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Wisconsin's technical colleges appear to receive unusually high funding levels per student compared to other public two-year colleges nationally. Yet our review has found more than 100,000 technical college students being served in Wisconsin are absent in national data, likely inflating the funding figures. Accounting for the missing students would leave spending levels in Wisconsin somewhat higher than nationally but much closer to what is typical for other two-year colleges.

A large share of Wisconsin's 400+ school districts are rural, and nearly half of all students enrolled in public schools statewide attend rural schools. Persistent challenges faced by rural districts in attracting and retaining educators, however, are contributing to an increasingly dire situation for the state's rural communities. This report summarizes findings from a yearlong research project investigating strategies being used by rural districts to address educator shortages, including a diverse set of "grow your own" (GYO) initiatives which involve school districts working with educator preparation programs (EPPs) and other local partners to identify, recruit, and prepare local candidates to become educators. The mixed-methods research design draws upon two statewide surveys (of rural superintendents and local site coordinators of the Educators Rising GYO program), along with site visits to five rural districts, to accomplish two main goals: (1) to identify strategies being used by rural districts to attract, recruit, and hire teachers; and (2) to describe the landscape of GYO initiatives being utilized by rural Wisconsin districts and local partners to address educator shortages. Broadly speaking, the work suggests that rural school districts are not waiting on state or federal policymakers to solve longstanding staffing challenges for them, but instead are actively engaged in implementing a mix of national GYO programs such as Educators Rising and "homegrown" GYO initiatives as one solution to chronic educator shortages. Not surprisingly, a distinct set of both successes and challenges have emerged as rural districts attempt to implement, launch, sustain, and scale up GYO initiatives that meet their needs. [Paper's original version August 2023; revised version September 2023. This work was made possible by a research grant from UW-Madison's Tommy G. Thompson Center for Public Leadership.]

Total enrollment at Wisconsin's public and charter schools declined by 25,000 students from fall 2019 to fall 2020 and has continued to fall in the years since then. While declining birth rates and apparent movement of some students to private or home schools likely account for at least two thirds of the decline, somewhere between 0.5% and 1.2% of the state's school-age population may be unaccounted for, raising questions about their whereabouts and well-being, the state's workforce, school finances, and more.

Early childhood education and care is critical to Wisconsin's families and businesses, offering a safe place for children to grow and learn during formative years while parents and other guardians participate in the workforce. Despite its importance, child care can be prohibitively expensive for some Wisconsin families, and the industry operates on easily eroded margins and relies on low-paid labor. This brief shows how all three sets of stakeholders within the child care system--families, employees, and operators--can be struggling at the same time. An understanding of this mutual challenge is essential to analyzing potential policy solutions and is a safeguard against proposals that, in seeking to address challenges for one group, might exacerbate difficulties for others. To illustrate these challenges, this brief examines the costs of child care provided in a licensed group center setting in Milwaukee County. [Additional financial support was provided by Mary Kellner.]

At a time when Wisconsin faces severe workforce shortages in several key sectors and demand for skilled workers has skyrocketed, enrollment in the state's colleges and universities has generally been declining even faster than the national trend. Enrollments in Wisconsin across all public and private institutions were falling even prior to the pandemic, dropping from 384,181 in 2010 to 332,856 in 2019. This decline of 13.4% was more than twice the national drop of 6.6% over the same period and was particularly pronounced for technical colleges and other two-year institutions. The arrival of COVID-19 has compounded the problem and added urgency to longstanding questions about how the state will cultivate the workers it will need to sustain the health of its economy and citizens, particularly in fields such as nursing, teaching, and skilled trades. This study reviews state and federal financial aid in Wisconsin, laying out the main trends and focusing on the handful of grant and loan programs that account for most of the dollars spent each year. Critical questions include: (1) How do Wisconsin's current levels of financial aid and specific programs compare to past funding and programs in this state and those in other states? Has their buying power grown or decreased over time compared to the cost of tuition? Which state agencies are involved in administering these programs and is the system efficient and accessible for families? (2) How does the picture change for students at the UW System, Wisconsin Technical College System (WTCS), or private nonprofit or tribal colleges? What does financial aid mean for specific groups of students such as racial and ethnic minorities and those from low-income families? and (3) What options should policymakers entertain after considering the current state of the financial aid system in Wisconsin, those of other states, and research on the impacts of different approaches? What are the pros and cons of each potential alternative? [Additional sponsors for this report include the Higher Education Regional Alliance, the ADAMM Foundation, and the Milwaukee Regional Research Forum. For the Executive Summary, see ED620268.]

This is the executive summary for the report, "A Little Help: Is Financial Aid Keeping College Affordable in Wisconsin?" This study finds that Wisconsin has not prioritized financial aid programs in recent years despite their potential benefits to the workforce and students, particularly low-income students and those of color. State funding has changed little over the past decade in key areas such as the average amount for Wisconsin Grants -- need-based awards to students at public and private nonprofit institutions in the state that make up the bulk of state financial aid payments. To keep college affordable, lawmakers and governors have put more emphasis on the UW tuition freeze, which holds down costs for all UW students but does not target those most in need or assist technical or private college students. Key finding are included. [For the full report, see ED620267.]

This policy brief is one in a series which examines selected topics related to Wisconsin's educator workforce. This brief presents a descriptive profile of Wisconsin's principal and assistant principal labor force over the past 20 years in terms of key attributes such as counts of both types of administrators, selected demographic characteristics (including gender, race/ethnicity, age, and years of experience), and distribution across locale type (urban, suburban, town, rural) and region of the state. Specific questions this brief addresses are as follows: (1) How has the number of principals and assistant principals working in Wisconsin public schools changed over the past two decades, and how does this compare to trends in student enrollment; (2) How has the distribution of Wisconsin principals and assistant principals by locale type and region of the state (including the state's largest districts) changed over the past two decades; and (3) How have selected characteristics of Wisconsin's principals and assistant principals changed over time? [For "Selected Characteristics of Teachers in Wisconsin Public Schools, 1999-00 to 2020-21," see ED624420.]

This policy brief is one in a series which examines selected topics related to Wisconsin's educator workforce. The goal of this brief is to present a descriptive profile of Wisconsin's teacher labor force over the past 20 years in terms of key attributes such as overall numbers of teachers, what they teach, and where they teach, and selected demographic characteristics (including gender, race/ethnicity, age, and years of experience). Specific questions this brief addresses are as follows: (1) How has the number of teaching staff in Wisconsin public schools changed over the past two decades, and how does this compare to trends in student enrollment; (2) How has the distribution of Wisconsin teachers across area of teaching assignment, geographic locale type (including the state's largest districts), and region of the state changed over the past two decades; and (3) How have selected characteristics of Wisconsin's teaching force (gender, race/ethnicity, age, years of experience, and highest degree held) changed over time? [For "Selected Characteristics of Principals and Assistant Principals in Wisconsin Public Schools, 1999-00 to 2019-20," see ED624419.]

This policy brief, produced by the Wisconsin Center for Education Research (WCER) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as part of the Region 10 Comprehensive Center, is one in a series examining selected topics related to Wisconsin's educator workforce. The goal of this brief is to summarize key trends in the use of emergency credentials within Wisconsin's public schools in recent years, which is a topic of interest for at least two reasons. A first reason is that increased reliance by Wisconsin school districts on emergency credentials as a strategy for filling vacant positions would serve as a meaningful indicator that widely-reported shortages of educators are worsening. A second policy implication associated with emergency credentials is a potential equity issue. To the extent that emergency credentials are being used by some districts and schools more than others, particularly for teaching positions and by districts and schools with higher shares of traditionally marginalized students, state and local policymakers should question whether additional supports and resources may be necessary to ensure that all students have access to highly-qualified educators.

In Wisconsin, schools strive to create learning environments where all students and staff feel healthy, safe, supported, engaged, and challenged. To realize this vision, districts and schools partner with students, families, and the community to build a comprehensive school mental health system (CSMHS). A CSMHS increases health equity by ensuring all students and staff have access to the prevention, early intervention, and treatment supports that they need, when they need them, free of stigma. Wisconsin's Comprehensive School Mental Health Framework applies Wisconsin's equitable multi-level system of supports (MLSS) to school mental health. An MLSS is a data-driven, problem-solving framework that utilizes a continuum of evidence-based practices to improve outcomes for all students (OSEP 2021). It includes universal programming to support all students, early intervention, and intensive interventions for those students who need additional support. Wisconsin's equitable MLSS includes all students and staff, considers the whole child and system, and focuses on providing equitable services and resources (DPI 2017c). Rather than creating a separate system for mental health service delivery, schools can leverage existing structures of their equitable MLSS as it applies to academic and behavioral supports to integrate the six components of CSMHS: (1) a continuum of mental health supports; (2) collaboration; (3) needs assessment and resource mapping; (4) mental health referral pathways; (5) sustainability; and (6) data. This document provides an overview of necessary considerations for building and sustaining the six components of a CSMHS to promote mental health for all students and staff. [This report was written in consultation with Elizabeth H. Connors.]

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are notably prevalent among patients with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), posing unique challenges in predicting CVD progression due to the intricate interactions of comorbidities. Traditional models typically lack the necessary dynamic and longitudinal scope to accurately forecast CVD trajectories in OSA patients. This study introduces a novel multi-level phenotypic model to analyze the progression and interplay of these conditions over time, utilizing data from the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort, which includes 1,123 participants followed for decades. Our methodology comprises three advanced steps: (1) Conducting feature importance analysis through tree-based models to underscore critical predictive variables like total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein (LDL), and diabetes. (2) Developing a logistic mixed-effects model (LGMM) to track longitudinal transitions and pinpoint significant factors, which displayed a diagnostic accuracy of 0.9556. (3) Implementing t-distributed Stochastic Neighbor Embedding (t-SNE) alongside Gaussian Mixture Models (GMM) to segment patient data into distinct phenotypic clusters that reflect varied risk profiles and disease progression pathways. This phenotypic clustering revealed two main groups, with one showing a markedly increased risk of major adverse cardiovascular events (MACEs), underscored by the significant predictive role of nocturnal hypoxia and sympathetic nervous system activity from sleep data. Analysis of transitions and trajectories with t-SNE and GMM highlighted different progression rates within the cohort, with one cluster progressing more slowly towards severe CVD states than the other. This study offers a comprehensive understanding of the dynamic relationship between CVD and OSA, providing valuable tools for predicting disease onset and tailoring treatment approaches., Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure, 5 tables

Although policymakers generally appreciate the value of crafting policies that are responsive to teacher and principal voice, doing so in a systematic way is challenging. Educator voices in the room when policies are made are often those of teachers and principals closest to policymakers. In 2019, to broaden the range of educator voices available to policymakers in Wisconsin, we asked more than 2,200 teachers and 700 principals in public schools in Wisconsin how "they" would change policy to improve the academic success of economically disadvantaged students. In total, 1,559 teachers and 601 principals offered suggestions for changing policy across four categories: school level--academic, student level, school level--non-academic, and community level. Though we saw variation in responses based on percent of student body eligible for free and reduced-priced lunch, grade levels served (elementary, middle, high school) and community type (city, suburb, town, rural), many responses appear with similar frequency among practitioners across contexts--indicating promise for making broader changes that impact all schools.

This report presents a snapshot of selected features of the condition of education in Wisconsin in 2019. With support from the U.S. Department of Education's Institute for Education Sciences, and in collaboration with colleagues at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), the authors set out to measure practices in PK-12 education that they considered especially important for educational equity and success for children in Wisconsin. Public school teachers and administrators in Wisconsin are responsible for educating about 855,000 students between four-year-old kindergarten and twelfth grade. State report cards produced annually by the Wisconsin DPI show how well we are doing as a school system with respect to student outcomes. In this paper, we focus on what principals and teachers in the state are doing. How do kindergarten teachers at both the four-year-old and five-year-old levels engage in play in their classrooms? How do elementary teachers group students for instruction and how frequently do they reconsider these groupings? What sorts of educational opportunities do teachers and schools offer their English language learners and their students with special needs? How supported do teachers feel in their early years in the profession? These are just a few of the questions we asked a representative sample of almost 700 principals and 2,200 teachers in the state. This paper offers a big picture view of instructional practice and educational opportunity in Wisconsin. It makes no claims about what schools and teachers should do to increase equity and success for students in Wisconsin. Instead, it shines a light on the many ways our educators work to support students in the state and, we hope, offers insights into where we might do better.

During the 2020-21 school year, Wisconsin districts applied to the Department of Public Instruction for waivers to respond to the evolving public health pandemic. This analysis, which focuses on districts utilizing Hours of Instruction and Length of School Day flexibilities, was designed to take stock of what was learned during this unusual year and to uncover possible new innovations. In June of 2021, the text of 110 waiver applications was analyzed for key themes. While some districts submitted waivers preemptively in anticipation of a need, others sought flexibility in response to urgent circumstances. As a result, original waiver language may not have reflected the strategies ultimately used. To better understand district experiences, districts were surveyed and interviewed during July of 2021. WMCC also did a brief web scan of innovative ideas from across the country to provide additional context for this analysis.

This policy brief examines one type of "leak" in the Wisconsin educator pipeline, a leak in the number of recent graduates from one of the state's 40+ educator preparation programs (EPPs) electing to work in Illinois or Minnesota public schools. While this group is numerically small, with just 38 Wisconsin 2017-18 EPP completers working in Illinois in 2018-19 and another 287 working in Minnesota, these subgroups combined represent almost 7% of all Wisconsin EPP completers from 2017-18. Additionally, nearly one-fifth (19.8%) of Wisconsin EPP completers were not working in Wisconsin public schools the following year. Available data only allow us to look at losses for a single cohort of Wisconsin EPP completers (from 2017-18); however, the trends uncovered warrant a deeper exploration of potential patterns from other years that could constitute a "leak" in the WI educator pipeline. [For the brief summary, see ED627843.]

Major teacher evaluation changes have occurred across the nation during the past decade. Pressed by federal education initiatives and encouraged by research on promising teacher evaluation practices, states and school districts have implemented evaluation systems using new measures of educator practice and student learning. A growing body of research has examined teacher evaluation policies and related impacts. Relatively less research focuses on the roles of principals, teachers, coaches, and peers. Wisconsin adopted a system for educator evaluation that includes common measures, similar training requirements, and an emphasis on educator growth and development. The evaluation of the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness System has provided informative state, district and school reports on teacher and principal perceptions of the system. There is much to learn, however, about how schools are carrying out evaluation practices to support educator improvement. This report presents findings from the Learning-Centered Evaluation Study carried out during the 2017-2018 school year. We examine school-level educator effectiveness practices and outcomes within Wisconsin districts focusing evaluation efforts on educator improvement rather than accountability. The report provides background on the system development in Wisconsin, summarizes our study design, and presents findings on learning-centered practices and observations on how evaluation affects teaching. The report includes a policy response from the study sponsor and thoughts on future studies. [The study is part of the evaluation and research agenda of the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness Research Partnership.]

Teacher collaboration is a key factor in improving instructional quality and promoting student achievement. Though research attests to the importance of school contextual elements for the work of teachers, few studies investigate how these factors interact to enable or constrain collaboration. This study examines teacher perspectives on collaborative practices by analyzing observations and interviews of teachers and other staff at eight Wisconsin elementary schools. It finds that structures for collaboration shape teacher participation in collaborative practices. The authors distinguish among three structures of collaboration--requisite, optional, and informal--and explore how relational trust among teachers and between teachers and their administrators and colleagues affects collaboration. They find that teachers who attested to the presence of relational trust within their schools collaborated with colleagues, regardless of formalized times to do so. Conversely, teachers who described a lack of relational trust opted against collaborating with grade-level colleagues, despite, in some instances, having access to collaborative planning time. Instructional approaches influenced collaborative structures and relational trust, as some teaching formats fostered contact between practitioners while others separated teachers. The study concludes by discussing the implications of the findings for extant and future research regarding collaboration in context.

In Wisconsin, racial disparities in K-12 achievement have taken center stage, and justifiably so: the black-white and Hispanic-white test score gap is wider in Wisconsin than in any other state (Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, 2014). However, Wisconsin also sees inequality along economic lines and disparities in postsecondary outcomes, both of which warrant attention. If Wisconsin is like the rest of the nation, closing its gaps in academic achievement is not sufficient to equalize educational attainment. Nationally and in Wisconsin, economically disadvantaged high school graduates attend college, especially baccalaureate colleges, at much lower rates than their more advantaged peers. Schools play an important role in helping economically disadvantaged students go to college. In this report, the authors describe Wisconsin's economic disparities by postsecondary outcomes, assess the magnitude of between-school variation in school effects on economically disadvantaged students' baccalaureate college attendance, and show which school characteristics explain this variation. To determine which types of schools are more successful in sending economically disadvantaged students to baccalaureate colleges, this study uses a relatively dense set of student-level and school-level characteristics. The authors draw these data from the population of Wisconsin public school students who entered ninth grade for the first time between the 2006-07 and 2011-12 school years. Three principal questions guide this study: (1) How large are economic disparities in college attendance in Wisconsin?; (2) How much variation is there among high schools in the share of their low-income students who attend college, controlling for student characteristics?; and (3) Which high school characteristics explain this between-school variation? The questions are approached using the Wisconsin State Longitudinal Data System, the National Student Clearinghouse, and the National Center for Education Statistics' Common Core of Data. This report proceeds in six sections. First, the authors describe their data sources and measurement strategies. Second, they show the magnitude of economic disparities in postsecondary outcomes in Wisconsin. Third, they demonstrate that school effects vary widely. Fourth, they present estimates of how specific school-level characteristics influence low-income students' postsecondary outcomes, highlighting the importance of geographic characteristics such as location in a suburb, proximity to a University of Wisconsin (UW) 4-year campus, and the education level of adults in the district. Fifth, they examine facets of school organization. Finally, the authors offer concluding comments.

A pervasive challenge for Wisconsin and states across the nation is accurate assessment of teacher labor supplies at the state and local levels. Demand measures based on predictions of changing teacher and student demographics have been wildly inaccurate. This report presents findings on key features of the Wisconsin teacher labor market, including mobility, attrition, supply, and demand. The authors use data from multiple sources (including state staffing and credentialing files, application and vacancy information, and statewide survey data on perceptions of staffing challenges) to: (1) establish a common vocabulary around categories of labor supply--specifically which positions are high supply, which are medium supply, and which are low supply; (2) provide a baseline against which subsequent reports can build and future policies can be assessed; (3) provide a common base of empirical evidence to focus and foster debate; and (4) identify aspects of the teacher labor market that are problematic. This report provides evidence on teacher supply and demand in Wisconsin to help policymakers see which avenues are available to influence the complex dynamics of differential mobility, attrition, licensure, and selection across educator labor markets. This portrait of Wisconsin's teacher labor market illustrates and defines key features to create a common understanding and vocabulary to engage emerging and persistent challenges. The authors organized this report around the following questions: (1) What are the prevailing trends in teacher attrition and mobility?; (2) What is the current supply of teachers?; (3) How are districts responding to staffing challenges?; and (4) Is there a teacher shortage in Wisconsin?

Advances in the science of learning and development, along with the increasing demands of life and work in the 21st century, are raising expectations for schools and educators. Policy levers that affect the teacher workforce will play a key role in meeting these expectations. This report, one of a series of state policy studies produced by the Learning Policy Institute in collaboration with the Council of Chief State School Officers, examines teacher licensure and preparation program approval systems in Wisconsin. This study was designed to assess how these systems are advancing the preparation of a stable, diverse, well-qualified, and equitably distributed teacher workforce to support all students' deeper learning and social, emotional, and academic development. This report draws upon multiple sources, including state teacher and student data, analyses of statutory and regulatory frameworks and policy activities, and interviews with educators and state agency staff. It opens with a description of the state policy context, including challenges in public education and the teacher workforce. After a description of the recent policymaking activity that has created current systems, the report lays out the workings of licensure and program approval in detail. Finally, the report draws on contemporary research and state policy examples to provide recommendations aimed at systemic improvement and intended to help policymakers move closer to Wisconsin's teacher workforce goals.

Research indicates that teamwork, communication, self-directed learning, and problem-solving skills are strongly linked to individual academic and professional success, yet little is known regarding how college educators and employer trainers learn to better teach or train others in these valuable skills in postsecondary and employment STEM contexts. This pilot study uses social network analysis--a research perspective studying relationships or "social ties" to better understand the ways interactions influence behavior--to explore the dimensions of educator and trainer discussions regarding methods for helping students or employees acquire important skills. The study also examines whether educators and employers believe such discussions influence their instruction. A descriptive analysis of data from online surveys collected from educators (n=192) and employers (n=70) in technology and manufacturing fields in southern Wisconsin and western New York indicates respondents frequently engage in such teaching- and training-focused discussions with people inside and outside their colleges and businesses. Though more college educators are involved in such conversations than employers, employer trainers who engage in such conversations do so with individuals affiliated with more diverse organizations. Results also indicate that educators and employers who have these discussions do so at a similar frequency. Finally, most educators and employers with teaching- and training-focused social networks perceive them to be beneficial to their teamwork, communication, self-directed learning, and problem-solving instruction. In light of these findings, leaders hoping to further develop teaching- and training-focused social networks in education and employment fields may find more success in openly promoting the importance of such social ties as well as providing more opportunities for intra- and interorganizational professional development in instruction.

Machine learning based decision-support tools in criminal justice systems are subjects of intense discussions and academic research. There are important open questions about the utility and fairness of such tools. Academic researchers often rely on a few small datasets that are not sufficient to empirically study various real-world aspects of these questions. In this paper, we contribute WCLD, a curated large dataset of 1.5 million criminal cases from circuit courts in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. We used reliable public data from 1970 to 2020 to curate attributes like prior criminal counts and recidivism outcomes. The dataset contains large number of samples from five racial groups, in addition to information like sex and age (at judgment and first offense). Other attributes in this dataset include neighborhood characteristics obtained from census data, detailed types of offense, charge severity, case decisions, sentence lengths, year of filing etc. We also provide pseudo-identifiers for judge, county and zipcode. The dataset will not only enable researchers to more rigorously study algorithmic fairness in the context of criminal justice, but also relate algorithmic challenges with various systemic issues. We also discuss in detail the process of constructing the dataset and provide a datasheet. The WCLD dataset is available at \url{https://clezdata.github.io/wcld/}., Comment: (Forthcoming) Proceedings of the 37th Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS 2023) Track on Datasets and Benchmarks

Wisconsin's gaps between Black and White student high school graduation rates (Richards, 2016) and Black and White fourth-grade math and reading scores (U.S. Department of Education, 2015) are the largest in the nation. These inequalities have led to criticisms of Wisconsin's schools and teachers as ineffective in bolstering the success of students of color and those who are economically disadvantaged. However, serious attention to disparities in school readiness has largely been absent from these conversations. The authors know that nationally, students of color and children who are poor enter Kindergarten substantially behind their peers (Reardon & Portilla, 2016) and that disparity can account for much, if not most, of the achievement gap seen later in primary and secondary school (Bradbury, Corak, Waldfogel, & Washbrook, 2015). This report describes differences in school readiness as reflected by literacy skills at Kindergarten entry among children in Wisconsin. The authors document inequalities in literacy skills by race/ethnicity, family income and place. Results show that teachers and schools in Wisconsin face a daunting challenge in producing equitable educational outcomes for children.

The United States has slid into educational mediocrity when compared to international peers which threatens Americans' ability to adapt in an evolving economy, be productive and content at work, put down deep roots in their communities, and help their nation continue to lead on the world stage. That decline has especially harsh consequences for the Midwest, which has seen industrial instability, slow population growth, and striking inequality of opportunity in rural and urban areas. This report uses Wisconsin as a model, proposing new education reforms for Great Lakes and Great Plains states. These reforms rely on states' unique midwestern characteristics to generate opportunity, prosperity, and purpose. In this paper, Mike Gallagher proposes eight ideas, coupled into four categories including: (1) transforming the classroom by bringing back phonics-based reading instruction, getting high-quality teachers into the profession, and helping these teachers mentor the next generation of educators; (2) growing urban and rural choice by funding district and choice students equally and making better investments in high-speed rural internet; (3) modernizing school bureaucracy by using a Yelp-like school enrollment system to empower parents to seek out quality and moving school board elections to the general Election Day to boost participation; and (4) promoting working-class college by encouraging "Guided Pathway" reforms at technical colleges, creating more flexible technical college programs and funding mechanisms, and allowing 529-style accounts to cover apprenticeship expenses, not just college costs.

YoungStar is a program of the Department of Children and Families (DCF) designed to improve the quality of child care for Wisconsin children. YoungStar is designed to: (1) evaluate and rate the quality of care given by child care providers; (2) help parents choose the best child care for their kids; (3) support providers with tools and training to deliver high-quality early care; and (4) set a consistent standard for child care quality. YoungStar evaluates the quality of care given by regulated child care providers and rates them from 1 to 5 Stars, with 5 Stars being the highest rating, similar to ratings for hotels, restaurants, or other types of businesses. A provider's Star rating is based on these criteria: (1) Educational Qualifications and Training; (2) Learning Environment and Curriculum; (3) Professional and Business Practices; and (4) Child Health and Well-Being Practices. In November 2010, the DCF contracted with a consortium to deliver specified YoungStar services in six regions in the state. The Consortium is made up of three agencies: Wisconsin Early Childhood Association, Supporting Families Together Association, and Celebrate Children Foundation. The Consortium is responsible for: (1) YoungStar administration for six regional areas of the state; (2) technical assistance to early care and education providers; (3) providing ratings via observation and assessment; (4) administering micro-grants to help programs improve; and (5) public outreach and communication to provide parents with concrete and understandable information on how to choose child care programs. This report, the fifth in a series of WCCF reports tracking the progress of Wisconsin's YoungStar program provides key findings and analysis of data as of July 2014 in the following areas: (1) Children: Quality ratings of their child care settings; (2) Programs: Quality ratings and YoungStar participation; (3) YoungStar regions: Analysis; and (4) Analysis. Appended are (1) Background; (2) YoungStar Regions; (3) List of Figures; and (4) More information about YoungStar and Early Childhood Issues. [For "YoungStar in Wisconsin: Analysis of Data as of July 2014. Executive Summary: Key Findings and Analysis," see ED566698.]

The "Participation in a Professional Development Program on Culturally Responsive Practices in Wisconsin" study examined the education outcomes among Black students across Wisconsin. The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction encourages schools to implement culturally responsive practices, which prior research suggests are related to improvements in outcomes among racial/ethnic minority students, and supports a professional development program on those practices called Building Culturally Responsive Systems. Using data from the 2012/13-2018/19 school years, this study examined the percentage of schools statewide that participated in the program, differences in the characteristics of schools that participated in the program and of schools that did not participate, implementation of culturally responsive practices among schools that participated in the program and schools that did not participate, and the relationship between participation and school-level academic and behavior outcomes. The study found that 4 percent of schools across the state participated in the program (meaning that teachers and administrators from the school attended at least one of the program's five sessions). This document presents the following three appendixes that accompany the study: (1) Overview of the Building Culturally Responsive Systems professional development program on culturally responsive practices; (2) Methods; and (3) Supplemental analyses. [For the full report, see ED614050. For the Study Snapshot, see ED614051. For the Study Brief, see ED614052.]

State and school district leaders in Wisconsin are interested in improving education outcomes among Black students across the state. To achieve this goal, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction encourages schools to implement culturally responsive practices, which prior research suggests are related to improvements in outcomes among racial/ethnic minority students, and supports a professional development program on those practices called Building Culturally Responsive Systems. The department and other stakeholders in Wisconsin have asked for more comprehensive information about schools' participation in the program. Using data from the 2012/13-2018/19 school years, this study examined the percentage of schools statewide that participated in the program, differences in the characteristics of schools that participated in the program and of schools that did not participate, implementation of culturally responsive practices among schools that participated in the program and schools that did not participate, and the relationship between participation and school-level academic and behavior outcomes. The study found that 4 percent of schools across the state participated in the program (meaning that teachers and administrators from the school attended at least one of the program's five sessions). Schools that participated in the program had a larger average enrollment, were more likely to be eligible for Title I funds, and were more often located in cities and suburbs compared with schools that did not participate, but there was no meaningful difference between the two school groups in the percentage of Black students (the difference was less than 5 percentage points). About 17 percent of schools that participated in the program reported implementing culturally responsive practices in reading instruction compared with 28 percent of schools that did not participate. Program participation was not meaningfully related to a school's "closing gaps scores" for English language arts or math, attendance rate, suspension rate, or expulsion rate one year, two years, or three years later, after school characteristics and pre-program academic and behavior measures were accounted for. The small number of schools that reported implementing culturally responsive practices might be a factor in this result. [For the Study Snapshot, see ED614051. For the Study Brief, see ED614052. For the appendixes, see ED614053.]

State and school district leaders in Wisconsin are interested in improving education outcomes among Black students across the state. To achieve this goal, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction encourages schools to implement culturally responsive practices, which prior research suggests are related to improvements in outcomes among racial/ethnic minority students, and supports a professional development program on those practices called Building Culturally Responsive Systems. The department and other stakeholders in Wisconsin have asked for more comprehensive information about schools' participation in the program. Using data from the 2012/13-2018/19 school years, this study examined the percentage of schools statewide that participated in the program, differences in the characteristics of schools that participated in the program and of schools that did not participate, implementation of culturally responsive practices among schools that participated in the program and schools that did not participate, and the relationship between participation and school-level academic and behavior outcomes. The study found that 4 percent of schools across the state participated in the program (meaning that teachers and administrators from the school attended at least one of the program's five sessions). Schools that participated in the program had a larger average enrollment, were more likely to be eligible for Title I funds, and were more often located in cities and suburbs compared with schools that did not participate, but there was no meaningful difference between the two school groups in the percentage of Black students (the difference was less than 5 percentage points). About 17 percent of schools that participated in the program reported implementing culturally responsive practices in reading instruction compared with 28 percent of schools that did not participate. Program participation was not meaningfully related to a school's "closing gaps scores" for English language arts or math, attendance rate, suspension rate, or expulsion rate one year, two years, or three years later, after school characteristics and pre-program academic and behavior measures were accounted for. The small number of schools that reported implementing culturally responsive practices might be a factor in this result. [For the full report, see ED614050. For the Study Snapshot, see ED614051. For the appendixes, see ED614053.]

This Race to the Top - Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) annual performance report for the reporting period of 01-01-2016 to 12-31-2016 provides a summary of Wisconsin's and strategies that Wisconsin will implement to address those challenges. During 2016, significant progress was made implementing programs and activities funded by the Race to the Top Early Learning Challenge (RTT-ELC) grant in Wisconsin. In 2016, the RTT-ELC funding continued to help improve the quality of the early care and education by enhancing YoungStar, helping children gain access to high-quality care, and helping child care providers improve the quality of the care they provide. From January 3, 2016 to January 31, 2017, 385 YoungStar rated child care programs increased their star rating. During 2016, the YoungStar Formal Raters continued to use the software created by Branagh to conduct Environment Rating Scale (ERS) observations. In addition the new progression of family engagement standards went into effect and allowed providers to demonstrate quality in new ways. Also the results from the YoungStar validation study were used to propose refinements to the YoungStar rating scale. Outreach efforts in 2016 continued with the 4-Year-Old Kindergarten (4K) programs as well as Early Head Start and Head Start programs. The new Head Performance Standards and changes to the automated case management system offered new opportunities for collaboration. Child care programs also had many opportunities to increase their levels of the quality. These opportunities included new resources for providers serving children with disabilities and their families, additional T.E.A.C.H. scholarships, on-site technical assistance, Educational Opportunities Grant, grants to support accreditation, garden micro-grants, and new breast feeding friendly training materials. RTT-ELC funds were also used to acknowledge providers who increased their Star rating though the use of Challenge Awards. Work was also completed to strengthen the overall system of early care and education in Wisconsin. Many collaborative opportunities for professionals from all sectors of the field early care and education were provided. These include the Tribal-State Relations Workgroup, the Online Professional Development Portfolio, the Professional Development Initiative, and the steering committees for the Wisconsin Model Early Learning Standards and the Wisconsin Pyramid Model. Challenges associated with the creation of an integrated early childhood database continued in 2016. The cross-agency team continues to collaborate and work through the tough issues. During 2016 the agencies also had to tackle the challenge a new system of budget and finance tracking. The budget and finance staff at each agency were undertaking a great workload making it difficult for them to keep up with RTT-ELC issues. In addition, a new system of tracking expenses had to be created at The Department of Children and Families (DCF) in order to monitor spending from all three Departments. Staff had to ensure careful monitoring and constant communication around spending issues in order to obtain accurate data.

Early warning systems (EWS) are predictive tools at the center of recent efforts to improve graduation rates in public schools across the United States. These systems assist in targeting interventions to individual students by predicting which students are at risk of dropping out. Despite significant investments in their widespread adoption, there remain large gaps in our understanding of the efficacy of EWS, and the role of statistical risk scores in education. In this work, we draw on nearly a decade's worth of data from a system used throughout Wisconsin to provide the first large-scale evaluation of the long-term impact of EWS on graduation outcomes. We present empirical evidence that the prediction system accurately sorts students by their dropout risk. We also find that it may have caused a single-digit percentage increase in graduation rates, though our empirical analyses cannot reliably rule out that there has been no positive treatment effect. Going beyond a retrospective evaluation of DEWS, we draw attention to a central question at the heart of the use of EWS: Are individual risk scores necessary for effectively targeting interventions? We propose a simple mechanism that only uses information about students' environments -- such as their schools, and districts -- and argue that this mechanism can target interventions just as efficiently as the individual risk score-based mechanism. Our argument holds even if individual predictions are highly accurate and effective interventions exist. In addition to motivating this simple targeting mechanism, our work provides a novel empirical backbone for the robust qualitative understanding among education researchers that dropout is structurally determined. Combined, our insights call into question the marginal value of individual predictions in settings where outcomes are driven by high levels of inequality.