Empower Wisconsin | Nov. 20, 2019
MADISON — Caution: This story may cause cursing.
The state Department of Public Instruction insists that a legislative proposal bringing back cursive writing to Wisconsin English classes would cost taxpayers as much as $5.95 million, according to Wispolitics.com
How do educrats arrive at their estimate? Fuzzy math.
In a legislative fiscal estimate, DPI quotes prices from Handwriting without Tears, a producer of widely used workbooks for students and teacher’s guide. The cost for disposable cursive materials would be $10 per child statewide.
DPI notes a cursive writing program billed at $159.51 per “teacher presentation book.”
And it appears DPI recommends teaching cursive writing to many of its teachers, including in its estimates professional learning webinars for educators at $25 per participant.
Final costs would vary, depending in large part on how public schools still teach the stylized writing.
In the Digital Age, cursive writing has seemingly disappeared from many classrooms.
Co-sponsors of the bill scoffed at DPI’s estimates. Rightly so.
Would do you really need to teach writing of any kind? A notebook, a pencil, a chalkboard, and some chalk.
That seemed to work just fine when more than 40 percent of Wisconsin students could read and write at grade level.
