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The Wisconsin State Senate takes up a bill Tuesday that would tie Wisconsin student test scores to standards set by a federal agency President Donald Trump has promised to gut. 

Lawmakers introduced the bill — AB 1 and its companion bill SB 18 — in reaction to changes the state Department of Public Instruction made last year to testing standards. Those changes included unlinking the standards from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) — also known as the “nation’s report card” — and changing the cut scores and terminology used for achievement levels. 

The bill would reverse the changes — requiring testing standards to go back to those used in 2019 and would require standards to be tied to the NAEP. Republican lawmakers have said the changes by DPI “lowered” the state’s academic standards.

“Let’s roll back to the standards that we had prior to the pandemic and move those forward as a way to gauge how our students are doing,” Rep. Robert Wittke (R-Caledonia) said at a hearing last week. 

The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) has denied the changes lowered standards, saying the changes align assessment cut scores to Wisconsin academic standards. After the Assembly passed the bill last month, threats to the federal agency that oversees NAEP have increased.

The NAEP is a congressionally mandated, representative assessment administered nationally to measure what students across the United States know and can do. The test assesses students in the fourth, eighth and 12th grade in various subjects, including reading and math, though not every student takes the NAEP. 

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), which was first established in 1867 to collect and report information about education for the nation, is responsible for administering the NAEP. It became part of the Department of Education after the agency was created in 1979.

The agency has been affected by the Trump administration’s moves to gut the Department of Education. First, an upcoming math and reading test for 17 year olds was canceled. Peggy Carr, the federal official in charge of the program, was placed on administrative leave. Last week, as a part of vast layoffs in the Department of Education, the statistics agency’s workforce was cut from about 100 employees to three, according to the Hechinger Report.

During a committee hearing on the bill last week, the status of the federal agency was a point of debate between lawmakers. 

Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) asked lawmakers if they heard about the recent news and if the purpose of the bill was to say,  “we should not eliminate the nation’s report card.” 

“Would you agree that it’s important?” Larson asked. 

Wittke said that isn’t what the bill is about and said it’s “about Wisconsin standards.” 

“I anticipated this question because I see that in the news everybody’s talking about the education department and what’s being done. They had a $289 billion dollar budget, the things that are being done now are the different administration that’s taking a look at the operation of that,” Wittke said. He said the last standards would be “at least a good starting point for the basis of our standards.” 

“The issue is they’re eliminating it,” Larson said. He quoted an ABC News report in which one employee who was fired from the agency said producing the “nation’s report card” without a full staff “would be the equivalent of manning a 13-person sailboat with a 12-month-old” and isn’t possible.

Jagler countered that NAEP would not be affected by the cuts. 

“If you look deeper into the cuts, NAEP is not affected. NAEP is not affected by what the administration or the education secretary is doing,” Jagler said. He said the independent National Assessment Governing Board, which is responsible for setting NAEP standards, is separate from the NCES. 

“It’s a totally different thing, but I understand what you’re saying, but NAEP will not be affected, which is the heart of this bill,” Jagler said. 

While the National Assessment Governing Board is responsible for setting NAEP policy, it does not administer the test as the National Center for Education Statistics does. According to the NAEP website, the NCES also works to “collect and analyze information and statistics in a manner that meets the highest methodological standards” and “maintain data credibility through its assessment design, collection, analysis, release, and dissemination procedures.”

The DPI’s recent written testimony cites the upheaval within the federal government as one of the top reasons the state education agency opposes the bill. During an Assembly hearing in February the DPI focused on the ways that NAEP and state testing don’t align in defending the decision to uncouple state standards from the national rubric.

“Anyone who follows the daily news from Washington knows that this is only the beginning and what comes next is unknown to say the least. It is clear in this time of massive uncertainty, cuts and disruption at NAEP and the USDE that it is not the time to tie Wisconsin statute to anything related to NAEP,” Deputy State Superintendent Tom McCarthy said in written testimony. “These cancellations will have implications for the accuracy of national-level data.”

The DPI has said that the national report card is helpful to compare students’ performance among states, but is not as helpful for understanding whether students have met the state’s academic standards. During hearings on the bill,  McCarthy explained that in the 2010s many states were moving towards aligning their standards with NAEP, but since that time some states have moved away from the national report card for similar reasons. 

Some of those states include Alaska and New York. Meanwhile, states including Virginia are working to align their standards to NAEP. 

The bill passed the committee on Friday in a 3-2 party line vote, and is on track to pass in the Republican-led Senate Tuesday.

The bill would then go to Gov. Tony Evers, who has been critical of the testing standards changes but has said he will likely veto the legislation because he thinks the DPI should make decisions about state tests.

State Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie) testifies on Tuesday, Feb. 11, in favor of legislation to require state employees to work in the office five days a week starting July 1. (Screenshot/WisEye)

State employees who worked in the office before the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020 would have to return to working in person starting July 1 under a proposed bill that went before a state Senate committee Tuesday.

“The pandemic is now over and has been for quite a while,” said State Rep. Amanda Nedweski (R-Pleasant Prairie), testifying at a public hearing on SB-27 in the Senate Committee on Licensing, Regulatory Reform, State and Federal Affairs. “Yet a high volume of state duties that required in-person execution prior to 2020 are still being performed in locations outside of the state offices in which they were long housed prior to the pandemic.”

Sen. Cory Tomczyk (R-Mosinee), the bill’s Senate author, cited decisions by major U.S. employers to return to at least partial in-office schedules. “Returning to work in person makes sense and forces accountability,” Tomczyk said.

Nedweski and Tomczyk were the only witnesses to testify at Tuesday’s hearing. There is not an Assembly companion bill, but Nedweski is the lead Assembly co-sponsor of the Senate legislation. She also chairs the Assembly’s new Committee on Government Operations, Accountability, and Transparency.

Republican state lawmakers have been pushing for state employees to end remote work for most of the last four years.

Meanwhile, the Department of Administration (DOA) and the administration of Gov. Tony Evers have been moving forward with a plan, Vision 2030, to reduce the state’s real estate footprint.

No administration representatives testified at Tuesday’s hearing. But in a memo to reporters Tuesday afternoon, Evers’ communications director, Britt Cudaback, said Vision 2030 is based on moving to a “modern and hybrid work environment” mixing remote and in-office work “in order to continue to be a competitive employer and bolster our efforts to recruit, train, and retain workers statewide.”

If SB-27 is enacted, she said, returning to in-office-only work would require more private leases for office space or reopening buildings that are to be closed and sold, or both. The administration has projected savings of more than $7 million in occupancy costs and more than $540 million in deferred maintenance costs.

Reversing those plans “would neither be pragmatic nor fiscally prudent,” Cudaback said.

At the hearing, Nedweski emphasized that the bill’s intent is not simply to bar all remote work, but she argued that the state hasn’t systematically evaluated its impact.

“We don’t have a handle on what’s going on,” she said. “So the idea would be, everybody, please come back and let’s figure out what the best situation is.”

Two years ago the Legislature’s Joint Audit Committee commissioned the Legislative Audit Bureau to review remote work and space allocation in state government. The resulting report said the state lacked comprehensive data on the extent of remote work and recommended more detailed monitoring and documentation of remote work agreements and practices.

Democrats on the five-member Senate committee balked at the legislation, calling it inflexible and a potential deterrent to the state’s ability to hire.

Sen. Tim Carpenter (D-Milwaukee) noted with remote work more state employees have been able to work from counties across Wisconsin, not just in its two largest cities. “If those people are going to have to keep their jobs and be in the office, which I assume would be Madison, are they going to be forced to give up their jobs?” he asked.

Nedweski and Tomczyk said that employees who were hired to work remotely or had employment agreements allowing remote work before the pandemic would not be required to return to an office five days a week.

But Sen. Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee), said the legislation’s wording appeared to be more narrowly written. “I am worried about this being wildly inflexible, and you’re talking about a level of flexibility that is not contained within the bill,” he said.

Nedweski said she “would be more than happy” to add language “that underscores that we already have DOA policy in place to allow for flexibility.”

Larson replied that the bill “would be a law that would override the policy.”

In an email message, Nedweski’s office staff member Tami Rongstad told the Wisconsin Examiner that there would be an amendment to exempt the University of Wisconsin Hospitals and Clinics from the bill “and clarify that the requirement to return to onsite work would not apply to duties that were performed off-site prior to March 1, 2020.”

Rongstad said Nedweski “was open to considering adding clarifying language to the bill related to future telework options for state employees beyond the July 1, 2025, return to in-person work date,” based on existing terms for remote work in the state human resources handbook.