Weekly Fiscal Facts are provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. The Wisconsin Policy Forum logo can be downloaded here.
Student assessment scores have not yet recovered from their decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Wisconsin Policy Forum’s newly updated School DataTool shows.
The Forward Exam, the state’s primary assessment for students in grades 3 to 8, underwent significant changes for the 2023-24 school year. This initially prevented comparability of the new exam scores to those from prior years, but the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction developed estimates of what previous years’ scores would have been under the updated exam and standards.
The Forum’s new DataTool update visualizes these estimates to provide an imperfect, but still useful, basis for comparison with prior years. It shows that, from 2022-23 to 2023-24, few elementary grades saw increases in the percentage of students statewide meeting expectations. Achievement levels also remained low compared to pre-pandemic years, with only fourth-grade English language arts (ELA) exceeding 2018-19 levels.
These are among the key findings of the Wisconsin Policy Forum’s updated 2025 School DataTool. This interactive online tool can be used to compare each of the state’s public school districts on metrics for student demographics and participation, school district finances, graduation rates, test scores, and other measures of student experience. Other key findings from the tool include:
- The statewide student chronic absenteeism rate decreased for the third straight year, falling to 17.7% in 2023-24. But these rates remain far above pre-pandemic norms for students of all races and ethnicities. The chronic absenteeism rate is the percentage of students who were absent (excused or unexcused) for more than 10% of school days.
- Total statewide public school enrollment in Wisconsin declined for the 11th straight year in 2024-25, by more than 8,000 students. Although this was slightly less than the drop in 2023-24, it marks the third-largest decline in the last decade.
- Enrollment declined among Black (-0.9%), white (-2.1%), and American Indian (-3.1%) students, while the number of students identifying as Asian (+0.5%), Hispanic (+2.5%), and of two or more races (+3.1%) increased.
- In one positive development, the share of students achieving scores of 3 or higher on Advanced Placement (AP) tests rose by five percentage points in 2023-24 to 71.2%, the highest rate since at least 2008-09. AP exams are scored on a five-point scale, with some colleges offering credit or placement for scores of 3 or higher.
- Student rates of non-testing, or declining to take, the mandated statewide ACT test remain elevated from pre-pandemic levels. While they have decreased from their 2020-21 peak of 12.9%, test participation rates improved only marginally in the last year, with 8.5% of students still not testing in 2023-24, compared to 5.2% in 2018-19 before COVID-19 hit.
- The statewide ACT composite score remained below pre-pandemic levels in 2023-24, averaging 19.2 out of a possible 36. Since 2020-21, high school students’ scores have stagnated and fallen short of 2019-20’s average composite score of 19.8.
- In 2023-24, statewide graduation rates increased by 0.6 percentage points, reaching 91.1%. This is the highest graduation rate observed in the past 12 years and continues an incremental four-year upward trend.
This information is provided to Wisconsin Newspaper Association members as a service of the Wisconsin Policy Forum, the state’s leading resource for nonpartisan state and local government research and civic education. Learn more at wispolicyforum.org.
