Every grade in the district ended the year with fewer students at benchmark than it started — except third grade, which didn’t move at all.
An analysis of the district’s fall, winter, and spring early literacy screening results, required under 2023 Wisconsin Act 20.
4K−16
Kindergarten−16
Grade 1−8
Grade 2−1
Grade 30
The short version
These numbers exist because of a law. 2023 Wisconsin Act 20 requires every public school district in the state to screen students in 4K through third grade for early literacy skills, and the Department of Public Instruction selected Pearson’s aimswebPlus as the statewide screener. Beginning in 2025–26, screening is required in fall and spring for 4K through third grade, and at midyear for 5K through third — which is why the 4K line in the chart below has a gap in it. Four-year-olds are screened twice a year, not three times.
A 2024 amendment, Act 192, reduced the number of required administrations for 2024–25 only, so 2025–26 is Madison’s first full year on the complete schedule. Five things stand out in the results.
Benchmark rates fell in every grade except third.
4K dropped from 82% to 66%. Kindergarten fell from 76% to 60%. First grade slid from 73% to 65%. Second grade held roughly steady, 69% to 68%. Third grade sat at exactly 72% at all three windows.
The younger the grade, the bigger the drop.
The 16-point declines in 4K and kindergarten are twice first grade’s and sixteen times second grade’s. That gradient is the single most important pattern in the data.
It is mostly a rising bar, not a falling skill.
Benchmark targets climb at each screening window, and what the screener measures changes over the year — from letter names and letter sounds toward reading actual words and passages. Students aren’t losing ground. Fewer of them are clearing a bar that keeps going up.
That said, the spring picture is the real one.
By May, 40% of kindergarteners and 35% of first graders were below benchmark. Those students finished the year not yet reading at the level the screener expects.
The gaps are large, and in the early grades they widen over the year.
In spring, White students were at benchmark at rates of 83% to 89% in every grade. Black students ranged from 41% to 53%, Hispanic and Latino students from 33% to 57%, English learners from 30% to 50%, and students with IEPs from 33% to 42%. The kindergarten gap between White and Hispanic students grew from 42 points in fall to 50 points in spring — the widest single gap anywhere in the data.
The grade-by-grade slide
Read the change column below from top to bottom and the shape is unmistakable: the decline shrinks as the grades get older, until it disappears entirely.
Figure 1
Percent of students at or above benchmark, by grade and screening window
Benchmark targets rise at each window, so a falling line means fewer students clearing a higher bar — not lost skills. Act 20 requires only fall and spring screening for 4K; the dashed connector spans a window in which no data was collected by design.
Percent at or above benchmark, 2025–26
Grade
Fall
Winter
Spring
Change
4K
82%
not screened
66%
−16
Kindergarten
76%
65%
60%
−16
Grade 1
73%
68%
65%
−8
Grade 2
69%
67%
68%
−1
Grade 3
72%
72%
72%
0
The temptation is to read a falling line as students getting worse. It almost certainly isn’t. Fall benchmarks for a four-year-old sit close to a floor — naming a handful of letters clears them, which is why 82% of 4K students met the fall mark. By spring, the same students are being asked to do considerably more, against a higher cut score. The measurement changes underneath them.
This is why the fall-to-spring comparison should be handled carefully, and why the flatness of third grade is worth pausing on. Third grade is the one place where the fall picture and the spring picture agree. Its 72% is the most stable number in the file.
Enrollment isn’t the explanation
One obvious alternative story — that the numbers fell because different students were tested — doesn’t hold. Working backward from the published counts, roughly 1,300 students were screened in 4K and between 1,680 and 1,780 in each of kindergarten through third grade, and those totals barely move across the three windows. The denominator is stable. The rate is what changed.
Who is below the line
District averages hide a great deal. Sorted by spring performance, the same five grades look very different depending on which students you follow.
Figure 2
Spring 2026: percent at or above benchmark, by grade and student group
White
Black or African American
Hispanic or Latino
Students with IEPs
All students in that grade
The dashed rule sits well above most of the bars beneath it — a reminder that a district average of 65% or 72% describes very few of the groups it summarizes.
Spring 2026 — percent at or above benchmark
Student group
4K
KG
Grade 1
Grade 2
Grade 3
All students
66%
60%
65%
68%
72%
White
86%
83%
87%
84%
89%
Asian
60%
75%
75%
77%
80%
Multiracial
79%
62%
62%
68%
74%
Black or African American
53%
41%
44%
51%
52%
Hispanic or Latino
45%
33%
47%
50%
57%
English learners
39%*
30%
49%
48%
50%
Economically disadvantaged
48%
38%
46%
51%
55%
Students with IEPs
34%
33%
42%
37%
39%
White students’ rates hold up across the year — third grade actually improved, from 87% in fall to 89% in spring. Almost every other group’s did not. The result is that the same rising bar that pulls the district average down pulls it down unevenly, and gaps that were already wide in September were wider in May.
Students with IEPs
The most consistent decline in the file. Every grade ended lower than it began: 4K from 54% to 34%, kindergarten from 49% to 33%, first grade from 49% to 42%, second from 45% to 37%, third from 42% to 39%. No grade finished above 42%.
English learners
A sharp fall in kindergarten, from 58% to 30%, but nearly flat in grades one through three — 58% to 49%, 50% to 48%, and 51% to 50%. The kindergarten collapse tracks the point in the year when the screener’s language demands increase, which is worth knowing before drawing conclusions about instruction.
Asian students
The quiet exception to the pattern that high-performing groups stayed high. They fell from 89% to 75% in kindergarten and from 79% to 60% in 4K — declines closer to the district’s than to White students’. Whatever is compressing early-grade scores is not simply a function of where a group started.
Where the data is thin
An honest read includes what the file cannot tell us. American Indian/Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander results are masked at every grade and every window, so those students are entirely absent from this analysis. Several 4K and kindergarten cells for English learners and Advanced Learners are masked as well.
A handful of published cells also look like reporting errors rather than findings. Winter first-grade results for Black students show 47% alongside a count of 47, where the count should be closer to 150. Spring 4K results for English learners show 39% alongside a count of 9. Anyone citing those specific cells should confirm them with the district first.
The question the data raises
If the early-grade declines are mostly an artifact of a rising bar, then the spring number is the one that matters — and the spring numbers say that between a quarter and two-fifths of Madison’s youngest students finish the year short of benchmark, with that share climbing past half for Black, Hispanic, English-learning, and IEP students in most grades.
Act 20 does not stop at counting. Students in 5K through third grade who score below the 25th percentile on the screener are to receive a diagnostic assessment and a personal reading plan — so behind every percentage on this page is a set of individual obligations the district has taken on.
Screening data [2025-2026 source data] cannot say why. It can only say where to look, and it is pointing at kindergarten and first grade, where the floor drops out fastest and the gaps open widest.