Brittany Kinser headshot. Photo: courtesy of campaign. State Superintendent Jill Underly speaking at a rally in the Capitol. Photo: Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.

State superintendent candidates, incumbent Jill Underly and education consultant Brittany Kinser, answered questions about public school funding, the state’s voucher program and working with the Legislature during an online forum Wednesday evening.

The forum was hosted by the Wisconsin Public Education Network (WPEN), the NAACP, the League of Women’s Voters and Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed and moderated by Kevin Lawrence Henry, Jr., Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison.

The race for the nonpartisan office will appear on voters’ ballots April 1 alongside the high-profile state Supreme Court race. The state superintendent is responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s 421 public school districts and leading the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), which administers state and federal funds, licenses teachers, develops educational curriculum and state assessments and advocates for public education.

Underly, who was elected to her first term in 2021, said she has the relationships, experiences and “deep knowledge of what it takes to lead Wisconsin’s public schools.” She said that she is “100% pro public school” and said that improvements have been made to Wisconsin’s education system, but there is more work to be done. 

Kinser said that her “vision for Wisconsin education is that 95% of children will be able to read well enough to go to college, have a career or a meaningful job or master of trade” and is running “to restore our high standards.” She referenced the recent changes approved by Underly in 2024 to state testing standards, but this was the only mention of what has become a major issue among the candidates and state lawmakers who have launched an audit into the changes and passed a bill to reverse them.

Both candidates said the state’s educational gaps must be addressed, but had varying answers on how to do that. According to the 2024 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), about three out of every 10 fourth graders and eighth graders were at or above proficient levels. 

“We have got to take accountability at the state level for how our children are learning or not learning… This is a crisis,” Kinser said. “That’s why I got into this race. We have got to hold ourselves accountable. We have got to make it transparent. We have to make sure that it’s easy for all of us to know the information right now.”

Kinser said she has been researching some of the best practices around the country and wants to bring “more transparency and predictability” to DPI. 

Underly said the gaps are “absolutely unacceptable.” She said they know how to solve the problem but that “it takes money and it takes effort.” 

Both candidates said they would want to look at the state’s funding formula for schools, though Underly said that the state’s school choice program, which allows students to attend private and independent charter schools using public dollars, is draining needed resources from public schools and making problems worse. 

“It goes back 30-plus years to [former Gov.] Tommy Thompson and his effort to defund public schools and send funding to unaccountable voucher schools, and this goes back to the refusal of the Legislature to fund public schools and the efforts that they make to defund public schools,” Underly said. “I say, give us the tools we need to do the work, and we can get it done.”

Underly added that she would have to sue if the Legislature continued not investing in schools, as required by the state constitution.

Kinser said that she would also want to look at the funding formula. She said that throughout her campaign she has learned that most people agree that the funding formula is “broken” and is in need of “an upgrade.” She also said that she would be interested in examining whether there is a better way to fund special education costs other than through the current reimbursement system. 

“Schools are operating with limited resources, are concerned and tired of actually paying the referendums,” Kinser said. “Wisconsin’s funding formula needs to be modernized, and I promise to be a leader in that… I have relationships on both sides of the aisle and rapport with the governor’s office. We have to make sure that it’s updated.” 

Underly said that she has worked to develop relationships with legislators, and has worked to “foster productive dialogue, even when we don’t agree.” She noted that collaboration between DPI and the Legislature helped get Act 20, a law that implemented new literacy requirements, passed.

Kinser took credit for helping get Act 11 passed in 2023. The bill provided a historic funding increase to independent charter schools and private schools participating in the Parental Choice Programs and raised the revenue ceiling for public schools to $11,000 for the 2023-24 school year.

“It was the Republicans plus five Democrats in Milwaukee,” Kinser said about the lawmakers who supported the bill. “The governor’s office signed that bill, so it was a group effort to get more funding for all the schools and then some other areas that the governor prioritized.”

Kinser, during her time at the City Forward Collective, a Milwaukee-based school choice advocacy group, lobbied for a bill that increased funding to Wisconsin voucher schools.

While most of the conversation throughout the forum was cordial, the candidates butted heads at the end over Kinser’s lack of a teacher’s license and her support of the state’s choice program. 

A report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in early February found that Kinser has never had a teacher’s license in Wisconsin and had let her administrator’s license lapse.  

“I don’t believe she fully understands how public schools work in Wisconsin,” Underly said. “She’s made this claim routinely, for example, that only three in 10, or 30 percent of kids, are able to read, or that they’re college ready, and that makes absolutely no sense. We’ve made incredible gains in Wisconsin — how can we be sixth in the nation? And I think my vision has had a lot to do with that.”

Underly also underscored Kinser’s background as a lobbyist advocating for school vouchers and independent charter schools. 

Kinser pushed back noting her varying experiences in the education field including a decade in Chicago Public Schools as a special education teacher and at the district level and about a decade as a principal and in leadership at a charter school in Milwaukee. She also clarified that she recently retained a license again.

“I paid the $185 to update my license… It was so difficult to move my license in from New York and Illinois to Wisconsin,” Kinser said. “I would hope Dr. Underly would understand this as she has said she understands that the teacher shortage is real.”

According to state records, DPI received Kinser’s application and payment on Feb. 25.

Kinser also said the claim that she is a school “privatizer” isn’t true, although she supports school choice. She said when it came to funding she was “lobbying for equal funding for all of our children.”

Brittany Kinser headshot. Photo: courtesy of campaign. State Superintendent Jill Underly speaking at a rally in the Capitol. Photo: Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner.

Incumbent State Superintendent Jill Underly and education consultant Brittany Kinser, who are competing in the April 1 election to lead  the Department of Public Instruction, will both participate in a virtual forum Wednesday evening. Kinser agreed to join the forum after initially declining, making a meeting of the two candidates appear unlikely ahead of the April 1 election. 

Underly is running for her second term in office on a platform of supporting and investing more funding in public schools. She has the backing of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Kinser, an advocate for the state’s school choice program, says she wants to work to improve reading and math education and raise state testing standards. She has the backing of the Wisconsin Republican Party and financial backing from prominent GOP billionaire megadonors. 

A direct conversation between the two candidates seemed unlikely as of last week as Underly declined three invitations and Kinser declined an invitation for a forum hosted by the Wisconsin Public Education Network (WPEN), the NAACP, the League of Women’s Voters and Wisconsin Early Childhood Action Needed. WPEN said in an email about the event that Kinser’s campaign changed its mind and confirmed her appearance “after clearing up some confusion and adjusting the timeline of the event.”

The event is being held online at 7 p.m. on Wednesday and will be moderated by Kevin Lawrence Henry, Jr., Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at UW-Madison.

At a protest on Saturday at the Capitol in Madison, a man who asked to be identified only as Tony said he was worried about cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the withdrawal of U.S. support for Ukraine. | Photo by Ruth Conniff/Wisconsin Examiner

It was a blustery, grey Saturday afternoon on March 15 as about 40 people wearing togas, carrying signs and waving upside-down American flags gathered on the steps of the Capitol in Madison to protest Donald Trump, Elon Musk and the current administration’s assault on democracy. 

The Madison rally, part of a loosely organized nationwide effort launched by the 5051 Movement, was one in a series of 50 protests held in 50 states on a specific day. The theme on this day was the “Ides of March” — hence the togas and signs denouncing Trump and Musk as American Caesars.

“I am tired of bullies in our state and in our national government,” said a white-haired man who asked to be identified by only his first name, Tony. “I think they’ve lost the whole idea of what our government is all about.” Threatened cuts to Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the withdrawal of U.S. support for Ukraine’s effort to repel Russia’s invasion were among the issues that brought him to the protest.

“I’m old,” said Ann Kimber, 70, explaining why she showed up to the Capitol in her wheelchair. “I get Medicare. My daughter’s on Medicaid. And I know some people who need their VA benefits. I want people to know we’re concerned they might go away.”

Kimber organized a Facebook group of Fitchburg seniors, she said, because she felt there was nothing happening to resist the dangerous assault on the federal government by the Trump administration. She was optimistic that protests were having an effect, causing the administration to backtrack on some of its planned cuts. “I think each group that has some stake in the matter should be out there protesting all the time,” she said.

Kimber recalled the massive 2011 protests against former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, whose attack on public employee unions and drastic cuts to education propelled tens of thousands of Wisconsinites to mount historic rallies at the Capitol. She said she thought Trump and Musk, like Walker, would suffer an inevitable public backlash because of their arrogance, acting like kings. “If they would have been a little more subtle about it they would get farther,” she said. 

Madison, home to one of the top research institutions in the country, stands to lose $65 millions as Trump takes a meat cleaver to National Institutes of Health funding, with dire ripple effects for the state’s economy and for critical progress on everything from curing childhood cancer to dementia.

But unlike the 2011 Wisconsin uprising against Walker, the public response to the stunning aggression of Trump and Musk has been eerily quiet. Some of the Madison protesters said they thought too many people were intimidated about speaking out, especially after the high-profile arrest of Columbia University student and pro-Palestinian protest organizer Mahmoud Khalil, who was taken from his apartment in New York earlier this month and held under threat of deportation at a detention center in Louisiana.

“If they’re gonna start arresting people for the stuff they say … that’s fascism 101,” said Julie Mankowski, who helped organize the Madison event and showed up wearing a king-size bedsheet. “When the first person disappears, if there’s not enough outrage, it becomes no resistance at all, just fear,” she added.

People of various ages and backgrounds joined the march, including “a lot of faces I haven’t seen,” said Mankowski, “a lot of people with diverse concerns, but the real theme seems to be this is not what our country is about.”

After chanting on the State Street corner of the Capitol for a while, the group made a lap of the Capitol square, flags flying, led by a cheerful young man with a megaphone who chanted, “Fascists out of the White House!”

A couple of self-appointed marshals stopped at each intersection, facing traffic as the group crossed the street. One young man had a handgun in a holster on his hip and a “defend equality” patch on his shoulder with the image of a military-style assault rifle against an LGBTQ pride flag. The jarring suggestion of violence was muted by the jolly mood of the gathering. Cars honked and passers-by accepted handbills promoting free speech.

The Ides of March theme had shifted to free speech, explained Carrie McClung, another toga-clad protest organizer, after Khalil’s arrest.  “I hope more people start coming out,” McClung added. “I know people are frustrated. I know people are angry. And I hope it encourages people — this is our right to be out here.” 

The first popular test of the Trump/Musk regime will take place in Wisconsin on April 1, in a state Supreme Court race Musk has spent millions to try to buy. Some protesters carried signs supporting Judge Susan Crawford in that race and opposing Musk-backed candidate Brad Schimel. The race has garnered national attention since,  as The Wall Street Journal reports, it will show whether Musk could be a political liability for Republicans.

Buoyed by all the honks of encouragement and  thumbs-up from passing pedestrians, the Madison protesters wound up back on the corner of State Street where they bopped to tunes on a boom box.

While Democrats and much of the public have been too shocked and disoriented by the scale of Trump’s assault on democracy to react, the ragtag group stood out in the wind, trying to spark a movement. 

In fact, this spring, signs of a bigger backlash have begun to appear, including a 3,500-person rally with Bernie Sanders at UW-Parkside in Kenosha earlier this month, where an additional 500 people were reportedly turned away from a packed arena. Videos of Sanders’ Fighting Oligarchy tour have gone viral. The same weekend as the small Ides of March Madison protest,  I heard a gravelly Brooklyn accent coming through my teenager’s bedroom door.

“From the bottom of my heart, I am convinced that they can be beaten,” Sanders said of the billionaires taking a chainsaw to the social safety net and Hoovering up the wealth of our nation. “Despair is not an option.”

An empty high school classroom. (Dan Forer | Getty Images)

It’s unlikely the candidates for state Superintendent will debate ahead of the April 1 election with incumbent Jill Underly turning down three opportunities and education consultant Brittany Kinser declining one. 

The race for the nonpartisan state superintendent will appear on voters’ ballots alongside the high-profile state Supreme Court race. While the race is not as high profile as the campaign for Supreme Court, the results will be consequential for education in Wisconsin. The winner will be responsible for overseeing Wisconsin’s 421 public school districts and leading the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) — an agency whose responsibilities include administering state and federal funds, licensing teachers, developing educational curriculum and state assessments and advocating for public education.

Underly, who is running for her second term in office, is running on a platform of advocating for the state’s public schools and has the support and financial backing of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. Kinser, who is running on a platform of improving reading and math education, is a school choice advocate and has the backing of Republicans, with financial support from the Republican Party of Wisconsin and backing from billionaire Republican mega-donors.

Underly, after missing a Wispolitics forum ahead of the primary, told the Examiner that February was a busy month and she would be open to attending a forum in March before the primary. The day of the Wispolitics meeting Underly said that she had to attend a meeting of the UW Board of Regents and also attended a press conference about federal payments not going out to Head Start programs. 

“March is not as busy,” Underly said at the time. “I have other meetings and things that are standard, but like, February is just unreasonable… You’re traveling so much and you’ve got a lot of obligations, so it’s hard right now, so yes, you know, next month, if there are forums and I don’t have a standing conflict.”

Since the primary, Underly has declined three debate opportunities. 

The Milwaukee Press Club along with WisPolitics and the Rotary Club of Milwaukee will host an event March 25, and said it invited both candidates to participate but Underly’s campaign spokesperson said she was unavailable. 

Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education will host an event with Kinser on Thursday. Kevin Conway, Associate Director of University Communication, said the center extended invitations to both candidates for a general election debate ahead of the February primary. 

“While all candidates agreed in concept, the Lubar Center was subsequently unable to confirm a program time with the Underly campaign,” Conway said. “Given the circumstances, the Lubar Center pivoted to offering “Get to Know” programs to both candidates, and the Kinser campaign accepted.”

WISN-12 had invited both candidates a chance to debate on UpFront, the channel’s Sunday public affairs program. 

“So far, we cannot get both candidates to agree on a date,” WISN 12 News Director Matt Sinn said in an email.

Underly said in a statement to the Examiner that her job as superintendent “requires every minute I can give it, which means making choices which matter the most for our kids’ future, and advocating on their behalf every single day.” 

Underly has agreed to a forum being hosted by the Wisconsin Public Education Network, a nonpartisan public education advocacy group, and the NAACP. 

“Unfortunately the dates did not work for other debates, but we were able to agree to the Wisconsin Public Education Network forum, which is the forum for the education community,” she said. 

WPEN Executive Director Heather DuBois Bourenane said WPEN had communicated with all of the candidates about a general election forum before the primary and the NAACP followed up with Kinser after the primary. 

Kinser’s campaign ended up declining.

DuBois Bourenane told the Examiner that the group is hoping Kinser will reconsider, noting that they want to have a “fair and friendly” conversation with the candidates to talk about their “vision for Wisconsin kids.” She said the League of Women Voters was also supposed to cohost the event, but the group doesn’t sponsor events where only one candidate participates. 

“It’s unfortunate that voters aren’t going to have an opportunity to hear from the candidates directly,” DuBois Bourenane said. “We hope Ms. Kinser will reconsider… We would love to have her at the event, and as we said in our email, make every effort to make sure that it’s fair and that the questions reflect the concerns that are most pressing to Wisconsin kids.”

Underly said that Kinser’s decision to decline “speaks volumes that after working for years to defund public schools she doesn’t want to show up and answer questions from public school advocates.”

Kinser’s campaign noted Underly declined each forum being hosted by members of the press, and accused Underly of “hiding.” 

“Wisconsinites deserve to hear from the candidates who will be responsible for our children’s future. Brittany Kinser has, when possible, made herself available to any organization, group, or voter who wants to learn more about her plans to restore high standards so every student can read, write, and do math well,” the campaign stated, adding that Kinser would continue meeting with voters ahead of Election Day.

Milwaukee born-and-raised writer and pop culture critic Ira Madison III has a new book that tells the story of his life through the lens of one of his greatest obsessions: pop culture.

The post Ira Madison III on growing up in Milwaukee and why you should watch ‘Survivor’ appeared first on WPR.

Elon Musk and Donald Trump are busy smashing the state. Wisconsinites will have a chance to weigh in on candidates who support and oppose the anti-government crusade on April 1. | Getty Images Creative

Wisconsinites voted for Donald Trump by a narrow margin in November. Does that mean a majority of voters here want to cancel farmers’ federal contracts, shut down Head Start centers across the state and turn loose Elon Musk to feed federal agencies into the woodchipper while hoovering up private citizens’ financial information?

The new Trump era is putting Republican nihilism to the test. In our closely divided swing state, the first official indication of whether Trump voters are developing buyers’ remorse will come, fittingly, on April Fool’s Day. 

In the Wisconsin Supreme Court race, candidate Brad Schimel has received Elon Musk’s endorsement and is benefitting from a huge ad buy by Musk’s political action committee. And while some Republicans have expressed qualms about Trump and Musk’s assertions that they have unchecked power to ride roughshod over judges and the U.S. Constitution, Schimel has, notably, sided with Trump and Musk against the courts. 

Last month, Schimel took to Vicki McKenna’s rightwing talk radio show to denounce the prosecution and sentencing of the Jan. 6 rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol after Trump lost in 2020, saying juries in Washington, D.C., were too liberal to deliver a fair verdict. Recently, on the same talk radio program, he criticized federal judges for blocking the ransacking of federal agencies by Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), accusing the judges of “acting corruptly” by daring to issue temporary restraining orders.

The race between Schimel and Democratic-backed candidate Susan Crawford will determine the ideological balance of the Court and, it seems, whether a majority of justices believe in the integrity of the court system at all. 

Also on the April 1 ballot is the race for state schools superintendent, which pits a lobbyist for the private school voucher industry against a defender of public schools — an existential choice as the growth of schools vouchers is on track to bankrupt our state’s public school system and enrollment caps on voucher programs are set to come off next year.

The ideological struggle over the future of our state was on stark display this week as Gov. Tony Evers presented his budget plan — an expansive vision that uses the state surplus to boost funding for K-12 schools and the University of Wisconsin, health care, clean water and rural infrastructure, and leaves a cushion to help protect communities against what Evers called the “needless chaos caused by the federal government” under Trump.

In a familiar ritual, Republican legislators immediately shot down Evers’ plan, denounced it as “reckless spending” and promised to throw it in the trash and replace it with a stripped-down alternative based on austerity and tax cuts.

“Wisconsin voted for Donald Trump and his agenda to cut spending and find inefficiency in government,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos declared.

But did they? 

It’s not clear that most Wisconsinites wanted what Trump and Musk are delivering — cuts to health care and veterans’ services, the claw-back of infrastructure projects, mass firings at the park service and the chaotic suspension of promised federal funds for child care and other essential services in Wisconsin.

For generations, Republicans have complained about “red tape” and “big government” and promised “freedom” and lower taxes to constituents who liked the sound of all that. Under Trump, we are seeing anti-government ideology reach its full, unchecked fruition. Trump’s No. 1 private donor, the richest man in the world, is laughing all the way to the bank. He’s using his access to trillions of dollars in taxpayer funds to cancel food programs for poor children and to bolster federal contracts that enrich himself. 

This, in the end, is what privatization is all about — taking the collective wealth of millions of people who contribute to maintaining a decent, healthy society and concentrating it in the hands of one very rich, self-interested man.

The long-term, existential struggle between private wealth and the public good in Wisconsin includes the fight over whether to fund public schools or give away money to subsidize the tuition of private school families. It includes whether to be the second-to-last state to finally offer 12 months of postpartum Medicaid coverage to new mothers — something even our Republican legislators support, minus Vos. The two sides of our divided government are locked in a battle over whether our universities, public parks, infrastructure, clean water and affordable housing are a boondoggle or something we ought to protect. 

Given what’s happening to our country, Wisconsinites will have to think hard about which side they’re on.