A national report found Wisconsin continues to lead the nation in racial disparities affecting children's well-being across the state.
Wisconsin ranked 11th in the 2025 Kids Count Data Book, which uses 16 key indicators to assess the overall well-being of children nationwide.
Emily Miota, communications director for the advocacy group Kids Forward, said the ranking does not tell the full story. She noted for six of the indicators, Wisconsin has some of the largest racial disparities in the country. They are large gaps in measures like low birth weight, high school graduation rates, and eighth grade math proficiency.
Miota emphasized it is the result of decades of statewide barriers.
"This is policy structural barriers," Miota explained. "That is a really important thing to couple with these disparities, because otherwise they can be so easily misconstrued, and we can draw the wrong conclusions about them."
Such conclusions are too often rooted in racism, she added. Lawmakers are now working on the state budget and Miota argued it is a huge opportunity for them to make targeted investments to begin to address disparities and help all children thrive.
Miota emphasized how crucial the data is to addressing these systemic issues, highlighting the need to prioritize parents' well-being, which is critical to their children's. She argued policy changes such as extending Medicaid postpartum coverage and allowing reimbursements for doula services are good starting points.
She would add investments in lead exposure prevention and treatment, school-based mental health services, special education and violence prevention.
"There's been a lot of federal attacks on simply the existence of data around specific racial and ethnic groups and this really hurts Wisconsin more deeply," Miota asserted. "Because while we have this 11th place ranking, the disaggregated data is so critical in showing us what that looks like for each community."
The state's outcomes track with nationwide trends.
Leslie Boissiere, vice president of external affairs for the Annie E. Casey Foundation, said the nation cannot lose sight of the disproportionate effects on Native, Black and Latino children.
"The child well-being outcomes on 15 out of 16 indicators for Native kids are lower than the national average," Boissiere pointed out. "If you look at Black kids, it's 8 out of 16 indicators, where Black kids' outcomes are lower than the national average."
She added the results are similar for Latino children and stressed the importance of implementing effective strategies to turn the numbers around.
