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.)