Underly, Kinser Advance in State Superintendent Race
Incumbent Jill Underly takes first, will face conservative-backed Brittany Kinser.
Jill Underly and Brittany Kinser. Photos from the campaigns.
Incumbent Superintendent Jill Underly and school choice supporter Brittany Kinser have advanced in primary election for Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction.
The Associated Press called the race with Underly winning approximately 37% of the vote and Kinser winning 35%. Jeff Wright, Sauk Prairie superintendent, won approximately 27% of the vote and was eliminated. Underly and Kinser will face off in the general election on April 1, setting up what may shape up as a liberal versus conservative battle.
The state superintendent is a non-partisan office and up for election every four years. The superintendent serves as the head of the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI), overseeing 421 school districts and state and federal funding for schools. The agency also manages statewide curricula and standardized testing.
Underly was first elected state superintendent in 2021. She replaced Carolyn Stanford Taylor, who was appointed by Gov. Tony Evers after he won election to the governor’s office in 2018 while serving as state superintendent; Taylor chose not to run for election to the post. Before winning state office, Underly had spent most of her career in public education, working as a teacher, principal and superintendent. She has also worked as a university administrator, an education consultant and an assistant director at DPI.
Underly has opposed expanding the state’s school voucher program, which provides taxpayer funding for private schools. She has received backing from the Wisconsin Democratic Party and the Wisconsin American Federation of Teachers labor union.
Underly has faced criticism for DPI’s recent changes to standardized testing, which included new terminology, scoring and even a new design for the test. The changes have faced bipartisan criticism, including from Evers, who said the state should not be lowering state testing standards.
The changes became a major issue during the primary election, with both Wright and Kinser criticizing them. Underly, meanwhile, has defended the changes, arguing DPI did not lower standards and that the changes allow testing to better represent student performance.
Wright told the Wisconsin Examiner the changes showed DPI needed to improve communication with the public, which he promised to deliver. Kinser, on the other hand, strongly criticized the changes, saying they were the reason she entered the race.
Kinser was the last candidate to enter the race for state superintendent. She has spent the majority of her career working on education, including as a teacher in public charter schools. Most recently, she served as the executive director of City Forward Collective, and she currently runs an education consultancy. Kinser has been criticized for lacking any active Wisconsin educational license: she has never held a Wisconsin teacher’s license, and her school administration license has lapsed.
Kinser, who has called herself a moderate, is getting strong support from conservatives and Republicans, which helped her out-raise her opponents in campaign donations, with support from Republican billionaires like Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein and Diane Hendricks.
While Kinser has made criticism of the standardized testing changes central to her campaign, she also set herself apart from Wright and Underly as the only school-choice proponent running for the top job in public education. She has also previously supported greater funding for school vouchers.
Wright, who came in last place during Tuesday’s primary, has worked in public education throughout his career as both a teacher and a principal.
He criticized Underly for failing to develop a relationship with the Republican-controlled Legislature, and said he planned to work on repairing the relationship between DPI and state legislators. Underly has clashed with the Legislature, calling for greater investment in education and telling the Wisconsin Examiner she has worked hard to elect state legislators who better support public education.
Update: This story was updated to reflect that Kinser worked in public charter schools.
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As Tim Walz would say, their candidates are weird. Of the 2 candidates for State Superintendent of Public Instruction which one would you not be afraid to leave your children or grandchildren with?
Both.
All I need to know is that Kinser is being funded by Elizabeth and Richard Uihlein and Diane Hendricks. When these “non-partisan” elections actually become non-partisan, maybe I’ll keep more of an open mind when a candidate uses the word “moderate” to describe herself.
For the record, I am not a Kinsey fan. In my mind expansion of choice is not good and we really need a state legislature that understands that money spent on education for all kids statewide is a good thing.
Gee, why would Herr Musk buy $1 million worth of attack ads for a “moderate” candidate? Add the Uileins, Hendricks, the Koch’s and you have a rogues gallery of plutocratic bullies whose kids and grandkids probably never set foot in a public school. This troll is running so she can do what Fuhrer Musk is doing to the Federal gov’t. Wake up, Badgervoters!
I would not vote for a candidate backed by the Uileins and Hendricks. I would go out of my way to vote for anyone running against a Musk backed candidate. Go Jill.
“Kinser has been criticized for lacking any active Wisconsin educational license: she has never held a Wisconsin teacher’s license, and her school administration license has lapsed.”
This is a perfect resume for the position of Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction in our newest Frumpian form of government. This level of experience and qualification might allow Kinser to substitute teach in some other country. But in today’s America, and with the financial support of Leon & the Peons (Uihlein and Hendricks), Kinser nicely fits the bill of an underqualified candidate that, if elected, will dance like a puppet on their puppetmaster strings.
Jill Underly is not perfect. But she is a damn sight better than anyone backed by the Right.
Please vote on April 1…even if you don’t have kids in school. The future of our kid’s education is at stake.
Isnt Underly the affluent woman who sent her own child to private school while trying to trap our poor children of color in a failing school system because their families dont have her wealth? This seems like the very definition of institutional racism we always talk about tearing down but never do because of special interests.