(The Center Square) – There is now a legal challenge to Wisconsin’s recently lowered state test scores.
The Institute for Reforming Government filed a case in Adams County that claims Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction violated the state’s open meetings law by secretly playing host to a working group of education bureaucrats in 2024. That working group drove DPI’s effort to rework Wisconsin’s standardized test scores.
“This workshop was essentially set up to refigure the cut scores, to rename them,” IRG attorney Jake Curtis explained in an interview on News Talk 1130 WISN.
Curtis said reworking the scores actually lowered them and misled parents about how well their kids are reading, writing and doing math.
“The problem, from a public policy standpoint, is that was lowering expectations,” Curtis added. “You’re not going to have an apples-to-apples comparison of how your kid was doing from previous years.”
But more than that, Curtis said DPI went to lengths to keep the effort to change the test scores from parents and the public.
“Attendees were asked to sign non-disclosure agreements, not allowed to post anything on social media,” Curtis said. “The public deserves to know. And those who attended, at least should have the right to discuss what was debated, and why these scores were lowered.”
But this isn’t the only time Curtis said DPI has hidden information from parents.
“Clearly, the concern here is, at DPI there seems to be a pattern of not informing the public,” Curtis said, “and most critically, on issues that the public really cares about.”
A Cap Times story last fall showed a pattern at DPI of ending or dismissing sexual misconduct and grooming investigations when suspected teachers surrendered their teaching licenses.
DPI has never addressed the claims that its 2024 waterpark weekend working group violated the open meetings law, but DPI officials have said they reworked the state’s test scores to better reflect how and what Wisconsin school kids are actually learning.
State Superintendent Jill Underly has been invited to testify at a legislative hearing at 10 a.m. on Wednesday about the secrecy at DPI.
