Max Pixel
Seven years ago, Wisconsin was rocked by massive protests against the passage of Act 10. Thousands poured into the streets, legislators battled, and Republican governor Scott Walker claimed fiscal emergency to enact historic school funding cuts and changes to teacher pay and negotiating rights. The 2011 legislation, passed by a majority Republican legislature, severely restricted collective bargaining negotiations between local school districts and the teachers’ unions.
Since then, Wisconsin has provided a tale to the nation of how to discredit and dismantle public education. Wisconsin teachers felt the blow in every aspect of their professional lives; passage of the act created a legion of stories about the shrinking teacher pipeline, the mass exodus of veteran teachers, tumbling teacher morale, and an eroding sense of professionalism.
There’s a second sad tale about education in Wisconsin—harder to tell because the story is masked by statewide data—a story about the state’s most vulnerable students.
This second tale actually began well before Act 10. Wisconsin’s flawed school funding formula—modified in 1993 as a strategy to cap local property taxes—had already pushed schools to a financial breaking point by 2008 when the Great Recession hit. Act 10, instead of fixing the issue, forced teachers to fill the funding gap by requiring that they contribute 5.8 percent of their mostly flat salaries toward their pensions and pay 12.6 percent of their health insurance premiums.
In poorer districts the result has been an unprecedented fluidity in their teacher workforce. Years of underfunding had already left poorer areas of the state bereft of the resources to keep more experienced teachers. Without the healthcare, retirement, pension, and tenure protections from collective bargaining, there was even less incentive for teachers to remain in lower-paying districts.
Without the healthcare, retirement, pension, and tenure protections from collective bargaining, there was even less incentive for teachers to remain in lower-paying districts.
The workforce shift—in a profession characterized by longevity—has been dramatic. $900 million dollars were drained from Wisconsin teachers’ collective wealth, and with it the spending power that sustained their families and their communities’ economies. Wisconsin schools cut more than 3,000 Wisconsin educators during the 2008 recession. Wisconsin teachers are now paid less and have more students, and they have less experience to help them address the challenges. In less than a decade, Wisconsin’s school districts have seen a 2-3 year drop in the average experience of their teaching workforce.
Before Act 10, high poverty school districts were already grappling with problems like student homelessness and parent joblessness. Now, these districts have the least experienced teachers and the least stable teaching staff in the state. The lowest full-time teacher salary in Milwaukee in 2010 was almost $36,000; in 2017, it’s $18,000. The Milwaukee teaching numbers have dropped almost 5 percent for a student population that has only decreased slightly.
This is how the stage was set for the second tale from Act 10—a story obscured by statewide statistics, but painfully clear at the district level. As a whole, Wisconsin high school graduation rates remain among the highest in the nation. Test scores are holding steady. More students are taking AP exams. The family poverty level has dropped slightly.
But the story from districts with higher percentages of students who are not white is very different. Within Wisconsin’s stellar statewide graduation rates and test scores lie the largest racial disparities in the nation. Just 66.7 percent of black students and 79 percent of hispanic students are expected to graduate this year, compared to over 95 percent of white students. Only 10.3 percent of Wisconsin’s black students achieved proficiency on math assessments compared to nearly half of white students.
This is not a small problem. Minority students comprise nearly 30 percent of all Wisconsin students, and their populations are growing. The achievement gap between them and Wisconsin’s white children is also expanding, and the less experienced pool of teachers created by Act 10 is ill-equipped to attend to this problem.
The mismatch of least qualified teachers with highest needs students has drawn federal scrutiny. Wisconsin’s recently-approved plan for the federal Every Student Succeeds Act revealed disproportionately high numbers of inexperienced teachers, teachers working outside their subject areas, and ineffective teachers in Wisconsin’s largest and poorest districts. Eighty-four of Milwaukee’s public schools, a district where over 81 percent of students are economically disadvantaged, are among the worst offenders. The Every Student Succeeds Act leaves the remedies to the state and district. The legislature’s response? Loosen teacher certification requirements.
The mismatch of least qualified teachers with highest needs students has drawn federal scrutiny.
This is the sad tale of how Wisconsin’s neediest students are faring after Act 10. We know the links between poverty and low academic achievement; between the lack of sustainable wages and family instability; between unaffordable housing and student homelessness; between fewer cultural resources and isolated, lonely and depressed students.
Act 10 slashed school costs but the biggest cost of all is perhaps in student well-being. Nationally, teachers are reporting tense school environments and increased incivility in the Age of Trump. A quarter of all Wisconsin high school students report feeling disconnected from their schools. African-American youth well-being in Wisconsin is the worst in the nation. The worst.
Teachers and students across the state of Wisconsin have suffered in the aftermath of Act 10. But dig deeper and you will find that some students are suffering far more. We owe it to them to tell the full story.
Carole Trone is a Wisconsin-based writer and advocate for education access and success. Using experiences as parent, education nonprofit leader, and college instructor, she works to connect families and students to education insights that matter.