Tony Evers didn’t need the legislature. He didn’t need to amend Wisconsin Administrative Code § PI 9.06. He didn’t even need to rewrite a single line of the pupil nondiscrimination statute that still demands nothing more than “equality of educational opportunity and nondiscrimination.” Instead, Evers and his Department of Public Instruction (DPI) did what bureaucrats do best: they used “guidance,” “templates,” and an administrative nudge to refocus the entire system towards equity (DEI).
What was supposed to be a routine five-year self-evaluation of nondiscrimination became a nudge that delivered universal DEI acceptance, equity outcomes, racial proportionality, “barriers” to equity, and culturally responsive everything, into every public school district in Wisconsin.
This is how they did it.
The legal requirement under PI 9.06 is crystal clear and has never changed since 1986: every school board must conduct a self-evaluation of its nondiscrimination policies and “efforts to achieve equality of educational opportunity.” Districts must produce a public report and submit it to DPI upon request. That’s it. Race-neutral. Merit-based. Equality under the law.
But starting in the 2011–2012 Cycle IV evaluations, and weaponized further under Evers’ direct leadership in 2016–17, DPI issued standardized instructions and report templates that quietly added equity language that directly conflicted with the statutory language of equality.
The undeniable proof is DPI’s official document “Introduction to the Pupil Nondiscrimination Self-Evaluation” for the 2016–17 school year. Issued under State Superintendent Tony Evers and listing Paul Sherman as the Pupil Nondiscrimination Program Consultant, it told every district exactly how to frame their required report:
“The self-evaluation required by PI 9.06 of the Wisconsin Administrative Code is more than simply a legal requirement. It is an invaluable tool that can be used to strengthen our commitment and efforts to foster equitable and successful schools for all students…”
That single paragraph—verbatim—now appears in the opening of most districts’ public PI 9.06 reports across the state. Districts didn’t write it. DPI wrote it and handed it to them as the official introduction. Copy, paste, comply.
DPI didn’t stop with a single nudge. The same guidance pushed districts to: Disaggregate every data point by race, gender, disability, and “other identity categories.” Identify “barriers” to equity and “underrepresented groups.” Measure success by closing racial outcome gaps instead of equal rules and access. Integrate “equity and diversity” into discipline, counseling, curriculum, athletics, scholarships, and gifted programs.
They even maintained a resource called “Benchmarks for an Equitable School” that framed the entire exercise around equity metrics far beyond anything in the actual statute.
The result was predictable. Districts dutifully followed DPI’s lead and began their equity quest chasing funding and compliance, treating the guidance as mandatory. Green Bay Area Public Schools (GBAPS) is the perfect, self-incriminating exhibit.
In their 2023 PI 9.06 self-evaluation, GBAPS openly brags about creating “a calibration system to ensure…disciplinary hearings were equitable across racial groups” and to “make the disciplinary hearings more proportionate based on the District’s student population.” They analyzed disaggregated suspension data showing Black students were over-represented and adjusted the system accordingly. Every restorative justice circle and equity-filtered mission directive hadn’t brought the disparities down, so they did what any good bureaucracy would do: they recalibrated. They changed the very definition of what was a suspendable offense. And like good bureaucrats, they couldn’t have been prouder. On paper the numbers looked more ‘equitable.’ In reality, the schools became less safe.
Even the Gifted & Talented program wasn’t spared. The district admitted the program was “predominantly white” and “not economically disadvantaged.” So they lowered identification thresholds on the Cog-AT test because higher-scoring students didn’t represent the “diverse student population groups in the District.” Then they announced they would expand the very definition of “giftedness” to include fine arts and leadership — explicitly to increase participation of First Nations, Black, Hispanic, and two-or-more-races students.
All of it was presented as fulfilling PI 9.06’s requirement for “equality of educational opportunity.”
This wasn’t a rogue district. This was DPI’s system operating exactly as designed.
The timeline is undeniable. Evers’ DPI launched the equity machine in 2009 with Pacific Education Group’s “Courageous Conversations” training for the entire Cabinet. By 2014, the Promoting Excellence for All (PEFA) Task Force—chaired by Evers’ appointee Dr. Demond Means—had become the blueprint for color-conscious strategies statewide. The 2016–17 guidance simply operationalized it inside the required PI 9.06 reports.
When Evers left DPI for the governor’s mansion, his successors kept the templates in place. Jill Underly’s DPI still distributes the identical 2023 template with the exact same language today.
No formal rulemaking. No public hearing. No legislative vote. Just guidance documents, standardized templates, and a wink and a nod that every district understood: use this language, adopt these metrics, or risk looking non-compliant.
DPI never had to change the law because they controlled the enforcement mechanism. They turned a nondiscrimination self-evaluation into a mandatory equity audit and then accepted reports that celebrated race-conscious discipline, race-targeted scholarships, and “detracked” gifted programs as compliant.
The human cost is already laid out in brutal detail in the “The DEI Mission.” Wisconsin still owns some of the worst Black-White achievement gaps in the nation. Merit, excellence, and high expectations were sacrificed on the altar of DEI. And DPI’s own documents prove they did it deliberately, systematically, and without ever asking the people of Wisconsin for permission.
This is administrative lawfare at its finest.
