A voucher story and a public school story

So I'm taking time out from the work to watch the live Vinnick-Santos debate (Vinnick is more comfortable on his feet; Santos has better ideas), and I thought I should get a couple of stories out there while I watched.

First, J-Dizzle has decided to use part of my idea (!) for dealing with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, and added it to the same compromise that he's used before. This week he offered to "rasie the cap":

Under the plan that Doyle unveiled Friday [. . .], the cap on students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice program would be raised from 15% to 18 % of Milwaukee Public Schools enrollment. Under the plan, about 3,000 more students could enter the program, which was closed to new enrollment Oct. 25 after the Department of Public Instruction determined that it appeared to have reached the state-mandated cap.

The package, which Doyle described as a "compromise," would also:

• Require private schools participating in the voucher program to administer the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam, the state standardized tests required in public schools.
  
• Enable MPS to count each choice student at a rate of 45% for determining its per-pupil value for the state aid formula. Although MPS does not count choice students for the purpose of calculating state aid now, Doyle said, "Milwaukee taxpayers are required to pay 45 percent of the cost of the choice program."
  
• Increase the income cutoff for participating families.
  
• Increase funding for Student Achievement Guarantee in Education, commonly called SAGE, from $2,000 to $2,500 a student, a change that Doyle described as "long overdue." The program holds class sizes to fewer than 15 students in participating schools from kindergarten through third grade.
  
Increase the enrollment cap for the Racine Charter School program from 400 to 480 to allow students attending 21st Century Preparatory School to attend the school through eighth grade. [. . .]

Also under Doyle's plan, an independent authority would have to accredit choice schools.

There is something admirable in this--Doyle is asking for some badly needed things like accountability in voucher schools, reifornced SAGE funding, and my idea, accreditation (I have to ask Zepnick if he passed it on to the gov or if the gov just reads my blog). But the Republicans in the legislature want just one thing out the voucher debate: A campaign issue. You can see it already in their responses to Doyle's plan, under the sub-heading "MPS aid criticized."

My prediction? The plan dies an ignoble and quiet death while Republicans keep banging the drum to "lift the cap."

Meanwhile, in the Milwaukee Public Schools, the move towards layoffs and bigger class sizes in overcrowded schools continues, with the board's approval of the closure of four more schools. What's remarkable to me is not necessarily the closures--anyone who knows the board knew the outcome before it started--but rather the misinformation from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in their editorial in favor of the closings and an earlier article about the hearing at Juneau High School, where hundreds of people lobbied to keep it open. In both pieces, the paper noted that last spring, the Superintendent proposed closing three schools but that the Board--the pre-election board, from before the "reformers" took over--scuttled the idea.

While not technically wrong, the wording in both stories puts the blame in the wrong place: The board had to reject the superintendent's proposal to close those three schools because he did it outside of the Board's rules and the district's guidelines for proposing such measures. In perpetuating this fiction, the paper continues to absolve the superintendent of any blame for anything--even when he's the one who screws up. Typical.