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The old saw about poor adults on welfare is that one-third is prepared for work, one-third is capable to enter work with extra support, and one-third is incapable of supporting themselves.

In light of such conventional wisdom, Wisconsin’s welfare reform success has exceeded even the most optimistic of expectations. Nine in ten families on welfare in the Badger State fifteen years ago are now free from public assistance. Thus, the two-thirds predicted to be employable are off the welfare rolls as is the majority of the bottom third.

Not so fast, caution welfare reform’s critics. While its one thing to help these families move off public assistance, its quite another for them to be reliable taxpayers. To these folks, Wisconsin Works (W-2) will only be a success when these families reach the admittedly artificial standard known as the poverty level.

Enter the recently released Wisconsin Legislative Audit Bureau evaluation of W-2. Those who opted to read news accounts rather than the study itself were presented with a glass half empty. Under the heading, "State audit gives W-2 poor grades," the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported, "relatively few former welfare recipients have landed jobs that pay more than poverty wages."

How bad is this news? The LAB study found that just months after implementation of the largest social policy change in the U.S. since President Roosevelt’s New Deal, nearly two-thirds of welfare escapees filed an income tax return. Bear in mind that this majority is gleaned from the final ten percent of Wisconsin’s welfare caseload—an entire group that virtually no welfare scholar would have deemed viable labor market participants merely five years ago.

The average income reported by most of these new workers was almost $12,000, or over $16,000 including state and federal earned income credits. That means about half of former recipients who filed a tax return were above the federal poverty level. This glass half full is quite satisfying considering that absolutely zero of these families were above the poverty threshold when receiving a welfare check. In the span of one year, the majority members of the most entrenched welfare population group in the nation exchanged a $673 monthly W-2 check for more than $1,000 per month in earned income.

The case against reform is further damaged when you consider the evidence not deemed worthy to report by the media. Conspicuously absent in the pages of the Milwaukee paper is a new report by the University of Wisconsin’s Institute for Research on Poverty, which revealed that both wage rates and total income increased over a two-year period for those who left welfare, and that their earnings trumped those by former welfare mothers in other states.

Such success is indeed unprecedented and cause for celebration, however it is no reason for resting on laurels or refusing to fix the problems that persist. Many families cycle on and off welfare in pursuit of stable employment, a pattern likely to increase in this tightening economy. Even families remaining in the workforce and earning wages above the poverty threshold are sometimes still struggling to make ends meet and need additional services to help them prosper further.

The deserved headlines for both the reported and unreported studies should have informed readers that the state’s leading researchers found that Wisconsin’s poorest adults are advancing up the employment ladder. While some are tempted to confuse progression for failure, these families deserve respect for their success and W-2 should be seen as the impressive yet unfinished work that it is.