Last week, in the Republican response to Governor Evers' State of the State Speech, I outlined Republican priorities, including ensuring our kids are properly taught to read in school. You may remember I mentioned that the Department of Public Instruction was lowering standards to make it look like kids were doing better than they were, and that our plan would be to tie state scores to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) exam to maintain a steady baseline that made it possible to assess year-over-year progress or decline in our reading scores without using funny math. This week, the federal NAEP scores have been released and they show a very grim picture.

Only 31% of students are proficient in reading, which is a 2% drop from 2022. Fourth grade reading scores are lower than they have been since at least 1994. Fourth grade math scores are lower than they have been since 2003. Remember that state Superintendent Jill Underly had announced that the reading proficiency scores were over 50%. This shows just how much she has lowered the standards. It is clear that Underly is trying to hide behind funny statistics rather than face the severity of this issue.

Click here to read a report by Wisconsin Law and Liberty about these scores.