The Sconi

Wisconsin public schools welcomed 58,212 eighth-grade students in the 2023-24 school year, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

That's 3.4% lower than than the previous school year, when 60,265 students were enrolled.

Data shows that the 11th-grade had the highest student enrollment at the time, with 64,950 students enrolled. Meanwhile, 4-year-old kindergarten had the lowest number of students, with 42,902 pupils.

Overall, there were 795,667 students enrolled in Wisconsin in the 2023-24 school year. Statewide, Milwaukee County ranked first in enrollment numbers, with 114,819 students enrolled in its schools. With only 381 students, Florence County ranked last during the 2023-24 school year.

According to the Nation’s Report Card 2022 results, Black fourth-graders in Wisconsin scored an average of 40 points lower than their white colleagues in both math and reading.

Data also showed that Black students were three times as likely to fail the reading test than white pupils in the state. The gap is even larger in mathematics, with Black students failing five times more than white students.

These achievement gaps are also reflected in graduation rates. According to recent US Census data, nearly 95% of white students in the state successfully graduated in 2021.

Meanwhile, graduation rates for Black and multiracial students lagged behind white students by 10%.

Even further behind, only 71.6% of Hispanic students completed their high school education during the same period, one of the lowest graduation rates in the state.