Wisconsin Republicans Pass Educational Standards Package

Frederica Freyberg:
Back at the Capitol, Assembly Republicans passed a package of education bills. The legislation would realign statewide testing standards back to national levels, ban the use of cell phones by students during class time, require cursive instruction and a specific civics instruction. Instructional materials must be made available for inspection by district residents, and 70% of operating expenses must go toward direct classroom costs and teacher salaries, and limit pay increases for school administrators. Republicans say the bills are necessary to improve achievement levels.

Robin Vos:
Since 2011, 2012, we have actually seen with demographic changes, about a 6.5% decline in the total number of students attending school in Wisconsin. But we have actually seen a 39% increase in spending during that same time. So the challenge that we have is we now know that just simply increasing education funding doesn’t necessarily mean we have higher standards. It doesn’t mean that we have better outcomes. Our test results and our test scores clearly show that. So what we want to make sure is that at a time when only 31% of the students who are taking the fourth-grade test are reading at grade level, we want to make sure that that actually gets better than where it is now. In fact, right now, that test score is the lowest that it’s been since 1992, where before many kids, actually many people, were even born. So the results that we have are disappointing. They are really frustrating, but they are also a wakeup call for Wisconsin.