More on My Kinser Endorsement

Some of my liberal friends have expressed their unhappiness over my endorsement of Brittany Kinser for State Superintendent of Public Instruction.

So, let me expand on my reasons.

When I was at the city of Madison and there was a managerial opening I always first thought about how that department was functioning. If things were going good, I’d want to promote from within. If things were rocky, I’ld look to the outside.

You can’t take an honest look at DPI and conclude that things are in good shape there. Wisconsin is behind average on test scores, behind most states on recovery after COVID, not great on attendance and we have the widest racial achievement gap of any state in the nation.

So, the first question I need to ask is, why do we want to stick with the status quo?

Well, the status quo has a ready answer: it’s just a question of money. To be exact, the incumbent, Jill Underly, wants to spend the state’s entire $4 billion surplus on public education. But she proposes no changes, no reforms and she would ask for no accountability — no improvements in test scores or anything else. It also just doesn’t add up because if we use all that one-time money in this biennium, what do we do in the next one?

Moreover, it’s just simply untrue that money is the problem for most districts. In fact, last year Wisconsin communities passed referendums worth more in total than any year in history. Here in Madison we haven’t voted down a school referendum in 20 years and we just passed the largest combined operating and capital referendums in our history — a total of $506 million. Milwaukee also passed its largest referendum ever.

And the results are terrible. Madison’s test scores are among the lowest in the state, COVID recovery is behind most places, truancy is high, the racial achievement gap is yawning and behavioral issues, some dangerous, continue to be a problem. It’s a small wonder that the district is losing students in the fastest growing county in the state. And the situation in Milwaukee is even worse.

Pouring more money into this failing system is like owning a car with a bad transmission and thinking you can fix it by filling up the gas tank.

As regards DPI, you can make two arguments. The first is that they are at least partially responsible for this. The second is that education is a local responsibility and so, it’s not DPI’s fault that things are this bad. But if that’s the case then why does DPI exist at all? Are they accountable for nothing?

Underly strikes me as the classic big education bureaucrat. She simply wants to defend the status quo and demand more money. Four more years of this means four more years of failure, four more years of no new ideas, no accountability and no progress.

And as regards accountability, Underly wants less of it. She moved to change the way test scores are recorded in a way that makes it look like more students are performing at grade level when nothing about their actual skill levels has changed. And it’s suspicious that she took that step only months before her reelection. Even Tony Evers thought she was wrong to do it as she did.

So, given all that, I think it’s time for a change. I wanted that change to be in the form of Jeff Wright, the Sauk Prairie Superintendent, but he didn’t make it through the primary. So, the choice now is between Underly and Kinser.

I spent an hour with Kinser a few weeks ago and I came away impressed. She’s young and energetic. She believes in change aimed at performance. She’s passionate about kids. She’s not steeped in the ossified big ed bureaucracy.

My liberal friends didn’t have the benefit of talking directly with her. Nonetheless, they don’t like two things about her. The first is that she supports vouchers and the second is that she’s backed by Republicans and affiliated groups.

Let’s take vouchers first. It’s a non-issue because the number of vouchers and the rules surrounding them are set by the Legislature and Governor, not the Superintendent. But I don’t have any ideological problem with them. Why shouldn’t less well off families have options just as upper middle class families do? And competition is a good thing. Rather than complaining about how vouchers take funds away from public schools, those public schools should figure out why they’re losing market share and work to get it back. A system in which consumers have only one choice is going to produce an inferior product every time.

Now, I do think that schools that get public funding should be held accountable to the same standards public schools are and to the extent that they’re not right now that’s a problem that needs to be addressed. I also think that family income limits should remain in place and public dollars should not go to religious schools.

As for guilt by association, it’s true that Kinser is getting support from quarters I generally do not like. But in my conversation with her I came away convinced that she’s not a Republican or much of a partisan at all. In fact, she has supported Democrats, including contributions to Tammy Baldwin. It’s just an unfortunate reality today that everything’s become partisan — even these once nonpartisan spring elections. So, when the Democratic Party and the teachers union got behind Underly, the opposite groups were going to back her opponent.

Sure, I find that awkward company to be in, but it’s not all bad. Dr. Howard Fuller and Madison’s One City Schools founder and CEO Kaleem Caire are also in Kinser’s corner. There aren’t two people I respect more for their thoughtfulness and courage related to educational issues.

She’s also been endorsed by the center-left Wisconsin State Journal editorial board. And there’s at least one highly curious non-endorsement. Tony Evers is staying out of it because he says he doesn’t want to get involved in a nonpartisan contest — a compunction that hasn’t prevented him from endorsing Susan Crawford on the same nonpartisan ballot.

And the other side of that coin is that I’m not necessarily all that enamored with all of Underly’s supporters either. WEAC is a union. Its job is to fight for more money for teachers. Nothing wrong with that. That’s what unions do. But let’s not confuse what WEAC wants with what’s good for kids. The most egregious example of that disconnect was the union’s insistence that schools be kept closed much longer than they needed to be during COVID. That has cost a whole cohort of students in a way that will probably hurt them for the rest of their lives.

Finally, Kinser gets attacked for her background (she doesn’t currently hold a teaching license), but when I talked with her I learned that she was a special education teacher in the public schools on Chicago’s Southside (no place for shrinking violets), a teachers union member and a skeptic on vouchers and charter schools. She became a convert when she saw them in action. But it’s not like she only understands one side of the issue. She also worked for the widely respected Arne Duncan, who became Education Secretary under Barack Obama. She has a masters degree in educational leadership from Columbia.

Look, I don’t like what’s happened to our politics. In another time, the Underly-Kinser race might have been a civil affair with an honest discussion of the big issues in education. Instead, it has become just another tribal fight, the candidates are just two more stand-ins for the national teams of red and blue.

But I don’t see it as that cut and dried. It’s not enough for me to just know that one candidate is backed by the blues and the other by the reds. Underly’s performance has been poor. The performance of our public schools is lagging. Kinser at least shows promise to be a change agent. And change is what we need.

I’m voting for Kinser. I hope you’ll consider joining me.

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