Top Wisconsin Education Official Calls Federal Government A ‘Bully’

State Superintendent Jill Underly speaks Thursday, Sept. 21, 2023, at the Wisconsin State Capitol in Madison, Wis. Angela Major/WPR

During her fifth State of Education address, Wisconsin Superintendent Jill Underly on Thursday called for political unity, but she said the federal government has become a bully to public schools.

Underly, a Democrat who was reelected in April to a second term, said rather than being a partner in education, the federal government is threatening the resources public schools depend on to serve students.

“At a time when we should be uniting to support our kids, our educators and our schools, we’re instead seeing attacks driven by nothing more than political agendas and hatred,” Underly said.

Trump signed an executive order in March saying he wanted to eliminate the Department of Education and turn the power of schools over to parents and states. At one point this summer, an estimated $72 million in federal education funding for Wisconsin was frozen.

Wisconsin joined a federal lawsuit to release the money, and much of the funding was eventually released.

“Instead of being a true partner, the federal Department of Education is using critical funding as a bargaining chip, threatening or withholding it with little or no notice while demanding compliance with unclear and unlawful demands,” Underly said.

She said the Trump administration is working to “sow confusion, create chaos and erode trust.”

“We teach our children to stand up to bullies,” she said. “But this year, the biggest schoolyard bully in our public schools is our own federal government.”

In response, Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg, said public education can be summed up in one word, “unaccountable.”

LeMahieu said Underly’s decision to change state testing benchmarks last year made it impossible for parents to track their child and school’s performance year-over-year.

“Parents, students and taxpayers deserve better,” LeMahieu said.

But Underly said too many students and educators are being left behind with budget cuts.

“Will we be the generation that looked away as our schools crumbled?” Underly said. “Or will we be the ones who stood up, kept our promise and chose to write a different story?”

Underly did not directly mention federal and state testing data that have consistently shown Wisconsin students are less than 50 percent proficient in math and reading.

She did, however, address the fact that the state has the nation’s widest disparity in math and reading scores between Black and white students.

“This is not an achievement gap. It is an opportunity gap,” Underly said. “Because when inputs are unequal, it is not the students who have failed — it is the system that has failed them.”

Underly said the state continues to pull resources from public schools to fund private schools, expecting both to thrive.

“This underinvestment has created a growing sense — in too many classrooms, during too many school board meetings and around too many kitchen tables — that our schools are being left to go it alone,” she said.

Underly said public education is a “living story” that should be written by students and teachers, not politicians or special interest groups.

Top Wisconsin education official says federal government has become a ‘bully’ to schools was originally published by Wisconsin Public Radio.