part of this work. It’s clear the School Board’s fingers are already on the scale — spreading around the planned spending, while whittling down the consultant’s initial list of consolidation candidates from 26 to 6 — and targeting these in a single school board district: District 4, the historic heart of Black Milwaukee.
  
  As I said more than a year ago, rightsizing decisions should be made in ways that are equitable and fair, both in terms of the pain and the gains. Targeting only District 4 fails on every level. It’s insufficient in scale, it’s unsupported by the data, and it’s politically divisive. It perpetuates decades of disinvestment in Milwaukee’s most educationally underserved communities. Every neighborhood should share in both the burden of rightsizing, and the benefits of reinvestment.

Stubborn Facts — and A Stubborn Board

Hard choices have only become harder because for more than a decade, the MPS School Board has stuck its head in the sand, refusing to act even as the district’s last two Facilities Master Plans each indicated MPS faced a billion-dollar-plus backlog of deferred maintenance, while the district was incurring upwards of $60-75M per year in costs for underutilized spaces.

Numbers don’t lie, and the math is clear: the MPS School Board urgently needs to significantly trim its bloated, underutilized, and underperforming portfolio of 130+ district-operated schools.

And, it’s equally clear that more money isn’t the solution: With an annual budget of $1.6 BILLION per year, after two tax hikes totaling more than $330M per year, and now firmly in the top ten of all districts statewide in per-pupil funding, MPS is no longer an underfunded school district.

Taxpayers - here in MKE, and increasingly across the state - have done their part.

The district’s refusal to face reality has made MPS’ tax levy a driver of Milwaukee’s housing and affordability crises. MPS is now the single-largest recipient of local property taxes - 41 cents of every dollar - and the highest-funded unit of local government in Wisconsin.

The district’s heel-dragging is also a significant contributor to skyrocketing statewide property taxes. This year alone, MPS received an additional $105M in state aid - and triggered funding reductions in more than 300 of the state’s other 420 school districts - even while district enrollment declined by 1300 students. Other districts - and their voters - are taking note; MPS’ broken finances are no longer just a Milwaukee issue.

Milwaukee’s students, families, and residents can’t afford more years of tepid half-measures. Our city doesn’t have time for yet another drawn-out, decade-long plan that catches dust on the shelf. Peer cities like Cleveland, which is closing or consolidating 29 schools, are showing that this can be done with strong leadership and community engagement. And, our polling shows Milwaukee’s citizens are ready for this conversation as well.

The bottom line is this: Two years is more than ample time for the School Board to complete a facilities master plan. Enough with denying reality, deferring decisions, and delaying action; if this School Board can’t - or won’t - make tough choices now, then it’s time for voters and elected leaders to step in and hold them to account.

I know this from experience. For nearly a decade, I served as a charter school authorizer. I helped train other authorizers. I led school accountability efforts for a major urban district, and designed charter renewal processes intended to prevent this kind of thing from happening. I’ve helped make the tough decisions to close low-performing schools – both charter and district-operated. I’ve sat through the testimony, listened to the anger and heartbreak, and looked students and families in the eye to deliver this news. I’ve carried the weight of knowing my recommendation would upend families and communities.

These decisions – good charter authorizing – matter in ways that most policy questions simply don’t.

That’s precisely why the MPS Board has a charter renewal process. That’s why they redesigned it this summer, with active participation from board members, specifically to ensure that when these hard decisions had to be made, they’d be grounded in evidence, not ideology. The reason those processes exist is to avoid arbitrary decisions driven by political agendas.

But last week, the board abandoned that process entirely.

At Thursday’s committee meeting, board members didn’t ask the questions you’d expect from a board serious about accountability. They didn’t ask: What is this school doing well? How do we support continued improvement? Or even: How do we make sure students, families, and educators have clarity about what comes next?

Instead, they asked a different question: How do we push them out?

One newly elected board member stated plainly—and on the record—that he will vote against any independent charter school renewal, period. Not based on performance. Not based on what’s best for students or families. As a matter of “principle”.

That’s not accountability. That’s ideology.

Good authorizing means applying consistent standards to all schools. Carmen Northwest scored 76% on the MPS charter renewal scorecard—a score that falls squarely in the range for a three-year contract. The district’s own staff and board members who visited the school, reviewed the data, and evaluated performance recommended a three-year renewal.

80 other MPS schools — more than half of the district — have lower levels of student proficiency in Math or Reading than Carmen Northwest. These are not the schools the board is threatening to close. These are not schools that the board is even seriously discussing. Many of them serve similar student populations in similar neighborhoods. Many are on the city’s north side, where more than two-thirds of Black MPS students attend schools not meeting state expectations.

If the School Board is genuinely serious about accountability, that’s where the conversation should start. Close the lowest performing schools first. Then, if you’re going to remove better-performing options like Carmen, at least you’ve put something better in their place.

Instead, the board is doing the opposite. It’s threatening to close a school that outperforms more than half of its own schools, including most of the schools in the same three-mile radius serving the same students. And it’s doing it based not on performance data, but on whether the school fits an ideological template about what kind of schools families should have access to. That’s not accountability.

Here’s what makes this especially damaging. The board undermined its own process in real time. Board President Zombor participated in redesigning the charter renewal process this summer. Work specifically aimed at addressing failures from prior years. She even served on the charter review panel for this campus. That process recommended renewal. And then she attacked it.

This is how you destroy your own credibility. This is how you tell every school operator—charter or otherwise—that your process doesn’t matter. That politics and ideology matters. That if they don’t fit your preferred model, the data won’t save them.

It’s no wonder that in light of this School Board’s blind ideological hostility, other high-performing MPS noninstrumentality charter schools have made the decision to shift to a “more mission-aligned authorizer” to ensure their schools’ “long term stability”.

What happens next matters enormously for 550 students and their families. If Carmen Northwest loses its renewal, those students and staff don’t disappear. They have to go somewhere. MPS has no plan for where. No one knows what happens to them on November 21.

That alone should be disqualifying for a “no” vote. Before closing any school, a board has an obligation to have a plan in place. To ensure no student and no family is left uncertain about what comes next. The School Board hasn’t done that work.

But more fundamentally, this decision says something about what the board values. It says ideology matters more than outcomes. It says winning political arguments matters more than supporting schools. It says the board has drifted from its core mission: ensuring every Milwaukee kid has access to a good education.

Milwaukee families deserve better. They deserve a board that asks hard questions about performance and asks those questions across all schools. They deserve a board that closes the lowest-performing schools first. They deserve a board that protects good options for families, not eliminates them on blind political principle.

On November 20, the board has a chance to recommit to that mission. It won’t be easy. But it’s the right call, not just for Carmen Northwest, but for every family in Milwaukee watching to see whether their school board is serious about accountability, or just about ideology.

The answer, unfortunately, seems clear.

This week, DPI released the 2024-25 School Report Cards; as always, our team is committed to beginning with the facts, and to do our best to bring clarity through the confusion. You can find CFC’s full analysis of this year’s results in our Data Brief, and our key takeaways below:

Milwaukee’s Stagnant Reality

Milwaukee’s topline results look remarkably similar to last year. 65% of students are enrolled in schools rated three stars or better—essentially unchanged from last year’s 64%.

However, under City Forward Collective’s own School Quality Metric—which adjusts the report card data to mitigate distortions from a broken grading curve—61% of Milwaukee students attend schools that are not meeting expectations. That’s a majority of our city’s children.

Enrollment in the lowest-performing, one-star schools increased for the second consecutive year. This year, 15% of Milwaukee students—more than 1,300 additional kids—are enrolled in schools that Fail to Meet Expectations. What does that mean in practice? In these one-star schools, just 8% of students are proficient in ELA and 6% in Math.

These schools are predominantly on the north side of the city, serving a student population that is 69% Black, 19% Hispanic, and 84% economically disadvantaged. Our most vulnerable students are disproportionately attending our lowest-performing schools.

Looking Beneath the Citywide Numbers

While the overall picture looks flat, there are meaningful differences worth noting across Milwaukee’s schools:

• Public charter schools showed the most substantial gains. An impressive 90.5% of charter school students—up nearly 10 percentage points from last year—are enrolled in schools meeting or exceeding expectations. All but one charter school either maintained or improved its rating this year. And, not a single public charter school earned a one-star rating.

• Private schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program also made meaningful progress. 83.5% of private school students (up 7.3 points) attend schools meeting expectations.

• Milwaukee Public Schools, by contrast, saw 51.9% of students in schools meeting expectations—a slight decline from last year. Just over half of MPS students are in schools rated three stars or better.

These disparities in school quality reflect and reinforce our city’s broader challenges in serving Black students and students from low-income families. Just 36% of Black students in MPS are enrolled in schools that met expectations, compared to 74% of Black private school students and 83% of Black students in public charter schools.

MPS Falls Further Behind

The situation at Milwaukee Public Schools demands particular attention. The district itself fell to a two-star, “Meets Few Expectations” rating. MPS ranked in the bottom 1% of districts statewide on every component of the state report card except growth. Half of the district’s schools received one or two-star ratings.

These results aren’t surprising in the wake of last year’s turmoil and the damning findings from Governor Evers’ academic audit released in June. They also align with City Forward Collective’s recent polling, where 54% of respondents named academic performance as their top concern about MPS.

To her credit, Superintendent Cassellius has been forthright in acknowledging that these results aren’t acceptable. The challenge ahead for MPS is clear: translating Superintendent Cassellius’ early momentum into sustained, measurable progress for students.

A System That Makes It Hard to Trust the Results

These report cards remain the best tool we have to compare school performance across the state. But that doesn’t mean they’re good enough. DPI’s own choices have undermined the credibility and usefulness of this critical accountability system – challenges we’ve raised before, and that still need to be addressed:

• They’re late. Students take these tests in March. The data becomes available over the summer. Yet Wisconsin is among the last states in the nation to publish report cards—this year’s came out in November, more than one-third of the way through the next school year. Families making school decisions deserve more timely information.

• They’re hard to find. These report cards are buried four clicks deep on DPI’s website. They are so hard to locate that even credible national researchers from CRPE couldn’t find them when evaluating state report card systems. This information should be easily accessible to the public.

• They’re hard to understand. While the report cards contain useful data, they’re presented in a text-heavy, 11-page format that doesn’t help busy families or other stakeholders quickly identify what matters most. Other states – including all of our neighbors – earned high marks for making data accessible; DPI should learn from them and improve how data is presented.

• They’re distorted. DPI’s decision to lower expectations on state assessments has artificially boosted Achievement scores by roughly 5 points. Combined with the state law requiring DPI to weight report cards by poverty, this means that some wealthier schools and districts saw their scores jump by 10 times more than schools serving low-income students. Not a single district in the state received a 1-star rating this year. Only 78 schools did.

When you combine grade inflation with a broken grading curve, you get a system where it’s nearly impossible for families to understand how their school is truly performing.

What This Means

These report cards tell us two things simultaneously. First, there are real bright spots—particularly in how public charter schools and many private schools are serving Milwaukee students. Second, we have a long way to go, especially for the most vulnerable students in our city.

But we can only act on what we can see clearly. And right now, DPI’s decisions have made it harder to trust what we’re seeing. Families deserve better. Students deserve better. Milwaukee deserves an accountability system that’s timely, accessible, accurate, and honest about where we stand and what our kids need.

As we have consistently done throughout the past few years (July 2024, February 2025), we regularly take the pulse of Milwaukee voters to understand what they want and expect from our education system.

This fall’s survey of 535 Milwaukee residents delivered some clear messages:

1. Milwaukee’s publicly-funded school sectors continue to receive similar levels of support - though we found a notable uptick in net favorable perceptions of public charter schools.

2. In a political environment where telling uncomfortable truths usually gets punished, Superintendent Cassellius’ candor about MPS’s deep challenges is resonating.

3. The School Board still has work to do to repair broken trust—and faces broad public support for state intervention if it doesn’t resolve MPS’s fiscal challenges.

4. And when it comes to more tax increases? Voters have once again made their position clear: in the midst of an affordability crisis, they want bold action on rightsizing, not another referendum.

Support for Public Charters & School Choice Options Remains Strong

While most of this edition of our poll’s major findings relate to Milwaukee Public Schools, I want to start by highlighting two broader, citywide results:

• On support for school options: We found similar levels of support across all three school sectors, with 35-38% of voters viewing each favorably. However, the key difference emerged in levels of opposition. While MPS and private voucher schools face significant pockets of opposition that drag down their net favorability to -1 and +1 respectively, public charter schools encounter less resistance, resulting in a healthier +9 net favorable rating. Charter schools maintained positive ratings across all demographics except White and college-educated respondents.

• On the federal school choice tax credit: We found strong public support for the $1700 per person tax credit, with 68% of respondents backing Wisconsin opting in to the proposal. Support was broad-based, with majorities across every demographic group, including 72% of likely Democratic primary voters and 78% of voters who had not yet decided on a candidate to support.

On MPS, Cassellius’ Candor Is Resonating

Superintendent Cassellius enjoys an overall +8 net favorability rating despite—or perhaps because of—her unflinching assessments of MPS’s academic failures and financial dysfunction. This builds on our consistent findings throughout 2024 showing Milwaukee voters’ desire for honest leadership and accountability.

When was the last time you saw a superintendent maintain public support while openly acknowledging that academic outcomes are unacceptable, that the district needs to tighten its budget, and that painful school closures are coming?

Compare this to the typical playbook, where superintendents soft-pedal problems, blame external factors, and defer difficult decisions. Cassellius is doing the opposite – and so far, residents appear to welcome the break from past practices. She deserves continued support as she works to address the deep-seated decay in the district and tackle longstanding challenges that previous administrations have ignored (detailed in the comprehensive audit done at the request of Governor Evers).

In an era of spin and euphemism, straight talk is proving to be smart politics.

The School Board’s Trust Deficit

While Cassellius earns marks for her leadership, the Milwaukee School Board sits at a dismal -17 net favorability (17/34). This isn’t just a popularity problem; it’s a governance crisis. The School Board’s myriad of failings, including the inability to provide effective financial stewardship and worst in the nation academic outcomes, have consequences beyond hurt feelings. Our polling shows that if the Board doesn’t resolve MPS’s structural budget issues, a majority of voters—including Democrats—support the creation of a state financial oversight body.

The Board’s credibility gap matters because tough choices require political capital. When only 32% of residents trust you to make decisions about their children’s education—compared to 58% who trust Governor Evers and 49% who trust Mayor Johnson—you lack the standing to lead transformational change. The Board needs to recognize this reality and either radically change course or risk having change imposed from Madison.

Ready for Tough Choices, Not Tax Hikes

The clearest message from our polling is that Milwaukee voters are done writing blank checks. Support for another MPS property tax referendum sits at just 46%, with only 20% saying they’d definitely vote yes. For context, the rule of thumb is that successful referendums typically start with 60% or more support, to account for inevitable erosion during the campaign.

The message from voters is unmistakable: in a moment where affordability tops the list of their concerns, they’ve done more than their fair share to address MPS’ finances. MPS has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. With nearly $1.5 billion in total funding and 41 cents of every local property tax dollar – the largest share of any local government unit – the district has ample resources. What it lacks is the will to make difficult decisions about rightsizing and restructuring.

Time to Stop Kicking the Can & Embrace The New Reality

What makes this moment different is that the usual coalition of status quo defenders is losing its grip on public opinion. When affordability and crime top voters’ concerns, when the School Board’s favorability matches that of Republican legislators, and when two-thirds of voters support school closures even after hearing opposition arguments, the political calculus has fundamentally shifted.

Superintendent Cassellius seems to understand this new reality. Her willingness to cite NAEP data showing Milwaukee’s academic catastrophe, to acknowledge the district’s nine-figure deferred maintenance crisis that the Board allowed to fester for over a decade, and to push for necessary consolidations shows she’s reading the room correctly. The key question is whether the School Board will take inspiration from Cassellius’ bold leadership or if it will continue to play politics while our schools deteriorate and student achievement remains stagnant.

The poll findings underscore a broader truth: Milwaukee voters want leaders focused on ensuring our city’s students have access to excellent schools.. They’re not interested in continuing the seemingly endless political battles over school choice options, and they’re ready to see through repeats of interest group scare tactics that have hijacked past opportunities for change. They’re pragmatic about solutions, whether that means supporting a superintendent willing to make hard choices, backing high-performing charter schools, or embracing federal policies that expand educational opportunity.

Statewide, just over half of students—50% in English Language Arts and 51% in Math—met even these lowered expectations. In Milwaukee, the picture is far worse: only 25% of students met the reduced standards in reading and just 21% in math. Even after lowering the passing standards, too many students are still unable to meet them.

I know some people want to toss out test scores entirely, but we can’t. They matter. While these test scores are just a snapshot, they provide crucial information that is linked to long-term student success. As I’ve mentioned before, families want to see a focus on the fundamentals—ensuring that students can read, write, do math, and are prepared for successful careers and lives.

But here’s the problem I testified about before the joint education committee: Wisconsin’s “honesty gap” in measuring school performance remains a crisis of confidence. The state’s definition of meeting expectations no longer aligns with rigorous national benchmarks for what students should know and be able to do to be ready for college or a career. Statewide, over 6,700 eleventh-graders are now in a new category of “Meets Expectations, Below College Ready” in math. We’re telling thousands of students they’re meeting state standards while also saying they’re not ready for college. That’s dishonest. And when schools with wildly different levels of student performance end up with similar ratings, our measurement system is broken.

While DPI has made some progress in improving its processes—and I’ve acknowledged their efforts to be more transparent—the fundamental problems persist. We need to resist the temptation to ignore or explain away these results. Instead, we should treat this data as a call to action. Our students, families, and communities deserve schools that provide both opportunities and positive outcomes.

That means fixing the inequities that create these gaps and refusing to lower the bar based on a kid’s address or family income. Until we’re honest about where students really are, we can’t do the work they need from us.

City Forward Collective has released a comprehensive data brief analyzing these results in detail, including breakdowns by student demographics, school sectors, and comparisons across Wisconsin. The brief provides the full picture of where our state stands and what these numbers mean for students and families. You can find our complete analysis and methodology here.

Real Progress Deserves Recognition

MPS's long-overdue financial reports are nearing completion, and more than $50 million in previously withheld special education funding was released. Combined with an additional $45 million from the state budget, these resources represent meaningful progress for Milwaukee students.

On a per-pupil basis, MPS now ranks among the top districts in Wisconsin in both state aid and total funding – rapidly approaching $20,000 per pupil as the full effects of the 2024 referendum phase in. And, for the first time, there seems to be a real, coherent plan for using these resources to improve student achievement, with an early focus on ensuring great teachers in every classroom, and improving literacy outcomes through the science of reading.

Superintendent Cassellius also continues to be refreshingly direct about the challenges ahead: improving academic outcomes starting with reading, rightsizing facilities usage through consolidations, and closing the district's $100+ million structural deficit. These are the right priorities.

The Numbers Don't Add Up - Reality Checks on Rightsizing & Referenda

But here's where we need to temper our enthusiasm: over the past few days, MPS quietly announced it had reduced its facilities consolidation candidates from 26 schools to just 5-6, while simultaneously floating the idea of yet more property tax referenda.

Here’s the bottom line: Neither more tax increases nor a timid approach to rightsizing will solve the fundamental math problem facing Milwaukee Public Schools.

MPS operates more than 130 campuses—more than it did a decade ago—despite losing over 25,000 students. At about 500 students per building, the facilities planning committee’s proposals would yield only about 2,500 fewer seats. Meanwhile, MPS's own 2018 study projected $75 million annually (or over $100 million today, adjusted for inflation) in costs, just to maintain vacant and underutilized space.

For comparison: the Green Bay school district, with one-quarter of MPS's enrollment and similar demographic challenges, recently rightsized by closing six campuses.

To be clear: solving MPS’ structural deficit isn’t as simple as just closing more schools. As I’ve said publicly, Superintendent Cassellius is right to seek opportunities to reinvest in our students and communities, to enhance academic outcomes and educational opportunities. But, the proposed approach from the facilities planning committee simply fails to add up.

Addressing Affordability: More Money & Higher Taxes Aren’t The Answer

Fundamentally, Milwaukee cannot afford—both educationally and financially—to keep taxing all of its residents to support district schools serving only half of its students.

Milwaukee parents, residents, and taxpayers have done more than their fair share. MPS now receives 41 cents of every property tax dollar – more than any other unit of government -- while operating a $1.5 billion budget. Since 2020, MPS has secured two property tax increases, adding over $330 million annually in new funding —a 35-40% funding boost that has brought more than $1.5 billion into district coffers to date.

Increasing local property taxes also has real impacts on our city’s residents – significantly contributing to Milwaukee's affordability and housing challenges, particularly for families struggling with the downsides of Milwaukee's reputation as “One of America’s Most Cutthroat Rental Markets”.

The polling is clear about where voters stand. Recent polling from 1000 Friends of Wisconsin revealed widespread concerns about affordability: 67% of Milwaukee voters say home buying costs are a major problem, 72% say the same about renting, and 80% say the city lacks affordable housing. City Forward Collective data shows 61% would oppose the 2024 referendum if voting today, and just 4% of voters supported additional property tax hikes to address MPS’ financial challenges.

These tax increases significantly contribute to Milwaukee's housing affordability crisis. As the 2024 referendum showed, wealthier neighborhoods supported tax hikes while lower-income communities of color—who disproportionately face affordability challenges—rejected them.

Yet another property tax hike for MPS simply isn’t the answer - especially when the 2024 referendum is still being phased in.

Pursuing Bold, Creative Solutions to Shared Challenges

In the midst of last summer’s crisis, we outlined a series of priorities for Milwaukee’s schools: sustainable and equitable funding solutions, operational excellence, and improved academic outcomes that justify continued public investment. While the needs are real, there's a lot that Milwaukee Public Schools can and must do before asking voters for even more tax hikes.

These challenges extend beyond MPS. In a city where half of the students attend public charter and private schools, we can't solve problems in sectored silos. Academic achievement, facilities safety, and workforce preparation affect all Milwaukee families, regardless of which school their children attend.

Some good ideas have been floated, including a citywide facilities authority that could address school building needs across all sectors, and revisiting the city's ownership of vacant and underutilized public school buildings to bring them back into the tax base, including as affordable housing options. On this and other issues, Milwaukee needs all stakeholders at the table, seeking creative, common-ground, and common-sense solutions that put students - not sectors - first.

The Road Ahead for MPS: Opportunity & Accountability
The question isn't whether Milwaukee cares about its children—we clearly do. And, the question is no longer about our willingness to invest in our students – we have. Sustainable improvement requires facing facts that have been ignored too long, making decisions that have been delayed too long, and prioritizing students over systems.

The message couldn't be clearer: voters want accountability. MPS must demonstrate sustained results before asking for more resources.

MPS has the resources to make meaningful improvements right now. To her credit, the Superintendent has been publicly clear about the need for more scrutiny of the district’s budget and belt-tightening at MPS. This will mean making tough choices to cut bloat and prioritize directing staff and resources into schools – and will require the School Board and the broader community to do our collective part to support bold leadership.

The first bell has rung on a new school year. Progress is possible, and a strong start brings real opportunity. How MPS responds over the next six months will determine whether this optimism was justified—or just another false start.

Last week, more than two dozen educators from across Wisconsin gathered in Madison for something that should have happened a year ago: updating the cut scores that determine how schools are rated on our state report cards. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction convened this working group—which includes our own Robb Rauh, Senior Advisor at City Forward Collective—because they had no choice.

Wisconsin’s School & District Report Cards: A Crisis of Credibility

Right now, Wisconsin's state report card is suffering from a crisis of credibility—one largely, though not entirely, of DPI's own making. Last year’s misguided decision to lower state standards further eroded trust in a critically important, yet increasingly unreliable, tool for educators and the public to understand how our schools - and ultimately, our students - are performing.

Consider Milwaukee Public Schools: only 9% of students meet NAEP proficiency standards, and less than 20% meet our now-lowered state expectations – yet MPS received a 3-star, "Meets Expectations" rating. Or, consider a private school in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, where just six students meet state proficiency expectations in reading – yet the school somehow earns a 4-star, "Exceeding Expectations" rating. And, this isn’t just an issue isolated to Milwaukee: There are dozens more examples like these, across school sectors and around the state.

These are simply not credible results. No one can – or should – expect fewer than five students to be on grade level in any school, full stop. And, from the new Superintendent on down, no one would make a straight-faced argument that MPS’ current performance is meeting anyone’s expectations and aspirations for Milwaukee’s students. Yet, the state Report Card purports to say just that.

The bottom line: Families, educators, and the public deserve a report card that's honest, accurate, and trustworthy - and right now, Wisconsin's School & District Report Cards are failing to measure up.

Why This Update Was Necessary: Fixing What DPI Broke

After DPI lowered state proficiency expectations last year, keeping the old cut score thresholds would have created a Lake Woebegon effect: by DPI's estimates, 94% of schools would have received 4 or 5-star ratings. Every school would be "above average," which is both statistically impossible and educationally meaningless.

To DPI's credit, this process was an improvement over their previous approach. Following widespread criticism of last year's closed-door process to lower assessment benchmarks, DPI facilitated a more transparent process with broader stakeholder representation. Although parents were still absent from the table and last-minute process changes altered the committee's recommendations, this approach was certainly an improvement over the secretive method we criticized last year. An open, transparent process is the bare minimum expectation, and our hope is that this new approach sets the floor for any future changes in standards, assessments, or accountability going forward.

Even the best processes can yield imperfect outcomes, however – and last week’s committee work is a case in point. This exercise, while necessary to mitigate the worst harms caused by DPI's misguided actions, only addressed symptoms rather than root causes.

The Real Problems Run Deeper: Lowered Standards, & A Biased, Unbalanced Scale

The scope of this committee's work was tightly constrained—in some cases by law, in others by DPI's design. The most significant issues remain untouched:

• Lowered proficiency standards stay in place. Despite overwhelming evidence and clear public support – 60%, in a recent Marquette Law Poll – for higher standards, DPI's misguided decision to lower expectations for students still stands, due in part to the veto of Assembly Bill 1 earlier this spring.

• An unbalanced, sliding scale achievement/growth weighting system is hardwired into state law. Our report cards still grade schools on a curve based on student demographics and poverty, statistically overcorrecting in ways that obscure real performance.

• DPI's changes magnified existing inequities. The lowered standards, coupled with other technical decisions, disproportionately impact schools serving low-income students. Schools serving wealthier communities (where Achievement counts for 45% of grades) will see a 4.5-point average boost from lowered standards, while high-poverty schools (where Achievement counts only 5%) will see just a 0.5-point bump. Due to the statutorily-manded sliding scale, schools serving wealthier families received nine times the benefit from DPI’s lower bar, creating a situation where the rich schools get richer - literally.

• Statutory requirements limit our options. While DPI bears sole responsibility for lowering standards, unbalanced weighting isn't just a DPI issue—state law requires this approach, and Governor Evers vetoed a past legislative effort to remove this provision.

What We Need Moving Forward: A Report Card We All Can Rely On

If this week's work stands, we'll get a more representative distribution of report card scores. That's better than nearly everyone getting 4 or 5 stars, but the scores still won't truly reflect how our schools and students are performing.

City Forward Collective will continue to advocate for three essential changes - legislative priorities we have consistently advanced for years:

• Balanced weighting of proficiency and growth. Every child is capable of achieving at high levels regardless of background. Student demographics are already accounted for within the Growth formula—double-counting by skewing final grades creates unfair statistical bias. Wisconsin must stop setting different expectations for schools based solely on family income.

• Earlier public release of report cards. While schools received assessment results in June this year, DPI still plans to release report cards in November—among the latest release dates of any state. States like Ohio require report cards within 60 days of releasing results to schools. Setting an August deadline would give families timely information when they need it more - now, before the school year begins.

• Parent-friendly formatting. Last year, the Center on Reinventing Public Education graded all 50 state report card portals. Wisconsin received a D—after initially getting an F because researchers couldn't find the information on DPI's website. Every neighboring state except Iowa received an A or B. Wisconsin can, and must, do better.

The work happening now is a necessary step, but only a step. The real work of creating a credible, trustworthy accountability system that serves families and communities still lies ahead. Wisconsin’s students, families, and residents deserve better than a report card system that obscures reality rather than illuminating it.

At City Forward Collective, we remain steadfast in our belief in and commitment to high-quality school choice as an essential and positive element of our city's educational landscape—and a necessary, but not sufficient, condition for achieving excellent schools for every Milwaukee child.

Thirty-five years in, the story of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP, often shortened to vouchers) is both complex and contested. The program has undeniably helped generations of our city’s students access better educational opportunities. But it has also shown that creating good schools—let alone moving the needle on citywide outcomes—is harder than advocates initially hoped, and that protecting families from harm while preserving innovation requires ongoing attention and adjustment.

The recent exchange in Education Next between Ashley Jochim and Michael Q. McShane offers valuable insights into the history and present reality of Milwaukee's voucher program, but it also reflects broader, national tensions in how we think about school choice. Rather than viewing these perspectives as in tension, we see an opportunity to chart a more nuanced path forward.

Parental Choice Is Popular—And Imperfect (like everything else)

What is inarguable is that MPCP has become an essential part of our city's dynamic educational ecosystem. Tens of thousands of Milwaukee families—including one in four current publicly-funded students—are undoubtedly benefiting from MPCP and the access to school choice options it has provided. Recent polling data yet again confirms that school choice also remains politically popular, both in Milwaukee and statewide, reflecting a broader truth that, as education analyst Andy Rotherham notes, "This is America—we like choice. Being on the wrong side of that…is not a great place to be."

At the same time, the program was never intended to be a panacea for our city's educational challenges. And, it remains true that far too many Milwaukee students—both in MPCP and beyond—remain trapped in low-performing schools. Last year, just 28% of MPCP students met state expectations in English; just 25% did so in Math. While modestly better than district schools, these results are far from the aspirations of the program’s founders—nor should they be acceptable to any of us invested in Milwaukee’s future. Our city’s school choice reality is neither the overhyped claims of school choice activists, nor the equally overheated attacks of its detractors.

Both Sides Have Merit—And Missing Pieces

Jochim's initial piece draws attention to some real challenges that have plagued MPCP: inadequate and incomplete information for parents to use in selecting and evaluating schools, and an underemphasis, especially during the program’s first decade, on basic regulatory guardrails that allowed an excess of low-performing and sometimes fraudulent operators to participate. Changes to the program since its inception have strengthened financial oversight, resolving the most egregious excesses - yet the scars from the shortcomings of the program’s early years remain as a cautionary tale for others, particularly in the current national moment.

McShane raises equally valid concerns. His central point resonates: "There are not enough good schools to go around." The supply-side challenges he identifies—the need for more educational entrepreneurs, innovators, and expanded access to high-quality school choices—reflect real constraints. And, he offers a valid critique of overbearing and unfair regulatory regimes that hinder innovation by creating bureaucratic obstacles unrelated to educational quality. If anything, his citation of the 90 slide training deck for prospective Choice schools underestimates the hurdles new private schools are forced to surmount – see, for instance, DPI’s extensive (and technically dense) series of fiscal trainings for new schools, and then compare that to the lax oversight of school district finances that’s one of the root causes of MPS’s ongoing financial turmoil.

Where McShane's initial piece focused primarily on deregulation, Jochim's follow-up response offers a more balanced and constructive path. Her emphasis on smart information systems, exit data monitoring, and family feedback represents the kind of "problem-solving ethos" that Milwaukee's leaders have brought to this work. As she notes, the choice isn't the “unproductive debate” between no rules and heavy-handed regulation—it's about designing systems that empower families while protecting children and taxpayers.

The Missing Voice: Parents and Community Pioneers

What both pieces miss, however, is the critical story of agency and empowerment for Milwaukee families, especially Black and Hispanic ones, that centrally animates the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

The legacy of Polly Williams, the pioneering legislator and "mother of school choice," reminds us what this fight was fundamentally about. As Williams put it: "Don't call it a voucher plan...That's not what I call it. It's parental choice. My focus is always empowering the parents." Her vision was both pragmatic and quality-focused: "A parent ought to be able to get the best, whatever they decide for their children, whatever it is...good, quality education ought to be there."

Dr. Howard Fuller—another pioneer of school choice—Abby Andrietsch, and I shared in an op-ed last fall that parental choice isn’t controversial for the families it was designed for. For generations of Milwaukee students, MPCP has been a lifeline—providing low- and middle-income parents with access to more of the same school choice options as have long been available to their wealthier peers. We cannot afford to lose sight of this intended purpose and core value, even as we must continue working to ensure excellence at every school.

CFC's Approach: Smart Guardrails and Supply-Side Solutions

This balanced perspective aligns with City Forward Collective's work on multiple fronts. We've advocated for honesty, transparency, and accountability in assessing school performance, including restoring high standards for all schools, closing the honesty gap in how we discuss student achievement, and improving the accessibility and transparency of Wisconsin’s D-rated School & District Report Card to give families clearer signals and better information. These efforts address Jochim's concerns about information asymmetries without creating the bureaucratic maze that McShane rightly criticizes.

Simultaneously, our Catalyze work to invest in increasing the supply of and access to high-quality schools directly tackles the supply-side challenges McShane identifies. By investing in the growth and development of new high-quality schools and helping successful schools expand, we're working to ensure that more Milwaukee students & families have access to excellent educational options—no matter their preferred type of school.

The Path Forward: Implementation Over Ideology

Serving Milwaukee’s students is a privilege and a sacred trust—not a right. All schools, regardless of sector, should be held to a high standard. Accountability isn’t about backwards-looking punishment—it’s about a forward-looking determination to realize the inherent potential of every student.

The most successful schools in Milwaukee's choice landscape succeeded not solely because of regulatory freedom, but because they combined strong, mission-driven leadership with sufficient resources and community support. Neither pure market forces nor heavy-handed, top-down regulation alone will solve our city’s educational challenges - we need both smart guardrails AND a continued focus on opening the doors of educational opportunity by spurring continued, quality-focused innovation.

The false tension between market mechanisms and smart oversight has held back progress for too long. As we enter the next 35 years of school choice, we STILL need more “Polly Williams choice people”—grounded in the needs of low- and middle-income parents and communities, centered on quality regardless of school type, and clear-eyed about pairing school choice with accountability.

Our bottom line: The K12 provisions of the 2025-27 Wisconsin state budget are a hard-fought compromise that secured gains for kids, here in Milwaukee and across Wisconsin. This budget isn’t perfect — but the final, cross-partisan agreement meaningfully and significantly invests in ALL of our students and ALL of the schools that serve them.

By any reasonable measure, securing $1.75 billion in new funding dedicated to education – $1.4 billion for K12 schools, plus $330 million more to address early childhood — is a win. The final budget includes a generational, half-billion dollar increase in public school special education funding, the long-overdue $50 million for early literacy efforts—now unlocked from litigation—and real resources to address pressing student mental health challenges.

Governor Evers and legislative leaders on both sides of the aisle—Speaker Robin Vos, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein—deserve credit for courageously and pragmatically leading from the center, rather than being held hostage by ideology and unreasonable partisanship from the fringes of their caucuses.

ASSESSING THE STATE BUDGET DEAL AGAINST CFC’s THREE PRIORITIES

In April, I laid out CFC’s three priorities for this state budget. Here’s how the final outcome stacks up:

1. Protect last session’s progress: this budget maintains the core policy elements from the last state budget, and builds on the $1.25B in investments that budget made in schools. As a result, nearly 50,000 students attending Milwaukee’s public charter and private schools will see more than $1,000 per pupil in additional, spendable dollars over the next two years. Students in Milwaukee Public Schools will also see real, spendable increases, including a $78.8M, 13% bump in state aid for the upcoming 25-26 school year that places MPS in the top ten of all districts statewide by percentage gain.
   
   Notably, these gains came despite misguided efforts by special interest groups and some legislative Democrats to exclude half of Milwaukee's students from additional funding, simply because they attend public charter or private schools – more on this in a moment.

2. Close gaps from the bottom up: While all Milwaukee schools will receive more spendable dollars, this budget missed the opportunity to address unfair and unequal funding. Per-pupil increases were not specifically targeted at the lowest-funded students. Consequently, impacts on closing Milwaukee’s per-pupil funding gaps will be modest at best.
   
   This is exacerbated by the 2024 MPS referendum, which will push MPS’ core state and local revenues beyond $20,000 per pupil by 2028. Conversely, at about $11,000 per pupil, K-8 students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program remain the lowest-funded of all publicly-supported students -- despite these two sets of schools having statistically indistinguishable racial, ethnic, and socio-economic demographics. Without action, Milwaukee remains on a trajectory to return to unsustainable, 33% to 50% disparities in per-pupil funding — a future we know our city’s students, families, and schools simply cannot afford.

3. Focus on our state’s most vulnerable students: Governor Evers and legislative leaders deserve praise for prioritizing funding for our state’s students with special education needs. The GOP-led Joint Finance Committee first approved nearly $300M in special education increases. Evers and Democratic legislators then built on this by securing an additional $275M in special education funding as part of the final budget agreement.
   
   The end outcome — a total increase of more than $500M — will yield the highest levels of state support for special education students in districts and public charter schools in more than a generation: a 45% target reimbursement rate for all special education costs, and a 90% guaranteed reimbursement for students with the highest level of need, matching an oft-referenced provision of the Special Needs Scholarship Program. This win effectively disarms the misleading "90/30" talking points used by some activists to create division, as Governor Evers himself noted in his signing statement.

Every compromise involves trade-offs, and this budget is no exception. No one, including us at CFC, got everything they wanted. We remain concerned by unfair and unequal funding, and troubled by the unsustainable trajectory of per-pupil funding gaps. We will continue to advocate for real accountability for student outcomes, tied to the billions of dollars in state investments made in K12 schools. And, we continue to believe that Wisconsin’s school funding structure is in dire need of fundamental reforms to put students at the center and end sector funding fights once and for all.

REJECTING FALSE CLAIMS OF “COWARDICE” FROM THE GROUPS

However, this budget process also revealed a troubling dynamic: the emergence of a bloc of far-left, ideologically motivated “groups” — including self-avowed socialists, as well as activists and former leaders of district-only special interests — who, alongside legislative allies, are using exaggerated rhetoric to snatch defeat from the jaws of a real, if imperfect, budget win for all of our kids.

The ascendance of this bloc reflects challenges facing Democrats nationally, as the party loses public trust on K12 education, while failing to navigate the distance between the rhetoric of progressive activists, and the desires of mainstream voters.

When these ”groups” demanded the inclusion of budget language that went out of its way to exclude 50,000 Milwaukee students from ANY proposed funding increases, Democrats on the Joint Finance Committee like Rep. Deb Andraca supported and even celebrated the (thankfully failed) attempt. Over the past week, these same “groups” and their legislative allies have been moving the goalposts in the wake of the budget deal, falsely claiming this outcome is a “complete betrayal”, a “catastrophic failure of leadership” — and even going so far as to loudly attack Governor Evers for his supposed “cowardice” in signing it.

Let’s be clear: these groups’ hyperbolic and outlandish “hot takes” aren’t just wrong — they wildly miss the mark. Their divisive approach is in conflict with Wisconsin's purple-state political identity, and reflects overt hostility to the decades-long experiences of tens of thousands of low- and middle-income, Black & Hispanic students and families in Milwaukee. Their statements prioritize the interests of wealthier suburban districts, while seeking to defund nearly half of Milwaukee’s K12 students. And, their policy positions contradict the repeatedly expressed desires of a majority of our state’s residents to support BOTH strong public schools AND robust school choice options.

Wisconsin’s students and schools need more courageous, pragmatic, cross-partisan leadership from the center — and less far-right OR far-left ideology driving policy decisions. Democrats in particular would be wise to follow Governor Evers’ lead and dismiss the unreasonable, extremist rhetoric coming from the “groups” as untenable for Wisconsin’s residents.

Our state’s students and families cannot afford for political leaders to let perfection become the enemy of progress. In a political climate that amplifies the extremes, Wisconsin’s leaders once again chose the harder, more courageous path of compromise—and all of our schools are better for it.

It’s clear what's at stake — a healthy MPS is a key part of a thriving Milwaukee. We should all be genuinely hopeful that Superintendent Cassellius and the new School Board will succeed where others have faltered. Their success isn't just about institutions; it means real opportunities for the nearly half of Milwaukee’s students, nearly 59,000 in total, who attend MPS schools every day.

As the Superintendent herself noted, "90% of [MPS’ students] are poor. They deserve the same opportunities that any other child would have within this state and within this nation." We couldn't agree more.

However, hope alone is an insufficient strategy. This time must be different. Governor Evers' recent audit revealed MPS's "longstanding culture of fear and reluctance to change," a pattern that has persisted through previous leadership transitions. We’ve been down this road before - a new ear that began with optimism, but ended without addressing deeply-rooted, systemic problems. Solving these structural and generational issues will require more than just additional funding or one-off changes. This moment requires both honest accountability and support.

So, in that spirit, let’s take stock of where things stand now - and the crucial choices for MPS that lie ahead.

Imperfect But Promising Start to Addressing Immediate Crises

Superintendent Cassellius’ handling of MPS’ most pressing issues over her first few weeks has demonstrated a refreshing willingness to tackle challenges head-on, making difficult decisions that previous administrations punted and fumbled.

• Central Office Staffing: Over the past week, the Superintendent has taken long-overdue action to reorganize and rightsize a bloated central office bureaucracy - notably winning the support of the new School Board president in doing so.. Nearly 40 certified teachers will return to classrooms—where they're desperately needed—while saving the district an estimated $5 million. The Superintendent aptly stated, "We're prioritizing our children and prioritizing getting the best and qualified teachers in our classrooms."

• Lead Poisoning Crisis: Every child deserves to be safe at school, and that includes being safe from lead paint and other environmental hazards. Superintendent Cassellus has moved with urgency in addressing the lead poisoning crisis plaguing MPS' schools. Her decision to hold MPS facilities officials accountable for years of negligence demonstrates a prioritization of student welfare over adult interests. Her candid acknowledgment that MPS' failure to right-size its buildings led to massive deferred maintenance is refreshingly honest.

• Corrective Action Plan: MPS' progress in rebuilding public trust has been marred by the continued shortcomings in its efforts to resolve its financial reporting crisis. The last public update on the Corrective Action Plan was produced in January - prior to the Superintendent’s selection. Last Friday, MPS announced it would miss yet another deadline under the CAP, risking tens of millions more in state funding.
  At $1.5 billion each year, MPS now commands Wisconsin's largest budget among local governments, receives the 7th most in funding per student from the state, and claims 41 cents of every Milwaukee property tax dollar. And these missing reports are impacting not just MPS, but also delaying funding for students across the state. The bottom line: MPS must do better in its role as a steward of public resources.

Critical Choices Ahead: The Next 45 Days

MPS now faces several consequential decisions in the next two months that will determine whether momentum continues or stalls:

• Leadership Team Selection: Who fills the senior leadership roles proposed in the Superintendent's organizational restructuring will be critical. As highlighted in the Governor's audit, selecting qualified individuals for these positions will establish the foundation for sustained improvement.

• Academic Performance Audit: Governor Evers' second audit—focused specifically on MPS' academic performance—is expected within weeks. We already know the headline: fewer than 1 in 4 students across MPS are performing on grade level in core subjects, even under lowered standards. This report will require immediate, decisive action from district leadership to address shortcomings and ensure MPS is delivering on its job #1: educating students and preparing them for a career and for life.

• Budget Approval: By July 1st, the School Board must approve the FY26 budget—a critical decision that will set the tone for yearts to come. While a complete budget overhaul is unrealistic given the Superintendent's short tenure and the ongoing financial reporting issues, this initial budget will signal her priorities and must serve as a foundation for necessary and more substantial reforms in the future.

The Path to a Thriving MPS: Renewing Our Calls for Transparency, Accountability & Structural Reform

We at CFC have been steadfast for more than a year in stating that addressing MPS' challenges requires transparency, accountability, and structural governance reforms to put students back at the center. Accountability must extend to everyone involved – not just MPS leadership, but all who are engaged in the critical work of educating our students. We reaffirm our belief that this work can - and indeed, it must - happen alongside the district's own efforts to improve.

Milwaukee’s students cannot afford another cycle where promising changes collapse against resistance from forces protecting an indefensible status quo. Our city’s students - every single one of them, including those attending MPS schools - deserve a high-quality education that prepares them for success, in school buildings free from health hazards, and with adults united in putting their needs first.

They also directly inform why the ongoing onslaught of abrupt federal education policy actions - and the resultant chaos it’s creating for families, schools, and partner organizations across our city - is so deeply disconcerting to me.

Disruption for its own sake – or even worse, for political point-scoring purposes – isn’t the answer for improving outcomes for our students and in our schools. Right now, far too much of what we’re seeing from Washington, D.C. is destabilization and destruction, seemingly without direction; if it continues, it runs the risk of becoming a disaster for Milwaukee’s students and schools.

AmeriCorps: Cutting Support When Students Need It Most

Last week’s abrupt termination of some AmeriCorps funding has pulled the rug out from programs serving children across Milwaukee. In total, more than 400 AmeriCorps members working on literacy, education, and youth services across Wisconsin have been told to cease their service, leaving schools and students without supports they had been promised.

Here in Milwaukee, partners like City Year, Teach For America, College Possible, and Math Corps together serve thousands of students across Milwaukee’s schools - in every sector - every day. Now, these programs have been left scrambling to respond, sometimes with mere hours or days of notice. While leaders of impacted programs have laudably sought to minimize the turmoil, uncertainty is already reaching our city’s classrooms - at least a half-dozen of our partner schools have shared direct impacts on students tied to last week’s announcements.

As Governor Evers noted, these cuts "will hurt Wisconsin's kids who are homeless or who need tutors for math and reading" as well as the "dedicated public servants whose livelihoods are depending on this work." And, the threat of further cuts to this critical national public service is real, as leaders from several organizations shared in their recent call to action.

NAEP: Eroding Trust In What “Keeps Everybody Honest”

Earlier this spring, an initial round of cuts to the Department of Education gutted the team responsible for NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card - a test that we at CFC have strongly supported, including in the wake of last year’s harmful lowering of state assessment expectations. The scale, scope, and timing of the NAEP cuts - mere weeks after the release of devastating results, both here in Milwaukee and nationally - came as a shock. And here in Wisconsin, NAEP disarray was politicized in defense of DPI’s decisions, with both state officials and campaign statements citing the uncertainty as justification for their approach.

After outcries from a cross-partisan coalition of local and national advocates - including us at CFC - the Department publicly committed to administering NAEP, saying “its something we absolutely need to keep” as “a way we keep everybody honest”. Frankly, she’s right on this point - and it should have been made clear from the start.

Real damage was done amidst the back-and-forth, however: last month, NAEP leaders voted to eliminate future exams in science, Civics, history, and writing. It’s still unclear whether staff is in place to administer the remaining tests. As NAEP’s Governing Board chair shared, “These are recommendations that we are making with much pain. None of us want to do this.”

Less tangibly, but every bit as troubling: the erratic approach threatens to undermine public confidence in NAEP itself. Here in Wisconsin, DPI’s own ill-considered decisions have left us reliant on NAEP as our best-available measure of student outcomes. The NAEP disarray was immediately politicized, with top state officials and campaign statements each citing the uncertainty as justification for opposition to efforts to return the state to more rigorous expectations for students.

Here too, the threat is ongoing: there are real concerns that hollowing out NAEP may be the precursor to a larger retreat from federal leadership around assessments through waivers to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA). As our own recent and ongoing experiences show, there’s real risk of further erosion in state standards without guardrails. We need strong & consistent leadership on this critical issue to keep everybody, including our state’s top education officials, honest.

Immigration Enforcement: Creating A Climate of Fear

Public education must be accessible to all children regardless of immigration status—a principle first established by the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, and affirmed by well-settled Supreme Court precedent in Plyer vs. Doe. Milwaukee Public Schools, and most all of our city’s public charter and private schools, have long held "safe haven" policies that recognize this principle.

Policy on paper provides little comfort when fear becomes reality, however - and federal policy shifts that no longer identify schools as “sensitive areas” for immigration enforcement are having real consequences. As one Milwaukee parent expressed, "If they see cops going in there getting their 6-year-old friend, they're going to be scared." And, as recent events at courthouses in and around Milwaukee have shown, these concerns aren’t unfounded.

Our city’s schools are also being impacted: our partners have shared stories of families keeping children home, and concerns about parents disappearing mid-semester. We’re also seeing impacts in our own parent engagement work: families shared that they were unable to attend a legislator’s recent in-district meeting because they feared immigration enforcement might target attendees.

Less Chaos, More Care: Returning Students to the Center

I want to be clear: my concerns about these distractions and disruptions are directly grounded in my commitment to CFC’s mission of transforming our city’s educational ecosystem and ensuring that every Milwaukee child has access to an excellent education at a school of their choice.

At CFC, we’ve been clear in our calls for change; while our advocacy focus is on local & state policy, we’d readily acknowledge there’s room for innovation and improvement at the federal level.

As these and other consequential choices are being made though, we need federal policymakers to return to a core principle: education policy decisions must center on what's best for children. We need leaders who reject the false binary of either maintaining the status quo or embracing destructive chaos. What’s needed is a thoughtful, bold, and student-centered approach that actually improves educational outcomes. Let's put our children back at the center of our decision-making, where they belong.

• The Critical Need for Special Education Reform

• Fair and Equal Per-Pupil Funding

These briefs build on the cross-partisan progress made in the last budget cycle and chart a path forward that works for all Wisconsin students, regardless of which school they attend.

Building on Last Session's Successes

The 2023-25 budget represented a significant step forward for Wisconsin's students. Leaders from both parties put aside differences to forge a compromise that benefited children across our state. Increases in revenue limits and targeted funding for mental health reached all students. The higher low-revenue ceiling enhanced equity for rural students. And our calls for gap-closing increases for Milwaukee's public charter and private school students were met with significant funding boosts.

These achievements deserve celebration, not criticism. The Governor and legislative leaders responded to their constituents' real concerns with courageous action. And this is exactly the kind of kid-first, pragmatic problem-solving approach Wisconsin needs more of.

Three Key Priorities For This Budget

City Forward Collective's policy briefs outline three key priorities that should guide the upcoming budget discussions:

1. Protect last session's wins for ALL kids by rejecting rollbacks of funding levels or policy compromises, as well as the divisive rhetoric that seeks to pit students, schools, and sectors against each other.
   

2. Continue closing gaps from the bottom up by focusing on our lowest-funded students: private school K-8 students (who receive less than the $11,000 per-pupil minimum guaranteed to other publicly-funded students) and public school districts at the low revenue ceiling.
   

3. Focus on our most vulnerable students, beginning by increasing funding AND reforming Wisconsin's antiquated and inadequate model of special education funding. The current reimbursement-based approach has plummeted from covering 70% of costs in 1973 to just 33% today, placing enormous strain on schools serving students with disabilities.

A System at the Breaking Point

Unfortunately, early discussions around K-12 education for the upcoming budget have reverted to divisive, partisan rhetoric that often ignores facts in favor of ideology.

At the recent Joint Finance Committee hearing in West Allis, many speakers passionately called for additional education investments – a goal we at City Forward Collective share – but many did so by attacking the choices of the more than 75 parents of public charter and private school students who joined us in the room.

The truth is that Wisconsin's school funding system is at the breaking point — for ALL students and schools. We remain locked in a two-tiered system, one hastily contrived in 1993 as a stopgap solution for a bygone era, even as our educational ecosystem and students' needs have evolved dramatically.

For districts, this yields a never-ending and unsustainable series of referenda, creating a patchwork of inequitable resources. For public charter and private schools, which face many of the same cost drivers but lack access to local referenda funding, it means repeated appeals to close persistent gaps of $3,000-$5,000 per student compared to their district peers.

Beyond the False Choices

We must stop pitting students, educators, and schools against each other. The misleading "90/30" talking points on special education funding being pushed by some advocates are both inaccurate and unhelpful.

Last year, just 11 high-need special education students attending private schools in the entire state were funded under this methodology – one that makes up for private schools' lack of access to IDEA and other federal funding sources that public schools utilize.

We all should want every student - including those receiving special education services - to have full and equitable access to any publicly-funded school, on the same terms as their peers. Demagoguing the Special Needs Scholarship Program, that makes it possible for private schools to do the right thing, by serving more high-need students, is counterproductive and wrong.

Instead of divisive distractions, we should focus on our shared concern: ensuring every school serving students with special education needs receives the necessary funding to fully educate each child according to their unique needs.

A Vision for The Future: Student-Centered Funding

It’s time for real reform of Wisconsin’s school funding models. We know from other states’ experiences that there are better, fairer, and more equitable solutions - an approach that could unify the interests of all of our state’s publicly-funded schools, regardless of sector.

Our shared goal should be a student-centered system where every child's education is funded fairly based on their individual needs and circumstances. More than 30 other states, red and blue alike, have already transitioned to this approach – from Florida and Tennessee to Colorado and DC.

Wisconsin can either continue with a system that funds institutions rather than students, or we can embrace reforms that ensure every child receives equitable resources, no matter their choice of school. As the budget process unfolds, we urge policymakers, educators, families, and community members to join us in advocating for these critical reforms that truly put students first.

Let's start with what we all agree on: our students – all of them – are worthy of our investments in their educational future.