Wisconsin has spent years debating how to improve its schools. Policymakers have argued over funding levels, teacher shortages, standardized testing, school choice, curriculum, and class sizes. More recently, the Department of Public Instruction has launched its “Portrait of a Graduate” initiative, asking parents, educators, and employers to imagine the knowledge, skills, and attributes every Wisconsin student should possess upon graduation.
Those conversations are important. But they all overlook a much more fundamental question.
Can our students read?
It is impossible to build an excellent education system—or a strong workforce, thriving economy, or informed citizenry—if students never master the single most important academic skill they will ever learn. Yet according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), often referred to as the Nation’s Report Card, only 31 percent of Wisconsin fourth graders are proficient in reading. Roughly 7 out of every 10 students in our fourth grade classrooms are being left to fall further and further behind.
While there are many factors that have contributed to this crisis, the conclusion is unavoidable: far too many Wisconsin children are entering the most important stage of their education without the literacy skills necessary to succeed.
This is not simply a K-12 story. It is a workforce story, a higher education story, a public safety story, and an economic competitiveness story. The consequences of poor literacy do not end when a child leaves elementary school. They compound year after year, following students into high school, college, the workplace, and often into adulthood.
Understanding why that matters begins with understanding why fourth grade matters.
The Most Important Transition in Education
Educators often describe third grade as the point where students are “learning to read.” By fourth grade, that equation changes. Students are expected to begin “reading to learn.”
The distinction may sound subtle, but it fundamentally changes a child’s educational experience.
Before fourth grade, reading is itself the lesson. Teachers spend much of their time helping students recognize letters, decode words, develop vocabulary, and build fluency. Once students reach fourth grade, reading becomes the gateway to every other subject. Science textbooks become more complex. History requires students to analyze primary sources. Mathematics increasingly depends on reading and understanding multi-step word problems. Even classroom discussions assume students can independently comprehend increasingly sophisticated material.
A student who enters fourth grade unable to read proficiently doesn’t simply struggle in English class. They begin struggling across nearly every subject because reading has become the vehicle through which all learning takes place. Every year they remain behind, catching up becomes more difficult as the gap between struggling readers and their peers continues to widen.
As that gap widens, the academic challenges often begin spilling over into the classroom environment. Many educators observe that struggling readers become increasingly frustrated and disengaged, and some begin acting out—not because they are incapable of succeeding, but because disruptive behavior can become a way to avoid academic tasks they know they struggle with or to deflect attention from their lagging skills. What begins as a literacy challenge can gradually become a behavioral one as well.
While our state’s overall reading proficiency is problematic enough. the disparities are even more alarming for disadvantaged students. Wisconsin is home to the worst racial achievement gap in the nation when it comes to literacy. Just 8 percent of Black fourth graders in Wisconsin score as proficient readers, while in Milwaukee Public Schools only 5 percent of Black fourth graders are proficient in both reading and mathematics.
Behind every percentage point is a child whose future becomes increasingly uncertain.
When Literacy Fails, Everything Else Becomes Harder
Reading proficiency is often discussed as though it were simply another education metric, alongside math scores or graduation rates. In reality, literacy is the foundation upon which nearly every other measure of success is built.
Students who are not reading proficiently by third grade are significantly less likely to graduate from high school. Researchers have also linked low literacy to a wide range of long-term challenges, including unemployment, government dependence, homelessness, substance abuse, and incarceration. One frequently cited study found that roughly 70 percent of incarcerated adults read below a fourth-grade level.
While there are many other factors that determine one’s path in life, literacy is one of the earliest and most important indicators of future opportunity. Children who never develop strong reading skills face steeper odds at nearly every stage of life because reading is the foundation upon which nearly every other academic and professional skill is built.
For that reason, Wisconsin’s literacy crisis should concern far more than parents with elementary school children. Every taxpayer has a stake in whether students leave school prepared to become productive, self-sufficient adults. The costs of educational failure do not disappear—they simply reappear elsewhere in society.
Those costs are increasingly visible in both higher education and the workforce.
According to the Universities of Wisconsin, 17 percent of incoming freshmen required remedial mathematics coursework. At UW-Milwaukee, that figure reached an astonishing 59 percent. While those numbers measure math rather than reading, they illustrate a broader problem: too many students are graduating from high school without mastering the foundational academic skills necessary for college-level work. Universities consequently devote increasing resources to remediation rather than advanced instruction, driving up costs while asking professors to teach material students should have learned years earlier.
Employers face many of the same challenges. According to the latest Wisconsin Employer Survey conducted by Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, nearly 60 percent of employers report difficulty finding workers with adequate skills, while 64 percent say employees struggle with basic reading, mathematics, or both. Businesses need workers who can interpret technical manuals, understand safety procedures, complete training materials, communicate effectively, and solve problems independently. When those foundational skills are lacking, productivity suffers and employers must devote additional time and resources to training employees on competencies they should have developed long before entering the workforce.
In other words, literacy is not simply an education issue. It is one of Wisconsin’s most important economic development issues.
Why Act 20 Was Necessary
Recognizing that decades of declining reading achievement demanded a fundamentally different approach, Wisconsin lawmakers enacted Act 20 in 2023, one of the most consequential education reforms in recent memory.
The legislation embraced the Science of Reading, an extensive body of research examining how children learn to read, and shifted Wisconsin away from the widely criticized “three-cueing” approach that encouraged students to rely on pictures and context clues to guess unfamiliar words rather than systematically decoding them through phonics. Act 20 also expanded literacy screening from 4K through third grade, required personalized reading plans for struggling students, created an Office of Literacy and an Early Literacy Curriculum Council, established literacy coaches to support schools across the state, and required teacher preparation programs to align future educators’ training with science-based reading instruction.
The legislation represented an acknowledgment that Wisconsin could no longer continue producing the same disappointing outcomes while expecting different results.
Not everyone agreed. Democratic gubernatorial candidate Francesca Hong voted against Act 20, arguing against reforms that ultimately passed with widespread bipartisan support.
Unfortunately, passing the legislation did not immediately translate into implementation. The Legislature paired Act 20 with approximately $50 million to support literacy coaches and other implementation efforts, but Governor Tony Evers’ partial vetoes of the accompanying legislation triggered a lengthy legal battle that delayed funding for nearly two years. During that time, many school districts were expected to begin implementing sweeping literacy reforms without the state support lawmakers had envisioned. Only after the Wisconsin Supreme Court unanimously ruled that the Governor had exceeded his veto authority did those resources finally begin reaching schools.
While it is still too early to determine the full impact of Act 20 across Wisconsin’s 421 school disricts, early indicators from other states suggest Wisconsin is moving in the right direction.
Building on the Foundation
If Act 20 represented the first chapter of Wisconsin’s literacy reforms, it should not be the last.
Perhaps the biggest unresolved debate involves mandatory third-grade retention. States such as Mississippi require many students who remain significantly behind in reading after intensive interventions to repeat third grade before advancing into the “reading to learn” years. Wisconsin ultimately adopted a compromise, requiring districts to provide additional interventions while leaving retention decisions largely to local policy.
Opponents understandably worry about the stigma associated with holding students back a grade. While there is some truth to that, sympathetic policymakers should also consider the following: Is the temporary embarrassment of repeating third grade more damaging than graduating from high school unable to read well enough to succeed in college, find stable employment, or avoid the many negative outcomes associated with chronic low literacy? Mississippi’s remarkable gains suggest that confronting reading deficiencies early—even when difficult decisions are required—may ultimately spare students far greater hardships later in life.
Wisconsin should also expand the supports available to struggling readers. The federal tax credit scholarship program presents one opportunity. Organizations such as the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce have pledged to provide 100 reading tutors for Milwaukee students if Wisconsin opts into the program, yet Governor Evers has declined to do so. Given the magnitude of Wisconsin’s literacy challenges, policymakers should be looking at every opportunity to provide targeted supports for the students who need it most.
Finally, literacy reform cannot stop at elementary classrooms. Universities that prepare Wisconsin’s future teachers must faithfully implement the Science of Reading in their educator preparation programs. The National Council on Teacher Quality has documented encouraging improvement at several Wisconsin institutions, while others continue to lag behind. Teacher apprenticeships likewise deserve greater attention, providing aspiring educators substantially more classroom experience before becoming full-time teachers and better equipping them to deliver effective reading instruction from their first day leading a classroom.
As DPI continues developing its “Portrait of a Graduate,” one characteristic deserves to stand above all the others. Before we ask whether graduates are collaborative, adaptable, or innovative, we should first ensure they possess the most fundamental academic skill of all: the ability to read proficiently.
Wisconsin’s literacy crisis will not be solved through a single bill or a single budget. It will require sustained commitment, faithful implementation, and the willingness to make difficult policy choices in pursuit of better outcomes. But if Wisconsin is serious about improving educational achievement, strengthening its workforce, reducing long-term social challenges, and expanding opportunity for the next generation, there is no more important place to begin than ensuring every child learns to read.
