Assembly Speaker: Fixing Wisconsin’s School Tests Scores a Top Priority

Wisconsin’s Assembly speaker says making sure the state doesn’t “dumb down” its public school tests scores is among his top priorities for the new legislative session.

Speaker Robin Vos on Wednesday said he’s dedicated to undoing the changes ordered by Wisconsin’s state superintendent of schools.

“Superintendent Underly wants to make it harder for parents to understand when their school is succeeding or failing,” Vos told reporters at a statehouse news conference. “She wants to make it easier for failing schools to somehow seem like they're succeeding.”

Superintendent Jill Underly in October ordered changes to Wisconsin’s reading and math standards, as well as the state’s cut scores for tests for elementary school, junior high, and high school students.

Underly has repeatedly said she made the changes to better reflect how Wisconsin school kids are learning. She’s pushed back on the idea that she lowered the standards or scores.

"Our updated standards more clearly lay out learning expectations, and detaching the cut scores from NAEP better demonstrates our results. I strongly stand by the decision to make this system better for the long haul,” Underly said earlier in the week.

Vos pointed out that even Democratic Gov. Tony Evers, a former state superintendent himself, is not a fan of her changes.

“We even saw Gov. Evers say he opposes [it],” Vos explained. “So I hope that's one of the areas that we'll get some speedy discussion, and hopefully bipartisan support. Because I would hope that no one -- the most liberal person or the most conservative person -- would want to dumb down our standards so kids aren't able to read, and the parents aren't able to even know whether or not their kids are succeeding.”

Outside of possible test score change legislation, Vos said there’s broad support among Assembly Republicans for tax cuts and tax reforms.

“Most [Assembly Republicans] thought that the number one priority should be the retirement income tax cut, so we keep more of our seniors and folks who are on fixed incomes and dealing with inflation, in Wisconsin,” Vos “Of course we would love to have an income tax cut. But we want to make sure it can get signed into law. We are going to focus also on property tax relief, because I think you see around the state, far too many families saw increases that are way beyond the norm.”

The Assembly is set to be back at the Capitol next week to vote on the proposed voter ID constitutional amendment. Vos said they would get to their other priorities after that.