Politics
Underly blames Legislature in State of Education speech
The Center Square – Wisconsin’s top education official, Jill Underly, gave her State of Education address Thursday, calling for a new way of funding…
By Jon Styf · 2026-09-24T19:35:50.120Z
The Center Square – Wisconsin’s top education official, Jill Underly, gave her State of Education address Thursday, calling for a new way of funding education in the state but failing to address her department’s lowering of education standards or backlog of 150 teacher license misconduct investigations.
Underly called the state’s current funding “stagnant” and said that it forces public schools into “impossible decisions.”
“Our schools are not the problem,” Underly said. "Our teachers are not the problem. Our students are not the problem. The problem is that we have asked them to carry the weight of decades of political decisions – and then blamed them when the burden became too heavy."
Research from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, however, shows that Wisconsin spends $19,000 per student, an increase last year of $154 per student.
The Department of Public Instruction is asking the state’s new governor and legislators to fund two additional full time staff positions in the next budget to make progress on that backlog.
“At present, there are roughly 150 open investigations and 60 community complaints to evaluate eight of which are from 2025, the remainder submitted in 2026 ,” the budget request said https://dpi.wi.gov/media/55860/download?inline . “The existing volume of investigations and complaints precludes the department’s existing Paralegal staff one permanent, one LTE from making meaningful progress in reducing the backlog, as the number of complaints received and investigations opened continue to increase.”
The request comes after DPI came under fire following an investigation from the Capital Times calling into question the transparency and effectiveness of DPI’s investigations into teacher license complaints for sexual misconduct and how it can prevent those teachers from returning to schools after those investigations.
Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin pointed to lowering standards, racial inequality in student achievement and stalled reading results as priorities rather than what Underly addressed.
“Wisconsin families don’t need another speech,” AFP WI State Director Megan Novak said in her response to the speech. “They need results. Instead of raising the bar, Jill Underly’s DPI lowered it and now parents can’t track whether their child or their school is actually improving. That is not the transparency parents need to make the best decision for their children.”
This story originally appeared on thecentersquare.com https://www.thecentersquare.com/wisconsin/article 56834115 22fc 464e a06a 6bfd8e855116.html .