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Go Public Action Briefing: Assessment, Accountability & Adequacy
January 27 @ 8:00 am - 5:00 pm
Wed. Jan. 29, 2025. 6:30-8:00 pm via zoom. Register to receive the link prior to event. This event is free and open to Wisconsin Public Education Network partners and champions for thriving public schools.
New changes to standardized testing scoring and reporting have been the topic of much debate and confusion in recent months, and a new bill proposal, LRB 0976: relating to: changes to the educational assessment program and the school and school district accountability report, is being fast-tracked for co-sponsorship by Senator Jagler and Representatives Wittke and Novak (with a short deadline of Jan. 28 at 4pm). We expect this bill to be fast-tracked for a hearing as well (possibly as early as Feb. 6).
Join us on Wed. Jan. 29 from 6:30-8:00 to unpack what this proposal means to how we assess and report student achievement, and how we can best ensure whatever “accountability” measures the state mandates come with funding adequate to meet the needs of all students. We’ll be joined by Dr. Christopher Saldaña (UW-Madison), Dr. David Knight and Dr. Matthew Gardner Kelly (both of the University of Washington), and Christopher Thiel (Legislative Policy Manager, Milwaukee Public Schools), with additional discussants tbd. Our experts will provide critical context for this bill, share how similar changes to cut scores in other states have been enacted, and discuss the impact on students and public schools.
About our speakers:
Matthew Gardner Kelly, Educational Foundations, Leadership, and Policy and Social and Cultural Foundations, University of Washington. Matthew Gardner Kelly studies how racial, economic, and spatial inequities in education are created through state action, normalized in public discourse over time, and resisted by historically marginalized communities. His first book, Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequity, was published by Cornell University Press in 2024. The book traces how a series of seemingly mundane and technical policies connected to public school funding helped create the racially, economically, and spatially fragmented postwar metropolis. In tracing how a poorly understood world of lawmaking connected to school funding extracted wealth from communities of color, subsidized white affluence, and promoted residential segregation since the 19th century, the book sheds new light on the culpability of the state in the production of educational inequities that persist in the present.
David Knight, Associate Professor, Danforth Educational Leadership Program and Educational Policy, Organization and Leadership, University of Washington. Dr. David Knight is Director of the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy and the Center for Early Childhood Policy and Equity at the University of Washington College of Education and serves as Associate Professor of Education Finance and Policy. David is a Fellow at the National Education Policy Center and a member of the Board of Trustees of the National Education Finance Academy.
Christopher Saldaña is an assistant professor of K-12 educational leadership and policy analysis at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Chris’s research examines the relationship between K-12 school finance and educational opportunity, focusing particularly on the educational experiences of minoritized and marginalized students. Chris uses multiple and mixed methods in his research.
This event is part of our 2025 GO PUBLIC! ACTION LAB, a series of briefings with education experts, policy analysts and advocates to unpack and understand the content and impacts of legislative proposals and find common ground for local action with statewide impact.