In close vote, MTEA declines additional concessions

by folkbum

In a letter emailed to teachers today (which you can read here), MTEA president Bob Peterson gave the results of the survey:

The survey showed that 52.4% of the membership opposed additional concessions and 47.5% favored them. Based on the results and the many thoughtful comments, the Executive Board decided to not pursue any additional concessions.

Considering that last fall's vote, which involved far larger concessions than those considered this time around, was overwhelming in favor, I think it's clear that Milwaukee teachers feel first, that we're not opposed to giving back, but we also recognize that we have given quite a lot.

But the closeness of this week's vote suggests that there is still room for compromise in the future, if we ever get the right to bargain collectively back. Currently, you might recall, it's against the law for the union and the district to meet and mutually discuss the employment conditions of Milwaukee's teachers.

I am disappointed by the vote, as I have been arguing for months that there are things teachers can give up that would save the district money without significant impact--a furlough day or two, dumping the "sweetener" supplemental pension--for both political and practical reasons. The superintendent--whose response you can read too--is not the enemy here; you can check the archives at his blog to see he agrees with me, and the union, in more diplomatic terms of course, about where the fault lies. Peterson's letter is pretty explicit, in fact, that a lot of teachers who might have voted yes commented that they didn't trust the current Republican leadership in the state and instead voted to protect themselves.

That right there is perhaps the worst damage that Walker and co. have done to the relationship between public employees and their employers. Not that long ago we willing made concessions to help the district and students, but now we feel we have to protect ourselves instead. Thanks, GOP.

Some stuff, we did know. It's what no one knew that is killing us.

by folkbum

Here's a comment from the thread below on MPS layoffs that encapsulates a common sentiment and that will serve as a good entree into this post, which I have been writing in my head for the last week or so:

Why not point the finger at yourself, the union, AND MPS administration? You KNEW there were going to be changes. The union KNEW there were going to be changes. MPS admin KNEW there were going to be changes. Instead of waiting to find out what they were, a contract was signed.

The background to this comment is this: My employer, the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and its teachers, represented by our union, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association (MTEA), have spent much of the last decade in contract-negotiation deadlock. We had a contract that expired on June 30, 2009, and for all of the 2009-2010 school year, we worked without a contract at all. The previous superintendent and his labor negotiators were being quite putzy about the whole thing--phone calls would go unreturned, negotiations would be canceled at the last minute, mutually-agreed deadlines would fly by with nary a peep from the MPS side of Vliet St. Plus, summer 2010 brought an ugly round of teacher layoffs.

In 2010, the Board hired a new superintendent, who came in July 1 intent upon having more of a clean slate to start his tenure, and who directed his people to get down to business and settle the contract. In October, the union and the district came to an agreement, and teachers and the Board ratified it soon after. This contract included many concessions by the teachers, including a pay freeze for two years (and, therefore, no back pay), a new drug plan, and contributions to health insurance costs. The magic benefit-to-salary ratio, which is the right's favorite talking point against MTEA, fell by nearly 7.5%. The contract was to cover not just 2009-2011, the two years that would have been covered if we'd settled by June 30, 2009, but also 2011-2013, which meant neither side had to immediately turn right back around and start re-negotiating for another contract.

Those of you with a rudimentary sense of chronology will be able to figure out that all of this, except the votes to approve the contract by both sides, happened prior to the 2010 election, in which Republicans won a majority of both state houses and the governorship.

Now, what the comment above refers to is the notion that MPS and MTEA should have known that "changes" would be coming to education in Wisconsin based on the November election results. There are a number of honest responses to this, the most basic of which is that neither the union nor the district had as its top concern the politics of the election; both sides simply wanted to not have to worry about having a lack of a contract over their heads.

But it would be dishonest to say that there was no attention paid to the politics. By October, when the agreement was reached, it was pretty clear that the election was not going to be good for schools. Tom Barrett had little chance of winning, the "enthusiasm gap" was real enough to mean that Democrats were better than even to lose one or both state houses. So you know what? Both sides, MPS and MTEA, tried to protect themselves from what they knew was coming.

Because we did, in fact, know things in October 2010. Scott Walker had an education platform, and it was this:

• Establish benchmarks for students in K-3 and hold back students who can’t read by the end of third grade.
• Evaluate teachers based on five criteria: 1) Planning and preparation, 2) Classroom and environment, 3) Quality of instruction, 4) Professional responsibilities, and 5) Yearly student progress. The overall ratings will be “ineffective,” “needs improvement,” “satisfactory” or “exemplary.” Teachers with two years of ineffective ratings will lose their teaching license. Those with satisfactory and exemplary scores will be eligible for bonuses.
• Reinstate the Qualified Economic Offer and tie it to revenue caps.
• Consider local economic factors in settling contract disputes.
• Facilitate local efforts to post school expenditures online.
• Allow school districts to enroll in the state health care plan.
• Remove the enrollment and eligibility caps on Milwaukee’s School Choice program and virtual charter schools statewide.

That was it. That is a complete and accurate summary of what Scott Walker was campaigning on in the fall of 2010 (see it on his campaign site too). In addition, there was a pretty good sense that Republicans would not follow the then-current statutory annual increase of ~$250 per student in funding across the state.

So when teachers went into the final stages of negotiation, we protected ourselves against the changes that we reasonably expected were coming: The contract maintains evaluation procedures and seniority rules, even though it changes some of the salary-advancement requirements. The contract freezes salary and lowers benefit costs, so it makes a possible switch back to the QEO more doable in the future. And it included changes to the health insurance program that makes joining the state health care plan less attractive for the administration.

At the same time as we teachers protected ourselves, the district wrung concessions from teachers that meant it could spend less in 2011-2012 than the then-statutory increase would have allowed. Figuring that as long as the increase was positive, even if it weren't $250 per student, the district could start the year on a sound footing with few if any layoffs--unlike what they had just gone through in the summer of 2010.

So what drops in February 2011? Not, absolutely not what's listed above. Walker's education platform did not say word one about slashing teacher salary by mandating minimum pension and insurance contributions. Walker did not suggest at all during the campaign that such a thing was coming. And the same is true for eliminating collective bargaining over everything but salary, limiting salary increases to the rate of inflation, and dissolving the unions and the protections that they provide. Not one single word of that was breathed during Walker's campaign--something that Walker has admitted to, since he is not so stupid that he would kill his chances of getting elected.

Further, Walker and Republicans absolutely did not campaign on slashing education spending statewide by nearly a billion dollars a year. I can guarantee you that if the GOP had walked around last fall telling parents and local school boards that they would be gutting the funds provided to schools, they would have lost in a landslide.

So in October of 2010, MPS and MTEA were looking at a contract that was going on two years expired, and both sides agreed that was too long. They were looking at specific and credible campaign promises from Republicans that would mean changes to the way they did business, and both sides agreed to solutions that addressed those promises.

In short, when the comment above asks why we didn't wait another four or six months or eight months until all the changes were settled law, we all, both sides, wanted to be proactive. We negotiated and approved a contract that not only saved the taxpayers money but accounted for the changes to education law that were promised to us by the governor-elect and his GOP majority.

And, worse, had we waited, we would not have been able to negotiate a contract at all! There was no reason to believe that once we did sign the contract, it would suddenly become illegal to re-open the contract for negotiation or work on a contract for 2013-2015 and beyond that responded to any additional changes that may come along. (It remains to be seen whether the contracts signed by other municipalities and districts after the effective date written in the budget repair bill can be challenged in court. The state's Department of Administration offered guidance that implementation of the changes should not begin until July 1, but when the state Supreme Court allowed the bill to take effect it did not change the language of the bill.)

So yes, commenters, we did know that there would be changes. And we accounted for them. It's what we didn't know--what no one knew until February 2011 because Walker and his minions deliberately hid their plans--that is killing MPS and causing additional layoffs. It's what we didn't know that is causing layoffs in districts and municipalities all across the state, and severe cutbacks in services. It's what no one knew that caused an uproar heard around the globe, nearly five months of daily protests at the Capitol, and unprecedented recall elections in all corners of the state.

So why should we point fingers at ourselves? MPS and MTEA negotiated $100 million in taxpayer savings over two years, something that under normal circumstances would be huge. But in the face of the ambush Scott Walker and the GOP sprang on the state of Wisconsin, Walker supporters have no defense left except to blame the victims of that ambush. Very classy.

--

Additionally: Another commenter in that thread asks why MPS couldn't have had our own "Kaukauna Miracle," noting the story that the Kaukauna school district used Walker's "tools" to create a surplus in the face of state-funding cuts. First, read Briane Pagel's brilliant dissection of this "miracle." It turns out that it's pretty easy to claim a surplus after you layoff a big chunk of staff first. UPDATED TO ADD: Economist Jake Formerly Of The LP has a smart take, too.

Second, realize that the fix was always in for Milwaukee, and even with Walker's "tools" in full effect, there was no way to turn a surplus. When state aid figures were made final this week, MPS was down $54.6 million. (This figure does not include cuts to categorical aids and grants, such as the the very successful Milwaukee Math Partnership; MPS estimates its total loss at more than $84 million for next year.) The state's own estimate of what Walker's "tools" could save MPS was $42 million, though state Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts and others determined that the state's numbers were high. MTEA, which knows what its members make and what the pension and insurance contributions would add up to, estimated savings through Walker's tools at a mere $36 million.

Either way, you can see the numbers don't add up, and MPS was going to need to find between $40 million and $50 million in additional cuts. Milwaukee was never going to get to a surplus, period.

--

And finally, I will continue to call for MTEA and MPS to work out additional concessions before the window closes at the end of this month.

MPS layoffs

by folkbum

Word is out today on the number of layoffs issued by my employer, the Milwaukee Public Schools, and it is a large number indeed: More than 500 positions total, including 354 teachers. (Updated to add, there's a workshop for laid-off teachers July 21 [pdf].)

Let's be clear about something: When the MTEA, our union, settled the teacher contract with MPS last fall, we did so making nearly $50 million in concessions. That is significant sacrifice to this point already, and, as I have noted before, that $50 million in concessions was enough to mean no (or very, very few) layoffs based on a reasonable projection--even a slightly pessimistic projection--of what the 2011-2012 budget would be.*

Scott Walker laid a budget on Wisconsin's schools that was nearly a billion dollars short of what schools were expecting. All districts, all over the state. Even though MPS and its union had bargained an agreement that left MPS on sounder footing than usual, particularly given the layoffs of last summer, Walker and the Republicans in the legislature tied the hands of MPS by cutting nearly $80 million from its projected budget. After MTEA conceded $50 million--worth nearly 500 teachers--suddenly we were expected to sacrifice more.

Which is not to say that we couldn't have. As I argued on this very blog and privately with MTEA leaders, there were things we could give up that would not mean significant additional hardship but that might save some of our colleagues' jobs. The Board and MPS are not the problem here, and pretending that they are doesn't help; taking a stand to draw attention to the damage being done to the state's educational system by the Walker-Fitzgerald regime doesn't keep my class sizes down.

But the point of this post is simply this: Everyone who says MTEA didn't try to save its teachers is a bald-faced liar. A pants-on-fire liar. And vilifying the wrong people.

* The "School Zone" blog post linked above does not mention this negotiation or the fact that MPS was on relatively sound footing before the massive budget cut from the state was announced. We'll see if the full story in tomorrow's paper, or any of the sure-to-be sensational coverage on TV, addresses the previous concessions. We already know talk radio is pretending it didn't happen.

For the record 2, pension boogalloo

by folkbum

By popular demand!, I bring you an addendum to the post I wrote last March urging my union, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, to sit down with the Milwaukee Public Schools and work out something to make the cuts imposed by Governor Walker's budget a little less devastating. (I did comment on twitter Tuesday during the Board meeting, but apparently my critics hanging on my every word to learn my opinion haven't figured out how to work the tittums machine yet.)

The backbone of this conviction of mine that something else needs to be done is simply this: Neither MPS nor the children of Milwaukee are the enemy here. Under different circumstances, I would agree with former MTEA president Mike Langyel when he says, bluntly, that we did the negotiating once already, and we're done.

And Mike is right about the first part, even if he's wrong about the next step: The union stepped up last fall and made concessions that squared the district's finances based on a reasonable prediction of what MPS's money situation would look like, using, in fact, a reduced prediction for revenue limits, rather than what the statutes projected. At the time the contract was signed, the outlook for 2011-2012 was good, with few layoffs or cuts predicted in large part because of the union concessions. The concessions already made will save nearly $100 million over the next two years. This on top of a negotiated pay freeze for this year and last.

At the time we signed this contract, no one in the union or at MPS expected the size and scope of the cuts that have materialized under Walker's budget. The cuts to schools seem to have been a huge surprise to everyone, in fact.

So let me be clear: Anyone who says that MTEA hasn't been willing to make concessions to save jobs or help out the district's finances (or "share the sacrifice") is just plain lying.

But still. I do think the union needs to step up again, because hurting our kids or our colleagues is a piss-poor way to move forward, even with the excuse that Scott Walker is the real enemy. Blaming larger class sizes on the governor's intransigence may be a decent rhetorical strategy, but practically it still leaves me with larger class sizes.

So I'm going back to what I wrote in March. The union should offer concessions, starting with taking furlough days and killing the "sweetener." The 2011-12 calendar includes required professional development days in the place of the former WEAC teacher convention days. Those should be made regular school days (or optional PD days), and MPS should end the school year two days earlier, paying teachers for two fewer days of work. And the sweetener should be discontinued or, at least, made into an opt-in supplemental pension. As I noted in March, that's a solid $20 million in additional concessions.

Teachers could also give back a portion of the scheduled raise next year--as noted, the first we're getting in a while. The raise is set to be 2.5%. At the same time, teachers will be kicking in 2% of our base salary for health insurance, which is part of how MPS is getting nearly $50 million in savings next year. If we give back the other .5%, and take, in effect, no raise for the third year in a row, that alone would pay for every school nurse and then some. A more generous offer might be to give up the full 2.5% raise on top of the insurance premium share. This also keeps the base salary steady, making the raise scheduled for 2012-2013 smaller on net for the district. Combined with the furloughs, that amounts to between 1.6% and 3.6% of salary; the district is seeking up to a 5.8% cut in salary, masked as a pension contribution.

And that's part of the key here for me: giving back something more without setting the precedent of teachers' paying doubly for their own deferred compensation (i.e., pensions).

I understand MTEA's point that opening any part of the contract could subject the whole contract to legal challenge pending various court actions. However, it seems the legislature is set to provide some cover for a concession like this if it is done quickly, which is what I encourage MTEA to do.

For the record

by folkbum

THURSDAY UPDATE: The MTEA position here is, apparently, "hold firm, no concessions." It sounds like this is in part because getting the contract re-opened and closed again by next Friday's deadline is asking too much, and in part because of long history of inflexibility, especially in the current leadership. I think it's the wrong decision. Read on for Wednesday's post:

I have been working on this post for like three weeks now, but this is not an easy one. Not because I have some kind of compunction against doing this sort of thing, but because the answers are not easy to come up with. MPS has a $74 million hole for next year's budget. That's a lot of cheddar.

(And, note, MPS estimates that the "tools" Walker provided to give MPS "maximum flexibility" would save MPS less than $50 million. He pretty clearly lied when he said school districts would make up in savings what he proposed in cuts.)

We have a limited amount of time to do something, anything. Starting next Friday, the ability for the union and the district sit down and hammer out a deal like this becomes illegal. As in, against the law. And the contract, absent any change before next Friday, will be locked in, as is, $74 million behind next year and $90 million behind the year after. With no ability to bargain a way out of the contract--and no legal way to break it, either--that could do some real damage to teachers, schools, and, worst of all, students.

So I keep making lists, running numbers, and puzzling over the possibilities.

But, for the record, this is what I passed on to several MTEA folks who attended a must-go meeting earlier tonight about, well, What To Do.

1. Furloughs. I've said it before, and I'll say it again--furlough teachers on teachers' convention days. Savings? About $4 million. If we made it three furlough days--give teachers the option of skipping the August organization day or the June record day (though I bet most of us would just work it free)--that gets us closer to $6 million.

2. The supplemental pension, aka "the sweetener." This is a 30-year-old anachronism, begun in the heady days of the Reagan administration, for reasons that no longer remain relevant. And I have made this argument repeatedly before, too. Dump it. At most, let teachers opt-out (no change to their salary) or stay in (with the cost of the pension plan deducted from their salary). In recent years, the annual MPS investment in the sweetener has ranged from $4 million to $19 million. Savings? Assume around $15 million.

For those of you playing along at home, that's about $20 million. Which is not chump change, I grant you (and all out of teachers' pockets), but it is not $74 million.

However, it is a pretty bold statement. And cuts beyond these, which will be hard for some to swallow, get really tricky. More on health care? The contract already calls for stepped-up contributions starting in June this year. Another year of wage freezes? We just did two years in a row frozen. I have heard rumors of a four-day school week (like they're doing in Hawaii this year), but we still have to put in a minimum number of hours with students.

I don't know--haven't heard yet--what was decided at that meeting earlier. I am hopeful that it was something like or as big as the cuts I offer here. And I hope it's something that can be sealed quickly, before all our hands are tied.

Collective Bargaining saves MPS money, lawsuit

ignorant commenters see union thugs at work, or a Win for Walker

by folkbum

Ye Olde Newspapernet contains an Associated Press [update, now Journal-written] blurb that an infamous lawsuit over a Little Blue Pill has been dropped:

The Milwaukee teachers union has dropped a lawsuit seeking to get its taxpayer-funded Viagra back.

The union sued in July 2010 to force the [Milwaukee Public Schools] school board to again include the erectile dysfunction drug and similar pills in its health insurance plans. [. . .] Court records indicate the union, the school board and the state labor commission agreed to dismiss the lawsuit on March 1.

Confused partisans infesting the Newspapernet's comment-teria have taken up strident assertions of which they know nothing and for which they muster no evidence. The lack of detail in the AP newslet is partly to blame of course, but so is the well-known cultural phenomenon of IHAVEACOMPUTERSOIMRIGHTSHUTUP, a syndrome all but unavoidable in the Newspapernet's comment corrals for the past month or so.

Says one ignoble typist: "This particular law suite [sic] is a perfect example of how the union bullies the state around to get it's [sic] way." Says another, heralding a victory that never happened: "Anybody who doesn't think this is a result of the move to change their bargaining rights is just naive. They clearly are taking this off the table because it was one of the best examples of union abuse out there." And a third fool: "Amazing - Walker has already won."

The real story is, of course, less exciting. A few months back, the local education concern and its workers settled a long-overdue contract*. Teachers--and don't be shocked when I say this, gentle readers, I am one of them!--conceded two full years of pay freezes, greater employee contribution to the cost of health insurance, and a new drug co-pay plan that shifts more costs to teachers, too. This contract saved the local education concern tens of millions in wage concessions and will save tens of millions more once the health insurance and drug changes start taking effect April 1.

The new drug plan, in addition to shifting more costs to employees, includes a new co-pay tier that covers non-preferred or non-formulary drugs. Teachers will pay a much larger share of the real cost of these drugs--a list much longer than Viagra, by the way--but they become a little bit more affordable (in the battle between Public Servant and Big Pharma, Public Servant always loses). The district still saves money, the union gets a concession for its teachers, and a lawsuit gets dropped.

This all happened because of a quaint little thing called "collective bargaining." You may have heard of it, as it's been in the news lately. Because both sides were at the table, both sides offered concessions until a deal was struck. The contract was long overdue because the previous administrators of the district had little interest in bargaining or making deals. (Sound familiar? It has become clear in recent days why Scott Walker opposes collective bargaining--he doesn't believe in concessions and deals!) New leadership led to reinvigorated talks and a quick settlement.

The ability of local units of government and their employees to make good deals like this is about to be scotched. Here's a success story to suggest why snuffing it out is foolish.

* The new contract is supposed to last four years. In the event that the contract lasts more than four years, labor and management should seek arbitration immediately.

something something MPS blah blah: BLAME THE UNION!!!!!11!

by folkbum

The other day, the newsamapaper had a story about how difficult it is for the Milwaukee Public Schools to unload its empty school buildings. These buildings need to go--there is no reason for MPS to hang on to them, and every chance I get to talk to anybody with authority (even potential authority, as I've talked about his to board candidates), I say sell them soon. But this is no easy task.

There are eleventy hundred reasons why this is true: bad real estate market; old buildings full of asbestos and otherwise not up to code; many of the properties in relatively undesirable locations. There are two significant reasons, though: one, as the paper reported, there's a deed restriction on the properties that makes it hard to sell them to other, non-MPS schools; and two, there is Administrative Policy 5.01(9) (pdf):

SCHOOL PROPERTIES DISPOSAL
In disposing of surplus school buildings and sites, the Board shall be guided by the following priorities based upon recommendations from various planning agencies, the needs of the school system, and input from the staff:
1st — Sale, for non-public purpose, with the goal of returning as many properties to the tax base as possible.
2nd — Lease with maintenance and operations activities performed by the district. Lease must cover all cost to the Board of School Directors.
3rd — Sale/lease to other governmental agencies.

This policy specifically dictates that the primary concern of the district in unloading vacant buildings is returning the sites to the private sector, which would help rebuild Milwaukee's sagging tax base. This policy, unlike the deed restriction, is not specific about what kind of non-profit or public entity the Board is discouraged from selling to: the top priority is getting properties back into private hands, period.

I point this out because, as is now the norm with any story involving MPS, no matter what the story actually is, there is a massive, simultaneous, knee-jerk response among the illiterati: IT'S ALL THE UNION'S FAULT. (Hence the title of this post; the substance of a story about MPS has little to do with the ultimate reaction.)

If you think I'm kidding, consider that before 8:30 that morning the comments blaming the union already started popping up on the Journal Sentinel story linked above, with such gems as "The only way is our way; the union way," and "I guess the reporters should have gone to a reliable source, like the teacher's union to find the real truth, right? Lol!"

This morning's story about two pols' plan to use state law to coerce MPS to sell or lease buildings to its competition is infested in the same way in its comment thread.

And there's this "Quick Hit," from Reader Advisory Committee member Thomas C. Burtnett (my emphasis): "Milwaukee Public Schools won’t sell even one of (only!) 27 empty school buildings to St. Marcus Lutheran School or Milwaukee College Prep, both 'high performing' charter schools [ed: St. Marcus is a voucher school, not a charter school] because the school would be operated 'in competition' with MPS. [. . .] This isn’t the 'public' talking. I smell a union."

Let's be clear: The union has no control over MPS administrative policy. Nothing, literally nothing in the MPS-MTEA contract has a thing to do with the size, shape, and location of the district's physical plant. Period.

Buh-buh-buh-buh-but the union buys the school board elections every year! I can imagine Burtnett or Charlie Sykes or the "Lol" geniuses on the comment threads at jsonline saying. Well, it seems like as good a time as any to remind people of reality on that front, as well. There are nine members of the Milwaukee Board of School Directors. Two of those nine--just two!--had union support in their last contested election. One of those nine had union support but ran unopposed. So of the nine members of the MPS board, six of them, a supermajority if you're counting, were opposed by the union in their last election. That's a 2-1 advantage for the non-union board members. To suggest that Board policy, then, is a product of the union or written at the direction of the union, is just dumb.

The fact is, MPS's policy of wanting first and foremost to move vacant properties into private hands and back onto the tax rolls makes sense. That MPS is acting like a business in "competition" with its actual competitors also makes sense; indeed, one of the biggest selling points behind the voucher movement is that "competition" is good for public schools. As much as Milwaukee Metro Association of Commerce head Tim Sheehy is blaming MPS's competitive attitude for their refusal to sell properties to voucher schools, it's Sheehy himself and his organization (plus groups like School Choice Wisconsin, on whose board Sheehy sits) that have long supported making the Milwaukee education sector into a competitive marketplace.

In fact, you could probably say that Sheehy, MMAC, voucher supporters, and charter pushers are much more responsible for MPS's reticence to sell than their preferred scapegoat, the union.

What's outrageous?

by folkbum

Since I started teaching for the Milwaukee Public Schools full-time in the fall of 1999, about half of my first days of school were done under an expired contract. It is looking more and more like this year's first day will be another, making two in a row. (Three in a row is the record--2003, 2004, 2005.)

Why is this? Is it because MTEA, my union, is a bunch of hardened bastards who refuse to negotiate, who won't make concessions, whose only concerns are gimme, gimme, gimme? No.

In fact, every one of those expired-contract first days has been because the district's negotiators have delayed, stalled, demanded arbitration, withheld critical information from the union, and bargained in the media rather than at the table.

Indeed, in the current round of negotiations, the union has been ready for two years to get a settlement, and the district has gone months at a time, literally, before returning to the table with new or adjusted offers. Late last winter, for example, when the media campaign ramped up about teachers' health care plans (this following months of ignoring union requests to bargain), MTEA requested utilization data in order to help craft a revised proposal. Those data were delivered just a few weeks ago, long after the superintendent released his draft budget proposing to lay off hundreds of employees, long after the layoff notices were sent. In the intervening months a solution could have been achieved, except the district delayed because it is their strategy to fight these things in the media and make the union look like the bad guys.

All of this is outrageous, right? A public entity negotiating in bad faith with its employees and spreading lies in the media, this should cause all good people to stand and demand better accountability. But no. What is it, really, that spurs outrage?

Viagra.

(I am anxious to see what google ads appear in the sidebar after this.)

For some reason--I cannot say for sure, but I am guessing the AP was tipped off by district officials--a long-running legal battle over whether the district's prescription formulary can offer female sexual dysfunction treatments but deny coverage for male sexual dysfunction treatments made the news this week. After all, it had been a few weeks since any news had broken about the status of contract (non-)talks and whether there were any breakthroughs that might have saved some teachers' jobs. So someone felt the pot needed stoking, and then the AP offered its story. Viagra is, literally, a much sexier story than the way the district conducts its negotiations.

And, of course, outrage. Jason Fields, reliably anti-MPS Milwaukee legislator: "You've got to be kidding me. [. . .] What are our priorities?"

I expect more soon, and perhaps even renewed calls for state intervention. One state legislator wrote to me, "[This] is exactly what nauseates me and 99% of Milwaukee when it comes to teacher compensation. MTEA has not done anything creative since they were created."

Again, outrage. And for false reasons, too: MTEA has been incredibly creative in trying to find solutions. In 2005 for example, when the contract went to arbitration (an arbitration that was settled after, technically, it had expired), the union offered to have every teacher pay 1% of salary, on top of out-of-pocket costs, to health care costs. This plan would have saved taxpayers money compared to the district plan the arbitrator settled on--in fact, it would have been much more expensive for me at the time, I wrote. Yet it was only long after the arbitration that the media, who were allies with the district in its public negotiating, finally admitted that maybe the teachers had a point. This should be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

More recently, the Board proposed a way to offset health care costs: a two-day furlough for all teachers ... equivalent to about 1% of salary! That the district took so long to come around to the idea should also be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

MTEA had to drag the district kicking and screaming into adopting a wellness plan that has saved the district tens of millions in costs and has meant that MPS's health cost inflation has been lower than the regional and national average. The union got in changes to retiree health care that had those costs decreasing for several years. That the union is still blamed for out of control health spending despite its creativity and success should be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

MTEA has also designed one of the most innovative programs to identify, mentor, and if needed fire underperforming teachers, but you wouldn't know that from the way people talk about the union protecting bad teachers. The way the media attacked MTEA for letting young teachers be laid off rather than some undefined, non-specific, theoretical group of "bad" teachers certainly seemed to me like it should be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

Beyond that, the fact still remains that MPS teachers are just about the lowest paid in SE Wisconsin, and even counting our benefits we are average in total compensation compared to peer districts. You don't know this because it's not, apparently, important for stories about MPS to include context. It's not, apparently, a priority to make sure that the people who choose to work with the most difficult students in the region get rewarded for their service. This, too, should be outrageous. But it's not--viagra is.

So go ahead. Have your viagra outrage orgy. (Now I'm just asking for trouble with the google ads.) Get it all out of your system, make your comments about how this will make it easier for teachers to molest students or whatever else it is you feel you need to say. Believe me, I've seen that and worse in many places the last couple of days, sick as it is. Because in a few days I head back in to school to do what none of the rest of you seem to care about: Actually helping the children of Milwaukee have a better life than what they see around them every day. Your outrage does squat to change that.

Arbitrate This

by folkbum

As I mentioned yesterday, this morning's editorial is calling for the contract between the Milwaukee Public Schools and its union, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, to go to arbitration.

Though later they say something conciliatory like "let's realize that everything must be on the table," this and the paper's recent history make it clear that the only thing they give a hoot about is one change that will ultimately be useless and that ignores the larger context of MPS's budget problems.

Arbitration, the editorialists write, "is the best option unless the Milwaukee School Board and teachers union agree on moving employees into a less-expensive health care option." To clarify, MPS teachers and most other employees have a choice between two different insurance plans, an HMO and PPO. What's available in these two plans is public, as the MTEA has posted it on their website (.pdf). The PPO is a better deal, mostly because of somewhat higher limits and more choice of doctors, though out-of-pocket costs are higher.

This is all frustrating, because it is pretty clear that the editorial board does not read its own reporting. Start with the report Amy Hetzner filed just last year on area school district salary and compensation. Hetzner's analysis found that average MPS salaries were very low for the region. Its fringe benefit package, though high, brought the full compensation package for MPS to merely middle of the road. To pretend that these benefits are the root of the problem, or are the most important factor in creating the current MPS budget distress, is ridiculous. If MPS's compensation package were truly the bane that the editorial board believes, then area school districts that compensate their teachers better would be falling apart far worse than MPS--and clearly, they are not. (Not to suggest that all local school districts are looking at rosy pictures next year; they are not. But they are not looking at challenges on a scale that MPS is.)

In addition, the low average salary identified by Hetzner contributes significantly to the shocking statistic that the editorializers perseverate upon: "The district pays 74.2 cents in benefits of every dollar it pays its employees in salary," they note. First, they do not clarify that MPS calculates this number using not just negotiated benefits--health insurance, for example--but adding on Social Security and Medicare taxes, state-mandated pension deductions, and other items that are not contractually negotiated. Second, remember your fractions: The low average salary--which would be the denominator, the bottom number--means that any increase in the benefit level--which would be the numerator, the top number--is amplified artificially.

This is true because MPS teachers, like teachers all over the state of Wisconsin, have opted to trade salary increases for mere maintenance of health insurance. Indeed, a quick check of national statistics bears this out. Wisconsin currently ranks 20th in average salary and 49th in starting salary. That site notes the 10-year increase, and Wisconsin ranks 43rd--meaning 42 states increased teachers' salaries more in the last ten years than we did. Going back to 1990, note that the average Wisconsin salary has increase by a mere $13,000; our neighbors in Minnesota saw their salaries double. Illinois and Michigan and even Iowa all beat us in salary increases. Spencer Coggs, when I spoke to him last week, put it to me this way, and I think it makes sense: Wisconsin teachers--and Milwaukee teachers, in particular--guessed correctly over the last 20 years that what would be valuable is not salary but health insurance. And people now want to punish us for getting it right.

In Milwaukee, this is particularly galling: We already have the most challenging teaching assignment in the metro area, with just about the lowest average salary--particularly apparent for teachers who have the most experience and the highest levels of training--and live in the most expensive health care market in the midwest. The one good thing we have left going for us, an ability to negotiate that market with peace of mind, is the target.

And here's the kicker: Changing the health plan from PPO to HMO isn't going to save much money at all: The district offered an estimate a while ago, noted by the editorial board here: "An estimated $47 million in health care savings could spare 400 teaching jobs." Their math is right on how much teachers cost, but the "estimated" savings is nowhere near accurate. The way MPS arrived at the number was to take the average cost of an employee on the HMO and subtract that from the average cost of an employee on the PPO, multiplied by the number of employees on the PPO. Problem is, the average cost of an employee on the HMO will shoot right up if all of us are on that plan. Why? Because the costs are based on actual utilization, and employees who choose the PPO do so generally because they have higher-cost or more challenging needs. Those health issues will not magically go away under the HMO, and MPS will still find itself paying for that care. In addition, the HMO requires no annual deductible or co-insurance or cop-pays.

The real fault lies in the fact that the cost of meeting the needs of MPS's students--and students around the state--are increasing for everyone faster than the rate at which the state or the federal government or even local taxpayers are prepared to meet. (More on that tomorrow.) To take this uncomfortable reality and use it as a bludgeon against the people on the front lines and doing the hard work of teaching the state's most difficult students is an offense against common sense and decency. Especially when the facts line up against the editorial board's ridiculous position.

RIP, Tom Morgan

by folkbum

I just got a bulletin from MTEA, the Milwaukee teacher's union, that Tom Morgan, the executive director of the union, passed away yesterday. Apparently he had a sudden, unexpected heart attack while on vacation out of the country. MTEA has not posted anything online yet, but I'm sure they will soon.

Parent Involvement series in MJS--first reactions (note updates below)

by folkbum

Many moons ago, I mentioned here that Erin Richards of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel was working on a series about parent involvement in schools.

It is running this week, finally, and it is good. (It seems I have a cameo in today's story.)

Yesterday's story, the first, has some sobering statistics about MPS and its failure to connect with parents. Here's something from it, featuring the blame-teachers-first mentality of our present administration:

But MPS has a spotty record, long operating a splintered outreach program that makes it easy to catch the same parents repeatedly and miss the vast majority that needs assistance. [. . .]

"(Teachers) still view themselves as individual practitioners," [Superintendent William] Andrekopoulos said. "We will try to work with them and resolve these issues, but we don't have any language in the (union) contract that says they absolutely have to work with parents."

But leaders in the Milwaukee Teachers' Education Association [MTEA] say the administration has never tried to engage the union at the bargaining table on the issue.

Blame the union, blame the union--and miss a key point. A teacher's work with parents is, in fact, a part of the evaluation process we all undergo (teachers are evaluated annually for the first five years, then every three years after that or as deemed necessary by the principal). Principals can identify problem areas in evaluations and require teachers to work on those. If word came from the top that every principal would be checking parent contacts during evaluations, you'd better believe the contacts we make (for indeed, we do try) would be better documented.

In addition, it's a fairly common thing for schools to include in their School Improvement Plans (all of which are public documents available from the MPS website; search for a school name and "school improvement plan" to see specific ones) better coordination and contact with parents. Service to the SIP is also a factor in teacher evaluations.

Finally, I would add that the amount of training I have had as a professional on dealing with parents is right about zero. No district or school inservices that I can recall had parent outreach as a topic. Teachers and the union don't set those topics. The one moment I do remember learning about better parent outreach came in an MTEA presentation for new teachers back when I first started in the district. I gathered with a bunch of other newbies in the basement of the MTEA building, on my own time, and heard suggestions from a panel of experienced teachers.

So why, again, are we blaming the union?

UPDATED to add two things: One, not seen yet (though it may be coming) in the discussion about parents and MPS is the fact that so many MPS parents send their children, particularly older children, to schools far away from home or even work. At a public meeting held for the community of my school regarding significant potential changes to the school, not one parent showed up to speak. Not one. Admittedly, the meeting was a bit short-notice (a different story entirely), but that not one parent was there is stunning to contemplate. (I addressed the myth of the Neighborhood Student in my last Compass column.)

Two, bills up for consideration right now to move away from elected leadership in the district to appointed leadership under the control of the mayor will just further remove parents from the process. Indeed, the leading bill, Colón-Taylor, would re-purpose the elected school board to be a buffer between parents and the real governance of the district. Given what we already know, thanks in large part to Erin Richards's collecting all the info into one place--about MPS's failures with parents, how is it rational that such a move is even being considered?

Once again, the teachers have to MOP up

by folkbum

It never fails: Time after time, I write here about what could be better about schooling in general and the Milwaukee Public Schools in particular. Comments are, well, few and far between. And, time after time (at least lately), I detail why a coup, a forced takeover of the Milwaukee Public Schools by the mayor is both unnecessary and a bad idea. Comments are, well, along the lines of "Well what's your plan, idiot?"

You can see why I get frustrated about this.

Now, though, there's a solid, complete competing plan, written by teachers for the district and the classrooms that they know better than anyone else. It's being called the Milwaukee Opportunity Plan, and it's being presented by the local and state teachers unions.

To be clear: I had nothing to do with the development of this plan; I didn't even know it was coming until I saw the news yesterday afternoon. But I have read through it, and, let me tell you that it is head and shoulders above anything the mayor, the governor, or the daily paper--all the big takeover proponents--have put forward. (The paper's answer to "where's the plan" was, in fact--and I'm not making up this quote--"In our book, getting a traditionally ineffectual board out of the way is a plan." Please!)

And also to be clear: I do not believe that this plan is going to make all the bad go away and turn MPS into a rainbow factory full of ponies and kittens. The MOP proposals here are research-based, seem sensible, and no doubt will have an effect. But all of these things, like most other reforms proposed or implemented in the last two decades, will create at best small gains at the margins. I will argue now as I have consistently since I started writing on the matter that the problems of the Milwaukee Public Schools are generally Milwaukee problems, and not schools problems. As long as our students struggle with poverty, crime, unstable families, homelessness and transience, and poor health, our job is going to be incredibly difficult. It's not that I don't like this plan--I do, much better than the no-plan of mayoral control--but I don't have faith that this alone is going to significantly close the achievement gap or get MPS off the District Identified for Improvement list.

The MOP is comprehensive but straightforward, and covers all of MPS's problem areas. This includes separating leadership of the district into a CEO and a CAO (A for academic). The board is already leaning that way, through the creation of an Office of Accountability that put some of the financial operation more directly under board control. Which is not to say that MPS doesn't handle its financial operations well--it wins awards, after all--but overseeing a billion-dollar budget and the education of 83,000 students is tough. I mean, I wouldn't want to have to do it. Having someone whose only job is to keep an eye on the day-to-day operations means more efficient budgets, and that should ameliorate one of the biggest knocks against MPS.

The MOP also includes a governance change at the board level--though one again already proposed by the board--of redistricting the board to eliminate the city-wide seat and giving the near south side its own representative. There are plenty of more proposed changes to the bureaucracy, too, including some to bring the district in line with national norms, something we don't always follow and that got us dinged in the McKinsey audit last spring.

There is, as can be expected from a plan proposed by teachers, a lot to do with the classroom, too, including many of the things I talk about regularly here as well as some of the things being proposed by the current district leadership. This includes everything from re-establishment of alternative programs for chronically disruptive students to standardizing curricula across schools to combat the effects of high student mobility. (I generally don't like the latter idea; it is an admission of defeat regarding one of the city's biggest problems and it will gut the variety and diversity of our schools.) The plan includes better professional development and more mentoring of new teachers. The MOP also asks for an expansion of the union's TEAM program, which has proven effective at improving teacher quality (and helping many bad teachers find the door); eliminating the residency requirement; and changing the teacher pay system.

In addition, the plan offers a number of ideas that I have floated here in the past: incentives to MPS students to become MPS teachers; smaller class sizes at key grades, like grade 9; better principal training and leadership; and bringing back arts education for all young students--the data are clear that arts education early makes later education in other subjects easier.

There is also a set of reforms to the school day and the school year. Earlier this year, the administration proposed using one-time stimulus money to extend the school day long-term; the union pointed out that that was a bad idea. But here they are at the table with a long-term, sustainable, thoughtful plan for more time in school daily and extended school year opportunities for our lowest-performing students.

The MOP proposal begins with what is perhaps most important--parental involvement. I noted at the top of this post that I don't believe that this plan alone, or any plan that focuses on the schools rather than the wider community as the locus of reform, won't produce significantly different results. I really do believe that. However, I know that we won't get any results if we don't have the parents and the community on board with the changes we do make within the schools. And that's the key difference between something like the teachers' plan here and the takeover plan that might be imposed from above: Teachers know that reaching out to the community, rather than tearing the community apart, creates a better learning environment. Will this plan have any better luck than efforts currently underway to expand parental involvement? I don't know; this is a hard thing and has been for some time. But this at least starts with the simple proposition that the parents and the community have value and hold many of the keys to success--and they need to be our partners, not our enemies.

As I said, at the very least, this offers a starting point for the "Well, what's your plan?" crowd. The documents about the MOP are here; read and ask why this isn't worth pursuing at least as vigorously (although ...) as the mayoral takeover idea.

Q: How do you know the MPS teachers' contract is about to expire?

by folkbum--UPDATED

A: The alarmist studies are out from the usual suspects screaming about how excessive teachers' benefits are.

So, as expected, the sky is falling:

In a report commissioned by the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce, the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, an independent, non-profit organization, forecasts continuing annual cuts in services to students for at least the next several years as expenses grow faster than revenue.

The report uses both optimistic and pessimistic financial assumptions. The difference is whether the equivalent of $40 million or $100 million in current spending will have to be cut in the 2009-'10 school year.

That forecast doesn't account for another major problem looming for MPS: New national accounting rules will require that a larger share of expected future costs for post-retirement benefits to employees be funded in current budgets.

If MPS sells bonds to cover its future obligations to retirees - one way of dealing with the issue - that could add more than $100 million a year to spending and, in effect, increase the gap between revenue and need to more than $200 million by three years from now.

Summing up the report, Todd A. Berry, president of Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, writes, "Needless to say, MPS has difficult years in its immediate future."

Tim Sheehy, president of the MMAC, put it more strongly: "The magnitude of the fiscal challenge facing MPS is stark. . . . Without real change, the district's viability is at risk."

Bankruptcy! Insolvency! Fire and brimstone coming down from the skies! Rivers and seas boiling! Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes! Volcanoes! The dead rising from the grave! Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!!!!

Look, there is little doubt that the Milwaukee Public Schools faces challenging fiscal times ahead. Us and about 400 other districts in the state. (Even conservative West Bend faces a $119 million hole it wants to plug.)

There is also little doubt that a group like Sheehy's MMAC would try to place the blame on us teachers--even though the data clearly show that we teachers are poorer than our colleagues around the state:

Using figures generally from a couple years ago, the report says the average teacher pay in MPS was below the statewide median, but that was largely because MPS teachers overall had less experience.

In the main funds used to pay for educating kids--the largest portions of the MPS budget--75% of spending went to compensation for employees: 49% for salary and 26% for benefits, the report says. That meant that 34% of compensation spending was for benefits--about five points higher than the state average. In 1995, benefits made up 26% of spending on compensation. The rise is largely due to escalating health insurance costs.

The numbers in the sidebar make this point more clearly: The average salary in MPS is $35,439, while benefits total $21,439. That means the average MPS teacher is earning about $57,000 in salary and benefits. (DISCLAIMER: I'M NOT ASKING FOR MORE.) This compares with an average salary and benefits total for the state as a whole of about $63,500. That's a significant difference.

But the paragraphs I just quoted here also draw attention to two factors: Health care costs are out of control, and if somebody would finally get around to doing something--like we should have done 15 years ago instead of instituting revenue caps and the QEO--compensation cost growth could slow.

The second is the artificially high ratio of salary to benefits. This was an issue also stoked by the JS a few years back preceeding the last heavy round of bargaining. Here's the first article in a series from November 2003, by Bruce Murphy. Note this paragraph, my emphasis:

By contrast, Milwaukee's five major taxing authorities spend [for benefits] as follows: Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District: 68 cents per salary dollar. Milwaukee Public Schools: 51 cents, and 55 cents projected in 2004. Milwaukee County: 47 cents, and soaring to a projected 65 cents in 2004. Milwaukee Area Technical College: 35 cents. City of Milwaukee: 32 cents.

The current MMAC/WISTAX study actually was of 2004, and puts the benefits spending at 34%. I don't know how or whether the benefit calculations were different between Murphy's analysis and MMAC/WISTAX's. But the 55% projection seems alarmingly high in comparison to the retrospective 34% reality. (I'm thinking about emailing Murphy, now at Milwaukee Magazine, and asking what he makes of the difference.) In either story, though, the important thing to note is that because Milwaukee's teachers are paid less than other teachers around the state--and because teachers around the state generally have voluntarily passed on raises to maintain benefits--the bennies look high in comparison to the artificially low salaries. (UPDATE: Mystery solved--see the comments.)

But after the Murphy series in 2003, at the direction of our superintendent (see his pull quote in the JS story linked just above!), negotiations between teachers and administrators shut down. The superintendent held two "town hall" meetings, inviting teachers and basically telling us that, one, we don't deserve what we get and, two, we were going to thank him when the district was done screwing us. Two years later, the district won an arbitration that, as it turned out, may well have been more expensive than the union's competing proposal.

I expect that this study, and free JS coverage it was sure to earn, is the opening salvo from the anti-public school forces in the run-up to the end of this month when our current contract expires. But I think the study may well contain two poison pills, neither of which got the kind of play that they should have in the newspaper. First, this MMAC/WISTAX analysis has these paragraphs in the full study (.pdf):

Just over half (55%) of MPS’s 2003-04 “educational” spending was on instruction (see pie chart above). The next largest category was business administration (15% of the total). Included in the business administration category is student transportation. District and school administration was next, accounting for 9% of spending. Pupil and staff services each were about 7% of the total.

Recent trends show per student instructional spending lagging increases in other areas. Spending on instruction rose 4.4% per year from 2000 through 2004. Of the major spending categories, only business administration rose slower. Staff services rose fastest, climbing 5.8% annually. Administration, pupil services and central services all rose more than 5% per year.

WISTAX's report for schools in Wisconsin generally in 2004 reported this:

Wisconsin school districts budgeted to spend $9,963 per student in 2003-04, up $300 (3.1%) from the year before. The majority of expenditures were for instructional costs, which climbed 3.5% to $5,827.

Doing the math, that means statewide, the "instructional" spending average was about 58.5%, compared to Milwaukee's 55% (I assume WISTAX would use the same formula in both analyses). So spending on teachers--which is the vast majority of of "instructional" spending--is growing slower than anything else in the budget and pretty significantly below the state average.

Second, the study does squarely finger the part of MPS's budget that doesn't lag behind the rest of the state:

The biggest difference between administration at MPS and at other districts is the number of assistant principals (AP). In 2005, MPS had 541 students per AP. The seven comparable districts averaged 1,177. Thus, relative to its student count, MPS had more than twice as many AP’s.

A second way to look at the number of AP’s is relative to the number of principals. MPS had more AP’s than principals in 2005; the other districts had one AP for every two principals.

The JS story gave this startling fact one. Single. Line. In the sidebar.

In short, teacher salaries and benefits are not what's driving MPS to the brink. Some changes external to MPS, such as who pays for health care and how, could slow that drive. Further, what MPS pays its teachers is below state average, and what MPS puts into "instruction"--most of which is teacher compensation--also lags behind. Again, I'm not suggesting MPS fork over keys to the vault when it sits down with teachers; none of us is in this business to get rich.

The Working Together, Achieving More strategic planning process, while not perfect, has the potential to provide a certain level of unity and focus for the district, and the last thing we need is a wedge, a bitter, protracted negotiation session. (I wonder how Sheehy's MMAC feels about that plan, as it was developed with funds from the competing Greater Milwaukee Committee.) But what will happen when the media and the anti-public school folks start escalating this fight, with the misleading quotes about "Cadillac benefits"? What will happen when the superintendent breaks out the rhetoric he was using four years ago?

I don't want a replay of 2003 and 2004. Those were awful years, and, frankly, I don't think teachers' morale has recovered yet; there's a lot of spite, on both sides, just below the surface. If this negotiation once again becomes about how teachers are breaking the backs of taxpayers, I don't know what will become of this district. It may well implode.

Then again, I suppose that's what MMAC has wanted all along.

Reflexive union-bashing is just lazy writing

by folkbum

Well, this turned out to be longer than I expected, even though what I'm writing about is not the part makes me angry from James T. Harris's call to shut down the Milwaukee Public Schools. It is, however, an issue I want to dispense with separately;

[O]n the whole, M.P.S. has de-evolved into a system that exists solely for the purpose of sustaining itself. By that I mean teachers' salaries and their Rolls-Royce benefits. There is power in the union.

The many dedicated M.P.S. teachers mentioned above--those not remaining solely for the purposes of sustaining and enriching themselves and their union--must do their jobs in the face of [problems omitted for brevity].

Harris is a relatively new blogger on the scene, and his arrival has been greeted with effusive praise by the right Cheddarsphere. But when I read something like this, it makes me wonder, as this kind of union bashing is really just laziness. Not just because it's cliche--and, jeebus help us, it's so tired--but because it betrays a level of ignorance about what's actually happening in the Milwaukee Public Schools and with the teachers union.

Set aside the notion that any union's first priority is to take care of its members--if they didn't fight for fair compensation for their members, they wouldn't be much of a union, no? MTEA specifically and the teachers unions generally are deeply involved in making education better. AFT, NEA, and their affiliates do more professional development with their members than most other unions combined. The MTEA developed a mentoring program, seen as a national model, for improving poor teachers or accelerating their way out the door. The MTEA is an integral partner with the Milwaukee Public Schools in developing its long-term plan (the "Working Together, Achieving More" process).

Harris seems to think that many teachers (and he doesn't specify how many, but with words like "exists solely for the purpose," it makes me think he's saying most) are teaching just because it's a big fat paycheck with health insurance. This is laughable. It's beyond laughable. No one goes into this business for the money. No one stays for the money. It isn't that good--believe me, I wish it were. If teaching in Milwaukee were such a cash cow, we wouldn't be short of teachers, and, maybe, Harris himself would go back into the profession and join us.

More telling than what Harris wrote, though, was what he said on his radio show Sunday night--the podcast is linked from the post above. He had on Corey Thompson, an assistant professor of education at Cardinal Stritch. About halfway through the podcast, toward the end of the conversation with Thompson, the guest starts talking about "leadership issues" in MPS. In context, it sounds like Thompson wants to talk about where and how the district spends its money. But Harris interrupts, getting more animated at that moment than at any other time in the show. He just goes off, putting words in Thompson's mouth:

You know what you're talking about, Dr. Thompson? I'm gonna say it. You're talking about the union! The teacher's union is the leadership, the only game in town when it comes to a roadblock to improving, or any kind of help whatsoever in the public school system.

Harris offers no evidence, no examples. He names no names and identifies no roadblocks. There is nothing there but reflexive animus. And, to his credit, Thompson doesn't take the bait. Harris implies that Thompson weenies out because Thompson has to work with the public schools and can't bite the hand that proverbially feeds him, but Thompson steers the conversation back to reality.

At the end of the show, Harris takes a call from someone who mentions merit pay for teachers, and blames the union for blocking it. The caller offers nothing to suggest that merit pay would improve schools (or, for that matter, that it's been proposed for MPS; it's hard to block something that hasn't been offered). Harris doesn't suggest how merit pay would improve schools, either. And he can't, as such data don't exist, even in places that have tried merit pay.

Worse, though, the caller says a lack of merit pay leaves administrators unable to run their schools, because they can't "pick and choose" teachers, or reward or punish them: "There's no one running the ship," the caller says. Harris fully endorses that, but it again reveals a certain ignorance about what really happens in the schools. Administrators have tremendous influence over who teaches in their schools, and have a wealth of tools at their disposal for identifying and dealing with bad teachers. If administrators won't use those tools, that's hardly the union's fault. If administrators won't take leadership roles seriously, that's hardly the union's fault. Look, if the administrators can't run a school and manage their employees, maybe someone should suggest merit pay for principals!

In none of the reporting about the Milwaukee Public Schools--either Sarah Carr's current excellent series on safety, or in any of the past stories about performance or anything else--is there a suggestion that what's dragging down Milwaukee's schools is the teachers or their union. That doesn't stop people from making that association, I know (including Dad29, who bizarrely claims that MTEA is silent on the issue of school violence, despite the several quotes from MTEA staff and officers in the very article he links to). There's no demonstrable causal link between the MTEA and the problems of MPS. In fact, I'd argue that without union protection, you'd see even the most dedicated of good MPS teachers eyeing the suburbs more seriously.

So that's what it comes down to: Empty overheated anti-union rhetoric, lazy writing and thinking, tired tropes about merit pay and roadblocks. If Harris has something substantive to say about the union, with real examples and facts, then he should be putting that on the table instead.

More Reactions to Green's Education "Plan"

Unsurprisingly, the unions don't like Mark Green's education "plan," released Tuesday. WEAC's release is the only one on-line right now; they point out, as I did, that the "plan" is a "mish-mash of half-policies--cooked up in Washington, D.C. think tanks--that ignores the most meaningful research on education, does not recognize the importance of local control, and disregards much of what we know about what works for Wisconsin’s great schools."

AFT-Wisconsin's release, which showed up in my mailbox but not yet on their website, reminds us of Green's Congressional record on education. "As Congressman," the AFT notes, "Mark Green voted against $7.8 billion in funding for education programs, and voted to cut $806 million from No Child Left Behind, an already underfunded mandate." Makes it hard to trust that Green now has the best interest of kids in mind.

MTEA, my union, also dropped a release in my mailbox before it went online: "None of these initiatives," they remind us, "have a proven track record for increasing student achievement. [. . .] The real solutions to creating strong schools and strong communities are providing adequate funding for our schools, implementing research-based reforms like small class sizes and early education opportunities, and providing professional development to help teachers improve their practice." That is indeed where the research shows investment makes the biggest difference, and Green's "plan" is silent on all of them.

All of the unions whose reactions I've seen have missed the point that Green's plan means, basically, the end of collective bargaining as we know it, by eliminating the last incentive schools boards had not to impose a qualified economic offer (QEO) every time negotiations roll around. I shudder to think what would have happened to my own contract--when the superintendent initially called for all employees, even those only earning $10,000 or $12,000 a year, to contribute up to $8,000 a year out of their salary for health care. We went to arbitration and got an okay deal (though not the best deal for taxpayers) because the QEO law as written is still a double-edged sword for districts. Green's plan takes away the edge of the sword that hurts them, and adds another edge to be used against unions.

Two editorials popped up in the Google News this morning about Green's "plan," including one from the state's largest daily paper which says Green's "ideas" are "worth debating." They then proceed to dismiss all the aspects of Green's "plan" they discuss except one--expanding the Milwaukee voucher program to include schools in the whole county, not just the city. They don't even touch the most significant elements of the plan, like the so-called "70% solution" or the end of collective bargaining on compensation issues altogether. The editorial seems as empty an exercise as Green's "plan" in the first place. C'mon, editors, you can do better than that.

The second is an op-ed from the chair of the UW's Badger Herald editorial board. If this is the kind of journalistic leader our future holds, jeebus help us:

The Wisconsin chapter of the American Federation of Teachers got more specific in their press release, which they released a month ago after gaining wind of Mr. Green’s proposal. Quoting a Standard & Poor’s study, AFT-Wisconsin said “there is no significant positive correlation between the percentage of funds that districts spend on instruction and the percentage of students who score proficient or higher on state reading or math tests.”

The quote, of course, suggests there is no connection between the performance of a teacher and the performance of his or her students. A school district might as well fire all its teachers and instead show students a continuous loop of film strips every day--it would save a boatload of money on instructional costs and students’ test performance wouldn’t drop at all.

Just . . . wow. AFT's quote "suggests" no such thing, there, Bucky. Remember for a second the definition of "classroom spending" that the national "65% Solution" movement uses--anything from football uniforms to books and computers--much of which tells us nothing about the performance of a teacher. But worst of all, our friend Bucky didn't even bother to look up the original S&P study (.pdf) to find out if S&P actually agrees with his interpretation of a one-line quote. And the answer is, um, no (my emphasis):

Standard & Poor’s analysis of district level spending and student achievement data in the states that are currently considering a 65 Percent Solution reveals that higher instructional spending allocations are not consistently linked to higher achievement levels. This does not mean that how districts spend their money does not matter; in fact, allocating more money to instruction is a laudable goal. However, mandating a specific spending allocation is not likely to provide a “silver bullet” solution to raising student achievement. The wide range in districts’ academic proficiency rates at any given spending allocation suggests that the specific ways that school districts use their instructional dollars may have as much, if not more, of an impact on student achievement as the percentage of dollars spent in the classroom.

To be fair to Bucky Badger, he does go on to re-write Green's 70% proposal to something he likes better before declaring it a rousing success. But even then--a proposal to specifically limit the amount spent on "administration"--Bucky doesn't take into account the very different needs of districts all across the state or provide a definition for what he thinks "administration" means. I worry for the future of journalism indeed.

And, of course, I worry about the strength of K-12 education is Green gets his muddy mitts all over it.

But my favorite reaction to Green's education "plan"? The announcement that a national pro-voucher group is going to spend $1 million to help Green gut public education in the state. Hm . . . Green announces a massive expansion of vouchers on Tuesday, and within a week a pro-voucher group is buying TV time . . . Must just be a coincidence.

MTEA's ad, and the irrational Cheddarsphere's foaming response

The pro-voucher folks dump what must be hundreds of thousands of dollars into the ads calling for an end to the "cap" on the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, ads that, on occasion, have labeled the other side--my side--racists. And the right Cheddarsphere stands up and applauds.

Predictably, the moment someone from the other side starts presenting fact-based arguments against wanton cap-lifting, the same half of the Cheddarsphere goes crazy. Even I got hit with some of the mouth-foam, and I haven't even written about it yet.

The ad is produced by my union (putting the biases up front), the MTEA. You can listen it to it here; the newspaper's story from this morning is here; Seth's take is excellent.

Much of the right's consternation comes from the fact that someone is finally mounting a more public opposition campaign. "Th-th-they can't do that!" they sputter. "Consider their motives!" they say. Face it: Someone has to stand up for the public schools. Milwaukee's public servants--our elected representatives--are doing that, but they only get as much access to the court of public opinion as the papers let them have. The school district is in no position to spend money (what money?) to defend itself. Who else would do it?

Then, of course, there are those who don't want to accept the facts presented in the ad. Fraley:

The value of homes in Milwaukee are not decreasing due to School Choice. School Choice is not the cause of MPS' problems. Choice schools have accountability and their performance certainly can be no worse than MPS.

Pawlak:

How can 15,000 kids going to private schools equal an *increase* in MPS clas size? [. . .] How is taking 15,000 children out of MPS causing a decrease in educational materials available to the remaining students?

Somehow, they refuse to believe that sucking money out of the public schools could serve to increase class sizes, create shortages of supplies, and otherwise jeopardize schools' quality. Because yes MPS pays for these voucher students, these voucher students that state doesn't count as MPS's. They also don't consider that the higher taxes Milwaukee residents are paying because of the voucher program might also have something to do with declining property values.

And we had a long talk about accountability last week.

The new sound bite I'm trying out is simple: We Milwaukeeans are paying more for this voucher program that gives us less--less accountability, less for Milwaukee's children, less transparency.

I'd stop there--and I really should, since I've been trying to follow sensei Feldstein's rule--but I was invoked. I laughed through much of Peter's post there, and not only because I am watching "The Office" as I write this. He starts with a quote from this post of mine to "prove" that we want an end to the voucher program. I'm sure Peter's PI license is in the mail . . .

But here are the real laugh lines:
[T]he tax dollars that are being used belong to the taxpayer, not the government. [. . .] All this does is allow the parents to use the portion of their property taxes for education to choose their own children's education.
So, if I give the choice parents each their $1.15 back, will you finally let me start demanding accountability for my tax dollars? You know, as a taxpayer?

Also, there is accountability to the parents: bad Choice schools go out of business.
One, Peter. One school, according to the Public Policy Forum, has closed because parents abandoned it. Why didn't the parents close Northside? Or L.E.A.D.E.R.? Or Academic Solutions? Or Louis Tucker? If it were a true free market, DPI wouldn't have to do the closing.

Quick. Name any monopoly that provides a high quality product at low cost.
I don't have to. This is what we in the business call a straw man: Public schools are not a monopoly. You think private schools didn't exist before the voucher program? You think they won't after the voucher experiment comes to an end?

If the MTEA thinks its product is so exceptional, why do three out of 10 teachers send their children elsewhere?
If private school teachers think their product is so exceptional, why do seven out of 10 teachers send their children to public schools?

The overall MPS graduation rate is 36%, according to Jay Greene, a nationally recognized expert on graduation rates.
Okay, technically, that's Susan Greene's joke, but, I mean, c'mon . . . Jay Greene an "expert"?

In the end, for all of the foaming at the mouth, the right Cheddarsphere can't see past their own biases. They just can't possibly believe that the union has any reason to invest in this fight besides money. As Fraley put it, "for them it's all about jobs and the subsequent union dues." They don't get it. Not even the right ballpark. No one--not even the union people--go into public education for the money. The union provides more professional development to its members than management; the union developed the TEAM program that defeats all conservative stereotypes about "protecting bad teachers." It does nothing without considering the single most important factor in a child's education--the quality of the teacher.

No one, at least not on their side, seems to consider the motives of the Waltons and the Joyces, funding the pro-voucher movement to the tune of tens of millions.

Or consider me: I collect no union dues. It would take a lot of students' leaving MPS before I get laid off. I have no personal investment in this. All I know is what I see in my classroom, and I have seen students fresh out of their voucher schools. Not all of them work miracles, believe me. I've seen my department cut by more than a third as our enrollment inches upward. I've seen my tax bill (Peter hasn't, since he doesn't live in Milwaukee) to know that I'm getting ripped off by a program that requires zero--zero--performance measures to be collected or reported.

Yet and still, I have offered to compromise. Jim Doyle has offered to compromise. The elected officials who represent Milwaukee have offered to compromise. But their side--they want blood. This foaming over MTEA's ad is symptomatic of their desire to get their way, only their way, all the time, because that is their ideology. The Market is King. Compromise is Weakness.

And lost in their struggle to get their feet on our necks is the very real future of 100,000 children in Milwaukee.

Throwing Down the Gauntlet

Having been given the mandate by our gracious blog host to continue discussing the bargaining strategy of the MTEA, it is here that I throw down the gauntlet and ask Sarah Fadness, "Why no response to my most recent post?"

I've been involved in too many debates with hard-core MTEA backers to believe she would just sit back and agree with the things said in my last post. I find it amazing that she hasn't challenged me for saying the MTEA is fighting the wrong battles.

Perhaps she needs more material. So Sarah, here's what I'd like you to do. There is no confusion about the fact that the MTEA is livid about the decision regarding the health-care benefits. In addition, the Union takes no issue with stating that it's health-care plan would have saved the District more money. Would you please, for the benefit of our audience, specifically explain the differences between the District and Union health-care proposals. Most notably, would you please address the issue of exactly how the Union's health-care proposal would have been more financially viable for the District, preferably addressing both the short, as well as long-term effects.

My feeling is that this will lead to one of two things: Either you provide an explanation that will clearly outline why the Union proposal was the superior plan, or... the explanation will remain vague and ambiguous, in which case I will try and counter by explaining why I think the arbitrator and the public simply didn't rally behind the teachers. In either case, it's a fantastic opportunity for us to put the issue of health care more firmly in the public eye, something I think we both agree needs to be done.