Critical

BIPARTISAN LONG-TERM TARGETS State leadership is essential to set state, not local goals, on a global scale and monitor results for citizens over the long run. Even with different approaches to the HOW of teaching and to school organization, schools are first fundamentally for students to learn the basics! (Though of course, there are many other side benefits for students from school.) This will require the commitment to these common ‘Targets’ from the sitting Governor and from both parties over several administrations. This can be done! Both Democrats and Republicans sustained a 1993 Massachusetts initiative, The Grand Bargain, to dramatically raise graduation requirements (MCAS) and teacher certification requirements (MTEL). By 2015, not only was the State by far #1 in the USA but was the only state that was at global levels for their 15-year-olds {SCIENCE #2 in World!, READING #8!, MATH #13!}. Due to COVID, MA did not participate in the 2022 PISA tests. Nor in the 2025 PISA test, perhaps because of cost. However, they in 2026 still have “the highest performing public schools in the country” (Wallet Hub, US News & World Report, Kids Count Data Center). Can we do it here? Both Democratic and Republican presidents maintained commitment to the seemingly impossible 1957 Man on the Moon “Stretch Target” and project. Via a practical, well-informed consensus mode that communicated with and won public support, and the full utilization and coordination of America’s best scientists/academicians/administrators/private company managers/blue collar workers, implementation with urgency followed …and 12 years later Armstrong and his first small step. RESULTS!

REALITY Our citizens and educators must first urgently acknowledge the major learning gaps between Wisconsin students and most First World kids, and the significant future occupational handicaps & lack of social & economic mobility that such gaps generate. Though on PISA tests, American 15 year olds score an encouraging #6 among 81 nations in reading, in the Adult Literacy Studies, the U.S. is a very low #36 in the world. Vs. other States, Wisconsin 4th graders in reading now are #21 in the nation. And our White 4th graders at #21, now read 17 rankings below Whites in Mississippi {NAEP, WI READING COALITION, 2017, Education Recovery Scorecard, 2024}; Mississippi Blacks, despite higher poverty rates of children, now are performing at Grade 4 in reading 1.5 grade levels ahead of Wisconsin. We have a major problem! And it impacts every future job…every future wage… and the self-worth of every child moving into adulthood. It also prevents the historic upward social mobility of America’s poor & immigrant children! Justice! Long term! Wisconsin schools have been falling behind for several generations. And mind you, it is not only on the facts or anecdotal experience, but every poll we have seen indicates American (and very likely Wisconsin) workers also rank dead last among 18 industrial countries in “problem solving in technology rich environments” (PIAAC, 2016). Four-fifths of unemployed Americans cannot figure out a rudimentary problem in which they have to spot an error when data is transferred from a two-column spreadsheet to a bar graph. 35% of USA workers, with a bachelor’s degree, say they “do not have the education…to get ahead at work.” That before the rise of AI. 60% of Americans believe public K-12 schools bear “a lot of responsibility” for lack of preparation for STEM & blue-collar work (Pew Research, 2025). Every interviewed WI superintendent whose 15-year-olds have taken the PISA international tests say their #1 challenge is the weakness in “critical problem solving”. Short term fixes will not do. Only sustained, well directed and targeted programs will bring real progress!

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