The Sconi

A recent Fordham Institute report ranked Wisconsin schools among the worst in the nation in the subjects of civics and U.S. history.

According to The Center Square, Wisconsin ranked among the bottom 10 states in the “The State of State Standards for Civics and U.S. History in 2021” report. The Fordham Institute's report attributed Wisconsin’s ambiguity in standards leading to some districts or schools not actually requiring the teaching of civics and U.S. history.

“A school with vague standards is where students are subject to the whim of the individual teachers and what they decide,” Will Flanders, research director at the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, told The Center Square. 

Tamara Mouw, director of Teaching and Learning at the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI), told The Capital Times that local control without narrow standards is actually good because it allows for flexibility in the curriculum.

“Being a local control state allows local areas to bring local history, their local context to learning," Mouw said, The Center Square reported. "The benefit of it is you have that flexibility of what you’re bringing to it.”

The report's evaluation for eighth graders showed that students met proficiency standards just “24% of the time in civics, 25% in geography and 15% in U.S. history.”

In civics, the Fordham Institute rated Wisconsin’s content and rigor a 1/7, its clarity and organization a 1/3, and its total score a 2/10. The ratings for U.S. history were 1/7, 1/3 and 2/10, respectively.

Despite these low scores, Wisconsin's budget spending on education is just slightly above the national average, according to a study by Stacker.

The state ranks No. 23 in the nation on education spending overall with its highest marks in student support spending at No. 17, the highest among all states.

The study also noted that even with this spending, Wisconsin high schoolers have the second-lowest SAT scores in the country.