Here & Now

Evers, Michels and Culture Wars Over Education in Wisconsin

Frederica Freyberg:

In just a few days, voters will go to the polls and decide what the future of Wisconsin government will look like. Democratic Governor Tony Evers says he has spent the last four years playing goalie, vetoing hundreds of bills passed by a Republican-controlled legislature. If he wins re-election, he can expect more of the same in his second term as the legislature is all but assured to remain in Republican hands. If Republican challenger Tim Michels wins, you can expect a very different scenario and he has promised to “transform Wisconsin for generations to come.” The future of public education is at stake in this election as the candidates have very different visions for how our schools should operate. Zac Schultz reports.

Tim Michels:

We are going to stop the CRT and get back to the ABCs.

Zac Schultz:

Republican Tim Michels’ education plan can be reduced down to one line and he says it in every speech.

Tim Michels:

We are going to stop the CRT and get back to the ABCs. We are going to stop the CRT and get back to the ABCs.

Woman:

Time is up please. Governor?

Tony Evers:

CRTs are not taught in our schools and the ABCs are. In fact, most parents teach the ABCs at home.

Zac Schultz:

CRT is short for Critical Race Theory, a college-level political theory that uses race as a lens to examine history. But in political discourse, CRT has become part of the ongoing culture wars that drive Republican turnout at the polls.

Tim Michels:

Now it’s all about the acronyms: LGBTQ and CRT and BLM.

Tony Evers:

When you start picking people out, whether it’s black kids, brown kids, LGBTQ kids, wokeness. All of a sudden you divided everybody. And now people can get excited and upset and angry. That does nothing for a conversation. And it sounds like somebody that has never walked through a public school in their life.

Zac Schultz:

Democrat Tony Evers is very comfortable in public schools even if the kids confuse him for someone else.

School kid:

You look like somebody I know.

Tony Evers:

Governor of the state of Wisconsin, you may have seen me on TV.

School kid:

You look like Joe Biden.

Tony Evers:

Joe Biden? Well, that’s a compliment.

Zac Schultz:

Prior to becoming governor, Evers spent his entire career in education, as a teacher, administrator, and as the state superintendent. He wants to reinvest more money into public schools, proposing $2 billion in additional spending in the next budget.

Tony Evers:

We need more resources for them. No question about that.

Zac Schultz:

Tim Michels did not agree to an interview for this story but has made his positions clear in numerous speeches and debates.

Tim Michels:

Our education system is broken in Wisconsin. The problem there is we’re already throwing so much money at education. That’s been the fix, if you will, for the last 10 or 20 or 30 years. More money at education, more money at education and it’s not working. The definition of insanity.

Man:

We’ll leave it at that.

Zac Schultz:

His solution is what he calls universal school choice.

Tim Michels:

We are going to have education reform. What are we going to do? Universal school choice.

Zac Schultz:

His website is light on specifics, but the policy would likely lift the enrollment and income caps on the current voucher programs, allowing wealthy families to use tax dollars to pay private school tuition. Evers says the problem is when voucher dollars leave the public schools, they still have to pay the light bill and they are required to raise property taxes to make up the difference.

Tony Evers:

This will be real likely a half billion dollar property tax increase.

Zac Schultz:

Michels says his plan is needed by pointing to a handful of Milwaukee schools in Black neighborhoods that saw reading scores crash during COVID.

Tim Michels:

Baby Kewonn and thousands of young babies like Kewonn, and baby girls, have zero chance at being successful in life unless, unless we change education. That’s why it’s the foundation of what we’re going to do. We’re going to get universal school choice, and we’re going to help get Milwaukee headed in the right direction.

Zac Schultz:

The problem with his argument is Milwaukee has had a voucher program for three decades. Universal school choice won’t change the situation there at all. Attacking schools may be good politics, but Evers says it’s dangerous policy.

Tony Evers:

What does that do to our institutions in the meantime? It destroys them. So it’s politics at its worst.

Zac Schultz:

And the politics may turn into policy. Evers vetoed a Republican bill last year that would have allowed parents to sue their local school districts over things like the use of names and pronouns for transgender kids. Michels would sign it.

Tony Evers:

If my opponent is governor, all 128 bills that I did veto over the last three and a half years will become the law of the land impacting voting rights, impacting reproductive health, impacting our public schools, you name it. Wisconsin will be a different place.

Tim Michels:

We know they’re indoctrinating our children.

Zac Schultz:

In his speeches to more conservative audiences, Michels’ rhetoric becomes more inflamed.

Tim Michels:

That is a cultural shift that the left wants. It’s part of their destroying America.

Zac Schultz:

At one speech, Michels linked public schools with a number of movements connected to black America.

Tim Michels:

We believe this country is on a slippery slope towards socialism. It’s being cloaked, cloaked behind CRT and BLM and defund the police.

Tony Evers:

It’s all dog whistle politics.

Zac Schultz:

To Evers, the racist undertones should not be ignored.

Tony Evers:

There’s a lot of harm that’s done by dividing people, dividing people and dividing people. That’s how Trump does it. That’s how my opponent does it.

Zac Schultz:

At that same event, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis praised Michels.

Ron DeSantis:

I really believe everything we’ve done in Florida, you will be able to do in Wisconsin and then some.

[cheering]

Zac Schultz:

Earlier this year DeSantis signed a bill critics called the “Don’t say gay” bill, which prevents elementary teachers from talking about sexual orientation and gender identity with students.

Tony Evers:

We don’t need Ron DeSantis to come to Wisconsin and tell us how to do things.

Zac Schultz:

Evers says the politics of DeSantis and Michels aren’t good for Wisconsin schools.

Tony Evers:

I read that he said, if my opponent’s elected, we can be like Florida. Well, whoop-de-do? Exactly who thinks that’s a good idea?

Zac Schultz:

So how does Michels want students educated on the issues of race and gender?

Tim Michels:

We’re going to let parents decide, not a couple of woke educrats that are going to say this is what it is now, we’re going to start teaching this, that this is bad and this is good.

Tony Evers:

Obviously, he believes that, that there’s this liberal cabal in every school district in the state that is woke, whatever that means.

Jill Underly:

We need to make sure kids see themselves represented in the history that we teach.

Zac Schultz:

State Superintendent Jill Underly wrote an editorial this year saying “Critical Race Theory is not a subject being taught in K-12 schools,” but she says, “if what you’re actually asking is, are we teaching students about race and racism? Then the answer is and should be yes.” And that’s what has Michels upset.

Tim Michels:

I disagree with the statement Frederica that everything is being taught properly right now. Parents have come to me and shown me the stuff that’s being taught to their kids in school and they’re outraged and they don’t like it.

Zac Schultz:

Evers says Michels is trying to use that confusion and outrage to get elected.

Tony Evers:

It bothers me because people can’t define it and then people get angry with each other. It’s just a way of dividing people and there is political sense in dividing people. If you divide people, then you’re going to be — and you divide them in such a way that 51% of them believe you. You get elected.

Zac Schultz:

Reporting from Madison, I’m Zac Schultz for “Here & Now.”