I don't want to make a habit of it, but, you know, the graphic is kind of cute.
Bush’s State of the Union
Bush’s Funding Record
“Keeping America competitive requires us to be good stewards of tax dollars. Every year of my presidency, we have reduced the growth of non-security discretionary spending - and last year you passed bills that cut this spending. This year my budget will cut it again, and reduce or eliminate more than 140 programs that are performing poorly or not fulfilling essential priorities. By passing these reforms, we will save the American taxpayer another 14 billion dollars next year - and stay on track to cut the deficit in half by 2009.”
Some of the ‘non-priority’ programs Mr. Bush proposed eliminating last year: Comprehensive School Reform, Educational Technology State Grants, K-12 Foreign Language Grants, Even Start, Vocational Education State Grants, GEAR UP, Safe and Drug Free Schools State Grants, Community Technology Centers, LEAP, Thurgood Marshall Legal Opportunity, Teacher Quality Enhancement Program, Hydropower Program, Emergency Medical Services for Children, Healthy Community Access Program, Universal Newborn Hearing Screening, HOPE VI, COPS Hiring Grants, and COPS Interoperable Communications Technology Grants.
Many of these cuts will cause direct, serious damage to programs that help Americans in their everyday lives while providing savings that are peanuts compared to the $51 billion it will cost to pay for the tax cuts for the wealthiest one percent of Americans this year.
Statement of U.S. Senator Russ Feingold on the President’s Warrantless Wiretapping Program, February 7, 2006, as Prepared for Delivery from the Senate Floor
Mr. President, last week the President of the United States gave his State of the Union address, where he spoke of America’s leadership in the world, and called on all of us to “lead this world toward freedom.” Again and again, he invoked the principle of freedom, and how it can transform nations, and empower people around the world.
But, almost in the same breath, the President openly acknowledged that he has ordered the government to spy on Americans, on American soil, without the warrants required by law.
The President issued a call to spread freedom throughout the world, and then he admitted that he has deprived Americans of one of their most basic freedoms under the Fourth Amendment -- to be free from unjustified government intrusion.
The President was blunt. He said that he had authorized the NSA’s domestic spying program, and he made a number of misleading arguments to defend himself. His words got rousing applause from Republicans, and even some Democrats.
The President was blunt, so I will be blunt: This program is breaking the law, and this President is breaking the law. Not only that, he is misleading the American people in his efforts to justify this program.
How is that worthy of applause? Since when do we celebrate our commander in chief for violating our most basic freedoms, and misleading the American people in the process? When did we start to stand up and cheer for breaking the law? In that moment at the State of the Union, I felt ashamed.
Congress has lost its way if we don’t hold this President accountable for his actions.
The President suggests that anyone who criticizes his illegal wiretapping program doesn’t understand the threat we face. But we do. Every single one of us is committed to stopping the terrorists who threaten us and our families.
Defeating the terrorists should be our top national priority, and we all agree that we need to wiretap them to do it. In fact, it would be irresponsible not to wiretap terrorists. But we have yet to see any reason why we have to trample the laws of the United States to do it. The President’s decision that he can break the law says far more about his attitude toward the rule of law than it does about the laws themselves.
This goes way beyond party, and way beyond politics. What the President has done here is to break faith with the American people. In the State of the Union, he also said that “we must always be clear in our principles” to get support from friends and allies that we need to fight terrorism. So let’s be clear about a basic American principle: When someone breaks the law, when someone misleads the public in an attempt to justify his actions, he needs to be held accountable. The President of the United States has broken the law. The President of the United States is trying to mislead the American people. And he needs to be held accountable.
Unfortunately, the President refuses to provide any details about this domestic spying program. Not even the full Intelligence committees know the details, and they were specifically set up to review classified information and oversee the intelligence activities of our government. Instead, the President says – “Trust me.”
This is not the first time we’ve heard that. In the lead-up to the Iraq war, the Administration went on an offensive to get the American public, the Congress, and the international community to believe its theory that Saddam Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction, and even that he had ties to Al Qaeda. The President painted a dire – and inaccurate – picture of Saddam Hussein’s capability and intent, and we invaded Iraq on that basis. To make matters worse, the Administration misled the country about what it would take to stabilize and reconstruct Iraq after the conflict. We were led to believe that this was going to be a short endeavor, and that our troops would be home soon.
We all recall the President’s “Mission Accomplished” banner on the aircraft carrier on May 1, 2003. In fact, the mission was not even close to being complete. More than 2100 total deaths have occurred after the President declared an end to major combat operations in May of 2003, and over 16,600 American troops have been wounded in Iraq. The President misled the American people and grossly miscalculated the true challenge of stabilizing and rebuilding Iraq.
In December, we found out that the President has authorized wiretaps of Americans without the court orders required by law. He says he is only wiretapping people with links to terrorists, but how do we know? We don’t. The President is unwilling to let a neutral judge make sure that is the case. He will not submit this program to an independent branch of government to make sure he’s not violating the rights of law-abiding Americans.
So I don’t want to hear again that this Administration has shown it can be trusted. It hasn’t. And that is exactly why the law requires a judge to review these wiretaps.
It is up to Congress to hold the President to account. We held a hearing on the domestic spying program in the Judiciary Committee yesterday, where Attorney General Gonzales was a witness. We expect there will be other hearings. That is a start, but it will take more than just hearings to get the job done.
We know that in part because the President’s Attorney General has already shown a willingness to mislead the Congress.
At the hearing yesterday, I reminded the Attorney General about his testimony during his confirmation hearings in January 2005, when I asked him whether the President had the power to authorize warrantless wiretaps in violation of the criminal law. We didn’t know it then, but the President had authorized the NSA program three years before, when the Attorney General was White House Counsel. At his confirmation hearing, the Attorney General first tried to dismiss my question as “hypothetical.” He then testified that “it’s not the policy or the agenda of this President to authorize actions that would be in contravention of our criminal statutes.”
Well, Mr. President, wiretapping American citizens on American soil without the required warrant is in direct contravention of our criminal statutes. The Attorney General knew that, and he knew about the NSA program when he sought the Senate’s approval for his nomination to be Attorney General. He wanted the Senate and the American people to think that the President had not acted on the extreme legal theory that the President has the power as Commander in Chief to disobey the criminal laws of this country. But he had. The Attorney General had some explaining to do, and he didn’t do it yesterday. Instead he parsed words, arguing that what he said was truthful because he didn’t believe that the President’s actions violated the law.
But he knew what I was asking, and he knew he was misleading the Committee in his response. If he had been straightforward, he would have told the committee that in his opinion, the President has the authority to authorize warrantless wiretaps. My question wasn’t about whether such illegal wiretapping was going on – like almost everyone in Congress, I didn’t know about the program then. It was a question about how the nominee to be Attorney General viewed the law. This nominee wanted to be confirmed, and so he let a misleading statement about one of the central issues of his confirmation – his view of executive power – stay on the record until the New York Times revealed the program.
The rest of the Attorney General’s performance at yesterday’s hearing certainly did not give me any comfort, either. He continued to push the Administration’s weak legal arguments, continued to insinuate that anyone who questions this program doesn’t want to fight terrorism, and refused to answer basic questions about what powers this Administration is claiming. We still need a lot of answers from this Administration.
But let’s put aside the Attorney General for now. The burden is not just on him to come clean -- the President has some explaining to do. The President’s defense of his actions is deeply cynical, deeply misleading, and deeply troubling.
To find out that the President of the United States has violated the basic rights of the American people is chilling. And then to see him publicly embrace his actions – and to see so many Members of Congress cheer him on – is appalling.
The President has broken the law, and he has made it clear that he will continue to do so. But the President is not a king. And the Congress is not a king’s court. Our job is not to stand up and cheer when the President breaks the law. Our job is to stand up and demand accountability, to stand up and check the power of an out-of-control executive branch.
That is one of the reasons that the framers put us here - to ensure balance between the branches of government, not to act as a professional cheering section.
We need answers. Because no one, not the President, not the Attorney General, and not any of their defenders in this body, has been able to explain why it is necessary to break the law to defend against terrorism. And I think that’s because they can’t explain it.
Instead, this administration reacts to anyone who questions this illegal program by saying that those of us who demand the truth and stand up for our rights and freedoms have a pre-9/11 view of the world.
In fact, the President has a pre-1776 view of the world.
Our Founders lived in dangerous times, and they risked everything for freedom. Patrick Henry said, "Give me liberty or give me death." The President's pre-1776 mentality is hurting America. It is fracturing the foundation on which our country has stood for 230 years. The President can't just bypass two branches of government, and obey only those laws he wants to obey. Deciding unilaterally which of our freedoms still apply in the fight against terrorism is unacceptable and needs to be stopped immediately.
Let’s examine for a moment some of the President’s attempts to defend his actions. His arguments have changed over time, of course. They have to – none of them hold up under even casual scrutiny, so he can’t rely on one single explanation. As each argument crumbles beneath him, he moves on to a new one, until that, too, is debunked, and on and on he goes.
In the State of the Union, the President referred to Presidents in American history who cited executive authority to order warrantless surveillance. But of course those past presidents – like Wilson and Roosevelt – were acting before the Supreme Court decided in 1967 that our communications are protected by the Fourth Amendment, and before Congress decided in 1978 that the executive branch can no longer unilaterally decide which Americans to wiretap. The Attorney General yesterday was unable to give me one example of a President who, since 1978 when FISA was passed, has authorized warrantless wiretaps outside of FISA.
So that argument is baseless, and it’s deeply troubling that the President of the United States would so obviously mislead the Congress and American public. That hardly honors the founders’ idea that the President should address the Congress on the state of our union.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed in 1978 to create a secret court, made up of judges who develop national security expertise, to issue warrants for surveillance of terrorists and spies. These are the judges from whom the Bush Administration has obtained thousands of warrants since 9/11. The Administration has almost never had a warrant request rejected by those judges. They have used the FISA Court thousands of times, but at the same time they assert that FISA is an “old law” or “out of date” and they can’t comply with it. Clearly they can and do comply with it – except when they don’t. Then they just arbitrarily decide to go around these judges, and around the law.
The Administration has said that it ignored FISA because it takes too long to get a warrant under that law. But we know that in an emergency, where the Attorney General believes that surveillance must begin before a court order can be obtained, FISA permits the wiretap to be executed immediately as long as the government goes to the court within 72 hours. The Attorney General has complained that the emergency provision does not give him enough flexibility, he has complained that getting a FISA application together or getting the necessary approvals takes too long. But the problems he has cited are bureaucratic barriers that the executive branch put in place, and could easily remove if it wanted.
FISA also permits the Attorney General to authorize unlimited warrantless electronic surveillance in the United States during the 15 days following a declaration of war, to allow time to consider any amendments to FISA required by a wartime emergency. That is the time period that Congress specified. Yet the President thinks that he can do this indefinitely.
In the State of the Union, the President also argued that federal courts had approved the use of presidential authority that he was invoking. But that turned out to be misleading as well. When I asked the Attorney General about this, he could point me to no court – not the Supreme Court or any other court – that has considered whether, after FISA was enacted, the President nonetheless had the authority to bypass it and authorize warrantless wiretaps. Not one court. The Administration’s effort to find support for what it has done in snippets of other court decisions would be laughable if this issue were not so serious.
The President knows that FISA makes it a crime to wiretap Americans in the United States without a warrant or a court order. Why else would he have assured the public, over and over again, that he was getting warrants before engaging in domestic surveillance?
Here’s what the President said on April 20, 2004: “Now, by the way, any time you hear the United States government talking about wiretap, it requires – a wiretap requires a court order. Nothing has changed, by the way. When we’re talking about chasing down terrorists, we’re talking about getting a court order before we do so.”
And again, on July 14, 2004: “The government can’t move on wiretaps or roving wiretaps without getting a court order.”
The President was understandably eager in these speeches to make it clear that under his administration, law enforcement was using the FISA Court to obtain warrants before wiretapping. That is understandable, since wiretapping Americans on American soil without a warrant is against the law.
And listen to what the President said on June 9, 2005: “Law enforcement officers need a federal judge’s permission to wiretap a foreign terrorist’s phone, a federal judge’s permission to track his calls, or a federal judge’s permission to search his property. Officers must meet strict standards to use any of these tools. And these standards are fully consistent with the Constitution of the U.S.”
Now that the public knows about the domestic spying program, he has had to change course. He has looked around for arguments to cloak his actions. And all of them are completely threadbare.
The President has argued that Congress gave him authority to wiretap Americans on U.S. soil without a warrant when it passed the Authorization for Use of Military Force after September 11, 2001. Mr. President, that is ridiculous. Members of Congress did not think this resolution gave the President blanket authority to order these warrantless wiretaps. We all know that. Anyone in this body who would tell you otherwise either wasn’t here at the time or isn’t telling the truth. We authorized the President to use military force in Afghanistan, a necessary and justified response to September 11. We did not authorize him to wiretap American citizens on American soil without going through the process that was set up nearly three decades ago precisely to facilitate the domestic surveillance of terrorists – with the approval of a judge. That is why both Republicans and Democrats have questioned this theory.
This particular claim is further undermined by congressional approval of the Patriot Act just a few weeks after we passed the Authorization for the Use of Military Force. The Patriot Act made it easier for law enforcement to conduct surveillance on suspected terrorists and spies, while maintaining FISA’s baseline requirement of judicial approval for wiretaps of Americans in the U.S. It is ridiculous to think that Congress would have negotiated and enacted all the changes to FISA in the Patriot Act if it thought it had just authorized the President to ignore FISA in the AUMF.
In addition, in the intelligence authorization bill passed in December 2001, we extended the emergency authority in FISA, at the Administration’s request, from 24 to 72 hours. Why do that if the President has the power to ignore FISA? That makes no sense at all.
The President has also said that his inherent executive power gives him the power to approve this program. But here the President is acting in direct violation of a criminal statute. That means his power is, as Justice Jackson said in the steel seizure cases half a century ago, “at its lowest ebb.” A recent letter from a group of law professors and former executive branch officials points out that “every time the Supreme Court has confronted a statute limiting the Commander-in-Chief’s authority, it has upheld the statute.” The Senate reports issued when FISA was enacted confirm the understanding that FISA overrode any pre-existing inherent authority of the President. As the 1978 Senate Judiciary Committee report stated, FISA “recognizes no inherent power of the president in this area.” And “Congress has declared that this statute, not any claimed presidential power, controls.” Contrary to what the President told the country in the State of the Union, no court has ever approved warrantless surveillance in violation of FISA.
The President’s claims of inherent executive authority, and his assertions that the courts have approved this type of activity, are baseless.
The President has argued that periodic internal executive branch review provides an adequate check on the program. He has even characterized this periodic review as a safeguard for civil liberties. But we don’t know what this check involves. And we do know that Congress explicitly rejected this idea of unilateral executive decision-making in this area when it passed FISA.
Finally, the president has tried to claim that informing a handful of congressional leaders, the so-called Gang of Eight, somehow excuses breaking the law. Of course, several of these members said they weren’t given the full story. And all of them were prohibited from discussing what they were told. So the fact that they were informed under these extraordinary circumstances does not constitute congressional oversight, and it most certainly does not constitute congressional approval of the program. Indeed, it doesn’t even comply with the National Security Act, which requires the entire memberships of the House and Senate Intelligence Committee to be “fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States.”
In addition, we now know that some of these members expressed concern about the program. The Administration ignored their protests. Just last week, one of the eight members of Congress who has been briefed about the program, Congresswoman Jane Harman, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, said she sees no reason why the Administration cannot accomplish its goals within the law as currently written.
None of the President’s arguments explains or excuses his conduct, or the NSA’s domestic spying program. Not one. It is hard to believe that the President has the audacity to claim that they do. It is a strategy that really hinges on the credibility of the office of the Presidency itself. If you just insist that you didn’t break the law, you haven’t broken the law. It reminds me of what Richard Nixon said after he had left office: “Well, when the president does it that means that it is not illegal.” But that is not how our constitutional democracy works. Making those kinds of arguments is damaging the credibility of the Presidency.
And what’s particularly disturbing is how many members of Congress have responded. They stood up and cheered. They stood up and cheered.
Justice Louis Brandeis once wrote: “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the Government’s purposes are beneficent. Men born to freedom are naturally alert to repel invasion of their liberty by evil-minded rulers. The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
The President’s actions are indefensible. Freedom is an enduring principle. It is not something to celebrate in one breath, and ignore the next. Freedom is at the heart of who we are as a nation, and as a people. We cannot be a beacon of freedom for the world unless we protect our own freedoms here at home.
The President was right about one thing. In his address, he said “We love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it.”
Yes, Mr. President. We do love our freedom, and we will fight to keep it. We will fight to defeat the terrorists who threaten the safety and security of our families and loved ones. And we will fight to protect the rights of law-abiding Americans against intrusive government power.
As the President said, we must always be clear in our principles. So let us be clear: We cherish the great and noble principle of freedom, we will fight to keep it, and we will hold this President – and anyone who violates those freedoms – accountable for their actions. In a nation built on freedom, the President is not a king, and no one is above the law.
Including all compensation, the MTEA teacher makes $67,456.97 per year[*]. This includes straight salary, the cash value of health insurance (if he or she had to pay for a comparable policy with the same coverage out-of-pocket), contribution to the employee's pension, dental and vision insurance, and the total compensation to FICA and Medicare.Peter "I will bet my house and property I can do any MTEA member's job better than they can" DiGaudio is responsible for 12 students for one hour each (according to the end of this post). He also says he earns $240 a week, meaning he must only work 30 weeks to teachers' 40**. The average Milwaukee high school teacher is responsible for about 150 students for one hour each. At his rate, if DiGaudio had the workload of an MPS teacher, he would be paid $91,000 for his 30 weeks, or $121,000 for 40. (A similar calculation can exist for elementary school teachers, who often teach fewer students total, but teach them five or six subjects daily.)
Including all compensation, for actually doing that teacher's job, I make $7,280 per year. This includes the cash value of health insurance (if he or she had to pay for a comparable policy with the same coverage out-of-pocket), contribution to the employee's pension, dental and vision insurance, and the total compensation to FICA and Medicare, the sum total of which equals ZERO. That is my annual income. I make 10.7% of what the MTEA teacher specified makes, with as much or more education.
I have a number of problems with government-run education. Not the least of which is the monopoly nature of the government-run schools. [. . .] Jay Bullock over at folkbum's rants and rambles, an MTEA teacher in MPS, tries to make the case that there is open competition between public and private schools, since private schools existed before choice. That's disingenuous, and he knows it. There is no real parental choice unless you are an affluent family. Poor and middle class families have little choice but the slums of government-run education.Finally, people are starting to catch on to the lower-case thing, but how hard is it to get the name right? More seriously, Peter is the one being disingenuous.
I see the products of "gummint skoolz" every damn day in my line of work. These products of the wonderful government system cannot read, write or do math at beyond a first or second grade level. All of these kids are between eighth and 11th grade. That is pathetic, and to hear anyone even defending this as a quality product frosts me. This is a pure end result of a monopoly. These kids and others like them have no real future. At most menial jobs such as fast food workers, but more likely gangs, drugs, crime, prison and death. [. . .]The last part of that--income, benefits, whatnot--will come back to haunt us in a moment, but for now I want to focus on the first part. DiGaudio feels free to judge MPS as a whole--and MPS teachers as a whole--because he works for a tutoring company that provides services to MPS students who need help. When he says he sees "the products of 'gumint skoolz' every damn day," the students he sees are the ones who need the most remedial help, clearly not a representative sample. I, too, can tell the story of the year I spent working for the Sylvan Learning Center, where almost all of the students I tutored (and, how I would love to have that 3-1 student-teacher ratio in my classrooms!) were from well-heeled suburban districts or private and religious schools. This is, I know, in great part because prior to No Child Left Behind, which allows your and my tax dollars to pay people like DiGaudio and his boss, Sylvan and its counterparts were priced such that MPS parents often could not afford it. Until NCLB, in fact, there was no Sylvan franchise anywhere in the city proper.
There is a bit of a personal story here which I have to admit colors my opinion to a certain extent. I am currently working for one of the supplemental service providers for MPS, earning a flat rate of $20 per one hour session to work with the failing products of MTEA members who cannot do their jobs properly. I have 12 clients that I see each week. That is my income. Period. No benefits, no retirement. Nothing. You do the math. I am doing your work for you and not getting compensated as well as you are for not doing your job.
I have applied to the local district here and to MPS. As well as virtually every surrounding district in the area. Every year since 1986. Wanna guess how many interviews I have had? None. Not one. In 20 years. So there is a tinge of bitterness on my part. I have to admit that. I see the end effect of lousy teachers and cannot understand why no district around here wants the services of a qualified, highly competent professional. [. . .]At least he's honest about the sour grapes thing. We now know that it isn't just his conservative ideology that makes us all out to be "WEAC thugs"; it's also that fact that no one let him in our club. I don't know what his certification is (he says elsewhere he has an Masters in Education, but not what he's licensed to teach), but I doubt he'll have much luck this year, either; remember, I'm predicting layoffs.
So here I sit. Doing what I can to help fix a broken system. One that I could do a better job of fixing it from within than from without.
Recent college grads would probably be more willing to get into teaching if [t]hey were not constantly bombarded with msgs by the WEAC/MSM and other sources complaining about how bad it is. Why would any normal person want to go into a profession that all they hear about is negativity. If WEAC and other liberally slanted groups wanted more teachers then they should be out there being positive about such a career choice. Oh wait - Thats right, Supply and demand. The fewer teachers there are in the system the more money they are worth. The more money they are worth, the more money the unions get in dues. (2 hrs a pay period) The more money they get in dues, the more money they can give to other liberal leaning socialist organizations. And then the more powerful they become. Never mind. WEAC will never promote teaching as a profession. They would lose to much power.First, the ID10T misstates the way dues are assessed--they have nothing to do with how much we are paid. I pay as much as someone 20 years my senior, who pays as much as someone who started teaching this year. Second, the ID10T's argument here runs counter to everything his side has been saying about the union's motivations to oppose the voucher program. He says we want an artificially low supply compared to the demand. Aside from seeming to run counter to NEA's dire predictions of teacher shortages, it breaks with the conservative calcualtion that fewer public school students means fewer public school teachers means less in dues, and that's why the union opposes vouchers. The ID10T's side needs to make sure that they all have their stories straight.
I'm probably better than 90% of the clowns on the MPS payroll and in the MTEA. Hiring me would be an upgrade anywhere. I have applied each of the last 4 years and probably 10 times in the past 20 without one single interview. I'll match my recommendations and evaluations with you, Jay, and any damned person on the MPS payroll. Tell me why? Hell, I told HR I'd even move to Milwaukee because it's better than the pissant piece of crap worthless work I am doing now. And, I will bet I can do your job better than you can.No one hired him? Hm.
If Quindlen is right that the American people should be our biggest advocates, then those same people ought to recognize that it was the teachers who reached them--not the meddling anti-tax forces, the know-it-all politicians, or the privateers who currently run the Department of Education--who deserve the praise and rewards. It was the teachers who helped them "levitate" who created conditions for success, not vouchers or Intelligent Design or corporate America.The reason the best and the brightest don't want to be teachers is because every time we turn around, somebody is calling us "thugs," questioning our intelligence, berating us for failing our students. You can't turn on the radio or read a newspaper without learning how awful we are, how poisonous our union is, how unvalued we are by society. We are told by the Kafka-esque bureaucracies to teach to the test, do these mountains of paperwork, blow with the ever-shifting winds of "reform."
Think back for just a second about your favorite school teacher, one who really did help you levitate, and ask yourself this: Would I meddle now in how that teacher does her job? Would that teacher have been as effective with me then if he'd had to prepare me for a standardized test? Would that teacher agree with me if I'd said to her face that she had an easy job--summers off and weekends free?
You know what the answers are. You know what the solution is: Stop perpetuating myths and start respecting and supporting what we teachers do.
The value of homes in Milwaukee are not decreasing due to School Choice. School Choice is not the cause of MPS' problems. Choice schools have accountability and their performance certainly can be no worse than MPS.Pawlak:
How can 15,000 kids going to private schools equal an *increase* in MPS clas size? [. . .] How is taking 15,000 children out of MPS causing a decrease in educational materials available to the remaining students?Somehow, they refuse to believe that sucking money out of the public schools could serve to increase class sizes, create shortages of supplies, and otherwise jeopardize schools' quality. Because yes MPS pays for these voucher students, these voucher students that state doesn't count as MPS's. They also don't consider that the higher taxes Milwaukee residents are paying because of the voucher program might also have something to do with declining property values.
The Journal-Sentinel reports today that an eight-year-old provision in Wisconsin's open enrollment program will end after this school year.Seth goes on to opine that relying on the free market as a matter of government policy is short-sighted and inevitably creates whole classes of those shut out of the market.
This provision, which has been around since open enrollment began in 1998, allows a school district to limit the number of students who transfer out of its district under the open enrollment policy. Since each time a student leaves a district the state aid provided to that district decreases, the open enrollment policy could actually work to shut down certain school districts unless limits on how many students could leave the district are in place. The absence of the provision for the 2006-2007 school year threatens the financial stability of at least 10 rural school districts, according to the JS report.
The gap between Wisconsin's most successful and least successful high schools is growing, and economics and race are the factors that match up most closely with the gap, a new study concludes.Again, confirming what I firmly believe: The community surrounding the schools is as or more important than what goes on in the schools. As I have said before, we in the public schools can and do work small miracles every day. But there is no way that we can make up for poverty, unemployment, high mobility, low property values in every student, every time, all the time. And that seems to be true across the state, not just in Milwaukee. As Paul Soglin put it today, there are
In an analysis issued by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, Phil McDade, a former education reporter for the Wisconsin State Journal in Madison, focused on school districts where the scores of 10th-graders on the state's standardized tests were in the top 10% and the bottom 10% overall in the 1996-'97 and 2003-'04 school years.
He concluded that the scores, across all the subjects tested by the state, indicated that the top schools were pulling away from the middle of the pack, while the bottom schools were falling further behind.
He calculated that in the earlier year, the top districts scored 10.7% above the state average, but in the later year, they were 21.3% above the average. For schools in the bottom 10%, the average was 13.7% below the state average in 1996-'97 and 17.3% below the average in 2003-'04.
The result pointed to "a growing gap between the performance of top- and bottom-tier high schools . . . during a time when the spending gap between these two groups of schools remained relatively constant," McDade said. "The growing performance gap is largely influenced by socioeconomic factors beyond the influence of schools," McDade said. "Property wealth, poverty and race were found to affect student performance."
underlying social conditions, such as poverty, incidence of two-parent families, number of children for whom English is a second language, and the number of special education students. This is an important omission because we know that family condition is the strongest predictor of a child’s success in school. Schools have an important effect; however, family (especially the mother’s level of education) has a greater influence than anything done by the school.The third piece comes to us by way of the Herbertly-named Amtal Rule:
Southeastern Wisconsin will prosper or decline as a region. I'm betting on the former and the Public Policy Forum's latest research (pdf) is reason for hope. A survey of 600 people from throughout region reveals some interesting opportunities and challenges [. . .]. Education ranks among the top concerns of people in the region. But there is a disconnect between recognition of a priority and a willingness to solve a problem regionally--especially on education. [. . .]He's absolutely right; as much as I make fun of Alberta Darling's concern over the inner workings of the Milwaukee Public Schools when she, at best, represents only a spare handful of its students, her meddling is not completely out of line. I still find it amusing that the Milwaukee Caucus and the 'burb caucus are so often diametrically opposed, though.
A big part of the region's future workforce come from the City of Milwaukee but the region has not sought to invest in educating that workforce. MPS is seen as a "Milwaukee problem" that suburban counties don't want a part of. But a UWM study indicates the health of MPS schools will determine whether the region grows (pdf):The future strength of the Milwaukee area labor force lies in large part with its minority populations. Metro Milwaukee has the youngest African American population among the 100 largest metro areas in the U.S. Its Asian population is 4th youngest and its Latino population is 9th youngest. By contrast, metro Milwaukee’s white population is older than most metro areas. The white population entering the labor force has declined, while baby boomers are retiring.The region needs to invest time, money and energy into strengthening MPS.
The state on Friday kicked the voucher school L.E.A.D.E.R. Institute out of the city's school choice program. [. . .] In ordering L.E.A.D.E.R. out of the program, state officials cited financial insolvency, arguing that the school owes $497,822 for improperly cashed checks, improperly claimed summer school payments, past payroll payments and other debts.Notice what is missing from the DPI's justification--no mention of the questionable academics at the school:
L.E.A.D.E.R.--the letters stand for Learning Educational Assets Development and Educational Reform--is in its second year of operation. The school has students in kindergarten through 12th grade and is housed in a former bank at 2200 N. King Drive that was previously used by two other voucher schools that have failed, the Mandella School of Science and Math, and Academic Solutions.
The DPI challenged the school in the fall on the grounds that it did not offer enough class hours in a school year to meet the legal minimum for private schools of 875 hours. Tyler argued that because the school met six days a week and in the summer, with about 10 weeks off spread out through the year, it met the total.So the number stays at two--two schools in 16 years that DPI has successfully challenged based on their inability to meet minimum standards. Does anyone really believe that those two have been the only two wastes of taxpayer money since the system's inception?
A DPI hearing examiner accepted Tyler's argument and said the school met the state minimums.
Friends, if you're going to be atheists, start thinking and acting like it. Get rid of your own irrational beliefs and embrace the world as you say it is: a purely physical and random place where goodness and evil don't really exist and where the rules set down by organized religion and thousands of years of human history are no more meaningful than two rocks colliding at the bottom of a mountain after an avalanche.I'm not going to pretend to understand everything there is to understand about the devoutly religious. I did, however, grow up among them; they are my people. I went to church three or more times a week until I was 18, and I think I have a pretty good handle on at least some of it all. What Reich has done here is not uncommon in my experience.
What I learned from my foray into disbelief was that most atheists have it all wrong. They've merely substituted their own irrational belief system for the one I was given from 2,000 years ago. [. . .]
God is the basis for good and evil, and once you reject him and his rules, you're left with nothing but self-serving and self-preservation. In short, you're left with being your own god.
[. . . V]irtually all of my non-believing friends [have come] up with a set of beliefs on their own. They find them in tradition, in rational thought, in politics, in philosophy, in the moon and the stars, in Tarot cards and even in the cookies where they get their Chinese takeout. [. . .] It seems to me, as a rational man as well as a Christian, that those thoughts are irrational and should be discarded immediately by any right-thinking atheist. I'm puzzled why they cling to something so silly. For them, life should be merely an exercise in seeking personal pleasure, procreating and then dying.
School choice--in its most basal form--is a civil rights issue. [. . .] Some suggest the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program is a sledgehammer used to tear down the walls of educational apartheid. [. . .]Again, Holt is implicitly--if not explicitly--linking those who believe in supporting the public schools before supporting private and religious schools to those who support segregation and apartheid; he is calling those of us who demand genuine accountability and more than minimal standards for the MPCP racist--there's just no way around it. As someone who has dedicated his professional life to urban education, to helping the same children that Holt claims to want to help, this is deeply offensive. I realize that Holt is not trying to win my friendship and influence me; rather, he is stirring up the African American community to vote against Jim Doyle this November. Because, you know, those Republicans have such a long history of supporting Milwaukee's black community . . .
Those who naively believed that at some point opponents of choice--the teachers union, the Democratic Party and missionary organizations--would put aside their biases and illogical opposition and join us on this freedom train were living a pipe dream. [. . .] I have no illusions about my ability in a commentary to persuade opponents to alter their course, to climb aboard our freedom train.
Because we have reached the statutory cap on enrollment in the program, the state Department of Public Instruction has engineered a rationing program that will be implemented this fall. It will essentially put a limit on the number of seats participating schools can provide.Here Holt is misplacing the blame, directing his anger at the wrong people. He needs to get on the phone to the GeorgeandSusanMitchells of the world, the Howard Fullers of the world, as ask them why--as voucher supporters--they opposed DPI's initial plans that would have protected all of the schools Holt names and the students attending them. Holt needs to call his allies in the state legislature, the John Gards and Alberta Darlings, and ask why they allowed the lobbying against DPI's initial plans to pursuade them to reject them. It is voucher supporters--most emphatically not the DPI--that deserves the blame should Messmer or Harambee or Urban Day School or any of the other schools whose quality is readily apparent be closed. Period. End of sentence.
That process, DPI officials admit, will mean a minimum of 4,000 students will be thrown out of the schools of their choice next fall. That means schools like Messmer Catholic Schools (which has 400 families on a waiting list), St. Joan Antida and St. Marcus Lutheran, each of which have excellent records of achievement, will be forced to dismiss half their students.
But the losses and personal disruption to human lives doesn't end there. It is estimated that 20 to 30 schools would close as a direct result of the rationing plan, meaning that hundreds of teachers, cooks, janitors, bus drivers, security guards, secretaries and cleaning personnel will lose their jobs.
The consternation over the voucher enrollment cap is a manufactured crisis.The Caucus:
The true crisis facing the voucher program is the lack of accountability that has allowed crooks, con artists and the well-meaning but educationally incapable to bilk taxpayers out of millions of dollars and to shortchange the educational hopes of hundreds of children.
Anyone who knows the governor and his family knows that his first priority is education. He wants the doors of education to be open to all, and he wants to ensure that the education our kids receive is the finest in America. [. . .]Both pieces--very short, especially compared to Holt's, which is longer than these two combined--are worth the full read.
As he first did two years ago, Doyle has again proposed a plan to lift the cap on the number of low-income students able to participate in the voucher program and eliminate prior-year enrollment requirements that limit eligibility.
The governor has clearly and repeatedly stated that he supports lifting the cap as part of a reform package that strengthens the program and expands educational opportunities for all Milwaukee students--whether they attend public or voucher schools.
A large-scale government-financed study has concluded that when it comes to math, students in regular public schools do as well as or significantly better than comparable students in private schools.This study was very, very limited, and did not consider Milwaukee in particular. But I'm throwing it out there as food for thought. Kevin Drum has more.
The study, by Christopher Lubienski and Sarah Theule Lubienski, of the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, compared fourth- and eighth-grade math scores of more than 340,000 students in 13,000 regular public, charter and private schools on the 2003 National Assessment of Educational Progress. The 2003 test was given to 10 times more students than any previous test, giving researchers a trove of new data.
Though private school students have long scored higher on the national assessment, commonly referred to as "the nation's report card," the new study used advanced statistical techniques to adjust for the effects of income, school and home circumstances. The researchers said they compared math scores, not reading ones, because math was considered a clearer measure of a school's overall effectiveness.
[W]e don't know what we're getting for our tax dollars because the governor said no. The Legislature has several times tried to commission objective studies of whether letting parents pick schools improves poor kids' lives. The governor has vetoed them all, vetoes desired by the teachers unions that spent seven figures to put him in office.It's the full gamut, no? Starting with Doyle is owned by WEAC and running through Doyle vetoed a study to All these closures mean there's accountability. All of them have been dealt with in these very pages to one extent or another, but it's worth reminding people:
We may get such a study because a scholar at Georgetown University is rounding up academics and foundations on both sides of the school-choice debate to do one. Bring it on. [. . .]
[W]ith school choice, we do know what we're not getting for our tax money.
We're not getting the Mercedes-buying principal mentioned by the governor: Mandella School of Science and Math got thrown out of the choice program in 2004 by state authorities acting under a law instigated by school-choice advocates. So did Northside High School last week after a state examiner flunked it. So did three other choice schools, and 30 with dicey plans were kept from opening this year.
The abuses cited by the governor and likely to appear in radio ads were stopped by rules choice advocates sought.
Of course, nearly every choice school does give some kind of standard test, and many reveal the results to parents, the people with the greatest claim to know.Wow! Many schools give results to parents. Many! That's accountability for you, isn't it? "Of course," I should write, "if you read the paper, you'd know that parents just don't use academics as a factor in their decisions."
Not that the [public schools are] not trying new things. It's resizing high schools, experimenting with curriculum, trying to oust bad teachers. But frequently opposing reforms sought by Superintendent William Andrekopoulos have been the School Board members elected with union support, and the union says it wants to defeat board members who support Andrekopoulos. Thus, the union asks parents to trust a system accountable to a board that's accountable to a union whose idea of reform is higher pay.Again proving that he doesn't read my blog, McIlheran repeats spin that I've shown to be false before. For one, he should read up on backwards way the district is going about doing small schools. He should also learn himself a little something about Milwaukee's TEAM program, a union idea which, since its implementation, has helped bad teachers out of the system. And higher pay is not where our disagreement with the superintendent comes from; it comes from the unprofessional way he treats teachers, and the way he pushed a bad health-care package that is actually costing the taxpayers more money than the union's proposal would have, and the teachers less.
