Businesses, nonprofits, colleges and universities all have roles to play in raising the bar for Milwaukee students, according to a new
Wisconsin Policy Forum report on the city’s K-12 education system.
The report, “Raising the Bar: Local and National Lessons for Milwaukee’s K-12 Schools” examined drivers of success at Milwaukee schools and analyzed examples of education improvement in Chicago, Washington, D.C., and other cities. Based on its findings, Wisconsin Policy Forum identified five areas for action to help improve education in Milwaukee. The report, released on Thursday, is the second in a two-part series about K-12 education in Milwaukee.
One point of action outlined in the report calls for the fostering of collaboration between schools and across sectors “to increase capacity and support community commitment.”
“Where Milwaukee schools can strategically partner with each other and with sectors outside of education, they can expand their access to resources such as money, talent, and analytics,” the report stated. “Higher education, nonprofits and businesses all have potential roles to play.”
The four other areas for stakeholder action, based on outcomes in other cities, include:
- Maintaining bold leadership.
- Prioritizing high-impact focus areas that can be tied to reliable data.
- Recruiting, developing and retaining equality educators.
- Supporting families and neighborhoods, particularly through addressing housing stability, public safety, racial and economic segregation and early childhood interventions.
“All of these paths forward depend upon determination, strategy and a willingness to treat the city’s many types of schools as part of the same system, serving the same students,” the report states. “These qualities have not always been present across Milwaukee, especially when competition between the three school sectors has proven isolating rather than productive.”
The report highlighted the efforts of nonprofits
Center for Urban Teaching,
City Year Milwaukee,
Teach For America–Milwaukee and the
Urban Learning Collaborative to recruit and develop educators in the city. Finding more opportunities for collaboration between them “could help ensure that the sum total of these efforts adequately covers the city’s needs,” the report stated.
“Beyond alignment of their current work, collaboration between these organizations could also yield new ideas or initiatives designed to improve recruitment and retention system-wide,” the report stated.
Finding success amid challenges
After examining the 29.2% of Milwaukee schools that exceeded the 2023 average for student academic achievement and growth in the city, WPF determined six drivers of success at those schools:
- “Unifying mission and stable staff and culture.”
- “High expectations paired with nurturing supports.”
- “Commitment to instructional excellence and continuous improvement.”
- “Proactive, intentional family engagement.”
- “Additional capacity through fundraising and partnerships.”
- “School-level autonomy, accountability and support.”
About 47.5% of students attending those schools with above-average academic achievement were educated within
Milwaukee Public Schools. Approximately 34.9% of the students participated in private choice programs, and 17.5% attended charter schools.
Leaders of Milwaukee’s “exemplary” schools are concerned about hiring and retaining staff, preparing students for their next steps, as well as navigating COVID’s impact on student absenteeism, student mobility, teacher behavior and family engagement, according to the report. School funding, neighborhood instability and families’ lack of access to quality early education and care are also prominent concerns these school leaders face.
To help address those challenges, the report posed some questions for stakeholders to consider, such as how Milwaukee’s schools and partners across sectors can collaborate to develop talent pipelines.
“Fortunately, other cities have seen seemingly immovable outcomes start to improve when pushed with a deliberate, concentrated will,” the report stated. “There are school leaders in Milwaukee who are already showing that outcomes could be different and more positive for children here.”
