Co-sponsored by more than two dozenstate lawmakers, including state education committee chairs Senator Alberta Darling and Representative Jeremy Thiesfeldt, Wisconsin’s Senate Bill 463 (and its companion version, Assembly Bill 488) would require public schools to disclose to parents and the public a listing of the actual materials making their way in front of students in K-12.
Adapted from the Goldwater Institute’s modelacademic transparency legislation now advancing in multiple states, the bill would ensure that radical, ideological materials will no longer land on students’ desks without public awareness, and that parents will no longer be expected to pay hundreds or thousands of dollars to extract curriculum information through expensive public records requests.
Instead, under the bill, public schools will proactively make this information available to parents, posting online the bibliographic information necessary to identify the specific learning materials used in their classrooms, “including the title and the author, organization or internet address associated with each specific learning material or educational activity.” With these requirements in place, parents will, for the first time, have reliable, easy access to the universe of materials their kids are encountering.
Speaking before the members of the Wisconsin Senate and Assembly Education Committees about the proposed legislation, Goldwater Institute Director of Education Policy Matt Beienburg shared the urgent need for, and practical benefits of, restoring transparency to our education system: