WI Weds (plus some Teaching Tuesday): Fisking Underheim

This is another busy week for me (oh, for a job that doesn't come home with me!). So I kind of neglected Teaching Tuesday yesterday, and so far today I have written bupkis. I'm on a string of daily blogging since Feb. 28, and I don't want to break it now. So, a softball.

Last week I mentioned how hard it was to find Gregg Underheim's website, and how frustrating it was since I was looking for answers. Turns out, I needn't have bothered.

Underheim's website has a pretty standard three-column format. At first I was excited, since the right column (seen to your left here) seemed to be link-buttons to detailed policy statements or something. No go; they seem to be just empty statements of purpose. But the long middle column is worth looking at, and, if I may, fisking.

Underheim opens with the standard tax scare spiel, and then points out something I keep saying:

From 1992-1993 school year to 2002-2003 school year school spending went up over 55%. The rate of inflation was just over 26%. Education spending grew at more that twice the rate of inflation. There must be a conversation about cost and quality in education.

If we are to succeed in not pitting seniors and kids and schools and teachers and taxpayers against one another we must recognize these problems and offer meaningful solutions.

Of course, he neglects to mention the single greatest reason why education spending has risen so: double-digit increases in the cost of health care. Education is a people-intensive business, so the personnel costs are greater than others state-wide. So when the cost of health care goes up in Wisconsin--at well faster than the national average--school district budgets balloon. This is why I noted last week that, had the legislature put an effort into controlling health care costs a decade ago instead of implementing revenue caps (which are killing us) and the QEO, we'd be in much better fiscal shape. Now, who among us is a state legislator, and could do such a thing if he wanted? That's right--Gregg Underheim.

The first of the "meaningful solutions" Underheim offers actually does, indirectly, address health care. He wants to put teachers into the same pool as other state employees. This is an idea championed by the conservative Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI) last January (their pdf is here), with claims that the state could save upwards of $100 million. Problem is, Underheim's third point is keeping the QEO. See, under the QEO, the total compensation of the teachers in the district is controlled--including salary and benefits. The state would still send the same money to districts; it would just be spent differently. I'm not saying that moving to the state plan is a bad idea (though others are saying it). I'm just saying it will not do what he thinks it will.

Underheim's second point, which I skipped, is what he calls W3--"What Works in Wisconsin," and it's not all bad. He wants to figure out how low-spending high-performing schools do it. (Never minding that there as many high-spending high-perfoming schools and low-spending low-performing schools.) I can venture a guess as to what this study--which was recommeded, by the way, by Governor Doyle's school-funding commission last summer!--will find. When a district spends a lot of money on special education and ESL students, their ROI is not going to be that hot.

Fourth is the "technology solves everything" plank of his platform, the thing that drove me to seek out his website in the first place. I renew my previous cost objections, including transition costs and the fact that you're not at all changing the adult-child ratio. Even if--and it's a big if--we could actually see long-term savings, we are really not in a fiscal position to make the big initial outlay now.

Fifth [Underheim writes], we must become positive toward the choice options in Wisconsin. The DPI must support the elimination of the school choice caps in Milwaukee. It must support giving counties the right to charter schools.

Do I need to give my response? First of all, a pretty exhaustive study recently showed that charter schools are not a panacea, not even a little bit. Having seen charter schools in action here in Milwaukee, I can confirm that they're not all that. And I wax eloquently on a regular basis against the problems of choice (see Fighting Bob yesterday, for example), so I won't belabor it now.

Sixth, and finally, something I can get fully behind, even if his reasoning is slightly convoluted. "[W]e must prepare students in math and science to meet the competition offered by the newly developing world," he says. And there's nothing wrong with that. Question is, how? And if he answers "technology," I may just scream.

And that's it for Underheim's website, besides a few news clippings and information about how to volunteer and give money. For comparison, I will direct you to Libby Burmaster's page, including a detailed section on her accomplishments and her platform.

Vote Libby. And go to bed. It's late.