[Madison, WI] – Former DPI Secretary Tony Evers should know better than to take credit for someone else’s work. Nonetheless, Evers continues to plagiarize throughout his re-election bid – claiming Republicans’ accomplishments as his own and misleading the public about his failed education record.

As the MacIver Institute points out, Evers’ new education-focused ad is misleading at best. While Evers touts Wisconsin’s rise on the US News’ schools ranking, “the current ranking uses data largely from the years when Scott Walker was governor, and the lower 2018 ranking was after nearly a decade of Evers’ leadership as DPI Superintendent.”

Meanwhile, according to DPI’s own data, English language arts proficiency is down by over 16 percent, math proficiency is down by over 20 percent, and just 8 percent of Black students are proficient in math. Tony Evers is failing Wisconsin kids.

Read more from the MacIver Institute in Wisconsin Spotlight below:

MacIver Fact Check: Evers’ Ad Fails Truth Test
MacIver Institute
Wisconsin Spotlight
July 19, 2022

The Evers camp has put out an ad to credential him as an education expert who knows what’s best for kids. The ad makes several claims about Evers’ education record we will check against the facts.

Claim 1: Tony Evers has Taken Wisconsin Schools into the Top 10 in the U.S.

The ad repeats a brag Evers has been making for months. The top 10 ranking issued by US News, shows Wisconsin’s rank improved 10 places since the 2018 list. Evers has been taking credit for the improvement although the current ranking uses data largely from the years when Scott Walker was governor, and the lower 2018 ranking was after nearly a decade of Evers’ leadership as DPI Superintendent.

First, let’s start with the obvious. K12 student achievement numbers are trending the wrong way in Wisconsin and the most recent proficiency scores were abysmal.

[…]

Evers didn’t work with the legislature on K12 spending or policy initiatives. Evers himself criticized the two Republican budgets as he signed them, and he even threatened to veto the entire 2021-2023 budget, something that has never been done before in state history. His fellow democrats overwhelmingly opposed the Republican budgets he signed.

With 2 decades in leadership at DPI and 4 years as governor, Tony Evers should have a raft of education accomplishments to highlight in his re-election campaign. But his first education ad indicates that like the rest of us, he is struggling to determine what those accomplishments are as he brags about schools that are failing to educate our kids, touts hand-outs of one-time pandemic dollars that don’t deliver as promised, and indulges in utter fantasy about his working relationship with the legislature.

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