WISE Academy

WISE Academy is an alternative school serving 218 students in grades PK–12 at 540 Birch St in Nekoosa, Wisconsin — a rural community where no other schools are located within 20 miles, which means the only available comparisons for this school are to its own district and to the state as a whole. It operates within the Nekoosa School District, a district ranked 252 of 432 in Wisconsin with a 2-star rating. Two things shape how parents should read everything below: the alternative designation, which typically means the school serves students who struggled in conventional settings, and the small class sizes, where a shift of one or two students can move a grade-level percentage by 5–10 points.

Academically, WISE Academy outperforms the district it sits inside on nearly every measure. In English language arts, grades 3–8 averaged 60.1% proficient versus 54.0% statewide and roughly 45.4% for the district, with 8th grade reaching 72.73%. Social studies is the school's most reliable strength: 10th graders scored 92.31 against a state rate of 48.25, the third straight year of large outperformance, and 8th grade social studies hit 100 in 2025-26. On the 10th-grade ACT, WISE students scored 80.0 in ELA, 60.0 in math, and 60.0 in science — all well above state averages. The overall trend is upward, with both ELA and math gaining ground relative to the state over four years.

Two cautions are worth knowing. Math is the weakest area on the Forward Exam, running about 10 points below the state despite big improvement — the gap has narrowed from nearly 24 points four years ago. Dropout is the other concern: the rate spiked to 13.0% in 2023-24, roughly ten times the state rate, before falling to 0.0 the following year, so a single year at zero shouldn't be read as settled. Several other reported figures — chronic absenteeism, student–teacher ratio, per-pupil spending, and free/reduced lunch — don't hold up to a plausibility check, so test scores, ACT results, and dropout rates are the numbers worth trusting here.