You may have heard 2019’s Forward Exam state test scores came out…

St. Marcus is proud to be a top 2 school serving low-income, African American students in Wisconsin! (We’ll catch up, @MilwCollegePrep. ?) pic.twitter.com/qnf0dYKd3h

— St. Marcus School (@StMarcusSchool) September 13, 2019

An interview with St. Marcus’s Henry Tyson.

Milwaukee NNS:

We are thrilled to be breaking ground to expand the North Campus, giving us the space we urgently need for both our students and to serve the surrounding community,” said Henry Tyson, St. Marcus’ Superintendent. “The outpouring of support from individual donors, foundations, community partners and corporations in the community has been a true blessing. This expansion allows St. Marcus to continue to grow its reach and respond to parent’s demands for a high-quality education for their children. Thank you to everyone who has supported St. Marcus scholars and made their success possible.”

The ceremony featured a student-centered welcome as 160 students greeted guests with a morning assembly singing “He knows my name” and “Underneath the shining star” and the school’s theme poem, Be Strong. Superintendent Henry Tyson addressed attendees and spoke about the struggles within the City of Milwaukee and the need to continue to grow so that as many students as possible receive a high-quality education. Tyson acknowledged and thanked all those who made the expansion possible starting with parents, staff, individual donors and foundation/corporate representatives in attendance. Attendees included representatives from the Fleck Foundation, Bradley Foundation, Lakeview Foundation, Siebert Lutheran Foundation, Sommer’s Automotive, Schools That Can Milwaukee, PAVE, Park Bank, Partnership Bank, Milwaukee Lutheran High School, Rinka Chung Architecture and Catalyst Construction.

Henry Tyson interview.

Alan Borsuk;

He thinks Milwaukee has advantages in shooting for success, including its size, the overall value system of the city, strong business and philanthropic support of education, and three streams of schools – public, charter and private (including many religious schools) – that each want to improve. He says he is more convinced than ever that the model being pursued by St. Marcus works and can be replicated.
These are controversial beliefs – for one thing, anything involving voucher schools remains highly charged. Tyson says politicians should focus less on such disputes and more on how to offer quality through whatever schools offer it.

Related: Interview: Henry Tyson, Superintendent of Milwaukee’s St. Marcus Elementary School.
and
Comparing Milwaukee Public and Voucher Schools’ Per Student Spending.

Henry Tyson, Superintendent of Milwaukee’s St. Marcus school recently talked with me [Transcript | mp3 audio] about his fascinating personal and professional education experience. St. Marcus is one of, if not the most successful scholarship schools in Milwaukee.
Henry discussed student, parent and teacher expectations, including an interesting program to educate and involve parents known as “Thankful Thursdays”. He further described their growth plans, specifically, the methods they are following to replicate the organization. In addition, I learned that St. Marcus tracks their students for 8 years after 8th grade graduation.
Finally, Henry discussed special education and their financial model, roughly $7,800/student annually of which $6,400 arrives from State of Wisconsin taxpayers in the form of a voucher. The remainder via local fundraising and church support.
He is quite bullish on the future of education in Milwaukee. I agree that in 15 to 20 years, Milwaukee’s education environment will be much, much improved. High expectations are of course critical to these improvements.
I appreciate the time Henry took to visit.
Related:

• Milwaukee per-pupil spending fourth highest among 50 largest districts in nation, Madison spent 8% more; “Not geared toward driving those dollars back to the classroom” Well worth reading.
• Comparing Milwaukee Public and Voucher Schools’ Per Student Spending
• Many notes and links on the Milwaukee voucher (parental choice) program.
• St. Marcus WKCE scores. [Notes and links on the WKCE]
• Madison’s 2012-2013 per student spending will be $15,132.
• The Wisconsin Policy Research Institute has many articles on the Milwaukee voucher program.
• Abby Ramirez: Believing in What’s Possible for Milwaukee Schools
• Milwaukee School Board member Larry Miller blogs about education issues.
• Miracle at St. Marcus.
• Rules tie up Milwaukee Public Schools real estate.

Patrick Wall:

Newark’s largest charter school networks give students a big bump in their test scores, while other charter schools are far less effective at boosting scores, a new study finds.

Students who enrolled at schools run by the city’s two largest charter operators — KIPP and Uncommon Schools — saw large and lasting gains on their test scores, according to the analysis of data from 2014 to 2018. But students who attended a different set of charter schools, on average, got a much smaller boost.

The study by the Manhattan Institute adds to previous research showing that Newark’s charter schools, which educate more than a third of the city’s public-school students, collectively raise students’ test scores. But the analysis also sheds new light on the wide variation within Newark’s large charter sector, showing that the big charter school networks with the most students drive the sector’s positive results.

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district has long resisted parent and student choice, despite spending far more than most and tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.

Milwaukee and many other cities offer extensive parent and student choice. An interview with Henry Tyson, Superintendent of the inner city St. Marcus elementary school.

Ben Velderman:

Hundreds of Milwaukee families have discovered in recent years that having a school voucher doesn’t mean much if your private school of choice doesn’t have the classroom space to accommodate additional children.
In Bad Faith screen grab topSuch is the case for the city’s St. Marcus Lutheran School. The high-performing private school has a long waiting list for any available seats that open up, and it’s not difficult to understand why. By virtually all measures, St. Marcus Lutheran is outperforming Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) – its government-run counterpart – by a wide margin. The most telling statistic is probably the schools’ graduation rates: St. Marcus succeeds in getting a diploma into the hands of 96 percent of its students, compared to MPS’ dismal 65 percent graduation rate.
If families who qualify for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program could flee their neighborhood government school, many of them obviously would. More than 25,000 students already have fled the district, which has caused MPS’ enrollment to crater. The attendance drop, in turn, has led to a surplus of school buildings the downsized district no longer needs.
But MPS leaders don’t want alternative schools using the empty buildings.
MPS officials believe that St. Marcus Lutheran and other high-quality voucher and charter schools pose an existential threat to the district, which is why they’ve devised a very clever plan to block the schools’ size and future growth by denying them access to the city’s vacant and unused school buildings

Eugene Kane:

As I regularly pass by the former Malcolm X Academy that has been vacant for years, the words of a legendary African-American educator comes to mind:
“No schoolhouse has been opened for us that has not been filled.”
Booker T. Washington said that in 1896 during an address to urge white Americans to respect the desire by most African-American parents to seek the best possible education for their children.
Fast-forward to 2013 in Milwaukee, and the issue of vacant school buildings gives a pecular spin to Washington’s words. Back then, he could never have imagined the combination of bureaucracy and politics that has some educators scrambling to find spaces to fill with African-American students.
The campaign by a local private school funded by taxpayers to buy the former Malcolm X Academy at 2760 N. 1st St. has caused some in town to question why Milwaukee Public Schools hasn’t done more to turn closed school buildings into functioning houses of learning.
In particular, some conservatives question why MPS hasn’t been willing to sell valuable resources to school choice entities that are essentially their main competition for low-income minority students.
Actually, that stance seems valid from a business standpoint; why help out the folks trying to put you out of business?

The City of Milwaukee: Put Children First!

St. Marcus is at capacity.
Hundreds of children are on waiting lists.
Over the past decade, St. Marcus Lutheran School in Milwaukee’s Harambee neighborhood has proven that high-quality urban education is possible. The K3-8th grade school has demonstrated a successful model for education that helps children and families from urban neighborhoods break the cycle of poverty and move on to achieve academic success at the post-secondary level and beyond.
By expanding to a second campus at Malcolm X, St. Marcus can serve 900 more students.

WILL Responds to MPS on Unused Schools Issues

On Tuesday, Milwaukee Public Schools responded to WILL’s report, “MPS and the City Ignore State Law on Unused Property.” Here is WILL’s reply:
1. MPS’ response is significant for what it does not say. WILL’s report states that, right now, there are at least 20 unused school buildings that are not on the market – and practically all of these buildings have attracted interest from charter and choice schools. As far as its records reveal, MPS refuses to adopt basic business practices, such as keeping an updated portfolio of what is happening with its facilities. How is the public to know where things stand when it is not clear that MPS keeps tabs on them?
2. MPS thinks everything is okay because it has sold four buildings since 2011 and leases to MPS schools. MPS’ response is similar to a football team (we trust it would be the Bears) celebrating that they scored two touchdowns in a game – only to end up losing 55-14. Our report acknowledged that MPS had disposed of a few buildings, but when there are at least 20 empty buildings – and substantial demand for them – claiming credit for selling a few is a bit like a chronic absentee celebrating the fact that he usually comes in on Tuesdays. Children and taxpayers deserve better.

Conservative group says MPS, city not selling enough empty buildings

A conservative legal group says that Milwaukee Public Schools is stalling on selling its empty school buildings to competing school operators that seek school facility space, and that the City of Milwaukee isn’t acting on a new law that gives it more authority to sell the district’s buildings.
The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, which supports many Republican causes, says its new report shows that MPS is preventing charter schools and private schools in the voucher program from purchasing empty and unused school buildings.
But MPS fired back yesterday, saying the legal group’s information omits facts and containts false claims.
For example, MPS Spokesman Tony Tagliavia said that this year, five previously unused MPS buildings are back in service as schools.
He said MPS has also sold buildings to high-performing charter schools. Charter operators it has sold to such as Milwaukee College Prep and the Hmong American Peace Academy are operating schools that are under the MPS umbrella, however, so the district gets to count those students as part of its enrollment.

Bill Boelter

My entire career of close to 50 years has been focused on growing a business in and close to the city of Milwaukee. This is where I have my roots. I have followed education closely over these years.
The Aug. 17 Journal Sentinel had an interesting article about conflicting opinions on what the most viable use is for the former Malcolm X School, which closed over six years ago.
The Milwaukee School Board has proposed to have the city convert the site into a community center for the arts, recreation, low-income housing and retail stores. The cost to city taxpaying residences and businesses has not been calculated. Rising tax burdens have been a major factor in the flight to the suburbs and decline of major cities across our country.
St. Marcus Lutheran School is prepared to purchase Malcolm X for an appraised fair market value. St. Marcus is part of Schools That Can Milwaukee, which also includes Milwaukee College Prep and Bruce-Guadalupe Community School. Other participating high performing schools are Atonement Lutheran School, Notre Dame Middle School and Carmen High School of Science and Technology. Support comes from private donations after state allowances for voucher/choice students.
Their students go on to graduate from high school at a rate of over 90%, compared to approximately 60% at Milwaukee Public Schools. The acquisition of Malcolm X would give an additional 800 students the opportunity to attend a high performing school and reduce waiting lists at St. Marcus.

St. Marcus Superintendent Henry Tyson, via a kind reader’s email:

Dear supporters of St. Marcus School,


I need your help in setting the story straight. Perhaps you read the bold headline in the local section of the Journal Sentinel yesterday — “Wisconsin voucher students lag in latest state test.” That claim is not accurate. You need to understand that this is misinformation about the Choice program. I want you to know the truth — and be our voices in sharing this with others.
The state released the 2012 WKCE test scores this week, conveniently comparing the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) to all of Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and showing that MPS “beat” MPCP in every subject area.
Unfortunately, this is a gross misrepresentation of reality and is not an “apples to apples” comparison. The information that was released FAILED to do the appropriate comparison of MPS low-income students to MPCP, whose students are almost ENTIRELY from low-income families. When doing an accurate comparison of MPCP to MPS’s low-income population, choice schools beat MPS in all subjects except math. (Remember MPS has many students who are not in poverty and are high-achieving. By nature, almost allMPCP students are low-income.)
Beyond the program averages, our St. Marcus students are doing tremendously well, outpacing both the MPS and MPCP numbers by wide margins:



This may seem unimportant, since people are often negative about the choice program. However, it is actually very important at this time to set the record straight. Legislators are reading this misinformation, our supporters are reading this misinformation and so is the general public. At a time when there is much debate about the amount of the choice voucher funding and the expansion of the program, it is essential that we set the record straight. We need to get correct information to our supporters and legislators immediately!
At St. Marcus, it has been demonstrated that it is possible to educate the urban poor, even very poor children, in a highly effective manner. To protect the well-being of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program and to enable St. Marcus to continue to grow and deliver excellent education to more students please take ACTION:
Forward this e-mail to your friends and certainly any legislators you know.
Contact your legislator directly and encourage them to support an increase in the voucher amount for MPCP schools. (Unbelievably, the current voucher amount of $6,451 is lower than the voucher amount back in 2006!)
Thanks for acting in support of your friends at St. Marcus and the awesome students achieving great things in schools like ours.
If you have any other questions or concerns, you can contact me.
Blessings,
Henry Tyson, Superintendent
414-303-2133
henry.tyson@stmarcus.org

Listen to a 2012 interview with Henry Tyson, here.
The Wisconsin State Journal:

The lower scores do not reflect falling performance. Students just need to know more to rank as high as they used to.
Most states are doing the same thing and will benchmark their exams to international standards.
Just as importantly, the computerized assessments of the near future will adjust to the ability of students. That will give parents and educators much better, more detailed and timely information about what students know and what they still need to learn.
Some critics will disparage any and all testing, pretending it will be the only measure Wisconsin will use for success. Others have lamented the increasing role of the federal government in the process.

Phil Hands cartoon.

David Blaska:

Graphical user interface? I think not, Mr. Jobs. Mainframe is where it’s at. Big and honking, run by guys in white lab coats. Smart phones? iPads? You’re dreaming. Take your new ideas somewhere else.
That is the Madison School Board. It has decided to batten the hatches against change. It is securing the perimeter against new thinking. It is the North Korea of education: insular, blighted, and paranoid.
Just try to start a charter school in Madison. I dare you. The Madison School Board on Monday took three measures to strangle new ideas in their crib:
1) Preserving the status quo: Any proposed charter school would have to have “a history of successful practice.” That leaves out several existing Madison public schools – never mind new approaches.
2) Starvation: Cap per-pupil reimbursement at around $6,500 – less than half what Madison public schools consume.
3) Encrustation: Unionized teachers only need apply.
I spoke to Carrie Bonk, executive director of the Wisconsin Charter Schools Association.

Related:
Madison’s disastrous reading results.

The rejected Studio charter school.

Minneapolis teacher’s union approved to authorize charter schools.

“We are not interested in the development of new charter schools”.

Notes and links on the rejected Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School.

Madison School District Open Enrollment Leavers Report, 2012-13.

Madison’s disastrous long term reading results..

Interview: Henry Tyson, Superintendent of Milwaukee’s St. Marcus Elementary School.

Dylan Pauly, Legal Counsel Steve Hartley, Chief of Staff (PDF):

It is the policy of the School Board to consider the establishment of charter schools that support the DISTRICT Mission and Belief Statements and as provided by law. The BOARD believes that the creation of charter schools can enhance the educational opportunities for Madison Metropolitan School District students by providing innovative and distinctive educational programs and by giving parents/students more educational options within the DISTRICT. Only charter schools that are an instrumentality of the DISTRICT will be considered by the BOARD.
The BOARD further believes that certain values and principles must be integrated into all work involving the conceptualization, development and implementation of a new charter school. These guiding principles are as follows:
1. All charter schools must meet high standards of student achievement while providing increased educational opportunities, including broadening existing opportunities for struggling populations of students;
2. All charter schools must have an underlying, research-based theory and history of successful practice that is likely to achieve academic success;
3. All charter schools will provide information to parents and students as to the quality of education provided by the charter school and the ongoing academic progress of the individual student;
4. All charter schools will ensure equitable access to all students regardless of gender, race and/or disability;
5. All charter schools must be financially accountable to the DISTRICT and rely on +’ sustainable funding models;
6. All charter schools must ensure the health and safety of all staff and students;
7. All externally-developed charter schools must be governed by a governance board that is registered as a 501(c)(3), tax-exempt charitable organization;
8. All charter schools must have a plan to hire, retain and recruit a highly-qualified, diverse staff;
9. All charter schools must have a clear code of student conduct that includes procedures for positive interventions and social emotional supports

Related:
Matthew DeFour’s article.
The rejected Studio charter school.
Minneapolis teacher’s union approved to authorize charter schools.
“We are not interested in the development of new charter schools”.
Notes and links on the rejected Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School.
Madison School District Open Enrollment Leavers Report, 2012-13.
Madison’s disastrous long term reading results..
Interview: Henry Tyson, Superintendent of Milwaukee’s St. Marcus Elementary School.

Mike Ford:

Admittedly I did not expect much. Upon review some parts pleasantly surprised me, but I am not holding my breath that it is the answer to MMSD’s achievement gaps. It is a classic example of what I call a butterflies and rainbows education plan. It includes a variety of non-controversial, ambitious, and often positive goals and strategies, but no compelling reason to expect it to close the achievement gap. Good things people will like, unlikely to address MMSD’s serious problems: butterflies and rainbows.
What follows is a review of the specific recommendations in the MSSD plan. And yes, there are good things in here that the district should pursue. However, any serious education plan must include timelines not just for implementation, but also for results. This plan does not do that. Nor does it say what happens if outcomes for struggling subgroups of students do not improve.
Recommendation #1: Ensure that All K-12 Students are Reading at Grade Level

The rejected Madison Preparatory IB charter school was proposed to address, in part Madison’s long standing achievement gap.
Related: Interview: Henry Tyson, Superintendent of Milwaukee’s St. Marcus Elementary School (an inner-city voucher school).

Pat Schneider:

T: The assumption in the discussion of parent engagement and academic achievement is that it is African-American parents who are not engaged.
JH: I think that’s the reality of it. The question is: why aren’t they engaged? The latest survey we had showed that roughly 40 percent of African-American high school students were not engaged. Why? What happens to the kids? We seem to lose them over time, and we lose the parents.
CT: That’s a pernicious thing for black youth, isn’t it? Why do you think it’s happening?
JH: I think one of the things is that we need to create a culture in our schools that these kids can feel they are more a part of. For example, we don’t present “American” history — there’s a lot of African-American history that never makes it to the books. So, if we as a country, as a community, would depict the true picture and make them part of it, I think kids would remain engaged longer.

Related: An interview the Henry Tyson, Superintendent of Milwaukee’s St. Marcus school.

Much more on Henry Tyson, here.

I invited a number of Madison people to this event, including Zach Brandon, Satya Rhodes-Conway, Joe Gothard along with The Simpson Street Free Press, Capital Times and Wisconsin State Journal.

Wishkub Kinepoway

I wanted diversity. I wanted my children to see, like, different nationalities. I wanted them to feel included. And I also wanted, like – I’m an educator, so I have an education background with early childhood, and I just wanted intentional learning experiences for my children.

I was actually unfamiliar with what a choice school was. I really didn’t have a connection. I didn’t have a source. I didn’t have anybody to say, “Do step one, two and three.” It was an emotional rollercoaster. I wanted the best for my kids, but how do I get there?

I really truly – I went down on my hands and knees praying, like I need something different for my children. And I spent days crying, trying to figure X, Y, and Z out. I kind of like did everything, and then I just, kind of like, threw my hands in the air, and I just left it to the universe. Whatever happens from here, I did my part. 

And so, we did it, and we got accepted, every child got accepted, and I was like, it’s a weight that lifts off of you. Like you’ve been accepted to the choice.

I have a 10-year-old who is going into fifth grade starting tomorrow, and I have a 13-year-old who will be entering eighth grade tomorrow at St. Marcus. My son attends Martin Luther High School in Greendale.

Without Choice, I could not have afforded to send my children to St. Marcus or Martin Luther. It’s money well spent. I would agree, both as a professional, as a parent and from a personal standpoint. I couldn’t be more thankful for this opportunity.

It would just be the over-excelling academic piece that I was like, this is what they need – the challenge. And he (my son) plays sports, so for us choosing Martin Luther specifically is their academics are really high, but their sports program is really good, too.

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

No When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Natalie Wexler:

In recent months, thanks largely to journalist Emily Hanford, it’s become clear that the prevailing approach to teaching kids how to decipher words isn’t backed by evidence. An abundance of research shows that many children—perhaps most—won’t learn to “decode” written text unless they get systematic instruction in phonics. As Hanford has shown, teachers may think they’re teaching phonics, but many also encourage children to guess at words from pictures or context. The result is that many never learn to sound out words—and in later years, when they encounter more difficult text, they hit a wall.

Hanford’s work has drawn well-deserved attention. And recently Education Week, a prominent national publication, released a special issue called “Getting Reading Right” that reveals, among other disturbing findings, that 75% of teachers say they encourage students to guess when they come to a word they don’t know.

“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”.

Mission vs. Organization: Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

While decades pass, with no substantive change in Madison’s reading results (despite substantial spending increases), perhaps we might learn from a successful inner city Milwaukee institution: Henry Tyson’s St. Marcus School.

More, here.

Do kids who attend private schools w publicly funded tuition vouchers do better than public schools? Research is mixed. Here’s a comprehensive look at the highs and lows in Milwaukee, which I wrote right as ⁦@BetsyDeVosED⁩ was rising to office. https://t.co/esSBjs5T7C

— Erin Richards (@emrichards) September 16, 2019

.@betsydevosed was involved early in Wisconsin’s voucher school expansion and has donated hundreds of thousands to Republican lawmakers since 2003. Here’s my story from 2017: https://t.co/E13KGVGg5h https://t.co/Sz2I4PtaUR

— Molly Beck (@MollyBeck) September 16, 2019

Despite the fact that media & security & @BetsyDeVosED are in their class, these 8th grade girls are absorbed in trying to “diagnose” the source of a patient’s symptoms. They already dissected a sheep brain. ? Kids are pretty focused at @StMarcusSchool. pic.twitter.com/z0oJrEwQuN

— Erin Richards (@emrichards) September 16, 2019

Why a Milwaukee voucher school to start a fall tour for @BetsyDeVosED? “This is where education freedom started,” says her press sec. (The Milwaukee voucher program started in 1990. Now 30K+ kids here attend private, mostly religious schools w public $$.) pic.twitter.com/eTk06S2yrV

— Erin Richards (@emrichards) September 16, 2019

Related: Mission vs Organization. Then Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.”

Betsy DeVos is coming to Wisconsin. So I’m heading to Milwaukee early tomorrow morning to join @MTEAunion and Milwaukee families in sending a crystal clear message: the Trump/DeVos team might not believe in public schools, but we do. https://t.co/XHUzMPbuVn

— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) September 16, 2019

An interview with St. Marcus Superintendent Henry Tyson.

Taxpayer supported K-12 school districts substantially outspend voucher schools. Madison’s $18-20K per student is more than double typical voucher school taxpayer support.

Wall Street Journal:

We wrote in 2015 about how MPS blocked charter and private school purchases of empty school buildings, which prevented high-performing schools like St. Marcus Lutheran from expanding. The state legislature then passed a law ordering the city and school district to sell vacant public school buildings.

Well, what do you know, the district still hasn’t sold a single vacant building to other schools despite 13 letters of interest from private and charter operators for 11 vacant buildings, according to the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty. Following protests from the teachers’ union, a local zoning board denied a bid by Right Step, a private school for children expelled from Milwaukee public schools. The city hasn’t even classified many unused buildings as “vacant.”

Milwaukee’s recalcitrance is denying thousands of students a better education—St. Marcus Lutheran alone has 264 students on its wait list—while draining tax dollars. Annual utility bills for vacant buildings cost $1 million, and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty calculates that the district could recover $5 million from selling its unoccupied real estate.

Related: a conversation with Henry Tyson.

The Wall Street Journal:

Teachers’ unions and their liberal allies are desperately trying to preserve the failing public school status quo. Witness how the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system is defying a state mandate to sell vacant property to charter and private schools.

Milwaukee’s public schools are a mess. Merely 62% of students graduate from high school in four years, and proficiency rates are 15% in math and just over 20% in English. Families are escaping to charter and private schools, which has resulted in 11,000 vacant seats and a budget shortfall that’s expected to swell $130 million within five years.

Milwaukee’s recalcitrance is denying thousands of students a better education—St. Marcus Lutheran alone has 264 students on its wait list—while draining tax dollars. Annual utility bills for vacant buildings cost $1 million, and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty calculates that the district could recover $5 million from selling its unoccupied real estate.

The legislature ought to punish Milwaukee for flouting the law by, say, snipping its share of state funding. But State Superintendent Tony Evers, the Democratic front-runner to challenge Gov. Scott Walker in November, would likely do the opposite. He wants to freeze and then phase out vouchers, which help nearly 28,000 low-income students across Milwaukee attend private schools.

If Democrats defeat Gov. Walker and take the statehouse in November, there will be nothing to stop Milwaukee or any other district from barricading students into lousy public schools.

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most.

Christian D’Andrea:

Several reform-minded schools have carved similar paths for I Promise to follow. The Knowledge is Power Program, better known as KIPP, has created the nation’s largest network of charter schools by catering to marginalized students with longer class hours, increasing access to teachers, and a tough but accommodating schedule for students. Rocketship Public Schools, another non-profit charter program with schools in California, Wisconsin, Tennessee, and Washington D.C., operates with a similarly non-traditional classroom. Rocketship emphasizes a STEM-based curriculum while bringing a student’s home life into the classroom and continuing learning outside regular class hours. Both take aim at reducing the achievement gap between low-income students and their peers.

It’s still early, but reports from I Promise suggest the school will address Akron’s achievement gap by running similar reforms as other successful national programs. It does not go as far as KIPP or Rocketship in those charges, but it’s clear I Promise is designed to operate at a level beyond the typical public school by creating a more comprehensive experience for students, not just one that begins at 7 a.m. and ends at 2 p.m.

I Promise is a regular public school, not a charter or a voucher-receiving private school
This kind of wide reform is rare to see at a traditional neighborhood school. KIPP and Rocketship schools have been successful in larger cities across the nation, but typically operate outside the purview of their local school boards as charter schools. Several private schools, like Milwaukee’s St. Marcus Lutheran Schools or Philadelphia’s Gesu School, have instituted reforms like these while enrolling students using publicly-funded vouchers or tax-credit scholarships.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school.

We have long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Claudio Sanchez:

The school doesn’t offer transportation, so Henry Tyson, the man who runs St. Marcus, is known to shuttle kids to and from school whenever their parents can’t. This morning, he is on his way to pick up a little boy named Jeremiah. Tyson says Jeremiah is a talented child who lives in a rough neighborhood where kids often get lost.

“It’s one of the great tragedies in a city like this,” says Tyson. “How do you give kids a vision for their future especially when they’re growing up in these tough, tough neighborhoods.”

Margaret Katherine has a grandson at St. Marcus. The voucher that he uses was an opportunity she says she couldn’t pass up.

“You better grab it while you can,” she says, “because once it’s gone, you’re gonna be like me.”

Katherine says not a day goes by that she doesn’t regret dropping out of school, not learning how to read or write properly. “I don’t want my child to be lost.”

Much more on Henry Tyson.

Erin Richards:

Together, Travis Academy and Holy Redeemer have received close to $100 million in taxpayer funding over the years. The sum is less than what taxpayers would have paid for those pupils in public schools, because each tuition voucher costs less than the total expense per pupil in Milwaukee Public Schools. But vouchers weren’t supposed to provide just a cheaper education. They were supposed to provide a better one.

CREATED IN 1990 BY A COALITION of black parents and school-reform advocates with the blessing of a Republican governor, the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program aimed to allow poor parents to withdraw their children from public schools and send them to higher-performing private schools they probably couldn’t otherwise afford.

Today, a little under a third of Milwaukee’s school-age population attends voucher schools. Overall, test-score outcomes for the Milwaukee Public Schools and the private voucher schools are remarkably low, and remarkably similar: On the latest state tests, about 80 percent of children in both sectors were not proficient in English and about 85 percent were not proficient in math. The voucher high schools, however, posted slightly higher 11th-grade ACT scores this year than Milwaukee Public Schools: a 17.5 composite, compared with the district’s 16.5.

The voucher program is not to blame for all of that, of course, but some wonder why the major reform hasn’t made more of a difference. The program has bolstered some decent religious schools—mostly Catholic and Lutheran—which would have never maintained a presence in the inner city serving poor children without taxpayer assistance. It’s helped to incubate a couple of private schools that eventually became high-performing charter schools. But it’s extended the same life raft to some abysmally performing schools that parents continue to choose for a variety of reasons besides academic performance. And it’s kept afloat a great number of mediocre programs.

Research shows Milwaukee parents have listed small class sizes and school safety among their top reasons for choosing a voucher school. Safety per se doesn’t equal educational excellence, but parents’ perceptions of safety can drive their decision-making. But are those perceptions accurate? Advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin examined police-call data for Milwaukee’s public and voucher schools in recent years and determined voucher schools to have proportionally fewer requests for assistance, but voucher schools also serve a disproportionately small number of students in high school, where many of the most serious school incidents warranting police attention occur. Objective data on school safety are hard to come by without records of incident reports, suspensions, and expulsions.

Henry Tyson, the superintendent of St. Marcus Lutheran School, a popular and high-performing voucher school that now serves children in Milwaukee’s central city, has long been frustrated at the lack of state and local political attention given to policies that would help expand high-performing programs and eliminate low-performing ones.

“I am intensely frustrated by the voucher schools that are chronically underperforming over a long period of time,” he says. “As far as I’m concerned, any school that has been open three years or more that is under 5 percent proficiency should close, whether that’s a public school, charter school, or voucher school.”

Milwaukee has failed to develop such a mechanism in part because many choice advocates don’t want to give more power to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which they do not believe is an objective overseer. Other advocates refuse to acknowledge that parent choice alone will not always raise the quality of the market.

“What we need to do is to toil every day and keep pushing for that Berlin Wall moment,” says Kevin Chavous, a Washington, D.C.-based lawyer and education-reform advocate who supported the launch of the federally funded D.C. voucher program. Chavous is a founding board member of the AFC, and a tall African American with piercing blue-gray eyes and an industrious nature—he’s written entire books on education reform during long-distance flights. He believes that school choice can and will become the dominant method of delivering educational opportunity in America.

“We’re close to that tipping point,” he said in May 2016 during AFC’s annual conference at National Harbor, a resort hugging the Potomac River just south of D.C.

It’s important to remember that private-school choice is still just a tiny sliver of the pie when it comes to publicly funded education in America. Approximately 50 million children attend public schools run by school districts. About 2.5 million attend public charter schools. And only around 400,000 attend private schools with the help of voucher, tax-credit scholarship, or education-savings account, according to EdChoice. But substantial jumps could be around the corner, especially as the programs continue to expand from targeting solely low-income children to being open to all.

A useful article. Links and detailed spending comparisons would be useful. Madison currently spends around $18k per student, far ahove the antional average. Similar achievement at less than half the cost of traditional K-12 organs is worth exploration, perhaps offering opportunities to help students in the greatest need, such as many in Madison.

Erin Richards:

In an interview Monday at St. Marcus School, a voucher school at 2215 Palmer St., Johnson said a staffer brought the investigation to his attention, which prompted him to write letters to U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch this summer, asking for evidence of the basis of their investigation.

The department has declined to comment, saying the investigation is ongoing.

Johnson, who was the only member of his committee at the hearing, said he invited other members to attend and bring witnesses, but all declined.

The official speaker list, then, included pro-voucher witnesses chosen by Johnson, including two former students of voucher schools: Justice Shorter, a graduate of Messmer High School who’s now in graduate school, and Diana Lopez, a graduate of St. Anthony High School who is headed to Yale. It also included Bob Smith, former principal of Messmer; John Witte, professor emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Richard Komer, senior attorney at the Institute of Justice.

“While participating in the parental choice program, I received the same voucher as all students, which didn’t account for the extra costs of my visual impairment,” said Shorter.

Komer said the justice department held on to the disability rights complaint in 2011 instead of referring it to the Department of Education, as is custom.

Dave Umhoefer:

So we did our own look at reading scores at all Milwaukee schools fitting the 80/80 description, including high schools and separate elementary and middle schools that include smaller groupings of grades. Our main data source: the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

Why are officials focusing on these schools at all?

High-poverty schools tend to have lower achievement than low-poverty schools. Milwaukee’s highest-poverty schools serve racial minorities. Milwaukee’s black students post some of the lowest achievement scores nationally among black students nationwide in certain grades and subjects.

To the numbers

Under Tyson’s approach, the K-8 schools, we found 57 that met the criteria.

Their average schoolwide reading proficiency score: 7.9 percent.

In the broader pool of schools, which tallied 95 schools, the average was 7.3 percent.

So the 8 percent claim is on target.

Of course, this is the reading average based on the collective reading proficiency at each school. It doesn’t mean every school came in at the overall school average of 7.3 percent.

Five schools, for example, had not a single pupil score proficient in reading on the state tests, which are administered to students in third through eighth grades, and once in high school, in 10th grade. The state assigned those schools a 0 percent score.

On the other end of the scale, the best reading proficiency score at an 80/80 school was 21 percent at Hartford Avenue University School in MPS. Second (20 percent) was Franklin School, also in MPS. St. Marcus Lutheran was third (19 percent).

Madison, too, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Erin Richards:

Spurred by a deal gone sour between Milwaukee Public Schools and the developer commissioned to renovate one of its empty buildings — a deal that kept a private school from buying the facility — Common Council President Michael Murphy has introduced an ordinance that would position the city to take charge and sell unused MPS property.

“The state granted us the authority to sell these properties, and I’m going to recommend a process for that to occur,” Murphy said.

The proposed ordinance comes on the heels of the latest twist in the Malcolm X Academy development deal: A School Board decision to cut ties with the developer and renovate part of the building for a new school on its own, but not before paying for work performed so far that the districts pegs at a little under $500,000 — though the developer says it’s owed closer to $1 million for its time and products.

Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett said he’s not pleased with the way the Malcolm X development deal has gone, especially since the city played a significant role in improving the initial proposal from MPS.

“I’m not happy at all that taxpayers are on the hook for these development costs,” Barrett said. “The city has the responsibility to put these buildings to their highest and best use.”

And state lawmakers Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and Rep. Joe Sanfelippo (R-West Allis) — perennial advocates of selling MPS property to non-district school operators — also weighed in, saying that the Legislature should try again in the next session to pass a law that would more forcefully compel the City of Milwaukee to sell MPS property.

They reiterated their view that the Malcolm X deal was phony from the start, designed by MPS to simply block St. Marcus Lutheran School from buying the building and expanding to serve more students.

Stop running the system for the sake of the system.

A focus on adult employment.

Bill Glauber

“I’m a conformist,” said Henry Tyson, superintendent of St. Marcus Lutheran School. “I like rules and I like order.”

To hear that Tyson considers himself a conformist is a surprise, given his background and his mission.

How this British-born educator came to Milwaukee is the stuff of chance, circumstance and an intense personal faith to live, work and educate children in the inner city.

Tyson’s ability to shake up the education establishment in recent years has made him a target of critics, who see him as an interloper.

Even those who are not intimately involved in the hothouse of education politics in Milwaukee may have heard of Tyson’s so-far unsuccessful quest to buy empty Milwaukee Public Schools buildings and expand the private voucher school he oversees.

On Friday, St. Marcus announced a deal to lease space for an early childhood education center at a non-MPS building, the Aurora Weier Educational Center building at 2669 N. Richards St.

The move marks a truce, of sorts. Yet the fight likely isn’t over. For his part, Tyson has been stung by criticism.

“What absolutely shocked me is that I became the nemesis of public education,” Tyson said. “Like I have always articulated, we will not move this city forward enough, or at least significantly, until the fighting stops.”

Last week, the fall term began at St. Marcus’ main campus at 2215 N. Palmer St. The sparkling facility buzzed with the energy of 730 students in grades K-8 and more than 100 staff. Nearly all of those students — 93% — attend on a taxpayer-paid voucher. The student body is 89% African-American, Tyson said.

Listen to an interview with Henry Tyson.

The Economist:

Which are the best properties to buy when playing Monopoly, and how many houses should you build on them? Which continent should you aim to take over first in Risk? And what is the best strategy when using the doubling cube in backgammon? These are some of the questions considered and answered by Marcus du Sautoy, a British mathematician and Oxford professor, in his sprightly, light-hearted history of games and gaming.

The narrative is organised geographically as a trip around the world, starting with ancient games from the Middle East—backgammon, the Royal Game of Ur, the Egyptian game of senet—and ending up in Europe with modern games such as Pandemic and Dobble. Along the way the author considers many old favourites (Cluedo, Scrabble, Risk), recent arrivals (Wordle, Settlers of Catan) and less familiar games from a wide range of cultures and historical periods, such as the African game of mancala and the Indian card game of ganjifa, whose rules change at night.

Amy Dockser Marcus:

Dylan Stone-Miller took a 9,000-mile road trip this summer to see some of his 96 children.

Emotionally, logistically, in all ways, it is complicated for the kids, their families and for Stone-Miller, a prolific 32-year-old sperm donor. His road trip is part of a larger odyssey—to figure out how he fits in the lives of the boys and girls he fathered in absentia. It began three years ago, when he first saw a photo of one of his biological children, a toddler named Harper who had his blue eyes and his sister’s blond curls. He got tears, he recalled, and unexpected feelings of kinship.

“I think of her as my first child,” Stone-Miller said. He met Harper when she was 3 and decided he wanted to foster relationships with as many of the children as possible. He quit his job as a software engineer and has funded his quest with savings. So far, Stone-Miller has met 25 of his biological children. Because tracking progeny from a donor isn’t always reliable, “I will never know for sure how many children I have,” he said.

Stone-Miller’s mission is itself an accident of birth, springing from the unforeseen union of in vitro fertilization, the internet and low-cost DNA testing. Together, these disparate advances have made it possible to find biological fathers who in the past were kept largely anonymous by sperm banks.

Months after Stone-Miller and his wife split up in 2020, a stranger messaged him. “I really hope you don’t feel violated in any way, but it’s Canadian Thanksgiving and I wanted to tell you how grateful my family is to you,” wrote Alicia Bowes, one of Harper’s two mothers. She had tracked Stone-Miller through social media and clues from his donor file, including his first name and his father’s occupation as a forensic psychologist.

Joel Kotkin:

Like earlier apostates, religious or scientific, ours face an uphill struggle. They must contend with forces within the C-suite and, particularly, academia, where even the sciences are now constrained by ideological edicts. This is where the money flows, often to a host of non-profits, some secretly funded, that spread the gospels of censorship, police reduction, indoctrination in schools and an apocalyptic environmental agenda. One problem the apostates face is therefore an obvious one: despite often impressive media resumes, their research rarely makes it into the mainstream, their voices being carried no further than Twitter, Substack and the more broad-minded corners of the media.

This pushback comes at a propitious time, extending beyond a few dissident intellectuals to the grassroots and business moguls such as Elon Musk, Ken Griffinand Bernie Marcus. The latter, in particular, understand that the new progressive orthodoxy undermines the entire system by embracing anti-capitalist memes and reducing the role of merit in a system built around it. And so a critical front has been the rebellion against ESG (environmental, social, governance) standards. Many US states have moved to take their pension funds out of firms that embrace this ideology; some investment houses, notably Vanguard and upstart Thrive Asset Management, are eschewing corporate policies that stress climate change and other issues over fiduciary obligation to investors.. The fact that returns to ESG firms have been poor, when compared with those tied to fossil fuels and basic industries, could presage a further awakening among financial and business leaders that the balance sheet, rather than ideological back-slapping, constitutes the primary mission of business.

More important still, apostasy is also rising among the general population. The pressure for reparations, for example, is opposed by upwards of two-thirds of Americans. All major ethnic groups, notes Pew, reject race quotas, including African-Americans; overall, almost three in four oppose this, as do a majority of both Democrats and Republicans.

Housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Journalism School (along with Marquette University), the formation, affiliation(s) and funding sources of Wisconsin Watch have generated some controversy. Jim Piwowarczyk noted in November, 2022:

“Wisconsin Watch, a 501(c)(3) organization that disseminates news stories to many prominent media outlets statewide and is housed at the taxpayer-funded UW-Madison campus, has taken more than $1 million from an organization founded by George Soros over the years. Wisconsin Right Now discovered that the group is still prominently pushing out stories by a writer, Howard Hardee, who was dispatched to Wisconsin by a Soros-funded organization to work on “election integrity” stories and projects.” When major media outlets like WTM-TV and the Wisconsin State Journal run stories by Wisconsin Watch or Hardee, they fail to advise readers that he’s a fellow with a Soros-linked group. The group says that “hundreds” of news organizations have shared its stories over the years, giving them wide reach.

The Soros family also boasts significant influence over American media. An analysis from the Media Research Center found numerous media outlets employ journalists who also serve on boards of organizations that receive large amounts of funding from Soros.

More recently, and amidst Wisconsin’s biennial budget deliberations including many billions ($11.97B in 2019! [xlsx] excluding federal and other sources) for traditional government K-12 school districts, Wisconsin Watch writer Phoebe Petrovic posted a number of articles targeting choice (0.797%!! of $11.97B) schools:

May 5, 2023: Considering a Wisconsin voucher school? Here’s what parents of children who are LGBTQ+ or have a disability should know. (Focus on < 1% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

May 5, 2023: False choice: Wisconsin taxpayers support schools that can discriminate. (Focus on < 1% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

May 20, 2023: Federal, state law permit disability discrimination in Wisconsin voucher schools. (Focus on < 1% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

## May 22, 2023 via a St Marcus Milwaukee sermon [transcript]- a church family whose incredible student efforts are worth a very deep dive. Compare this to Madison, where we’ve tolerated disastrous reading results for decades despite spending > $25k+/student!

## May 23, 2023: Curious (false claims) reporting on legacy k-12 schools, charter/voucher models and special education via Wisconsin coalition for education freedom. (Focus on 99% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

May 31, 2023: ‘Unwanted and unwelcome’: Anti-LGBTQ+ policies common at Wisconsin voucher schools. (Focus on < 1% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

May 31, 2023: Wisconsin students with disabilities often denied public school options via another Wisconsin Watch writer: Mario Koran. (Focus on 99% of redistributed state taxpayer spending).

WI’s open enrollment program is one of the best in the country, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t limitations. When anti-#SchoolChoice folks use @WisconsinWatch articles to attack, they should also remember the same things happen in public schools. https://t.co/EwPIiwm7CU

— Will Flanders (@WillFlandersWI) June 1, 2023

The free market roots of #SchoolChoice are often overlooked in today’s political debates. It’s important to remember that the goal of school choice isn’t the elimination of public schools, but rather the lifting of all ships by providing competition to the public school monopoly. https://t.co/t49It5boHq

— Will Flanders (@WillFlandersWI) June 1, 2023

Related: Governor Evers’ most recent budget proposals have attempted to kill One City Schools’ charter authorization…… and 2010: WEAC $1.57M !! for four state senators.

June 2, 2023 Wisconsin Watch’s Embarrassing Campaign against Vouchers and Christian Schools

Oops:

“Wisconsin Watch isn’t nonpartisan in a way that a layman would understand the term. Rather, it’s nonpartisan because there isn’t a party far enough to the left to earn its support.” @LutherAbel1 dismantles Petrovic’s reporting.https://t.co/2U1miyLSv7

— Patrick McIlheran (@PaddyMacMke) June 2, 2023

In examining who Wisconsin excludes from school choice, we’ve seen how private voucher schools discriminate against LGBTQ+ students and those w/ disabilities.

Here, @MarioKoran examines how public schools reject kids w/ disabilities from open enrollment https://t.co/gsNYBO6ocX

— Jim Malewitz (@Jmalewitz) June 1, 2023

Yeah, @WisconsinWatch has long leaned left and can easily be similarly accused of avoiding introspection. Lol https://t.co/GBseKikRh6

— Chris Rickert (@RickertWisSJ) June 3, 2023

Their literal next piece (by a different reporter, true) was on inadequate special needs funding, so it’s suspicious to overlook that when critical of voucher schools and special needs.

The sexuality piece was bad journalism with unfounded logical leaps.https://t.co/A8WQgg2bdP

— Quinton Klabon (@GhaleonQ) June 3, 2023

Why might civics minded have an interest in funding sources (such as Wisconsin Watch, WILL, ActBlue and so on)?

Two examples:

Billionaire George Soros is taking a stake in the Bernalillo County district attorney’s race, backing Raul Torrez with a $107,000 contribution to an independent expenditure committee.

George Soros, a multibillionaire who has only the most tenuous connection to Colorado, is paying for negative ads against incumbent District Attorney Pete Weir, a Republican, pumping hundreds of thousands of dollars into the effort.

Wisconsin coalition for education freedom:

Wisconsin Watch has released its third article in a series attempting to discredit the great work choice programs do in Wisconsin. Their latest article misrepresents admission policies of choice schools while ignoring the fact that public schools often engage in admission practices that would be illegal for schools participating in the state’s choice programs.
Wisconsin Watch is again making false claims.

• In their most recent article, Wisconsin Watch again misrepresents school choice admission practices and now adds a false narrative that schools “expel” students with disabilities at will. Their claims don’t match reality, nor is a single example provided.
• Fact: Schools in Wisconsin’s choice programs may not discriminate against any eligible family based on a student’s disability.i
• As with many individual public schools, individual private schools are not required to provide a full range of disability services. Parents who choose to enroll their student do so only after being fully informed of available services.
  Some Wisconsin public schools have admissions processes that would be illegal for private choice schools.
• Public school districts often have specialty public schools, in addition to their residentially assigned schools. Public schools are permitted to create admission requirements for these schools.
• Public schools having admission requirements is not a new phenomenon, with the practice being documented in Wisconsin for decades.ii (Link)
• Today, specialty schools like those in Milwaukeeiii (Link) use a points system to admit students based on their report card scores, attendance, standardized test scores, and an essay. In Green Bay,iv (Link) students must complete a test for admission to a school for the gifted.
  1
• Choice schools must admit students on a random basis if there is excess demand with few exceptions, primarily related to being in the same family as an existing student.v (Link)
  Public schools reject students in the public school full-time open enrollment program.

Phoebe Petrovic:

As an advocacy specialist at Disability Rights Wisconsin, Joanne Juhnke regularly finds herself on the phone with parents concerned about their children’s treatment at school.

Most complaints concern public schools, which enroll the majority of students. State funding for special education has shrunk, forcing districts to struggle to provide services, and disparate treatment of students with disabilities at public schools persists. But in public school, families have a state body to appeal to: the Department of Public Instruction.

DPI is far less helpful in disputes with private schools, which under state law can legally discriminate against students who need certain disability accommodations — or even kick them out. This applies even to private schools that receive taxpayer-funded tuition vouchers to educate students.

The calls Juhnke receives from voucher families often contain the same story. A family has enrolled a child with disabilities in a private school. Administrators have begun pressuring the student to leave or have kicked them out, something public schools cannot do. The parents are shocked. They’re sure the schools can’t do that.

Many times, Juhnke has to tell them: Yes, they can.

“You went into this school choice program thinking that you were the one, as the parents, who have the choice,” she said. “Really, on the other end, the school holds more choice cards than you do, and you’re coming out on the wrong side of that.”

I find the timing of Wisconsin Watch’s articles curious, amidst budget season. Ideally, the writer might dive deep and wide into the effectiveness of our well funded k-12 system. Reading would be a terrific place to start.

This Wisconsin Watch article was referenced in a recent St Marcus (Milwaukee) podcast. St Marcus operates an extraordinarily successful choice school on the City’s near north side. Read more, here.

Governor Evers’ most recent budget proposals have attempted to kill One City Schools’ charter authorization……

“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”

The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Jon Marcus:

When Santos Enrique Camara arrived at Shoreline Community College in Washington State to study audio engineering, he quickly felt lost.

“It’s like a weird maze,” remembered Camara, who was 19 at the time and had finished high school with a 4.0 grade-point average. “You need help with your classes and financial aid? Well, here, take a number and run from office to office and see if you can figure it out.”

In high school, he said, “it’s like they’re all working to get you through.” But at a community college, “it’s all on you.”

Advocates for community colleges defend them as the underdogs of America’s higher education system, left to serve the students who need the most support but without the money required to provide it. Critics contend that this has become an excuse for poor success rates that are only getting worse and for the kind of faceless bureaucracies that ultimately prompted Camara to drop out after two semesters; he now works in a restaurant and plays in two bands.

“I seriously tried,” Camara said. “I gave it my all. But you’re sort of screwed from the get-go.”

Jon Marcus:

A rare brand-new nonprofit university, NewU has a comparatively low $16,500-a-year price that’s locked in for a student’s entire education and majors with interchangeable requirements so students don’t fall behind if they switch.

But the feature that appears to be really winning over applicants is that NewU will offer bachelor’s degrees in three years instead of the customary four.

“We didn’t think the three-year bachelor’s degree was going to be the biggest draw,” said Stratsi Kulinski, president of the startup college. “But it has been, hands-down. Consumers are definitely ready for something different.”

A handful of conventional colleges and universities are coming to the same conclusion. Several are adding three-year degrees as students and families increasingly chafe at the more than four years it now takes most of those earning bachelor’s degrees to finish — and the resulting additional cost.

Adrian Humphreys:

Emergency isolation orders, border closures, social distancing and mandated lockdowns are inconvenient and costly, but, it is hoped, it will at least test theories like never before of why crime really happens and how it can be predicted and reduced.

The COVID-19 pandemic is “the largest criminological experiment in history,” according to influential American criminologist Marcus Felson. “It’s like a natural lab,” Felson says in an interview — and we are all test subjects locked in this dystopian exploration.

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“The ‘stay-at-home’ mandates brought about the most wide-reaching, significant, and sudden alteration of the lives of billions of people in human history,” Felson, a professor at Texas State University, wrote in a recent paper rallying criminologists around the world to aggressively seize opportunity from tragedy.

The pandemic certainly has some collateral damage to folks’ levels of stress and strain

“Practically overnight, the entire country ceased or significantly reduced day-to-day travels, eliminating commutes from home to work, as well as leisure activities, shopping trips, social gatherings, the ability to dine out, and more.

Jon Marcus:

Free classes! Free parking! Prime dorm rooms! More cash!

The more they worry about whether students in this year of the coronavirus will show up in the fall, the more admissions officers responsible for filling seats at colleges and universities have started sounding like the salesmen on late-night TV infomercials.

“The gloves have come off,” said Angel Pérez, vice president for enrollment and student success at Trinity College in Connecticut, who laments this trend. “You’re talking about a scenario where colleges need to enroll students at any cost.”

Caroline Crampton:

On 28 February 1972 at 5.50am, Frank Aycliffe recorded an important decision. “I think my uncertainty of whether to go to the hairdressers’ has been solved,” he wrote. “I have decided not to, but wait and see what things are like in another month’s time.”

Aycliffe put his deliberations in his diary. It was later transcribed by his daughter and, after his death, donated to the Great Diary Project, set up in 2007 to “provide a permanent home for unwanted diaries of any kind”. He wasn’t a famous or notable person, but this record of his life’s small, seemingly inconsequential details is now preserved at the Bishopsgate Institute in east London, alongside at least 7,500 other diaries and journals. They can be consulted by the public at any time, and a selection has recently been on display at Somerset House as part of an exhibition titled Dear Diary: A Celebration of Diaries and their Digital Descendants.

The impulse to create a personal narrative and record it can be traced back centuries – it is inextricably linked with how we think about life and existence. Marcus Aurelius, the second-century philosopher, is often credited as the author of the first example of what we would now call a diary. This work, today referred to as Meditations, originally had the Greek title Ta eis heauton, which translates roughly as “to himself”. It comprises personal notes on philosophical ideas, particularly in relation to Stoicism (a key tenet of which is self-knowledge). On the page, he plots thoughts about how to live a better life through maxims such as “put an end once and for all to this discussion of what a good man should be, and be one”.

Razib Khan:

There is one section of her talk where Dreger waxes eloquently about the Enlightenment, and freedom of thought, which caught my attention. We have always missed the mark, but at there was a point where in Western intellectual culture the idea that freedom of thought and striving toward truth was at least the paramount method and goal. I am not so sure that is the case today.

When Dreger pointed approvingly on Twitter to University of Chicago’s statement on “safe spaces,” I told her that most of my liberal Twitter follows were enthusiastically sharing this piece, UChicago’s anti-safe spaces letter isn’t about academic freedom. It’s about power. The piece makes some coherent points, but mostly it is self-congratulatory intellectual masturbation. At a certain point the cultural Left no longer made any pretense to being liberal, and transformed themselves into “progressives.” They have taken Marcuse’s thesis in Repressive Tolerance to heart.

Though I hope that Dreger and her fellow travelers succeed in rolling back the clock, I suspect that the battle here is lost. She points out, correctly, that the total politicization of academia will destroy its existence as a producer of truth in any independent and objective manner. More concretely, she suggests it is likely that conservatives will simply start to defund and direct higher education even more stridently than they do now, because they will correctly see higher education as purely a tool toward the politics of their antagonists. I happen to be a conservative, and one who is pessimistic about the persistence of a public liberal space for ideas that offend. If progressives give up on liberalism of ideas, and it seems that many are (the most famous defenders of the old ideals are people from earlier generations, such as Nadine Strossen and Wendy Kaminer, with Dreger being a young example), I can’t see those of us in the broadly libertarian wing of conservatism making the last stand alone.

Robert Klemko:

Elliot Uzelac took over this moribund football program at a struggling school in a worse-off town with clear goals. The boys would pass their classes. They would commit their weekday afternoons to practice. And they would make the playoffs. He even wrote that word—playoffs—on a chalkboard during his first team meeting, underlining it three times for emphasis. Never mind the fact this team had won four games in eight years.
Incredulous, a few players pulled out their smartphones and Googled this crazy man with white hair and a gruff voice. Before them stood a football lifer who had once coached under Bo Schembechler and Bill Belichick, a 74-year-old who had once been the head coach of Division I college programs.

High expectations should drive everything in the K-12 world, rather than spending more and delivering disastrous reading results.

The Economist:

PEER review, many boffins argue, channelling Churchill, is the worst way to ensure quality of research, except all the others. The system, which relies on papers being vetted by anonymous experts prior to publication, has underpinned scientific literature for decades. It is far from perfect: studies have shown that referees, who are not paid for their services, often make a poor fist of spotting serious mistakes. It is also open to abuse, with reviewers susceptible to derailing rivals or pinching their ideas. But it is as good as it gets.
Or is it? Marcus Munafò, of Bristol University, believes it could be improved–by injecting a dose of subjectivity. The claim, which he and his colleagues present in a (peer-reviewed) paper just published in Nature, is odd. Science, after all, purports to be about seeking objective truth (or at least avoiding objective falsity). But it is done by scientists, who are human beings. And like other human endeavours, Dr Munafò says, it is prone to bubbles. When the academic herd stampedes to the right answer, that is fine and dandy. Less so if it rushes towards the wrong one.
To arrive at their counterintuitive conclusion the researchers compared computer models of reviewer behaviour. Each began with a scientist who had reached an initial opinion as to which of two opposing hypotheses is more likely to be true. The more controversial the issue, the lower the confidence. He then sends the manuscript supporting one of the hypotheses to a reviewer, who also has a prior opinion about its veracity, and who recommends either rejecting or accepting the submission. (In this simple model journal editors are assumed to follow reviewers’ advice unquestioningly, which is not always the case in practice.) Subsequently, the reviewer himself writes and submits his own paper advocating one of the hypotheses to the journal, and the process repeats itself.

Gary Marcus:

Almost fifteen years ago, in a book called “Chance, Development, and Aging,” the gerontologists Caleb Finch and Thomas Kirkwood described a truly elegant study of biology: a batch of roundworms, all genetically identical, raised on identical diets of agar. Despite having identical genetics and near-identical environments, some worms lived far longer than others. The lesson? The classical equation of “life = nature + nurture” had left out chance.
Of course, that was just worms. This week, a team of German researchers, led by Gerd Kempermann, built on a similar logic and announced in Science that they had raised forty inbred mice that were essentially genetically identical in a single complex environment, and used radio-frequency identification (RFID) implants to track every moment of their lives. Nobody could ever ethically run that sort of controlled experiment with humans, but Kempermann’s study provides convincing evidence that–in a fellow mammal with which we share a basic brain organization–neither genetic identity nor a shared environment is enough to guarantee a common fate. Different creatures, even from the same species, can grow up differently, and develop significantly different brains–even if their genomes are identical, and even if their environments are, too.
Because of the care with which Kempermann and his colleagues tracked the individual mice, the study provides considerable new insight into how we become who we are. It speaks to what the psychologist Sandra Scarr once called “niche-picking”: the idea that each individual develops a different set of talents, in order to carve out his or her own identity. Two people with initially slight differences might develop radically different skills, because they follow different paths. One child likes basketball, another painting; at first hardly anything distinguishes the two: both struggle to make baskets, and neither one can yet draw a credible house. But, from the outset, the first is slightly better at basketball, the second at art. Over time, the first child devotes herself to basketball, spends thousands of hours playing the game, and eventually becomes a professional athlete; the other applies herself equally to her chosen pursuit, and becomes a great artist. Tiny initial differences in talent, or simply in desire, become magnified over time. By tracking in detail the learning curves for forty individual mice, genetically identical and with essentially equal environmental opportunity, Kempermann and his colleagues show how the same kind of magnification can happen under carefully observed laboratory circumstances.