Wisconsin schools budget proposal; $60M to recruit, retain educators
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On Tuesday, Oct. 29, 2024 Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction, Jill Underly proposed a $59.5-million in new investments aimed at recruiting and retaining educators.
The announcement is part of the superintendent’s 2025- 27 Biennial Budget which was made at La Follette High School in Milwaukee.
A news release says with Underly’s proposal, stipends would be provided to eligible student teachers to help cover expenses and reduce debt, a new state-funded grow-your-own grant program would help grow the workforce, a support program for new educators would expand, and barriers to licensure would be carefully examined and reformed as necessary.
In Dr. Underly’s budget proposal, the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) would:
• Support future educators by providing a $10,000 stipend for all student teachers (plus $3,000 for cooperating teachers), reducing debt and helping with expenses while they spend valuable time learning and developing in the classroom ($46.9- million over the biennium).
• Create a stronger grow-your-own-educator program that supports school districts with grant funding for use in activities that grow the educator workforce. This includes, but is not limited to, supporting student organizations and covering the cost for existing paraprofessional staff to take coursework leading to licensure ($5-million over the biennium).
• Expand the Peer Review and Mentoring Grant Program, providing support for the development of educators during their first three years in the profession. This expansion will allow more school districts to participate so Wisconsin can keep more teachers in the classroom ($7.4-million over the biennium).
• Eliminate barriers to educator licensing by reviewing requirements for licensure, such as the much-criticized Foundations of Reading Test. Passage rates of this test have declined precipitously since 2014 — just 48 percent of test takers passed on the first attempt in the most recent data, although it’s not clear that the test effectively measures the ability of a teacher to teach.
The news release said data from the Wisconsin DPI’s 2022 Education Preparation Program and Workforce Analysis Report, released earlier this year, found that about four out of every 10 first-year educators (39.4 percent) either leave the state or the profession altogether within their first six years teaching.
