Lawsuit claims DPI violated Wisconsin open meetings law

A new lawsuit from the conservative Institute for Reforming Government alleges the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction violated open meetings law when it held a conference in the Wisconsin Dells in 2024.

The lawsuit, filed Tuesday in Adams County Circuit Court, focuses on a four-day conference at the Chula Vista Resort where DPI met with educators and Data Recognition Corporation, the vendor for the Forward Exam, to work on standard setting.

During the meeting, the vendor worked with a group of 88 educators on new testing standards for students and recommended cutting scores to divide students into four performance levels.

“The standard setting was required because of recent changes to the tests,” according to a report from Data Recognition Corporation.

However, the lawsuit alleges DPI violated Wisconsin Open Meetings Law.

“The meeting was not noticed to the public, was not open to the public, and participants were required to sign blanket non-disclosure agreements,” a Wednesday statement from the Institute for Reforming Government said.

“Information about the meeting only came to light after IRG and the Dairyland Sentinel sought the release of public records after a 12-month delay.”

DPI’s “Standard Setting Committee and Standard Setting Sub-Committees” were named in the complaint.

The lawsuit alleges the conference was “shrouded in secrecy.”

Jacob Curtis, general counsel at Institute for Reforming Government, said the lawsuit is not focused on the fact that the meeting was held.

“What we are claiming in this lawsuit is that public notice should have been issued such that any concerned individual in the state — whether it be an individual or somebody within an organization like IRG — that we would have been able to … have notice that the meeting was taking place and attend,” Curtis said.

Republicans have been critical of the updated testing benchmarks. Republican state lawmakers have also questioned the department on if open meetings laws were violated, while raising concerns about the price of the conference, which was $368,885.

Responding to lawmakers’ earlier complaints, Rich Judge, assistant state superintendent for government and public affairs, told a legislative committee in April that the conference did not violate open meetings law, saying it was attended by educators and facilitated by the vendor rather than being a quorum of public officials.

In an email Tuesday, DPI spokesperson Chris Bucher said, “Throughout this process, the DPI has openly and transparently participated in legislative hearings related to this matter, which the Republican co-chair of a legislative committee called ‘routine.’”

“However, more than two years after the fact, a special interest group with a well-documented political agenda continues to recycle unfounded accusations, diverting public resources and agency time away from the work that matters most: supporting Wisconsin students, educators and schools,” Bucher wrote.

Wisconsin’s Open Meetings Law says that, “all meetings of all state and local governmental bodies shall be publicly held in places reasonably accessible to members of the public and shall be open to all citizens at all times unless otherwise expressly provided by law.” The law also says that meetings of a governmental body, “shall be preceded by public notice” and “shall be held in open session.”

The complaint said that although the Standard Setting Committee did not vote, it, “reached its decisions via ‘consensus’ and acted upon those decisions by forwarding its recommendations to DPI.”

The lawsuit asks the court for a judgement declaring that DPI violated the open meetings law and that any action that resulted from the meeting be void.