Wisconsin Virtual Learning

Wisconsin Virtual Learning is a public virtual school in Fredonia, Wisconsin (Ozaukee County) serving 337 students in grades PK–12 through the Northern Ozaukee School District. Because it is an online program that families opt into from across the state, students are not drawn from a neighborhood attendance area — and since it is the only school within 20 miles in this data, the most useful comparisons are against its own district and the state of Wisconsin as a whole.

The school's clearest strengths sit in the upper grades. Its graduation rate has beaten the state in four of the last five years, averaging about 94.9% versus roughly 90.6% statewide, and 10th graders have scored above the state on ACT ELA and ACT Science. Chronic absenteeism is also genuinely impressive for a virtual school — it has stayed below the state average every recent year, which suggests the school's family-engagement and monitoring systems are working. But that advantage is shrinking fast: absenteeism has more than doubled, from 5.6% to 12.8%, while the state's rate fell.

The most important concern is math. Grades 3–8 math proficiency has dropped from above the state average two years ago to roughly 18.8%, far below the state (about 53.7%) and its own district (about 56.3%), and 10th-grade ACT math confirms the weakness continues into high school. ELA is slipping in the same direction, and the 2024–25 dropout rate of 3.8% was a one-year spike well above both district and state. Note that with 337 students across 14 grade levels, single-grade percentages rest on very small numbers, so the multi-year subject averages are the more reliable signal. One other practical note: about 35.6% of students qualified for free or reduced lunch in 2024–25.