Wisconsin still suffers from a decade of school defunding, and voucher theft is making it worse

I wanted to draw attention to something that came out in the last week from the Wisconsin Budget Project, who gave an overview of the damage done to the state's public schools over the last decade.

In 2021, the state will invest less in public school districts than it did in 2011, something that has been true of every year in between as well. In 2021, Wisconsin school districts will receive $75 million less in state aid than in 2011 in inflation-adjusted dollars, or 1.2% less than in 2011.

Over time, the budget cuts to public school districts have accumulated. Between 2012 and 2021, the state provided $3.9 billion less in state aid to school districts than it would have if state aid had been kept at 2011 levels.

In another measure of how lawmakers have shifted state aid away from school districts, the share of state tax revenue dedicated to districts has declined since 2011. That year, the state devoted $3.81 out of every $10 in tax revenue to school districts. In contrast, the state is projected to spend just $3.12 out of every $10 in tax revenue on school districts in 2021, a decline of 15% since 2011.

That being said, there is one area that Republicans have decided to invest in when it comes to K-12 education - for vouchers that go to private/religious schools. And many of those vouchers are funded by taking even more money away from the public schools.

Over the past decade, the state increased the amount of public money going to private schools and charter schools that operate independently from school districts. To offset the cost of funding these separate school systems, state lawmakers redirected state aid that would otherwise go to public school districts. The total cost of that redirected state aid has risen sharply, increasing from $133 million in 2012 to $223 million in 2020, an increase of 68%. These separate school systems also receive additional state funding that does not represent a direct loss of funding for school districts.

That's what the GOP was promoting with that vile photo op with Mike Pence and Betsy DeVos at the Capitol last week. They were asking to give more money nationwide to DeVos's "Jesus Rode a Dinosaur" schools, using the claim of "giving opportunity to Children of Color" as their cover story.

Lieutenant Governor Mandela Barnes noted how those kids were being used as props by GOP politicians that won't lift a finger to care about their lives in any other way,

In case this hasn’t been mentioned, the rally in the Capitol today was the most interaction many of those adults will ever have with black and brown children.

— Mandela Barnes (@TheOtherMandela) January 28, 2020

It's pathetic, and that de-investment in poor communities around Wisconsin is a conscious choice by [WisGOP] lawmakers. The Wisconsin Budget Project adds that another choice made by WisGOP over the last 10 years is to cut taxes to lower the amount of money available to put into public education.

State lawmakers have enacted more than 100 tax cuts since January 2011, some of which are extremely slanted in favor of the rich and powerful. One example is the Manufacturing Credit, which in 2019 gave 21 tax filers—each of whom earned over $30 million—an average estimated tax cut of $1.9 million each, according to figures from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau. The Manufacturing Credit, which results in manufacturers paying virtually no state income tax, reduced state revenue by $283 million in 2019. To put that amount in context, it is more state money than the school districts of Waukesha, Appleton, and Madison got that year, put together…..

The tax cuts have drained money from public schools. If lawmakers had declined to pass new tax cuts and instead appropriated that money in the same proportion as other state tax money is spent, the result would have been an additional $727 million available for public school districts this year. Even just eliminating a single tax cut—the Manufacturing Credit—and dedicating the revenue to public schools would increase state support well past 2011 levels.

And of course, many of the tax cuts have been offset with higher taxes as a result of school referenda, and/or higher wheel taxes and other local fees due to the cuts to local government, both of which were a result of these choices of funneling money out of public schools and into vouchers, tax cuts, and other kickbacks to GOP donors.

But it's all cool if the results are better, right? Except the results aren't better, as the Wisconsin Policy Forum reminded us this week.

According to data from the state Department of Public Instruction, the share of high school students statewide whose ACT subject test scores indicate they are prepared for college courses in English, math, and science declined between 2017-18 and 2018-19, as shown in Figure 1. These numbers are also down relative to the 2014-15 school year, the first year in which all Wisconsin high school juniors were required to take the ACT. Meanwhile, the percentage of students with college-ready reading skills increased slightly in the 2018-19 school year, returning to the same level as two years earlier.

Despite the decline in the share of students meeting college readiness benchmarks in three of the four categories, it’s important to note Wisconsin high schoolers still fare better on their overall ACT scores than nearly all other states that require all students to take the test. But within those statewide scores are gaping disparities, particularly on the basis of race, that demand urgent attention.

Those 5 years correspond to an unprecedented expansion of vouchers into every corner of the state, with the number of children receiving vouchers growing every year. And yet Republicans plan to double down on even more vouchers and even more money-funneling away from public K-12 education in the coming years.

Maybe we shouldn't do that, and instead take us back toward what was working before 2011 - strong investment into public K-12 education, and not stealing from taxpayers to send them to vouchers that only care about a small subset of students at the expense of everyone else.