Wisconsin's kids need help learning to read, so let's see more cooperation and an end to power maneuvers and partisanship.

Enough. Enough.

I’m fed up with partisanship, polarization and power maneuvers in the state Capitol that put adults and politics first and kids last.

There have been many episodes of this unfortunate soap opera over the years. And now we have one of the most aggravating because it involves something that has both urgency and broad agreement, yet is at a standstill.

Wisconsin has a reading crisis. Milwaukee and some other areas where poverty is high especially have a reading crisis, but the problem goes beyond income, race and where a child lives. There are just too few children who are becoming capable readers by the end of third grade, which a wide range of educators would tell you is an important point in determining whether a kid is on the road to doing well in school and, in many cases, in life beyond school.

In state standardized tests a year ago (the most recent results available), 37% of all third-graders in Wisconsin were rated as proficient or better in English language arts, which generally means they’re reading well. Another 36% were rated as “basic,” which I interpret as “kind of OK.” And 25% were rated as “below basic,” which I rephrase as “not really on the playing field.” Overall, that means about 60% of the kids are rated below proficient — or, to put it more gently, a quarter are not doing well at all. That is a lot of kids.

If the future of a community or state is linked to a work force that is well educated (and evidence supports saying that), Wisconsinites ought to be concerned. Furthermore, reading achievement has not changed for the better in Wisconsin for at least a quarter of a century. Not to mention that the overall reading success of Black kids in Wisconsin has consistently been at or near the bottom of the U.S., and the gap between Black and white kids on reading has consistently been the biggest or close to the biggest in the country.

One step forward, but now what?

At last! We decided to try to do something about it. Last summer, Republican legislative majorities, a handful of Democrats, Democratic Gov. Tony Evers and the Democratic-leaning leadership of the state Department of Public Instruction came to agreement on a bill that made Wisconsin one of more than 30 states that has called for shifting away from an approach to teaching called balanced literacy. It’s been popular statewide but hasn’t been associated with improving results. The new state law calls for promoting (and to some degree requiring) approaches that use what supporters call “the science of reading.” This is labeled in many people’s minds as switching to emphasizing phonics, which means teaching kids to read largely by sounding out letters and words. (When done right, the science of reading requires more than that, but “phonics” is the label that has stuck.)

What emerged from the state Capitol was a law and a budget appropriation that, among other things, puts $50 million over two years into hiring several dozen reading specialists to work with schools statewide where success is low, while providing some school districts with grants for buying new curriculum materials that meet science of reading standards. The law also requires kids in early grades to be screened for reading progress several times a year, with the goal of getting early help for those who are behind where they ought to be.

So the plan is starting to unfold, right?

Of course not. This is Wisconsin, where no opportunity to engage in political fighting is missed. How about this for state motto: ‘Forward? Forget it if it requires working together.”

Action on reading has slowed nearly to a stop

So here we are, approaching a year since the agreement over the reading law was reached, and more than $49 million of the $50 million is being held back by the Legislature’s finance committee. No coaches have been hired. No money for textbooks has been provided to schools. A Department of Public Instruction spokesperson said plans are underway to procure an early childhood screener, even as the deadlock over the whole initiative continues. The process of hiring someone to head up the DPI’s work was pretty much halted by threats of legal action, but is now moving forward, the DPI spokesman said.

Although getting help from the state is close to frozen, and local resources are tight, some schools are making changes locally. The DPI spokesman said, “Schools continue to move forward with implementing science-based early literacy instruction, creating local reading remediation plans, and strengthening local systems related to meeting each learner’s reading needs.”

One thing that has been accomplished (sort of) is creating a list of recommended curriculums for teaching reading. These would be the materials that the state would help school districts buy. But even that became an unfriendly mess. A committee created to make recommendations came up with one list. The DPI said it wanted a different and longer list. The Legislature’s Republican-controlled Joint Finance Committee supported the shorter, Republican-backed list. Not that any money has actually begun to flow.

There is no guarantee the new initiative will work. But there’s reason to hope they will, and they are the best thing we’ve got going when it comes to aiming for better outcomes.

Overall, we are heading toward another school year with nothing major launched. Kids only go to first grade or second grade once, so another wave of kids are likely to miss out in the coming year on steps that might give them more of a boost.

The reading issue has parallels that are also at stake currently. The Legislature approved and the governor signed on to spending millions of dollars to respond to PFAS water pollution and to help struggling hospitals in western Wisconsin. But those also are held up by bickering between the Democratic governor and the Republican-controlled finance committee that could release the funds if it wanted to.

Is this really the Wisconsin way?

So why is there this deadlock? Because of blah blah blah, some sloganeering and legal claims, a lot of fighting over power, a lot of finger pointing, many claims that this is the other side’s fault, I’ll sue you, no, I’ll sue you, and more blah blah blah. The details seem irrelevant compared to the broad reality of deadlock.

Compromise? Let’s work this out? Let’s drop some of our demands and get moving?  Let’s talk? Nope, nope, nope, and nope.

Let’s unite in a broad effort to help kids learn to read? So far, nope.

I don’t think this is really the Wisconsin way. I bet the large majority of people in the state — especially educators and parents — would like to see less fighting, more cooperation and a forward-moving effort to deal with one of Wisconsin’s most important education problems.

But it’s the way things are done these days at the top of state government. And we can expect that to continue, unless the people who have power somehow come to say:

Enough. Enough.

Alan J. Borsuk is senior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. He can be reached at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.     

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Put science of reading legislation to work in Wisconsin