Wisconsin Lawmakers Begin Push to Raise Learning Standards in State’s Public Schools

Superintendent Underly Fighting School Reform Efforts

Wisconsin’s state superintendent of schools is fighting the effort at the State Capitol to raise the bar for kids in the state’s public schools.

Superintendent Jill Underly on Thursday blasted the legislation that would restore Wisconsin’s learning standards, and reinstate the way Wisconsin measures reading, writing, and math.

“Republican lawmakers are proving once again they’re not interested in real solutions – they’re too busy playing political games, using our schools and children as pawns to push their own ideological agenda,” Underly said in a statement. “Rather than empowering local districts, they are intent on ignoring local control and imposing their own control over classrooms, dictating every move and actively trying to undermine public trust in our teachers and the entire education system.”

Assembly Bill 1 would require Underly’s Department of Public Instruction to “use the same cut scores, score ranges, and corresponding qualitative descriptions that DPI used for report cards published in the 2019-20 school year.”

Underly changed those scores, as well as the language that described student success last fall.

Republicans have said for months, and said again Thursday, that the changes make it look like Wisconsin school kids are doing better on reading, writing, and math tests.

“We can't get an accurate read on where the problems are and where to invest if we're playing games with where we're telling how proficient students are or not,” Rep Bob Wittke, R-Caledonia, said.

Sen. John Jagler, R-Watertown, said Underly and DPI had a chance to make some “tweaks,” but said “instead, they just blew-up the whole system.”

“As expected, DPI is failing to explain what they did,” Jagler added on Twitter during Thursday’s hearing. “But the argument is simple. We should expect more from our kids, not less. The standards shouldn’t have been lowered. Period full stop. It was, as the governor said, a mistake.”

Jagler also took issue with Underly’s statement that restoring the state’s education standards is somehow anti-teacher.

“So wanting high standards for our kids is somehow not “standing with educators”?

Really? Jagler asked in a tweet. “Does that statement include Governor Evers? He said he disagreed with your changes and said the way you went about it was a mistake. Does he not ‘stand with educators’?”

Gov. Evers, who is a former state superintendent himself, said last month he wants public schools to be held to high learning standards, and said he was “surprised” that Underly changed them.

But it’s not clear if Evers will sign AB1 if it makes it to his desk later this year.