Is Wisconsin’s School Finance System Serving Anyone Well?
TLDR: The overall system of funding schools in Wisconsin feels broken, and districts across the state, forced to function within this broken system, are trying to make things work with limited options. In a state where group-level achievement gaps have been large and persistent for decades and where the school finance system has arguably outlived any utility it may have once had, weighted student funding may be worth a discussion.
Public school funding in the United States is complicated, involving concepts (e.g., mill rate, levy) and complex formulas that can be difficult to grasp. There is a good reason so many primers on school finance exist (this is an excellent example). But in a sentence, public schools in the United States are funded through a combination of state aid and local property taxes, with a small amount (about 8%) coming from federal sources.
In my home state, Wisconsin, state lawmakers have long prioritized controlling property taxes when considering school funding, and they have achieved this in part by imposing revenue limits on the amount of funding school districts can collect through general state aid and local property taxes.
Initially, the state balanced out these revenue limits by committing to funding two-thirds of school district revenue through state aid and property tax credits. However, this commitment disappeared in the 2003-05 budget cycle and was further eroded in 2009 when the state separated per-pupil funding from inflationary increases. Since that time, the only way districts can exceed state-imposed revenue limits is through ballot referenda. And, caught between revenue limits and rising operational costs, districts in Wisconsin have gone to voters in record numbers over the past several years.
School Finance Gets Personal
I’ve been thinking about school funding lately, and particularly school funding in Wisconsin. Voters here are increasingly being asked to pay more in property taxes through school district referendums, while the state’s largest-in-the-nation Black-White and Hispanic-White achievement gaps remain relatively unchanged.
My questions reflect both my professional and personal backgrounds. I am a former public school teacher; I love my state and my community and I believe strongly in the importance of our public education system. I am also a researcher who focuses on how we can better use evidence to inform decision in education (including about funding, and especially for vulnerable student groups). And I am a Wisconsin resident whose property taxes have seen multiple steep jumps due to local district referendums in the past decade.
How well funded (or not) are Wisconsin schools, and has this changed over time? What about student outcomes, how have they changed? And are the increases in property taxes necessary?
Wisconsin School Spending in a National Context
Adjusted for inflation, Wisconsin preK-12 education spending per pupil increased by 2.4% between 2002 and 2023, while the national average per pupil real spending amount increased by 21.1% over the same period – a nine-fold difference.
Wisconsin has also slipped significantly relative to other states on a variety of metrics related to school funding. Wisconsin ranked 11th nationally in per pupil education spending in 2002 and first among 12 Midwest states. By 2023, the state had fallen to 26th nationally and seventh among its Midwest peers. And despite spending a larger share of residents’ combined personal income on education than the national average in 2002, by 2023 the state was lagging the nation on this metric.
Because these are per pupil figures, student enrollment is another key consideration. Per pupil spending would rise if enrollment fell and would drop if enrollment rose, even if funding remained constant. Wisconsin’s preK-12 student enrollment has decreased more than the nation’s on a percentage basis since the early 2000’s. From 2002 through 2023, preK-12 student enrollment declined 7.3% in Wisconsin compared to a 1.3% decline nationally during the same period. That is to say, Wisconsin’s current per pupil spending looks better than it would if state and national enrollment had held steady since 2002.
What About Student Achievement?
Over the past two decades, Wisconsin students have generally continued to perform at or above the national average in reading and math on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). But there are some worrying signs on the horizon.
The state is lagging most other states in post-pandemic academic recovery, ranking 33rd out of 38 states in math academic growth and 30th out of 35 states in reading between 2022 and 2025. And for the past two decades, Wisconsin has been consistently flagged as having the widest Black-White and Hispanic-White achievement gaps in the nation.
Closer to Home
In Madison, where I live, the district has put forth 16 ballot referendums since revenue limits were introduced in 1993. Most recently, in 2020 voters approved a $317 million facilities improvement alongside a $33 million operating referendum. Four years later, the district came to voters again, asking for a historic $607 million in additional school funding through property tax increases. This referendum was also successful, leading to a 20.4% increase on residents’ December 2025 property tax bills. Property owners felt that, including this one.
If I think about the issue of school funding in my state and my community through the lens of evidence rather than with my pocketbook, however, a few things are clear.
Is There a Better Way?
Considering the entire state of Wisconsin, the state legislature is squeezing districts so hard through revenue limits combined with effectively declining general state aid that their stated goal of controlling local property taxes is becoming meaningless. To use a toothpaste tube as an analogy, they’ve screwed the cap on so tight that as pressure on the tube continues to increase, the tube must crack somewhere else. A vast majority of Wisconsin school districts are now using referendums to effectively increase property taxes to fund schools. Meanwhile, Wisconsin student academic growth is lagging most of the nation in the years since the pandemic.
It seems like Wisconsin’s notoriously complicated school funding system might not be working for nearly anyone.
Here in Madison, the district now has one of the highest per-pupil spending levels in the state (exceeding $19,000). Yet the district also serves a greater density of students requiring specialized and higher cost resources, including multilingual learner students, students from low-income households, and students with disabilities. And the district is investing new resources into targeted and evidence informed programs for each of these populations. That is a good sign and consistent with research demonstrating that well-allocated increases in education funding improve student outcomes. Specifically, when additional resources are targeted toward students living in poverty and the school districts serving a greater proportion of these students, outcomes such as math and reading achievement as well as longer-term outcomes including high school graduation and earnings in adulthood are better.
And yet. The overall system of funding schools in Wisconsin feels broken. Districts across the state, forced to function within this broken system, are trying to make things work with the limited options available to them.
Increasingly, need-based allocation models—often referred to as Weighted Student Funding (WSF) or Student-Based Budgeting (SBB)—are supported by causal research. These models allocate a base per-pupil amount and add proportional "weights" for students who require costlier interventions, such as low-income students, English Learners, and students with disabilities.
In a state where group-level achievement gaps have been large and persistent for decades and where the school finance system has arguably outlived any utility it may have once had, weighted student funding seems like it just might merit discussion at the very least.