State Superintendent Jill Underly Running as Public Education Champion

State Superintendent Jill Underly with Madison La Follette High School Principal Mathew Thompson and Madison Public School District Superintendent Joe Gothard in the hallway at La Follette | Photo by Ruth Conniff

Incumbent State Superintendent Jill Underly says that Wisconsin has made some “incredible progress” in the last four years when it comes to education, but there is still more work to be done that she wants to see through in a second term leading the Department of Public Instruction (DPI).

Underly faces two challengers — education consultant Brittany Kinser, a self-described moderate and school choice proponent, 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., and the top two vote getters will advance to the general election.

“This position is about being the No. 1 advocate for public education, and I feel like I’m doing that,” Underly said in an interview with the Wisconsin Examiner.

Underly, a Democrat, ran for her first term in 2021 and defeated her opponent with nearly 58% of the vote. She said entering office during the COVID-19 pandemic was “unprecedented” and presented a bit of a “learning curve,” but she said she feels like DPI has “gotten our arms around what are the most important issues that the state of Wisconsin citizens want us to work on.”

Underly said some of her work has included calls for increased investment in education throughout the budget process, and pointed to securing investments and starting certain initiatives for career and technical education, school mental health, teacher recruitment and retention efforts. She also said that she has worked hard to help elect people in the Legislature who will be “pro-public school advocates” and will help pass initiatives in the future.

Underly said 2025 is “equally unprecedented” compared to last year and her experience makes her the right person to lead DPI.

“You need somebody in this role who can [offer] stability, who has the relationships, who can be consistent in this time of chaos and we need someone who’s going to stand up for public schools — for all kids, for teachers and families — and someone who has already proven that she can do it,” Underly said.

Underly said her work on literacy is one of her proudest accomplishments in her first term.

The agency was instrumental in negotiating 2023 Wisconsin Act 20, which sought to move the state towards a “science of reading” based approach and banned “three-cueing” — a way of teaching reading that relies on context, structure and letters to identify words.

“I think what it proved is that we really do want the same thing. When we put politics aside, we can get some really good stuff done on behalf of kids,” Underly said. “The flip side of that is politics still is involved. I mean, we’re still waiting on that $50 million so that we can reimburse school districts for curriculum and hire some reading coaches, but I’m really proud of that.”

Lawmakers had dedicated the money to supporting literacy changes in the last budget, but it is being withheld by Republican lawmakers.

While Underly is proud of her accomplishments, Underly’s opponents in the race have been critical of her leadership.

Recent changes to the way DPI measures the state’s standardized reading and math test scores is at the center of criticisms from her challengers, who said the changes “lowered standards” and that the decision to make the change wasn’t transparent or well communicated. The changes included new terms to describe student achievement and new cut scores, which are the minimum scores needed to qualify for certain achievement labels.

Underly said it’s “absolutely false” that DPI lowered standards and that “it wouldn’t be an issue” if the election weren’t happening.

Her opponent Kinser has said the changes were the reason she is running, and that she supports restoring “high standards.”

“The critics are wrong, and I think, by Brittany saying that this is the reason she entered the race, it just gives me this feeling that she just doesn’t understand what this job is about,” Underly said.

“We didn’t lower standards. We raised standards in math and science. We added standards in career and tech ed. We added a literacy score for all kids. We were very transparent. This is something that DPI has done periodically since testing began in state law,” Underly added. “We had to change the scoring system to match the test, and you do that any time you change a test.”

Underly said she also thinks that the focus on testing is a distraction from other consequential challenges that school districts are facing. If student achievement is a major priority for the state, Underly said, it should look towards investing in mental health, literacy and math, teachers, school meals and early childhood education, including full-day 4-year-old kindergarten.

“Where you see low test scores is in communities that have high poverty. You don’t see low test scores in the schools that have the best facilities or the most veteran teachers or strong and robust school nutrition and mental health programs,” Underly said. “It’s just a way to misdirect or to take the eye off of what really matters, and also then disguise the fact that our Legislature has underfunded schools and undermined public schools, specifically, for the past 15 years.”

Increased investment in public education

A little before polls close in Wisconsin next Tuesday, Gov. Tony Evers will deliver his budget address at the State Capitol and unveil his complete state budget proposal. As a part of the process, state agencies submitted requests to Evers late last year. Underly and DPI submitted one that would dedicate an additional $4 billion — about the same amount as the current budget surplus — towards K-12 education.

The sweeping proposal includes increasing funding for mental health supports, special education costs, literacy and math education, teachers and staff pay, free school breakfast and lunch and early childhood education, including full-day 4-year-old kindergarten. Underly said she proposed it because “it’s what our schools need.”

“They need, probably, more than that, but that’s what they need right now,” Underly said.

Underly noted school districts haven’t been receiving inflationary increases in funding from the state Legislature over the last 15 years. She also noted that last year a record number of school districts went to referendum to ask taxpayers to raise their property taxes to help cover operational and building costs.

There was a “fiscal cliff because the COVID dollars were temporary, one-time, and they couldn’t make ends meet and we had record high inflation,” Underly said. “[Schools] still have to pay staff. They still have to put gas in their buses, and they have to pay utilities and all these other things to keep their operations going, but they haven’t been able to get any increase really that’s been sustainable from our state Legislature.”

Underly said investing could help address an array of issues.

For example, Underly said teacher retention could be helped with more resources and by reestablishing the “respect and rapport that teachers deserve.” Recent DPI data found that four out of every 10 first-year teachers either leave the state or the profession altogether after just six years. She said the agency has been doing some work to help, including securing a federal grant aimed at supporting special education teachers, but that more investment would be beneficial.

Underly said enough people are being prepared for the job and by getting “more revenue in our schools, they have a feeling we can get more staff, either to lower class sizes, which will help with working conditions, and they can also pay their staff more.”

Instead of adequately addressing the financial challenges, Underly said Republicans have been blaming schools “so that people will not send their kids to public school, and they can take that money and they can put it in private vouchers.”

Limit school vouchers

Wisconsin’s school voucher programs, which use state money to subsidize families’ tuition at private schools, have been growing since the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program was created in 1990. The caps on Wisconsin’s school voucher program, which limits the number of students who can participate, are slated to be lifted in the 2026-27 school year and could have a big effect on the future of education in Wisconsin.

Underly said the state needs to ensure the program doesn’t expand any further. She noted that the programs aren’t held to the same accountability, testing, reporting or licensing requirements as the state’s public schools.

“If you have somebody in the seat who is indifferent to vouchers, or is going to be supportive of vouchers, it’s really — that’s the end of public education in Wisconsin, and that’s what the federal government wants. They want to privatize public schools,” Underly said. “They want to take the money that they no longer have to spend in the Department of Ed and just give it to parents so that they could put it in a voucher.”

“If you have somebody in the seat who is indifferent to vouchers, or is going to be supportive of vouchers, it’s really — that’s the end of public education in Wisconsin, and that’s what the federal government wants. They want to privatize public schools,”

– State Superintendent Jill Underly

Endorsed by Democratic Party and AFT-Wisconsin

Underly’s approach to advocating for public schools is part of what has won her the endorsement of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin and American Federation of Teachers-Wisconsin, a union of professionals working in the University of Wisconsin System, the Wisconsin Technical College System, public schools and state agencies.

Jon Shelton, AFT-Wisconsin vice president for higher education and a UW-Green Bay professor, said that Underly’s incumbent status and accomplishments in office set her apart in the endorsement process. The organization, which has a constitutional process for endorsements, interviewed Underly and Wright.

“[Underly] has always shown a commitment to ensuring that the voices of educators have a seat at the table and in the decision-making processes, both with the Department of Public Instruction, but also modeling that for local school districts,” Shelton said.

In addition to overseeing the state’s 421 public school districts, the state superintendent also has a seat on the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents. Shelton said Underly’s outspokenness for educators was an asset in her position there as well. He pointed out that she was the only regent to vote against a plan to fire 35 tenured faculty members at UW-Milwaukee and to give a speech about the negative consequences of the decision.

Shelton also called Underly’s budget proposal “visionary.” He said that K-12 education and higher education, while separate systems in Wisconsin, are connected since younger students eventually become college students and the higher education system is responsible for preparing their future education, which is why it’s important to see both supported by the state.

Shelton said the proposal is important because there is a budget surplus in Wisconsin and educators shouldn’t allow “our expectations to be lowered.” He noted that under new legislative maps, 14 Democrats flipped seats in the state Legislature and the impact could continue in the future.

“In 2026, Democrats could have control of either one or both houses of the Legislature. This idea that we have to basically just adhere to the low expectations of Republican priorities, it’s not the reality anymore,” Shelton said. “So it’s really important that we have people who are in a position like Dr. Underly, who have that platform to be able to vocally and forcefully advocate for these priorities, so that they’re on the agenda in 2026.”

Shelton said having an advocate willing to engage in certain battles is more important than having a candidate that prioritizes working across the aisle due to the actions being taken at the federal level right now.

“Our nation, our state, is under threat from authoritarian Republicans. Right now, the Trump administration is intentionally trying to sow chaos and intentionally trying to set working people against each other. This is why you have this, this executive order, which is meant to prevent even teaching about things like race and racism. This is not like the West Wing… where you have Republicans and Democrats having good faith differences of opinion. This is a party at the national level that is connected to [Assembly Speaker] Robin Vos and the Republicans at the state level, who, frankly, don’t want certain parts of our education system to exist,” Shelton said.

“We’ve tried to find common ground with Republicans, and they just keep cutting our budgets and keep coming at us for more, and frankly, our administrators continue to accommodate this,” Shelton continued. “We’re not going to let our students and the people of the state have the public higher education system, that’s been so good for such a long time, just taken from us, and so we’re going to be the ones on the front lines of fighting it, just like we’re going to be the ones on the front line of fighting authoritarianism from the national level.”

The Wisconsin Democratic Party endorsed Underly for a second term at the end of November. Party Chair Ben Wikler called her a “steadfast advocate” for students, parents and schools in a statement and said she is a “proven leader” who is “championing our kids in the Department of Public Instruction.”

The political environment and working with the Legislature

During her term in office, Underly and the agency have regularly come into contention with the Republican-led Legislature on a variety of issues. Just last week, representatives from the agency testified against several Republican bills, including one to reverse test score changes and limit how schools can spend their money.

Despite the disagreements, Underly said that she’s been able to work with lawmakers during her term. She said the literacy law is one example.

However, Wright cited the communication challenges that the agency has had with lawmakers, school districts and others. He said he would try to minimize partisanship, so that more conversations can be had between the agency and lawmakers.

Underly said communication with lawmakers is an issue that the agency has been working on, and brushed back some of Wright’s critique.

“It’s entirely comical that the male candidate in this race thinks that he’s going to have better luck with the Legislature…,” Underly said. “It’s really insulting that this, you know, this male candidate, thinks he can come in and undermine my leadership and call me a bad communicator.”

Underly said that when she speaks with lawmakers individually and when people on her team speak with them it’s clear that they agree on a lot, but that politics and polarization can get in the way. She noted that most lawmakers want healthy kids, high quality public schools and communities in rural and urban areas.

Underly said in a second term she would continue to work on improving the relationships and is hopeful that new faces in the Legislatures will help.

“We need people in the Legislature who will fight for public schools, too. That’s really what it comes down to,” Underly said. “I think we have to understand that it doesn’t matter who’s in the seat, if you’re a public school advocate, it’s always gonna be a struggle.”

In discussing the politicization of education, Underly called attention to the recent actions being taken by the federal government at the instruction of President Donald Trump. She said the actions are “chaotic” and “cruel.”

“The things that they’re axing and cutting and slashing are programs that are meant to help kids,” Underly said. She pointed to Head Start programs and the freeze on payments that have been affecting child care centers across the country, including in Wisconsin. “We look at the programs that they’re cutting like these that are helping the most vulnerable kids so that they can be successful, healthy adults.”

The administration is also considering eliminating the Department of Education, and Underly warned that people need to be prepared.

“If he says that’s what he’s going to do, we have to believe them… I don’t think people realize all the different things the Department of Education administers,” Underly said. She noted many programs work to ensure certain people have equal access to education, including kids and families in poverty, students with disabilities, English language learners, Native American students, kids in rural areas and girls.

“There’s so many protections in place… I think of the funding that our schools get, our state gets money from the Department of Ed. I don’t know if the state Legislature would be willing to fill those gaps,” Underly said. “There’s a lot to be concerned about.”

Trump has also signed executive orders that attempt to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion in government, the private sector and schools. He has also eliminated a policy that stopped Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from going to “sensitive areas” — a decision that opens schools up to immigration raids.

Underly said her “North Star” is focused on “creating safe, welcoming environments where every child feels valued and respected, where every child feels they belong so they can thrive.” She said DPI trusts schools and educators to work closely with families and communities to support all students, though the agency is also providing guidance.

“I’m going to always stand up for kids, especially your most vulnerable kids, and just remind people to stay focused on what matters,” Underly said. “We’re going to follow the law, and we gave them the guidance that will help them.”

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

Incumbent Superintendent Jill Underly says she’ll remain ‘No. 1 advocate for public education’ was originally published by Wisconsin Examiner.