Michigan’s largest teachers union is stirring up possible teacher strikes — perhaps a statewide strike — to protest what the union calls attacks by Gov. Rick Snyder and the Republican-led Legislature on unions, school funding and middle-class taxpayers.
A letter by MichiganEducation Association President Iris Salters to 1,100 locals asks them whether the union should authorize “job action,” up to and including illegal strikes, to “increase pressure on our legislators.”
The union and other education advocates have criticized Snyder’s proposal to cut funding to schools by $470 per pupil as excessive.
School administrative costs, public information practices draw backlash from Baltimore County lawmakers
County hired deputy superintendent at salary of $214,000 even as it cuts teaching positions
Members of the Baltimore County delegation are demanding an explanation for the school system’s spending on top-level administration and its policy of requiring written requests for salary information.
In a letter dated Friday, Sen. Kathy Klausmeier and Del. John Olszewski Jr. criticized the school system’s recent hiring of a deputy superintendent at an annual salary of $214,000 even as the proposed budget calls for cutting 196 teaching positions at middle and high schools.
“Leaving 200 teaching positions vacant will no doubt mean larger class sizes and it may also mean that many important and valuable educational programs will either be understaffed or non-existent,” they said in the letter to school Superintendent Joe A. Hairston.
They also called the salary of Renee Foose, who will begin her job as the county’s deputy superintendent next month, “appalling to many Baltimore County residents.”
If education is really a priority, fund it
Many of us are still trying to get over the shock of Gov. Rick Snyder’s recent budget proposal and the devastating impact it will have on school districts. We knew there would be sacrifices from all sectors of the state, but we didn’t expect such a disinvestment in public education. Snyder is proposing in his 2011-12 budget a $300 per pupil cut on top of the current $170 cut. Adding to the damage is an expected increase in retirement costs that could equate to an additional $230 per pupil. Add the numbers together and districts could be facing a $700 per pupil reduction.
Michigan districts have been reducing their budgets for the past 10 years. They’ve been forced to think creatively to provide quality education despite years of shrinking resources and one-time budget fixes. At the same time, the expectations for school reform and increased student achievement are at an all-time high, negative attacks on education are unprecedented. The result has been a focus on short-term fixes that offer temporary relief to schools with no assurance of long-term funding stability. Districts have been forced to plan from year-to-year as opposed to long-term planning which we know is more conducive to spawning true reform.
Kathy Hayes is executive director of the Michigan Association of School Boards.
Wisconsin Kids caught in the middle of stalemate between Walker, teachers union
Meanwhile, American kids, when compared with those in other countries, are in the middle of the pack or worse when it comes to reading, math and science proficiency, according to a study released last week. And locally, Madison schools struggle with rising numbers of low-income students and poor minority graduation rates.
These are not problems that can be solved by killing teachers unions, nor with teachers unions unwilling to participate in real reform.
But I suppose that as long as Walker and the unions remain in fight mode, solutions will have to wait.
Are “charter universities” the future of state-funded higher ed?
On the face of it, the budget proposal that Ohio Governor John Kasich released this week looks like terrible news for state universities. Not only would Kasich’s plan slash higher education spending by 10.5 percent but it also would cap tuition increases at 3.5 percent a year.
So it might come as a surprise that some university presidents received the plan warmly. Within hours, Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee released a statement praising the governor for “understanding that higher education and our state’s long-term strength are inextricably linked.”
Gee’s optimism rests on another aspect of the governor’s budget. In exchange for the budget cuts, Kasich would give state universities more autonomy in running their day-to-day affairs. Long-term, that could save schools money. “We at Ohio State continue to move aggressively in both advocating for regulatory freedom and reconfiguring and reinventing our institution,” Gee said.
Upstate N.Y. schools anguish over aid cuts
Upstate school district leaders and education groups are concerned that Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s proposed budget sharply reduces their state aid while sparing their downstate counterparts.
“I think it’s completely immoral,” said Bloomfield Central School District Superintendent Michael Midey in Ontario County. “Why is it that my students take a hit? I just don’t understand it.”
Among school districts facing the largest cuts per pupil, 97 percent are in upstate communities while 75 percent of those facing the smallest cuts are in downstate suburban communities, according to the Alliance for a Quality Education, an Albany-based union-backed advocacy group.
At issue is a proposed $1.5 billion cut to education aid in Cuomo’s 2011-12 state budget plan, dropping local funding from $20.9 billion to $19.4 billion.
Newark School Board Talks Benefits or No Benefits for Board Members
NUSD board members have medical, dental and vision coverage for themselves and their families that is paid for by the district. Possible changes sparked disagreements at budget workshop.
Debates surfaced among school board members on whether they should receive health benefits, a topic that was brought up during a budget workshop held on Tuesday night.
Disagreements began when board member Nancy Thomas presented the idea that board members should no longer participate in health benefits provided by Newark Unified School District.
Can Anyone Change No Child Left Behind?
The Obama Administration is doubling down on its push to overhaul the federal No Child Left Behind Act. Last Wednesday, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan testified before Congress and aggressively urged action to revise the landmark and contentious education law that was passed in 2001. The President began this week with a speech at a northern Virginia middle school urging Congress to act and then spent part of Tuesday cutting several radio interviews prodding Capitol Hill even more.
This isn’t the first time the Administration has implored Congress to change this law: it’s been a constant drumbeat since 2009 (the law was due to be “reauthorized,” Washingtonspeak for tuned up, in 2007 but Congress couldn’t agree on how to do it) and even during the 2008 campaign. Now, frustrated with the lack of action, Obama and Duncan are trying a new approach: scaring Congress into acting. Both Obama and Duncan are highlighting Department of Education estimates that more than 80% of schools will not meet performance targets this year if the law isn’t changed. One wag dubbed the new strategy a “fail wail.”
New York Democrat governor hits school districts, defends education cut
Claiming local school districts are playing “political games,” New York’s governor on Thursday defended his $1.5 billion cut to education spending.
Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed cut in state aid to schools — the largest in history — is aimed at closing a $10 billion budget gap for the next fiscal year.
Cuomo told reporters on Thursday that his cuts average 2.7 percent per school district, and could be offset by rooting out inefficiencies, using reserve funds and lowering the salaries of superintendents.
“I know there is waste and abuse in the school districts; 2.7 percent in waste and abuse,” Cuomo said after a private meeting with legislative leaders. “Districts say ‘we don’t have any.’ I don’t believe it.”
Teachers’ unions and school officials have attacked Cuomo’s plan, saying that they’ve already made steep cuts in recent years, and that unfunded state mandates are driving up costs. Aid was cut by $1.4 billion in 2010 after being frozen in 2009. School districts have also assailed the governor’s proposal to cap property tax increases.
Education and the boiled frog
Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011-’13 budget proposal includes cuts to Wisconsin’s public schools of more than $834 million. This represents the largest cut to education in our state’s history. It would be impossible to implement cuts this size without significant cuts to educational programs and services for Wisconsin’s children.
The proposal is drastic – and that is just part of the problem. You have likely heard the old adage that a frog placed in a pot of hot water will immediately jump out to avoid harm, while a frog placed in cool water will not notice if the heat is turned up and will unwittingly allow itself to be boiled alive. Similarly, the proposed cuts are placed on top of smaller cuts the schools have taken steadily over the past two decades.
In Wisconsin, school districts have been under strict limits on their revenues and spending. These limits have not kept pace with the natural increases in the costs of everyday things like supplies, energy and fuel. So every year, local school board members and administrators have had to cut their budgets to comply with their budget limits.
Educational Innovation, Technology and Entrepreneurship
I have spent the last 25 years studying and working with governments and private groups to improve the education available to marginalized youth, in the United States and around the world. Most of that work was based in the belief that change at scale could result from the decisions made by governments, and that research could enlighten those choices. When I joined the Harvard faculty 13 years ago I set out to educate a next generation of leaders who would go on to advise policy makers or to become policy makers themselves, and designed a masters program largely responsive to that vision. During those years I continued to write for those audiences.
Over time, however, I have become aware that traditional approaches can’t improve education at a scale and depth sufficient to ready the next generation of students for the challenges they will face. I have also become more skeptical of the assumed linear relationship between conventional research and educational change. I now believe the needed educational revitalization requires design and invention, as much as linear extrapolation from the study of the status quo — that is, of the past. It also requires systemic interventions — changes in multiple conditions and at multiple levels, inside the school and out. And it requires a departure from the conventional study into how much we can expect a given intervention or additional resource to change one educational outcome measure — typically a skill as measured on a test or access to an education level, or transition to the next.
Unions Intimidating Gist
The tension which exists between Education Commissioner Deborah Gist and the leadership of the teachers’ unions is simmering at a hotter level than usual this week as the Commissioner faces down an unfair labor practice complaint filed against her. But the complaint brings forth an important question of just who is intimidating whom when teachers and educational professionals are thrust into the midst of political battles.
The tireless and ever steely Gist was due for a complaint hearing before the union-sympathizing state Labor Relations Board (LRB) Tuesday which was prompted by an unfair labor practice charge filed against her by the union representing workers at her own RI Department of Education (RIDE).
The core of the complaint was that Gist violated state labor laws when she sent an e-mail out last February, at the height of the Central Falls teacher firing tempest, which basically advised her own employees that it would not be a great idea to physically partake in a protest rally which was designed to denigrate RIDE’s own school transformation policy effort at the failing high school.
Madison School District could reduce property taxes next year
The Madison School District is positioned to reduce property taxes next year because of proposed reductions in state funding and concessions from its employee unions, a district official said Tuesday.
Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal calls for a 5.5 percent reduction in district revenues, which the Legislative Fiscal Bureau estimated Tuesday would reduce district funding statewide by $465 million.
Madison estimates its revenues — a combination of property taxes and state aid — would drop $15 million under the governor’s proposal, assistant superintendent for business services Erik Kass said.
The district’s property taxes would be $243 million next year, or $2 million less than this year, Kass said, because of an increase in enrollment, a proposed $5 million reduction in state aid and a 2008 referendum that allows the district to exceed its revenue limit set by the state.
Property taxes increased about 9% last year.
U.S. Is Urged to Raise Teachers’ Status
Sam Dillon via a Kris Olds’ email:
To improve its public schools, the United States should raise the status of the teaching profession by recruiting more qualified candidates, training them better and paying them more, according to a new report on comparative educational systems.
Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the international achievement test known by its acronym Pisa, says in his report that top-scoring countries like Korea, Singapore and Finland recruit only high-performing college graduates for teaching positions, support them with mentoring and other help in the classroom, and take steps to raise respect for the profession.
“Teaching in the U.S. is unfortunately no longer a high-status occupation,” Mr. Schleicher says in the report, prepared in advance of an educational conference that opens in New York on Wednesday. “Despite the characterization of some that teaching is an easy job, with short hours and summers off, the fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership.”
The Best of Times and the Worst of Times?
Years from now, lets hope ed reformers looking back on 2011 and gauging the Republican “position” don’t liken it to the opening of Charles Dickens’ classic A Tale of Two Cities, with it having been among “the best of times and the worst of times” for education reform. Of course, at first blush this scenario would appear to be highly unlikely – an exaggeration at best -but sadly such a pronouncement seems less farfetched with each passing day of the new 112th Congress and with the emerging priorities of at least some self-proclaimed education reform governors.
Huh? Wasn’t 2011-12 supposed to be a ‘banner year’ for all things education reform?
Compromise would limit collective bargaining for Tennessee teachers
House Republicans today advanced a compromise on the bill that would originally have halted collective bargaining by Tennessee teachers — allowing bargaining to continue but with new limits on what can be negotiated.
The House Education Subcommittee approved, on a party-line vote, the amendment that would strip out the bill’s ban on collective bargaining and instead allow negotiations to continue between local teacher associations and school boards on base salaries, benefits and a few other issues.
It would prohibit negotiations on differential and merit pay, giving school boards full authority to enact merit pay plans. It would limit bargaining on “working conditions” — currently a broad topic — to matters affecting employees financially or their relationship with the school board.
Pop Quiz: Rhee & Weingarten
Two Cornellians on opposite sides of the education debate–controversial former D.C. schools chancellor Michelle Rhee ’92 and teachers’ union leader Randi Weingarten ’80–sat down with CAM to talk about school reform. (But not together.)
They are the two strong-willed women at the heart of the nation’s debate on school reform. Both were featured in last year’s education documentary Waiting for Superman–one as a hero, the other as a heavy. They have offices seven blocks from each other in Washington, D.C., but are miles apart philosophically. And, yes, reform advocate Michelle Rhee ’92 and union leader Randi Weingarten ’80 are both Cornellians, a connection they’ve never discussed.
Rhee, forty-one, catapulted to national prominence–including appearances on Oprah and the covers of Time and Newsweek–as a result of her tumultuous three years as schools chancellor in the District of Columbia. Appointed in 2007 by Mayor Adrian Fenty to overhaul the troubled D.C. system, she fired hundreds of teachers and principals, closed schools, and reorganized the bureaucracy. Test scores rose and enrollment stabilized, but her steamroller style made enemies, not the least of them the Weingarten-led American Federation of Teachers. AFT poured money into the mayoral campaign of Vincent Gray, who defeated Fenty in last September’s Democratic primary. Rhee, calling the outcome “devastating,” resigned soon after. She has since started a new organization, Students First, to promote school reform. A native of Toledo and the divorced mother of two daughters, Rhee is engaged to former NBA star Kevin Johnson, the mayor of Sacramento.
The Inevitable Wisconsin
In the words of Young Frankenstein’s Inspector Kemp, “A riot iss an ogly think.” So is the Wisconsin shootout; ugly – but inevitable.
The unions had to be expecting a tough time with their new Governor Walker. No doubt they anticipated a difficult negotiation – “hard bargaining”, as the governor cut labor costs to balance the budget. Instead, they found themselves facing political forces who actually intend to put an end to them.
Unions have always decried every effort to rollback labor costs or union power as “union-busting.” Now their past rhetorical excesses have caught up with them, as they confront the real thing. (Cf “Wolf, the Boy who Cried…”)
At first it looked as if Walker was indeed bargaining hard. Rolling back pensions, increasing employee contributions, and making labor accept it as a compromise by agreeing not to end collective bargaining outright. And there would be the peace, as Don Barzini would say.
Well, gentlemen may cry “peace, peace,” but there is no peace. Before it could be seen if Walker was a “let’s make a deal” type, Democrats abandoned the state and the unions seized the Capitol to bully the governor and Republicans. They in turn found a parliamentary bypass and passed the bill to strip bargaining rights. The budget, with its real benefit reductions and budget cuts is still pending. But the unions appear to have used up most of their ammo, so their hopes cannot be high.
College Degree Fails to Promote Active Civic Engagement Beyond Voting
Intercollegiate Studies Institute:
nlightened Citizenship: How Civic Knowledge Trumps a College Degree in Promoting Active Civic Engagement is the fifth report to the nation issued by ISI’s National Civic Literacy Board. While each past study has had a different point of emphasis, all share a common thread of examining the relationships that exist between higher education, civic knowledge, and citizenship.
Unfortunately, the results of ISI’s past civic literacy research does not inspire confidence that our institutions of higher learning are living up to their educative and civic responsibilities, responsibilities that almost all American colleges recognize as critical to their overall public missions.
In 2006 and 2007, ISI administered a sixty-question multiple-choice exam on knowledge of American history and institutions to over 28,000 college freshmen and seniors from over eighty schools. In both years, the average freshman and senior failed the exam.
In 2008, ISI tested 2,508 adults of all ages and educational backgrounds, and once again the results were discouraging. Seventy-one percent of Americans failed the exam, with high school graduates scoring 44% and college graduates also failing at 57%.
Teachers will move forward
Wisconsin’s public school teachers and support staff are reeling after a week in which our state leaders put political ambitions before their constituents.
When the governor signed into law his unprecedented attack on workers’ rights, he did so amidst plummeting approval ratings and an intense and growing base of Wisconsinites who are outraged by the actions he is taking to destroy our great state.
Make no mistake, this disregard for public opinion and workplace rights will have a broad and lasting negative impact on our state’s future. From schools to hospitals to public services – and ultimately, to middle-class families across this state, the damage these actions set into place will be deep and wide.
On behalf of educators across our state, I remind you that weeks ago we accepted the financial concessions the governor asked for to help solve our state’s budget crisis. But we have consistently said that silencing the voices of workers by eliminating their collective bargaining rights goes too far.
Mary Bell is a Wisconsin Rapids junior high teacher with 33 years experience in the classroom. She is serving as president of the Wisconsin Education Association Council.
Quality in the classroom Layoffs by seniority are not in the best interests of students
With Republican governors across the nation looking for new ways to demean and disparage public school teachers, it was refreshing to see Gov. Andrew Cuomo take a different tack. He proposed legislation to expedite an agreed-upon evaluation system that could be used as early as next school year to elevate the quality and professionalism of New York’s teaching work force.
While Cuomo’s bill will have a positive impact on the state’s education system years down the road, it doesn’t address a major threat to teacher quality this year: seniority-based layoffs.
It is time for Cuomo to lead on the issue by eliminating the state law that requires layoffs to be based on seniority rather than effectiveness.
Wisconsin Legislative Fiscal Bureau Releases Redistributed Tax Dollar & Property Tax Growth Limitation Change Memos for School Districts
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau this afternoon released a host of memos analyzing Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011-13 budget and its impact on local government aids.
The memos outline the budget’s impact on county and municipal aid, general transportation aid to counties and municipalities, state aid and levy information for technical college districts, and potential savings to local governments due to increase employee contributions to the Wisconsin Retirement System.
According to the LFB, the bill would reduce total funding for calendar year 2012 payments by $96 million, $59.5 million for towns, villages and cities, and $36.5 million for counties.
More Wisconsin districts now could drop insurance arm of teachers union
In freeing school boards from bargaining with employees over anything but inflation-capped wage increases, Wisconsin lawmakers might have opened the floodgates for districts seeking to drop coverage by the state’s dominant – and highly controversial – health insurance provider for teachers.
WEA Trust, the nonprofit company started 40 years ago by the state’s largest teachers union, currently insures employees in about two-thirds of Wisconsin school districts. The company’s market dominance has dropped in recent years, although not as much as some school officials who complain about the company’s costs would like.
After switching the district’s nonunion employees to a different health insurance carrier, Cedarburg School Board President Kevin Kennedy said his school system is likely to look at cost savings by doing the same for its unionized teachers after unsuccessful attempts in previous years.
“It’s such a large-ticket item; it’s such low-hanging fruit,” he said. “You can lay off an aide or increase your student fees, but that doesn’t make up such a magnitude of saving as insurance does.”
Obama takes Budget Debate to School
President Barack Obama called on Congress Monday to overhaul the No Child Left Behind education law, the third time this month he has focused on education in a bid to gain advantage in the federal budget battle.
The effort to change the law, George W. Bush’s signature domestic achievement, is expected to be largely bipartisan. Mr. Obama asked lawmakers to send him a new version before school opens this fall.
At the same time, White House officials see an opportunity in education to win support in the budget debate, which Republicans have focused on cutting federal spending. On Monday, Mr. Obama paired some largely bipartisan ideas about policy with a partisan attack on GOP budget priorities. “Let me make it plain: We cannot cut education,” said Mr. Obama at a middle school in Arlington, Va., part of what the White House labels “education month.”
The White House’s goal, beyond reauthorizing No Child, is to turn the spending debate from a general push for cuts toward a discussion of the implications for favored programs.
Madison School Board Tension over Spending/Taxes & Compensation
Gov. Scott Walker says the changes he has rammed through the Legislature will give school districts and local governments “the tools” they need to withstand the severe cuts in state aid his budget will deliver. What he doesn’t get into is how the tensions caused by his agenda will divide the members of these bodies, as they have the state as a whole.
One example of this is the Madison school board, where disagreements over the impact of Walker’s actions have spurned an ugly exchange, in which school board member Lucy Mathiak lobbed an F-bomb at a fellow board member, Marj Passman.
The exchange happened yesterday, March 14. Passman was contacted by a Madison school teacher who felt Mathiak had been dismissive of the teacher’s concerns, urging her to “get over yourself.” Passman, who allows that board members have been deluged with angry emails, says she expressed to Mathiak that she agreed this response was a little harsh.
Somewhat related: Jason Shepherd: Going to the mat for WPS
School board yields to pressure to keep costlier insurance option
Suzanne Fatupaito, a nurse’s assistant in Madison schools, is fed up with Wisconsin Physicians Service, the preferred health insurance provider of Madison Teachers Inc.
“MTI uses scare tactics” to maintain teacher support for WPS, Fatupaito recently wrote to the school board. “If members knew that another insurance [plan] would offer similar services to WPS and was less expensive – it would be a no-brainer.”
WPS, with a monthly price tag of $1,720 for family coverage, is one of two health coverage options available to the district’s teachers. The other is Group Health Cooperative, costing $920 monthly for a family plan.
During the past year, the Madison school board has reached agreements with other employee groups to switch from WPS to HMO plans, with most of the savings going to boost pay.
In December, the board held a secret vote in closed session to give up its right to seek health insurance changes should negotiations on the 2007-09 teachers contract go into binding arbitration. (The board can seek voluntary insurance changes during negotations.)
Lucy has been a long time friend and I have long appreciated her activism on behalf of students, the schools and our community.
Higher Property Taxes, Teacher Cuts and Blame
There will be blood. It’s undeniable, especially when the governor goes out of his way to say that he doesn’t have any on his hands.
Rick Perry, watching over a legislative session that threatens (at this point) to cut $9.3 billion or more from state spending on public education, said this week that it would not be the state’s fault if any public school teachers lost their jobs. “The lieutenant governor, the speaker and their colleagues aren’t going to hire or fire one teacher, as best I can tell,” he said. “That is a local decision that will be made at the local districts.”
House Speaker Joe Straus, Republican of San Antonio, said a day later that the governor was “technically correct,” in that the teachers don’t work directly for the state and the state won’t be doing the firing. They may be cutting off the food supply to the kitchen, but it’s the cooks who decide which diners will be fed.
Alaska legislative task force releases tentative education report
The Legislature should attend to policies impacting distance education, teacher training and student counseling, a task force has said.
The tentative report serves as early recommendations from the group, which formed almost a year ago under a legislative directive.
Policy makers will ultimately look to its final recommendations for guidance when setting education policy. The group spent two days last week combing, as a co-chairman put it, through a “kitchen sink” of 63 ideas. Roughly half remained when it wrapped up work Friday afternoon.
The list — still tentative — places emphasis on turning to technology-supported distance education in a vast state with relatively few residents. The group suggested state education and workforce development departments should team with university leaders to assess broadband infrastructure. The list would also nudge lawmakers further by asking them to consider encouraging school districts to start requiring some online coursework before a student can graduate.
Vouchers advance in Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.
The U.S. is enjoying a new spring of education reform, with challenges to teacher tenure and “parent-trigger” for charter schools. So it’s natural that the mother of all school choice reforms–vouchers–is also making a comeback.
Last week a House committee voted to restore Washington, D.C.’s opportunity scholarship program, which lets kids in persistently failing schools attend a private school of the family’s choosing. Joe Lieberman is pushing similar legislation in the Senate, where it enjoys bipartisan support. The White House and teachers unions killed the program in 2009, despite clear evidence of academic gains.
Meanwhile, more states are realizing that true educational choice extends beyond charter schools. The most promising development is occurring in Pennsylvania, where a state-wide voucher bill supported by new Governor Tom Corbett is moving through the Republican-controlled legislature.
Demonize data on teaching at our state’s (California) peril
The facts are hard.
A generation ago, California had what was considered the best education system on the planet.
Today, our daughters and sons attend one of the worst-performing education systems in the industrialized world.
We are failing on the rock-bottom basics. California students’ ability to read is ranked 49th in the country by the U.S. Department of Education. Our kids’ ability to do math is ranked 47th and we are second to worst in science. Compared globally, the situation darkens further. Of the top 35 nations, the United States is ranked 29th in science and 35th in math. Your neighborhood school might be good by California standards, but that is a very low bar indeed. Our education crisis is a human tragedy and a looming economic disaster.
The Bay Area Council resolutely refuses to accept this crisis as our state’s fate. Let’s get past the political gridlock and get down to the real business of dramatically improving California schools. We know, as every honest study has shown, that it will take a combination of real dollars and major changes in the way we deliver education.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Outgoing Democrat Representative Dave Obey’s Midnight Bonuses
Retired Rep. Dave Obey, the Wausau Democrat who was known for running a lean congressional office, left office after giving a nice taxpayer-funded gift to his staff in the form of an 84 percent salary bonus. Obey ranked eighth among all 435 members of the House of Representatives in his fourth quarter generosity to staff.
The practice of jacking up fourth quarter salaries for staffers is something that several members of Wisconsin’s congressional delegation – led by Republican representatives Thomas Petri (Wisconsin’s 6th District), F. James Sensenbrenner (5th Dist) and Democrat Gwen Moore (4th Dist.) – have engaged in over the last decade.
DAVE OBEY
The “4th Quarter Bonus,” as it has been called by Capitol insiders, is now documented thanks to the researchers at LegiStorm, an organization that catalogues and categorizes Congressional financial data. Congressional salary data is reported quarterly and was released March 1. In every year, there is a pronounced spike in fourth-quarter staff salaries that averages 20 per cent among members of the House of Representatives.
In the fourth quarter of 2010, fueled by bonuses that were largely fed by departing members – mostly retiring or defeated Democrats like Obey – congressional staff salary expenditures exceeded $200 million for the first time, totaling $201.7 million. LegiStorm reported that bonuses were nearly twice as large for staffs of departing House members as they were for continuing members.
Related: US debt clock: The outstanding public debt as of 3/13/2011 @ 8:01:46p.m. is $14,175,382,249,980.58 which is $45,698.37 per citizen.
Kansas Moving $50,000,000 from Education to Health & Human Services
Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback is cutting $50 million from schools and will ask the Legislature to transfer nearly that much to cover increased costs in health and human services caseloads.
The school funding reduction makes up the lion’s share of $56.5 million in total cuts announced late Friday.
Brownback, a Republican, said the reductions are necessary to meet the constitutional requirement that the state budget be in balance when the fiscal year ends in June.
“I wish we didn’t have to do this,” he said. “It’s been difficult, but it’s something we need to do.”
The cut in base state aid to education will reduce the state’s annual school spending per pupil by $22, from $4,012 to $3,990, according to Sherriene Jones-Sontag, the governor’s spokeswoman.
Much more on increased adult to adult spending, here.
Education Budget Battle in Alabama
Gov. Robert Bentley’s proposed education budget would so severely underfund Alabama school systems that at least 49 of the 132 districts would be unable to operate, according to state Superintendent Joe Morton.
Bentley’s budget, which he presented March 1, protects all state-funded teachers but underfunds transportation, utilities, operations and support workers such as secretaries, maintenance workers, cafeteria workers and janitors, Morton said.
“If the governor’s budget is enacted into law without changes, we estimate at the end of fiscal 2012 that 89 school systems will have less than a one-month operating balance and 49 of the 89 will actually have a deficit budget,” Morton said. “Alabama cannot operate public education with 37 percent of its school systems insolvent.”
Proposed budget makes all-male charter school in Madison less likely
The chances the Madison School Board will approve an Urban League proposal for an all-male charter school geared toward low-income minorities are dwindling.
Madison Preparatory Academy would cost the district $1.1 million in 2012-13, its first year of operation. That would increase to $2.8 million by its fifth year, Superintendent Dan Nerad told the board last week.
“For each of these years, (the district) would be obligated to reduce programs and services to our existing schools to transfer this amount of money to Madison Prep,” Nerad wrote in a memo.
Some school board members said last week that Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal makes it less likely they will be able to support cutting other programs to find money for Madison Prep.
Who has plan to lift teachers’ gloom?
So much tumult lately. It’s hard to focus on just one thing. So here are four short columns instead of one long one.
Column 1
Forget the Viagra. The teachers I’ve been in touch with lately need Prozac.
Somewhere in the chaos of last week, the Milwaukee teachers union confirmed that it had given up the fight for its members’ rights to have drugs for sexual dysfunction covered by their insurance (a stand that, whatever its merits, belongs in the Hall of Fame of public relations blunders).
But depression among teachers – now that’s a serious subject. Maybe not genuine, clinical depression. Rather, bad-morale, pessimistic, stressed-out, I-think-it’s-only-going-to-get-worse depression.
Maybe the unhappiness will blow over. Daily routines tend to win out in our minds. Or maybe you think ill will is just a necessary by-product of the mother of all comeuppances that teachers deserved and got at the hands of Gov. Scott Walker and the legislative Republicans.
But marking the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War by staging a new one in Wisconsin will have long-term consequences on teachers and teaching. Some maybe on the upside. Some will have lasting effects as downers. Who goes into teaching, who stays, what the work is like – there will be big issues to sort out.
I sincerely hope that Wisconsin political, education and civic leaders take the lead on new education opportunities, rather than follow. Minnesota Democrat Governor Mark Dayton just signed an alternative teacher licensing law days ago. Janet Mertz advocated for a similar model for math & science teachers via this 2009 email. Education model, curricular and financial changes are certainly well underway.
Just say no to voucher expansion
Memo to all Wisconsin legislators. There is an easy way to prove you care about public education in Wisconsin. And it won’t cost a penny.
Just say no to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed expansion of the Milwaukee voucher program providing tax dollars to private schools.
This may seem merely like a Milwaukee issue. It’s not. Voucher advocates have made clear for more than 20 years that their goal is to replace public education with a system of universal vouchers that includes private and religious schools.
The heartbreaking drama currently playing in Milwaukee – millions of dollars cut from the public schools while vouchers are expanded so wealthy families can attend private schools in the suburbs – may be coming soon to a school district near you.
Madison School District reaches tentative contract agreement with teachers’ union
The Madison School District has reached a tentative agreement with all of its unions for an extension of their collective bargaining agreement through mid-2013.
Superintendent Dan Nerad said the agreement includes a 50 percent employee contribution to the pension plan. It also includes a five percentage point increase in employees’ health insurance premiums, and the elimination of a more expensive health insurance option in the second year.
Salaries would be frozen at current levels, though employees could still receive raises for longevity and educational credits.
The district said the deal results in savings of about $23 million for the district over the two-year contract.
The agreement includes no amnesty or pay for teachers who missed four days last month protesting Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to strip public employee collective bargaining rights. Walker’s signing of the bill Friday prompted the district and MTI to reach an agreement quickly
A two-year tentative contract agreement has been reached between the Madison Metropolitan School District and the Madison Teachers Union for five bargaining units: teachers, substitute teachers, educational and special educational assistants, supportive educational employees and school security assistants.
District administrators, with the guidance of the Board of Education, and Madison Teacher Inc. reps negotiated from 9 a.m. Friday until 3 a.m. Saturday when the tentative agreements were completed.
Under details of the contract, workers would contribute 50 percent of the total money that’s being contribution to pension plans. That figure according to district officials, is believed to be very close to the 12 percent overall contribution that the budget repair bill was calling for. The overall savings to the district would be $11 million.
I present Blaska’s Red Badge of Courage award to the Madison Area Technical College Board. Its part-time teachers union would rather sue than settle until Gov. Scott Walker acted. Then it withdrew the lawsuit and asked the board for terms. No dice. “Times have changed,” said MATC’s attorney.
The Madison school board showed a rudimentary backbone when it settled a contract, rather hastily, with a newly nervous Madison teachers union.
The school board got $23 million of concessions over the next two years. Wages are frozen at current levels. Of course, the automatic pay track system remains, which rewards longevity.
The Madison Metropolitan School District and Madison Teachers, Inc. have reached tentative contract agreements for five bargaining units: teachers, substitute teachers, educational and special educational assistants, supportive educational employees, and school security assistants.
District administrators, with the guidance of the Board of Education, and MTI reps negotiated from 9:00 a.m. Friday until 3:00 a.m. Saturday when the tentative agreements were completed.
The Board of Education held a Special Meeting today at 2:00 p.m. and ratified the five collective bargaining agreements. The five MTI units must also ratify before the contracts take effect.
Summary of the agreements:
Emanuel: City (Chicago) needs more single-gender public high schools
Chicago needs more public high schools in general — and more single-gender high schools in particular — to bolster student performance and stem an exodus of middle class families, Mayor-elect Rahm Emanuel said Friday.
During a town-hall meeting with Chicago high-school students, Emanuel blamed a “severe shortage” of high schools, in part, for an alarming, 200,000-person decline in the city’s population in the 2010 U.S. Census.
The mayor-elect said that nine out of ten students who apply for admission to Lane Tech High School are turned away. On the West Side, there are 14,000 students “ready to go to high school and only 7,000 slots,” he said.
NJEA Lobbying: Did You Get Your $6.8 Million Worth?
Lots of press on NJEA’s bill for lobbying last year: $6.8 million, far more than any other lobbying group in NJ. At about 200,000 members who pay an average of $730 in annual dues, that’s about 5% of each teacher’s contribution. Pennies in the grand scheme of things. And yet…here’s NJEA Spokesman Steve Wollmer sounding a tad defensive in the Star-Ledger: “We spent that money. We felt we had to. The governor was putting out a lot of what we feel was misinformation on education and our members demanded we set the record straight”
and in NJ Spotlight: “It was unprecedented, but so is the severity of the attacks by this governor. Our membership insisted on it, and our leadership did, too.”
and in the Asbury Park Press, “It’s like a fight between two heavyweights; you land some punches, and everyone gets hurt. Our And we acknowledge that numbers for NJEA are down. But that’s not going to stop us from telling the truth.”
Locally, the Wisconsin Education Association’s $2,143,588 topped lobbying expenditures from January, 2009 to July, 2010
Teachers Unions explained
The Education DIMARYP (Pyramid Spelled Backwards)
Will an expanded Wisconsin voucher program cost more or less?
Gov. Walker’s proposed 2011-2013 biennial budget calls for an expansion of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program by repealing the enrollment cap, allowing private schools anywhere within Milwaukee County to participate, and expanding eligibility to all City of Milwaukee families by eliminating income limits.
During tough budget deliberations, it would be good to know whether the expanded choice program is likely to save or cost state taxpayers over the long run. Either is possible – taxpayers save if the students who join the expanded program otherwise would have been students at more costly public or charter schools and taxpayers lose if the new voucher users would have otherwise been free to the state as tuition-paying private school students.
There is a debate over the likelihood that the program will be able expand considerably, as capacity for new students in the county’s existing private schools appears constrained at this time. However, the debate so far has overlooked the fact that the proposed budget would allow new voucher users to be existing private school students starting in the 2012-13 school year. There is a real concern that the expanded program may, in fact, increase costs for the state over the long run by increasing the total number of Wisconsin K-12 students who receive state support for their education.
A teacher weeps for the future of Wisconsin schools
The morning after the Republicans stripped me of my rights, I stood in the hallway of my school, watching my four-year-olds stream in. They gave me hugs. They ran up to show me things: a new shirt, an extra pretty hair ribbon, a silly band. They wanted to know if it was chocolate milk day. They pointed out that one of their classmates, who had been out sick for a few days, had come finally come back!
And for a little while, normalcy returned to our world. I had spent the evening before at the Capitol, in the crowd of thousands that pushed against the locked doors, demanding to be let in. I think I spent most of the night in shock – not only at how suddenly I could be deprived of everything I had worked for, but of how suddenly the country I thought I knew could become unrecognizable. I was standing with a crowd on the steps in front of the Capitol door when a police officer slammed it shut in our faces. I walked around the building until I found a spot where protesters had lowered a bathroom window. And I watched in disbelief as people began hoisting each other in through the open window, while dozens milled around them. “Ssssh,” they warned each other. Don’t make any noises that might attract the police.
Memphis Suburbs Vow to Fight Schools Merger
Cameron McWhirter & Timothy Martin:
Officials in the suburbs of Memphis, Tenn., said Wednesday they would fight what they see as a shotgun marriage that joins its school system with that of the city, claiming the move will harm academic standards and increase bureaucracy.
City residents voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to merge its school system–the largest in Tennessee–with the system run by surrounding Shelby County. The two systems operate as separate entities and administrations, but draw money from the same county-wide tax-revenue base–rare for school districts.
The move by the Memphis schools, which still faces a federal lawsuit, has drawn the ire of suburban politicians.
“We will proceed, whether through legislative or judicial channels, to try to undo what we believe has been an ill-conceived and poorly executed plan to take over the Shelby County school system,” said David Pickler, chairman of the Shelby County school board.
New Tennessee education chief is ‘right fit’
Gov. Bill Haslam went outside the state and outside the schoolhouse to find Tennessee’s next education commissioner.
Kevin Huffman is a Washington, D.C.-based attorney who has two years of classroom experience and a decade as an administrator at Teach for America, a nonprofit dedicated to taking bright young college students with no teaching experience and training them to teach in some of the poorest schools in the nation.
“I put a special effort into finding the right fit for education commissioner,” Haslam said in Thursday’s announcement of one of his final Cabinet appointments. “… Kevin combines the experience of having been a bilingual first- and second-grade teacher to helping oversee a national organization with 1,400 full-time employees and a budget of $212 million.”
‘Insanity,’ ‘stupidity’ drive education reform efforts
A big crowd packed into the University of Wisconsin’s Memorial Union Theater on Tuesday night to hear education historian Diane Ravitch, considered one of the most influential scholars in the nation on schools.
In her talk, she ripped into Gov. Scott Walker’s budget, U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan’s Race to the Top, the obsession with measuring student progress through high stakes testing, privatization of education through charters and vouchers and No Child Left Behind legislation that is closing schools and punishing teachers.
Her gloomy assessment of the current passion for “fixing” education and vilifying teachers is particularly striking because Ravitch herself is a former proponent of school testing and accountability and an early supporter of the No Child Left Behind legislation.
Collective Bargaining and the Student Achievement Gap
As numerous states — most prominently Wisconsin and Ohio — consider curtailing the collective bargaining rights of their workers, the debate has largely focused on money and power. If public employee unions are de-authorized or restricted, what impact will that have on state budgets? Tax rates? Political contests?
When it comes to teachers, however, this discussion bypasses a crucial question: What is the impact of collective bargaining on students? A study just published in the Yale Law Journal, which looks at recent, real-life experience in the state of New Mexico, provides a troubling answer.
It finds mandatory collective bargaining laws for public-school teachers lead to a welcome rise in SAT scores – and a disappointing decrease in graduation rates. Author Benjamin Lindy, a member of the Yale Law School class of 2010 and former middle-school teacher, reports that any improvements in student performance appear to come “at the expense of those who are already worse off.”
Wisconsin Teachers urge school boards to approve contracts ahead of budget repair bill
Teachers unions across the state are urging school boards, including Madison’s, to approve two-year contract extensions with major wage concessions before a Republican proposal to dismantle collective bargaining takes effect.
But the Wisconsin Association of School Boards is warning districts not to rush contract approvals as they may be limiting their options in the face of historic state funding cuts.
“We’re telling people to be very cautious,” said Bob Butler, an attorney with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards. “There’s just a lot of unknowns for what their revenue will look like under the governor’s (budget) proposal and how that proposal will evolve over time.”
Wisconsin Governor Walker’s Budget Bill’s Education Component
Visit the Wisconsin Department of Administration website and look up “Budget in Brief” to find this and other information regarding the budget. The Drum received this document from a Waukesha County School District resident. These memos were sent out to all the parents of children in their district and we were told the teachers are not happy.
There are some interesting changes Gov. Walker is looking to pull of. The one that stands out to me is found in the last bulleted point on page 1. It is the repeal of the requirement that charter school teachers hold a DPI teacher license and the only requirement is to have a bachelor’s degree.
This won’t be popular, but I know several professionals that want to get involved in education and do not because of the licensing requirement. If this gets repealed I know that some will get involved in charter schools and they will have a positive impact on students. There will be more Black Male teachers as a result of this sea change.
Does Wisconsin Governor Walker Care About Attracting the Best and Brightest? – McKinsey and Company says U.S. Teacher Pay is Too Low.
Kim Grimmer via a Mary Battaglia email:
Six months ago, before Governor Walker’s recent initiatives had Sconnies questioning the level of pay of teachers and other public servants, McKinsey and Company, the international management consulting company, published a report on whether the United States was falling behind other industrialized nations in attracting and retaining the best possible teachers for its K-12 systems. The report was entitled: Closing the Talent Gap, Attracting and Retaining Top-Third Graduates to a Career in Teaching. One aspect that the report noted was that pay for public school teachers in the United States is too low to attract candidates from the top one-third of university graduating classes, and pay over teachers’ careers does not rise as fast as that of teachers in other industrialized countries.
White House Blog Post on Education
In the third edition of the Advise the Advisor program, Melody Barnes, Director of the Domestic Policy Council and one of President Obama’s senior advisors on education policy, is asking for feedback from parents, teachers and students on what’s working in communities and what needs to change.
Providing our nation’s students with a world-class education is a shared responsibility. It’s going to take all of us – educators, parents, students, philanthropists, state and local leaders, and the federal government – working together to prepare today’s students for the jobs of the 21st century.
You can add your voice to the conversation by answering one or all of the following questions at WhiteHouse.gov/Advise:
Bipartisan Group Backs Common School Curriculum
A bipartisan group of educators and business and labor leaders announced on Monday their support for a common curriculum that states could adopt for public schools across the nation.
The proposal, if it gains traction, would go beyond the common academic standards in English and mathematics that about 40 states adopted last year, by providing specific guidelines for schools and teachers about what should be taught in each grade.
For decades, similar calls for common academic standards, curricular materials and tests for use nationwide — the educational model used by many countries in Europe and Asia — have been beaten back by believers in America’s tradition of local control of schools.
Who’s Trusting Who?
This whole obsession with public trust had me perplexed.
Why would the District suddenly be all concerned about public trust? The District, at least for the ten years that I have been active at the District level, has never shown any interest in public trust. In fact, the District has shown a gleeful contempt for the public trust. Their trust message to the public was the line from Animal House: “You fxxxed messed up. You trusted us.”
Why, after successfully demonstrating for the past ten years that the District had no regard for the public trust, that the District didn’t need the public trust, and that the District didn’t particularly want the public trust, is the District suddenly interested in winning the public’s trust?
Hundreds protest cuts to education during Las Vegas Strip rally
What was billed as a funeral procession of sorts made its way from the Las Vegas Strip to the Palms hotel-casino on Sunday as about 500 people protested Gov. Brian Sandoval’s proposed cuts to education — or what attendees referred to as the “death of education” in Nevada.
Although it was a student-led protest, the rally attracted parents and educators as well, many of whom carried posters bearing messages such as “Nevadans care about education! So should you, Mr. Sandoval,” “What happens in Vegas matters,” and “Budget cuts? Nevada bleeds.”
Protesters lamented the effects cuts would have on education in Nevada, arguing for more creativity and tax increases rather than slashing the budgets of K-12 and higher education.
“No matter how many budget cuts they take from us, we will continue to rise,” said Greg Ross, a Nevada State College student. “… Education, no matter what happens at the end of the day, determines the future.”
Students defend their knowledge of proposed Idaho education reform
The battle over education reform in Idaho will continue this week. The House of Representatives is set to possibly send two of the three bills attached to Superintendent Tom Luna’s plan to the governor’s desk. The teachers’ union is promising more demonstrations and there could also be more student walkouts.
Last week saw student walkouts most of the week from around the state, all in protest of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna’s Education Reform Plan.
But while it looks like a huge number of students, teachers, and parents are against his plan, Luna doesn’t necessarily believe they’re in the majority.
“Sometimes, there’s an organized effort to get people to testify and protest, and that doesn’t necessarily mean that they represent a majority,” Luna said.
Some students we talked to did admit they were only protesting as a means of getting out of class. Luna believes more students would be in support if his plan if they really knew the facts about it.
Education in Michigan must embrace the possible
As we debate Gov. Rick Snyder’s proposed budget and whether his constituents can survive it, we should note what the late French essayist Joseph Joubert said: “The aim of argument, or of discussion, should not be victory, but progress.”
That should apply to how we spend tax money. And at risk of death threats, I want us to converse more about education spending.
I find it curious and heartbreaking that whenever a governor proposes cuts to schools, the first outcry is what it will cost the kids.
Why pick on the kids first?
Texans Duel Over Millions in School Funding
As Texas schools scrounge for cash to buy supplies and threaten to lay off teachers, $830 million in education funding earmarked for the state is sitting at the federal Department of Education.
The money, part of the stimulus package passed last year by Congress to help U.S. schools, is trapped by an increasingly hostile battle between the state’s Republican and Democratic politicians over how to use it–to the dismay of school districts facing an almost $10 billion shortfall in state aid.
Democrats in the state’s congressional delegation included a provision in the federal legislation requiring Texas to use the money to supplement existing spending. In the past, they contend, Republicans have replaced state education dollars with federal money, then used the savings for other purposes.
“Federal aid to education should actually aid education in our local Texas schools, not provide a bailout to the governor for his mismanagement of the state budget,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, a Democrat who represents part of Austin.
Miami’s Education Success Story
As the White House seized that job news yesterday, President Obama went to Miami. He was there to talk about an issue that has bipartisan support: Education reform. The president visited a Miami high school with an inspiring comeback story. NPR’s Greg Allen reports he was joined by a well-known Florida Republican: The former governor, Jeb Bush.
GREG ALLEN: There are many lessons to be learned from Miami’s Central High School: The first is that when there’s a president visiting, 600 students can make a lot of noise.
President BARACK OBAMA: It is good to be here today.
(Soundbite of cheering)
Mr. OBAMA: I’m excited.
ALLEN: Miami-Dade is the nation’s fourth-largest school district, and for many years Central was one of its worst high schools. A perennial underachiever, for years it consistently ranked as a failing F school. President Obama noted that in one survey only a third of students said they felt safe at school.
Wisconsin School choice programs get boost in Walker budget
Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal calls for deep cuts in most areas of public education with one notable exception – public school choice programs.
In addition to steep reductions in school district funding, Walker’s budget calls for a 10 percent cut to grants for programs such as bilingual-bicultural education and 4-year-old kindergarten. It also retains current grant funding for special education and low-income students, despite projected growth in those populations.
Meanwhile, Milwaukee’s 20-year-old voucher program would receive $22.5 million more to accommodate 1,300 additional students. The growth would result from Walker’s proposal to remove the program’s income requirements and enrollment caps.
And independent charter schools would receive $18.4 million more over the biennium. Walker is projecting 600 additional students as his proposal would lift the state enrollment cap on virtual charter schools, allow the UW System’s 13 four-year universities to establish charter schools, and allow independent charter schools in any district in the state.
The Madison School District Plans to Expand its Dual Language Immersion Program
Elementary School Level DLI: Proposal to plan and implement DLI programs at Stephens, Thoreau, and Hawthorne Elementary Schools for the 2011-2012 School year. Given the ongoing increase in the number of Spanish-speaking English language learners, MMSD needs to implement bilingual education programming in order to meet legal requirements imposed by the state statutes. It is recommended we start planning at these three sites during the 2011-2012 school year for program implementation during the 2012-2013 school year starting with a Kindergarten cohort.
La Follette High School Dual Language Immersion Program Proposal Update: A committee has been formed to start developing a proposal to bring to the BOE for a high school DLI continuation program. The committee is made up of representatives from the district ESLIBE/DLI Division as well as administrators and staff from La Follette High School. The committee meets biweekly. This high school DLI program would
serve the needs of students in the Sennett DLI program. The students are scheduled to start their high school programming during the 2013-2014 school year. A proposal is scheduled to be presented to the BOE in May of 2011 .
Additional language options, particularly for elementary students will be good news. Nearby Verona launched a Mandarin immersion charter school recently.
Don’t forget the students when mulling what’s next for the Milwaukee Public Schools
So what will things look like the day after the Milwaukee Public Schools system collapses?
Or, if you prefer, what needs to be done to avoid finding out the answer to that question?
Are these serious questions or is all this the-MPS-world-is-ending talk exaggerated?
I only have a firm sense of the answer to one of those questions, and it’s No. 3: It probably won’t be this fall (although it might be). But, best as I can see, the system as we know it stands at the brink of a momentous functional breakdown.
There have been people in recent years who thought the best solution to the problems of MPS was to blow up the system and build something better.
OK, big talkers: Time to put up. What’s next?
Notes and Links on “The Battle of Wisconsin”
Wisconsin cannot continue to spend more money than it has while pushing a pile of bills into the future.
For too long, Wisconsin has lurched from one budget shortfall to another.
The near-constant distraction of the state’s financial mess has kept our leaders from thinking long term. It has intensified partisan squabbles. It has forced difficult cuts and limited our state’s ability to invest in its future.
Gov. Scott Walker’s state budget, unveiled last week, is far from perfect. But it does one big thing right: It finally tackles Wisconsin’s money problems in a serious way – without the usual accounting tricks and money raids that only delay tough decisions.
Walker is largely doing in his budget proposal what he said he’d do: Fix the budget mess without raising taxes.
WPRI Poll: Wisconsinites want Walker to compromise
Wisconsinites overwhelmingly want GOP Gov. Scott Walker to compromise, a new poll says.
The poll, commissioned by a conservative-leaning think tank, also found that state residents think Democratic President Barack Obama is doing a better overall job than Walker.
Further, Wisconsinites narrowly disapprove of Senate Democrats’ decision to leave the state to block a Senate vote on Walker’s budget repair bill, which contains language to strip away most public employee union bargaining rights.
The poll of 603 Wisconsinites was commissioned by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute and conducted between Feb. 27 and March 1, the day of Walker’s budget address, and has a margin of error of 4 percent. The survey of randomly selected adults included cell phone-users and was directed by Ken Goldstein, a UW-Madison political science professor on leave who is also the co-founder and director of the Big Ten Battleground Poll.
The poll’s release comes amid talks between Walker’s office and the Senate Democrats. Walker has hinted recently at compromise but said he won’t compromise on the core principles of his bi
Days after Gov. Scott Walker proposed major cuts to state education funding, school officials are still trying to find out how harsh the impact might be on their own districts.
Although the governor recommended a two-year, $834 million decline in state aid for schools and an across-the-board 5.5% decrease in per-pupil revenue caps – restricting how much districts can collect from state aid and property taxes – how that plays out at the local level could still shock some communities.
They have only to think of two years ago when the Democrat-controlled Legislature dropped school aid by less than 3% and nearly one-quarter of the state’s 425 school districts saw their general state aid decline by 15%. The proposed cut in school aid in Walker’s budget is more than 8% in the first year.
“Whenever the state tries to do things at a macro level, with formulas and revenue caps and so forth, there are always glitches,” said Todd Berry, president of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.
New York Times Editorial on New York’s Budget:
At a time when public school students are being forced into ever more crowded classrooms, and poor families will lose state medical benefits, New York State is paying 10 times more for state employees’ pensions than it did just a decade ago.
That huge increase is largely because of Albany’s outsized generosity to the state’s powerful employees’ unions in the early years of the last decade, made worse when the recession pushed down pension fund earnings, forcing the state to make up the difference.
Although taxpayers are on the hook for the recession’s costs, most state employees pay only 3 percent of their salaries to their pensions, half the level of most state employees elsewhere. Their health insurance payments are about half those in the private sector.
In all, the salaries and benefits of state employees add up to $18.5 billion, or a fifth of New York’s operating budget. Unless those costs are reined in, New York will find itself unable to provide even essential services.
And, finally, photos from Tennessee.
Tyler Cowen:
What to do? Time is no longer on the side of good. I suggest that we confront the nation’s fiscal difficulties as soon as possible. That means both tax hikes and spending cuts, though I prefer to concentrate on the latter. Nonetheless it is naive to think spending cuts can do the job alone, and insisting on no tax hikes drives us faster along the path of fiscal ruin. The time for the Grand Bargain is now, it will only get harder:
The Elephant in Portland’s Room
Caroline Fenn, Charles McGee and Doug Wells:
Monday evening, the Portland School Board will vote on a teacher contract that, once again, ignores the elephant in the room — Portland Public Schools’ failure to adequately educate low-income children and children of color. We encourage all Portland residents to read the contract and see what some would have us celebrate. School board members should explain what they’ve gained and what they’ve given up with this negotiation. The public deserves answers.
The district’s budget woes are real. But the bigger problem is that PPS time and again puts adult jobs and politics ahead of students’ learning and graduating. Our community and state pay a hefty price. With an overall graduation rate of 53 percent (31 percent for Hispanic, 44 percent for African American and 45 percent for poor children), our quality of life is being redefined right before our eyes.
On Dec. 20, the Black Parent Initiative, the Coalition of Black Men, Community & Parents for Public Schools, and Stand for Children asked the school district, school board and teacher association to eliminate barriers to recruiting and retaining excellent teachers and principals, and to better serve our students, in particular our students of color. Barriers exist in both the teacher contract and district policy. The Native American Youth and Family Center, Latino Network, the Asian Pacific American Network of Oregon, the Hispanic Chamber and a number of civic leaders soon joined with us.
The fallout for Wisconsin Committing to excellent public schools
The problem with the current crisis in Madison over public-sector unions is that it distracts from the real issue where Wisconsin’s public education is concerned.
The governor recently announced the need to send contract termination notices to public school teachers if a vote on his budget-repair bill doesn’t happen soon.
Hmm. Do unionized teachers earn too much because of their unions? Can the state afford it?
The question should be: Would Wisconsin pay for excellent public schools even without teachers unions?
Teachers are not like General Motors workers in the ’70s or janitors today. Those workers have nothing to offer but their strong backs and hands. If they do not bargain collectively, they lose. Nor can teachers be lumped in with police and firefighters. These workers are necessary in a society that wishes to be safe.
Effective teachers are the kind of professionals who are valuable because of their education, creativity, innovation and initiative. Excellent teachers should be allowed to rise to the top and be in demand, while ineffective ones should be trimmed. The large teacher unions I have belonged to (Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association and Chicago Teachers Union) seem to do the opposite. However, excellent teachers will still need to be attracted with competitive pay and benefits.
Bill Gates: How state budgets are breaking US schools
“We need to care about state budgets: Big Money, Little Scrutiny”.
Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman:
“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.”
Related: “The Guys at Enron Would Never Have Done This“.
Much more on schools increased “adult to adult” spending here.
When It Comes To Class Size, Smaller Isn’t Always Better
Budget cuts! Layoffs! Bigger classes! Oh my! Given the mini-Wisconsins erupting around the country, it’s not surprising that parents are worried about their children’s schools. At least 45 states will face some budget shortfall for the fiscal year that begins this July, according to The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.
Last week the school board of Providence, Rhode Island gave pink slips to the city’s entire teaching force. Rumors of class sizes as large as 60 students circulated in Detroit.
Reality check: There will be teachers teaching in Providence next year. Similar sky-is-falling scenarios will be averted in Detroit and elsewhere, too. But that doesn’t mean that there will not be fewer teachers–and larger classes–in many places when school opens this fall. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan may well be right that scarce resources will be the “new normal” for schools.
The looming budget cuts are putting the question of class size front and center in local communities and the national education debate. A proposal to raise class sizes in Idaho by laying off more than 700 teachers led to protests around the state. Many other states and cities are considering changes to rules about class size.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Largest unions pay leaders well, give extensively to Democrats
John C. Henry, Center for Public Integrity:
On the surface, the fight between the governor of Wisconsin and organized labor is about balancing state budgets and collective-bargaining rights. Behind the scenes, hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation to top labor leaders as well as campaign contributions to Democrats could be in jeopardy.
Union treasuries – filled by dues paid by union members – not only fund programs benefiting union members and their families. The money they collect also pays six-figure compensation packages for labor leaders and provides millions of dollars for Democratic causes and candidates.
The Center for Public Integrity found compensation for leaders of the 10 largest unions ranged from $173,000 at the United Auto Workers to $618,000 at the Laborers’ International Union of North America, and almost $480,000 for the president of the American Federation of State, County & Municipal Employees. The latter is the target of GOP governors in Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Tennessee and Kansas.
The union reports, filed with the Department of Labor, list compensation for all union employees and officers. Salaries make up the biggest portion, but other benefits can include tens of thousands of dollars for meal allowances, mileage allowances and entertainment. Health care and pension contributions are not specifically addressed.
n L.A. school board races, outside spending surpasses $2 million [Updated]
Outside political action committees continue to dominate the contests over four seats on the Los Angeles Board of Education, spending more than $2 million combined, according to city records.
[Updated at 2:45 p.m.: The candidate attracting the most independent spending is Luis Sanchez, who is running for the one open seat, in District 5, which spans Los Feliz, Silver Lake, Eagle Rock and the southeastern portions of L.A. Unified, including the cities of Huntington Park, Bell and South Gate.
Outside groups have spent more than $727,000 for or against Sanchez. Nearly $500,000 has come in to support Sanchez. The source of this money is fund-raising led by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and, separately, spending by Local 99 of the Service Employees International Union, which represents many non-teaching school district workers. The local teachers union, United Teachers Los Angeles, has spent about $260,000 for a campaign opposing Sanchez. It’s also spent more than $127,000 in support of Bennett Kayser, who is running against Sanchez.]
Budget crisis forces states to spend creatively: Duncan
In these challenging financial times — what I call ‘The New Normal’ — governments at every level face a critical need to cut spending where we can in order to invest where we must,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan wrote to U.S. governors while offering “some options on the effective, efficient, and responsible use of resources in tight budget times.”
The $821 billion economic stimulus plan passed in 2009 included the largest transfer of federal funds to states in U.S. history, with much of the money targeted toward healthcare and education.
The plan runs out this year and the states, which are only seeing a modest uptick in revenue as they still struggle with the fallout of the recession, are looking for places to cut to keep their budgets balanced.
Dianne Ravitch On Daily Show: Testing And Choice Undermining Education
Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart interviewed author, historian, and professor Dianne Ravitch on her new book “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.”
Ravitch argued that testing and choice are undermining America’s education system. She said that ever since the No Child Left Behind Act, “schools have been turned into testing factories.”
She also discussed how being a teacher has turned into a thankless job, and that teachers have become entirely demoralized. She stated that “the whole public monologue for the last couple of years has been ‘Blame the teachers for everything.'” Stewart agreed, noting that his mother worked in education for years.
Ravitch is scheduled to speak in Madison on March 8, 2011 @ 7:00p.m.
New York Democrat Governor Cuomo Seeks Speedy Change in Teacher Evaluations
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said on Tuesday that he would introduce legislation to speed the implementation of a statewide system to evaluate teachers’ performance.
His announcement came minutes after the State Senate passed legislation sought by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that would reverse a rule protecting long-serving New York City teachers from layoffs regardless of their effectiveness.
Mr. Cuomo’s proposal would have far broader implications, affecting school districts across the state. But it would not affect the thousands of layoffs that Mr. Bloomberg maintains he will be forced to carry out because of cuts in state aid.
Rather, Mr. Cuomo is seeking to accelerate the introduction of new standards for teacher and principal evaluation that the state’s Education Department, with the support of teachers’ unions, has been developing since last year.
Federal Education Spending Updates
The administration had wanted to see those programs consolidated into a new, broader, $383 million funding stream aimed at improving literacy. Now it appears there may be a lot less available money for that effort.
The measure also gets rid of all funding for the rest of the year for the $88 million Smaller Learning Communities program, which was slated to be funneled into a broader program aimed at improving educational options.
And it scraps the Leveraging Educational Assistance Partnerships, or LEAP, program, financed at $64 million.
The bill also defunds a lot of programs that are right now classified as “earmarks,” meaning money directed at one particular program or project. That includes a number of national education programs, such as Teach for America, the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards, National Writing Project, Reading is Fundamental, and the Close Up fellowship.
Illinois Governor Quinn defends call for merging school districts & Cutting Administrative Costs
Gov. Pat Quinn defended his proposal to merge school districts on Wednesday, saying the money saved from cutting district administrators will put more teachers in Illinois classrooms.
Quinn said the state could save $100 million by cutting the Illinois’ 868 school districts to about 300. Illinois has the third-most school districts in the nation behind Texas and California, and about 200 districts have just a single school.
“We don’t need as many folks at the top level,” Quinn told reporters at the Capitol. “We need folks on the front line, in teaching, imparting knowledge and making sure our kids get 21st century education.”
Quinn said at least 270 superintendents earn more than his $177,412 salary.
Minn. Senate passes alternative teacher licensing
The Minnesota Senate has passed a bill that creates a new method of obtaining teacher licenses.
The alternative licensing plan is aimed at meeting projected teacher shortages in the future. It’s designed to give Minnesota schools an infusion of new, mostly young teachers who don’t attend traditional teaching colleges, and help close an achievement gap between white and minority students that’s one of the worst in the country.
Critics say it will harm schoolchildren by making it too easy to become a teacher. But the bill the Senate passed Thursday reflects a compromise between Gov. Mark Dayton and bill sponsors, and it’s expected to get his signature.
Related: Janet Mertz: An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria
Midwest union battles highlight debate over improving schools
The Republican faceoff with labor unions in the Midwest and elsewhere marks not just a fight over money and collective bargaining but also a test of wills over how to improve the nation’s schools.
Various GOP proposals to narrow labor rights, dismantle teacher tenure and channel public money toward private schools raise a question: Should states work with teacher unions to overhaul education or try to roll over them?
Like many Democrats, President Obama wants collaboration. He has preached teamwork with unions even as he pushes harder than any of his predecessors to get bad teachers out of schools and pay more to those who excel.
Here in Indiana, Gov. Mitch Daniels (R) shares many of Obama’s education goals. But Daniels, a possible 2012 presidential contender, and several of his Republican peers are pursuing reform through confrontation.
Budget presented by Fair Lawn, NJ School Board, 1.75% Property Tax Increase
A tentative school budget of $83.3 million was approved by the Board of Education on March 3.
The budget includes a tax levy, the amount to be paid by taxpayers, of $73,158,200 million. The tax levy is a 1.75 percent increase over last year and below the 2 percent cap permitted for school districts. With debt service of $1,940,222, the total tax levy is $75 million.
For a property assessed at $411,663, the borough average, it amounts to a $181.93 annual increase or $15.16 a month, according to Superintendent of Schools Bruce Watson.
“We still have three weeks to work on it,” said Watson during his presentation. “We can still change it.”
Teachers Wonder, Why the Scorn?
The jabs Erin Parker has heard about her job have stunned her. Oh you pathetic teachers, read the online comments and placards of counterdemonstrators. You are glorified baby sitters who leave work at 3 p.m. You deserve minimum wage.
“You feel punched in the stomach,” said Ms. Parker, a high school science teacher in Madison, Wis., where public employees’ two-week occupation of the State Capitol has stalled but not deterred the governor’s plan to try to strip them of bargaining rights.
Ms. Parker, a second-year teacher making $36,000, fears that under the proposed legislation class sizes would rise and higher contributions to her benefits would knock her out of the middle class.
“I love teaching, but I have $26,000 of student debt,” she said. “I’m 30 years old, and I can’t save up enough for a down payment” for a house. Nor does she own a car. She is making plans to move to Colorado, where she could afford to keep teaching by living with her parents.
Whitney Tilson, via email:
This front page story in today’s NYT annoys the heck out of me because it’s missing one word in its title – it should read: “Teachers UNIONS Wonder, Why the Scorn?” The author presents NO evidence that Americans don’t cherish teachers other than a random placard and online comment. What Americans DO object to are unions using their enormous political influence to benefit their members while throwing kids under the bus – two great examples are the impossibility of firing even the most horrific teachers and doing layoffs purely by seniority. Checker Finn has it exactly right:
Chester E. Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative-leaning education policy group, said the decline in teachers’ status traced to the success of unions in paying teachers and granting job security based on their years of service, not ability.
“They are reaping a bitter harvest that they didn’t individually plant but their profession has planted over 50 years, going from a respected profession to a mass work force in which everyone is treated as if they are interchangeable, as in the steel mills of yesteryear,” Mr. Finn said.And why did the author quote the only young teacher in America who thinks it’s fair that he’s being laid off because he lacks seniority rather than doing it based on which teachers are best for kids? He could have easily quoted one of the Educators 4 Excellence teachers, for example:
Last month Mr. Tougher was notified that because of his lack of seniority, he will be laid off, or “excessed,” this year under the state’s proposed cuts to school aid. A union activist, he believes seniority-based layoffs are fair.
“The seniority part, I get that,” said Mr. Tougher, who is single. “While it would be a bummer if I were excessed for next year, that’s just how things go sometimes.”
Politics, Unions and Wisconsin Pensions
This is a story that tells how state benefits – and state power – works.
In 1994, former governor Tommy Thompson was running for reelection to his third term. He wanted to win by a wide margin to boast his chances of being considered as a possible candidate for president or vice-president of the United States. So Thompson let union leaders know he was open to improving the pension for state employees.
The overture worked. The state employees union backed Thompson in 1994 and again in 1998. And Thompson made good on his promise, helping to pass, in 1999, a state law that gave all employees a 10 percent increase in the value of their pension for all years worked prior to 2000 (any years worked after this got the usual pension multiplier).
But Thompson went further than the unions wanted. His law allowed employees to collect up to 70 percent of their final average salary in pension payments, an increase from the old 65 percent. That had little value for the unions: Employees would see their annual pension multiplier rise from 1.6 per year to 1.765 percent; even with that increase, however, they would have to work 37 years to hit the legal ceiling of 65 percent of their final average salary.
Gates Says High Pension Costs Hurt Education
Robert Guth & Michael Corkery:
Billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates will step into the national debate over state budgets Thursday with a call for states to rethink their public-employee benefits systems, which he says stifle funding for the nation’s public schools.
Mr. Gates in an interview said he will use a high-profile conference Thursday in Long Beach, Calif., to urge that more attention be paid to how states calculate their employee-pension funding and health-care obligations. “These budgets are way out of whack,” Mr. Gates said. “They’ve used accounting gimmicks and lot things that are truly extreme.”
The comments come after Mr. Gates spent more than a year studying the issue and enlisting the advice of leading academics and others.
Seattle school district: A culture of fear? District Limits Employee Communications with the School Board
A fear of retaliation and an official policy that keeps Seattle Public Schools employees from directly raising concerns with the school board are at least partly to blame for a scandal involving $1.8 million in misused public funds, auditors and investigators say.
The scandal unfolding at the school district is calling into question why Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson and the seven members of the school board weren’t alerted earlier to concerns about Silas Potter, who ran the Regional Small Business Development Program.
Those concerns aren’t new — at least, not to a handful of employees in the school district. But when those concerns were voiced over the last several years, they never made it up to the school board.
At Seattle Public Schools, when employees do speak up, they have to navigate an obstacle course of bureaucracy before gaining the ears of board members.
Wisconsin Governor Seeks Change in Reading Programs, Highlights dramatic fall in NAEP Performance
But the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is questioning the legality of Walker’s proposal to fund the program through the Department of Administration.
Walker has proposed spending $600,000 in each of the next two years to implement recommendations of a new task force appointed by Walker that would develop a third-grade reading test. Walker noted Wisconsin’s performance on a national fourth-grade reading exam has fallen from third out of 39 states in 1994 to 30th out of 50 states in 2009.
“From kindergarten to third grade, our kids learn to read, and then from third grade on, they use reading to learn,” Walker said in his budget address. “We need to make sure every child can read as they move on from third grade.”
Related:
- 60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags “National Average”: Administration seeks to continue its use.
- Madison School District’s “K-12 Literacy Program Evaluation”
Erasing Signatures From History
In his 35 years as a high school English teacher in suburban Philadelphia, Thom Williams often encouraged his students to splash their most creative thoughts on the walls of his classroom.
Hundreds of students embraced his invitation, covering those painted cinderblocks with original art, quotes from favorite books, and deep thoughts born from teenaged angst.
“I looked to those walls for inspiration,” says 18-year-old Lauren Silvestri, a student of Mr. Williams’s at Marple Newtown High School in Newtown Square, Pa. Before graduating last year, she signed her name and a quote she loves. “It felt good to know I’d come back someday and my words on the wall would be there.”
Her words won’t remain for long, however. Mr. Williams died of cancer in December at age 63, and now the school is being renovated. That classroom’s walls are set to be demolished or painted over. “Thom was a free spirit who encouraged his students to be free spirits,” says Raymond McFall, the school’s principal. Still, “I can’t have everybody painting on the walls of the school.”
Education ministers wobbly on ICT – ‘don’t get it’?
The Coalition Government brought a big shift in ICT policy for education. From a position of active strategies, streams of guidance, heavy investment in connectivity, research and equipment, to a touch so light as to be barely perceptible.
The recent white paper, “The Importance of Teaching”, emphasises standards for frontline teaching, with ideas about what the curriculum might contain, but scant reference to how they might teach, or with what resources. ICT has one mention – in relation to procurement. This is no oversight. Why the big change? And a recurrent fear among those consulted is worrying – they simply don’t fully understand the importance of ICT.
A set of three simple questions were put to a number of leading figures involved in ICT for learning (the full set of questions and answers can be downloaded here) and three to schools minister Nick Gibb MP. While the Department for Education emphasised schools’ new freedoms (see below), the other responses raised a range of worries.
Wisconsin Budget cuts $834 million from schools
Amy Hetzner and Erin Richards:
State and local funding for general Wisconsin public school operations would drop 5.5% in 2011-’12 while Milwaukee’s private-school voucher program could be poised for a massive expansion under Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal, one that slashes $834 million in state K-12 education spending over the next two years.
The governor’s 2011-’13 budget proposal would phase out the income requirements of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, eliminate the enrollment cap on student participation, and allow Milwaukee families to use their publicly funded voucher to attend any private school in Milwaukee County that wished to participate in the program.
Walker also hopes to remove a requirement that students in the choice schools take state tests, possibly scuttling new efforts to gauge whether the private school choice program has meaningful impact on academic achievement.
“We’ve been saying for a month now that the second shoe was going to drop,” said Tom Beebe, executive director of Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, referring to Walker’s recent push for major concessions on benefits from teachers and other public employees. “It wasn’t just dropped. It was thrown at the head.”
Missing Wisconsin senators rely heavily on union campaign dollars
The 14 Wisconsin Democratic senators who fled to Illinois share more than just political sympathy with the public employees and unions targeted by Gov. Scott Walker’s budget-repair bill.
The Senate Democrats count on those in the public sector as a key funding source for their campaigns.
In fact, nearly one out of every five dollars raised by those Democratic senators in the past two election cycles came from public employees, such as teachers and firefighters, and their unions, a Journal Sentinel analysis of campaign records shows.
“It’s very simple,” said Richard Abelson, executive director of District Council 48 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. “We have interests, and because of that, we attempt to support candidates who support our interests. It’s pretty hard to find Republicans who support our interests these days.”
Critics of Walker’s budget-repair bill say it would mean less union money for Democrats. That’s because the legislation would end automatic payroll deductions for dues and would allow public employees to opt out of belonging to a union.
Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Distribution of Tax Burden by Quintile
In comments on my post on Rand Paul and David Letterman, some commenters expressed interest in seeing the data on overall federal tax burden, not just the burden of the federal income tax. As it happens, the Congressional Budget Office reports such data. I would reprint their tables but I haven’t yet figured out how to do that. So here is the link for 2006 data. Click on their data and you’ll get an Excel spreadsheet that shows the following:
. The bottom quintile paid 4.3 percent of income in taxes,
. The top quintile paid 25.8 percent of income in taxes,
. The top decile paid 27.5 percent of income in taxes,
. The top 5 percent paid 29.0 percent of income in taxes, and
. The top 1 percent paid 31.2 percent of income in taxes.
What Does the Governor’s Budget Mean for the Madison School District?
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:
The Governor has stated that the cuts in benefits he is imposing on public employees will allow school districts and other governmental agencies to absorb the cuts in state aid that they will sustain without requiring significant layoffs or decreases in services.
Does that claim hold up? Well, for our school district it looks like it might.
If my assumptions are correct, it looks like the big financial hits the Governor wants our teachers to absorb will enable us to make it through the recommended cuts in state aid and in our spending authority without the need for significant layoffs.
I need to emphasize that this conclusion is tentative and certainly subject to revision as I learn more. But this is how I see it now.
School budgeting issues are invariably confusing. The confusion can be reduced a bit if two issues are kept separate. The first is: How much money can we spend? The second: Where will that money come from?
David Blaska has more on Ed Hughes’ blog, here
I will not replicate here Kris Wigdal’s list of boycott targets but here’s the punchline: her list numbers 154 of the leading companies in Wisconsin! Suffice it to say it would be difficult to mow your lawn, do a summer cook out, quaff your thirst, gas up your car, or get medical care unless you do like the Fugitive 14 Senators and go out of state.
Madison school board member says governor’s budget could work
I have long felt that Ed Hughes is probably squarely in the center of the Madison school board — not too hot, not too cold. His take on Governor Walker’s budget as unveiled Tuesday is that it could work for Madison without teacher layoffs:
Labor union supporters say Wisconsin test scores vastly outpace those in five states without collective bargaining for teachers
With that question out of the way, we’ll take a look at the thornier question of how those five states’ test scores stack up nationally, and against Wisconsin in particular.
On Feb. 20, 2011, Angus Johnston, an adjunct assistant professor at the City University of New York, published a comprehensive analysis of this question on his blog. He published links to a chart that appears to have been the inspiration for the tweets and Facebook postings. It offers a state-by-state analysis of scores on the SAT and the ACT, the two leading college-admissions tests, assembled by University of Missouri law professor Douglas O. Linder.
Johnston is critical of Linder’s methodology for a variety of reasons, which he explains in more detail here. But without even taking those concerns into account, we find the statistics unreliable. They were published in 1999, meaning that the statistics themselves are likely more than a dozen years old — far too old to be presumed valid in 2011.
Fortunately, it’s possible to obtain state-by-state rankings for the SAT and ACT of a more recent vintage. Here’s a table of the relevant states:
Even Without Muni Bond Sale, Wisconsin Not in Fiscal Peril
Kelly Nolan, via a Barb Schrank email:
Wisconsin may not be able to refinance $165 million in debt as planned in the municipal bond market this week or next, but that doesn’t mean the state is in any kind of immediate fiscal peril.
Wisconsin has taken center stage this budget season, as Gov. Scott Walker, a Republican, has pushed to eliminate most of the collective bargaining rights for the state’s 170,000 public employees through a controversial budget “repair bill.” Democratic state senators have fled the state to avoid voting on the measure.
Mr. Walker’s latest tactic to lure them back has been threatening to make additional cuts or more layoffs, should the state be unable to refinance $165 million in debt for short-term budget relief. Under his plan, the state would issue a 10-year bond to restructure a debt payment that otherwise would be due May 1.
Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway
The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, more than 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development.
These are a few of the findings in a massive study of overlapping and duplicative programs that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, according to the Government Accountability Office.
A report from the nonpartisan GAO, to be released Tuesday, compiles a list of redundant and potentially ineffective federal programs, and it could serve as a template for lawmakers in both parties as they move to cut federal spending and consolidate programs to reduce the deficit. Sen. Tom Coburn (R., Okla.), who pushed for the report, estimated it identifies between $100 billion and $200 billion in duplicative spending. The GAO didn’t put a specific figure on the spending overlap.
Extra Money May Not Avert Teacher Layoffs
One day after outlining plans to lay off teachers, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he is unsure whether additional funds from the state would change his call to eliminate more than 6,100 teaching positions.
Earlier this month, as part of his preliminary budget proposal for the fiscal year beginning July 1, the mayor requested $600 million in aid from Albany — $200 million of which he said was needed for New York City’s Department of Education. That additional aid from Albany would close the city’s deficit, he said.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Race to the Bottom?
But America shouldn’t compete on the basis of cheap labor: we are not nor should we try to be the Walmart of Work. So the first question becomes how do we compete in ways that don’t involve endlessly ratcheting down wages and benefits? And the second, related question is how can we generate enough demand for American workers so that market forces drive incomes up from year to year and decade to decade?
The key to success is obvious: we need to continue to raise productivity throughout the economy. If productivity goes up quickly enough, wages can rise here even if they are falling elsewhere. This is getting harder; productivity is both easier to measure and to raise in manufacturing than in services. But substituting capital and technology for human sweat has to be a large part of what we do.
To raise productivity significantly, and especially to do it in ways that give us some long term advantages, we are going to have to do more about productivity in services. In particular we are going to have to look at health, government, education and the legal industry. Health care accounts for 18% of our GDP; education for 7%, and government spending (federal, state and local) accounts for 40%. (Because a lot of government spending goes to health and education, the total from these sectors is closer to 45% of GDP than 65%.)
Record number of California teachers likely to see pink slips
A record number of California teachers could see pink slips in their mailboxes over the next two weeks as school districts prepare for the worst possible budget scenario.
With the state budget hinging on proposed June ballot measures to extend and increase taxes, school districts won’t know until summer whether they’ll get enough money from the state to keep all their teachers.
Billions of dollars hang in the balance, but the uncertainty could force districts next month to send layoff notices to some 30,000 or more teachers, an increase from the 20,000 to 25,000 teachers who got a notice last year, education and labor officials said Friday.
The notices, required by state law to be sent out by March 15, will advise the teachers, mostly those with the least seniority, that they might not have a job next year. The layoffs must be confirmed in mid-May.
US State & Federal Tax & Spending Climate
The federal government isn’t simply bleeding money. Because of its addiction to red ink, it’s bleeding power, which is starting to flow away from the nation’s capital and out to the states. This is the little-recognized reality behind the remarkable political upheaval being seen in state capitals.
Republican governors such as Wisconsin’s Scott Walker, New Jersey’s Chris Christie and Indiana’s Mitch Daniels are pursuing their own controversial fiscal policies out of what they consider financial necessity; they have budgets to balance, and little time and few options to do the job. But governors of both parties also have less reason to wait and hope for help from a federal government that, with overwhelming budget deficits, is losing its ability to offer financial goodies to the states.
For decades, the implicit deal between Washington and state capitals has been that the feds would offer chunks of cash, and in return would get commensurate influence over the states’ social policies. Now that flow of federal goodies has begun what figures to be a long-term decline, as the money Washington has available to pass around to the states is squeezed. Already the funds the federal government offered states as part of the 2009 economic stimulus package have nearly run out, and the budget-cutting that has begun in Washington is curtailing the other money available to dole out.
Billions in Bloat Uncovered in Beltway
The U.S. government has 15 different agencies overseeing food-safety laws, 20 separate programs to help the homeless and 80 programs for economic development.
These are a few of the findings in a massive study of overlapping and duplicative programs that cost taxpayers billions of dollars each year, according to a new Government Accountability Office report to be released Tuesday.
The report from the nonpartisan GAO compiles a list of redundant and potentially ineffective federal programs, and it could serve as a template for lawmakers in both parties as they move to cut federal spending and consolidate programs to reduce the deficit.
What Wisconsin reveals about public workers and political power.
The raucous Wisconsin debate over collective bargaining may be ugly at times, but it has been worth it for the splendid public education. For the first time in decades, Americans have been asked to look under the government hood at the causes of runaway spending. What they are discovering is the monopoly power of government unions that have long been on a collision course with taxpayers. Though it arrived in Madison first, this crack-up was inevitable.
We first started running the nearby chart on the trends in public and private union membership many years ago. It documents the great transformation in the American labor movement over the latter decades of the 20th century. A movement once led by workers in private trades and manufacturing evolved into one dominated by public workers at all levels of government but especially in the states and cities.
The trend is even starker if you go back a decade earlier. In 1960, 31.9% of the private work force belonged to a union, compared to only 10.8% of government workers. By 2010, the numbers had more than reversed, with 36.2% of public workers in unions but only 6.9% in the private economy.
How ironic that Wisconsin has become ground zero for the battle between taxpayers and public- employee labor unions. Wisconsin was the first state to allow collective bargaining for government workers (in 1959), following a tradition where it was the first to introduce a personal income tax (in 1911, before the introduction of the current form of individual income tax in 1913 by the federal government).
Labor unions like to portray collective bargaining as a basic civil liberty, akin to the freedoms of speech, press, assembly and religion. For a teachers union, collective bargaining means that suppliers of teacher services to all public school systems in a state–or even across states–can collude with regard to acceptable wages, benefits and working conditions. An analogy for business would be for all providers of airline transportation to assemble to fix ticket prices, capacity and so on. From this perspective, collective bargaining on a broad scale is more similar to an antitrust violation than to a civil liberty.
In fact, labor unions were subject to U.S. antitrust laws in the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, which was first applied in 1894 to the American Railway Union. However, organized labor managed to obtain exemption from federal antitrust laws in subsequent legislation, notably the Clayton Antitrust Act of 1914 and the National Labor Relations Act of 1935.
Madison school officials call Walker’s budget ‘disgraceful’
Madison school superintendent Dan Nerad also admitted that it has been “a difficult day.”
“This district has been making reductions for over 15 years,” Nerad says. “A year ago we had a reduction of 15% in state aid. This year’s it’s an 8% reduction in state aid. While we know that we face a budget deficit, there’s also a need to know that our kids are educated well if our state is to stay strong.”
Nerad says Walker’s budget will cause a $20 million cut in revenue for the district in 2011. If the governor’s budget repair bill passes in its current form, he says, the amount would be about $11 million. Obviously, given the current chaos in the Capitol, the future is murky.
The 2011 State of the Madison School District document puts spending at 379,058,945 for 24,471 students ($15,490.13/student).
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Union Pay Isn’t Busting State Budgets: “its almost everything else”
To be clear, I’m making an argument that’s different from “Government workers are overpaid.” I’m saying that they are paid in the wrong ways — in ways that make life easier on union leaders and elected officials, at least initially, but that eventually hurt both workers and taxpayers.
The best example is health insurance. Health plans for union workers and retirees are much more likely to require little or no co-payment, which leads to lots of medical treatments that don’t make people any healthier, and to huge costs. Ultimately, some of these plans will probably prove so expensive as to be unsustainable. Workers would have been better off accepting a less generous benefit package and slightly higher salaries.
The solution today is not to cut both the pay and the benefits of public workers, as would happen if workers in Wisconsin, Ohio and elsewhere lost their right to bargain. Remember, public workers don’t get especially generous salaries. The solution is to get rid of the deferred benefits that make no sense — the wasteful health plans, the pensions that start at age 55 and still let retirees draw a full salary elsewhere, the definitions of disability that treat herniated discs as incurable.
Madison Teachers, Inc. 2011 Candidate Questionnaire
1MB PDF, via a kind reader’s email:. Mayoral Candidate Paul Soglin participated and I found this question and response interesting:
What strategies will you introduce to reduce the 6000+ families who move in and out of Madison Public School classrooms each year?
In the last three years more children opted out of the district than all previous years in the history of the district. That contributed to the increase of children from households below the poverty line rising to over 48% of the kids enrolled.
To stabilize our enrollment we need stable families and stable neighborhoods. This will require a collaborate effort between governments, like the city, the county and the school district, as well as the private sector and the non-profits. It means opening Madison’s economy to all families, providing stable housing, and building on the assets of our neighborhoods.
One decades old problem is the significant poverty in the Town of Madison. I would work with town officials, and city of Fitchburg officials to see if we could accelerate the annexation of the town so we could provide better services to area residents.
Ed Hughes and Marj Passman, both running unopposed responded to MTI’s questions via this pdf document.
MTIVOTERS 2011 School Board Election Questionnaire
Please respond to each ofthe following questions. If you wish to add/clarifY your response, please attach a separate sheet and designate your responses with the same number which appears in the questionnaire. Please deliver your responses to MTI Headquarters (821 Williamson Street) by, February 17, 2011.
General:
If the School Board finds it necessary to change school boundaries due to enrollment, what criteria would you, as a Board member, use to make such a judgement?
Ifthe School Board finds it necessary to close a school/schools due to economic reasons, what criteria would you, as a Board member, use to make such a judgement?
If the School Board finds it necessary, due to the State-imposed revenue controls, to make further budget cuts to the 2011-12 budget, what criteria would you, as a Board member, use to make such a judgement?
IdentifY specific MMSD programs and/or policies which you believe should to be modified, re-prioritized, or eliminated, and explain why.
What should the District do to reduce violence/assure that proper discipline and safety (of the learning and working environment) is maintained in our schools?
Do you agree that the health insurance provided to District employees should be mutually selected through collective bargaining?
_ _ YES _ _ NO Explain your concerns/proposed solutions relative to the District’s efforts to reduce the “achievement gap”.
Should planning time for teachers be increased? If yes, how could this be accomplished?
Given that the Wisconsin Association of School Boards rarely supports the interests of the Madison Metropolitan School District, do you support the District withdrawing from the W ASB? Please explain your rationale.
From what sources do you believe that public schools should be funded?
a. Do you support further increasing student fees? _ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Do you support the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools’ (WAES) initiative to raise sales tax by 1% to help fund schools?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you support class sizes of 15 or less for all primary grades? _ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you support:
a. The use of public funds (vouchers) to enable parents to pay tuition with tax payers’ money for religious and private schools?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
b. The expansion of Charter schools within the Madison Metropolitan School District? _ _ YES _ _ NO
c. The Urban League’s proposed “Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men” as a charter school which would not be an instrumentality of the District?
_ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Do you agree that the usual and customary work ofteachers, i.e. work ofthose in MTI’s teacher bargaining unit, should not be performed by others (sub-contracted)?
_ _ YES _ _ NO List MMSD staff and Board member(s) from whom you do or would seek advice.
Is your candidacy being promoted by any organization? _ _ YES _ _ NO
If yes, please name such organization(s). Have you ever been employed as a teacher? If yes, please describe why you left the teaching profession.
Do you support the inclusion model for including Title 1, EEN and ESL students in the regular education classroom? Why/why not?
What grouping practices do you advocate for talented and gifted (TAG) students?
Aside from limitations from lack ofadequate financial resources, what problems to you feel exist in meeting TAG students’ needs at present, and how would you propose to solve these problems?
The Board ofEducation has moved from the development ofpolicy to becoming involved in implementation of policy; i.e. matters usually reserved to administration. Some examples are when it:
a. Decided to hear parents’ complaints about a teacher’s tests and grading. b. Decided to modifY the administration’s decision about how a State Statute should be implemented.
Do you believe that the Board should delegate to administrators the implementation of policy which the Board has created?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you believe that the Board should delegate to administrators the implementation of State Statutes? _ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you support the Board exploring further means to make their meetings more efficient? _ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Do you support a merit pay scheme being added to the Collective Bargaining Agreement _ _ YES _ _ _ NO
If yes, based on which performance indicators?
Do/did/will your children attend private or parochial schools during their K-12 years? Ifno, and ifyou have children, what schools have/will they attend(ed)?
_ _ YES _ _ NO If you responded “yes”, please explain why your child/children attended private parochial schools.
Legislation
Will you introduce and vote for a motion which would direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage oflegislation to eliminate the revenue controls on public schools and return full budgeting authority to the School Board?
_ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage oflegislation to prohibit the privatization ofpublic schools via the use oftuition tax credits (vouchers) to pay tuition with taxpayers’ money to private or religious schools?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage of legislation which will maintain or expand the benefit level of the Wisconsin Family and Medical Leave Act?
_ _ YES _ _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage oflegislation which will increase the retirement formula multiplier from 1.6% to 2% for teachers and general employees, i.e. equal that of protective employees?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage of legislation which will forbid restrictions to free and open collective bargaining for the selection ofinsurance for public employees (under Wis. Stat. 111.70), including the naming ofthe insurance carrier?
_ _ YES
_ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage of legislation which will guarantee free and open collective bargaining regarding the establishment of the school calendar/school year, including when the school year begins?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsiu Association of School Boards to request the introduction and promote the passage of legislation to forbid the work of employees organized under Wis. Stat. 111.70 (collective bargaining statute) to be subcontracted?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to seek passage of legislation which will require full State funding of any State-mandated program?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Will you introduce and vote for a motion to direct the Wisconsin Association of School Boards to seek passage oflegislation which will provide adequate State funding of public education?
_ _ YES _ _ NO
Do you support a specific school finance reform plan (e.g., School Finance Network (SFN), Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES), Andrews/Matthews Plan)?
Why/why not? Your Campaign:
Are you, or any of your campaign committee members, active in or supportive (past or present) of the “Get Real”, “ACE”, “Vote No for Change” or similar organizations?
Name ofCampaign Committee/Address/Phone #/Treasurer. List the members ofyour campaign committee.
New York Democrat Governor Andrew Cuomo and the unions: The governor’s showdown is more subtle
IN 1975, when New York City teetered toward bankruptcy, Hugh Carey, then the governor of the state of New York, convinced the teachers’ union to invest a significant amount of its pension funds in bail-out bonds. He also persuaded District Council 37 to shelve pay increases for its municipal workers. The unions played a crucial role in saving the city and probably the state with it. Thirty-five years later, during his gubernatorial campaign, Andrew Cuomo gave copies of “The Man Who Saved New York”, an account of Mr Carey’s role in the crisis, to labour leaders. Seymour Lachman, the book’s co-author, reckons that, like Mr Carey, Mr Cuomo wants and needs the unions’ help in surviving the current crisis.
Facing a $10 billion deficit, Mr Cuomo campaigned on pension reform, making it clear he was going to target public-sector unions and sounding more like his Republican neighbour across the Hudson, Chris Christie, than a Democrat. Mr Christie stirred up a lot of headlines when he took on the unions, most recently calling them greedy, selfish and self-interested. Mr Cuomo is less vitriolic, but no less adamant that he wants the unions to do their part. During his budget address on February 1st, in which he declared the state to be “functionally bankrupt”, he called on the state’s public-sector unions to make $450m in concessions. He threatened, as a “last resort”, to lay off up to 9,800 state workers to get the savings needed.
Gov. Scott Walker can thank Michelle Rhee for making teachers unions the enemy
Education writer explains how the former D.C. schools chief helped stoke anti-union fires
A half-century ago, Wisconsin became the first state in the nation to pass legislation allowing collective bargaining for public employees, including educators. At the time, teachers across the country, who make up a significant share of public employees, were often underpaid and mistreated by autocratic administrators. In the fight for greater dignity, union leaders such as Albert Shanker in New York City linked teacher unionization to the fledgling civil rights movement.
Today, Wisconsin is again at the forefront of a union battle – this time in Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s effort to cut his state’s budget deficit in part by curtailing collective bargaining for teachers and other public employees. How did it become okay, once more, to vilify public-sector workers, especially the ones who are educating and caring for our children?
