A new report from the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) contends that the state’s stagnant reading scores and ongoing teacher shortage stem from the same root problem: inconsistent preparation of new teachers in how to teach reading.
The study, titled “The FORT Gap: How Inconsistent Teacher Preparation Is Fueling Wisconsin’s Literacy and Educator Crises,” is the opening installment of a broader WILL initiative called “The Wisconsin Education Comeback: A Roadmap for Student Success.” The series is intended to hand the state’s next governor and legislature a ready-made agenda of K-12 reforms, with additional reports expected in the coming months.
The first report centers on the Foundations of Reading Test, known as the FORT, which Wisconsin requires for licensure in elementary and middle school education, middle childhood-early adolescence education, and special education. The exam is designed to confirm that aspiring teachers understand the five components of evidence-based reading instruction: phonemic awareness, phonics, vocabulary, fluency, and comprehension. WILL treats passage rates on the test as a diagnostic window into how well individual teacher-preparation programs are doing their job.
What the data shows, according to the report, is a wide gap between the strongest and weakest programs. Pass rates across Wisconsin universities ranged from 100 percent down to 25 percent. Among the schools highlighted were Marquette University at 100 percent, Maranatha Baptist University at 95 percent, and UW-Eau Claire at 92 percent, compared with Mount Mary University at 45 percent, the Milwaukee Teacher Education Center at 41 percent, and Northland College at 25 percent.
“Wisconsin is facing a growing literacy challenge marked by stagnant or declining reading proficiency and a strained teacher workforce. While these issues are often treated separately, they are actually closely connected,” WILL Research Director Will Flanders told The Heartland Post. “At the center is a systemic gap in teacher preparation—particularly in equipping educators with the knowledge and skills aligned with the ‘Science of Reading.’”
The report also points to a mixed statewide picture following Act 20, the 2023 law that mandated science-based reading instruction in Wisconsin schools. Citing new analysis from the National Council on Teacher Quality, WILL notes that some teacher-prep programs significantly improved their ratings after the law took effect, while others stagnated or lost ground—evidence, the report argues, that Act 20 alone hasn’t been enough to close the gap.
Rather than tightening licensure requirements across the board, WILL is pitching a narrower, three-part fix. It wants the Department of Public Instruction to publicly report university-level FORT passage rates every year, to place chronically underperforming programs on probation, and to create “Literacy Excellence Grants” that reward programs with strong results. The goal, the organization says, is to apply transparency, accountability, and incentives without raising the bar for licensure itself.
WILL frames the FORT Gap report as the first piece of a larger push, with more installments of the Wisconsin Education Comeback series expected to address other areas of K-12 policy ahead of the next legislative session.
