MADISON, Wis. — Democratic Gov. Tony Evers vetoed a Republican-authored bill Friday that would have required state education officials to score standardized student tests according to the scale they used years ago.

What You Need To Know

  • Wisconsin's governor has vetoed a Republican-authored bill that would revive old standards for student test scores and report cards

  • Superintendent Jill Underly changed standardized testing benchmarks and reclassified levels of student achievement in 2024

  • Her opponents argue the changes lower the bar for student performance and muddy school district performances

  • The Senate passed the bill earlier this month. The Assembly passed the bill in February

State schools Superintendent Jill Underly, a liberal who faces conservative Brittany Kinser in Tuesday's spring election, changed student standardized testing benchmarks and scoring thresholds for school district performance report cards last year. She has said that she made the performance changes at the request of Wisconsin teachers and how they felt their students can perform.

Republicans argue the changes watered down standards in an effort to artificially inflate performance grades and made it harder to compare Wisconsin students and districts to their peers around the rest of the country. Evers has said Underly made a mistake, but online legislative records indicate he vetoed the bill on Friday morning.

The governor said in his veto message that while he's been critical of the process, he objects to legislators trying to undermine the state superintendent's authority and independence. Evers served as state schools superintendent before he became governor in 2019.

In a statement, Underly commended the veto.

"The proposal was deeply flawed as it relied on the NAEP – a federal assessment that is currently being cut by the federal government and is not aligned to Wisconsin’s rigorous standards – to influence local school policies. Most importantly, it undermined the authority of the state superintendent as outlined in Wisconsin’s Constitution," Underly said in part.

Kinser also responded to the veto.

“The decision to restore high standards now rests in the hands of Wisconsin voters. If elected to be the next DPI Superintendent, I will restore high standards on Day One. Our kids can’t wait and they deserve so much better," Kinser said.

The measure would have required education officials to apply performance levels established by the National Assessment of Educational Process when rating the Wisconsin Forward exam, a standardized English and math test.

They also would have had to use terms from the 2021-22 school year to rate student performance on two other standardized tests, the PreACT and ACT with Writing in English, Reading and Mathematics. The categories would be called “below basic,” “basic,” “proficient” or “advanced.” DPI now describes student performance levels as “advanced,” “meeting,” “approaching” and “developing.”

The state Department of Public Instruction would have had to use the same scoring system for school district report cards as the agency used during the 2019-20 school year.

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