Wisconsin Ranks 33rd in Math, 30th in Reading Growth Among States

Fifth grade students in math teacher Missy Sperle’s class work on a math problem Tuesday, April 29, 2025, at Winskill Elementary School in Lancaster, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

Reading scores have continued to decline in Wisconsin since 2022, leaving students more than a half of a grade below pandemic levels.

At the same time, math scores in the state haven’t budged. That has left some students in districts including Sun Prairie, Oshkosh and West Allis-West Milwaukee lagging more than a full grade level behind 2019 math benchmarks.

That’s according to the latest Education Score Card at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University.

Wisconsin ranks 33rd out of 38 states in academic growth in math and 30th out of 35 states in reading between 2022 and 2025. Due to data limitations, Alaska, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Montana, New Mexico, New York, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon and Vermont are not included in the 2026 Education Scorecard findings.

“The pandemic was the mudslide that followed seven years of erosion in student achievement,” Tom Kane, faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University said in a statement. “The learning recession started a decade ago, after policymakers switched off the early warning system of test-based accountability and social media took over children’s lives.”

The report, now in its fourth year, combines state test results for roughly 35 million grade students nationwide in third through eighth grade.

This year, because federal pandemic dollars have been spent, the analysis shifted from focusing solely on pandemic recovery to a more forward-looking approach focused on “districts on the rise.”

There are some bright spots in Wisconsin

The analysis found school districts in Fond du Lac, Cedarburg and Waukesha are outperforming their peers in both math and reading.

Fond du Lac School District Superintendent Matt Steinbarth said starting in the 2020-21 school year, the district made sure every student was receiving the same curriculum and opportunities.

At the same time, principals became more engaged in the data, Steinbarth said. All building principals now look at data every six days.

“They work side-by-side with their staff in terms of knowing the curriculum needs, as well as how to help students reach that next level of learning,” Steinbarth said.

The improvements weren’t instant. Steinbarth said before reading and math scores could be improved student behavior was a focus.

“We stopped leading out of sympathy and instead led with empathy,” he said. “We really worked with families to let them know how important it was for them to lean into the opportunities provided at school. From there, once that was under control, we started to lean into our teacher and administrative habits.”

Other districts are also making strides in some areas.

The  Hamilton, Elmbrook and Verona Area school districts are outperforming peers in math, while the Racine Unified School District and West De Pere are emerging as a reading leaders.

Statewide, chronic absenteeism has fallen from 22 percent in 2022 to 17 percent in 2025, although the number of students missing more than 10 percent of the school year is still 10 percentage points higher than pre-panemic levels.

Nationally, the Education Scorecard found post-pandemic recovery has been U-shaped, with larger improvements among the highest-income and the lowest-income school districts in the country. Middle-income districts have seen the least improvement on average.

The recovery in achievement in the highest-poverty districts seems largely driven by the federal pandemic relief funding. Without that relief, according to the study, the average high-poverty district would have remained at its 2022 level of achievement.

Wisconsin ranks 33rd in math and 30th in reading recovery among states was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.