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(The Center Square) – Wisconsin’s latest enrollment numbers show some good news for choice schools in the state, but there’s also a warning sign.
School Choice Wisconsin said choice enrollment hit a new record high of 60,972 students.
“Parents are speaking loudly and clearly about what they want for their children: more educational options different than those offered by public schools,” School Choice Wisconsin Vice President Carol Shires said.
The nearly 61,000 choice students this year is up from less than 34,000 in the 2016-2017 school year.
And, Shires said, the new record-high comes just as Wisconsin’s choice school enrollment cap expires.
“Lawmakers in Madison should continue to prioritize protecting these private-school options for all students,” she said.
But there are also warnings about the limits of choice school enrollment growth.
Quinton Klabon with the Institute for Reforming Government said choice schools will soon face the same demographic challenges that traditional public schools are facing.
He said the “baby bust” from the 2008 recession has arrived, and all schools will see enrollments fall because there are simply fewer school-aged children.
“School choice supporters and opponents alike have projected rapid, continued growth, but new data suggest the programs are affected by declining birth rates, school participation, or parent choices,” IRG noted.
“School choice supporters cannot be complacent,” Klabon said. “Informing parents, expanding high-quality schools, and protecting schools from hostile red tape are high priorities. Otherwise, the baby bust will close choice schools.”
The new enrollment numbers show Milwaukee’s choice program added 235 students this year.
Racine’s school choice program lost 14 students, and the state’s special needs choice program gained 419. But it was the statewide school choice program that saw the largest enrollment increases. The Wisconsin Parental Choice Program added 1,814 students this fall.
A sharp decline in Gen Z Americans identifying as transgender and queer has occurred, from 6.8% identifying as a gender other than male or female in 2023 compared to 3.6% stating so in 2025, according to a report.
The report’s author, professor of Politics Eric Kaufmann, told The Center Square he thinks this drop in transgender young people “signals one of the first shifts away from progressive non-conformity of lifestyle and self-expression in 60 years.”
Kaufmann told The Center Square: “I believe we could be at the start of a gradual change toward a more post-progressive society, somewhat more socially conservative – or at least not as socially radical.”
Kaufmann also said to The Center Square that “there are many” implications to his report.
“First, that social influences are an important factor in the rise and decline of trans, queer and bisexual identity among young people since the 2010s,” Kaufmann said.
“Second, that gender and sexual identity seems to operate relatively independently of politics and culture war attitudes among young people,” Kaufmann said.
For instance, in an X post on the subject, Kaufmann wrote that the shift in queer and trans identification is not actually due to the youth becoming “less woke, more religious or more conservative,” because “those beliefs remained stable throughout the 2020s.”
Kaufmann told The Center Square that his third and final listed point on the implications of his report was “that improving mental health is connected to this trend [of declining Gen Z transgenderism], though only partially.”
Better mental health certainly appears to play a part in the decline in trans and queer identifying young Americans, as “less anxious and, especially, depressed, students [are] linked with a smaller share identifying as trans, queer or bisexual,” Kaufmann wrote on X.
Kaufmann additionally noted to The Center Square that “it does not appear that these shifts are related to social media consumption patterns.”
Interestingly, as Kaufmann wrote on X, “freshmen in 2024-25 were less trans and queer than seniors whereas it was the reverse when BTQ+ identity was surging in 2022-23,” suggesting that “gender/sexual non-conformity will continue to fall.”
Policy director at family advocacy group American Principles Project Paul Dupont told The Center Square that the findings of Kaufmann’s report “should be seen as good news.”
“Adopting an identity at odds with one's biology is not healthy, so any report showing more people embracing their bodies rather than rejecting them is a positive development,” Dupont said.
“While it's too early to say with certainty, one hopes that this decline will make it easier to root out gender ideology from its remaining strongholds,” Dupont said.
“Many blue states and cities still allow men to access women's private spaces and sports,” Dupont said. “Many hospitals and clinics still perform gender transition procedures on minors. Many school districts still keep parents in the dark if their child is struggling with gender dysphoria.”
“All of these policies must be repealed wherever they are still in force, and having more members of Gen Z acknowledge biological reality will only help hasten that process,” Dupont said.
Dupont advised that “advocates for sanity should be cautious not to declare victory yet.”
“Although we are making progress, gender ideology remains entrenched in many powerful American institutions, and Democrats have refused to moderate one inch in response to their election loss last year,” Dupont said. “There is still a difficult road ahead.”
Much of the information going into Kaufmann’s report came from raw data found in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s (FIRE) annual survey of college students – the College Free Speech Rankings Survey – with more than 60,000 polled in 2025.
As stated by Kaufmann in an article on his report, “just 3.6% of respondents [to FIRE’s survey] identified as a gender other than male or female,” in 2025.
“By comparison, the figure was 5.2% in 2024 and 6.8% in both 2022 and 2023,” Kaufmann wrote. “In other words, the share of trans-identified students has effectively halved in just two years.”
FIRE told The Center Square that its survey “looks at student attitudes for free expression and is conducted for that purpose.”
FIRE explained that “as a side effect of asking demographic questions of so many respondents (68,000 this year), one can glean trends in demographics as Prof Kauffman has done here.”
“We make our data available to the public for free on this page to encourage academics or members of the public to dive in and see what findings they're able to uncover beyond the analyses that we ourselves are able to run,” FIRE told The Center Square.
(The Center Square) – Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers signed a bill on Friday that will make using artificial intelligence to create pornography of a person a misdemeanor and using an AI-generated nude or sexual image of a person to intimidate, coerce or harass them a felony.
Wisconsin Act 34 was authored by Rep. Brent Jacobson, R-Mosinee, and Sen. Andre Jacque, New Franken.
The law, which goes into effect on Saturday, came after D.C. Everest Junior High student Bradyn Bohn died by suicide after he was the victim of sextortion.
“Recent events like the tragic death of DC Everest student Bradyn Bohn demonstrate how vulnerable we can be to online coercion and intimidation,” Jacobson said in a statement. “I am proud that my colleagues in the Legislature and Governor Evers could come together to proactively update our laws and keep Wisconsinites safe!”
The law is an expansion of prior crimes related to the depiction of nudity.
Jacque cited a study from Deeptrace which showed that 96% of “deep fake” material is non-consensual pornography, and “exclusively targets and harms women.”
Jacque cited another case in Milwaukee where an artificial image was created by a former police officer who then used the image to harass an ex-girlfriend.
“As the capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI) become more and more advanced, bad actors are increasingly using artificially generated sexually explicit images to harass and intimidate innocent people online,” Jacque said in a statement. “Act 34 will protect citizens against a new and disturbing form of cyber-abuse and ensure that all Wisconsinites can feel comfortable sharing regular images of themselves online without fearing that those images will be manipulated or corrupted into pornography.”
