Wisconsin’s incumbent State Superintendent Jill Underly and education consultant Brittany Kinser discussed their positions on education funding, school choice and student performance at a candidate forum Wednesday.
The forum, hosted by the Wisconsin Public Education Network, will be the first and only time candidates will face off ahead of the April 1 general election.
The state superintendent is responsible for setting education standards, overseeing the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and influencing state education policy.
Both candidates call for increased funding for K-12 education
Underly said “public education is nonpartisan,” stressing the need for lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to work together to improve Wisconsin’s public education system.
Kinser agreed that bipartisan support is necessary to ensure K-12 schools get the funding they need, adding that the funding formula is “broken” and needs an “upgrade.”
“Schools are operating with limited resources, and taxpayers are concerned and tired of actually paying the referendums… Wisconsin’s funding formula needs to be modernized,” Kinser said.
Roughly 50% of Wisconsin’s school districts had to go to referendum for additional education funding in 2024, asking for almost $6 billion in total from Wisconsin residents.
In 2024, a total of 145 districts — more than one-third of the 421 total public school districts in Wisconsin — passed a referendum with a 70.1% passage rate, according to a Wisconsin Policy Forum report.
Gov. Tony Evers called on the Legislature to invest more than $3.1 billion in general and categorical aid for K-12 public schools in both his State of the State and budget addresses.
Republican lawmakers, who control the state Legislature and the budget-writing process, have pledged to throw out the governor’s proposed spending plan and write their own, with Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, saying Evers’ spending proposals are "dead on arrival.”
Kinser, Underly differ on school choice, private school funding
Kinser voiced strong support for school choice in Wisconsin and the ability for parents to choose which schools their children attend. She said that without funding from the state, a lot of families would not have access to school choice.
“We talk about vouchers as an object. These are children. These are families. In Milwaukee, it's mostly Black and brown families living in poverty, and we're saying we're going to take this option away from them,” Kinser said.
Former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson supported Wisconsin’s first school choice movement of the 1990s, which saw Milwaukee’s private school population increase from 341 students in 1990 to 29,000 students in 2021, according to school choice advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin.
For many families interested in private or parochial education for their children, the price of private education is a limiting factor. In Wisconsin, 21,638 students rely on the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program to fully fund their education across 344 choice schools, according to School Choice Wisconsin.
Private school voucher programs in Wisconsin service 43% of students in private schools. This number is expected to grow by around 60% once the voucher program’s enrollment cap sunsets in 2026.
While Kinser has advocated for increased funding for both K-12 public and private schools, Underly said she believes that public dollars should be invested in “the system that takes all kids.”
“Students who are in the voucher program are not outperforming Milwaukee public school students. They're all scoring below the state average,” Underly said. “I strongly believe that public dollars should be invested in public schools where all students, regardless of their background or needs, have access to that high quality education.”
Currently, state aid for education is distributed between two systems: private and public schools, meaning funding for private school vouchers comes out of the same pool of funding from the state as public schools. Underly said that because of this, as the funding for voucher programs increase, funding for public schools decrease.
Both Underly and Kinser said they are in favor of “decoupling” private school voucher funds from public education spending, making each a separate budget item, to ensure adequate funding for both public and private K-12 schools in Wisconsin.
A total of 799,230 students in Wisconsin attended public schools in 2024. About 92,000 students participated in the school choice program or the special needs scholarship program during the 2023-24 school year, totaling $573.6 million, according to DPI.
Both candidates aim to address achievement gaps in K-12 schools
Kinser said there needs to be accountability at the state level for how children are performing in K-12 schools in Wisconsin, referencing the latest National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) report that found that Wisconsin continues to have the widest racial achievement gap in math and reading scores in the nation.
In 2024, Black fourth-grade students in Wisconsin scored an average of 45 points lower than their white peers in reading, while Black eighth graders scored 39 points lower. Hispanic fourth graders had an average score of 25 points below white students, and economically disadvantaged fourth graders scored 30 points lower than their non-disadvantaged counterparts. These trends were similar among eighth graders.
“This is a crisis. We have to take accountability for it and ensure our schools are getting the support they need,” Kinser said.
Underly added that critics have argued that DPI hasn’t done enough to close these gaps, to which she said “they are absolutely right.”
“We should all be ashamed of it. Gaps are absolutely unacceptable, but we know how to solve the problem. It takes money and it takes effort,” Underly said, calling on the state Legislature to give K-12 education the funding it needs to address the gaps and better serve Wisconsin youth.
Early voting has begun in Wisconsin. Voters can find their polling place by visiting the MyVote Wisconsin website.
Anna Kleiber is the state news editor for The Daily Cardinal. She previously served as the arts editor. Anna has written in-depth on elections, legislative maps and campus news. She has interned with WisPolitics and Madison Magazine. Follow her on X at @annakleiber03.
