The Milwaukee Journal Does The Usual Bi-Weekly Attack On the School Board and Democracy, While Using a Self-Congratulatory Voucher Comparison as Evidence

I ask, where’s the journalism? Where’s the critique of the business community and city government’s failure to create family sustaining jobs and economic development?

Jan. 11, 2011 Editorial MJS

Where’s the leadership?

Milwaukee School Board members wanted the community to give them a chance to lead. Recent decisions show the board is not up to the challenge.

The dearth of candidates for the Milwaukee School Board is another sign of how little democracy there really is in the current governance structure.

How little, you ask?

Five of the nine seats are up for election, but only one race will have a primary in February because three candidates are running. In three races, there will be only two candidates on the April ballot, and no one challenged School Board President Michael Bonds.

The lack of interest in School Board elections is nothing new in Milwaukee, of course, but it’s still troubling. And here’s something else that’s troubling: A new study shows voucher school kids are 17% more likely to graduate than Milwaukee Public Schools students.

MPS disputes the numbers. What cannot be disputed are the financial and academic problems looming over the district. And effective leadership is critical to turning MPS around.

A 70% graduation rate is not good enough. The 82,000 students who attend MPS deserve better, and the community as a whole depends on the district’s success because MPS is, essentially, the region’s biggest workforce development agency.

Financially, the School Board has shown it is not ready to make big decisions.

Milwaukee Common Council President Willie L. Hines Jr. and state Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) questioned why the School Board refused to sell empty buildings to its competition when the district is paying about $1 million a year to maintain those buildings.

Bonds’ response: Mind your own business.

“You are focusing on MPS issues while neglecting the problems that you were elected to solve,” Bonds said in a letter to Hines.

Not exactly the sort of leadership that inspires confidence.

That’s why we still believe a governance change is required. We have no confidence that this board will be able to address the mounting financial and academic crises.

A change in governance alone won’t fix MPS. Schools need to be safe; parents need to be involved. Each school needs effective, top-to-bottom leadership.

Superintendent Gregory Thornton is trying, but an ineffective board stymies effective leadership.

It’s time for better leadership.

Republican Control: What Wisconsin GOP Wins Mean for Milwaukee Schools

By: Terrence Falk | Monday 11/8/2010

Republicans now control state government. How will they treat Wisconsin’s largest school district?

Don’t expect Mayor Barrett to get control of MPS no matter how many editorials the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel runs supporting the idea. In the last legislative session. Republicans stonewalled the idea. They are not about to change their minds now.

Instead some Republicans have been pushing the idea of breaking MPS into a half dozen or more districts. Their reasoning is that smaller school districts work well in Wisconsin; therefore, a major problem for MPS must be its sheer size. They forget that right behind Milwaukee in struggling school systems is Racine, Kenosha, and little Beloit, much smaller school districts. All have the common denominator: a high percentage of minority schools living in poverty, not district size.

Would creating six superintendents, six school administrations, and six school boards save any money? And saving money is what the GOP really cares about.

Breaking MPS into smaller districts is akin to smashing a hornets’ nest with a baseball bat.  The school system’s problems are going to fly off in all different directions, and a lot of people are going to get stung. No, breaking MPS into smaller districts is not likely to happens.

Might Republicans give more power to the state superintendent? If Milwaukeean rejected mayoral control, how do you think they would react to state control? Former GOP Governor Thompson actually tried to get rid of the state superintendent office. Republicans will be cautious in giving more power to the state superintendent whose election is often dependent upon support from teacher unions.

Walker and the GOP are likely to do three things:

Are you against unfunded mandates? So are the Republicans. But they are not likely to give school districts more money for those mandates. Instead they will cut state regulations saying schools can do “more with less.”  But schools will just do less.

Limiting the number of choice schools in Milwaukee? That is gone. The real question is whether Republicans will keep in place higher standards in place.   Some choice providers were caught falsifying enrollment numbers, buying BMWs, and offering substandard educations. The theory that simply relying on free market competition would weed out substandard schools did not work out very well. Will GOP have the courage to close failing choice schools?

How do you feel about teacher unions? They are likely to be the biggest losers. the GOP may say they care about improving education, but they also care about raw political power. Teacher unions have been a reliable Democratic power base. Cut them off at the knees.

The GOP is likely to make it easier for individual teachers to opt out of joining local teacher unions. Right-to-Work, here we come. If unions have fewer members and less revenue, unions will have less power.

Getting rid of teacher residency in Milwaukee will be portrayed ss a civil rights issue and a method for opening up MPS to a larger pool of potential teachers. But fewer MTEA teachers living in Milwaukee will also dilute their power in city elections.

Placing teachers into the state health insurance system, making it easier to fire poor teachers, and pushing merit pay are all likely to come in second to raw political power.

Could the GOP actually improve Wisconsin education? Their wins free up the left to support reforms they may have not supported otherwise, but it is the GOP who are in the driver’s seat, and they have to make the first moves.

To visit Terrence Falk’s website Yellow Bus go to:

ttp://www.insidemilwaukee.com/Topics/Yellow%20Bus

Ravitch on Mayoral Control

Ravitch: Mayoral control means zero accountability

My guest is Diane Ravitch, New York University education historian and author of the best-selling “The Death and Life of the Great American School System.” Ravitch, once a supporter of No Child Left Behind and now a fierce critic of its impact, is traveling the country and meeting thousands of teachers as she blasts the Obama administration’s education policies.

By Diane Ravitch
For the past five years, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Chancellor Joel Klein have claimed that, due to their programs, New York City was a national model. They proclaimed that the city had made “historic gains” on state tests, all because of the mayor’s complete control of the policymaking apparatus. The mayor testified in congressional hearings that New York City had cut the achievement gap in half. Klein traveled to Australia to boast of the city’s gains, and the Australian minister of education intends to align that nation’s education system with the New York City model.

It was an exciting and wonderful ride while it lasted. But last week, with the release of the state test results for 2010, New York City’s claims came crashing to the ground. The national model went up in smoke. The miracle was no more. The belief that mayoral control was a panacea for urban ills was no longer sustainable.

Secretary of Education Arne Duncan has gone around the nation for the past 18 months singing the praises of mayoral control. But in light of the New York City fiasco, he will have to find a new example when he lectures urban audiences, because the New York model just lost its wheels.

What is that model? All decision-making power vested in the office of the mayor, who chooses the school leadership; testing and accountability; report cards for schools with a single letter grade; bonuses for principals whose schools have rising scores; closing schools whose scores do not rise; opening charter schools and small schools; devolving authority to principals to make decisions about spending and instructional programs.

When Mayor Bloomberg first ran for office, he said that the legislature should give him control of the school system with minimal checks or balances. He promised accountability. If anything went wrong, the public would know whom to hold accountable; not some faceless board, but he, the mayor, would be accountable.

The New York City version of mayoral control means that parents and the public have no voice. The shell of the central board is dominated by a majority of mayoral appointees, who approve whatever the mayor wants. On the one occasion when two of his appointees threatened to vote independently, they were fired on the spot.

Every year, the State Education Department reported that scores were going up across the state and in New York City. In 2007, based entirely on steadily rising state scores, the Broad Foundation awarded New York City its annual prize as the nation’s most improved urban school district. Mayor Bloomberg used the state scores to win re-election in 2005 and to bypass term limits and get re-elected for a third term in 2009.

When the mayoral control law expired a year ago, the mayor referred to the state scores as evidence that his reforms were working and the progress should not be interrupted.

The narrative ended on a sour note last week. The State Education Department accepted that the state tests had gotten so easy in recent years that the standards had become meaningless.

Students could advance from level 1 (where remediation was required in New York City) to level 2 by random guessing. Reaching level 3 (“proficiency”) did not mean that students were likely to graduate high school. Under new leadership, the state raised standards, and the proportion of New York City students who reached proficiency dramatically declined.

The pass rate on the reading test fell from 69 percent to only 42 percent, and on the math test, it dropped from 82% to 54%. In addition, the achievement gap among students of different racial and ethnic groups grew larger, as large as it was when the mayor took office.

The mayor and the chancellor responded to the new situation not by accepting responsibility and accountability, but by denying the facts. In news conferences, press briefings, and opinion articles, they and their surrogates insisted that the “historic gains” of the past five years were still intact.

They pointed to scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress to defend their claims, but this was a weak reed. New York City’s gains on NAEP were garden-variety. Atlanta, Boston and the District of Columbia made larger gains in fourth grade reading and math; Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, and San Diego made larger gains in eighth grade math; and New York City made zero gains in eighth grade reading from 2003-2009, while Atlanta, Houston, and Los Angeles did see significant improvement in that grade and subject.

So the larger story is this: Mayoral control did not turn New York City into a national model. Before promoting mayoral control as the answer to urban education, Secretary Duncan would do well to consider Cleveland, which has had mayoral control since 1995.

Like New York City, Cleveand has participated in national testing from the inception of urban district assessment. Cleveland has made no gains in fourth grade reading or eighth grade reading or fourth grade mathematics or eighth grade mathematics.

Mayoral control is not a panacea. Not in Cleveland or in New York City. Nor in Chicago, which has seen some gains, but is still one of the nation’s lowest performing urban districts after many years of mayoral control.

WI Gubernatorial Candidates Weigh In On New DPI Power Over Failing Schools and Districts

Published Online: April 30, 2010

New Wis. Law Targets Failing Public Schools

Gov. Jim Doyle said Thursday that he believes a new law giving Wisconsin’s education superintendent more power to try turning around failing public schools will survive a new governor.

The law is an alternative to a proposal Doyle and Democratic gubernatorial candidate Tom Barrett backed earlier that would have shifted control of the troubled Milwaukee Public Schools system to the mayor. That failed to garner enough support.

Doyle, also a Democrat, isn’t running for re-election. Doyle said he doesn’t expect the superintendent’s new powers to be removed when a new governor takes office in January, despite two Republican gubernatorial candidates criticizing it.

“I can’t imagine that any governor would say, ‘You know, superintendent, I know you are turning around those schools. We’re going to pull the plug on it,’” he said. “It’s a very important piece of legislation that needed to be done for a long time.”

The law requires school boards in low-performing districts to adopt model teaching standards, create new programs to help struggling students earlier, and provide more learning time for those who need it. Those steps could include expanding the school day or academic year.

The worst public schools would be required to adopt new standards for evaluating teachers and principals, with academic improvement being a significant factor.

Milwaukee has struggled for years with closing the achievement gap between white and minority students as well as improving overall performance.

State Superintendent Tony Evers said he hopes to have some directives in place by the summer for Milwaukee Public Schools.

“It’s not all the answers, clearly,” he said, “but it’s a way for us as a state to assist the district to focus its efforts.”

Evers said the state is concentrating on the Milwaukee schools now but they might need to look at other districts later.

Two Republican gubernatorial candidates are criticizing the new law. Barrett, Milwaukee’s mayor, said the new law was a step in the right direction.

In a statement, Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker said Thursday the law is another example of Doyle’s and Barrett’s “failed leadership on education reform.”

“No real standards of accountability for our teachers are contained within the proposal, and our state has put another generation of children at risk of being lost in broken schools across our state,” he said. His spokeswoman didn’t immediately return an e-mail asking whether Walker would take away the superintendent’s power.

But former U.S. Rep. Mark Neumann said he would consider changing the law.

“We may need to change it, we may not need to change it,” he said in a phone interview Thursday. “The discussion needs to be about what we are going to be doing better for our kids to provide a higher quality education in our state.”

Barrett said he would have liked to see the law go further.

“I don’t think the last chapter has been written in this book,” Barrett said Wednesday in Madison, where he was campaigning.

Barrett said his main concerns are both the quality of Milwaukee’s public education and the district’s financial health. Barrett indicated he wouldn’t push for mayoral control if elected governor.

“Right now I want to see how well this works,” he said. “To me it’s all about performance. If those at the local level can produce a plan that’s going to improve the educational attainment and the fiscal health of the school district, then I’m going to be happy with that. “

Mary Bell, president of the state teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, said her group supports the legislation.

“When you get to issues of struggling schools, we tend in Wisconsin to see those as local issues,” Bell said, “but the survival and thriving of students and our economy really are tied together.”

Doyle Signs Bill Giving Increased Power to DPI

Ronald Reagan High School: Governor enacts law giving state superintendent more power

By Amy Hetzner of the Journal Sentinel April 29, 2010

Surrounded by legislators and Milwaukee high school students, Gov. Jim Doyle signed into law Thursday a measure that will give the state’s schools superindent more authority to intervene in struggling school districts and their schools.

“This bill really makes a major step forward for us to begin to give the superintendent real power to make major changes,” Doyle said.

The new law will give the state’s superintendent of public instruction the authority to direct school boards in failing districts to adopt new curriculum, provide early intervention services for children, extend student learning time and implement professional development programs for teachers and principals. The law also requires the state superintendent to enact rules for how school districts and schools will be identified for this intervention.

In addition, the law specifically requires that Milwaukee Public Schools draw up a master plan to analyze aging facilities and buildings, collaborate with non-profit organizations to provide social services and develop alternative routes to high school diplomas for at-risk students.

The law also removes tenure for MPS principals, the only principals in the state to have such a protection provided by law. MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said that was a positive.

But he criticized the new law as being too weak on the school system’s teachers, by allowing them to avoid accountability.

“There’s a section in there that gives the teacher a million excuses for not performing,” he said.

He called the measure “a bit racist” because “I don’t think this would be in the bill if these kids were white kids.” If the same teachers were failing kids in suburban schools, Andrekopoulos said he thought the Legislature would take more definite action.

But Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association President Mike Langyel said that the new law makes sure that teachers in struggling schools are provided the proper support they need to do their jobs.

“I think what this bill does, it moves us beyond the blame-the-teacher mentality that is prevalent in the administration of Milwaukee Public Schools,” he said.

Read the New Legislation Giving DPI and Tony Evers Increased Power Over MPS

To Read the full Bill 437 with amendments go to the following link:

Final Plus Amendments SB-437

Rep. Grigsby Statement on School Legislation

For Immediate Release For More Information, contact:
April 22, 2010
Grigsby Statement on Passage of Struggling School Reform Legislation

Madison – State Representative Tamara Grigsby (D-Milwaukee) made the following statement today
regarding passage of Senate Bill 437, which will provide additional support for struggling schools and
increase collaboration between stakeholders involved in improving Milwaukee Public Schools:
“As one of the most adamant opponents of mayoral takeovers, many people have asked me whether there is
something everyone could do together in order to improve education in our state. Today is proof that yes,
absolutely, we can come together to do what’s right for our children.
“This compromise is not a takeover of any sort. It is not about a change in governance, nor is it about school
control. Rather, it’s about support for our schools and providing a consistent, quality education for our
children. It contains many important provisions that will increase support for local school districts which will
continue to chart the course of public education. Under this bill, important policies will be enacted that are
designed to support and strengthen Milwaukee Public Schools and maintain its democratically-elected,
empowered school board.
“We must do much, much more to increase the quality of education and opportunities for children throughout
our state. This compromise represents a new beginning, not an end, of that effort and I hope to continue
working with every stakeholder as we move forward.”
###

Read the Preliminary Draft of the Legislation Giving DPI Increased Control Over MPS

To read the proposed legislation go to the following link:

DPI and MPS

Move Under Way to Give Tony Evers and DPI Significant Control Over MPS

The following article by Alan Borsuk outlines the power grab by DPI. But it leaves out an important piece of the proposed legislation. Under Section 2 it reads “If the state superintendent determines that a school district has been in need of improvement for 4 consecutive school years, (which MPS has) the school board shall do all of the following: (a) Employ a standard, consistent curriculum that is aligned with the state’s model academic standards, as determined by the state superintendent, and across grades in all schools.”

This gives Evers and DPI the ability to prescribe all curriculum for MPS. This will be a disaster. A clear example has been the debate MPS administration has had with DPI over reading and literacy. Since January of 2009 MPS has been working hard on creating a Comprehensive Literacy Plan. DPI consistently drags its feet either by not responding or criticizing its direction. It appears that DPI has been under the influence of a DPI consultant, Alan Coulter, who believes in a reading approach specifically for urban students of color that has been rejected in research and outcomes by many experts in the field. (Read about this research in the Comprehensive Literacy Review, pages 11 and 12 at:

http://mpsportal.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/portal/server.pt/gateway/PTARGS_0_2_3754_335_0_43/http%3B/www2.milwaukee.k12.wi.us/port/docs/LiteracyReview-12-08.pdf )

This type of interference by reading “lobbyists” who have influence with DPI will hurt our kids at a time when we have to fight to insure their educational success.

State schools chief may get more power

By Alan J. Borsuk, Journal Sentinel

Key legislators and major players in Wisconsin’s education scene are close to agreement on a package of ideas aimed at invigorating efforts to improve low performing schools, particularly in Milwaukee.

The focus of the proposal is on giving Tony Evers, the state superintendent of public instruction, an array of new tools for taking on the problems of the schools in the state that get the weakest results.

According to a draft of the proposal, when it comes to low-performing schools, Evers would have powers to order school boards to change how principals are hired and fired; how teachers are assigned; how teachers and principals are evaluated, including the use of student performance data; and how curriculum and training of teachers is handled.

“There’s a large consensus of people who are around this,” State Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) said. “That’s exciting.”

Evers said, “We feel confident we have a good, meaningful piece of legislation.” He said it had been “an amazing few weeks” as prospects for a major education reform package this year went from bleak to energized. He said conversations, including a session Wednesday at the Capitol with many of the major players, had involved hard conversations in which people had given ground on stands they had taken previously.

Those at the meeting Wednesday included incoming MPS superintendent Gregory Thornton, the leaders of the state and Milwaukee teachers unions, and representatives of Gov. Jim Doyle, along with several Democratic legislators involved in education policy.

Polly Williams Blasts Move To Give DPI More Power Over MPS Without Community Input

To read Rep. Polly William’s letter criticizing the attempt by DPI to takeover MPS, go to the following link:

williams-on-mps-dpi-control2