Students graduating from Wisconsin high schools this spring will be the first class the Wisconsin Guarantee will apply to, giving graduates automatic acceptance to UW System schools based on their class rank.
At the end of their junior year, students in the top 5% of their high school class will receive automatic admission into all 13 UW System schools, including UW-Madison. Those in the top 10% of their class at the end of junior year will see automatic acceptance into the other 12 schools.
Co-sponsor of the 2023-2024 Wisconsin Legislative Senate Bill 367, the legislation that created the Wisconsin Guarantee, Rep. Jerry L. O’Connor R-Fond Du Lac said the bill aims to increase the acceptance of qualified students to the Universities of Wisconsin schools.
“It’s a simple bill that’s built upon scholastic performance,” O’Connor said.
Many constituents had contacted O’Connor and other Wisconsin legislators about their children having high GPAs but not being accepted into some state schools and the flagship university, O’Connor said.
O’Connor sits on the college and university’s committee. He said he has been trying to get access to the “grid” UW-Madison uses to determine who they let into school.
“What we can conclude is that they’re not capturing the meritocracy or the scholastic performance of students as a primary determinate in who is granted admission into the school,” O’Connor said.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly has been criticized for lowering scholastic standards rather than maintaining them and challenging schools to meet a certain national standard, O’Connor said.
Recently, the Department of Public Instruction lowered testing standards and changed terminology used to describe academic success, according to WPR.
“People do want to see scholastic performance rewarded,” O’Connor said. “If you use other criteria, and that could be race, economic background or a variety of issues that could factor in–it is not a wise thing to make that the basis for your criteria without considering scholastic performance, because the dropout rate is far higher.”
Not considering scholastic performance as a main focus for enrollment results in higher dropout rates from colleges as well as negative experiences on students, according to O’Connor.
The measurement of scholastic achievement might create issues for certain Wisconsin school districts, according to the Chair of the Department of Sociology and sociology and educational policies professor Eric Grodsky.
“It’s going to be a challenge… not all school districts across Wisconsin have the same approach to class rank, and so this is really forcing their hand to make some choices,” Grodsky said.
School districts like Madison’s do not have weighted GPAs for honors and AP classes, Grodsky said. With the Wisconsin Guarantee, Madison constituents are eager for high schools to weigh GPA for honors and AP classes.
Legislators like O’Connor put a blanket requirement on schools to use a national testing standard, like the SAT or ACT, to measure scholastic performance. Legislation also requires school boards to establish criteria for scholastic performance using GPA, SAT, ACT or other standards, putting the challenge back on local school systems, O’Connor said.
“You really want to challenge the local school boards,” O’Connor said. “You want to be thinking about how to get the highest level of performance of your education system and how do you recognize it?”
Certain high schools across the state offer different kinds of classes, which adds more complication, Grodsky.
By basing admission off of measurements like class ranking, even schools who don’t offer as many AP or honors classes will still have people ranked at the top of their class, equalizing students at those schools without an option to take AP or honors classes with schools that do for the admissions process, Grodsky said.
There are certain exceptions to the Wisconsin Guarantee, with homeschooled or virtually enrolled private school students in Wisconsin seeing direct admission into UW-Madison if they score in the 98th percentile or higher in the ACT. National Merit Scholarship finalists are also allowed direct admission into UW-Madison, regardless of their class rank.
Admission results for UW-Madison’s regular decision applicants came out earlier this spring, but admission numbers for this upcoming fall semester will not be released until September, according to Director for Strategic Initiatives and Chief of Staff Cori Splain.
The Wisconsin Guarantee only applies to Wisconsin students. Out-of-state students and Minnesota students who have reciprocity for in-state tuition will not be admitted based on the criteria in the Wisconsin Guarantee, O’Connor said.
“I’ve heard back from parents of students who had a great sense of relief, that they knew because their kid was a high performer, that they were going to get into one of our schools here in Wisconsin,” O’Connor said.
