WUWM: Education Reporting

The most-winning team at Milwaukee’s Riverside University High School might be its robotics club. The Riverside RoboTigers qualified for world championships four of the last five years.

Families of children with dyslexia want Wisconsin lawmakers to do more to help struggling readers. Dyslexia is a common reading disorder that makes it difficult to connect written text to spoken language. Children with dyslexia are at risk for reading failure if they don’t get early interventions.

Dyslexia is a common learning disorder that inhibits a person’s ability to connect written text to spoken language. It’s likely one major reason why 65 percent of Wisconsin fourth graders don’t meet proficiency standards on national reading assessments.

In many places across the United States, families looking for Montessori education turn to private schools. But Milwaukee is different. There are eight free, public Montessori schools in the district.

One of them is James Whitcomb Riley School on the south side. It’s Milwaukee’s newest public Montessori school, and the only dual language one.

Updated at 5 p.m. CT

A former Milwaukee School Board president was indicted in federal court Thursday in an alleged charter school bribery scheme.

Michael Bonds is accused of accepting $6,000 in bribes from a Philadelphia-based charter school operator.

Updated on April, 8 12 p.m. CT: Final election results affirm union-endorsed Marva Herndon's win in District 1.

Preliminary results show union-backed candidates winning four of five open Milwaukee School Board seats in Tuesday's election. The race between Marva Herndon and Shyla Deacon in District 1 is too close to call. 

The Kenosha Unified School District is implementing new guidelines following controversy over cheerleading awards that objectified students' bodies. But the ACLU, which threatened legal action against the district, says it's not going far enough.

The Milwaukee School Board is about to see a lot of turnover. Five of nine seats are on the ballot in the April 2 election. All the races are contested and only one incumbent is running, which means there will be at least four new faces on the board that governs Wisconsin’s largest school district.

>>View The Election Results

Nineteen-year-old Lauren Buchanan is a student at Bethesda College, a specialized program for students with intellectual disabilities. It is run by the nonprofit Bethesda Lutheran Communities, located on Concordia University's campus in Mequon.

"I wanted to go to college because I wanted to meet new friends, see new people and, like, have good relationships, good friendships with people," Buchanan says.

In his proposed biennial capital budget, Gov. Tony Evers wants to spend $2.5 billion on public building projects. About half of that money would go to University of Wisconsin facilities, including a new $130 million chemistry building at UW-Milwaukee.

On Thursday, UW System President Ray Cross held a press conference to rally support for the proposed chemistry building replacement.

Gov. Tony Evers wants to spend an additional $150 million on Wisconsin’s public universities and colleges in the next two years. Evers plans to announce the proposal as part of his biennial budget address Thursday night.

The new governor’s proposal is a departure from his predecessor, Republican Scott Walker. Walker cut funding for the UW System and limited the universities’ ability to raise revenue by imposing a tuition freeze for in-state students.

Updated at 12:07 p.m.

The Kenosha News reports that three Tremper High School cheer coaches have been barred from attending a state competition their team is participating in this weekend. It also reports two coaches will resign at the end of the school year.  

Original Story at 11:36 a.m.

Democratic Gov. Tony Evers will call for a freeze on school choice programs and independent charter schools when he introduces his biennial budget proposal this week.

Evers isn’t trying to end school choice in Wisconsin. But he does want to hit the brakes. His office provided an outline of his voucher and charter school proposal prior to his budget address, which is scheduled for Thursday.

It includes freezing enrollment in Wisconsin’s voucher programs, beginning in fiscal year 2021, and phasing out the newest of the programs.

The Kenosha Unified School District is under fire for what the American Civil Liberties Union calls an environment of pervasive gender discrimination.

The ACLU is asking the district to take more aggressive action in response to two eye-popping incidents that occurred in 2018. It is also demanding the district act to change a school culture “in which female students are objectified and sexualized.”