If I had a subscription, I would cancel it

In an editorial entitled "Time ripe for MPS reform," the daily's editors demonstrate once again why they are on the editorial board and not the school board. And, yes, I recognize how idiotic it may be of me to criticize one organ of the press juggernaut whose other organ may well give me an award (if you go vote for me) before the contest is over. Now, though, a full fisking:

The reformers now hold the balance of power, thanks to last week's election. The unionists took the reins in the election before that. And three elections ago, the reformers took control. This seesaw has played out for a long time.

I'm not going to deny their facts, here, just their characterizations. By "unionists," they mean board members concerned about ensuring that good teachers--remember, teachers are the most important factor in achievement--come to and stay in MPS. Danny Goldberg, like the other "reformers" on the board, wants nothing less than a dismantling of everything about the job that makes it attractive, from benefits to classroom climate. He has publicly kissed the ass of our superintendent, who has nothing but contempt for teachers. Believe me. I've been to his meetings. And I didn't even write in that post how, after the meeting, he "got up in my grill," as the kids would say, confronting me in the hallway yelling and--I am not making this up!--wagging his finger at me for daring to question his priorities. The paper considers him another "reformer," though.

But the Milwaukee Public Schools District is failing to meet the needs of too many children for coasting to remain good enough. Thus, last week's election warrants cheers; it gives the reform movement new energy.

No, the results were not as rosy as they should have been. Unfortunately, incumbents Peter Blewett, the board's president, and Charlene Hardin, the vice president, defeated reform-minded challengers Kevin Ronnie and Bernadine Bradford in contests on the west and north sides, respectively.

Yes, it really, really sucks that the people got to vote, huh? Maybe we should have just cancelled the election the way the "reformers" on the board want to cancel my health care--health care that means the raises I could have gotten over the last decade were also cancelled.

Look, I'm not going to deny that Milwaukee has problems. But should we solve our problems by putting kids into completely unaccountable settings that are not proven to even work? Or into charter schools that can close without warning, leaving kids high and dry? I keep saying it, and I keep meaning it: Our kids are not New Coke or Daewoo. Strong public schools can make every kid a winner; the market guarantees losers.

Goldberg boasts exceptional talents. Noticing while an assistant college professor that many high school dropouts were nonetheless smart, he dedicated himself to educational reform. He helped found the Technical Assistance and Leadership Center [TALC] to promote reform and, under that agency's auspices, was key in bringing to Milwaukee a multimillion-dollar grant from the Gates Foundation to set up small high schools. As local director of Homeboyz Interactive, he raised more than $1 million to give high-tech training to young people without ready access to computers. Also, he's president of the governance council of I.D.E.A.L., a charter school founded by MPS teachers.

Ahhhh, now I see what "reform" means: "Reform" is apparently what you call it when you support a superintendent who got you six million dollars. "Reform" is what you call it when you support a program that--while it may work for your kids--is worse for most kids. Would they call Goldberg a "reformer" if he came out explicitly in favor of putting students in schools without teachers, so the kids can watch DVDs and riot? Because, you know, that's what happens.

Goldberg survived, by the way, a disappointing smear campaign by Wisconsin Citizen Action, which twisted his support for the worthwhile private school choice program into support for "rampant corruption."

What are you talking about? Your very own newspaper has reported on rampant corruption, repeatedly. And while I bet my hypothetical above--Goldberg's support for riots--would never happen, if you support a system that allows for corruption, if you support sending the children that voters elected you to protect into that system, then, well, I don't know. It continues to boggle my mind how anyone can believe that he is effectively representing the people on the public school board when he wants to take children out of the public schools. Seriously. I'm boggled.

That a big-city school system can work remains an unproven proposition. But the reforms--greater accountability, site-based management, shoring up of neighborhood schools, for example--appeared to have led to a bit of progress. Last week's election keeps hope alive for more gains.

Okay. Take a deep breath for a second. Now, a question: Of the three reforms just named, how many have been actively opposed by the union? As long as the processes for each "reform" have been fair (and I can tell you about how the current superintendent has been smacked down even by a unanimous board, reformers and all, because he pulls things out of his butt that are neither fair nor all that smart), the union has not stood in the way of progress. Nor have the "unionists" on the board. The debates around those issues were contentious, yes, but the board, with the union in tow, has been moving steadily forward to ensure quality changes.

But let us not kid ourselves here at your humble folkbum's blog the way they are kidding themselves down at the editorial offices. The "reforms" Dannny Goldberg was elected to implement (if you can call a 220-vote victory a mandate) have nothing to do with accountability, neighborhood schools, or effective site management. If you believe that to be the case, then I know where you can get a bridge, cheap. Goldberg is a long-tome voucher advocate, elected with voucher money, by voucher supporters, and he makes the Journal Sentinel go all gooey because he wants to cut teachers' health benefits. Period.

You want to talk reform? I'm all for it. Just come on down to my classes of 37 and 42 and more some day, and, if we can hear over the noise, you can tell me how cutting my benefits and demeaning my union makes me a better teacher.

A Whole Nuther Fighting Bum

Here. It's about voting. And Republicans. And the elderly. Not to mention underage kids sneaking into dance clubs with fake IDs.

Oh, and, you know, the apostrophes were right when I sent it in . . . Ah, editors. :)

(Of course, the update should be that the state senate today passed the useless bill. Stupid senate.)

Last day to vote

Please do so if you haven't. That is all.

Bumped to stay at the top; new posts below.

Wisconsin Wednesday: Waning Wages

First, remember what I noted earlier this week: Inflation is outpacing real wage growth overall. Now, consider this:

The state senate today is expected to pass a bill that moved out of committee yesterday to roll back any cities' attempts to raise their own minimum wages. This is after the Republicans in the legislature refused to listen to a bi-partisan council's recommendation to increase the minimum wage state-wide. (The vote on that council was 16-2. The two dissenters were not any of the businesspeople on the council, but two Republican state lawmakers.)

What's worse, this bill would, through poor wording, also prohibit municipalities from requiring a "living wage" from their contractors. Right now, if you're on a job contracted through LaCrosse County, Dane County, Milwaukee, or any number of other places, you're guaranteed a $9 or so; this bill cuts you back to $5.15. This isn't just a dig at progressive cities--it's a decrease for hundreds, maybe thousands of workers statewide.

This is your Republican leadership at work, folks--sending us back to the 1800s . . .

Wisconsin Wednesday: Where's the Democracy?

Bill Christofferson has been on a tear lately at the Xoff Files (I wonder how long until he gets in trouble for "taking the Christ out of Christofferson"?). One that you all need to read is Monday's No Sunshine on the Budget. Even if you're one of them Republicans (and I imagine there are a couple of you among my five or six regular readers), this should disturb you (my bold, his italics):

Well, how many state budget decisions do you suppose got made over the weekend? No, the legislature wasn't in session, and the Joint Finance Committee wasn't meeting. But the first batch of budget decisions were quietly being made on conference calls between Republican leaders in the Senate and Assembly and co-chairs of Joint Finance. It wouldn't be surprising if the call also included Finance member Scott Jensen and maybe a few more key players.

How do we know that? Because Assembly Co-Chair Dean Kaufert said so. This from the WisPolitics weekly report on Friday:

Kaufert expects conference calls between caucus leaders and JFC members over the weekend to start nailing down some of the issues. "I think by Monday some of those decisions between the Senate and Assembly are going to start falling into place. We've got to have both sides to dance, and until we are in agreement, neither house is going to go out there too far on any of these.''

Joint Finance has had no public debate by its members on any budget items yet, although it has held public hearings and had briefings by agencies.

Voting by Joint Finance is supposed to begin on Thursday. How, you might wonder, will the committee vote on the dozens, if not hundreds, of motions if members haven't discussed them? [. . .]

Is this legal? Technically, maybe [. . .]. But does it meet the intent of state open meetings laws? Of course not. It flunks the smell test and may even flunk the legal test if someone [. . .] were to apply it.

So, are we clear? John Gard (R Sun Prairie Peshtigo) and his indicted cronies get on the phone to each other and make their budget decisions completely in the dark. What are they afraid of? What are they hiding? Or are they just too drunk on their own power to consider that maybe, in a democracy (representative though we may be), the people have a right to know?

By the way, I fully expect (read: it will be a cold day in hell if) Frank Lasee to condemn this. Remember, his TABOR bill is all about stopping unconscionable legislators from making these kinds of decisions, especially in secret. Lasee wants most of these decisions moved to referrenda, in fact. So, Frank, what do you say? And my Republican readers?

F. Jim Scares Me

Cross-posted from SensenbrennerWatch.com.

It's bad enough that F. Jim doesn't remember his civics lessons well enough to know that the third branch of government--the judiciary--is independent. Now, it turns out, he's actively trying to subjugate the courts to the Congress.

Max Blumenthal of The Nation wandered into that "Confronting the Judicial War on Faith" conference some of the most extreme elements of the Republican party held last weekend. This is the one, you may remember, at which conservative activist Edwin Vieira said that Stalin--you remember Stalin? Brutal killer? Bad goatee?--"offered the best method for reining in the Supreme Court. 'He had a slogan,' Vieira said, 'and it worked very well for him whenever he ran into difficulty: "No man, no problem." ' " (The complete Stalin quote is, "Death solves all problems: no man, no problem.")

The Sensenbrenner part comes on page two of Blumenthal's article. You've heard about the threats against the physical well-being of judges; what's working under the surface is an attempt to strip judges of their Constitutional authority:

The threatening tenor of the conference speakers was a calculated tactic. As Gary Cass, the director of Rev. D. James Kennedy's lobbying front, the Center for Reclaiming America, explained, they are arousing the anger of their base in order to harness it politically. The rising tide of threats against judges "is understandable," Cass told me, "but we have to take the opportunity to channel that into a constitutional solution."

Cass's "solution" is the "Constitution Restoration Act," a bill relentlessly promoted during the conference that authorizes Congress to impeach judges who fail to abide by "the standard of good behavior" required by the Constitution. If they refuse to acknowledge "God as the sovereign source of law, liberty, or government," or rely in any way on international law in their rulings, judges also invite impeachment. In essence, the bill would turn judges' gavels into mere instruments of "The Hammer," Tom DeLay, and Christian-right cadres. [. . .]

In the Senate the bill was sponsored by Richard Shelby, a senator from Roy Moore's home state; among the co-sponsors is Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, who is contemplating a run for the Republican nomination for President. The bill was introduced on March 3, before the Terri Schiavo affair erupted, before Florida Circuit Judge George Greer ordered the removal of her feeding tube and before he became the poster-child for the right's judicial impeachment campaign.

Now, according to Howard Phillips in a speech to the conference, his "good friend" Wisconsin GOP Representative James Sensenbrenner is planning to hold hearings on the Constitution Restoration Act in the House. DeLay, who appeared on a big screen during a Thursday morning session to call for the removal of "a judiciary run amok," has put his name on the act as the House sponsor.

Howard Phillips, you may remember, is the founding father of the Constitution Party, which invites you to join them as they "work to restore our government [. . .] to its Biblical foundation." (Does this mean his "good friend" F. Jim will be introducing legislation to stone adulterers? Come to think if it, this does explain F. Jim's desire to over-regulate the entertainment industry.)

The "Constitution Restoration Act" is to the Constitution what the "Clear Skies Initiative" is to air and the "Healthy Forest Initiative" is to trees (read more about it here). Call F. Jim right now and ask him why he thinks our Constitution isn't worth protecting: (262) 784-1111 (district office); 1-800-242-1119 (the HOTLINE for those outside of the Milwaukee metro area); (202) 225-5101 (DC office).

Vote Deadline Approaching

Don't forget: I would really appreciate your votes in this week's blog of the week contest.

Duh

Alan Borsuk has a kind of "no duh" write-up of what the addition of Danny Goldberg means to the Milwaukee Public Schools board--things readers of this blog learned last week. My favorite line:

Goldberg, on the other hand, said in a post-election interview, "I'm much more interested in supporting him (Andrekopoulos) than criticizing him." He added, "I believe in the reforms Mr. Andrekopoulos is seeking to carry out."

Of course you do, especially when those reforms mean MORE MONEY for the organization that you founded. Grrrrr.

Prosperity is just . . . around here somewhere

So I went to a tax-freeze talk last night. More about that later this week when I have time to write it up well.

But, briefly, one thing the speaker (Andrew Reschovsky from the LaFollette school) pointed out is that tying state spending to the Consumer Price Index (CPI) is kind of stupid (my words, not his), since what consumers buy has very little to do with what governments buy. Both J-Dizzle's tax freeze and the Lasee-Wood TABOR use the CPI, a measure of inflation, as a marker.

Today comes word that, for the first time since the previous Bush administration, the CPI has outpaced real wage growth. This should not come as much of a surprise to those of you tracking the meteoric rise of gas prices, milk prices, basic cable subscription fees, and electricity rates. It's even less surprising to those of you paying the jacked-up prices on last year's salary.

We have known for some time job growth has been anemic, and real wage growth has stayed flat or fallen. But it has taken this long for inflation to catch up, at least in part because Alan Greenspan has kept interest rates so low.

Well, now interest rates are rising. While the rates were low, people got their adjustable rate mortgages. That mortgage debt--not to mention credit debt--has kept purchasing going strong. At some point, those ARMs are going to come due, the housing prices are going to collapse (your high Wisconsin property taxes are due, at least in part, to the housing bubble), and then we're all screwed.

Sorry to be a downer, but it's hard to be very happy about this kind of news.

The Banner Stays

So everybody probably has heard by now that Russ Feingold and his wife of 14 years, Mary, are getting divorced. (I'm deciding not to blame that temptress Stacie for breaking them up.)

Some people are already speculating that this dooms any potential 2008 presidential bid (really--I won't link to them, because you don't need to see that). But, here's the thing: If a divorce didn't stop God's Own Annointed One, St. Ronald, then it won't stop Russ. Who else do we have? Seriously? Until a better candidate comes along--or until Russ personally emails me (my email <- there you go, Senator!) and assures me that he's not running--I will proudly display my "Feingold 2008" banner.

Run, Russ, run.

Don't forget to vote!

I'm probably going to be a while with something new later this afternoon--like all about the exciting tax freeze forum I attended last night--but not now.

Don't, however, forget to vote for me over at MKE's blog of the week contest if you haven't yet. I mean, if you don't, some other blog could win, and that would be, just, wrong.

Advocate Weekly, Part III

This time, shari does the heavy lifting. It's all good stuff.

Voucher/ Charter/ Small Schools updates

In the past couple of weeks, I've been hitting the education issues pretty heavy. To remind you:

• I've talked about the systemic problems of Wisconsin's voucher program
• I strongly advocated against electing a school board member who has gotten rich off of Bill Gates's small school money
• I went off pretty good when he won anyway
• I noted the financial problems of a local institution that runs charter and voucher schools, as well as how they shut down the paid-for schools while keeping the voucher school open until the last state checks come
• I posted an insider's view on why you can't say charter schools have a level playing field

Today, I want to follow up on a few of those stories, and point you to some additional resources and good reads.

First, shari at "An old soul . . ." links to an article providing a somber, if a little over-the-top, warning about Gates and what his motives might be:

Gates has spent almost a billion dollars influencing American public schools, and while his donations seem laudable on some fronts, especially in an era of increased federal demands coupled with reduced federal spending, his philanthropy remains problematic. When corporate leaders shape government institutions according to their needs, we move away from democracy and toward corporatism [. . .].

While I agree with Gates that there is indeed a crisis in our schools, it should not be confused with any perceived crisis over achievement. Schools in wealthy neighborhoods consistently score first in international comparisons in a number of subjects, and when SAT scores are desegregated according to race, all subgroups have seen consistent point gains over the past 30 years. The real crisis in our schools reflects the most serious crisis in our democracy: diverse peoples with multiple voices and needs have little say in the major decisions shaping their lives. [. . .]

Corporatism [. . .] requires citizen obedience to corporate demands; individual needs are ignored. In the case of public schools, CEOs have great influence on the curriculum whereas parents have none. Individual students become products whose manufacture is subject to the whims of the market. [. . .]

When Gates told his audience that "in the international competition to have the biggest and best supply of knowledge workers, America is falling behind," he failed to mention two salient facts. First, it does not matter how many "knowledge workers" our schools produce if corporations continue to offshore IT jobs, which are growing at a rate of less than 3% a year. Second, and more importantly, we are not all "knowledge workers" nor should we be. In a democracy, individual differences and nuances should be respected and valued, not standardized. Teacher innovation, family desire, and community need should influence public education. The corporatist mentality is a one-size-fits-all mindset, a mindset more totalitarian than anything else. Parents who want their children to grow up to be more than blindly obedient worksheet completers must challenge CEO classroom encroachment. Citizens who value democracy must join them.

Next, more on vouchers, but this time in our nation's capital. It seems that the voucher program all those wealthy, white, Republican congressmen foisted on poor, black Democratic DC is not wroking as planned. Sure, it's early, but a Department of Education report on the first year noted shows "a failure to achieve legislatively determined priorities, an inability to evaluate the program in the manner required by Congress, and efforts by administrators to obscure information that might reflect poorly on the program." People for the American Way noted from the DOE documents that only about 4% of the students in the program, despite clear language in the law requiring priority for them, were from schools deemed "in need of improvement." The 96% included hundreds of students alread in private schools. This might be the worst: "The program allows private schools to impose their normal admissions tests and thus pick and choose which students to accept. In addition, private schools participating in the voucher program that charge tuition higher than the voucher amount of $7,500 are permitted to charge the additional amount to voucher students, limiting the availability of meaningful “choice” for low-income families. Both these facts were obscured in a 'Frequently Asked Questions' document prepared by" the administrators. There's more here.

Finally, charter schools. Conservative blogger (look at his sidebar) Mark Lerner points to a new book critical of charter schools, and backs that claim up with his own experience teaching at one. In language that echoes some of what Patrick, my charter school insider (see the link above) used, the book notes how charter schools are not always exemplars. The Boston Globe
article that Lerner links has even more. Try this (my emphasis):

Not only did [the authors] find that charter schools do not generate higher student achievement in general or the educational performance of central city, low-income minority children in particular, they also found that charter schools are associated with increased school segregation. And they found minimal accountability. Despite their inability to show across-the-board improvement, fewer than 1 percent of charter schools have been shut down for academic failure. [. . .]

[M]any charter schools rely on less-experienced, uncertified, and often less-well-paid teachers. In a regular central city school, 75 percent of the teachers have more than five years' experience. In a charter school the percentage is only 34 percent. In public high schools, 70 percent of the math teachers either majored or minored in math in college. In a charter high school, the percentage is 56 percent. ''While freedom from certification rules undoubtedly permit charter schools to hire teachers who are more qualified than typical teachers in regular public schools, the data do not reveal evidence that charter schools, on average, are actually using their freedom to do so," the authors wrote.

Mishel and Carnoy both said that whatever systemic problems the charter school movement is trying to address, they may be far outside the realm of either public or charter school.

Some of these links came through the Education Wonk's Carnival of Education. There is chaff among the wheat there, but all dealing with educational issues.

Bloggers Market

Which, despite its name, is not actually a place to buy or sell bloggers. (That only seems to happen in South Dakota.) It's one of the many projects that former folkbum's rambles and rants guestblogger Jeff Davidson is up to these days. And you can find it here.

Somebody should get fired

And it's this guy:

A top state Department of Transportation official has come under fire for telling hundreds of employees that women often aren't promoted in his division because of family duties.

Kevin Chesnik, administrator of transportation infrastructure development, made the comment last week at a conference before at least 200 employees he oversees, according to workers who were there. [. . .]

More than 230 DOT employees have been notified that they are at risk of being laid off as part of the reorganization, causing heightened tension throughout the department.

At the meeting March 31 at a Madison hotel, an employee asked Chesnik why more women were not promoted. Chesnik responded that it was hard to find women for high-level jobs because of their roles as mothers, according to four people who attended the meeting.

"He proceeded to say that women need to--how did he put it?--re-evaluate their priorities because they have children," one of the employees said. "It sounded like something you would say in the '60s."

Another said: "Basically, he said the women he's approached feel they're busy home raising their families, and so they typically don't go for these types of positions." [. . .]

In an e-mail he sent to his staff Monday, Chesnik said his comments "were not appropriate and potentially offensive to some people in the audience." But the e-mail did not include an apology, which upset some employees.

"I thought it was in there, actually," he said Thursday. "Because that was the intent. I recognized that, and I wanted to say I'm sorry, and I guess it should have been written in there."

What is this, 1950? Puh-lease! At least he figured out quickly that he'd better start investigating himself--no, wait, he's not. He is, to be fair, though, looking at whether there has been discrimination.

Still, that kind of attitude has no place in someone in a position of authority, someone who influences the promotions, hiring, and firing procedures at DOT. Time for Chesnik to move on.

You people don't tell me anything

Via Peter David, I see that Will Eisner, legend and inspiration of mine back when I was a wee lad lad thinking about a career in comic books--passed away earlier this year.

Yes, I'm a news junkie. But this one slipped past me. I expect you guys to keep me up to date about this sort of thing.

Really. I'm quite jealous of all the Major Bloggers who have to complain about all the unsolicted email they get about news they haven't covered yet. Me, all I get is email offering me c!@1!$ or whatever ‘f�l�l�È’²‹³“¯�D‰ï‚©‚ç‚Ì‚¨’m‚点�B  translates to.

Tomorrow I will have real blogging. Education and stuff. Promise.

Scary F. Jim

We all know that Tom "La Cucaracha" DeLay has wandered away from the tour group when it comes to judges. But a Wisconsin Congressman is just as bad. See my latest at SensenbrennerWatch about F. Jim's ignorance of the Constitution.

Got Beer Tax?

It seems suicidal, but a Wisconsin state representative has proposed a 2¢ per six-pack beer tax. Before I get any further, let me fully disclose here: I don't drink. Not beer, not wine, not even those electric-blue margatinis at certain national-chain tex-mex restaurants. So if the tax goes up on your beer, my teetotaling self won't be bothered by it.

Two things struck me, though, reading about this proposal: First, it's just 2¢. How much are you drinking if you find 2¢ per six pack a financial burden? My wife, who knows these sorts of things, assures me that there plenty of people who drink three six packs a day. Even at that, it's only an extra $21 a year. Of course, if you're drinking 18 beers a day, you may not have a day job, and that extra little bit may actually hurt. But clearly, if you're in that condition, you're probably the kind of person that the tax is meant to help.

Which leads me to the next point: "Raising the beer tax would raise $4.7 million a year more to pay for alcohol-abuse treatment," the article notes, "treatment needed by almost 600,000 Wisconsin residents in 2001, according to the University of Wisconsin Law School's Resource Center on Impaired Driving." While I do like the idea of helping people who need help, it disturbs me a little that we drink the equivalent of 235,000,000 six packs a year.

That's not all in cans, of course; opponents of the proposed tax point out, helpfully, that the tax would hurt breweries and families at fish fries.

While I'm not big on raising taxes--I think Wisconsin's budget troubles can be solved in other ways--it's hard to see this as a bad thing. Wisconsin's beer tax hasn't been raised in 25 years, and, if it had been indexed to inflation, it wouldn't be the 6¢ per gallon it is now, but $10. And if some of those three six-pack-a-dayers could get some help, well, then I think I can get behind this one.

Friday Random Ten

Rules here.

1. "Martyr's Lounge" Ellis Paul from Sweet Mistakes
2. "Fall on Me" Cry Cry Cry (Dar Williams, Lucy Kaplansky, and Richard Shindell) from Cry Cry Cry
3. "Always" The Story (Jonatha Brooke and Jennifer Kimball) from Grace in Gravity
4. "City Love" John Mayer from Room for Squares
5. "Protect Me" James from Seven
6. "Zachary" Sonia Dada from E-Town Live 2
7. "My Maria" Marton Sexton from The American
8. "So Says the Whipporwill" Richard Shindell from Vuelta
9. "A Bend in the River" Mark Erelli from Hillbilly Pilgrim
10. "What's He Building" Tom Waits from Mule Variations

Welcome, MKE online voters!

I thought I'd throw you a higlight reel from the last month or so of posting, so you get a better sense of what's what around here, beofre you go back and vote:

• This is me being angry: What Hagen's Loss Means
• This is me being glib--and lazy, since it's all links: Russ Goes South, Again
• This is me being pedantic, but making a serious point about TABOR: Ixnay on the ABOR-Tay
• This is a sample of some of my lyrics--the guitars aren't just for decoration around here: Boondocking at Wal-Mart
• This is me electioneering: Fisking Underheim
• This is me talking about TABOR again (I just won't let it go): Who Else is Anti-TABOR
• This is an education rant: That Time of Year
• This is me getting philosophical: Victimhood as a Way of Life

And, long-time readers, remind me of your favorite posts in the comments, eh?

If he starts reaching for his marbles, don't stop him

Scott Walker is giving up on his unconstitutional bond plan after voters pretty solidly shot him down Tuesday. Apparently, opposition was "spread evenly around the county"--so not just us librul city folk shot him down.

Walker is now practicing his buck-passing; he signed off on the wording himself, but then "contended that wording in the question misled voters" at his news conference. He's already in the blaming others stage; I'm hoping he gets to the storming off in a huff phase soon.

The Xoff files has more.

Yeah, I Know We Just Had an Election

But you must now vote again. I'm up for blog of the week at MKE's online presence. I've voted in both of the other weeks' contests and have gotten no spam, so I feel confident in recommending that you go there and vote for me.

In addition, mAd PrOpz congrats to my buddy and near-neighbor Scott for winning week two's contest. Way! To! Go!

(Oh, and you can vote if you're not from Milwaukee, even; at least one of the blogs is based up nort' somewhere. I bet even my out-of-state fans--both of you!--can vote, as well.)

So, go, vote--it's the "folkbum's rambles and rants" radio button. Thanks!

Yet another Fightin' Bum

But this time, my GuestBlog post is all new material--not cribbed from stuff already published here.

Wisconsin Wednesday: A Question of Identity

As a follow-up to Stacie's Fighting Bob GuestBlog (if I can be so presumptuous as to follow-up someone else's post!) on the Voter Photo-ID pablum passed out of committee yesterday: Today I did a poll in my class of ninth graders. I asked if they--or any of their "friends"--had fake IDs or had ever successfully used fake IDs. Well over half raised their hands. Which makes me wonder, of course, how much more vigilant about these sorts of things septuagenarians working the polls will be than, say, bouncers at "the club" or clerks selling cigarettes.

Look, many other people have waxed plenty eloquent about how none of the irregularities that Republicans have gone all gasket-blown about would have been stopped by requiring a photo ID. Felons voting? That's fine, as long as they have an ID. Voters who vote without being checked off? Not solved by requiring IDs. Transcription errors in registering new voters? Not helped--since new voters need ID of some kind, anyway. People voting multiple times under multiple names? (NOTE: There is no evidence that this happened at all, just wild speculation.) Ask my students about that one.

In fact, the only thing that requiring an ID to vote prevents is votes from traditionally Democratic voters: the poor, the elderly, the transient.

What bugs me most is that Tim Carpenter knows this. He and I have talked about this (though we have not talked about his new haircut; he really should have asked me on that one) and we will undoubtedly talk about it again at his town hall meeting this Saturday.

What the Hagen loss means for me, MPS, and Milwaukee Taxpayers

As promised . . .

Most simply: If Hagen had won, I am convinced we would have a settled contract within a month. Every day that the MPS administration pretends it doesn't see us and the money-saving health plan we have on the table, taxpayers lose $35,000. That's one Educational Assistant. Every day.

And, sure, Goldberg wants to save taxpayers money, too, by dismantling our health plan; what he and the blind fools calling the shots neglect is that the MPS proposal not only saves money today by voluntarily instituting our first-ever premium share; our plan--which includes Health and Productivity Management--guarantees continued savings above and beyond even the district's proposal. And no, this isn't some "wellness" voodoo, either. HPM is empirically proven to have long-term benefits to employee health and corresponding cost savings.

So that's the immediate result: Continued deadlock while our contract is arbitrated. And remember, the contract under arbitration expires June 30!

Further down the line, we will see more money going into our superintendent's "small schools" initiative. Someday when I have six hours to document the failings of the plan, I will. I'll do just one now: My school has one--exactly one--teacher licensed to teach physics for 1500 students. Since physics is an elective, that's not a problem. But let's say our school "multiplexes" or breaks up into small schools. Which school gets that physics teacher? Which school gets the one licensed computer science teacher we have? The one licensed speech and theatre teacher? The one me (cuz, you know, I would be so in demand). And then are the other 1200 students in the four other schools just SOL, or will the district pay for teachers to start adding licenses so we can leagally--remember NCLB's "highly qualified teacher" provision--teach a full complement of classes? Okay, two: School mobility is incredibly high now; despite what they say about a student feeling like she "belongs" more at a small school, a wider selection to choose from means even more students will take advantage of MPS's lenient transfer policy to game the system. This is true: My school requires 25 credits for graduation while other schools require 22 or 18. Guess what happens to our seniors?

As the "small schools" initiative grows, Goldberg's former colleagues at the Technical Assistance and Leadership Center (TALC)--voucher advocates, all--will start getting taxpayer money to do their thing once that Gates money runs out. (Goldberg at least got his share of Bill Gates's money before he quit TALC to run for school board.) So we'll have a board that will refuse to offer compensation packages that make teaching classes of 42 more palatable while funnelling money to people looking to undermine the Milwaukee Public Schools.

Left unchecked, these changes will result in just two or three types of teachers left in Milwaukee: the young ones building experience before they transfer to the suburbs, the old ones waiting for their number to come up so they can retire, and, literally, the dim ones who don't have the skills to escape. This will, of course, feed the cycle of more parents trying to save their kids through voucher schools, which will further decimate the public schools, leading to more vouchers, and so on until the fundamentalist preachers and market deists have won. Worst-case scenario? Sure. But around MPS, we have a philosophy: If you want to survive, you have to figure that the worst-case scenario is the best you can hope for.

I love what I do, but I will not do it under the kind of conditions that will be coming. And if I quit, Joe Dannecker had better get ready for a whooping when his seat is up in 2007.

Showing Up in Odd Places

Like two of my Fighting Bob posts showing up in Oshkosh.

Or ex-Milwaukee School Board Member and teacher-hater Bruce Thompson showing up in the blogosphere. Apparently he's been there a while; I have to start poking him.

Or Satan turning up on a turtle's shell. Poking of Satan is not recommended.

Any bets on what's next?

Voucher School Trouble. Again.

Even the shining stars of Milwaukee's voucher program can fall. Take the Harambee Community School, for example, which has been a part of the program for 15 years. Yesterday, protesting late paychecks and an expanding web of lies, teachers walked out:

School officials said about six teachers walked out, but Reed put the number at between 20 and 25.

No classes were canceled, and a school official described the disruption as minimal. School staff could be heard directing classes inside the building at 110 W. Burleigh St., and one group of students marched off for recreational activities in the day's final hour of classes.

But the walkout indicates additional problems are simmering inside the pioneering and once highly regarded school, which enrolls roughly 380 students in kindergarten through eighth grade.

In December, the state revoked the license of a child care facility associated with the school. In January, the former chief financial officer was charged with embezzling up to $750,000 in school money.

Teachers have complained of late paychecks in the past. Last year, the school dismissed its principal and a large number of teachers.

Again, I don't want to make the blanket claim that all MPS schools are squeaky clean, but with them, at least, there is much greater leverage and accountability when things go wrong. Plus, MPS paychecks never show up late. If you recall, one of the biggest problems at Academic Solutions is that they stopped paying their teachers, and the teachers stopped coming to work, leaving the kids to watch DVDs and riot in the hallways. (Keep an eye on Riverwest Currents; I'm sure they'll do much better reporting on this story than the daily, but probably not until next week.)

And speaking of not coming to work, the broke and busted Learning Enterprise organization shut down everything but its choice school this week, since it won't pay teachers any more. Meaning, of couse, that several hundred non-voucher kids will be dropped into MPS schools--with twelve weeks left in the school year!--accompanied by zero dollars, seeing as how the $1.7 million MPS paid Learning Enterprise has already evaporated. The voucher kids can stay, though, since there's a final state disbursement of funds coming in May. Love that gravy train!

Election Results Thread

9:50 They're calling it for Burmaster. Looks like she may beat her primary number--and the primary was a rout. They're also calling the state-wide question in favor of four-year terms for county officials. I had no horse in that race, though I voted no, just on the theory that elected officials ought to be frequently accountable to their constituents.

It also looks like Charlene Hardin will cruise to a win on the School Board; Peter Blewett is ahead but it's close. There are no results yet in the key race of Hagen vs. the evil, evil privatizing-nut Goldberg. That's making me tense.

10:50 Blewett's still winning (yay), but with 49% counted, Hagen is down 48-52. But that's only 100 votes . . .

11:10 Blewett's won, but Hagen's lost. i was right that it would be the key. Tomorrow I will comment further on this and what it means both for your humble folkbum (the private sector may start looking more attractive soon) and for the Milwaukee Public Schools. The short answer is that Goldberg will be sure to keep sending his TALC cronies your tax dollars to implement reforms no one thinks will work and no one but those getting rich want to see.

Also, Halbrooks is making a good fight against Hill. Again, no horse for me in that race, just interesting to watch the margin shrinking . . .

And Walker lost his advisor referendum. Good. His plan being unconstutional, and all.

Wednesday morning On the other hand, the day was not a total loss for Hagen. But, wow, he was unjustly passed over for promotion 15 times? Wow.

I'm getting my results here.

Teaching Tuesday: The Post Wherein I Go Retro

Well, retro back to October, 2004.

While procrastinating today, I was tooling through the archives over at Fightin' Bob and I found a piece from noted education author and researcher Gerald Bracy. In it, he lays out the "Seven Deadly Absurdities" of No Child Left Behind. I think it's important to remember, on this day when we elect our next superintendent, how odious a law this truly is:

1. The No Child Left Behind law (NCLB) uses the phrase “scientifically based research” 111 times and demands such research from educational researchers, but no scientifically based research—or any research--supports the law’s mandates.

2. NCLB lacks research support because NCLB depends solely on punishment. As schools fail to make arbitrary “Adequate Yearly Progress” (AYP) the law imposes punitive, increasingly harsh sanctions. No psychologist, educator or organizational theorist would establish such a system, much less expect it to work [. . .].

3. [NCLB] punishes the entire school for the failures of the few, often the very few. [. . .]


4. All students must be proficient in reading, math, and science by 2014. This is ridiculous. In his 2003 presidential address to American Educational Research Association, Robert Linn projected it would take 61 years, 66 years, and 166 years, respectively, to get fourth-, eighth-, and twelfth-graders to the proficient level in math. [. . .]


5. As a consequence of #3 and #4 above, California projects that by the witching year of 2014, NCLB will label 99 percent of its schools “failing.” Minnesota, one of the nation’s highest scoring states, projects that 2014 will find 80 percent of its schools wanting.

6. Any school that fails to make AYP for two consecutive years must offer all students the option to transfer to a “successful” school. Thus, if a school’s special education students fail to make AYP one year and its English language learners fail the next year, the school must offer all students the “choice option” in spite of the fact that the school worked for the other 36 student categories.

In cities, the choice option is a farce. This year, Chicago had 200,000 students eligible, but only 500 spaces for them. [. . .]

7. Schools alone cannot accomplish what NCLB requires. After all, between birth and age 18, children spend only 9 percent of their lives in schools.

Go read the whole thing--my excerpts don't do it justice.

I'll report later on the election results as I learn them.

What are you doing here?

Go vote!

(And say a little prayer/ send vibes/ whatever you do for Meteor Blades.)

My Music Monday: Boondocking at Wal-Mart

I came across this piece in today's paper. It's all about how some communities around Wisconsin are banning RVs from boondocking at Wal-Mart; the article notes that in some places, it's illegal to camp outside of real campgrounds.

This puts me in mind of a song I wrote about two-and-a-half years ago after hearing a story on NPR about the phenomenon of people packing up their RVs to see America--or at least America's Wal-Marts. The story featured interviews with campground managers furious that they were losing business to Wal-Mart (that's getting to be a bigger club every day, innit?). But I opted to write from the perspective of an RV owner, even did research to find how big a Winnebago one could get if one wanted. And this is what came out:

Boondocking at Wal-Mart
copyright 2002 Jay Bullock

Driving down the highway, got a tank full of gas
Man, the Winnebago windshield makes the world look fast
I’m counting mile markers as they fly past
On my way to the next small town
There’s no better kind of living once the kids have grown and gone
They made an offer on our place and we sold it for a song
Bought this diesel-powered monster, it’s like twelve yards long
And the wheels don’t touch the ground

The wife is cooking breakfast on the stove in the back
Three eggs over easy and a little short stack
Ever since we sold the house I try to cut a little slack
I don’t yell at her no more
But when the daylight starts to getting low in the west
And our eyelids are getting heavy and we need our beauty rest
We got a spot all picked out, you know that it’s the best!
The parking lot of our favorite store

‘Cause the KOA is DOA, that’s not where I want to stay
I’m going to back to where I bought everything I got
And Jellystone has never known the presence of my motor home
I’d rather boondock in a Wal-Mart parking lot
I’d rather boondock in a Wal-Mart parking lot

Maine to California, yeah, you know we’ve seen it all
Northern lights in the winter and the foliage in the fall
We renewed our vows in Vegas in a cheesy strip mall
Forty years to the wedding day
Grand Canyon and the Badlands and the Everglades Swamp
One time in Indiana we pulled over for a romp
Rent, Chicago, Fosse, we’ve even seen Stomp
Try to park it on the Great White Way

‘Cause the KOA is DOA, that’s not where I want to stay
I’m going to back to where I bought everything I got
And Jellystone has never known the presence of my motor home
I’d rather boondock in a Wal-Mart parking lot
I’d rather boondock in a Wal-Mart parking lot

Sometimes the cops, they try to roust me
Or the manager doesn’t want me to stay
Don’t they know this is America?
God bless the Wal-mart and the U-S-A

People make fun, people stop and stare
But I look down on them from my reclining captain’s chair
I don’t miss the at night with my queen bed and central air
And my DVD player
So if you’ve got a problem with what I choose to do
Or how I live my life, well then let me tell you
You’d better head on down to Wal-Mart and by yourself a clue
Man, they sell everything there

‘Cause the KOA is DOA, that’s not where I want to stay
I’m going to back to where I bought everything I got
And Jellystone has never known the pleasure of my motor home
I’d rather boondock in a Wal-Mart parking lot
I’d rather boondock in a Wal-Mart parking lot

You have to imagine it in an up-tempo rockabilly G. With so many words, I think I set a land-speed record every time I sing it, since it's really only three minutes long . . .

Vote Tomorrow. GOTV Today

The predictions are for very low turnout statewide tomorrow. Even here in Milwaukee, with a judicial race and school board races on the ballot, turnout is likely to be low if history is any guide. This is one of those elections where, in fact, a few votes here or there can really make a difference.

So, use today to rally all the faithful you know to get out to vote for Burmaster, and, in Milwaukee, Blewett, Hardin, and Hagen for the schol board.

(As a side note, the linked article above does restate this subtle point about Underheim's having been abandoned by the GOP: "But perhaps the most telling sign of the state of the race is what has not happened: There has not been a large wave of support for Underheim from the Republican-oriented power bases that might have fueled a bigger challenge by him. [. . .] The only political logic that can be put to the situation is that those who could have brought a lot more to the table in support of Underheim concluded that the Oshkosh legislator's bid, launched just before the filing deadline three months ago, had little chance of success."

And I did catch the WPTV debate between Underheim and Burmaster; my opinion has not changed. I TiVoed the "Sunday Night" with the two of them and Gousha, but it was on past my bedtime and I haven't seen it yet to comment.)

Surprise! Burmaster for DPI, says the daily

I saw this last night, but it was past my bedtime and it wasn't really newsworthy. So I didn't so anything about it then.

It is not a surprise that the Journal Sentinel editorial board endorsed, give their position on the Milwaukee voucher program. The board likes the program but wants stricter academic standards--something Burmaster has been angling for. Underheim has said he doesn't want academic standards for voucher schools.

Elsewhere around the state, the Janesville Gazette endorsed Burmaster, questioning whether Underheim is more committed to the children of Wisconsin or to the Republican leadership that recruited him to run. The Capital Times is also in Burmaster's camp (another big surprise!), though I couldn't find any endorsement on the Wisconsin State Journal's page. None of the Gannet papers seem to have endorsements on-line, nor does Underheim's hometown paper (and adopted hometown paper). Makes you wonder, eh?

The only malpractice I see is in your editorial

In today's daily rag, an opinionist opines, "Medical malpractice lawsuits have been driving up the costs of health care for decades. In recent years, they have actually started to limit patient access to quality care. [. . . Malpractice] premiums in states with limits on non-economic awards are 17% lower than in states where attorneys have free reign."

Okay, then, genius, explain to me how Wisconsin, which has caps on malpractice awards, has health care costs that increase faster than the national average? Perhaps, more importantly, how does Wisconsin have higher malpractice insurance rates which increase faster than our non-capped neighbor Minnesota?

Again: You are entitled to your own opinion. You are not entitled to your own facts. Idiots.

Victimhood as a way of life

I wrote a song after the election in November. My group--a songwriters' workshop, though it does have some theraputic value--had given ourselves the assignment to write a song using the word rough. My song, which, in a burst of creativity, I titled "Rough," is a series of vignettes: A single mother without health insurance; Andrew Veal, who committed suicide at Ground Zero; a soldier in Iraq. After these stories, the refrain: "And you think you've got it rough." The bridge, though, is about the winners from that election:

You control the church, the TV
You control the courts and DC
You wear the flag like it's some kind of shield
You want the "gubmint" off your back
You want the spend without the tax
You want to play both hands of the deal

The song played on an idea I've been toying with for a while, that conservatives in this country cannot help but play the victim in every circumstance, despite the fact that they are most emphatically not victimized.

There is a long history of this, and it can be traced back through Reagan, Falwell's Moral [sic] Majority, Nixon's southern strategy, even back to the race-protecting origins of the KKK. Today we see it playing out everywhere, with a recent and egregious example being Tom DeLay's threat to exact revenge on parts of the judiciary that don't toe his line violate the "will of the people," never mind that the judiciary is already pretty well on his side at every level.

Chris Bowers at MyDD drew my attention to something last week that really served to drive this problem home. Christopher Hayes conceptualized the problem in a way that I never could, wrapped it up and put a bow on it and handed it to me like an unwanted gift: It's beautifully expressed, but a little part of me dies every time I read it. Now, as you read this excerpt, remember that ever other word out of conservatives' mouths these days has to do with how they are victimized, downtrodden, assualted, and defeated at every turn. This excerpt, though, is the reality:

Consider a baby born in 2005 to a conservative family anywhere in America—that is anywhere outside of a major city where the very particles in the air are liberal. How might this child become a progressive? Her first possible exposure to a progressive worldview would be through children’s media: books, videos and television shows. Conservatives patrol this border vigorously. Every several months or so, it seems James Dobson or Jerry Falwell is in high dudgeon railing against the perversions of some innocuous children’s television character, from Bert and Ernie to SpongeBob SquarePants. Most recently, conservatives targeted Buster the cartoon rabbit, whose visit in one episode of his PBS show to a lesbian couple in Vermont prompted an angry rebuke from Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings.

Next, the child will likely attend public school, an institution conservatives have sought to control by taking over local school boards in order to introduce creationist textbooks, establish abstinence-only sex education and excise any lesson plans tolerant of homosexuality. And while activists seek to influence local curricula, right-wing think tanks advocate fully dismantling public education through vouchers and other ruses.

If our hypothetical student goes to college she will finally, for the first time, come face to face with a progressive worldview. Higher education stands as the only institution in American life today with a significant progressive presence. In classes, in clubs and in dorms, students are exposed to progressives and their views. [. . .]

Since college enrollment continues to climb, and the economy increasingly puts a premium on post-graduate degrees, this bodes well for Democrats. Conservatives realize this [flaw] in their armor, which explains why their attacks on higher education are so ardent. David Horowitz’s latest anti-university gimmick is Students for Academic Freedom, a Web site where disgruntled conservative undergrads can post complaints [. . .].

Absurd as this is, Horowitz remains a serious threat. Currently eight different state legislatures are considering the Horowitz-authored “Academic Bill of Rights,” which, unsurprisingly, would revoke academic freedom by making the government enforce some ill-defined “diversity.” (Critics have pointed out that, as the bill currently reads, it could become mandatory for the underrepresented political views of, say, al Qaeda to be more widely taught.) There are already numerous conservative influences on contemporary campuses: business schools, well-funded publications, economics departments and major corporations that partner with universities in research. With the attacks of Horowitz and others intensifying, we must defend the independent progressive character of American undergraduate education with every arrow in our quiver.

Let’s say, though, that our hypothetical youngster doesn’t go to college, and instead enters the workforce. If her job is unionized, she will immediately be exposed to progressive ideas about fairness and workplace democracy, but the odds are overwhelmingly against her holding a union job. Over the last 30 years, unionization has fallen from more than 35 percent to less than 12 percent of the workforce due to, among other things, a sustained attack by Republicans on the right to organize. From the instant the National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935, the business class has recognized that unions are the most direct means by which working-class voters are brought into the left. Being in a union has an even more dramatic effect on voting behavior than college. Kerry won two-thirds of union members, and among working-class white voters, a group Kerry lost by 24 points, he won a majority of those in a union. [. . .]

Outside of school, work and friends, the only other real entry point for our hypothetical subject is the Internet and blogosphere. And while these are invaluable resources for people who have no other access to progressive ideas, they don’t ring your doorbell or leaflet your local supermarket. High-profile groups such as NARAL Pro-Choice America, the Sierra Club and People for the American Way don’t help much either. Though they fight tooth and nail for progressive causes, they are essentially self-contained, devoting little energy toward recruiting non-progressives.

This is chilling, absolutley chilling. And Hayes doesn't even get into the corporate media--which, to a one, support conservative politicians over liberal ones--or the conservative media's shaping of our national dialog (for an example, see this post on how Ward Churchill, an obscure fool, became such a national obsession).

And yet, victimhood has become such a way of life for them, they can't stop. Allow me to get provincial for a moment: Here in Wisconsin, conservatives a pushing the misaptly-named Taxpayers Bill of Rights, or TABOR. (See a pattern here? If a conservative promotes anything with the words "Bill of Rights" in the name, run away!) This despite the fact that Wisconsin's state and local taxes are lower as a percentage of personal income than 20 years ago, we have a world-class uiniversity system, top-notch public schools, an economy outpacing the rest of the Midwest and the national average, and Colorado is busy running away from TABOR as fast as they can. (I'd link all that, but it's Saturday, and I shouldn't have to work that hard.) Yet Wisconsin conservatives are so set in their "victim" ways, they feel somehow compelled to pass this crap legislation. And, because they have a nearly 2-1 margin in the state legislature (oh, but they're victims!), there's a good chance they'll do it, too.

What's the moral to this story? I don't know that there is one. How do you fight people who are already living in a culture of victimhood?

Another Perspective on Superintendent Race

Tired of hearing me prattle on about it? Here's an angle I haven't pursued yet, from WisOpinion's Lefty Blogger, Bill Christofferson:

How can it be a surprise to anyone that WEAC is spending money independently to help re-elect Libby Burmaster as superintendent of public instruction? [. . .]

The real news is that the usual suspects on the other side, Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce, Realtors, school choicers and others, are NOT spending money to try to help their candidate, Gregg Underheim.

That is a sure sign they have given up on Underheim's candidacy. It's over.

UPDATE: A reader reminds me that it's not just the WMC and other right-leaning "independent" groups who have bailed on Underheim. The Wisconsin Republican Party, which recruited Underheim to run and even hired felons to collect nomination papers to get him on the ballot, is MIA, too. Scott Jensen announced on TV awhile back that the DPI race would be THE test campaign for the GOP message on property taxes and education. Well, the party is spending tens of thousands of dollars on radio the week before the election--but not for Underheim. It's going for ads about photo ID for voters. Underheim, meanwhile, is being hung out to dry.

Now, if we can just get WisOpinion to let their bloggers turn on comments, then we'd be on to something . . .

I wonder if this is an April Fools

Via Atrios, a story on Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich's order requiring pharmacies to fill birth control prescriptions regardless of a pharmacist's moral objections. Buried in the story is this line:

Blagojevich is a result of a Chicago pharmacist recently refusing to fill orders for contraceptives because of moral opposition.

Now we understand why he might be anxious to prevent other "accidents," eh?

Oh, and for proof, a screen shot:

Friday Random Ten

Rules here. And, yes, I've given up on the annotated thing. So sue me.

1. "I Hate to Disappoint You" Jay Bullock from April Fools (Okay, that one isn't random, but since today is actually the title of my CD, it makes sense.)
2. "Which Describes How You're Feeling" They Might Be Giants from Apollo 18
3. "Summer 68" Pink Floyd from Atom Heart Mother
4. "I'll Be Here in the Morning" Richard Shindell from Reunion Hill
5. "Blizzard" Ellis Paul from Say Something
6. "No Way Jose" Pat Metheny and John Scofield from I Can See Your House From Here
7. "Time Brings" Great Big Sea from Great Big Sea
8. "Recently" Kat Eggleston from Second Nature
9. "Recently" Dave Matthews Band from Remember Two Things
10. "Sink the Censorship" Disappear Fear from Live at the Bottom Line

State Superintendent Race Update

The daily today has an article with the blow-by-blow of a debate taped for the Journal Corp's Sunday show with Mike Gousha, perhaps the only respectable TV news figure in Milwaukee.

In the debate, apparently, Bad Guy Gregg Underheim demonstrates why he would be bad for Milwaukee:

Underheim attacked Burmaster [. . .] for her support of the state program to reduce the size of classes serving low-income children in kindergarten through third grade. [. . .]

Underheim said he supported expanding the voucher program, which is close to the maximum size allowed under state law. Burmaster said it is up to the governor and the Legislature to decide what the limit should be, and that she has been advocating better financial, operational and educational accountability in the school choice program.

Gousha asked Underheim whether more controls are needed on voucher schools, given problems associated with the closing of five such schools in the last year. Underheim said he opposes any changes related to student performance but said there might be a need for changes related to such matters as schools being operated by convicted felons.

Let's start with SAGE, the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education, a program aims for a 15-1 student-teacher ratio in the primary grades. If Underheim says the research doesn't support SAGE, he's either mis-informed or a liar:

The researchers used Average Growth Curves (AGC) to measure SAGE student achievement. AGCs provide the expected average growth of student achievement over time, offering a useful basis for comparison in evaluating educational effects.

The report illustrates that SAGE students outperformed non-SAGE students, gaining 25-30% of a year's additional growth by the end of first grade. After first grade, the report shows that SAGE students maintained their advantage over comparison students in reading and mathematics through third grade.

According to the researchers, all students benefit from being in small classes, but African-American Students benefit most of all. African-American students entering first grade classes in SAGE schools had lower reading and math scores than African-American students entering larger classes in comparison schools. By the end of first grade African-American SAGE students' achievement scores were significantly higher than those of African-American students in comparison classes.

In addition, African-American SAGE students narrowed the achievement gap between them and their white classmates in first grade. This decreased gap did not widen in second and third grade for SAGE students. In comparison schools, African-American students fell further behind White students each year.

SAGE classes appear to minimize the devastating effects of low attendance as well, the report shows. Low attending SAGE students perform as well as high attending comparison school students.

Beyond that, every study of small-sized classes shows that there are both immediate benefits as well as benefits for students later on, even if in later grades they have larger classes. This Dept. of Ed page has an excellent summary of the research to date.

Underheim's stance on voucher schools is simply untenable. Sure, I appreciate that he wants guards in place to stop convicted felons from opening schools (would that we had that prior to the Alex's Academic of Excellence fiasco!). But Libby Burmaster understands that choice schools are only as good as you can hold them accountable for: Underheim wants to keep giving these schools a free pass on academic quality. We know from both a UW study and a General Accounting Office study that voucher students do not do any better (pdf) than their public school counterparts as they suck money out of public schools state-wide. If there were some oversight--any oversight at all!--of how well these schools taught their students, then maybe we could see the kind of results the voucher supporters dream of.

Right now, there are no academic standards at all for voucher schools, and apparently, Gregg Underheim likes it that way. The article did not say whether Underheim supports exempting Milwaukee's public schools from academic standards, but I doubt he really wants to level the playing field or buck his conservative masters on this one.

A Charter School Note from Last Week

I missed this story last week about Learning Enterpise closing down:

The founder and CEO of the agency died a month ago and the operation has encountered major financial problems, according to sources. More than 400 students were served by Learning Enterprise schools at the start of this school year.

The schools included a seventh-through-12th-grade school for at-risk children that was funded on a contract basis with Milwaukee Public Schools; a school for high school students that was part of the state-funded voucher program; and a charter school authorized by the Milwaukee School Board that provided vocational programs for 11th- and 12th-grade students.

If the schools are permanently closed, they would become the fifth voucher school and the second MPS charter school to close in the last year. [. . .] MPS had paid Learning Enterprise more than $1.7 million so far this year under the contracts with the partnership school and the charter school. DPI had paid Learning Enterprise about $679,000 so far this year.

So now when I get those Learning Enterprise students in my class next week, where will the funding to support them come from?

More on Charter Schools

I thought about highlighting this story the other day, about a new "tool" offered by the family-friendly folks at Standard & Poors, "a searchable database of schools that includes a 'return on spending' analysis as well as data on demographics, testing and other educational results," according to the article.

But I didn't. My sworn nemesis did, though, talking about how great it was, whereas I would have pointed out how difficult it would be to judge anything based on one year's (two years ago, even) data. But the site does show that Wisconsin outperform the rest of the country on pretty much every measure.

But what was interesting about Owen's post is in the comments, though, which are not permalinkable, so scroll down. The only comments so far are from someone named Patrick who says he "recently worked for an organization that runs a charter school in Milwaukee." That's not what's astounding, though. What's astounding is that we have an insider admitting to what we already know. He writes,

[A] test score/dollars-per-pupil ratio, such as this Standard & Poors metric, is better left as topic for debate on school funding rather than a measurement parents should use to weigh the best schools.  Why?  In my time working with the local charter school, and discussions with others in similar positions at charter schools, I came to learn the “games” that charter/choice schools (or, more importantly, their parent organizations) play with “cost” numbers.  Many of us on staff with the parent organization spent countless hours of our work days to support the school, yet none of our salaries or benefits were ever included in official reports of school expenditures.  “Official” school expenditures didn’t show any marketing costs, fund raising costs, custodial services, security costs, etc.--these dollars were in fact spent and necessary, but they were applied to the parent organization.

* Many charter schools, including the one I worked for, purposely avoid costs that public schools must incur.  For example, the charter school I worked for provided no busing, bought no library books (the very small library contained only donated books), and had no students with physical disabilities (a dirty little secret among many small private and charter schools--if you don’t have a special education program, parents of special ed students won’t apply to have their kids come to your school.)

* The school I worked for received private money in addition to the public money it received.  Yet the “cost-per-pupil” figures we provided were based only on the public monies provided.

* Charter/private schools know that their private donors can be fooled by the test score numbers you give them.  Each year I worked with the charter school, we publicized only those test scores that looked good.  If 3rd Grade reading and 5th Grade Math scores were good, that’s what we publicized in articles and letters.  If the Iowa Standard tests were good but the WKCE tests weren’t, we pretended the latter scores didn’t exist.  In developing ideas on how to publicize scores, I examined materials another well-known local charter school put forth--after reviewing scores on the state DPI’s site, I found that they were actually lying about their scores by quite a bit. [. . .]

* Charter/private schools can and do accept academically talented students ahead of poor students--something public schools cannot do.  The charter school I worked for had more interested parents than it did open slots for students.  What did it do?  “Unofficially,” it accepted the students with the highest grades from their previous school work.

Having been paid to “play with” testing results to make them look good for a charter school, I offer this advice to parents who want to use testing results intelligently as one indicator of the quality of a school:
* Ask to see all cumulative testing results at all grade levels, not just what the school gives you. [. . .]
* Don’t let the school play the “year” trick.  For example, if a school had terrible test results this school year but great test results last school year, they might give you the “2004” test results, which are actually the 2003-2004 school year test results based on tests students took in November 2003 and results the school received in 2004.  If this school year’s test results were better than last school year’s, they might give you the “2004” test results, which are the results of the tests students took in November 2004 as part of the 2004-2005 school year.

(My emphasis throughout.)

Thanks, Patrick, for the honesty. I keep saying, charter and choice schools are not the answer everyone thinks they are. Sure, public schools also "play" with the numbers. But they are, at bottom, fully transparent and fully accountable to you, me, the DPI, voters, taxpayers, and parents. These "private" schools simply are not. They make promises and represent themselves one way ("The school will be safe. [. . .] We don't have a bad school. We have a great school," said the guy from Academic Solutions) while the reality is completely different (riots in the halls, anyone?). And what kind of transparency can we ask from these schools? What kind of accountability?

Not, sadly, an April Fools

This week, gas has already hit $2.39 for the cheap stuff. Tomorrow, the price will jump three more cents as that cursed automatic gas tax kicks in. I'll just remind everyone--as I did this time last year--that good Democrats Spencer Black and Tim Carpenter keep trying to kill the tax, but John Gard (R Sun Prairie Peshtigo), who is plugged into the road-builder's pipeline doesn't want it to happen. (To be fair, our Gov. J-Dizzle probably is glad about that, as much as he hauls in.)

And Good Bloggers

By which, of course, I mean me. At Fightin' Bob.

Speaking of Bad Bloggers

The wingnut who runs the St. Croix-based http://ontheborderline.net/ (no link for you!) has started a xerox of Rich Eggleston's blogTABOR at http://blogtaborwi.blogspot.com/ (again, no link). I'm not sure what he's up to, but it can't be good. It's also a crummy, unethical, and potentially illegal (copyright violations, anyone?) thing to do.

It does, however, go quite a ways toward proving my theory that Republicans would much rather put their fingers in their ears than listen to facts that don't jibe with their worldview.

Is This Kosher?

Frank Lasee, so weak-willed that he needs a constitutional amendment to keep him from giving in to that tax jones, has plastered some of his state websites (like this one) with a "www.franklasee.net" banner, as if they were his own private pages instead of done on taxpayers' dimes. Is that kosher?

What's funnier is that if you click on the banner, you get a 404-Not Found error page.

Russ Goes South, Again

Lots of interesting perspective on Russ Feingold's return trip to the Very Red South. For example, the Milwaukee daily called it "one of the more unusual forays a Democrat with national ambitions could make - a three-day campaign-style swing through a state his party lost by 25 points in the 2004 presidential race."

The Mongomery Advertiser made sure we knew Feingold was out of his element: "What a joke," Alabama Republican Party Chairwoman Twinkle Andress Cavanaugh said in rebuttal later in the day. "The reason he came back was because he opened his mouth and he inserted his foot to start with." To that, of course, I say, yeah, but your name's Twinkle.

The Birmingham News told us that "Congress is on spring break." And I think it means a lot that Russ is off fence-mending instead of dousing young women's thin t-shirts with Budweiser.

At MSNBC (it took me some time to figure out that the headline "Pope linked to feeding tube" probably doesn't mean the same as "Boy Scout leader linked to child porn" and has nothing to do with the World's Most Famous Feeding Tube, down in Florida), there's a rerun of local paper's story, but a brand-new story today about Russ's seat on the Senate Judiciary committee. That story includes such melifluous prose as, "Unlike another potential 2008 contender, fellow Judiciary Committee Democrat Sen. Joe Biden, whose questioning of witnesses tends to become a meandering meditation on life and the law, Feingold poses crisp queries." I don't really know what it's about.

Just thought I'd give you all a heads up.

Scott on Air

Even though his name's not on the list here, my friend and near-neighbor Scott tells me he'll be on WUWM's "At Ten" program tomorrow. The show airs at, um, ten.

MPS School Board district 7

The daily today has profiles on the candidates for the Milwaukee Public Schools 7th district race, the one that may be most pivotal this year. There's the good guy, John Malloy Hagen, and the very, very bad guy, Danny Goldberg.

What makes Goldberg so very bad? Try this: "Until September, Goldberg worked for the Technical Assistance and Leadership Center [TALC], an organization he helped create. The center--and Goldberg, specifically--was instrumental in winning Milwaukee a multimillion-dollar grant from the Gates Foundation to reform its high schools by creating new, smaller ones, and breaking apart existing, large ones."

Yay, you might be saying, millions for MPS! Why is that wrong? Well, three things in particular:

1. The only big winner from the Gates grant is TALC itself:

   At first glance, the $17 million Gates grant sounds like a lot. But MPS is guaranteed only about $9 million, which, on an annual basis, is about $65 per MPS high school student.
   
   Financially, the only certainty is that the Gates grant is a bonanza for the Technical Assistance and Leadership Center of TransCenter for Youth. A little-known non-profit with strong ties to the voucher movement, the group will receive one-third, or $5.75 million, of the Gates money to provide training and support. (The grant's remaining $2.5 million goes toward forming 10 non-MPS voucher and charter schools.)

   
   
2. The big losers in this whole "small school redisign" fiasco are students, teachers, and parents. As much as you may hear that the new "multiplexed" high schools are doing so voluntarily, don't believe it. Several high schools--North Division and Marshall, among them--were given the ultimatum to change or close.
   
   Our MPS Superintendents have the habit of unilaterally making decisions that affect the entire city. The immediate past guy, Spence Korte, for example, snuck off to DC to claim, without one ounce of community support, that Milwaukee wanted to be the "charter school district." And witness, for example, the recent flap over the current guy's decision to change school start times, a decision which seemed, like Athena from the head of Zeus, to plop fully formed into committee. The committee meeting I wrote about a few weeks back only had community members attending because the lone board member opposed blast-faxed schools the day before with news of the hearing.
   
   This small-school baloney is no different. Take the story of the Advanced Language and Academic Studies High School, or ALAS. The idea behind ALAS is not so bad--a school dedicated to a high-standards bilingual education. But its implementation has been nothing short of embarrassing. It was originally slated to be housed at South Division High School--a school that already had a vibrant bilingual program--without the consent of South's staff or parent group. In addition, the students in ALAS would be siphoned from South, gutting the bilingual AP programs and costing South hundreds of thousands of dollars. What's worse, the planners exaggerated how much community support they had.
   
   After a compromise that delayed ALAS's opening for a year, the powers that be finally decided to stick ALAS at Kosciuszko Middle school, again without the consent of the Kozy community, whose students would be relegated to the basement while ALAS took the upper two floors. Expect more of the same as the "small school" crap continues.
   
   
3. Since we can expect more of the same, it is doubly important that we not continue to elect people to the school board whose loyalties lie with non-public schools. It boggles my mind--seriously, it's like scrambled eggs up there--how this city can put people on the public school board whose campaigns are funded by national voucher money and whose goal is to continue gutting Milwaukee's public schools in favor of ineffective and even dangerous private schools.
   
   John Malloy Hagen knows where success will come from. He is a detective with the Milwaukee Police Department, and he's worked school details before, and he knows that unless we can get kids into classrooms with quality teachers, we're doomed. And, using almost the same language I've used to describe the voucher fiasco, he says, "I don't like the idea of experimenting with children." Now, when we are at a serious crossroads, is not the time to turn over our children to unproved experimentation and start ramming through "reform" that serves only to tear communities apart. Danny Goldberg, pockets full of Gates money, campaign coffers full of voucher money, wants to keep doing just that.

So, if you live in district 7, Hagen is your guy. If you don't, tell everyone you know who does. At the very least, you still need to vote April 5 for Libby Burmaster--see what I wrote yesterday for more on why.

Advocate Weekly, Part II

Here's your reading assignment for the week. There will be a quiz.

More Superintendent News

The puff piece on Gregg Underheim (the bad guy) is here (following Burmaster's profile yesterday). Things I did not know about Underheim before:

• The teaching job he quit was at the high school my wife graduated from
  
• After he found he couldn't hack it as a teacher, he found he couldn't hack it as a national Republican operative
  
• He was a world-class foosball player
  
• Despite chairing the Assembly health committee for a decade, he's done nothing to control skyrocketing health care costs in Wisconsin (okay, that one I knew already)
  
• One of my least favorite people in the world, Ken Cole of the state Association of School Boards, said of Underheim, "I don't think he's very knowledgeable at all" on education issues.

It's that last that I keep worrying about. Last week, when I reviewed his "platform," there seemed to be a bit of dissonance between what he envisioned as possible and what economic and pedagogical reality would allow. Whether it's his apparent misunderstanding of the QEO or his belief that good teachers will want to sit on their behinds all day babysitting students at laptops, he just doesn't have a handle on what's really going on.

In other news, Monday marked a reporting deadline for fundraising in the race, and Burmaster leads the way, rather unsurprisingly. If I didn't have TiVo, I'd probably have seen their commercials by now . . .

Puff Profile

The daily is running puff pieces on the state superintendent candidates. Today is Libby Burmaster, with that other fella tomorrow.

Things I've Been Meaning to Link

My friend Stephen and others are keeping an eye on Milwaukee media and Milwaukee Republicans at Watchdog Milwaukee.

Joe Thomas of Shut up and Teach is keeping track of many great progrssive educators and supporters of public education. He's collecting a weekly best-of; here's last week's, with another to follow tonight or tomorrow.