Statesman:

What Biden says about school choice

The Biden campaign said he’s firmly against using public money for private K-12 schools. Here’s the full statement we received:

“Joe Biden opposes the Trump/(Betsy) DeVos conception of ‘school choice,’ which is private school vouchers that would destroy our public schools. He’s also against for-profit and low-performing charter schools, and believes in holding all charter schools accountable. He does not oppose districts letting parents choose to send their children to public magnet schools, high-performing public charters or traditional public schools.”

As part of a broader education policy outlined on his website, Biden calls for nearly tripling the Title 1 funding for aid to schools serving lower income neighborhoods and raising teacher pay.

The Trump-Pence 2020 website claims that Biden said “that if he’s elected, charter schools are gone.” The campaign links to a comment Biden made at a December 2019 forum on public schools. Biden was attacking Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ policy on student sexual assault accusations. At the very end of condemning that policy on assaults, he said, “If I’m president, Betsy DeVos’ whole notion from charter schools to this are gone.”

Biden didn’t otherwise discuss charter schools or school choice broadly.

Assessing Biden on school choice

EdChoice, an advocacy group that aims “to advance educational freedom and choice,” lists a number of practices that fall under the school choice umbrella. In addition to vouchers, that list includes charter schools, specialized magnet schools (for example, for math and science or the arts) and allowing students to choose which public school they want to attend.

Biden’s platform includes all of those elements except vouchers.

Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled

Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees).

Molly Beck and Madeline Heim:

which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection is in an area.   

While positive test results are being processed and their number reported quickly, negative test results are taking days in some cases to be analyzed before they are reported to the state. 

Channel3000:

The department said it was between eight and 10 days behind in updating that metric on the dashboard, and as a result it appeared to show a higher positive percentage of tests and a lower number of total tests per day.

The department said this delay is due to the fact data analysts must input each of the hundreds of tests per day manually, and in order to continue accurate and timely contact tracing efforts, they prioritized inputting positive tests.

“Positive tests are always immediately verified and processed, and delays in processing negative tests in our data system does not affect notification of test results,” the department said in a news release. “The only effect this backlog has had is on our percent positivity rate and daily test counts.”

Staff have not verified the approximately 17,000 tests, which includes steps such as matching test results to patients to avoid duplicating numbers and verifying the person who was tested resides in Dane County.

All 77 false-positive COVID-19 tests come back negative upon reruns.

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Paul E. Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel:

Public charter schools were once viewed as a nonpartisan compromise between vouchers for private schools and no choice at all. Not now. In its 2020 national platform, the Democratic Party calls for “stringent guardrails to ensure charter schools are good stewards” and says federal funding for charters must be conditioned on “whether the charter will systematically underserve the neediest students.” Charter schools are indeed acting as good stewards by outpacing district schools on achievement growth—especially for the most at-risk students.

In a new study we compare the progress made by cohorts of charter and district school students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress from 2005-17—a sample of more than four million test performances. Overall, students at charters are advancing at a faster pace than those at district schools. The strides made by African-American charter students have been particularly impressive. We also see larger gains at charters, relative to district schools, by students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.

Sometimes known as “the nation’s report card,” the NAEP administers math and reading tests every other year to representative samples of fourth- and eighth-grade students in all 50 states. Ours is the first study to use this vast storehouse of information to analyze changes over time in the charter and district sectors. By adjusting for student background characteristics—sex, ethnicity, income, and (for eighth-grade students) computer availability and the number of books in the home—we made direct comparisons between student outcomes at charter and district schools. Because NAEP data don’t allow us to track specific students, we looked at changes in performance from one student cohort to the next over 12 years.

Todd Richmond:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction violated state law when it withheld voucher students’ standardized test scores for a day last fall, a judge ruled Friday.

School Choice Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative law firm, sued the department in Jefferson County court in November. The lawsuit revolved around the 2018-19 standardized test scores that the department released that September.

The scores showed only 39% of all students were proficient or advanced in English and that 40% were proficient or advanced in math. Only 20.7% of voucher students were proficient or advanced in English and just 17.8% were proficient or advanced in math.

Students in voucher programs can use state dollars to subsidize tuition at private schools. Republicans have touted the programs as an alternative for students stuck in failing public schools. Democrats argue the programs are a drain on state revenues that could go to help public schools.

Wisconsin has generally lacked a rigorous approach to statewide assessments: see the oft criticized WKCE.

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Paul E. Peterson and M. Danish Shakeel:

Public charter schools were once viewed as a nonpartisan compromise between vouchers for private schools and no choice at all. Not now. In its 2020 national platform, the Democratic Party calls for “stringent guardrails to ensure charter schools are good stewards” and says federal funding for charters must be conditioned on “whether the charter will systematically underserve the neediest students.” Charter schools are indeed acting as good stewards by outpacing district schools on achievement growth—especially for the most at-risk students.

In a new study we compare the progress made by cohorts of charter and district school students on the National Assessment of Educational Progress from 2005-17—a sample of more than four million test performances. Overall, students at charters are advancing at a faster pace than those at district schools. The strides made by African-American charter students have been particularly impressive. We also see larger gains at charters, relative to district schools, by students from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds.

Joanne Jacobs:

Thirty years ago, Milwaukee launched a private-school voucher program for low-income students. In 1998, when religious schools were allowed to participate, enrollment expanded.

Overall, test scores for voucher students resemble their public school counterparts. But there’s a critical difference: Voucher students are more likely to complete high school, enroll in college and earn a degree.

They’re also more likely to become law-abiding citizens, concludes a study, published in the Journal of Private Enterprise. 

Participation in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) “predicts lower rates of conviction for criminal activity and lower rates of paternity suits” by ages 25 to 28, conclude Patrick Wolf, a professor of education policy at the University of Arkansas, and Corey DeAngelis of the Reason Foundation. “Exposure to the MPCP is associated with a reduction of around 53 percent in drug convictions, 86 percent in property damage convictions, and 38 percent in paternity suits,” Wolf and DeAngelis found.

Effects tend to be “largest for males and students with lower levels of academic achievement at baseline.”

2011: A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board voted to abort the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Chris Rickert:

A group of parents and private religious schools is asking the Wisconsin Supreme Court to void a Dane County order barring in-person school for most students, saying the order issued in response to the COVID-19 pandemic infringes on the right to worship and to an education.

“This case challenges the authority of one unelected bureaucrat to upend the education plans of thousands of students and families and their schools located throughout Dane County via the stroke of a pen,” asserts the petition filed Wednesday by the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on behalf of 14 parents, five religious schools, and interest groups for school vouchers and religious and independent schools.

Issued Friday and effective Monday, Emergency Order No. 9 bars schools from offering in-person instruction for grades 3 through 12 until the county meets certain benchmarks showing the coronavirus is better contained. In effect, it applies almost exclusively to private schools because public schools in Dane County had already decided to start the year online for almost all students in almost every grade.

In the WILL petition and a separate one filed on behalf of Fitchburg mother Sara Lindsey James on Tuesday, attorneys argue that Janel Heinrich, director of Public Health Madison and Dane County, doesn’t have authority under state law to close schools and that the order runs counter to the decision the high court made in May striking down the statewide stay-at-home order.

In the May case, the court did not strike down the part of the stay-at-home order closing schools, but that order only closed them through the end of last school year. James’ petition argues state law allowing the state’s public health director to close schools in a public health emergency does not extend to local public health directors such as Heinrich.

(Some) Madison Governance Rhetoric on University of Wisconsin Governance Plans

Madison private school raises $70,000 for lawsuit against public health order. – WKOW-TV. Commentary.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Assembly against private school forced closure.

Wisconsin Catholic schools will challenge local COVID-19 closing order. More.

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

Corey DeAngelis:

School closures have affected over 55 million K–12 students in the U.S. since March as the nation deals with the coronavirus pandemic. Although numerous private schools and day care centers have adjusted to the pandemic and reopened, many public school districts and teachers unions are fighting to remain closed in the name of safety. In fact, 85 percent of the country’s 20 largest public school districts have already announced that they will not be reopening schools for any in-person instruction as the school year begins.

Some have noted these reopening decisions often appear to be driven by politics rather than public health. Unfortunately, many teachers groups are contributing to this appearance. In their report on safely reopening schools, for example, the Los Angeles’ teachers union went beyond detailing the safety needs of teachers and students, also calling for politicians to enact a wealth tax, Medicare for All, and a ban on charter schools. 

Similarly, 10 teachers unions across the country joined a coalition that included the Democratic Socialists of America to “Demand Safe Schools.” But rather than focus on student and teacher safety, they demanded a ban on new charter schools and voucher programs as well as the cancellation of rents and mortgages. 

When a reporter asked Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser if trends in the city’s COVID-19 cases justified the all-virtual start to the school year, Bowser responded, “No. I wouldn’t say the attention to the health metrics is the only thing that’s leading to our decision today” and that “clearly we want to work with our workforce.”

The Week:

If schools aren’t going to reopen, we’re not suggesting pulling funding from education,” DeVos told Fox News in a interview. “Instead,” the government is considering “allowing families … (to) take that money and figure out where their kids can get educated if their schools are going to refuse to open,” she said. It’s unclear if that very broad idea is even possible, seeing as Congress mandates how federal funds can be used. DeVos has long been a proponent of charter schools, which use government funding but run separately from public schools, and letting parents use tax vouchers to pay for education at private schools.

After President Trump complained about the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s guidelines for reopening schools being “too tough,” Vice President Mike Pence said the guidelines would be revised. – Kathryn Krawczyk

Libby Sobic:

Yesterday the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a landmark decision that will allow low-income parents across the country to send their children to private schools with their taxpayer dollars. In a 5–4 ruling, the Court decided in favor of Kendra Espinoza and two other mothers in their case brought by the Institute for Justice (IJ) against the Montana Department of Revenue.

Espinoza is a single mom who has wanted to send her two daughters to a religious school in Montana through the tax-credit scholarship program. Big Sky Scholarships provided families with a tax break if they contributed to charitable organizations that provide scholarships for students to attend private schools. The program was initially created to provide students with scholarships to attend any private school.

But soon after Big Sky started, Montana’s Department of Revenue declared that the scholarships could be used only for non-religious private schools. IJ filed this case on behalf of the Montana mom but lost in the Montana supreme court. The court shut down the entire tax-credit scholarship program, arguing that it was unconstitutional because it included religious options for parents and that it would be impossible to separate religious private schools from other private schools in this program.

Yesterday the Supreme Court held that “the application of the no-aid provision discriminated against religious schools and the families whose children attend or hope to attend them in violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the Federal Constitution.” In his majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts highlights that Montana’s program discriminated against religious schools because of the mere fact that they are religious: “Montana’s no-aid provision bars religious schools from public benefits solely because of the religious character of the schools. The provision also bars parents who wish to send their children to a religious school from those same benefits, again solely because of the religious character of the school.”

But with the Court ruling in favor of Espinoza, Montana families will be able to use the Big Sky Scholarship program to send their children to private schools, religious or not, which they otherwise could not afford. And even better: This victory reaches much farther than the 559 miles across Montana. It will allow states throughout the U.S. to provide assistance to families for private school through the creation of school-choice programs, including vouchers, tax scholarship programs, and education-savings accounts (ESAs).

Annysa Johnson:

Howard Fuller announced this month that he is retiring from Marquette University, where he is a distinguished professor of education and founder and director of its Institute for the Transformation of Learning.

At 79, Fuller has served in many roles in his lifetime: civil rights activist, educator and civil servant. He is a former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools and best known in recent decades as a national advocate for school choice, which provides taxpayer-funded vouchers, typically to low-income families.

He is founder of Dr. Howard Fuller Collegiate Academy, a local charter high school, which beganinitially as a private religious school in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.He is a controversial figure for many public school advocates who believe school choice bleeds needed dollars from those schools.

In addition to retiring from Marquette, Fuller has resigned all of his board appointments, except for that of the school.

Fuller sat down with Milwaukee Journal Sentinel education reporter Annysa Johnson for a lengthy and wide-ranging discussion. These are excerpts:

Question: When you first announced your retirement, I could sense a weariness in your voice. It was clear you were struggling with where we are in this country right now. What can you say about education in the context of this moment?

Fuller: One of the things that became absolutely clear when the pandemic hit was what we already knew, and that was the inequities in education in this country. What the pandemic did was show which schools were already into the 21st century and which were holding on tightly to the 20th century, still functioning with an industrial-age paradigm. When the pandemic broke, the people who were tied lock, stock and barrel to the industrial-age paradigm, were lost. They had no idea what to do. Because everything was centered onyou gottacome to a building, the teacher is the center of learning, etc.

2011: A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

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

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

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

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

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

WILL:

The News: The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) sued the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) on behalf of a West Allis family, Heritage Christian Schools, and School Choice Wisconsin Action (SCWA), after the department adopted an illegal policy to block a family from enrolling in the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP) – the statewide voucher program. The lawsuit was filed in Waukesha County Circuit Court.

Background: To apply for the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP), families must submit financial information to determine whether they meet the income eligibility requirements in state statute – 220% of the poverty line. Further, the WPCP has specific grade entry points for students who are already in a private school – kindergarten, 1^st, and 9^th grade – meaning families with children in private schools who want to participate in the WPCP have specific windows when they are eligible to apply.

The Lawsuit: When the Olguin family in West Allis applied to the WPCP for their kindergartner and 9^th grader to attend Heritage Christian Schools, a high performing school, DPI determined the family was $47 over the income threshold. To meet the threshold, the Olguin family made a legal contribution to an IRA account, resubmitted their tax return and reapplied to the program. But DPI refused to consider the Olguin’s new application, citing a ‘one and done’ policy that families are allowed only one submission during an enrollment period – regardless of a change in circumstances. Without relief, their 9^th grade son will never receive a voucher unless he were to switch schools from a private school to a public school and then back again.

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

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

Chris Stewart:

Public schools in New Mexico aren’t funding students equitably, so says the U.S. Department Education who accuse the state’s leaders of “diverting [$63 million] in federal Impact Aid grants” intended to help school districts that are disadvantaged by their low tax bases. 

The feds found that New Mexico wasn’t passing the “equity test,” which by law requires “the difference in per-student spending between the public district or charter school with the highest rate in the state and the one with the lowest must not exceed 25 percent.” 

As is, the state’s difference between its highest and lowest is 30%. Not only does that put them out of compliance, it also illustrates the equity-killing effects of business as usual.

Dylan Mullan from the Sante Fe New Mexican reporting includes a nugget that reveals a massive rip in the public education seam:

Madison spends roughly 19k/student annually, while some districts are far less. Charter and voucher schools cannot touch substantial local property taxes and therefore spend less than half of Madison.

In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.

– via a kind reader.

Milwaukee annual per student $pending:

Public: just over $14K

Charter: just over $9k

Voucher: just under $9k

“The problems have less to do with funding and more about policies and practices”. Mission vs organization.

Madison’s taxpayer supported school district spends around $19 to 20K/student and is planning a substantial tax and spending increase referendum. This, despite tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.

Corey DeAngelis:

The United States invests over $660 billion for K-12 education, or over $13,000 per student, each year, on average.¹ Real education expenditures in the U.S. have nearly quadrupled in the past half century without consistent improvements in student outcomes (Hanushek, 1997, 2015a, 2015b; Hanushek & Lindseth, 2009, 2010). Because education dollars are scarce resources, and because students’ academic success is important for society, it’s vital to examine which education sector delivers the most “bang for the buck.”

In theory, private schools and public charter schools might be more cost-effective than traditional public schools because of competitive pressures (Friedman,

Theoretically, it is possible that private schools and public charter schools have stronger financial incentives to spend scarce education dollars efficiently than traditional public schools because schools of choice must attract their customers (Friedman,

Voucher

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

In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.

Original Op Ed

Preston C. Green III

I am writing this post to alert my fellow professors about a situation I recently encountered after publishing a piece with the Hechinger Institute. This organization approached Bruce Baker and me to write an op-ed explaining the possible consequences of the Espinoza v. Montana State Department of Revenue case. In this case, the Supreme Court is considering whether states can prohibit parochial schools from participating in a tax-credit scholarship program. It is generally expected that the Court will hold that states cannot act in this manner.

In this op-ed, we explained that states might respond to this potential decision by placing curricular restrictions on participating schools or even refusing to fund private education altogether. We even posited that states might respond to the Court’s expected decision by dramatically reducing their investment in charter schools.

We did not get much pushback for these points in the op-ed. However, Corey DeAngelis, adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom and the Director of School Choice at the Reason Foundation, claimed on Twitter that we were wrong to suggest that parochial school participants in school voucher programs might even consider discrimination on the basis of race. He supported this assertion by citing a Supreme Court case, Runyon v. McCrary. DeAngelis posted a screenshot of the purported holding, which he got from Wikipedia. According to this summation, Runyon held that “[f]ederal law prohibits private schools from discriminating on the basis of race.” On the basis of this “evidence,” DeAngelis demanded that Hechinger correct this alleged error.

I responded on Twitter by posting a screenshot of the pertinent part of the actual case, which included the following statement (italics added):

Additional commentary.

David N. Figlio, Cassandra M.D. Hart, Krzysztof Karbownik:

Using a rich dataset that merges student-level school records with birth records, and a student fixed effect design, we explore how the massive scale-up of a Florida private school choice program affected public school students’ outcomes. Expansion of the program produced modestly larger benefits for students attending public schools that had a larger initial degree of private school options, measured prior to the introduction of the voucher program. These benefits include higher standardized test scores and lower absenteeism and suspension rates. Effects are particularly pronounced for lower-income students, but results are positive for more affluent students as well.

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

In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.

Matt Stoller:

It’s always been a bit of a puzzle for me to define just what the Democratic Party is. There are no formal membership dues, and registration varies by state. Candidates can sometimes run for the party nomination without being a member. And that leaves out the actual mechanisms of governance, the think tanks, banks, corporations, and law firms in which the various policy experts work as a sort of shadow government.

One of the better books on the Democratic Party comes from a former Joe Biden staffer, Jeff Connaughton, who coined the term “the blob” to denote the network of lawyers, lobbyists, Congressional staffers, foreign policy experts, podcasters, media figures and pollsters who comprise the groupthink of the Democrats. These people know each other, marry each other, take vacations together, book each other on shows, hire each other, and work together on policies and campaigns. It’s not a conspiracy, it’s a community.

But that community, if it becomes immune from external pressure, can become dangerous. And that’s what happened in Iowa. 

There were two parts to the fiasco. The first was the narrow community in Iowa.

The Iowa caucuses are for most of us an experiment in democracy, but for key actors in Iowa the caucuses are a business. Take former Iowa Governor and Obama Ag Secretary Tom Vilsack, whose endorsement was highly sought after. Vilsack is now a highly paid dairy lobbyist. Vilsack is well known, but then there are behind the scenes men like Jerry Crawford. 

A lawyer with white hair mowed like a golf-course fairway, Crawford is something of a kingmaker back home in Des Moines. He has shepherded every Democratic presidential nominee in the most important caucus state going back to 1980 — every nominee except for one, that is. Crawford, 65, still blames himself for Clinton’s 2008 third-place finish in the Hawkeye State, from which her campaign never really recovered. He vows that 2016 will be his year to make it right for her. “I’m trying to make amends,” he said.

Crawford was a lobbyist for Monsanto and Exxon. The Democratic Party is riddled with minor ward bosses like Crawford, especially in early states like Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina. It’s not a criticism to observe that these communities have leaders. But of the insularity of the political class has enabled institutional actors within the Democratic Party in Iowa to become fused with corporate power through informal and formal financial and social relationships.

As corporations get more and more concentrated, these relationships eventually wear down the competence of a political apparatus. The night before the caucus, the Iowa Democratic Party head said, “These are probably the most prepared we’ve ever been as a party for these caucuses. We’ve run through a few different scenarios, but I can tell you, we’re ready.”

The rhetoric around a recent Wisconsin education event is informative.

Cori Petersen:

This week has marked the tenth annual National School Choice Week, a celebration of educational options all over the country, but in Wisconsin, school choice is a much older tradition. Here, 2020 marks the thirty-year anniversary of school vouchers aka the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). As we celebrate this legacy, I sat down with State Senator Alberta Darling, an education reform champion who has been in the fight from the beginning, to talk about her battles in the legislature to expand school choice, what she would do if she were governor for a day, and why school choice is no longer a bipartisan issue.

Darling entered the Wisconsin assembly in a 1990 special election. In 1992 she was elected into the Senate representing the eighth district, which includes part of Milwaukee county and areas to the north and west. Before long, she found herself deep in the weeds of the controversial fight for school vouchers.

At the Pence rally. A lot of people here with yellow sashes in support of school vouchers. Many nonwhite.

— Rocknrolli OneAndOnly (@RocknRocknrolli) January 28, 2020

.@vp mentions @GovEvers‘s absence and a bill to be reintroduced today by @RepBrostoff to phase out school vouchers in Wisconsin: “I know the governor can’t be here with us today so let’s make sure he hears this, we’re not going to let that happen.”

— Mitchell Schmidt (@schmidtmitchell) January 28, 2020

Molly Beck:

Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday gave an election-year defense of President Donald Trump’s education policies — assuring parents at a Capitol rally that under the Republican president, children will not be stuck in poorly performing schools.

Pence and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos turned a state rally promoting alternatives to public schools into a stump speech for Trump, who needs to keep Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes in his corner as he faces reelection and an impeachment trial.

“I’m here in Wisconsin because this is where it all began,” Pence told a crowd of hundreds in the Wisconsin State Capitol’s rotunda, referring to Milwaukee’s private school voucher program — the nation’s first.

The visit to the statehouse — a first for a sitting vice president — put on alert local education officials and public school advocates who see the Trump administration as a threat to public school funding, which they argue has been decimated over the last 10 years by the programs Pence and DeVos promoted.

Mitchell Schmidt:

In a press conference after Pence’s speech, Rep. Jonathan Brostoff, D-Milwaukee, said his bill would phase out vouchers in the state and reinvest in public schools.

“(Pence) has no idea what’s going on here,” Brostoff said. “He represents a complete erosion of one of the most fundamental values and one of the greatest values of this country which is strong public education and that’s certainly a Wisconsin value.”

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, also spoke at the event, with both vowing to uphold the state’s voucher program.

“As long as Republicans control the Legislature, we plan to keep it,” Fitzgerald said.

During his speech, Vos encouraged students participating in the event to cheer for Trump, Pence and DeVos and boo “those who don’t like school choice.”

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin held an event in response to Pence’s visit, where party chairman Ben Wikler called the event a celebration for the attack on public schools by President Donald Trump and his administration.

“Trump and his cronies are sabotaging public education because it’s not their children who go to public school,” Wikler said.

Logan Wroge (fails to compare total spending)

The Milwaukee voucher program started in 1990-91 under former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, who attended Tuesday’s rally.

In the first year, the program enrolled 337 students. Enrollment has grown almost every year. This fall, 28,978 students attended 130 private schools on vouchers in Milwaukee.

Another voucher program in Racine started in the 2011-12 school year, followed by a statewide program in 2013-14 and a fourth for students with disabilities in 2016.

In the Milwaukee, Racine and statewide programs, 42,392 students enrolled in private schools this fall using a voucher, or just under 5% of the total school-aged population.

The use of vouchers, though, has yet to catch on in Madison as only three schools in the city signed up to accept students this school year through the statewide program, which state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said leaves Madison children with “limited choices.”

Scott Bauer:

Vice President Mike Pence touted alternatives to a public school education during a visit Tuesday to the state where the private school voucher program began, stopping in battleground Wisconsin for a noontime celebration in the state Capitol.

Pence, and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were both briefly drowned out by chants of “shame” from dozens of protesters who gathered one floor down in the Capitol building. The protesters, some carrying signs calling for the separation of church and state, also booed throughout their comments.

School choice — which includes private school vouchers, charter schools and other nontraditional options — has long been an issue that divides Republicans and Democrats, particularly in Wisconsin. Conservatives have championed offering students an alternative to public schools, giving Pence a chance to appeal to Republican voters in a swing state during national school choice week.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

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

In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.

2011: A majority of the Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Property Academy IB charter school.

Voucher schools spend far less per student than traditional government supported schools. Traditional K-12 School Districts capture local (property), redistributed state and federal funds, while voucher schools largely survive on state taxpayer funds.

Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty:

On the first day of National School Choice Week, a new study (here) estimates how further growth of Wisconsin’s parental choice programs could result in $3.2 billion in new economic benefits to Wisconsin over the next two decades. Ripple Effect, authored by Will Flanders, PhD, builds upon a recent study which documented how students in MPCP are more likely to graduate from college to extrapolate the economic gains to Wisconsin if the parental choice programs were expanded.

Broken down, Wisconsin’s cities could expect to see:

• $100 million in economic benefits for Madison

• $75 million in economic benefits for Green Bay

• $60 million in economic benefits for Appleton

• $24 million in economic benefits for La Crosse

Kenya’s Story: These economic gains can be understood through Kenya Green. As a child in Milwaukee, she struggled at Milwaukee Public Schools. By the time she was in eighth grade, she was close to giving up, seemingly forced to attend unsafe, low-performing MPS schools. But through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, she discovered HOPE Christian Schools, which transformed her life. The school gave her the rigorous academics and the structure she needed. After graduating from HOPE, she attended Wisconsin Lutheran College, graduated, got a job, and is now in school to become an aesthetician.

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

In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.

2011: A majority of the Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Property Academy IB charter school.

Voucher schools spend far less per student than traditional government supported schools. Traditional K-12 School Districts capture local (property), redistributed state and federal funds, while voucher schools largely survive on state taxpayer funds.

Mary Lynn Smith:

The largest organization representing Minnesota educators announced Wednesday that it opposes a plan to change the state Constitution in an effort to narrow the state’s persistent academic achievement gap.

Education Minnesota, the union representing 80,000 members who work in pre-K and K-12 schools and higher-education institutions, announced its opposition as the authors of the proposal launched a public effort to woo support for their “out-of-the-box” idea.

Alan Page, a former Minnesota Supreme Court justice, and Neel Kashkari, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, want to make quality public education a civil right for all children. To do that, they propose amending the Constitution’s current language on education, which has remained largely the same since it was written in 1857.

But the teachers union argues that the change would pave the way for taxpayer-funded vouchers for private schools, which they’ve long opposed.

“The public schools paid for by the taxpayers should be available to every Minnesota family no matter where they are from, how they pray, whether their children have special needs, or who they love,” Education Minnesota President Denise Specht said in a written statement.

The proposal would remove the mandate for a uniform system of public education, creating even wider inequities between wealthy and poor districts, Specht wrote in a series of tweets.

Related: “An emphasis on adult employment“.

Michael R. Ford & Fredrik O. Andersson:

In this article we review the substantial literature on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP), the U.S.’s oldest and largest urban school voucher program, and use the review to propose an agenda for second generation school voucher research. We review research on student-level impacts, public school response, parental decision-making, fiscal impacts, organizational churn, and the larger public policy issues resulting from Milwaukee’s voucher policy. We conclude that the balance of literature on the MPCP shows limited positive effects for voucher users, positive fiscal impacts for taxpayers, substantial numbers of school closures, and various externalities that need to be better understood given the program’s size and prominence. Given this, we suggest a future research agenda focused on the question of how to make voucher policies as successful as possible.

Laura Waters:

On New Year’s Eve The Nation published an analysis by Jennifer Berkshire called “The Democrats’ School Choice Problem.” Her piece is instructive because it illustrates a strategy commonly employed by those who regard themselves as warriors against craven privatizing shysters intent on expanding charter schools and/or voucher programs. This is how it works: Ignore context. Ignore math. Ignore inconvenient facts. And hustle together a specious I argument that plays to those who —perhaps responding to the Trumpian lurch to the right by Republican Party leaders in D.C. —believe that the only way to retain decency and moral order is by careening just as far to the left, which seems to me a surefire way to guarantee Trump a second term. (Not sure what these directions mean anyway. Since when is limiting public school choice, which primarily benefits low-income children of color, a value of left-wingers? Since when is it a violation of Democratic Party loyalty to want better schools for your kids?)

To unknowing readers (which apparently includes The Nation’s fact-checking department) Berkshire’s argument, as context and fact-free as it is, holds power. So let’s demystify the mystique and look at some of the ways that Berkshire makes her argument that the Democratic pro-choice coalition is “unraveling” and that no choice is the right choice.

First, to give credit where credit is due, Berkshire  begins with the recent AFT/NEA “school choice forum” last month in Pittsburgh where seven candidates begged for union money and endorsement. She notes that the invitation-only audience was greeted by a Black mother affiliated with the Working Families Party (closely tied in agenda and funding with AFT/NEA) while 250 Black mothers (she says 100 but who’s counting) stood in a cold rain because they were locked out of the “public forum” for wanting quality schools for their children even if they can’t afford to live in Gloucester. (See here.) Why were they outside in the rain? Because the candidates, with the sole exception of Mike Bennett, refused to walk down the block and meet with them in a hotel room paid for by a GoFundMe campaign. Inside, audience members wore “F*%k Charter Schools” tee-shirts.

Madison’s taxpayer supported K – 12 school district has resisted school and parental choice.

A majority of the school board rejected the proposed Madison preparatory Academy ib charter school in 2011.

Madison taxpayers have long spent far more than most K-12 school districts, despite tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.

CJ Safir and Libby Sobic:

Across the country, parents, many of them low-income, are using school choice to educate their children at schools outside their public neighborhood options. Twenty-nine states, and the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico provide some school choice program for students to attend private schools, including tax-credit scholarships, school vouchers, tax deduction and education savings accounts. Many more states (44 and D.C. and Puerto Rico) allow for high-performing charter schools, which are public schools with less red tape than traditional public schools.

Trump’s roundtable highlighted these successes as well as those of particular states. For example, Trump heaped praise on Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis who, less than a year into his tenure, secured legislation to move 14,000 students off wait lists for the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program.

However, despite successful state programs, far too many students are without access to quality schools, which is why President Trump says the Education Freedom Scholarships proposal is necessary. The bill, authored by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) and Rep. Bradley Byrne (R-Ala.), would strengthen school choice from a federal level while allowing states to have the flexibility to manage how the scholarships are structured, determine which students are eligible and how the funds could be used.

The demand for school choice is largely a reflection of frustration with the current system. K-12 education in the U.S. ranks 13 in science and 31 in math compared to other Organization for Economic-Cooperation and Development countries. Yet, the U.S. is the second-biggest spender on K-12 schools (after Norway). The recent National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) results found that student reading proficiency declined in 17 states and mathematical proficiency is stagnant. This is why, according to a RealClear Opinion Research poll this month, 70 percent of registered voters favor a federal tax credit scholarship and 68 percent support some form of school choice.  

Erica L. Green and Eliza Shapiro

The night before Democratic presidential candidates took to a debate stage here last week, black and Latino charter school parents and supporters gathered in a bland hotel conference room nearby to make signs they hoped would get the politicians’ attention.

“Charter schools = self-determination,” one sign read. “Black Democrats want charters!” another blared.

At issue is the delicate politics of race and education. For more than two decades, Democrats have largely backed public charter schools as part of a compromise to deliver black and Latino families a way out of failing district schools. Charters were embraced as an alternative to the taxpayer-funded vouchers for private-school tuition supported by Republicans, who were using the issue to woo minority voters.

Matthew Ladner:

School choice is a hot topic in the United States. Private school vouchers, public charter schools, open enrollment, and homeschooling all regularly appear on the policy agenda as ways to improve the educational experience and outcomes for students, parents, and the broader society. Pundits often make claims about the various ways in which parents select schools and thus customize their child’s education. What claims about school choice are grounded in actual evidence?

This book presents systematic reviews of the social science research regarding critical aspects of parental school choice. How do parents choose schools and what do they seek? What effects do their choices have on the racial integration of schools and the performance of the schools that serve non-choosing students? What features of public charter schools are related to higher student test scores? What effects does school choice have on important non-cognitive outcomes including parent satisfaction, student character traits, and how far students go in school? What do we know about homeschooling as a school choice? This book, originally published as a special issue of the Journal of School Choice, provides evidence-based answers to those vital questions.

Jim Bender:

As a district, Madison enrolls students who are 42% white, 14.5% with disabilities and 48.2% listed as economically disadvantaged. The Madison district report card score is 72.3

Lighthouse Christian enrolls students who are 90% of color, 14.8% with disabilities and 87% listed as economically disadvantaged. Their report card score is 83 based solely on students who attend using a state voucher.

Some schools have higher scores than Lighthouse in Madison. Van Hise Elementary has a report card score of 94.9. But it is also 63% white, 11% with disabilities and only 15% of students in poverty. The seven other schools in Madison with higher scores all have lower poverty and less diversity than Lighthouse.

The footprint of the Private School Choice Program in Madison is small but growing. In Milwaukee, where the population and number of participating private schools is larger, attention is often given to the performance of the many 80/80 schools

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

Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Collin Anderson:

Democratic presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren raked in tens of thousands of dollars from teachers’ unions before reversing her past support for student vouchers and education reform.

In 2004, Warren argued that vouchers “relieve parents” from relying on failing public schools. Her campaign’s newly-released education plan attacks charter schools and school choice. Warren’s reversal comes after the Massachusetts senator took more than $2.5 million in campaign cash from the education industry throughout her political career, including nearly $70,000 from the country’s most powerful teachers’ unions, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

Will Flanders:

In the never-ending debate on test scores in Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program, old is new again. Alan Borsuk, in his most recent column discussing the topic, brings up the possibility that higher scores in choice schools might be the result of better parents and students taking advantage of the program, leaving the worse students behind for MPS to deal with. This is notion of “creaming” is pervasive among opponents of school choice. But the evidence does not support it.

First, by all of the measures that are able to be observed, it is worth noting that students in the MPCP and MPS are very similar. Demographic data for choice students was not included in the DPI release for this year, but the 2017-18 numbers reveal 77.5% of students in the MPCP come from low-income backgrounds compared to 84.8% in MPS. 87.3% of MPCP students come from minority backgrounds, as do 89.3% of students in MPS. There are no significant differences along these dimensions. When WILL conducts it’s annual Apples to Apples report that accounts for demographic factors like these, choice schools still rise to the top.

But what Borsuk is probably really focused on are more intangible differences between the students. If a parent takes the time to seek out an alternative educational option, it may indicate some additional level of caring about a child’s education than a parent who leaves their child in an assigned school, whatever its quality. Fortunately, there are a number of studies that are also able to account for this possibility thanks to lotteries that were held to determine admissions to the school. Such research takes advantage of random assignment to receiving school choice, usually due to limitations in the number of vouchers that are available. This means that the students who lose the lottery come from the same sort of family environments as those that win the lottery, allowing for a true effect of educational choice to be observed experimentally. Of 18 studies that have used these methods, 14 have found positive effects on student achievement, 2 have found no effects, and 2–both in Louisiana–have found negative effects. This includes 2 studies in Milwaukee conducted before caps were lifted on the program. In other words, the vast majority of studies that directly address Borsuk’s worry have found no evidence of the problem.

Perhaps the reason for this is that it isn’t just the “cream of the crop” that make the decision to send their students to an alternative school. Indeed, a case can be made that if a student is doing very well in their current public school, why would a change be needed? Of 10 studies that have examined this very question, eight find either evidence in the opposite direction or ambiguous results, and only two find choice students are more advantaged.

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

Molly Beck:

Less than half of Wisconsin students again this year are considered to be proficient in reading and math — a trend Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Thursday called “disturbing.”

The percentage of students in public and private voucher schools scoring well in reading and math on state tests dropped slightly during the 2018-19 school year, from 41% in both areas to 40% in math and 39% in reading.

“These test scores are a cause for concern for parents, educators and taxpayers,” Vos said, in a statement on the annual release of state test scores by the state Department of Public Instruction. “While standardized tests don’t reflect everything that’s happening in the classroom, these scores reveal a disturbing decline.”

Vos also questioned how recent increases in K-12 funding have been spent given students’ scores on state tests, which were crafted by an agency run by Gov. Tony Evers until January when he left his position as state superintendent.

“Wisconsin students deserve an excellent education no matter where they attend school,” he said. “With the repeated increases in funding for K-12 education, taxpayers deserve to know why we’re not seeing better results.”

Vos rejected a state budget proposal this year from Evers that included $1.4 billion in new funding for public and private voucher schools and changed the state funding formula to provide more money to schools with students who live in poverty — a characteristic of students who generally score poorly on state tests.

The Republican-backed budget ultimately included an increase in funding — $500 million in additional funds for schools. Evers then used his broad veto authority to add about $65 million more for schools.

Related: 2011: A Capitol Conversation on Wisconsin’s Reading Challenges.

2012: Wisconsin Act 166.

2015: Foundations of Reading Teacher Exam Results 2017 update.

2019: Mulligans for Wisconsin Elementary Reading Teachers.

2019: A bill is circulating in both houses of the Wisconsin legislature that would permanently exempt special education teachers from having to pass the Foundations of Reading Test (FORT).

Will Flanders:

At Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD), there exist two distinct school systems.

Despite its economic growth, low-income families in Madison are more likely to stay poor for their entire lives.

While 60% of white students at MMSD are proficient or higher on the Forward exam, only 9.8% of African Americans are proficient. This achievement gap is worse than Milwaukee Public Schools.

While Hispanic proficiency is higher than that for African Americans, large gaps remain.

21% of African Americans and 18% of Hispanic students in MMSD do not graduate from high school within five years compared to just 6% of white students.

African American and low-income students are more likely to be in schools with significantly higher numbers of police calls.

Due to caps and restrictions, school choice is very limited in Madison. Unless your family has money. More than 4,300 children attend 31 private schools in Madison, primarily outside of the voucher program.

Related: Police calls near local high schools: 1996-2006.

Madison taxpayers recently funded expansion of our least diverse schools.

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

I am currently the reading interventionist teacher at West High School.

I’ve been there for 4 years. Previous to that I’ve been in the school district as a regular ed teacher for about 20 years. I started in the early 90s.

I have (a) question I want to ask you guys. What district-wide systems are in place as we use our map data to monitor the reading student achievement?

Student by student, not school by school but also school by school and provide support for the school the teachers and the students that need it.

And especially to help students who score in the bottom percentiles who will need an intervention which is significantly different than differentiation.

I was (a) TAG coordinator (talent and gifted coordinator) for 4 years at Hamilton and I have extensive background with the talent and gifted and differentiation training.

( and teaching of teachers). Now I’m in interventionist and they are significantly different we need interventions to serve the lowest scoring kids that we have.

Here’s my data from this year and this is why I’m here:

Of the 65 students plus or minus it kind of changes this year 24 of them are regular ed students.

Another way to say they don’t have an IEP so there is no excuse for that reading intervention in (that group).

12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.

They have High attendance. They have been in the same (you know) feeder school they have not had high mobility. There is no excuse for 12 of my students to be reading at the first second or third grade level and that’s where they’re at and I’m angry and I’m not the only one that’s angry.

The teachers are angry because we are being held accountable for things that we didn’t do at the high school level. Of those 24 students, 21 of them have been enrolled in Madison for four or more years.

Of those 24 students one is Caucasian the rest of them identify as some other ethnic group.

I am tired of the district playing what I called whack-a-mole, (in) another words a problem happens at Cherokee boom we bop it down and we we fix it temporarily and then something at Sherman or something at Toki or something at Faulk and we bop it down and its quiet for awhile but it has not been fixed on a system-wide level and that’s what has to change.

Thank you very much.

Madison taxpayers have long spent far more than most K-12 school districts, now between 18 and 20k per student, depending on the district documents one reviews.

Kate Cox:

Amazon’s Ring line of consumer home surveillance products enjoys an extensive partnership with local police departments all over the country. Cops receive free product, extensive coaching, and pre-approved marketing lines, and Amazon gets access to your 911 data and gets to spread its network of security cameras all over the nation. According to a trio of new reports, though, the benefits to police go even further than was previously known—as long as they don’t use the word “surveillance,” that is.

Gizmodo on Monday published an email exchange between the chief of police in one New Jersey town and Ring showing that Ring edited out certain key terms of a draft press release before the town published it, as the company frequently does.

The town of Ewing, New Jersey, in March said it would be using Ring’s Neighbors app. Neighbors does not require a Ring device to use; consumers who don’t have footage to share can still view certain categories of crime reports in their area and contribute reports of their own, sort of like a Nextdoor on steroids.

FURTHER READING
Amazon writes scripts for cops to sling Ring home cameras, report says
Law enforcement has access to a companion portal that allows police to see an approximate map of active Ring cameras in a given area and request footage from them in the course of an investigation. The town also launched a subsidy program, giving up to 200 residents a $100 discount on the purchase of Ring security products. Members of the police department also received $50 discount vouchers for their own use.

Jason Bedrick and Corey A. DeAngelis:

Thanks to private-school choice—vouchers, tax-credit scholarships and education savings accounts—this year nearly half a million children in 29 U.S. states and the District of Columbia will attend schools their parents selected.

Critics of school choice often argue that low-income families lack the knowledge or ability to choose meaningfully between schools. Worrying that parents will be taken advantage of or make poor decisions, they oppose choice programs or favor onerous testing requirements to prove they are effective.

New studies on school choice in Colombia and Barbados, however, suggest families know something that tests can’t detect. These two countries, with per capita incomes a quarter and a third of America’s, respectively, can teach us a lot about how the most economically disadvantaged families choose schools.

Richard Vedder:

Op-Ed. An estimated 14.67 million college students attend what we call “state universities.” Some of them are renowned highly selective research institutions like the University of California at Berkeley or the University of Michigan, while others are relatively obscure schools with an open admissions policy. But all receive some degree of subsidization from the state government where they are physically located.

Yet there are good arguments to make state universities independent private institutions, albeit ones that still indirectly receive some governmental support. Our so-called “private” schools already mostly are indirectly heavily dependent on the federal government for support via its financing student tuition and room and board charges, not to mention research support and favorable tax treatments. With a few exceptions like Hillsdale College, purely totally independent private institutions are extremely rare.

Let’s give money to needy and accomplished students, not to schools. Data collected by Harvard’s Raj Chetty and associates show that the family income of kids attending schools like the University of Virginia or the University of Michigan averages around $200,000 a year, with the median income also in the six digits. These schools are not places where poor but bright and ambitious kids heavily populate. People worried about income distribution and access to economic opportunity should be concerned that state government aid to colleges is, in fact, largely a middle and upper-class entitlement.

Why don’t we provide vouchers for college attendance like some states do for students going to K-12 schools? The aid could be more explicitly targeted to kids who are either relatively poor or who excel academically. For example, suppose Michigan gave vouchers for attendance by residents that vary in magnitude from $1,000 to $15,000, with extremely high-income applicants made ineligible for any assistance, while very low-income students could receive enough to cover most basic living costs (more than they get today)? Why don’t we further restrict assistance after the first year to students showing at least minimally acceptable academic performance, perhaps something like a “C” average (2.0 grade point average)? Why don’t we put a five-year limit on vouchers, reducing the phenomenon of students taking six years to get a degree?

Marisa Peryer:

Established in 2015, the school is part of a nationwide network of 35 Cristo Rey Jesuit schools that predominantly reach students from low-income families. Students spend four days a week at the school, then one day a week at businesses across greater Milwaukee as part of the work-study program. The students are not paid; instead, their “pay” goes to the school to pay down the cost of tuition.

Almost all the students are Hispanic, and almost all attend the school on taxpayer-funded vouchers through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The school continues to grow. Now at 1215 S. 45th St., it soon will double its space as it moves into a vacated Pick ‘n Save store at 1818 W. National Ave.

A few hundred parents, family members and friends gathered in Marquette University’s Church of the Gesu for Friday’s ceremony.

After speeches from salutatorian Wendy Gutierrez-Perez, who will attend College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, and from commencement speaker the Rev. John P. Foley, chairman emeritus of Cristo Rey’s board, Vera took to the podium to give her valedictorian address.

Will Flanders:

Here are 5 findings for our upcoming report on school performance:
1. Milwaukee: Choice Schools Lead in Student Proficiency (even more significantly than DPI data suggests)
Wisconsin’s private and charter schools, much maligned by Governor Evers and other leaders on the left, continue to succeed for Wisconsin students. Once schools are put on a level playing field, all types of charters show a proficiency advantage over traditional public schools (TPS). Led by schools like Carmen Middle/High School of Science and Technology in Milwaukee, non-instrumentalities have 12% higher proficiency in English and 13% higher proficiency in math on average than TPS. This dramatic performance positively exceeded every other sector measured.
Independent charter schools, schools in which the governor has attempted to freeze enrollment, exceeded TPS proficiency rates in math by 8%, as did instrumentality charters (for a brief primer on charter school types, look here). No effect of independent charters or instrumentalities was found for English. Private schools in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program have higher proficiency rates in both math and English. Proficiency was 4.7% higher in English, and about 4% higher in math than TPS. The inclusion of control variables widens these gaps in most cases, meaning that the results are more positive for choice schools than the data on DPI’s website which lacks controls.

These findings will be enlightening to Governor Evers, who in an interview earlier this week declared vouchers to perform similar to students at Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS).

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

Corey DeAngelis:

Using Evers’ own publicly available Accountability Report Card data from the 2017-18 school year, I find that private schools participating in choice programs and independent charter schools tend to offer the citizens of Wisconsin more “bang for the buck” than district-run public schools.

Specifically, private schools deliver 2.27 more Accountability Report Card points for every $1,000 invested than district-run public schools, demonstrating a 36% cost-effectiveness advantage for private schools. Notably, private schools are 75% more cost-effective in Racine and 50% more cost-effective in Milwaukee, the cities with the highest proportions of students using school vouchers in the state.

The data reveal that Wisconsin’s independent charter schools also do more with less. Independent charter schools are 63% more cost-effective in Racine, and 50% more cost-effective in Milwaukee, than nearby district-run public schools.

This isn’t the only evidence that school choice is a good investment. In fact, a recent evaluation from researchers at the University of Arkansas finds that charter schools are around 40% more cost-effective than traditional public schools in Wisconsin. Another peer-reviewed study from 2017 finds that charter schools are more efficient than traditional public schools in Milwaukee.

But that’s not all.

The Price of Teacher Mulligans: “I didn’t stop to ask myself then what would happen to all the kids who’d been left in the basement with the teacher who couldn’t teach” – Michelle Obama

Libby Sobic and Will Flanders:

This change in accreditation also makes it more difficult for existing private schools to join the parental choice program because it is one more regulation that the school must comply with. The plan is even more ridiculous when one considers that Wisconsin’s public schools aren’t required to go through any accreditation process at all.

While some states such as Indiana and Michigan require schools to be accredited, Wisconsin has no such provision in law. If the governor believes that further onerous accreditation requirements are needed on some of Wisconsin’s best performing schools, surely one would expect that he wants the same regulations on the public schools that he oversaw for a decade.

But that is not the case because this is not about school quality. Rather, this is little more than yet another attempt to cut off the pipeline of high performing private voucher schools that provide too much competition to his teachers’ union donors.

Evers knows exactly what he is doing with his accreditation proposal. He is looking to create more red tape for private schools and add to the number of requirements that already make the Wisconsin choice program one of the most regulated in the country. This proposal is well designed attack on the school choice programs and it must not stand.

The Wisconsin DPI, long lead by new Governor Tony Evers, has waived thousands of elementary teacher reading content knowledge exam requirements. This, despite our long term, disastrous reading results.

WILL Policy Brief:

Today WILL is releasing “A Deep Dive into Governor Evers’ K-12 Budget Proposal” that goes through nearly every single education proposal in Evers’ budget while utilizing new research as well as LFB analysis and JFC testimony. For each proposal, we explain how it impacts schools and students across Wisconsin.

We dive deep into nearly every provision in his budget, from his infamous voucher freeze – which would cost Wisconsin $110 million in lost economic benefits – to the ending of the Special Needs Scholarship Program – that has a 56% higher parental satisfaction score than public schools for educating students with disabilities. The report looks at lesser known provisions, such as new private school accreditation requirements, new teacher licensing requirements, changes to the early college credit program, the elimination of the private school tuition tax deduction, and more mandates from Madison on local school districts.

Evers’ budget should concern parents and lawmakers alike. It would end school choice as we know it – freezing the expansion of vouchers and charters but also implementing stifling regulations that would halt the growth of private schools in the choice program. It also goes after Wisconsin’s incredibly popular Open Enrollment Program, limiting funding increases for the program and making it less desirable for public schools to participate. Evers’ budget would exacerbate Wisconsin’s teacher shortage problem, making it harder for teachers to work at private and public schools. All in all, Evers’ budget:

Daniel Funke:

A study published in Science Advances in January found that older people are more likely to share fake news stories. A Gallup and Knight Foundation survey from last year suggested that most Americans want technology companies to do more to fight misinformation. Other researchers have found that fake news is making college students trust all news less.

But how has online fakery affected journalists?

In a new study conducted by the Institute for the Future, a California-based nonprofit think tank, researchers found more than 80% of journalists admitted to falling for false information online. The data was based on a survey of 1,018 journalists at regional and national publications in the United States.

Perhaps more concerning: Only 14.9% of journalists surveyed said they had been trained on how to best report on misinformation.

A good place to start: financial misinformation. Reporters should always tell the whole story $518m in Madison school district 2018-2019 spending), not just taxpayer funded public rhetoric.

Materiality is also important (missing the big story, in this example).

Bethany Blankley:

While 59 percent of respondents supported Evers’ plan to increase public school funding by $1.4 billion, support fell to 39 percent when respondents learned the increase in spending comes with no academic accountability, the polls found.

In response to Evers’ budget proposal, Madison–Co-chairs of the Joint Committee on Finance, Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, and Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, said in a statement, “Wisconsin can’t afford Tony Evers’ budget. He’s spending our record surplus and billions more. His budget increases spending by $1,000 for every resident in the state, raises taxes, and eliminates the reforms that worked over the last eight years. Governor Evers is digging another hole that Republicans will again have to fill.”

The majority polled support public charter schools: 68 percent of Hispanics, 66 percent of Republicans, 62 percent of blacks, and 61 percent of residents from Metro Milwaukee counties.

More respondents support school voucher programs than those who oppose them. Supporters include 66 percent of blacks, 60 percent of Hispanics, 59 percent from Metro Milwaukee counties, and 53 percent of Millennial/Generation Z respondents.

Curiously, this document is NOT shared as part of the Madison School Board public documents. Chan Stroman obtained the April 4, 2019 70 page package via an open records request (!).

The April 4, 2019 document contains a number of interesting links and shares, including a summary of Governor Ever’s (Former long time Wisconsin DPI leader) proposed budget. I found no mention of DPI’s elementary reading teacher mulligan practice, yet noted this on page 16:

Teacher Shortage and Teacher Licensure Provisions
• Authorizes school districts to rehire a retired annuitant teacher if:

– at least 30 days have passed since the teacher left employment with a district;

– at the time of retirement, the teacher does not have an agreement with any school district to return to employment; and

– upon returning to work the teacher elects to not become a participating employee and continue receiving their annuity.

• Repeals the alternative education preparation licensure pathway through which teachers can become licensed without in-classroom teaching time.

• Provides $571,200 in 2019-20 and $652,900 in fiscal year 2020-21 to help recruit and retain high quality master educator and national board-certified teachers in high poverty schools. (This funding would triple the size of continuing grants to qualified teachers in high poverty urban schools and double the size of the continuing grant for teachers at high poverty schools elsewhere in (i.e., throughout) the state, and would incentivize an estimated 130 or more highly qualified teachers to continue teaching in schools with high levels of poverty.)

• Requires teachers at private schools participating in a private school choice (voucher) program to be licensed as of July 1, 2022. (This item also appears below under voucher programs.)

Related: Mulligans for Wisconsin Elementary Reading Teachers:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction “DPI”, lead for many years by new Governor Tony Evers, has waived thousands of elementary reading teacher content knowledge requirements. This, despite our long term, disastrous reading results.

Negassi Tesfamichael:

However, the group said support dipped once additional information on current spending levels and other information about the budget was included.

The poll found only a third of respondents supported Evers’ proposal to freeze the growth of private school vouchers and independent charter schools. The poll found a majority of support for public charter schools and for parts of Act 10, including a provision that requires teachers to contribute at least 12 percent to their health care costs.

Indeed. One wonders how many citizens are aware of our $20k per student Madison school
District budget?

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

David Blaska:

Parents, you do have a choice, thanks to Tommy Thompson, Scott Walker and the Republican legislature.

Low income choice

If you are low-income, you can participate in the WI Parental Choice Program. Your annual household income for a family of three must not exceed $45,716. Application period ends April 20.

Unfortunately, state law mandates that no more than 4% of the pupil membership of a public school district may participate in the WPCP. The DPI conducts random drawings.

Much more on open
Enrollment, charter~/a< and voucher student options.

“An emphasis on adult employment”.

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

David Blaska:

I met many people throughout the city (and reconnected with sister Jane). Gratified at the many educators, teaching support staff, and mainstream Democrats who said they voted for me. Another shout-out to liberal downtown Madison blogger Greg Humphrey. That took courage.

We started a long overdue conversation in this community. That will continue.

I am proud of the campaign we ran and many of you were a big part of that. We talked the issues, we did not disparage motives or call names. (But we sure were on the receiving end! Thought I had a tough hide but there are some bruises.) We offered real-life solutions rather than blaming nebulous, macro socio-economic conditions, Act 10 or various Koch brothers. Returning control of their classrooms to teachers was, Tuesday’s results show, a bridge too far. Who’d a-thunk it?

Jenny Peek:

Caire said he knew it would be a tight race, but said the 32,000 people who voted for him want change. “That 32,000 is a sign that there are folks that want to move in different directions. So we’re going to keep pushing,” he said. He said he is concerned that the “hardcore left” in Madison is not truly committed to change for kids of color. “You don’t see them fighting and calling people names and yelling and screaming and picketing when it’s black kids failing. And that bothers me, that bothers me. I feel like if they’re really with us, they should be with us all the time.”

Mirilli and Muldrow said they will address the issues they campaigned on.

“Now we get to work,” Muldrow said. “Now we try to make our schools into places where every single kid can be successful and … give it everything we’ve got.”

Negassi Tesfamichael:

Caire said he will continue to be active in Madison’s education scene and will push for universal preschool in the city.

“I keep going; I don’t stop,” Caire said. “(The election) is not going to stop me from doing what it is that we need to do … there’s a lot going on in the schools I feel I could help with, and I’ll still try to help.”

Carusi, who has touted her many years of attending School Board meetings and being a grassroots organizer, has staunchly opposed voucher schools and independent charter schools like One City. Her opposition to independent charter and voucher schools scored her the endorsement of Madison Teachers Inc., the local teachers union.

“I’m looking forward to being able to bring all voices to the table and representing our whole community on the School Board,” Carusi said.

WORT-FM commentary mp3 audio.

Notes and links on the 2019 Madison School Board election, here.

Turnout: 26.6% statewide

Will Flanders:

First, it is important to note that spending on school choice represents a minuscule share of the state’s education spending. For fiscal year 18-19, Wisconsin spent $5,899,757,400 in aid to local school districts according to LFB. Spending on school choice was $192 million, or about three percent of that total. To make the claim that school choice is undermining public school spending is one of the biggest fallacies regularly repeated by choice opponents.

Perhaps the most misleading aspect of Pope’s summary of the information is in the $42 million reduction that is attributed to Milwaukee. Pope presents this as if this is continual reduction that requires Evers’ extremist position of capping enrollment in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to address.

In reality, this reduction is already disappearing over time. Indeed, quoting Pope’s own LFB memo “Under Provisions of 2013 Act 20, (the percentage of this aid reduction) will be reduced by 3.2 percentage points each year, until no aid reduction is made beginning in 2024-25.” In other words, the legislature has already taken steps to reduce by $42 million the aid reduction that Pope is discussing, yet this appears nowhere in her press release.

That aid reductions should occur for students that a district is no longer educating seems to be common sense. Districts that have students whose families make the decision to attend a private school that works better for them should not still see the school they left rewarded with tax dollars earmarked for that student. As we have noted on several occasions, Pick and Save does not continue to receive money from you if you choose to shop at Aldi. Pope believes public schools should be exempt from the performance-improving benefits of competition. We do not. Moreover, districts have the ability to raise property taxes to make up for the loss of state aid, and many do, for better or worse.

Also neglected from Pope’s press release is the reality that school choice saves Wisconsin money overall. Students in independent charter schools and those using a voucher are funded at a substantially lower level than students in traditional public schools throughout the state. Independent charter schools receive $8,619 per student and voucher students receive $7,754 (K8) or $8,400 (9-12) per student. Public school students are funded at a rate more than $2,000 higher on average throughout Wisconsin. According to recent research from EdChoice, this leads to a savings of $800-1,200 per student in the choice program. Over the lifetime of the programs, Wisconsin has realized a benefit of more than $345 million from school choice. I’d wager some of that boon was poured back in to the public school system.

Jessie Opoien:

WILL’s most likely battle with Evers, Esenberg said, is over administrative rules — a “fight that only a wonk could love.” As Evers seeks to implement policies with a Republican Legislature opposed to most of his goals, he could direct state agencies to implement administrative rules — most of which WILL would be likely to oppose.

“To the extent that there are more regulations enacted by a new administration, they would have more targets to shoot at, although they were not lacking for targets in the ‘old world,’” Tseytlin said.

As Evers seeks to freeze enrollment in the state’s taxpayer-funded voucher schools and halt the creation of new charter schools, WILL will push back.

Sobic contends those programs offer alternatives to improve student achievement, while Evers has said the freezes are needed so officials can reexamine the state’s education system and the way each portion of it is funded. Evers has argued the state currently has two parallel systems.

Related: Repeated Wisconsin DPI elementary reading teacher mulligans – this despite our long term, disastrous reading results.

Negassi Tesfamichael:

In the Seat 4 race, candidate David Blaska has said there should be a drive-through window at the Doyle Administration Building to approve more charter schools. His opponent, Ali Muldrow — who was endorsed by the influential Madison Teachers Inc. before the Feb. 19 primary — has two children who attend Isthmus Montessori Academy.

Muldrow has said she does not support school vouchers or any form of privatizing public education, while noting that some public charter schools are helpful such as Nuestro Mundo.

Though unsuccessful in his bid to make it through the Seat 5 primary earlier this month, then-Seat 5 candidate Amos Roe built a campaign almost exclusively on promoting voucher schools and charter schools.

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

Yet, Madison spends far more than most taxpayer funded K-12 schools, now atriums $20,000 per student.

A majority of the Madison school board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

Tap for a larger version.

Raw data [Excel Numbers] via Sara Hynek.

Note that taxpayer supported K-12 school districts receive funds from a variety of sources, including federal taxpayer funds along with local fees.

Madison plans to spend $518,955,288 during the 2018-2019 school year. That’s about $20,000 per student (26,917, which includes 4k), which is far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 schools, nearly 3X voucher organizations, for example. Much more on spending comparisons, here.

An “emphasis on adult employment“.

Logan Wroge:

The Democratic governor included the funding formula revision in his executive budget released Thursday. As state superintendent during four previous budgets, Evers sought to shake up the formula to deliver more funding to high poverty and rural school districts, but former Gov. Scott Walker did not advance the proposal. After narrowly beating Walker in the November election, Evers was able to ensure its inclusion.

Other major proposals in the two-year education spending package largely reflect what Evers requested last fall as head of the state Department of Public Instruction.

He is seeking to reinstate a defunct commitment for the state to fund two-thirds of public school costs, add $606 million for special education, direct $64 million more toward mental health services and programs, and create $20 million in grants for after-school programs.

Additionally, Evers is looking to suspend the expansion of independent charter schools, freeze enrollment in the Milwaukee, Racine and statewide voucher programs, and phase out the voucher program for students with disabilities.

Prior to the governor’s Thursday evening budget address, Democratic lawmakers and state education advocates lauded the proposals.

Madison spends around $20,000 per student, far more than most. This, despite long term, disastrous reading results.

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

Joanne Jacobs::

1. Which of the following is true of qualitative measures of text complexity?
A. They describe statistical measurements of a text.
B. They rely on computer algorithms to describe text.
C. They involve attributes that can be measured only by human readers.
D. They account for the different motivational levels readers bring to texts.
“The correct answer is C. The qualitative attributes are subjective and can only be evalauted by a human reader (i.e. “predictability of text”). A and B are incorrect because they refer to quantitative attributes of text complexity, while D focuses on matching the reader to text and task.”
2. The only prime factors of a certain number are 2, 3, and 7. Which of the following could be the number?
A. 18 X 28
B. 20 X 21
C. 22 X 63
D. 24 X 35
“The correct answer is A. The question requires an understanding of how to find factors and multiples of numbers. The prime factorization of 18 is 2 X 32 and the prime factorization of 28 is 22 X 7. So the prime factorization of 18 X 28 is 23 X 32 X 7.”

Related: The DPI, lead by Mr. Evers, granted thousands of elementary teacher reading content knowledge requirement exemptions.

Negassi Tesfamichael:

The nine candidates in a crowded primary for three seats on the Madison School Board made their case to an audience gathered at Christ Presbyterian Church Tuesday evening.

The forum, organized by the Grandparents United for Madison Public Schools, was the first time the candidates shared the stage during the current election cycle.

The fast-paced forum moved quickly through a number of issues, ranging from how the School Board should handle new programs and initiatives started in the district and how best to evaluate them, to how they would handle hypothetical situations that might arise if elected.

Candidates also answered several yes-or-no questions on their support of Wisconsin’s private school voucher program, emergency licenses for teachers, restoring collective bargaining rights for teachers and itemizing the amount of a local property tax bill that goes to fund private schools.

Kaleem Caire, the founder and CEO of One City Schools, is running against Cris Carusi, a University of Wisconsin-Madison employee and public education advocate, for Seat 3. Both candidates will likely advance through the primary race since a third candidate, Skylar Croy, withdrew from the race last month. Croy’s name will still be on the Feb. 19 ballot.

Will Flanders:

Perhaps the most egregious omissions are in the discussion of school funding and its effect on student outcomes. While the author cites one study – not yet peer-reviewed — the preponderance of evidence for decades has suggested little to no impact of per-student funding on educational achievement. This study, and others like it based on court-mandated increases in spending, hinge on the assumption that court-mandated increases in spending are random events when of course they are not. Courts are most likely to act to increase spending in places where there is a public push to improve educational outcomes, or where disparities are so great that legal action is required. None of these situations apply to Wisconsin.

A meta-analysis of about 400 studies by Eric Hanushek of Stanford University finds no relationship between spending and student outcomes. Our research on Wisconsin school districts has found no relationship between student outcomes and spending once important control variables are taken into account. Data points like this ought not to be ignored in the funding discussion.

On the subject of early childhood education, the author says that students enter pre-K more prepared than they otherwise would. However, there is an extremely important caveat here that is not included. While the best research suggests that students do enter kindergarten better prepared, the same research also shows that these effects dissipate rapidly, and even become negative by third grade — meaning students who didn’t have early childhood education were actually performing better by that age. The bottom line is that the preponderance of the evidence is negative on the impacts of pre-K, and to claim that the evidence shows otherwise is a disservice to readers.

When it comes to the achievement gap, the assessment that Wisconsin has some of the largest gaps in the nation is absolutely correct. But Evers’ well-documented anti-school-choice agenda is often at odds with what the evidence suggests can improve outcomes for these students. Particularly for students living in Milwaukee, research shows that private schools in the voucher program and charter schools offer students a better opportunity to succeed academically, graduate, and attend college.

Evers has suggested ending or reducing enrollment in these programs, which would eliminate access to alternatives for many low-income, minority families. Ending programs used by more than 30,000 students is likely to have a far more deleterious effect on minority students than the implementation of softer suspension policies that is suggested in the article, which our research has actually found can have a negative impact on student outcomes.

While running the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, Mr. Evers waived thousands of teachers’ required content knowledge tests (Foundations of Reading).

Ed Kilgore:

The growing militancy of teachers unions and their tendency to make uncontrolled growth of charter schools a primary issue means Booker won’t be able to dodge or finesse the issue much longer. And the way the wind is blowing in Democratic circles was amply illustrated by a recent column from former Chicago mayor — and former Clinton and Obama staffer — Rahm Emanuel, who regretted his long battles with teachers over his advocacy of “education reform,” which often came across as simply union-bashing.

Booker could choose to flatly repudiate his past positions on education policy and take this issue largely off the table for the 2020 primaries. Or he could, as other Democrats have long done, draw a bright line between private-school vouchers and public charter schools, and reject unaccountable charters that exist to make profits. He could even double down on his heresies as a token of independence from Democratic interest groups. But at some point soon he’ll have to make up his mind.

David Blaska:

The occasion was a school board candidate forum. An organization named GRUMPS sponsored it. It stands for GRandparents United for Madison Public Schools. Its major domos are former school board members Nan Brien, Anne Arnesen, Barbara Arnold, Arlene Silviera, and Carol Carstensen. We also encountered former board guys Bill Keyes, Bill Clingan, and Ed Hughes Tuesday at the venue, Christ Presbyterian Church on E. Gorham St. All are good liberals and — in today’s identity politics-riven world — white as Wonder Bread.

This is the teachers union-first cabal that voted down Kaleem Caire’s proposed Madison Prep Academy charter school eight years ago. Because, you must understand, protecting the public school monopoly takes precedence over closing the academic achievement gap. Then and now. GRumps is death on school choice, death on vouchers, death on “non-instrumentality” charter schools formed within the district. Which forced Mr. Caire to go to Governor Walker to start his One City Learning Center.

Despite their hegemony over Madison’s public schools these last 20 years, they assume no responsibility for its endemic racial achievement gap. (See my website at BlaskaForSaferSchools.)

This top-down, command-and-control philosophy — so Madison! — informed GRumps questions.

Have you stopped beating your wife?

The nine active candidates were asked if they supported informing Madison residents through their tax bill of how much state money is lost to private, usually religious, voucher schools. A clever and insidious propagandizing, that. Yes or No.

No explanation accepted at this forum. No caveat that every student in Wisconsin gets a share of state dollars and that those dollars follow the student. It’s called “choice” for a reason. No exposition on the fact that the parents of 28,000 largely minority and “economically disadvantaged” students in Milwaukee have chosen hope over the failed public schools there.

Much more on the 2019 Madison school board election, here (primary February 19, general April 2)

Negassi Tesfamichael:

MTI cited Carusi’s opposition to voucher and independent charter schools in its endorsement.

“Carusi is opposed to vouchers and independent charter schools and strongly believes that we need to continuously work to improve our public schools, rather than support alternatives,” MTI’s endorsement said.

Caire’s One City Schools, which expanded from One City Early Learning Center, is one of the state’s first 4K and kindergarten charter options authorized by the University of Wisconsin’s Office of Educational Opportunity.

Caire said in his MTI questionnaire that he supports public charter schools “but only those that have produced higher levels of student outcomes and attainment, or that (are) designed to meet a particular need that traditional public schools either struggle with or do not offer.”

Laurie Frost and Jeff Henriques on Madison’s disastrous reading results:

Children who are not proficient readers by fourth grade are four times more likely to drop out of school. Additionally, two-thirds of them will end up in prison or on welfare.

Though these dismal trajectories are well known, Madison School District’s reading scores for minority students remain unconscionably low and flat. According to the most recent data from 2017-18, fewer than 9 percent of black and fewer than 20 percent of Hispanic fourth graders were reading proficiently. Year after year, we fail these students in the most basic of our responsibilities to them: teaching them how to read.

Much is known about the process of learning to read, but a huge gap is between that knowledge and what is practiced in our schools. The Madison School District needs a science-based literacy curriculum overseen by licensed reading professionals who understand the cognitive processes that underlie learning how to read.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

Routing around Madison’s non-diverse K-12 legacy governance model:

In March 2016, Cheatham said that it was her intent to make OEO “obsolete — that our schools will be serving students so well that there isn’t a need.”

Since then, the district has tried to keep tabs on any new charter proposals for Madison, going so far as to send former School Board member Ed Hughes to a September meeting of the Goodman Community Center board of directors to express the district’s opposition to another proposed charter school, Arbor Community School, which was looking to partner with the Goodman center.

Hughes gave the board a letter from Cheatham to UW System President Ray Cross that expressed the district’s dismay at allegedly being kept out of the loop on Arbor’s plans, pointed to alleged deficiencies in Arbor’s charter proposal, and asked that Arbor either be rejected or at least kept out of Madison.

Hughes also told the board that as a Goodman donor, he did not think other donors would look kindly on a Goodman partnership with Arbor.

Becky Steinhoff, Goodman executive director, later told the Wisconsin State Journal that Goodman was “experiencing a period of enormous change,” including the recent opening of a new building, and chose not to work with Arbor.

“I understand the climate and the polarizing topic of charters” in Madison, McCabe said, but he wasn’t concerned the district would attempt to thwart Milestone and he said it would “be a dream come true” if Milestone were one day folded into the district.

He said Community—Learning—Design has an application due to the state Feb. 22 for a federal planning grant.

Much more on our 2019 school board election:

Seat 3

Kaleem Caire, 7856 Wood Reed Drive, Madison

Cristiana Carusi, 5709 Bittersweet Place

Skylar Croy, 502 N. Frances St., Madison

Seat 4

David Blaska, 5213 Loruth Terrace, Madison

Laila Borokhim, 2214 Monroe St., Madison

Albert Bryan, 4302 Hillcrest Drive, Madison

Ali Muldrow, 1966 East Main St., Madison

Seat 5

TJ Mertz, 1210 Gilson St., Madison

Ananda Mirilli, 1027 S. Sunnyvale Lane Unit A, Madison

Amos Roe, 5705 Crabapple Lane, Madison

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before:

On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

2006: “They’re all Rich White Kids, and they’ll do just fine, NOT!”

2009: An emphasis on adult employment.

2013: What will be different, this time?

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, 2015:

Shortly after the office was proposed, Cheatham said non-district-authorized charter schools have “no consistent record of improving education for children, but they do drain resources from public schools, without any control in our local community or school board.”

“Rather than invest in what we know works in education, this proposal puts resources in strategies with mixed results at the expense of our public school students,” she said in May 2015

2013: What will be different, this time?

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Compare Madison, WI high school graduation rates and academic achievement data.

The Madison School District’s “Strategic Framework”.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, lead by Governor Elect, Tony Evers, has waived Massachusetts’ style elementary teacher content knowledge requirements for thousands of teachers.

Sarah Manski and Ed Hughes “withdrew” from their respective races in recent elections. The timing, in both cases was unfortunate for voters, and other candidates.

Alan Borsuk:

To set the context briefly: Comparing three years ago to last year, the percentage of students statewide who are rated as proficient or advanced in language arts, math and science has gone down. Just above 40% of Wisconsin kids are proficient or better in each subject, which means close to 60% are not. This includes students using vouchers to attend private schools.

Statewide, less than 40% of high school students who took the ACT test scored at levels considered to show proficiency in English language arts, math and scienc

There are nine large Milwaukee high schools where more than 75% of ninth- and 10th-grade students either did not take the ACT Aspire test that is part of the state assessment system or scored in the lowest category of performance (“in need of support”). At eight of them, fewer than 5% were rated as on track for readiness for college-level work.

Much more on Scott Walker and Tony Evers.

The Wisconsin DPI, lead by Tony Evers has aborted our one attempt at teacher content knowledge requirements: Foundations of Reading.

Molly Beck and Kevin Crowe:

The state ratings are assigned by analyzing data related to academics, attendance and graduation rates from the 2017-’18 school year and reported through DPI’s state report card system, which assigns five-star ratings to public schools and private voucher schools.

Nearly 84 percent of the state’s public and private voucher schools are meeting or exceeding expectations, according to the new data, but Milwaukee and other large districts with high concentrations of students living in low-income households continue to flounder in state ratings.

“If a school or district has greater numbers of students who experience poverty it is more likely that their score is lower,” Laura Pinsonneault, director of DPI’s Office of Educational Accountability, said Monday. “That is the reality that exists.”

Matt Beienburg:

Most recently, for example, The Republic’s October 25 exposé on ESA usage cast a damning light on the program. Unfortunately, it’s The Republic’s analysis, not the ESA program, that needs to be drawn into the light.

The Republic’s story makes two key assertions: 1) that ESAs are disproportionately used by and serve the wealthy, and 2) that kids from rich areas get bigger ESA awards than more disadvantaged peers.

Both assertions are false.

In particular, the paper opened its story by claiming:

“Arizona students who use public money to go to private schools are still disproportionately leaving wealthier and higher-performing school districts….Nearly 70 percent of the money from the voucher-like Empowerment Scholarship Accounts is being used by students leaving A- or B-rated districts to attend private schools.”

This is hugely misleading on several grounds: First, about 70 percent of the state’s K-12 population attends schools in A and B-rated districts, so you’d expect that number in the ESA program. But you’d have to read 34 paragraphs down in the Republic analysis to find even a veiled reference to this slightly noteworthy bit of context.

Second, students from A and B districts actually make up less than 70 percent of the students receiving an ESA, despite being 70 percent of the overall K-12 population. This is because students who left mediocre C districts, or failing D and F districts are over-represented in the ESA program. (Now, as the Republic correctly points out, students from D & F schools or districts can qualify for an ESA without meeting additional eligibility criteria, so this is exactly what we would anticipate.)

Will Flanders:

Calls for more regulation of Wisconsin’s school choice programs have been getting louder. Making the claims that performance isn’t consistent enough, generally on standardized tests, they argue that government—or some outside entity—needs greater control of school entry and school exit in the state. However, a new study by Corey DeAngelis of the Cato Institute adds to the growing body of evidence that such arguments are wrongheaded. Rather than under-regulation, problems in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) likely result from too many regulations being forced on private schools.

By many measures, the MPCP is already one of the most regulated school choice programs in the country. MPCP schools are forced to take the voucher amount as the full cost of tuition, which eliminates the feature of a functional market whereby service quality and demand sets prices. Schools are subject to a number of accounting hoops and accreditation requirements that school leaders will often tell you are difficult to understand and keep up with. Schools are also required to hire certified teachers with certain educational requirements, which may make it difficult to fill positions, or may necessitate the hiring of someone less objectively qualified for a particular job. WILL and School Choice Wisconsin’s study of accountability in the MPCP and other state programs last year highlights even further the difficulty of the regulatory environment faced by schools that want to participate.

DeAngelis examines the impact of such regulations across two school choice programs—the MPCP in Milwaukee and Ohio’s Educational Choice Scholarship Program. In both cases, he finds that proxies for school quality (tuition and school rankings on the website Great Schools) are negatively related to the likelihood of schools to participate in the voucher program. Specifically in the MPCP, a $1,000 increase in tuition is related to a 3% decline in probability that a school participates. By the other measure, a one point increase in a school’s score on Great Schools is related to a 14.8% decline in the likelihood of participation. This is consistent with previous work that DeAngelis has coauthored, which showed that lower levels of regulation in school choice in Indiana result in higher levels of school participation than more regulated programs in Washington, DC and Louisiana.

Madison’s taxpayer funded non diverse K-12 governance model has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School (2011).

Yet, we spend far more than most taxpayer supported school districts.

John E. Coons:

The second book, “Family Choice in Education” (Institute of Government Studies, 1971), was essentially the text of a model statute for parental choice with substantial comment by Steve and myself upon each section. The model presupposed the participation of public as well as private schools in the market created by vouchers.

The question of subsidized choice was, by then, in the academic air. What remained to be written, we supposed, was a more accessible display and critique of the various arguments for and against choice, one addressed to all serious readers. The existing literature was good but remote, academic and largely unread. The possible exception was Friedman’s brief but classic portrayal of an unregulated system that would bestow vouchers of the same dollar value upon parents of every income level. The idea was simple, clear and attractive – but a bit too much so.

I had known Friedman rather well in Chicago. He had been an oft-repeated guest on my half-hour weekly radio show – later I appeared on his television show. Both of us had, in the late ‘60s, moved west to the Bay – he to San Francisco, I to Berkeley, where Steve was soon to be my colleague. About 1973, the latter and I concluded that the market of serious readers deserved a more complete and accessible argument for a form of parental choice more inviting than that of the “libertarians,” a system that would take a form more engaging for political centrists. It would describe a form of governmental engagement that would in practice empower those parents of low or modest income who had for so long suffered de facto conscription of their child by the public system – literally segregation by wealth.

So at last came EBC in 1978; and at long last I have re-read it. I feel the satisfaction typical of geezers who rediscover, then relive, something to be proud of, some deed or artifact that is still in the game. EBC now appears to me sufficient as a battle plan for beginning the rescue of the conscripted parent and child, not trying to exterminate public education but, rather, inviting it to become truly public. This just might be a time and place where interested parties can join freely in common cause – the enhancement of young lives, the professionalization of education, the strengthening of families and the good of the civil order.

The Wall Street Journal:

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christian D’Andrea:

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

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

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

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

We have long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Scoot Milfred and Phil Hands:

Usual mumbo-jumbo, we do on this podcast. Why don’t we invite in today some experts to talk about our topic which is around school. Which Madison is finally going to give a try this fall to experts. I know very well we have all hands on deck here. We have Owen hands. Oh and how old are you? Oh, nine years old.

All right and Claire. How old are you? Wow, let’s Round Up will see your six. So what if I were to tell you that instead of having school from September until June? What if we had school year round? What do you think of that idea? Yeah. Yeah, it’s exciting. Yeah, I’m Clare alway knows because um, she has school year round.
She doesn’t see only doesn’t have school on weekends and Thursdays. What if you had a long break you don’t like a long break from school you’d rather be. School, I will never break off my tablet all day. What if instead of a big summer break we had just smaller breaks throughout the year. So you’d get.

More breaks, but you wouldn’t get one Brig big long break like you might get a two-week break in the fall, and maybe I got there you have it and then you wouldn’t get bored in the summer time. You guys get bored this summer at all. No, I well today on Center Stage the Wisconsin State journals political podcast from the sensible Center of Wisconsin politics. We’re going to talk about year-round school. Madison diving into it sort of and the benefits concerns and myths surrounding this sometimes controversial idea.

I’m Scott Milford the editorial page editor for the Wisconsin State Journal and I’m Phil Hands. I’m the editorial cartoonist for the Wisconsin State Journal and we are half of the State Journal editorial board.
Well, there’s the Bell, uh, even at around school fill the kids get to go out for recess. So we’ll bring back our experts later for now. Let’s talk about Madison and it’s uh dabble into your around school. So it’s the dog days of summer right now. The kids have been out of school for almost six weeks nowadays and my kids my kids did some summer camps and now that summer camps of run their course, uh, we’re going on vacation soon.
Guess but uh, but yeah, I mean the summer vacation it’s a long slog and it’s a time when kids are not necessarily. I mean, they’re looking at their devices and I guess they’re reading some uh information on their devices but it’s there’s not a lot of learning going on. We make our kids read during the summertime, but that’s only because we make them read.

Oh and go to your room and read. Well one thing we’ve been advocating on The State Journal editorial board for a long time is year-round school because yeah kids usually, um, And they they will lose some of the knowledge they’ve gained over the previous school year during that exceptionally long summer vacation.

Yeah, and lo and behold Madison is finally moving towards trying out around school this starting this next month for Madison. Yeah, except it’s not the Madison School District that’s doing it. It’s not no they’ve uh, it’s actually the to charter schools that the state has authorized to start in Madison.

Outside the scope of the school district and it’s going to be under the control of the University of Wisconsin system. So I’m confused here Scott. So I always thought that year. I mean I’ve heard that you’re around school is good for kids. It helps them learn more. It keeps them from falling behind.

But I thought Charter Schools were always evil. Well, that’s according to the uh, Progressive talking points, but I think what they so you’re saying that charter schools are doing something that’s going to help kids learn better. I’m afraid I am. Oh my goodness. You shared my world of you this podcast tale begins, six or seven years ago.

When kaleem caire then the head of the Urban League of Greater Madison proposed a charter school that would cater to. Struggling mostly black and Latino high school students boys with a charter school that would run year round and have lots of other features like longer classes, uh longer school day required extracurricular activities report cards for parents on how well they’re doing and getting involved with their children’s education.

It was called Madison prep, right right and after a long and loud, Uh debate over that the Madison School Board voted it down, uh one important note I would make on that. Is that the only African American member of the school board James Howard did vote for it. So I will say that it’s always frustrating.

I’ll go back to Summer frustrate. That’s because Madison we have some of the worst racial disparities. Uh for for African-Americans and Latinos in our in this in the state, I mean, so if you’re a black kid in the Madison Public Schools your chances of graduating our worst and they are in Milwaukee, which is not great and here was a school that was supposed to focus on this problem specifically and the high-minded Liberals whites on the school board Madison decided that no, this school wasn’t a good idea.

That’s right. And uh what’s happened now, is that the Republicans who control the legislature have. Opened up a new valve. I guess you could call it where people who want to do Charter Schools outside of the school districts control can go to the University of Wisconsin system and they will oversee the charter rather than the local school district.
So alas that’s what column has done. I’ll be kind of upside in an upside-down way. So originally what his proposal was was to start a high school. Uh here in Madison for struggling mostly minority kids. Now what he’s doing is he’s starting a preschool and kindergarten. Yes. It’s a fork and a kindergarten charter school and he’s hoping to build from the bottom up now, which I think is awesome.

Because you know getting the kids early is the best way to achieve success later in life. I mean, sometimes people argue that you know, getting people in high school is even too late to really effect change in a kid. Uh moving forward but you know, you can um give these kids a really good start early in their lives and for preschool and kindergarten.

I think it’s awesome and just to be clear. This is a free public school. It’s not a private school and it’s not a voucher school. So let’s just talk for a minute then about what year-round school means. I mean when people hear that they immediately recoil but I but I hear when I think that is you’re gonna have kids in school.

365 days a year for 27 hours a day and kids will have no time off they will we will stifle all creativity and make them, uh study for mandatory tests on regular basis. Yeah, and you actually get pushback from both the left and the right on this on the left what you tend to get is teacher unions who think wait a minute.
I’m not going to get my. Some are break anymore, which is one of the best benefits of being a teacher and then from the right when we’ve talked to the governor Walker about this editorial board meetings. His response is always sort of a flip. Uh, he says, well, I don’t think having kids butts in the seats.

More days is the answer to our problems. Yeah with a public education and generally neither of those criticisms is accurate for most your own schools because what we’d like to see in the editorial board is we wouldn’t we don’t necessarily want more days of instruction. We would like to seek it. We just think that long break the starts three months beginning of June that goes the end of August is too long.

Let’s shorten that break and add in some other breaks throughout the course of the school year in the case of the charter schools opening. For example, I think closest to what we’re talkin about is the Isthmus Montessori Academy. This is another charter school that charter school that the Madison School Board rejected and now the the organizers of.

School went to the state via the University of Wisconsin system and got approved for the charter and their schedule is going to be they’re going to take two weeks off in the fall two weeks off in the winter. And then they’re only going to have a six-week summer break. So they’re essentially going to cut the uh summer break in half.

There’s enough time for a camp or two. There’s enough time for summer activities like swim team or something like that, but it does but the summer doesn’t go on and on and on on and actually their school year is going to start. His 15th. They’re going to start a little bit earlier now in the case of clean cares new school, which is the one city is the name of it.

He’s going to actually add a lot more days to the school schedule, which is what he was originally wanted to do with the Madison prep. So he’s going to be up over 200 days of classes. So there are going to be more days in class. Yeah for his students that just shows you that this varies to some degree and actually when you.
Cat a lot of the foreign countries who students are testing better than American students on most testing those schools do have more days of classes than we do. Yeah, and they don’t have this gigantic, uh summer break. So I’m not so sure that we want to say we don’t want more days of classes, but I think to answer the governor’s point, you don’t you don’t have to have more days of classes just don’t have the giant break and then B if you do have.

Or days and classes who says the kids have to be sitting their butts in the seats. Absolutely not no, I mean so so my daughter is in is in a preschool right now and she’s been going through school most of the summer and their school during the summer time. They do a lot of field trips to get Outdoors.

They play a lot outside, you know, they’re they’re experiencing nature. They go on nature hikes that garden and they have a community garden that they work in so there’s lots of things you can do in a school environment that aren’t that isn’t, you know, doing rote memorization and with butts.

Cher’s I was just looking at a Brookings report on the summer break and this pretty much follows a lot of the research that you see it’s very well-defined that there is a slip in we call it the summer slide or the summer slip where students test better at the. Of Summer then they do at the end of summer.

Is that surprising surprising and on average student achievement scores decline over the summer vacation by about one month’s worth of school year learning and the decline is sharper in math than it is in Reading. And the loss is larger at the higher grade levels. That’s not so surprising that you don’t forget your uh algebra more than maybe your ABCs and then finally, this is much bigger issue for lower-income kids.

Are you saying this is a social justice issue Sky. I mean it is it is because middle class upper middle class families that have lots of resources. They put their kids in Camp All Summer Long my son. Well we. Afford it all summer. I mean my son. He did a computer camp this year. He did. Yeah a couple of different, uh, you know swim team camps and stuff like that lots of different activities keep them occupied but a lot of kids don’t have those opportunities and they spend the summer watching TV or hanging around the block.

That’s right. I got a high school kid at a cross-country camp this week 500 bucks. Really? I had a I had my younger daughter went to a horse camp and that was about 400. So those things are. Can’t do that. So I mean even my kids I wish they were I wish they were busier and I wish I could put him in more camps and if there was a year-round schedule, I’ll guarantee you they uh, they would be in it the white upper-middle-class school board can say well we don’t want we don’t want we don’t want year-round school, but it’s hurting the kids that are hurting already in our achievement Gap issues.

It’s that’s who is hurting the most. Yeah, and and a lot of the pushback is okay parents like us we don’t. To give up the summer break. We don’t want to give up our vacation. I’ve been working all summer. I know I have a job. I know but I’m just saying in terms of taking a vacation. They think oh, well, I’m not gonna be able to take a vacation with my kids.

I don’t like that. Well, I’ll tell you what, so what if I had two weeks in the fall when nobody else is going on vacation to go on vacation. That sounds awesome to me. I tried to go down to Florida a couple years ago for spring break and the airfare was through the roof because everybody in America had the same week for spring break.

What if I had two other week some other time? It’d be great for us. The other thing you often hear is hey, let’s let kids be kids. Summer vacation is important. They’re not just supposed to sit in front of a book called A. They’re supposed to get out and use their imagination and play and they’re putting on too much weight.

Obesity is a problem. Why are you taking away summer vacation from Phil? Well, I mean, you know, a lot of kids just sitting there iPads the whole time or their devices or whatever. They have during the summertime, you know, you know, I think every every parent has that issue it like it’s some point in summer vacation my kids say.

I’m bored. There’s nothing to do. Yeah, usually about the second week. But the point is you’d still get even if you went to this Montessori charter school, you’re still getting six weeks in the summer still getting six weeks in place. You’re getting some additional instead of a spring break. It’s a fall break and a winter break plus the spring break.

Yeah. So you’re breaking it up a little bit what some other districts have found is that you can save money. So this is the little this is a little bright, uh, Underlying point for taxpayers out there so I don’t have kids in school and work them hard. What’s the matter with you? Well grumpy, mr. Taxpayer. Guess what? You can save some money on this deal because if you what a lot of schools do is they’ll psycho kids through so that when some some kids are on break, uh, the other kids are in the school. Okay. So what you wind up with is the schools are used throughout the year rather than just sitting vacant for three months.

Yeah. Now that might. Work in Madison because what we always hear well, we don’t have air conditioning in most of the school buildings. Well, hey, we got summer school. Yeah without air conditioning. So maybe we can do it. I actually gave I gave a talk in the summer school class. It was hot. Yeah.

It was too fun. Now now let’s give the Madison School District some credit here for the summer school program which appears to be improving. I mean Madison does offer a six-week summer school program and they’ve been trying to incorporate. It’s an effort that we’ve supported here at the newspaper is uh and is they have their morning classes and these tend to be classes that are a little more fun you do you don’t just sit in a seat all the time.

You have more activities and then in the afternoon, there’s recreational activities outside and they try to incorporate reading into the recreational like yeah, so maybe there’s a scavenger hunt where you reading and then through the read up program kids get five free books that they get to pick.

And uh take home and start their library. And so the district has shown some statistics that suggest those kids that are in that program are not sliding over the summer that doesn’t quite sound like butts and shares to me. It’s not know but the problem with summer school in Madison, isn’t that we’re not doing a great job trying to teach kids in the summer and help them catch up.

Yeah. It’s that around half of the kids. Who are. Invited to summer school because the teachers say you really need to catch up their parents don’t send it. So then how you’re going to get to them? Yeah. Now if you certainly the kids fault that their parents aren’t with it together enough to to get them into school.
No now the district says they’re making strides on that and that they are getting more. The parents to put their kids in but that’s been a major problem. Now if you had a year-round school schedule, well, you can’t opt out of six weeks of school if you don’t want to do it. Yeah. So, um that, you know, a year-round schedule would solve that problem.

They be required to go. Yeah, it’s not just whether or not I want to do. I think it sounds good. And I think it’s I think it’s a basic simple. I mean, it’s not I guess it’s not a simple thing. It would take a lot of work and a lot it’s a big lift, but it’s one of those things there’s a few things the school all the science says you should do this for kids.

Well, I don’t know that all the science says that I mean, I think there is some you know, there are some researchers who you know who go out of their way to say this is not a Panacea. Well not exactly and there are programs for example racing had a uh, Your own school for more than a decade and it just stopped doing it.
Okay, and one of the reasons, why was that according to the school board is a lot of the parents that lived around the school. They didn’t want to send their kids there. But the school board was split on that on whether they wanted to continue it or not and depending on which school board members you listen to it.
Either was working or it wasn’t. Yeah, uh and the main argument was hey, let’s we have a more streamlined streamlined District if we were all in the same schedule, however, Toma is starting uh around School lacrosse has been doing it Milwaukee has been doing it. There are lots of examples of it happening and from the research.

I’ve looked at they say those kids tend to do at least as well if not better. Then kids who have longer breaks particularly the lower-income kids, but we should talk about why we don’t have year-round school. The reason we don’t have year-round school is because and if I maybe I’m wrong about this Gap, but I’ve always heard.
The reason we have a big summer vacation is so that kids can help out on the Family Farm or in Wisconsin at the resort. Okay, because we’re a tourist state so so I don’t have a family farm Family Farm. I have a garden. I mean, I don’t help my kids don’t do anything– but you’re right. It was it started as an agrarian society thing where the kids did actually have to work out in the field picking rocks and helping with chores.
They weren’t getting done on their iPads all summer long. No. No, I don’t know that they were necessarily getting smart by feeding the pigs either. But they were working and they were working in character and that was required. Uh, but we’ve moved past that now some people say well, but what about the Wisconsin Dells we need these workers.

Well gee whiz every time I go up to the sconce endell everybody I speak to at the retail store isn’t the Resort’s has an Eastern European accent. Yeah. They’re all spies. What’s more important here of filling some seasonal jobs or educating our children? Especially the kids that are of lower income.
And by the way, they’re hiring high school kids. Yeah, they’re not hiring. Uh, third graders. Yeah. I mean kaleem’s School is gonna be the youngest kids. So I think that argument tends to find another issue. What is it low income parents post do with their kid All Summer Long. Yeah, and we have.

These programs that do pop up. I mean the why does a lot of things there? You know, they are there are places to go. Um that are probably cost less I guess than uh than a formal school education. But what you find is that when these school districts that do the year-round schedules, so you say well wait a minute if there’s going to be a two-week break and the fall what am I going to do with my kids for those two?

That’s when the summer camp pops. Yeah, those things those things pop up where there’s. Is (that) what they find? Yeah. All right. Let’s go back to the experts here, which is better being in school or being out of school. Okay, but do you learn anything complete of China have poisoned my school? You learn about toys.

I do want a lot at school. But um last year in math. I won almost nothing I’d say math is probably my favorite subject. Awesome least favorite. So your dad’s a cartoonist, but art is your least favorite. Yes. Okay. Yeah, not exactly chip off the old block not exactly chip off the old block. You can’t go look at Nasa.
They’ll be just fine.

Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Will Flanders:

The Special Needs Scholarship Program (SNSP) represents an important new option for families of students with disabilities in Wisconsin. The SNSP provides a substantially larger voucher for families of students with disabilities who do not feel their needs are being met in the traditional public school setting to attend a private school that better meets those needs.

During the previous legislative session, a number of constraints on the program were removed meaning that many more Wisconsin children will be able to participate in the future. For the 2018-19 school year, 84 schools have signed up to participate including 55 schools which will be participating in the program for the first time. With a growing program such as this, it is important to get an assessment ‘on the ground’ of how well it is meeting the needs of participating students.

Susan Dynarski:

New York City is wrestling with what to do with its exam schools. Students at Stuyvesant, Bronx Science, and Brooklyn Tech (the oldest exam schools) perform brilliantly and attend the best colleges. Their students score at the 99th percentile of the state SAT distribution (with Stuyvesant at the 99.9th percentile) and they account for the majority of New York City students attending Harvard, Princeton and Yale.1 These are by any measure elite schools and are revered as jewels of the city school system.

But of the 900 freshmen who enrolled at Stuyvesant this past fall, just 10 were black.2 By state law, admission to these schools is via a specialized, voluntary, admissions test. Mayor Bill de Blasio and others complain that this admissions system perpetuates inequality in opportunity to an excellent education.

A lot of ink has been spilled over the exam schools, in popular news outlets as well as in academic journals. In this piece, I address a narrow but relevant question: the causal impact of these schools on the students who attend them. Do the exam schools produce academically outstanding graduates, or do they simply admit stellar students and enjoy credit for their successes? I also briefly discuss alternative methods the city could use to dole out scarce seats at these over-subscribed schools.

Understanding the effectiveness of any school is a challenge because parents choose their children’s schools. In many cases, the school a child attends is tied to her address, so a parent effectively chooses a school when she picks a residence. In places like New York and Boston, which have district-wide choice, families can choose from dozens of public schools, including charters, magnets and exam schools. And there are private schools for those who can afford them or who have vouchers to subsidize the cost.

Keith Brannon:

The U.S. Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences has awarded a five-year, $10 million grant to Tulane University to study how different approaches to school choice, such as voucher programs and charter schools, can better serve disadvantaged students.

The grant will create the National Center for Research on Education Access and Choice (REACH), a first-of-its-kind center that will be housed at Tulane and led by prominent education scholars from around the country, including Douglas Harris of Tulane, Joshua Cowen and Katharine Strunk of Michigan State University, Julie Marsh of the University of Southern California and Amy Ellen Schwartz of Syracuse University.

Most states have charter school systems, and more than half have voucher or tuition tax-credit policies that allow students to use public funds to attend private schools. School choice programs have delivered some notable successesin cities like Boston, New York and New Orleans but have not succeeded everywhere.

Corey A. DeAngelis:

These positive effects are all large. For example, the most recent federal evaluation of the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program found that vouchers increased the likelihood that parents and students reported that the students were in very safe schools by more than 35 percent. Data from the state-mandated evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program showed that vouchers increased the likelihood that parents strongly agreed that their children were safe in class by 48 percent. In addition, a study found that school vouchers in D.C., New York City, and Ohio largely reduced the likelihood that parents reported school problems such as fighting, destruction of property, and racial conflict.

But this evidence shouldn’t surprise us all that much. When given the opportunity to choose schools, parents frequently put their children’s safety at the top of the list. In fact, a 2013 studyshowed that 53 percent of families listed safety as a top reason for choosing certain private schools for their kids. After all, families care about their children’s safety more than anyone else.

Will Flanders:

A message about traditional value and civic virtue worked to drive up support among Republicans. But perhaps more surprisingly, among Democrats and minorities, messages about how school choice can increase racial diversity in schools and effectively level the playing field for low-income students increased support substantially. A slim majority — 51 percent — of Democrats expressed support for vouchers when told about their implications for diversity, compared with only 29 percent in the baseline condition where they only received a simple definition. Among independents, a message that private schools can be safer than traditional public schools increased support by about 15 points. These messages moved support above the 50 percent threshold among groups for which support for private school choice is traditionally lower, suggesting that there is ample space for education reformers to convince a broader audience of the value of education reform.

Among the messages that didn’t work is one that is near and dear to the hearts of many education reformers: information about test scores. Perhaps dishearteningly to some, most people in our survey were unmoved in their support for private school choice by information that test scores tend to be higher in choice schools.

These findings make sense in light of social-psychology research showing that people from different ideological perspectives process information in different ways. Conservatives are more interested in patriotic messages, while liberals are more interested in concepts such as fairness. It is only natural that the way in which we process information changes the manner in which we speak about issues like school choice. And as conservatives have come to dominate the education-reform agenda, their language has come to dominate the public discussion.

Related: Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

WILL:

on K-12 Education Reform
In almost every context, words matter. Public opinion on particular issues can shift greatly depending on the language used, and K-12 education reform is no exception. To help further understand this, the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty commissioned Research Now Survey Sampling International to conduct a statewide survey experiment of 1,500 adults in Wisconsin. We tested a number of messages related to education reform, ranging from vouchers to Education Savings Accounts (ESA). We also surveyed public opinion on spending on K-12 schools and the impact of Act 10, the 2011 collective bargaining reform law, on teachers and students.
To conduct the school choice messaging study for vouchers, charter schools, and ESAs, respondents were randomized into one of several messaging conditions, exposing them to certain types of information. Following this randomization, respondents are asked about their level of support for school choice on a five point scale ranging from “strongly oppose” to “strongly support.” We learn which messages increase support by comparing the average responses of those in the control group to the average response of those in each treatment group.

We found that school choice is in fact popular, but the words that are used to describe it are of critical importance. For example, Republicans increase their support of vouchers when discussed in terms of civics and patriotism. Democrats and African Americans increase their support when discussed in terms of diversity. Surprisingly Education Savings Accounts have majority or plurality of support amongst all demographics, including Democrats, and suggest strong appetite for more school choice

Chester E. Finn, Jr. President, Fordham Foundation Academic Questions, Spring 1998e:

What’s going on in the college curriculum cannot be laid entirely at the doorstep of the K-12 system. Indeed, as Allan Bloom figured out a decade or more ago, it has as much to do with our educational culture, indeed with our culture per se, as with our schools. Cultural meltdown afflicts both sets of institutions. But each also inflames the other.

What is the crisis in K-12 education? There is, of course, a faction within the profession that insists there is no crisis, that the schools are getting a bum rap, that they’re doing a good enough job, or as good a job as they ever did, or as good a job as our nasty, Philistine society deserves, or as good a job as they can, given the decay of parents and families, or as good a job as the money we are giving them will buy, and so on. There is a popular book in educator-land called The Manufactured Crisis which trots out all these arguments and adds that the unwarranted criticism of U.S. schools is the result of a Machiavellian rightwing plot to discredit public education in order to replace it with vouchers, for-profit schools, home schooling, and other variations.

Most Americans, though, agree that we have a crisis in K-12 education. Employers say so. College admissions officers and professors say so. Elected officials at every level say so. A number of honest educators say so. And lots and lots of surveys make plain that most of the public believes this to be the case and, incidentally, is out there busily seeking alternatives to mediocre schools for their own kids.

People highlight various aspects of the crisis. For some, discipline, violence, and drug issues are paramount. For some, it is the collapse of big city school systems. This critique is usually brought by people who (wrongly, in my view) suppose that rural and suburban schools are doing a good enough job. For some, it is character issues like cheating. For some it is dropouts and other forms of non-completion. All of these are genuine problems and they all affect the colleges. But the core of the K-12 crisis is the weak academic skills and knowledge of a huge fraction of high school graduates, the tiny fraction who are truly well educated, and the sizable fraction who are more or less illiterate at the end of twelve or thirteen years of schooling.

That is the first of ten elements of the K-12 crisis with special salience for the college curriculum. What does it mean to enroll a freshman who does not know when or why the [U.S.] Civil War was fought, who has never written a paper longer than a couple of pages, whose math goes only to algebra, whose acquaintance with literature is more apt to involve Maya Angelou and maybe Hemingway than Dickens, Faulkner, or Milton, who cannot distinguish Dred Scott from F. Scott Fitzgerald, and who could not accurately locate more than six countries if handed a blank map of the world?

What does it mean for the college curriculum? Not to put too fine a point on it, I think it means that the college curriculum is forced—like it or not—to become more like what the high school curriculum ought to be. College becomes the place to get a secondary education just as, for many young people, high school is the place for a primary education. Is it any surprise that many employers, wanting to hire people with a bona fide tertiary education, are insisting on postgraduate degrees?

Second, young people entering our colleges are unaccustomed, by virtue of their K-12 education, to serious intellectual standards. They are well accustomed to praise, deserved or not. Middle school classrooms dripping with self-esteem, something called “emotional intelligence,” and other forms of affective learning turn into grade inflation in college. Try giving these students a C or D—or even a B—and see what reaction you get. Not only have they been allowed to get by with slovenly academic work, they have also been told they’re fantastic. Which is, of course, why, in all those international comparisons our kids do so much better on the self-regard measures than on actual performance.

Third, they are not used to working hard. They got through school without rewriting papers, without doing long division by hand (they had calculators), without wrestling with difficult texts, or without burning the midnight oil at the library. Lots of them had jobs, they had boyfriends, they were on athletic teams, they partied a lot. They may have been busy as can be, but many of them minored in academics while in high school. They are used to coasting—and getting by.

Fourth, school has not nurtured their character, their virtues, their values, or their moral fiber. Lots of schooling is still self-consciously value-neutral and lots of teachers are still self-conscious about “imposing values” on their students. The curriculum encourages relativism, too. So concepts of right and wrong, beautiful and ugly, good and bad, noble and villainous—these distinctions may be a little murky to arriving college students, unless they picked them up in church or at home.

Fifth, they do not have good study habits. They did not need them to make a go of high school. Often they could avoid homework, cram at the last minute for tests, avoid participating in class discussions, borrow term papers from the Internet, and use plot summaries and other short cuts rather than wrestling with the textbook, much less an original text. If, like many schools, theirs emphasized group work and cooperative learning, and minimized competition and individual attainment, then they are accustomed to sharing the work, not doing it themselves and being held accountable.

Sixth, they have received an ample dose, if not an overdose, of political correctness, multiculturalism, and other ideologies before they’ve even reached the ivy-covered walls. They learned to be nice, to be sensitive, to be inclusive, and not to say anything offensive or provocative. They did not learn it only from high school, of course. As Mark Edmundson of the University of Virginia made painfully clear in a brilliant Harper’s essay, much of this worldview comes from television. But today’s schooling contributes its fair share and more.

Seventh, if they went to a typical U.S. high school, they are used to a curricular smorgasbord and are probably unacquainted, or minimally acquainted, with some core subjects. They may have taken bachelor living instead of civics, consumer math instead of geometry, black history instead of ancient history, and psychology instead of physics. They very likely took some technical or vocational or “school to work” classes instead of a comprehensive program in the liberal arts. Yes, they had to satisfy certain graduation requirements, but if psychology counts as science and journalism counts as English, why take the real stuff?

Eighth, they’re accustomed to mediocre teaching. They may have had a favorite teacher, perhaps a great, inspiring, deeply knowledgeable teacher. Jaime Escalante is not the only such, after all, among 2.7 million teachers in U.S. schools. But the odds are that a number of their teachers were time-servers, not terribly sophisticated about their own fields, and perhaps more interested in whether kids are properly entertained, enjoyed the class, and were feeling good about themselves, than in how much they learned from it.

Ninth, college-bound students are not accustomed to many consequences. They are not used to feeling that it really matters in their lives whether they study hard, learn a lot, and get top marks in hard subjects, or coast along with so-so grades in fluffy courses. They know that results count in some domains—like sports—but not in class.

I have turned into something of a behaviorist. I do not believe that anything has really been taught unless it was learned, nor do I think that educational reform is real until and unless it actually boosts student achievement. And I do not expect that to happen until young people actually alter their behavior: take different courses, study harder, and rise to higher standards. But what is going to alter their behavior if their real world continues to signal that it does not make any difference, that there are few tangible rewards for learning more, and practically no unpleasant consequences for learning very little? What does that say to a sixteen-year-old faced with a choice between rewriting his lab report and studying for his history test, or going out with his friends. Sixteen-year-olds, in their own peculiar way, are rational beings. They are forever going through a crude calculus that boils down to “does it really matter?” The answer we keep giving them is no, it doesn’t, not unless they’re part of that small sub-set of the sixteen-year-old population that is gunning for admission to our handful of truly competitive colleges and universities.

This may not be well understood by intellectuals, so many of whom have kids in that little pool of aspirants to Princeton and Stanford and Amherst. For those young people, yes, it makes a difference how they spend their Tuesday evenings, and most of them know it. But what about everyone else?

Third grade teachers can fake it with eight-year-olds by handing out gold stars and threatening them with summer school. To some extent, school systems can even fake it with teenagers by telling them that they are not going to graduate unless they pass certain tests or take certain courses. More and more of that is happening around the K-12 system. But it is all a bit unreal—a bit fake—because the sprawling U.S. higher education complex keeps whispering in kids’ ears, “Never mind, we’ll be glad to have you anyway.”

Tenth, finally, our young people are thoroughly accustomed, long before they reach the university classroom, to the educational regimen that E.D. Hirsch calls romantic naturalism—a product of Rousseau and Dewey and the rest of the Teachers College faculty of eighty years ago, but still the regnant intellectual theology of the education profession. Let us abjure a long excursion into this “thoughtworld,” as Hirsch terms it, and not rehash its lack of any serious scientific moorings. Its immediate relevance is that kids are coming out of school having been told that all they need to learn is what they feel like learning, that their teachers are escorts or facilitators, not instructors, that knowledge is pretty much whatever they’d like it to be, and that their feelings and sentiments are as valid as anything that might be termed successive approximations of objective truth, if indeed there is any such thing as truth.

What are the implications of all this for the college curriculum? To reduce it to a sentence, our universities are having to build a house atop a cracked and incomplete foundation.

How much repouring of the foundation does the university undertake? At whose expense? Instead of what? Does the remedial work count for credit? If so, does it subtract from the amount of so-called college level work that is expected, or does it add to the total, thus taking more time and demanding additional resources? Or does the college give up? Or try to do something altogether different, not repairing the foundation but, let’s say, pouring a slab and proceeding to build?

I have my own view of all this, but I know it is naive, my own form of romantic utopianism. My view is that the colleges should leverage the K-12 system to make the kinds of changes that both systems (not to mention the larger society) urgently need.

Shoulder-to-shoulder the nation’s universities should stand, proclaiming as with a single voice that, starting some reasonable number of years in the future, none will admit any student (under the age of, say, thirty) who cannot demonstrate mastery of certain specified skills and knowledge. If that demand were honestly enforced, it would have a dramatic, catalytic effect on the nation’s high schools, one that would reverberate back through the elementary schools. And if major employers were to make common cause with the institutions of higher education, the effect would be more dramatic still. The second-order effects on our colleges and universities would be striking as well.

But it is not going to happen. Employers would cite legal reasons, civil rights reasons, business reasons. Interest groups and editorialists will talk about equal opportunity. As for the colleges—well, their need for students is greater than their need for standards. So the higher education system is apt instead to persist in its peculiar love-hate relationship with the K-12 system, complaining about the system’s products while contributing to and exacerbating in myriad ways the bad habits and fallacies that produced them.

The worst of higher education’s crimes against the K-12 system is the abandonment of entry standards, which of course is a corollary of the universalization of access to higher education within the United States.

Let me be clear. I am not opposed to everyone’s having a shot at a college education. I do not begrudge financial aid measures that make it possible for many people to enroll. What I oppose is the devastation that is wrought on high school standards—and thereby, on primary school standards—by the widespread understanding that all can go to college even if they do not learn a doggone thing in school. The greatest tragedy of open admissions is not what it does to the colleges but what it does to the schools and to efforts to reform them. By holding the schools harmless from their own shortcomings, and signaling that young people are welcome in our colleges—well, some colleges—regardless of what they took or how much they learned or how hard they worked in high school, the endless expansion of higher education fatally undermines the prospects of doing anything about our schools. Moreover, it contributes to what we might term the “highschoolization” of colleges themselves. (Of course, it we come to count on our colleges to provide secondary education, then it is not unreasonable to expect access to them to be universal. I think President Clinton, among others, has figured that out, though of course he never says it that way.)

Admissions standards, or their absence, have a profound effect on the schools, and are the first of five ways in which the crisis of the college curriculum adversely affects the K-12 system.

Second, the university’s intellectual and curricular fashions have a trickle down effect. Every idea that seeps down through the academic limestone eventually creates stalactites within the K-12 curriculum. The whole postmodern intellectual enterprise has infected what is taught in grade schools. Deconstructionism in the university become constructivism in fourth grade—both progeny of the same ancestors. Where do “fuzzy” math, cooperative learning, whole language reading, and “history from the victim’s standpoint” come from? Where did those wretched national history standards come from? Whence cometh the emphasis on so-called higher order thinking skills and the scorn for specific knowledge and facts? They are all gifts that higher education has bestowed on the schools.

Third, there is the disaster area of teacher training. Upwards of a hundred thousand education degrees are awarded by U.S. colleges and universities. People in the arts and sciences sometimes delude themselves into believing that the dreadful, wrong-headed content and low standards built into most of these degrees are the problem of some other wing of the university. Perhaps so. But I do not see how any serious discussion of the college curriculum can proceed to cloture without at least pondering the intellectual carnage of our education schools. Somebody in higher education has got to be responsible for that!

Consider that a new first grade teacher with twenty-five kids in her class, if she remains in the profession for thirty years, will profoundly affect the lives and educational futures of 750 youngsters. If she is a high school teacher with, say, 100 students a year, the number whose lives she will touch over the course of a classroom career rises to 3,000. Where did she get her own education? Who decided what she needs to know before being turned loose on children? Who decided when she had learned enough of it? Who trained the principals and department heads who will supervise her? Who supplies the “in service” training and “professional development” that will salt her career? Who writes the textbooks that she will use and the professional journals that she will read? These are all the responsibility of the university and its faculty. The K-12 virus that has sickened and will infect generations of future students in the university can be traced right back to the university campus itself.

Fourth, permissiveness with respect to behavior and morality also trickles down. If it is taken for granted on the college campus that it is fine for eighteen-year-olds to indulge in drugs, sex, binge drinking, class-cutting, over-sleeping, and all the rest, it is naive to think that seventeen-year-olds on the high school campus will not adopt the same practices. Which means that fifteen-year-olds, and thirteen-year-olds, and eleven-year-olds, and so on down through the grades, will do their version of the same things. If the college winks at state drinking laws, why shouldn’t the high school? If the college sophomore in the family boasts about his exploits, what do you suppose will be the effect on the high school sophomore who is his younger sister or brother? What are the effects on parents trying to bring their kids up properly?

Fifth, and finally, the university is the wellspring of such social and political values of the K-12 curriculum as multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, scorn for patriotism, affection for governmental solutions to all problems, and so forth. These creep into fourth-grade textbooks, into the videos and television programs that teachers show, into the magazines and newspapers and workbooks that they assign, and into the belief structure of the teachers themselves. Indeed, the activist groups that seek to propagate those values throughout the society are especially eager to target the young and vulnerable. Thus “peace education” has evolved into conflict-resolution courses and science and geography classes are awash in radical environmentalism. I do not say that this is entirely the fault of our colleges and universities, but if these beliefs were not firmly grounded there, their position in our schools would be a lot shakier.

Entropy describes a closed system in which everything deteriorates. Webster’s refers to “the degradation of the matter and energy in the universe to an ultimate state of inert uniformity.” That is how I have come to see the all-but-sealed world in which the schools and the colleges deteriorate together, each worsening the condition of the other.

Is anything to be done? I see small signs of hope on the K-12 front: the movement toward standards, tests, and accountability; the spread of “charter” schools and other new institutional forms; the growth of school choice and the concomitant transfer of some authority from producers to consumers. But it is a slow process and so far not one that has yielded palpable results in terms of student achievement.

One can also point to new islands of excellence in the postsecondary seas and to other modest indicators of progress.

Perhaps it will all come together. Certainly there is evidence of mounting discontent on the part of governors and legislators and of greater willingness to take such obvious policy steps as yoking college admission standards to high school exit requirements.

But what we need most is a renaissance of the will and the spirit, a rebirth of the concept of educational quality. As Roger Shattuck put it in a grand essay in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “[W]e need to reexamine our fundamental beliefs about educational excellence. If we do not confront these assumptions, we shall never be able to change the ways in which our two levels conspire to lower standards.”

Christian Schneider:

The last line of the Sentinel article added one final bullet point, almost as an afterthought. The day before, Thompson had signed a “parental choice” program which would soon allow 930 Milwaukee students to attend a private, non-sectarian school for free.

In the ensuing 28 years, Milwaukee’s school choice program has been fiercely debated both statewide and nationally. In 1995, the voucher program was extended to private, religious schools; during Gov. Scott Walker’s tenure, vouchers have been expanded statewide, drawing harsh criticism from Democrats sympathetic to teachers’ unions.

In a story by the Wisconsin State Journal’s Molly Beck on Sunday, seven of the top nine Democratic candidates said they would eliminate all four private school voucher programs in Wisconsin, with most vowing to phase the program out over a period of time.

Clearly, the days of bipartisan support for choice are a remnant of history. The program that passed in 1990 was part of a bill introduced by Democrats (choice was most notably championed by Milwaukee Assemblywoman Annette “Polly” Williams) and passed each Democrat-controlled house of the Legislature overwhelmingly (26-7 in the Senate, 86-8 in the Assembly.)

At the time, Williams thought the program would help low-income blacks break free from the paternalistic liberals who wanted to run their lives. “At some point, we want to make our own decisions, whether our friends like it or not,” said Williams, who the Wisconsin chair for Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns in 1984 and 1988.

But now, promising to end school choice in Wisconsin has become to state Democrats what Donald’s Trump’s Mexican border wall became to Republicans — an impossible task that nonetheless allows a candidate to signal false bravado in order to pacify the party’s base.

Neal McCluskey:

Polling reveals that parents, especially African Americans, want school choice. Studies show choice students pulling even with public school kids even in laggard programs, and often surpassing them. And states keep expanding choice initiatives as families flock to them.

Perhaps because of all this good news, opponents of expanding the options available to parents and their children have launched a new strategy, one employing grossly cherry-picked history to imply that school choice is fueled by bigotry. It is both hugely inaccurate history, and hugely ironic, because if any education system has been shot-through with bigotry, it is public schooling.

The new assault started with “The Racist Origins of Private School Vouchers,” a report from the leftist Center for American Progress, focused on southern districts that, after Brown v. Board of Education,implemented school choice plans to dodge integration. Soon after the report’s release, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten declared in a speech to her union’s annual convention that choice and proposed federal education budget cuts were the “only slightly more polite cousins of segregation.” And just this week, TheNew York Times ran a piece by journalist Katherine Stewart stating that choice supporters’ objections to “government schools” have their lineage in racism and anti-Catholicism.

The most glaring omission in these choice-smearing histories is that Jim Crow laws segregated African Americans in public schools for decades
These are not totally without historical bases. Some segregationists, for instance, did try to employ choice to escape integration. But just because some people had ugly motives does not mean most supporters of school choice do. And these hyper-politicized versions of history have ignored that the far bigger, much more devastating story of bigotry has been in the public schools that were supposed to serve everyone.

The most glaring omission in these choice-smearing histories is that Jim Crow laws segregated African Americans in public schools for decades. Meanwhile, private schools sometimes integrated in open defiance of the law. And segregation did not occur only with African Americans or in the South. It was practiced in Boston through the mid-1850s, and Asians and Mexican Americans were segregated in other parts of the country.

Elizabeth Harrington:

Teachers’ union president Randi Weingarten is plotting a teachers’ strike to shut down schools in Puerto Rico, according to a conversation overheard Friday in the first-class car of an Acela train heading to New York.

Puerto Rico is in the midst of implementing school-choice reforms, opposed by Weingarten’s American Federation of Teachers. Last month Gov. Ricardo Rosselló signed legislation to increase the number of charter schools and voucher programs.

Weingarten said she does not want to use the word “strike,” but wants to use the strategy of recent teacher walkouts in Oklahoma and West Virginia as a model to fight against school-choice reforms.

“We never use the word strike,” Weingarten was overheard saying on the phone in a first-class car. “We are a human shield for the kids … teachers are doing this in the stead of parents and kids.”

Weingarten said the union’s goal should be “cloaking this in Oklahoma and West Virginia” and asked the unknown person on the other end of the line, “Does that concept work?” Weingarten also mentioned working with the “lobbyists we have” on the plan.

Alan Borsuk:

Teachers and the teachers’ union. Don’t expect a happy workforce. The union has turned up the volume on its unhappiness and it remains a powerful force, even without the bargaining powers it had before Act 10, which dramatically curtailed collective bargaining for most public employees, including teachers. Beyond the union itself, it won’t be easy for MPS to attract and retain top teachers, given the renewed money crunch.

Principals. You can advocate all sorts of things as superintendent, but carrying them out depends a lot on the 150 or so principals running schools. I suspect if Driver were candid, she’d say that she worries about the quality of principals overall. And there is concern that a wave of retirements is coming. Good luck finding great principals.

Student achievement. Driver accomplished some things as superintendent, but the most important big picture point to me is that student achievement didn’t change much. A few indicators improved a bit. Overall, the situation continues to be deeply alarming. Year after year, one in five students in MPS (and in the private school voucher program) rates as proficient in reading. Fewer than that are proficient in math. Is it Driver’s fault that things haven’t improved much? Obviously, there’s lots of blame to share. But, ultimately the coach is judged by how the team does on the field. The team is chronically beleaguered.

Relationships. This was Driver’s biggest strength. She connected with all sorts of people — community leaders, philanthropists, business leaders, elected officials, leaders from elsewhere in Wisconsin. This translated into both tangible and intangible support for MPS. But relationships require a lot of tending, especially with so many competing interests. Driver will be a tough act to follow on this front.

Alan Borsuk:

Private schools and charter schools that educate more than a third of the city’s children are showing general stability and, in notable cases, growth, even as they are having increased problems dealing positively with MPS.

Both the charter schools (publicly funded but operating outside of the conventional MPS system) and the private schools that participate in the publicly-funded voucher program have issues to deal with. But their ships are sailing forward.

The Takeaway:

Betsy DeVos was thrust into the spotlight this weekend on an episode 60 Minutes, as she struggled to give satisfying answers to interviewer Lesley Stahl. DeVos has been appearing on several news programs recently, as the federal government assigned the secretary of education to head up a federal commission on school safety.

Long a champion of private education, DeVos has been vocal in her desire to see taxpayer funds spent at religious and charter schools through a system of school vouchers. In fact, DeVos claimed America’s public school system was a “dead end” at a speech in 2015.

Travis Pillow:

Florida’s newest private school choice program is no ordinary voucher, a new report finds.

The analysis, released this week by EdChoice, found that in the first two years of the Gardiner Scholarship program, roughly four out of ten parents used the scholarships to pay for multiple educational services — not just private school tuition.

The scholarship program is available to children with specific special needs. It has grown to become the nation’s largest education savings account. The accounts allow parents to control the funding the state would spend to educate their child. They can spend the money on a range of education-related expenses, from textbooks and school tuition to tutoring and therapy.

Tawnell Hobbs:

Private schools are lowering tuition, ramping up marketing and targeting traditionally underrepresented communities to reverse a national enrollment decline.

Enrollment in private schools for grades pre-K to 12, including parochial schools, dropped by 14%—to 6.3 million in 2016 from 7.3 million in 2006, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Overall school enrollment was nearly flat during that time, with public schools educating 2% more students to reach almost 52 million in 2016, the data shows.

Researchers and private-school associations attribute the decline to a host of factors: more affordable Catholic schools have closed; traditional public schools provide better options; families cut their budgets after the 2007 recession; and charter schools and other alternatives have expanded. School voucher programs and tax-credit scholarship programs have spread to just over a dozen states and are believed to have helped private-school enrollment some, but not enough to make up losses dating back years.

Molly Beck:

Children living in low-income households who are considered to be advanced learners will be eligible to receive a taxpayer-funded scholarship to use to pay for education expenses under a new program proposed by three lawmakers this week.

The scholarship program would provide $1,000 to families with “gifted and talented” students who are already eligible to receive free or reduced-price school lunches, which means the household’s annual income is at or below $45,510 annually for a family of four.

The program is proposed by Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, Rep. Mary Felzkowski, R-Irma, and Rep. Jason Fields, D-Milwaukee — lawmakers who have historically been strong supporters of private school voucher and charter schools — and will be open to 2,000 families beginning in the 2018-19 school year, if the bill passes and is signed by Gov. Scott Walker.

“These scholarships will provide students in families with low incomes the ability to access a wide range of educational opportunities that they may currently not have the resources to participate in,” the lawmakers wrote in a memo seeking support from other lawmakers.

“Who knows how many scientists, engineers, musicians, artists, and community leaders we are missing out on because their family can’t afford additional educational opportunities,” Darling said in a statement.

Molly Beck:

Kitchens said the formula could be improved for school districts with declining enrollment, increasing enrollment and small, rural school districts with spending levels capped at below $10,000 per student. Olsen also funding for open enrollment and charter and private voucher schools also could be examined.

“Over the years we’ve continually changed little pieces of the formula and often times it’s just to affect a problem in one or two school districts, but too many times when you fix one problem in one place it causes a problem somewhere else,” he said, adding he wants to start with a blank slate and go “in any direction that the evidence leads us.”

But he also noted Wisconsin’s school funding formula is well-regarded “so it may well be in the end we decide to stick with the basic framework and build around that.”

In Wisconsin, school districts are funded through local property taxes, state aid and federal funding. Schools receive the largest amount of their state funding through a general fund that distributes money through a formula that gives more to districts with more students with challenges, including those who live in poverty. Districts also receive money from several funding streams including through a certain amount per pupil, currently set at $450 per student.

Rather interesting to see the $10,000 per student mentioned in the article.

Madison spends far more, now nearly $20,000 per student.

Alan Borsuk:

Private schools, most of them religious, using vouchers. The total for voucher students this year (28,702) is up a few hundred from a year ago and is edging toward a quarter of all the Milwaukee kids who receive a publicly-funded education. What a huge change from a generation ago, when the number was zero.

Charter schools. In total, just over 15,000 students are in charters not run as part of conventional school systems. That’s 13% of all the publicly-funded kids. That percentage has stayed about the same in recent years and charter growth has slowed.

Open enrollment into suburban public schools. Wisconsin allows parents to enroll their children in schools in districts other than the one they live in. This year, about 5,600 Milwaukee kids (a bit under 5% of the city’s school kids) are going to public schools in other districts. But open enrollment has fallen since it hit 6,900 four years ago, in large part because suburban districts have made fewer seats available. Probably another reason MPS enrollment has stabilized.

Krista Holtzmann:

Considering the consequential nature of the upcoming Douglas County school board election to our students, it is imperative that the public receives all the facts. As a member of the commUNITY candidate team, which includes Anthony Graziano, Kevin Leung, Chris Schor and myself, I can attest to our positions on several issues:
We fully support quality public school choice for all students, including charter, magnet, neighborhood, online and home schools.
We do not support vouchers. Using taxpayer dollars to pay private schools is irresponsible. The community loses oversight and accountability, and these schools can legally discriminate.
We support and value all Douglas County schools, including charter schools. It is time we stop pitting our schools against each other and operate as a healthy and strong community committed to serving all our students.
Voters have two clear choices this election — candidates who support public schools and those who want to continue the failed reforms. Students have been harmed by the drop in academic achievement, skyrocketing teacher turnover and infighting. We want to build back our district, while our opponents want to continue on its current destructive path.
Our opponents are supported by special interest groups and hidden outside money in excess of half a million dollars. Americans for Prosperity has admitted to spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to advance their national pro-voucher agenda in Douglas County.

Alan Borsuk:

What if we’ve created an education landscape in Milwaukee where it is impossible to bring serious improvement?

There are many powerful and painful reasons why so many kids in the city aren’t doing well in school and aren’t on track for good futures. Start with the daily circumstances of their lives.

But with another school year underway with no big sign of improvement, and with a fresh round of test results from last spring that show the needle has (once again!) not really moved, I find myself looking at the bizarrely complex structure of Milwaukee schooling and wondering what it would take to change things.

I have company. Michael R. Ford, an assistant professor of public administration at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, worked previously for organizations that support the Milwaukee private school voucher program, School Choice Wisconsin and the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (which changed its name recently to the Badger Institute). Ford got a Ph.D from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee along the way.

He’s not an ideologue and he’s interested in the realities of how students, in all streams of schools in Milwaukee, are doing.

Annysa Johnson:

On the ACT exam, for example, he noted that students on vouchers scored an average 17.2 compared with 16.3 by MPS students overall and 15.6 for MPS students considered economically disadvantaged. Similarly, he said, students in the statewide voucher program, which accepts students from outside of Milwaukee and Racine, scored an average 21.3 on the ACT, compared with a 20 for all statewide students and 17.1 for those considered economically disadvantaged.

In all, more than 453,000 students took the exams in the spring. The Forward and DLM are given to students in grades three through eight; the ACT to high school juniors. The Forward tests English language arts, math and science.

According to DPI:

40.5% of students overall were proficient or above in math, 42.7% in English and 42.3% in science.
Scores for public school students were comparable: 41.4% were proficient or above in math, 43.5% in English and 43.1% in science.

Voucher students scored far below those, with 15.2% proficient or above in math, 20.1% in English and 19.2% in science. Bender said those numbers are skewed by the large numbers of students in the Milwaukee and Racine voucher programs.

There were wide gaps in achievement for several student subgroups. For example, black, Hispanic and poor students scored well-below their peers on the overall ACT composite and across the board in math, English and science.

Karen Rivedal:

Related: Linking the Wisconsin Forward Assessments to NWEA MAP Growth Tests (PDF), via a kind reader:

The results in Table 5 demonstrate that MAP reading scores can consistently classify students’ proficiency (Level 3 or higher) status on Forward ELA test 81-83% of the time and MAP math scores can consistently classify students on Forward math test 86-88% of the time. Those numbers are high suggesting that both MAP reading and math tests are great predictors of students’ proficiency status on the Forward tests.”

Alan Borsuk:

A setting for greatness: I was part of a program a few days ago with 40 or so leaders of Milwaukee-area public school districts. One thing I said was that I didn’t see much bold action or big orders coming their way from Washington. And there wasn’t much big news in the state ESSA plan or the new state budget (special-education vouchers being one exception). I said if there’s going to be a rising tide of quality, it’s going to come from people such as them — from the local level.

And in some places, that is happening. Some particularly innovative and nationally recognized school leaders were in the room. You want names? This is not a full list, but I’d mention Menomonee Falls Superintendent Patricia Greco, Kettle Moraine Superintendent Patricia Deklotz and Brown Deer Superintendent Deb Kerr.

Alan Borsuk:

Molly Beck:

Overall, Walker proposed $11.5 billion for schools, including the $649 million increase.

A spokesman for budget committee co-chairwoman Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, said the Joint Finance Committee reduced the increase to $639 million because of reductions to funding proposed by Walker for rural school districts and for schools in the Milwaukee School District that meet academic achievement goals.

Walker in a statement thanked the committee for its actions after the package was approved 12-4, with all Republicans voting for and all Democrats voting against.

Jesse Opoien:

Darling raised her voice at one point, arguing that Democratic policies before Act 10 had “put the teachers in the back room and put the unions at the table.”

“Come on,” Darling said. “We value teachers. I’m sick of this victimizing teachers. Let’s agree that education is all of our priority.”

One measure would allow people to take online classes to earn teacher certification in high-need subjects like technology, math, engineering and science. Another would offer loans for people seeking additional education and training to become principals or other education administrators.

Lawmakers also approved a measure proposed in Walker’s budget to eliminate expiration dates for teachers’ licenses following a three-year provisional period.

It also offers resources for school districts that elect to consolidate or share some services. Districts that completely consolidate would be eligible for aid equal to $150 per student for five years after the consolidation, gradually tapering off in the following years. Districts that choose to share a grade could receive $150 per student enrolled in that grade for four years, which would taper off in the fifth year. The package also sets aside $2 million for a pilot program to provide aid to districts that share some administrative services.

Also under the plan, districts could only hold referendums during already-scheduled election days or on the second Tuesday of November in odd-numbered years, with allowances made for special circumstances, such as increased costs resulting from a natural disaster.

“Thanks to the members of the Joint Finance Committee for supporting the education portion of my budget,” Walker said in a statement. “Once signed, this budget will include more actual dollars for K-12 education than ever before in our history.”

Locally, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending nearly $20,000 per student.

Additional links:

WisPolitics

AB64

SB30

C.J. Szafir and Libby Sobic , via a kind email:

Today state legislators all over the country are deciding how to comply with ESSA. When the last deadline for submitting proposals arrives this September, we may see a crop of promising plans for the future of K-12 education. Yet in Wisconsin, the planning process has been so flawed that Sen. Alexander’s vision of “innovation” and “ingenuity” seems like a pipe dream.

Wisconsin’s woes have little to do with ESSA itself, which largely delivers on the promise of greater flexibility. To receive funding from Washington, states must submit plans that comply with Titles I through IX of the federal education code. The requirements for these plans are basic: States must maintain a statewide report-card system for public schools, establish methods to measure teacher effectiveness, set policies to reform low-performing schools, and so forth. Each plan must be granted final approval by the Education Department.

The Badger State ought to be taking full advantage of the freedom ESSA provides to enact bold education reform. After all, Wisconsin already has a broad range of educational options, including successful voucher programs and charter schools. Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP-controlled Legislature have established a strong record on education.

The problem is that Wisconsin’s plan for complying with ESSA has fallen to the state’s education agency, the Department of Public Instruction. Its leader, Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers, is a notorious opponent of education reform. Mr. Evers’s greatest hits include calling the expansion of school vouchers “morally wrong” and routinely criticizing Gov. Walker’s Act 10 reforms of public-employee unions. It’s worth noting that in opposing the governor, Mr. Evers may have more than the students’ interest in mind. He recently filed paperwork to enter Wisconsin’s 2018 gubernatorial race, hoping to upset Mr. Walker’s shot at a third term.

So far, the department has cleverly worked to avoid any oversight of its ESSA plan by the legislature. To create the illusion of accountability, Mr. Evers formed the Equity in ESSA Council, an advisory board made up of legislators, school administrators, union leaders and education reformers. In truth, however, the council has no power to set the agenda or control the provisions of the state’s ESSA proposal.

Related:

Tony Evers

Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Madison spends far more than most, now nearly $20,000 per student.

Will Flanders:

Unfortunately, the public schools have not responded as well to increased competition. Aided by politicians like Representative Taylor, public schools leaders have chosen to not to embrace competition but to seek protection from it, fighting the growth of better educational alternatives at every turn.

While creating an incentive to improve, school choice has not come at a cost to the public schools. If, as Representative Taylor claims, school choice is designed to “siphon” money from public schools, it’s making a mess of the job. Per pupil spending is higher today than it was before the start of the voucher program. And because the voucher amount is substantially less than the amount spend on children attending public schools, the program actually saves money which could, if the legislature desired, be further redirected to public schools. Under current law, school districts can continue to receive funding for students they no longer educate if they choose to go to a private school with a voucher, meaning that a student leaving actually increases the districts per student revenue in the short term. Representative Taylor conveniently ignores these facts.

Mikel Holt & Collin Roth::

National teachers’ union president Randi Weingarten has a message for the thousands of students, parents, and teachers enrolled or teaching at private voucher schools: You are the pawns of bigots.

In a recent speech to the American Federation of Teachers annual convention, Weingarten said, “Make no mistake: This use of privatization, coupled with disinvestment are only slightly more polite cousins of segregation.” Weingarten went on to say, “The real pioneers of private school choice were the white politicians who resisted school integration.”

For Milwaukee residents, home to the country’s oldest private voucher program, Weingarten’s comments ought to raise a few eyebrows. Indeed, for those with any real memory of the voucher program’s origins, particularly the black and Hispanic citizens who lobbied for it, the feelings range from indignation to insult.

Weingarten’s attack centers on the rare, but shameful, experience of some counties in the South where vouchers were sometimes used to allow whites to flee desegregated public schools. But that’s not what happened here. Milwaukee’s voucher program may have its roots in segregation, but not in the way Weingarten suggests.

In the late 1960s, before the federal courts “forced” the Milwaukee Public Schools District to end “separate and unequal” public education, it was black community leaders who petitioned the School Board to apply for a federal voucher grant that would have helped them escape a segregated and failing system. Two decades later — amid a desegregated but still unequal district, MPS Superintendent Robert Peterkin proposed the idea of a “school choice” program. While Peterkin’s attempt failed, success came in Madison. State Rep. Annette Polly Williams — an African-American liberal Democrat — helped shepherd a pilot voucher program to the desk of a supportive Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson.

Weingarten would have a hard time accusing the pioneers of Milwaukee’s voucher program of being the tools of racists. Peterkin, his successor Howard Fuller, the late Virginia Stamper, Zikiya Courtney and state Sen. Gary George, are all African-Americans who played critical roles in advancing choice legislation. What is more, thousands of African-American school leaders, teachers, volunteers and parents commit their lives daily to improving education outcomes through Milwaukee’s voucher program.

Mike Antunucci:

Rachel M. Cohen has written a piece in The American Prospect titled “Under Trump, Liberals Rediscover School Segregation” that almost seems designed to rile both sides of the education policy debate.

These kinds of articles always get my attention, because it’s the easiest thing in the world to tell people exactly what they want to hear. The next easiest thing is to tell your opponents what they don’t want to hear.

Telling your allies what they don’t want to hear gets really awkward, at best.

Cohen applauds the newfound focus on school segregation, but thinks “the timing sometimes seems politically convenient.” She notes a previous lack of liberal interest in the segregation found not only in traditional schools, but in charters when supported by a charter-friendly Obama Administration.

Charter advocates aren’t going to love the notion that they, as well as voucher advocates, are contributing to segregation. But unions aren’t going to love Cohen’s implication that they tend to fight segregation only when they don’t have to sacrifice anything:

Robin Lake & Sivan Tuchman:

Many respected national groups have recently set their sights on school choice as the new battlefront for disability rights. They are anywhere from open to highly skeptical to adamantly opposed to charter schools and private school choice, often aligning with teachers unions to try to block new proposals or to re-regulate existing policies.

This opposition makes sense in many ways. Schools of choice, to varying degrees, are free of the hard-won regulations that these groups fought for over the last two decades: the right for access to, and inclusion in, general education classrooms, rather than isolated institutional settings; and the right to a defined set of supports and services to help students with special needs succeed in school.

Indeed, there are good reasons to be alert to issues like counseling out, disproportionate or inappropriate school discipline, and denial of services in public charter schools, which are required to comply with the same federal and state protections as district-run public schools. And when it comes to vouchers, education savings accounts (ESAs), and other forms of private school choice, the issues get more complex around student rights and school responsibilities.

Mike Antonucci:

In the past two weeks, both support and criticism of Weingarten have centered on whether or not school vouchers actually increase segregation. A different question is whether or not Weingarten’s broadsides against vouchers, privatization, and disinvestment have anything to do with fighting segregation.

Elsewhere in the speech Weingarten recounted her joint visit to the public schools in Van Wert, Ohio, with U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos. Weingarten chose that particular district because “these are the schools I wanted Betsy DeVos to see — public schools in the heart of the heart of America.”

“The people of Van Wert are proud of their public schools,” she said. “They’ve invested in pre-K and project-based learning. They have a nationally recognized robotics team and a community school program that helps at-risk kids graduate. Ninety-six percent of students in the district graduate from high school.”

Those are things to be proud of. But in a speech condemning segregation, Weingarten failed to mention another facet of Van Wert public schools: Out of 1,991 students, just 18 are African Americans. Not 18 percent — 18 students.

Madison recently expanded its Least diverse school.

School Choice Wisconsin and Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty:

After 27 years of school choice in Milwaukee, the debate over private school vouchers has shifted away from their mere existence towards whether – and how – accountability provisions should impact the ability of private schools to participate in the program. The education community is divided over this question. Some argue that test-based accountability should sanction poor-performing schools of all types, others argue that parental school choice, fiscal, and market forces are the strongest forms of accountability and are the measures that should be utilized.
Yet despite the amount of ink spilled on the topic, there has been little quantifiable research conducted. This study addresses that research gap. It comprehensively reviews the extent and impact of accountability regulations affecting the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) and also analyzes the role of parental accountability. This pioneering report describes the scope of the accountability regime and presents a statistical analysis that estimates its impact. We find, through the use of a rigorous econometric model, that the accountability system culls poor- performing and unsafe schools from the program and allows high quality schools to grow. The system anticipates factors associated with poor-performing schools and their eventual failure. Specifically, we find:

Larry Sand:

It’s hardly news that teachers’ union honchos oppose any type of school choice, especially the kind that lets public money follow a child to a public school. But while making her case recently, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten descended down a rabbit hole.

It started with an event on “school vouchers and racism” hosted by the AFT and the Center for American Progress, a leftist research and advocacy organization financially supported by both the AFT and the National Education Association. CAP had just released a report claiming that educational vouchers were born in the effort by Southern states to resist racial integration after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Topeka Board of Education ruling. In what segregationists termed “massive resistance,” Virginia’s Prince Edward County closed its public schools in 1959, and then gave vouchers to white families, which were used to pay tuition at segregated private schools. This ugly case represents the “sordid history of school vouchers,” as CAP sees it—conveniently overlooking the G.I. Bill, the country’s first significant voucher program, which was signed into law in 1944, 15 years before Prince Edward County’s gambit.

Joe Kent:

But Jobs blamed teachers unions for getting in the way of good teachers getting better pay. “It’s not a meritocracy,” said Jobs. “It turns into a bureaucracy, which is exactly what’s happened. And teachers can’t teach, and administrators run the place, and nobody can be fired. It’s terrible.”

He noted that one solution is school choice: “I’ve been a very strong believer that what we need to do in education is go to the full voucher system.” Jobs explained that education in America had been taken over by a government monopoly, which was providing a poor quality education for children.

He referenced the government-created phone monopoly, broken up in 1982: “I remember seeing a bumper sticker with the Bell logo on it and it said, ‘We don’t care, we don’t have to.’ That’s certainly what the public school system is. They don’t have to care.”

Alan Borsuk::

It’s a good thing we don’t need to change much about the overall success of students in Milwaukee because there really isn’t much change coming these days.

Fewer than 20% of students in both Milwaukee Public Schools and the 100-plus private schools in the publicly funded voucher program were rated as proficient in reading in the most recently released results.

Fewer than 15% of students in both MPS and the voucher schools were rated as proficient in math.

Fewer than 60% of MPS kids graduated high school in four years in the most recent data (Class of 2015) and the percentage has declined a notch each year, starting with the Class of 2011.

Oh, well. What can you do?

Not too much different. At least that seems like a reasonable summary of the answers emerging as a new school year comes close.

Office of Educational Opportunity (PDF):

Identifying Information

Name of Organization:

Year Founded:

Revised 5/31/2017, 11:30 a.m.

Recovery School Request for Proposal

First and Last Name of Primary Applicant:

Mailing Address:
Preferred E-Mail Address
Preferred Phone Number:

Attach the names, professional affiliation, and role in the proposed school for all school leaders and board members.

Summarize the purpose and brief history of the organization. (For instance, is this a new non profit created for this proposed school, or is it an existing nonprofit seeking to expand or replicate its portfolio?)

Evidence of Incorporation in Wisconsin and IRS status

Organizational Background

Do you currently operate a school, if yes where for how long and how is it operated (public district, private, other)?

Is your proposal a fresh start campus, replication campus, or a conversion campus?

If it is a conversion campus, why are you seeking to reorganize your operations into a public charter school?

Have you applied for charter status before? If yes with what authorizer, what was the outcome, and what reasons were given for the outcome?
May we contact the authorizer to discuss your prior application?

Much more on Gary Bennett’s Wisconsin – non traditional government school district – charter school authorizing body.

Related: A majority of the Madison School rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School. Also rejected: the Studio School.

This University of Wisconsin system office has the authority to authorize Charter schools in Madison and Milwaukee.

Despite spending more than most, now nearly $20,000 per student, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Note that charter and voucher schools must operate on less than half of Madison’s per student spending. They receive only redistributed state tax dollars, nothing from local property taxes or other typical government sources.

Michael Falk::

F COLLEGES PROVIDE VALUE, then let’s make them warranty their offerings. Make the colleges be the lenders—responsible for the loans they approve. Goodbye to Uncle Sam, his tuition-inflation program, and his support for colleges that don’t offer value.

In order to be able to lend, colleges would need to capitalize their assets, such as their endowments and all of the human capital represented by their graduates’ future earning power. This would be a useful exercise for those institutions that haven’t been paying attention to the value of their products. The quality of classes they offer could improve and become more relevant as a result.

Some colleges might reduce the variety of degrees they offer, while other colleges might specialize in fields of study that attract cash-based or independently financed students.

Lending colleges ought to improve their career counseling to manage their new risky assets—the students. Students might also receive other benefits, such as more and better placement services through alumni or local businesses, since the colleges would have vested interests in their success.

An additional feature on the proposition for colleges as lenders could be to offer adjustable-rate debt agreements based on students’ final grade-point averages. Rates could be discounted for grades at or above B average and raised for lower grade averages. Students should find a direct incentive to invest in academic success.

An equity-conversion option could also offer students protection for times when quality employment opportunities aren’t plentiful for their degrees. College lenders could grant an option to graduates for an equity conversion within the first three years after graduation.

Exercising the option would convert a student’s fixed debt payment into a fixed equity interest for a lender, such as a claim on 10% of the student’s income for the next 20 years. Over a couple of decades, payments from highly successful students who converted should offset low payments from those less successful. These equity conversions could provide colleges with a form of automated endowment growth.