Badger State Education Coverage, Driven by Data
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Racine Unified's chronic absenteeism rate held flat at 36.5% in 2025, unchanged from the prior year, as the state's fifth-largest district faces compounding enrollment loss and attendance challenges.
Wisconsin lost 28,898 students during COVID and another 24,054 since. None of the state's 10 largest districts have regained pre-pandemic enrollment.
Only 83 of 421 Wisconsin school districts have returned to pre-pandemic chronic absenteeism rates, while 338 remain stuck with elevated absence three years after the 2022 peak.
Hispanic enrollment nearly doubled to 116,817 over 19 years, from 6.7% to 14.5% of students while total enrollment fell. Dairy towns anchor the shift.
Black students in Wisconsin face a 46.3% chronic absence rate compared to 10.8% for white students, a 35.5-point gap that has widened since before COVID.
Charter enrollment surged 17.5% during the pandemic, driven almost entirely by virtual schools. Four years later, the sector has kept those gains.
Milwaukee's 46.2% chronic absenteeism rate means 28,355 students miss too much school, 22% of all chronically absent students statewide.
Wisconsin lost 8,121 public school students in 2024-25, its second-largest non-COVID drop. Combined with last year's 8,802 loss, the two-year decline rivals the pandemic year itself.
After cutting chronic absenteeism by 3.2 points in 2023, Wisconsin's improvement shrank to just 0.4 points in 2025, leaving 130,131 students still missing too much school.
Wisconsin lost 150,475 white students since 2006, a 22.1% decline that dwarfs the state's total enrollment loss of 67,640.
MPS enrollment has fallen 28.6% since 2006, shedding 26,219 students while the state declined just 7.7%. A $46 million budget gap is forcing 260 job cuts.
Wisconsin public school enrollment fell to 805,881 in 2025-26, an all-time low capping a decade of unbroken decline that has erased nearly 70,000 students.
DPI releases 2025-26 enrollment data showing 805,881 students statewide, down 8,121, continuing a decade of unbroken decline.