Each year, the Wisconsin Policy Forum releases dozens of reports on how policy decisions are impacting Wisconsin communities. To cap off 2025, we’re looking back at WPF’s top 5 findings on various issues facing the state.
Mark Sommerhauser is the communications director for the forum, and he joined Lake Effect’s Joy Powers by phone.
1. The value of goods imported to Wisconsin increased by 32.4% from 2016 to 2024, even when accounting for inflation.
"Some of the biggest categories were industrial machinery that's imported to our state by many of our large manufacturers that use it in their manufacturing processes," Sommerhauser says.
On the consumer goods side, pharmaceuticals and cars ranked among the top categories, a Forum report from May 2025 also found.
"We haven't yet had a chance to analyze what exports and imports to our state looked like this past year, with all these new tariffs taking effect, but that's certainly something that we are going to look at as soon as that data becomes available," says Sommerhauser.
2. Gross property taxes levies across Wisconsin school districts increased by 7.8% in 2025 — the largest increase since 1992.
"If you think of property tax bills like pie, there's the various units of local government that each contribute their levy to the property tax bill that any property taxpayer pays," Sommerhauser says. "The biggest slice of the pie, though, is school districts. They account for about 45% of all property taxes that are collected within our state."
Increases to state limits on school districts' per pupil spending, a lack of additional state aid in Wisconsin's most recent state budget and the passage of a record number of school district referenda have all contributed to rising K-12 taxes, a Dec. 2025 Forum report found.
3. Milwaukee leaders can look to high-performing schools locally and across the country as a roadmap for improvement.
"Over the past decade or more in Milwaukee, families have seen a wider range of schooling choices and schooling options for their children," Sommerhauser says. "During that period, educational outcomes — at least on the metrics that we looked at for the average child in Milwaukee — did not really transform. And in many respects, they actually worsened following the COVID-19 pandemic."
Looking at high-performing school in Milwaukee and nationwide, a March WPF report identified six drivers of success: unifying mission and stable staff and culture, high expectations paired with support, commitment to instructional excellence and continuous improvement, family engagement, fundraising and partnerships and school-level autonomy, accountability and support.
4. Apprenticeship participation in Wisconsin has reached record levels, but gaps remain in certain occupations and regions of the state.
Wisconsin is seeing record levels of apprenticeship participation electrical work, carpentry, construction and other blue collar occupations, according to WPF research from July and December of 2025.
"But, when we look at some other professions that also are in demand and pay good wages — such as nursing, such as teaching — those are professions where we don't always see as much apprenticeship participation," Sommerhauser says.
The gaps are geographic as well, with Northwest and West Central Wisconsin seeing low levels of apprenticeship participation relative to available job openings in select occupations.
5. The youth justice system in Milwaukee County is operating close to its pre-pandemic capacity, following a dip in referrals in 2020. But, it's seeing more severe offenses.
"What we found was that the overall system had kind of returned more or less to its pre-pandemic capacity by the end of 2023," Sommerhauser says. "But the system was processing, in general, more severe offenses than we had seen in the pre-pandemic years."
From 2018 to 2023, felony offense referrals to Milwaukee County Children, Youth, and Family Services increased by 13%, the report found. Sommerhauser says some of the most serious felonies, such as armed robbery and homicide, saw even bigger increases. Although county officials have implemented new youth programs aimed at reducing recidivism, Sommerhauser says data on the effectiveness of new programming remains to be seen.
"It was a little too early to assess how effective these programs were in achieving better outcomes, especially in terms of reducing recidivism into the criminal justice system," he says.
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