Wisconsin Badgers 2025 Spring Position Preview: Offensive Line

ROSTER OVERVIEW

One question heading into spring practices: How much competition is there at the open spots? 

Player to watch this spring: Kevin Heywood

Damning national testing results earlier this year should spark a clarion call in state capitals, emboldening leaders to come clean with parents and take meaningful action that improves student learning.

But Wisconsin is running the other way, by lowering its state standards and “cut scores”—the minimum score needed to pass an assessment. The moves make it far more difficult for a parent to determine whether their child is succeeding and truly learning enough to advance to the next grade.

Parents simply aren’t being told the truth.

Colleston Morgan Jr., executive director of the Milwaukee-based City Forward Collective, an education non-profit, shed light on the impact of the most recent standards revision.

“Analyzing educational data should be a straightforward process that allows for clear year-over-year performance comparisons—and most years it is,” Morgan told me in an interview. “But the most recent changes to the Wisconsin Academic Standards and state assessment have both lowered the bar for what we expect from our students and muddied the picture of student outcomes and school performance across years.”

Wisconsin’s 2023-24 state test results show public school students have a proficiency rate of 52% in 4^th grade reading and 51% in 8^th grade math.

But the most recent results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) paint a less promising picture with 4^th grade reading at just 31% proficient and 8^th grade math at 37%. That’s a 21-point difference in reading and a 14-point difference in math between the state test and NAEP.

In a press release, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) discussed how a public survey influenced its decision on standards and cut scores. It stated, “Wisconsin students noted a decrease in feeling like they belonged at school. Less than half (45 percent) of students who got a “C” letter grade and just 24 percent of students who got a “D/F” said they felt like they belonged at school, survey data indicated. The updated performance level terms improve feelings of encouragement and motivation for all students, including those scoring lower on tests than their peers.”

For Morgan, that’s not justification. “Of course, we want our students to feel encouraged and motivated,” he told me. “But that doesn’t mean we lie to them and tell them that they’re more prepared than they really are. We must believe in them and work to provide them and the entire education system with the supports and resources they need to meet the challenge—the challenge that every other student will face across the country, not just here in Wisconsin.”

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, appears to agree. “I think we need to have as high standards as possible. I don’t think we should be lowering them,” he told reporters at a news conference. “It’s hard to compare year-to-year if one year you’re doing something completely different. I think it could have been handled better.”

Help might be on the way for Wisconsin, where a group of state lawmakers has introduced a bill to reinstate Wisconsin’s previous high academic standards and cut scores.

In a statement to the Wisconsin Examiner, bill co-author, Republican Sen. John Jagler accused DPI of making the decision to change the way the state measures academic standards in a nontransparent way.

“These changes were made behind closed doors in advance and revealed only when the test scores were announced,” Jagler said. “Not surprisingly, the massive uptick in artificial performance gains was confusing at best and misleading at worst. We also lost, because of these changes, the ability to compare performance from previous years.”

The bill is still pending in the Wisconsin legislature.

To be clear, raising standards and cut scores alone doesn’t guarantee student achievement.

States need high quality curriculum, strong teacher professional development, and supports for struggling students.

But the truth matters.

Whether they plan to go to college, enter a career or join the military, Wisconsin students should be held to national and global standards. If their proficiency scores at home don’t match what’s expected beyond high school, we’re setting them up for failure.

MILWAUKEE – President Donald Trump spoke to the nation on Tuesday night, March 4.

Trump speaks to the nation

It was not the State of the Union, since that doesn’t happen in a new president’s first year. He spoke about his first 43 days in office and what’s next for the country.

Big picture view:

Wisconsin was a key battleground state, as it flipped red and helped propel Trump back into the White House.

Cuts to Medicaid

Local perspective:

Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.)’s guest for the president’s speech was a Milwaukee woman, who is a cancer survivor who receives Medicaid.

SIGN UP TODAY: Get daily headlines, breaking news emails from FOX6 News

“I want to let them know: this is Medicaid. Right here. Stage 4 cancer survivor, who is willing to fight,” Renee Scherck-Meyer said. “I want to live. I want to be healthy. I want to have my health care. I’m very scared that I might not have access to my team anymore.”

A budget resolution adopted Tuesday by House Republicans called for the Energy and Commerce Committee to cut $880 billion in spending. The bipartisan committee for a responsible budget said that will inevitably mean cuts to Medicaid.

The other side:

“Our social safety net programs, and an important one being Medicaid, should be there for the most vulnerable: for children, for pregnant women,” U.S. Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) said. “But we also have to make sure that we are helping individuals come off and lift their lives up and come off the programs.”

House Republicans applaud during a joint session of Congress in the House Chamber of the US Capitol in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, March 4, 2025. Donald Trump’s primetime address Tuesday night from Capitol Hill, billed as a chronicle of his “Rene

Advertisement

Trump also highlighted the flurry of executive orders on things like freezing foreign aid, and stopping transgender athletes.

The president spoke about what he called “waste,” and praised Elon Musk for the Department of Government Efficiency.

Politicians respond

That’s something on the minds of Wisconsin’s Congressional delegation.

What they’re saying:

“The beginning of this Administration has been riddled with chaos,” Baldwin said. “It’s checks and balances. It’s Congress that passes budgets, that passes appropriations bills, passes laws and it’s to be the President who implements them and administers them. And that’s not happening right now.”

FREE DOWNLOAD: Get breaking news alerts in the FOX LOCAL Mobile app for iOS or Android

“The proof will be in what they are able to produce when it comes to numbers,” U.S. Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) said. “So, I’m still very hopeful that there is a dividend, that at the end of the day, the tax payers will see a reduction ultimately in their taxes as a result of the federal dollars that they’re finding that are really, completely unaccountable.”

Dig deeper:

Democratic Party of Wisconsin Communications Director Joe Oslund:

“Derrick Van Orden, Bryan Steil, and Wisconsin Republicans in DC are working with Donald Trump and Elon Musk to cut as much as $880 billion from Medicaid, dole out massive tax cuts to the rich, and attack hard-earned Social Security benefits Wisconsin seniors depend on. Nothing we heard from Donald Trump tonight changes the disastrous impact this agenda will have for Wisconsin families.”

The Republican Party of Wisconsin Chairman Brian Schimming:

“President Trump has embodied ‘promises made, promises kept.’ In just over a month since taking office, President Trump has secured the southern border, slashed millions of wasteful spending, and stood up to Hamas. Americans are grateful for President Trump delivering his America First agenda and renewing the American Dream.”