Wisconsin's woeful education track record has local and national implications

Jill Underly's tenure offers a cautionary tale for proponents of block grants and legislated literacy reforms.

Last year, I wrote about a specific, promising development in Wisconsin: the state published the strongest ELA curriculum list in the country.

Unfortunately, the work in Wisconsin prior to that development, and since, underwhelms.

I’m overdue to write about the broader context in Wisconsin, mostly because progress on curriculum improvement has stalled, and I should continue the story. Also, Wisconsin elects a new state superintendent this week, so it’s a good time to revisit the tenure of state superintendent Jill Underly.

From a national lens, Wisconsin offers a cautionary tale for everyone calling to shift power back to states and for the legislated path to literacy gains.

Wisconsin’s Legacy And the Underly Era

Wisconsin is one of the rare states that elects its state superintendent, and this seems to have the unfortunate effect of politicizing the role more than usual. The state’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is described by locals as a “political factory.” Current governor Tony Evers is a former state superintendent, so DPI roles are viewed as a political springboard. Notably, Deputy Superintendent Thomas McCarthy has no education background, he’s a career state politico.

This context helps explain why the state has a lackluster track record on academics. In addition, DPI literacy leaders are known to follow discredited educational philosophies.

Barbara Novak, the Director of Early Literacy, is a historic Balanced Literacy devotee. Novak is the former President of the Wisconsin Reading Association (WSRA), which lobbied against the WI Dyslexia Guidebook and the recent Act 20 literacy legislation. She has been with DPI for more than a decade; during that time, DPI has made few efforts to advance “science of reading” initiatives, in stark contrast to the other states.

A few illustrative stories:

Wisconsin recently passed a strong literacy bill – Act 20 – which invested in teacher and administrator training, banned three-cueing, and created incentives for districts to use the highest-quality curricula, among other reforms. Initially, DPI seemed supportive of the bill, and participated in its drafting. However, since Act 20 passed, DPI has stalled and stymied implementation.

Under Act 20, a panel of local literacy experts recommended a very short list of very good curricula for state incentives. In a startling move, DPI opposed the work of that council. I wrote about those developments here and here. The legislature sided with the expert panel, so its curriculum list prevailed, but the funds that had been allocated for curriculum upgrades haven’t started flowing. Act 20 reforms seem to be caught up in politics and wrangling about priorities for funding, with DPI and the legislature pointing fingers at each other.

Act 20 banned three-cueing in Wisconsin schools. In the curriculum list drama, Wisconsin DPI proposed a curriculum list that included multiple programs with three-cueing.

Then, parents in the Unified School District of De Pere, a Green Bay suburb, challenged the use of Reading Recovery because of its three-cueing. Barbara Novak was in charge of the investigation. If you listen closely to her comments on the matter, she essentially defends three-cueing practices.

Act 20 called for teacher training on how kids learn to read. DPI’s list of approved training organizations included a few local CESA organizations with Balanced Literacy legacies.

Why did DPI initially support Act 20, then impede its implementation? Locals speculate that DPI leaders made a bet about the political winds. Wisconsin recently established new legislative maps, and DPI’s left leaning leaders may have bet that Democrats would retake the legislature and end or amend Act 20 before it could be implemented. In fact, Republicans maintained control of the WI Assembly and Senate in 2024 elections. (Note to readers: I’m a left-leaning independent, and many of my Wisconsin sources were Democrats. I don’t mean to make political statements here; I only mean to share the observations of locals.)

Beyond the Act 20 drama…

Wisconsin is one of four states that lowered proficiency standards since the pandemic. Superintendent Jill Underly came under fire statewide and nationally for this change and legislators moved to block the lowering of standards, but Governor Evers just vetoed their bill. Underly cheered.

In 2021, under Underly’s predecessor Carolyn Stanford Taylor, DPI published a curriculum map for the state, offering insight into curriculum selections for each district – and confirming everyone’s sense that Wisconsin was dominated by Balanced Literacy. Recently, that website went down and DPI failed to republish the data; it continued to link to a broken website. Fortunately, parent advocates downloaded the 2021 data; I republished it openly.

Forward Literacy, a Wisconsin nonprofit, compiled curriculum data for 2024-25. Forward Literacy finds that 20% of Wisconsin districts are still using the widely-discredited Teachers College Reading Workshop approach right now. If anyone at DPI is concerned, we wouldn’t know it. Also, it boggles the mind that parents are carrying the water for transparency efforts.

These stories go on and on. Wisconsin advocates sound fatigued, and I can’t blame them.

Implications

State Superintendent Underly led DPI through the period detailed above, and she’s up for re-election on April 1.

Parents have chided Underly for “gaslighting” the public. Former Madison mayor Dave Cieslewicz brilliantly captures the case against Underly, and the bipartisan case for her opponent.

Her opponent Brittany Kinser has earned endorsements from The Wisconsin State Journal (which endorsed Underly in the last election), Democrats for Education Reform, the founder of One City Schools Kaleem Caire, former Milwaukee Superintendent Dr. Howard Fuller, and the Republican Party of Wisconsin. While I am a Packers fan, I’m not a Wisconsinite, so full disclosure, I have not studied Kinser’s platform closely. Some literacy advocates have found her comments on phonics to be under-informed. That said…

Speaking with a national lens, I can confidently say Wisconsin is one of the weakest states on reading reform, in an era when most states are focused on literacy. In fact, four states have raised reading outcomes by pursuing the very efforts (teacher training, curriculum improvement) that met roadblocks in Wisconsin. Under Jill Underly, the “Science of Reading” era has been a massive disappointment, and I hope voters take that to heart.

Again with an eye to national trends, Wisconsin illustrates the flaws in the ‘hot’ approaches to K-12 reform.

As I write, Republican leaders are urging the Trump administration to move towards block grant funding for K-12 education, which would shift more power to state departments of education. Wisconsin is an object lesson in the risks of that approach. What’s more, I wouldn’t say that Wisconsin has the worst literacy track record. (Have you seen the inaction in my own state, New York?)

The Wisconsin story also puts pressure on the theory of change via legislation. Between 2019 and 2022, forty-five states passed literacy legislation, largely because of the activism of parent groups. Advocates take the legislative route because it’s easier to get movement in state houses than in school houses, but the Wisconsin story reminds us that strong legislation alone seldom paves a path to better instruction in classrooms.

Like a broken record, I encourage everyone to study the work in Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Alabama, which I call the Southern Surge. Yes, legislation played some part in the Southern Surge, and yes, federal funding sometimes advanced the work, but sustained leadership is the biggest enabling condition. The Southern Surge states offer a playbook, but state leaders must want to run the plays.

Latest on the Curriculum Front

I wrote last year about the promising curriculum list that emerged from Wisconsin’s Early Literacy Curriculum Council (ELCC), as called for by Act 20. DPI tried to block that list and instead use EdReports as a guide, but the legislature stuck with its expert council. Curriculum advocates cheered the list, which included four comprehensive programs.

Since then, the Wisconsin list has expanded slightly. The ELCC had some turnover, and the group approved one additional curriculum: Into Reading, which isn’t great news. It’s bloated, hard to implement, weak on fundamentals, short on whole books/novels, and contains cueing.

Wisconsin still has the strongest overall list, because four out of five programs are solid (I count Wit & Wisdom as one option, even though it is listed twice, paired with two different phonics programs). Yet we have learned that districts tend to gravitate to the weakest options on the list, especially when they come from major publishers with strong sales and marketing arms. In New York City, Into Reading was offered alongside EL Education and Wit & Wisdom, the majority of schools chose Into Reading, and districtwide outcomes dropped.

With curriculum funding held up by the political wrangling, there is still time for state leaders to encourage use of the strongest curriculum options. Here’s hoping Wisconsin gets the leaders it deserves.