You all should know that this "research" group is wholly opposed to affirmative action in any of its manifestations. So one must assume that any position they take, and any stats they generate are biased toward their predetermined position.

Any truth to the whispers about town today that the CEO is funded by the same conservative, anti-public education groups that have funded Kaleem Caire's various ventures over the past decade? Allen Ruff has made a very persuasive argument that Caire is taking Koch Brothers monies designed to subvert public education.

First that I've heard that Koch is involved with any of this, including Kaleem Caire's projects.

Where's the substance to any of this? Not that this is impossible or unlikely, but I've also heard rumors that crop circles were created by aliens from outer space, that Area 51 was the military base from which all the fake US moon landings were shot, Obama was not born in the US, the 9/11 attack was orchestrated by Bush-Cheney, that FDR ordered the bombing of Pearl Harbor, that vaccines cause autism, the HPV vaccines cause mental retardation (from the enlightened Michelle Bachman), that Gov Walker was kicked out of college for cheating, that there are 7 Intelligences, etc.

dadanonymous, please say more. (Larry Winkler, please be nice or please be quiet.) If you have evidence, please share it.

Having been an initial strong and enthusiastic supporter of Madison Prep, I have become increasingly disturbed by the manipulation, politics and ego I have seen more recently. I do not trust what may be going on behind the scenes. Playing on the liberal white guilt that is so abundant in our city -- by saying that anyone who does not support Madison Prep is racist -- is extremist bullying and does nothing either to improve race relations in our community or advance the cause of supporting/improving minority achievement. $27 million is a huge amount of money! Why can't we work together to find less expensive ways to address the problems of low expectations (of students, of teachers, of parents, of families) and consequent low performance and achievement. This has become a political battle between hyper-inflated adult egos. Let's please refocus our attention and energy on our kids and their needs.

Can anyone tell us anything substantive about the Next Generation Education Foundation that Mr. Caire and his wife founded in 2006 and ran for three or four years before they moved here? What did it actually do? Where did its money come from? Does it still exist (and if not, why not and what happened?). It is very difficult to find information online. And the many articles that appeared when Mr. Caire arrived in Madison are surprisingly silent on exactly what he was doing right before he took over at the Urban League. Thanks.

The genesis of my question was the information shared by Allen Ruff at the recent school board meeting detailing how Mr. Caire's various projects in education were financially supported by right wing, anti-public education groups. Subsequent to that statement by Mr. Ruff, who is a bright man and certainly not prone to falsehoods, I've heard that these right wing anti-public education groups are Koch funded. However, I have yet to see any definitive connection, although by nature, such connections are rarely definitive. It has been mentioned that the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) that just raised a ruckus over UW admissions policies also has financial ties to Mr. Caire's prior endeavors in education.

I guess I fail to see how my comments were not nice or otherwise.

Nonetheless, if I feel like it, I will be neither nice nor quiet. Nor anonymous; at least I use my name in my posts and don't hide behind pseudonyms.

In any case, for many decades now, promises have been made to better education, and I don't see any evidence of improvement. Caire probably sees the progress the same as I, but specifically with regards to African-American kids. Seems to me, if promises are to be made, then promises are to be kept, and that hasn't happened.

I do, however, suspect that schools could do better, but neither they nor the teachers are the major cause of the problem, nor are they the sole solution. Seems as a society, we decided long ago that all social ills which we passively if not actively foster should be solved by the schools. That is asking too much.

Thank you, dadanonymous.

I am sure we would all appreciate the efforts of anyone willing to look into this. We need to know more, don't you think?

Can anyone get Allen Ruff to post?

Why does it matter who is funding CEO or Caire? Both may be funded by Koch or different folks. None of that matters to the substance of the issue raised by the Clegg.

I have seen many studies involving conservative economists and those considered liberal, several of which have been linked to from this site. Think of studies involving charter vs public schools, for example.

There is no question many of the conservative groups have cooked the numbers to support their political agenda, and disappointingly, the liberal groups seem incapable of raising cogent arguments and showing what the cooked numbers are, instead relying on very soft arguments. I very much miss the late Gerald Bracey who was alway cogent and made solid and thorough statistical arguments. I haven't seen any replacement for him.

I did scan the CEO paper, did not study it, but found it all conclusory. It certainly is easy to hide number cooking when the data used is not available, which their report does.

The UW did report summary data from their data warehouse (called INFOACCESS) of which I'm somewhat familiar having accessed a small portion of that information for certain data other analyses UW uses. See http://apa.wisc.edu/admissions/New_Freshmen_Applicants.pdf.

What I find distressing about UW Madison in this case is that they had the temerity to require a court decision that they had to give up the numbers to CEO so CEO could evaluate it. From what I can tell, UW was going to lose the lawsuit so why fight it? It's not that they haven't tried this tactic before and lost, too.

I don't know if UW has made the data UW supplied to CEO available for the rest of us to review, but that would give those outside of UW or CEO who have good data analysis skills the ability to perform their own analysis. Makes sense to me.

However, I'm very embarrassed by the behavior of the protesting, yelling and chanting of UW students at the Clegg presentation. Obviously, these 850 students have not taken the goal of a university education to heart. If CEO and Clegg cooked the numbers (and I would be surprised if they didn't), the proper approach would have been to show how the numbers were cooked and present an accurate picture of the diversity efforts and supply solid policy arguments in favor of UW's efforts, or even argue that UW does not go far enough.

Acting like uneducated hysterics does not serve a useful purpose to those supporting affirmative action. It does the opposite.