As COVID-19 upended the lives of students around the state, schools across Wisconsin saw a troubling increase in chronic absences. This report discusses where chronic absenteeism grew more sharply in Wisconsin. The highest rates of absenteeism occurred in schools with greater numbers of students of color and from low-income households, thus posing…

Although numerous studies confirm the importance of school principals, schools often experience high turnover rates and principal shortage. However, we know little about the staffing challenges in rural schools and what promotes applicants to apply for and be hired for principalship. In partnership with the Wisconsin Education Career Access…

The examination of belonging in schools, connecting school belonging to a plethora of academic and psychosocial outcomes, has been well established in the literature. Researchers have measured school belonging most frequently with the Psychological Sense of School Membership, but its psychometric properties have been called into question by…

This study analyzed how Wisconsin rural public high schools' academic achievement compared to their city, suburb and town peers while controlling for ten factors. The Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) measured academic achievement for tenth graders including reading, language arts, mathematics, science and social studies. The ten…

This report describes the development and implementation of a place-based curriculum for a small charter high school of 25 students in Wisconsin. The curriculum involved 100 days of field studies in local places such as historical archives, a restored wetland, a river valley, and a senior citizen community center. The students worked with 60…