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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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Alan Borsuk: Statewide vouchers: A big reason the voucher scene in Wisconsin is so complicated is that there are separate programs for Milwaukee, Racine and the rest of Wisconsin, each with its own rules. In this round of state budgeting, it was decided to make more people eligible for vouchers statewide by raising the maximum […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
: Congressman Mark Pocan (D-Wis.) tried to grill Education Secretary Betsy DeVos Wednesday about the performance of the Milwaukee voucher program, at one point asking her if she’d send her own children to one of the city’s lowest-performing voucher schools. DeVos demurred on that question during a House subcommittee hearing. Later, she suggested that it […]
Alan Borsuk: News of the future! Well, wait, we’ll get to that in a few moments. First, news of the past. Every two years, the governor and Legislature labor mightily to come up with a new budget for Wisconsin. It’s a great and curious tradition that in the process of doing this, they add in […]
Alan Borsuk: “Never, never give up on students.” Two weeks ago in this column, I quoted Marc Tucker, who leads the National Center on Education and the Economy, a Washington-based nonprofit, saying that in a talk in Madison. On its face, it’s not controversial. Who’s in favor of giving up on kids? But what does […]
ed.gov The DC Opportunity Scholarship Program (OSP), established in 2004, is the only federally-funded private school voucher program for low-income parents in the United States. This report examines impacts on achievement and other outcomes one year after eligible children were selected or not selected to receive scholarships using a lottery process in 2012, 2013, and […]
Alan Borsuk: he best high school in Wisconsin? According to the U.S. News and World Report rankings, released several days ago, it is the Carmen High School of Science and Technology campus on Milwaukee’s south side. Which is a charter school. One of the most disheartening and alarming developments on Milwaukee’s school scene this academic […]
Jason Blakely: Buoyed by Donald Trump’s championing of a voucher system—and cheered on by his education secretary Betsy DeVos—Arizona just passed one of the country’s most thoroughgoing policies in favor of so-called “school of choice.” The legislation signed by Governor Doug Ducey allows students who withdraw from the public system to use their share of […]
Marilyn Anderson Rhames: A few weeks ago I wrote a blog expressing my exasperation with my children’s public school education and my attraction to school vouchers. To my surprise, United States Education Secretary Betsy DeVos spoke about that blog in a speech, and her staff later invited me to the Department of Education (DOE) to […]
Wall Street Journal: President Trump has made a cause of public and private school choice, and liberals who oppose evaluating teachers based on student achievement are now hyping a few studies that have found vouchers hurt student performance. A closer look still supports the case for giving parents choice. More than 400,000 students in 30 […]
WILL: “Our study compared outcomes between all K-12 schools in Wisconsin – traditional public, public charter, and private schools in the choice programs. In doing so, it controlled for a variety of socioeconomic factors such as race, poverty, etc. As we acknowledged, we did not control for special needs or learning disabilities because the data […]
Jim Bender: There have been a number of conflict-based education stories on the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP) recently. In that mold, a story in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel looked at expansion of the WPCP in a piece titled “Tensions rise as vouchers pick up traction across Wisconsin.” Pitting one school type against another creates […]
Annysa Johnson: “Wisconsin is the worst in the nation for achievement gaps and graduation gaps,” said Holtz, who believes public charter and private voucher schools could do a better job than some public schools. “We’re leaving a generation of students behind.” Evers says Wisconsin schools have raised standards, increased graduation rates and expanded career and […]
Paul E. Peterson and Samuel Barrows: The Supreme Court, in Friedrichs v. California Teachers Association (CTA), is now considering whether all teachers should be required to pay union-determined “agency fees” for collective bargaining services, whether or not the teacher wants them. When making their case, unions would have the public believe that school teachers stand […]
Erin Richards: To qualify for a voucher in the statewide program, students have to come from families earning no more than 185% of the federal poverty level, or about $45,000 for a family of four or about $52,000 if the parents are married. The income limit for the Racine and Milwaukee programs is 300% of […]
Annysa Johnson, and Brittany Carloni Four of the nine seats on the Milwaukee Public Schools board of directors are up for grabs in the April 4 election, with two incumbents facing challengers and two others making way for newcomers to join the board. The election comes at a critical time for MPS, the largest and […]
Lisa Speckhard: We can’t change too much too fast when we have one of the largest achievement gaps in the country,” said candidate Ali Muldrow, who faces Kate Toews in the race for Seat 6 on the board. “My children don’t have 10 years for us to improve … Notes and links on seat 6 […]
Molly Beck: “The ability for school boards to use charters as kind of an incubator — I think that’s great,” Evers said, who lamented that the public often conflates private voucher schools with charter schools. Evers, who now opposes the expansion of taxpayer-funded school vouchers in Wisconsin, also once voiced support for them in 2000 […]
Gromer Jeffers, Jr: Sen. Don Huffines is passionate about giving public school students the choice to attend private schools. But he’s raising eyebrows because of the combative tone he used Monday in Austin during a discussion about education at Texas PTA Rally Day with a group of students from Richardson ISD. During one exchange, a […]
Annysa Johnson: Evers, 65, said his large margin Tuesday reflected Wisconsin voters’ commitment to public education. But he could face a tough fight ahead, he said, if Holtz attracts funding from school reform proponents across the country. “They both vowed to go after national voucher money, and I assume that will be Mr. Holtz’s M.O.,” […]
Jane Shaw: Assuming that Betsy DeVos, the new secretary of education, has sufficient commitment and stamina, she will change how her department addresses K-12 education. Her support of school choice through charter schools and voucher programs is well known. DeVos’s department is also deeply involved in higher education, but the issues are different. What roils […]
Molly Beck: “I think our track record is pretty good,” Evers said, citing decreased suspensions and expulsions, increased number of students taking college-level courses while still in high school and modest increases in reading proficiency. “Is it where we want? Absolutely not,” he said. Reading a key issuefor Humphries The state’s reading proficiency levels have […]
Thomas Sowell: An opportunity has arisen — belatedly — that may not come again in this generation. That is an opportunity to greatly expand the kinds of schools that have successfully educated, to a high level, inner-city youngsters whom the great bulk of public schools fail to educate to even minimally adequate levels. What may […]
Jennifer Cheatham: With a contested race for state superintendent of public instruction and a legislative session that is swinging into gear, much is at stake for public education in Wisconsin. One of the fundamental issues at the center of the debate is the potential expansion of “school choice,” which is the term used to describe […]
Tony Evers (PDF): 1. Why are you running for State Superintendent of Public Instruction? I’ve been an educator all my adult life. I grew up in small town Plymouth, WI. Worked at a canning factory in high school, put myself through college, and married my kindergarten sweetheart, Kathy-also a teacher. I taught and became a […]
Graham Vyse: Black History Month began Wednesday, and this year’s theme is “The Crisis in Black Education.” According to the Association for the Study of African American Life and History, the group that founded BHM—this crisis “has grown significantly in urban neighborhoods where public schools lack resources, endure overcrowding, exhibit a racial achievement gap, and […]
Joanne Jacobs: ews coverage about Betsy DeVos has been lousy, writes Alexander Russo in The Grade, now on the Kappan site. Instead of giving readers a full, helpful understanding of the nominee and her background, national outlets including Politico, Slate, the Wall Street Journal, and (especially) the New York Times have cherry-picked storylines that put […]
“The existing K-12 school system (including most charters and private schools) has been transformed into a knowledge-free zone…Surveys conducted by NAEP and other testing agencies reveal an astonishing lack of historical and civic knowledge…Fifty-two percent chose Germany, Japan, or Italy as “U.S. Allies” in World War II.” Sol Stern, via Will Fitzhugh: President-elect Donald Trump’s […]
Kristina Rizga: It’s Christmastime in Holland, Michigan, and the northerly winds from Lake Macatawa bring a merciless chill to the small city covered in deep snow. The sparkly lights on the trees in downtown luxury storefronts illuminate seasonal delicacies from the Netherlands, photos and paintings of windmills and tulips, wooden shoes, and occasional “Welkom Vrienden” […]
Glenn Reynolds: The long knives have come out for Education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos. But her critics aren’t attacking her because they think she’ll do a bad job. They’re attacking her because they’re afraid she’ll do a good job. But I think that her success will be important, if you care about addressing inequality in […]
Molly Beck: Humphries said in an interview with the Wisconsin State Journal that if he is elected as the state’s chief of schools, he would implement a process during which consistently low-performing schools could be turned over to a variety of school operators — including those that run charter or private voucher schools — through […]
Edwin Rios: On the day President-elect Donald Trump announced Michigan billionaire philanthropist Betsy DeVos as his pick for education secretary, the heads of the country’s two largest teachers unions jumped to condemn the choice. American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten called DeVos “the most ideological, anti-public education nominee put forward since President Carter […]
Alan Borsuk: The Underestimated Development of 2016 Award: The launch of special education vouchers statewide. Only 206 students statewide qualified in September for these $12,000 vouchers (which was about 10 times what I expected given the narrow eligibility rules). It was a foot in the door, and I’ll be surprised if the rules aren’t changed […]
Molly Beck: “This is a sleazy deal that lets a candidate for public office keep getting paid by taxpayers, with no oversight for how he spends his days,” said Ross. “All the while promoting selling out our public schools to chase campaign cash from the private school voucher industry and the billionaires that support it.” […]
Chris Rickert: If I were Santa Claus, my Christmas gifts to Republican state Rep. Dave Murphy and Republican state Sen. Steve Nass would be vouchers to enroll in the UW-Madison class “The Problem of Whiteness.” According to a course description, it offers the chance to wonder “what it really means to be white” and asks: […]
Jared Bernstein & Ben Spielberg: DeVos and other ideological enemies of teachers unions may well try to block that vision. But as most education policy gets hashed out at the local level, they will hopefully fail. The desire for cross-sector collaboration with a goal of promoting equity for all students is growing, and fostering that […]
Kim Schroeder (President of the Milwaukee Teacher Union: Critics may say that not all charter schools are bad, which may be true. But only a small percentage of private charters outperform traditional public schools. And private schools serve fewer English-language learners and children with special needs; expel a disproportionate number of minority students; and, even […]
Alan Borsuk: Just when it seemed like the annual trends involving the education landscape of Milwaukee had become predictable and boring, a couple of unpredicted things happened. Around this time every year since 2008, I’ve put together a chart showing where Milwaukee children are getting a publicly funded education, sector by sector. I try not […]
Doug Erickson: Madison School Board members Ed Hughes and Michael Flores said Thursday they’ll run for re-election — Hughes for a fourth term, Flores for a second. Candidate filing for the seats began Thursday and ends Jan. 3. Terms are for three years. Hughes (Seat 7) and Flores (Seat 6) are the only members of […]
Annysa johnson Jensen and Underwood squared off as part of a discussion on the lessons learned from a quarter century of school vouchers in Wisconsin, moderated by Alan Borsuk, a longtime education journalist and fellow at the law school. Wisconsin’s is the largest voucher program in the country with 261 schools and more than 33,700 […]
Alan Borsuk: We already have hefty private school voucher programs in Milwaukee and Racine and a growing voucher scene in the rest of the state, plus a new special-education voucher program, and a convoluted but fairly lively charter school scene, particularly in Milwaukee. What more could be done? It’s a time when school choice insiders […]
Kate Zernike It is hard to find anyone more passionate about the idea of steering public dollars away from traditional public schools than Betsy DeVos, Donald J. Trump’s pick as the cabinet secretary overseeing the nation’s education system. For nearly 30 years, as a philanthropist, activist and Republican fund-raiser, she has pushed to give families […]
Molly Beck: John Matthews, former longtime executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., called Evers a “hero” and said he deserves to be re-elected. He said Wisconsin “residents know of his advocacy for their children.” “That said, I do worry that the far right and the corporations which want to privatize our public schools and make […]
Molly Beck: He said school districts can save money because of reduced health insurance costs for staff and can be creative in retaining teachers, like providing bonuses. Humphries said in an interview that Evers was too focused on objecting to the expansion of private voucher and independent charter schools and not focused enough on raising […]
Doug Erickson: On the latest round of statewide tests, fewer than half of Wisconsin public school students in grades three through eight scored proficient or better in English language arts or math. The results, released Tuesday by the state Department of Public Instruction, showed 42.5 percent of students scored in those top two categories in […]
Erin Richards: About 60% of school districts will get a boost in state aid in 2016-’17, but the money will flow through to property tax relief instead of funding for classrooms, according to new state figures. Meanwhile, costs to taxpayers for the Milwaukee voucher program and costs to nearly all districts for the expense of […]
Larry Cuban There is a strongly-held myth many academics, policymakers, and reformers repeat weekly: schools hardly ever change. Those who believe in this myth often cite the large literature demonstrating failed innovations in schools or point at calcified bureaucracies and stubborn teachers and principals who block reform after reform (see here and here). Like all […]
Helen Andrews: Last fall, Toby Young did something ironic. Toby is the son of Michael Young, the British sociologist and Labour life peer whose 1958 satire The Rise of the Meritocracy has been credited with coining the term. Toby has become an education reformer in his own right, as founder of the West London Free […]
Alan Borsuk: Another possibility: I have floated in the past a fantasy of creating a school oversight board that would control the faucet for public money for schools in Milwaukee. Leave the structure of MPS, vouchers and charters in place, but put a board above them that would require individual schools to show good cause […]
Annysa Johnson: The city’s decision to move forward with the state-mandated sale of vacant or surplus Milwaukee Public School buildings to competing operators will hinder the district’s own reform efforts and its ability to serve returning students when private voucher and charter schools go belly-up, an MPS spokesman said Saturday. The common council on Friday […]
Alan Borsuk: By the way, test scores can be a factor in evaluating teachers, but they have not emerged as a big factor. And the momentum behind connecting scores to ratings of teachers seems to have waned nationwide. (Why? Because it doesn’t really work.) With the new scores, the “report card” for each school in […]
Alan Borsuk: Point one: If Milwaukee has demonstrated anything to the nation with its long, broad and deep school choice offerings, it is that school quality is generated far more at the level of individual schools than sector by sector. There are MPS schools where students score much above the Milwaukee averages and, in a […]
Molly Beck: More than 700 students in the Madison School District opted out in 2015, part of the 8,104 public school students who opted out statewide, a substantial increase from the 87 and 583 students, respectively, who opted out last year, state and school district data show. The surge nationwide in recent years represents a […]
Annysa Johnson: Messmer Catholic Schools will spend $500,000 to boost teacher salaries by 10% to 30% over the next two years in a move intended both to sustain recent academic gains and uphold the church’s teachings on social justice, its president said. “If we’re going to exhibit Catholic values of justice, that means appropriate compensation […]
Annysa Johnson: Andy Vitrano corrals a group of school leaders from across Milwaukee inside the main hallway at St. Anthony School on the city’s south side. They’ve spent much of the last hour discussing the importance of data in assessing a school’s performance, dissecting one school’s attendance figures and brainstorming ideas for improvement. Now he’s […]
Molly Beck: While I do agree that there was some situations where some districts were gaming the system, and perhaps something needs to be done, it’s clear in talking with the Senate that there isn’t support to bring this bill all the way home,” he said, adding that he expected enough support for the original […]
Chris Rickert: It’s as if taxpayers face paying for a voucher student twice — once through state taxes for vouchers, and again through district property tax levies for, well, I’m not sure what, given that the voucher students are no longer in the districts. Dan Rossmiller, government relations director at the Wisconsin Association of School […]
Alan Borsuk: The standardized tests a few hundred thousand Wisconsin third- through eighth-graders will take this spring will be the third version of such tests used in three years, each with a different definition of proficiency. Months overdue, results the Department of Public Instruction released Wednesday did not include data for individual schools or districts […]
Annysa Johnson: They do not include individual district- and school-level data for public schools or the scores for private schools participating in the state-funded voucher programs. Among the highlights: The composite score for juniors who took the ACT was 20 on a scale of 36. That’s below the 22.2 reported in August 2015. Again, DPI […]
Alissa Quart: “This school would be more of a safety,” Joyce Szuflita explained to the parents. She gestured at the colored paper handouts fanned out between them, and then pointed at another zoned school on a different sheet. “That’s a curated class of parents because they chose to move into the zone of the school […]
Alan Borsuk: The mountain keeps eroding and the foothills keep growing. Where does this lead? It’s time for my annual look at Milwaukee’s changing and amazing educational landscape, as shown by enrollment numbers for the several streams of publicly funded education that flow strongly in the city. It’s been a quarter-century since the launch of […]
Molly Beck: The number and type of crimes committed at high schools, at their events and on school buses would be printed on the state’s school report cards under a bill being circulated this week. Any public high school, public charter high school or private voucher high school would be required to track reports of […]
Alan Borsuk: It’s a vastly different picture now. Many of the limitations are gone; an estimated 26,900 students who live in the city of Milwaukee are using vouchers to attend 117 private schools, the vast majority of them religious. Public spending for the current school year will exceed $190 million. And that’s just Milwaukee. Vouchers […]
Wisconsin’s stürm and drang over “Act 10” is somewhat manifested in Madison. Madison’s government schools are the only Wisconsin District, via extensive litigation, to still have a collective bargaining agreement with a teacher union, in this case, Madison Teachers, Inc. The Madison School Board and Administration are working with the local teachers union on a […]
WORT-FM How is the school year going? What about the behavior improvement plan, community schools, teacher diversity, racial equity, test scores, white flight, and school voucher schools? Today Carousel Bayrd talks with Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Dr. Jennifer Cheatham today to discuss the upcoming year and her vision for the future.
Annysa Johnson: Assembly Speaker Robin Vos’ special Task Force on Urban Education will hold the first in a series of public hearings — this one on teacher recruitment, retention and training — at 1 p.m. Tuesday at the State Capitol, Room 412. The panel will take testimony from the public after hearing from invited individuals […]
Alan Borsuk: Being superintendent was a pretty low profile matter for much of the last 166 years, but no more. Here are three reasons why: Vouchers: DPI oversees administration of the private school voucher program. Evers and his two predecessors were big advocates of the conventional public school system. Voucher advocates generally regard all of […]
Molly Beck: The number of students using vouchers to attend private schools grew from 22,439 during the 2011-12 school year to 29,609 last school year, according to the DPI. At the same time, 870,650 students attended public schools last year — which is about the same number that did in the 2011-12 school year. Enrollment […]
Onion: Saying the long nights of cramming from the study guide and the constant drilling from flashcards had really worn on his nerves, Arne Duncan told reporters Tuesday that preparing for the upcoming standardized Secretary of Education Test was completely stressing him out. “I know I’ve got the stuff on FSA loans down, but it’s […]
Vivian Wang: Laying down a new marker in the competition for school enrollment in Milwaukee, the School Board has approved a high-profile young educator’s proposal for a new charter school, after he promised to ramp up efforts to reverse the flow of students leaving the district for voucher schools and other options. Maurice Thomas’ planned […]
School vouchers may be the most effective anti-poverty program around, yet they’re fought tooth and hammer by the teachers unions. Late last week the North Carolina Supreme Court awarded a victory to poor kids by protecting vouchers from another union attack. Two years ago Tar Heel Republicans passed a modest reform offering low-income students $4,200 […]