State Superintendent Candidate Brittany Kinser Wants Higher Standards

Brittany Kinser. Photo courtesy of campaign.

Education consultant Brittany Kinser says the recent changes to the way Wisconsin reading and math scores are calculated motivated her to enter the race for state schools superintendent.

Kinser is running against incumbent Superintendent Jill Underly, a Democrat, and Sauk Prairie Schools Superintendent Jeff Wright, a Democrat, in the race for the nonpartisan office. The primary for the state superintendent election is Feb. 18 with early voting underway. The top two vote getters will advance to the general election.

Kinser was debating as late as December about whether to enter the race, she said, when a Milwaukee school leader, whom she declined to name, helped her make a decision.

“[He] said, ‘I heard, you’re not going to run. … Who’s going to be the voice for our kids?’” Kinser said in an interview with the Wisconsin Examiner. “And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh.’”

Kinser, prior to entering the race, called herself a “Blue Dog Democrat” according to WisPolitics, however she hasn’t embraced the label since. She recently called herself a “moderate” on 1130 WISN, saying she has voted for Republicans and Democrats before and attended the Republican National Convention and the Democratic National Convention. Her campaign manager is Amy Loudenbeck, a former Republican state lawmaker and former School Choice Wisconsin leader.

Kinser said the decision to change to how test scores are measured was “unacceptable.” Those changes included new terms to describe student achievement and changes to cut scores, which are the minimum scores needed to qualify for certain achievement labels.

“When I heard that they lowered the standards, my response was like, that’s not good for kids. That might make adults feel OK … but that’s not what’s best for kids,” Kinser said. “Kids know if they can’t read, all colleges and their employers will know that they can’t read well enough when they graduate, and so when that happened, I knew I needed to do something. I [can’t] just sit on the sidelines and complain about it.”

While opponents have said the changes “lowered” the state’s standards, DPI and Underly have repeatedly defended the new scores, saying educators helped develop them and the changes were needed to better align the state’s standardized tests with its curriculum standards.

Kinser has said she supports reversing the changes, and is running to “restore high standards” in Wisconsin.

Literacy is one of Kinser’s top priorities and she has said that more needs to be done to ensure students are able to read, pointing to recent results on the Nation’s Report Card.

“It doesn’t have to be three out of 10 [who aren’t proficient in reading]. It can be 95% of our children. It’s possible,” Kinser said.

When it comes to supporting literacy efforts, Kinser said that the state needs to ensure that teachers have “evidence-based curriculum” and are getting support, including through coaching and professional development.

Kinser named Louisiana and Mississippi as examples of states that Wisconsin could take notes from — both states that have seen improvements in reading scores on national assessments.

“They’re doing that in Louisiana, and they have a portfolio of choices for schools. They’re focusing on the kids… we need to focus on making sure our teachers have the support they need, the curriculum as an evidence-based curriculum, so that our kids are getting the instruction and then there is transparency around results,” Kinser said.

Wisconsin has been taking steps to change reading, including by passing a law that was negotiated in part by DPI with Underly at the helm. The law sought to push Wisconsin schools towards a “science of reading” approach to teaching literacy, and dedicated $50 million to support the efforts, though the majority of the money is still being withheld by the state Legislature.

Kinser said that the law was a “great first step,” and said she would want to build on that. She said there needs to be accountability to ensure that schools are adopting new curriculum and not using “three-cueing” — a way of teaching reading that relies on context, structure and letters to identify words — as it was banned under the new law.

“We can continue to build on that, but we also can make sure that we are supporting the schools and implementing it, and also celebrating the schools and making data really clear to see where we’re at, because it really should be about how the students are learning,” Kinser said.

Kinser’s school choice background & view on its role in Wisconsin education

Kinser, if elected, would take the position with a different background compared to her opponents. As first reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Kinser has never had a Wisconsin teaching license and her principal’s license lapsed last year.

Kinser said at a WisPolitics forum last week that she is qualified for the job even with her lack of license, and pointed to her other experiences as an educator.

The majority of Kinser’s education experiences in Wisconsin have not been at traditional public schools. Currently, Kinser serves as CEO of Kinser Consulting, LLC and she recently helped start a literacy initiative in Wisconsin.

Prior to this, Kinser served as the CEO and President of the City Forward Collective, a Milwaukee-based nonprofit advocacy group that works to ensure “every child has the opportunity to attend a high-quality school” with a mission statement that says it seeks to support Milwaukee public, charter and private voucher schools.

According to Wisconsin’s lobbying website, Kinser was registered from January 2023 until January 2024 as a lobbyist for the organization, which spent over 538 hours and $148,000 lobbying in 2023-2024.

During 2023, the organization spent the majority of its time lobbying in support of SB 330, now 2023 Wisconsin Act 11, which increased per pupil funding for choice programs, and its companion bill AB 305. The group spent a total 236 hours in 2023 lobbying for the bills.

Last session, the group also registered in support of 2023 AB 688 and AB 900, a pair of bills that would have implemented a decoupling policy in Wisconsin. The policy would separate the state’s voucher programs from public school districts and fund them using state general purpose revenue.

Kinser said she continues to support the policy of “decoupling,” which didn’t pass the Legislature last session.

Kinser has also served as principal and executive director of Rocketship schools in Milwaukee, part of an entrepreneurial network of charter schools that started in the Silicon Valley and has been at the center of public debate about privatization of public schools. Kinser has also served as a special education teacher in Chicago.

Kinser has claimed the title of the “only pro-school choice” candidate in the race, and she said her experiences as an educator shaped her views on the school choice program in Wisconsin.

“Parents should have choices for their children,” Kinser said. She noted that parents in Wisconsin “overwhelmingly choose their neighborhood schools in the state” and called open enrollment, which is a policy that allows students to attend a public school outside of their residential school district, the largest school choice program in Wisconsin.

“What I see happening right now is everyone wants to focus on vouchers, but that’s just… a scholarship for children to go to a private school. That’s just one small part,” Kinser said.

Asked about whether she wants to see changes in funding for voucher schools, Kinser noted that students who receive vouchers to attend private schools in Milwaukee “do not get as much money as the students that are going to MPS.”

As a leader of the City Forward Collective, Kinser celebrated the historic increases in funding for Wisconsin’s voucher programs in the last state budget as a win for “parent power” in an opinion piece in 2023.

“We want to make sure all of our kids are getting a great education, and so the funding for elementary school children that receive private vouchers is much lower than if they were going to a traditional public school, so I would be an advocate for kids getting more money, yes, and making sure that’s fair.”

Public school funding

As state superintendent, Kinser would be responsible for overseeing 421 public school districts across the state, and funding for those schools has become an increasing concern for many in recent years, especially as more school districts have turned to voters to ask them to raise their property taxes to help cover education costs.

Kinser pointed to a controversial partial veto by Gov. Tony Evers in the last budget that extended a $325 increase in its school revenue limits each year for the next four centuries into the future. She said, given this increase in what school districts are allowed to raise from local taxpayers and spend on each pupil (which does not come with any increase in state aid), she is more concerned about ensuring that there is transparency about where money is being allocated and “making sure that it’s getting into the classroom.

“My priority is in the classroom to our teachers, and we are getting more money every year,” Kinser said.

Kinser said that she does want to see more investment in special education, though she didn’t say how much of an increase there should be. The state of Wisconsin currently covers only about 33% of public schools’ special education costs, leaving school districts to cut programs and find other ways to come up with money to cover this federally mandated expense.

“We need to figure out what is possible for funding for special education. We can’t put a number out there that’s not going to happen,” Kinser said.

Kinser said that ensuring a “good relationship” between DPI, the Legislature and Evers’ office would be necessary to figure this out. She said she doesn’t think the whole state surplus, which was most recently estimated to be $4.3 billion, will go towards education, even if that’s her first priority.

She said that she already has a “strong rapport” with Evers and the Legislature, and will continue to strengthen those relationships as well as others.

“Kids need an advocate, and their families and our educators, and part of that is being able to have relationships, building relationships with both sides of the aisle, and… being able to have relationships with everyone,” Kinser said.

Kinser said she wants to see additional investment in rural education, including transportation.

Navigating politics and education

Kinser said that she doesn’t think that politics belongs in Wisconsin schools.

“When I interviewed to be a principal or a special ed teacher… no one ever asked me if I was a Republican or Democrat, I would have been appalled and thought, ‘Oh my gosh, this school doesn’t have their priorities in order, like, why are they asking me this?’ I gotta work with all the kids, no matter who their parents are.”

The DPI, however, will likely have to navigate politically charged issues in the coming years. One issue is diversity, equity and inclusion, which has become a highly discussed topic again as the new administration of President Donald Trump has sought to eliminate DEI in government, the private sector and schools.

Kinser said she thinks every student should feel safe and welcome in the classroom, but that cultural issues, including diversity, equity and inclusion, are something that should be handled by individual districts.

“Wisconsin is a local control state, and I think it is really important that parents are working with their school districts and school board to decide on those issues, on the culture issues,” Kinser said. “I don’t think you can have someone from Madison telling all different school districts what to do with each of their cultures.”

The Trump administration is also considering attempting to eliminate the U.S. Department of Education. Kinser said that she doesn’t know whether that will happen but would want to ensure Wisconsin continues to receive its federal funding.

“My big thing is making sure that the money that we get for… that we’ve been getting really — Title I and special education — still flows to our state so that we can use that money,” Kinser said. “I think the funding is the biggest issue that everyone I’ve talked to here is most concerned about, so making sure that that money still comes into our state.”

The primary election is Tuesday, Feb. 18, and the general election is on Tuesday, April 1.

State superintendent candidate Brittany Kinser on literacy, school choice, public school funding was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.