Wisconsin

Need some help developing or advocating for policies in your state to tackle school pushout and end the school-to-prison pipeline? Then look no further than this newly released state policy guide from the Opportunity to Learn Campaign! The guide provides advocates and policymakers with recommendations for ending the ineffective and discriminatory practice of out-of-school suspensions as well as a summary of the significant action and legislative proposals that are already underway in states to address our national pushout crisis.

Budgets are like waterbeds. Push down in one area of the bed and it will just force another area of the bed to rise. And if you let out all the water, it will stop being a bed altogether. Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is underfunding education (pushing down on one side of the waterbed) to balance the state budget, thereby raising the amount of funding that communities have to provide to continue educating their children. But what about communities that can't afford to assume the extra costs? Well, it's not a waterbed without water.

Thrown under the school bus this week by the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) were 76 Wisconsin schools that "Failed to Meet Expectations" as calculated under the state's newfangled school accountability system. But dig deeper into those rankings and you'll see they only add to the mountain of national data showing that students' socio-economic status affects their access to the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. Standing atop this heap of evidence, advocates must remind legislators, parents, school leaders, and taxpayers that reducing childhood poverty does much to reform public schools.

Let's do the math: Cut enough funding from Wisconsin's schools and other public services and you will eventually, through lack of spending, end up with a state budget surplus. But rather than shuffle that surplus off to the state's Rainy Day Fund, let's acknowledge that all those cuts have our schools looking under the weather. We need to reinvest that money now, because today it isn't just raining in WI schools, it's downpouring. 

Public schools in Wisconsin (and, indeed, across the entire nation) are suffering "death by a thousand cuts" as state and local budgets drastically reduce the size of school funding. But as our economy begins to recover from the recession and as budget surpluses begin to appear, our policymakers need to reinvest in schools and in students. Wisconsin is looking at a surplus of $126 million this year. Nothing has a better claim on this unexpected windfall than our public schools.