Report Card Time

I know what you're thinking: It's only the fourth week of school! How can there be report cards already? Well, it's not about my students: It's about the superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools.

I was one of nearly 3000 Milwaukee teachers to evaluate the superintendent. If you are a regular reader, you can probably guess the kinds of grades I gave him. I wish now that I had made a copy of my report card before I mailed it in, so I can remember exactly, but I did not. Sigh. Whatever specific grades I gave him, you can see the complete results here.

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about being on a conference call with Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack, and how it was nice that someone was finally asking teachers what they thought about reforming education. That almost never happens. Those of us on the front lines, who see solutions but seldom are empowered to implement them, can do more than sit silently in our classrooms. This report card is a slight move in the right direction, though this is basically negative input, not seeking solutions. I do hope it's the start of something positive, though.

I have been asked to blog about the MPS superintendent report card at the report card blog, but the invite still hasn't come through. I did write my first post, though, and for want of anywhere else to put it, I'll put it here.

If you can't say something nice

Jay Bullock, here. I am a teacher at Madison University High School, and an old hat at this blogging thing: I can usually be found at the award-winning folkbum's rambles and rants weblog.

I was invited to participate here, in part because of my blogging experience and in part because I have been an outspoken supporter of public education in this city. I have also been a constant critic of the superintendent. However, I thought I would start with something positive, and how the superintendent undermines it every chance he gets.

You've by now undoubtedly see the Superintendent's Report Card. if you haven't, click through and get a sense of the grades he received from many thousands teachers in the district. I admit, when I filled out my survey, I scored the superintendent very low in nearly every category. I tried, as I do when I grade my students, to be consistent and fair. So when I came a category where I though he deserved praise, I gave him an A.

That category was "Advocating for public education and specifically MPS." You can see that it was one of the few categories in which the superintendent's GPA would be considered passing.

I have always been impressed, especially in light of his other actions, with the way our superintendent is willing to go to Madison to fight for the Milwaukee Public Schools. He recognizes the same thing that so many of the rest of us advocating for public education do: A district such as MPS, with poverty at epidemic levels and so many other problems that make educating our students a challenge, needs strong state support. There are too many members of our state legislature who do not share that opinion of MPS, and our superintendent has never, ever shied away from fighting them, that I know of. He was especially involved in the budget fight last June, when Republican leaders in Madison wanted to keep cutting public school funding across the state. Our superintended saw the enemy there, and fought for us.

And yet, when the superintendent comes back to Milwaukee from Madison, he keeps that fighting spirit, and he looks for enemies even among those who should be his strongest allies.

Time after time, the superintendent has elected to alienate, divide, and belittle the teachers in this district. All the good will he may have developed by fighting for the resources we need to do our jobs gets squandered by his efforts to undermine our confidence, professionalism, unity, and--some days--sanity. That's why the superintendent scored so low on the first section of the Report Card--his relationships with teachers.

MPS is huge. There are billions of dollars of assets in and held by the district. Yet the most important asset this district has is its teachers. The superintendent can't see that, and that is his most crucial failure of leadership.

So there you go. You can read Sarah Carr's write-up of the report card in the newspaper, with the superintendent's response and words from some fellow teachers. I hope that the report card gets Milwaukee talking about what we really need in a superintendent. I also hope that people like Alberta Darling take notice: Our superintendent has failed.