(The Center Square) – It’s not just the nearly $400,000 expense that has one watchdog group wanting more from Wisconsin’s public school managers.
The Institute for Reforming Government on Thursday said lawmakers in Madison need to question the secrecy around the Department of Public Instruction’s 2024 meeting to rewrite the state’s testing standards.
“What justification does DPI have to hold this standard setting workshop in secret?” IRG’s Jake Curtis asked during an interview on News Talk 1130 WISN. “Either this was a formal workshop committee, in which case the open meetings law is triggered, or essentially the way that DPI framed this was dishonest.”
DPI invited 88 education professionals to the Wisconsin Dells in 2024 to rewrite the standards for Wisconsin’s state tests. DPI eventually lowered those standards. Critics say lowering those standards covers up how poorly students in Wisconsin schools are reading and doing math.
Curtis said if the 88 people at the conference worked on those standards together, that work should be public. He also said doing the work in secret, and continuing to keep the work secret, would be against the law.
“When courts look at alleged violations of the open meetings law, one of the factors is going to be ‘is there an extra level of [public] interest?’ And if there is, that government entity can have a really, really hard time justifying why they didn’t properly notice that meeting.”
Curtis said it is possible that a court could rule that DPI’s work during the secret meeting should never have happened. If that happens, Wisconsin’s new state test standards could be tossed out.
Curtis said the first step should be a legislative hearing. He said Wisconsin lawmakers need to get some basic answers from DPI and the 88 other people invited to the 2024 workshop.
“I would ask DPI [to] make some personnel available. Superintendent Jill Underly, DPI’s director of the office of educational accountability, DPI’s assistant director of the OEA and the actual members of these workshop committees,” Curtis explained. “Ask them the questions. What was actually shared with the attendees? Were these Power Points about how to message the new scores? Was it focused on specific school districts? Remember these were individual school board members. We’re asking all that. I don’t have the answer. Nobody does because nobody was there.”
