Category Archives: Gimme Some Truth

by | June 16, 2011 · 3:23 pm

Exactly — A Voucher Advocate Reveals What is Wrong with Vouchers

I can't vouch for the statistic, but I like the graphic -- TJM

As the voucher movement in Wisconsin is poised to claim at least a partial victory, at an American Enterprise sessi0n ironically titled “School Voucher Programs and the Effects of a Little Healthy Competition” pro-voucher think tanker Grover Whitehurst inadvertently identified a flaw at the heart of the market-obsessed,  school privatization with public money movement.  Education Week reports:

He offered an analogy. A school district decides to allow students to buy meals from off-campus businesses, like the nearby McDonald’s. Public school cafeteria directors have several options to keep students eating in house, Whitehurst said, such as trying to improve outreach to students and encouraging the cafeteria staff to be friendlier. The cafeteria director, he said, “knows about the production function for satisfying customers.”

Just as choice in food consumption has not — in the aggregate — resulted in good and healthy choices, choice in education has not and will not result in good and healthy choices.  Many people either don’t know or don’t want what is good and healthy.  They want what is fast, tasty and popular.  The market doesn’t produce results that are healthy for society.

I don’t care much how people spend their food dollars, but I do care how we spend tax dollars and education dollars.  I don’t want it spent on the educational equivalent of McDonalds.

Thomas J. Mertz

 

 

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by | June 8, 2011 · 2:28 pm

Rep. Bernier Tries to Get Cute (and Fails).

Phony Democratic Primary Candidates are apparently only the beginning, the GOP has now moved on to insincere revenue legislation.

First term Republican Representative Kathy Bernier is circulating phony legislation proposing an income tax check-off to fund shared revenue, medical assistance, and K-12 education.

You can read the bill here.

In the plea for co-sponsors Bernier explains her “thinking”:

Over the last few months, and years, we have heard certain portions of the population advocate for raising taxes as a means to fund these programs. This gives those people that feel they have the ability to pay more in taxes to do so without mandating that burden on those who cannot afford it.

Cute, huh?  Not.

At a listening session back in April, things got ugly for Bernier.  On that occasion and probably others,  people told Bernier to increase taxes (in April there were also loud complaints about corporate tax breaks).

Voluntary check-offs are not taxes.  Taxation involves legal obligations and the power to enforce those obligations.  For all the lovers of the US Constitution and the historically minded, one of the biggest reasons that the founding generation replaced the Articles of Confederation was because that document did not include the power to tax, only to ask for voluntary donations from the states.  The distinction is important.

While on the topic of distinctions that are lost on Rep. Bernier, the LRB lists “the endangered resources program. .. a veterans trust fund, prostate cancer research, multiple sclerosis programs, a fire fighters memorial, Second Harvest food banks, and a breast cancer research program, and to provide a donation to a professional football stadium district” as items that currently receive fund via check-offs.  As worthy as these might be, they are hardly the kind of Constitutionally mandated or essential programs as shared revenue, medical assistance, and K-12 education.

Rep. Bernier and her fellow partisans should stop playing games, stop trying to be cute and get to work on real revenue reform that includes real tax increases.  Penny for Kids would be a great start.  After that, there are plenty of ideas in the Institute for Wisconsin’s Future’s updated Catalog of Tax Reform Options for Wisconsin.  Not cute either, but what the state needs.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | June 6, 2011 · 3:10 pm

Scary and Wrong — The Ends of Education

No, AMPS isn’t taking advertisements,  I just wanted to point out how ridiculous the idea expressed in this one is. And note it isn’t just the Iowa Assessments, MMSD has bought the ACT/EPASS/EXPLORE program based on the same pitch.

” College and Career Readiness” as “revealed” by standardized tests starting in 6th grade.  Is this the end of education in that  goal and yard stick are test based ” College and Career Readiness”?  If so then it is the end of education for citizenship and  full and rich life.

Caveat — I know that some good can come from monitoring where students are in relation to where they will/should be going.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | June 3, 2011 · 1:14 pm

Starving the Public Sector to Death

The basic idea behind  “starve the beast” politics was expressed by Grover Norquist “”My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.”   What subtlety there is involves weakening the public sector to the point where it no longer functions as it should while building up the private sector.  Eventually, even people who like the public sector in theory find themselves frustrated with the current state of affairs and withdraw support.  The spiral goes from there, with less support the public sector gets weaker and weaker and weaker…. This is what is going on in Wisconsin.

A story in the Racine Journal Times today captured the plan in action.  The topic was the Committee on Joint Finance’s expansion  — in funding, geography and income eligibility —  of the private school voucher program.   The larger context was that same committee’s cuts to public education totaling between $800 million to $1.3 billion (depending on how you count it).  With at least one Racine parent, the plan is working.

Fabiola Diaz was glad to hear vouchers are moving forward. Diaz, 36, of Racine, has four children: One in a private high school, two in a Unified middle school and one too young for school.

She said she can barely afford to send her oldest child to the private school and would not be able to send her two middle schoolers to private high school without vouchers.

“I would really like all of them to have that opportunity,” said Diaz, an educator. “I don’t have anything against the school district, the public schools. It’s just that I feel with the budget cuts and things there’s going to be an even larger number of kids in the classrooms.

“In my experience, in a smaller school and smaller classroom my kids got more out of it and more attention from the teachers,” she said.

Such smaller class sizes should not be available only to families who can afford private school, Diaz said (emphasis added).

It sounds like she “gets it,” that she understands the opportunities all kids should have and sees that budget cuts have made it impossible for public schools to provide them.   What’s a parent to do?  Some of us fight to revitalize public education, to do our best to make sure that our kids and everybody’s kids have the opportunities to learn that they deserve.  Others have given up, they’ll take their voucher and hope for the best.  That’s the plan.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | May 23, 2011 · 11:30 am

On the Agenda — MMSD Board of Education, the Week of May 23, 2011 (updated, finished)

As has been the tradition this "On the Agenda Post" is illustrated with a graph highlighting inequalities in MMSD. This one is from the 2011 "State of the District Report" (click the image for the full report, this graph is on page 40 of the pdf). To be honest, I have no idea what it means. "Advanced Courses" are not defined anywhere, nor is the meaning of "rate." The graphs are accompanied by a factiod stating "The percentage of students taking advanced course in grades 9-12 increased in 2009-10 compared to the prior year from 13.7% to 15.2%." This and other graph show decreases -- see the ESL/Not ESL for the best example -- and the above graph also shows "rates "of about 50% (low income) and about 80% (not low income). The "rate" in the factiod may be the percentage of total courses taken that are "advanced" (whatever that means) and the graphs may be the percentage of students in each category who took at least one advanced course (or both maybe something else entirely, who knows?). As a presentation of data, this is incomprehensible and inexcusable.

I picked a bad week to start doing “On the Agenda” posts on the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education doings.  Too much going on.   Given the amount to cover, I’m going to try to keep the comments and context minimal.  I should also note that I haven’t yet decided how regularly I will do these again.

The details for all of  the meetings are here.  Here is the rundown.

  • 4K Advisory Committee, Monday, Monday, May 23, 9:00 AM, 5 Odana Court.  The agenda is at “details for all” link, but none of the documents are linked.
  • Special Board of Education Meeting in Closed Session, Monday, May 23 5:00 PM, Doyle Building, RM 103.  The agenda is at “details for all” link, but none of the documents are linked,  employee non-renewal and student discipline are listed.
  • Regular Board of Education Meeting (Open Session), Monday, May 23 6:00 PM, Doyle Building, Auditorium.  Agenda linked and discussed below.
  • Madison School & Community Recreation (MSCR) Advisory Committee Meeting, Tuesday, May 24, 6:30 PM, MSCR Administration Building.  The agenda is at “details for all” link, but none of the documents are linked.  Some interesting things I’d like to see, especially the “2011-12 MSCR Budget Update” and “Draft 2010 MSCR Annual Report.”
  • 2nd Annual Review of MMSD Strategic Plan, Wednesday, May 25, 5:00 PM, United Way of Dane County 2059 Atwood Avenue.  The agenda is at “details for all” link, but none of the document linked here.  There is a lot here.  Way too much to absorb in any one session.  What isn’t here is much in the way of an overall summary or summaries of each area or “Action Plan.”  You have to go line-by-line to get a feeling of what is and is not going on with each action plan (I’ve made it about 1/3 of the way through).  Since the “Action Teams” are  — I believe   — exclusively made up of staff, it means that no member of the public has been in the loop.  Under these circumstances, a once year 86  page report-out followed by a feedback session isn’t going to produce much in the way of meaningful engagement.    The Board realized some of this and established “Core Measures”  (page 69).  Of the 15 of 16 with goals, 8 have not been met; the 16th is the “Advanced Course Participation” graphed and critiqued at the top, there is no goal established for that.  I should note that some of these benchmarks ramp up to ridiculous NCLB inspired 100% proficiency goals in the coming years.    Failure is assured, eventually.
  • Project Orange Thumb Garden Makeover Ribbon Cutting, Thursday May 26, 3:00 PM, Black Hawk Middle School 1402 Wyoming Way.  A very positive school (Blackhawk),  community (Community Action Coalition), business (Fiskars) partnership.

The rest of this is going to be about the Regular Board of Education Meeting (Open Session), the highlights ad lowlights, in order (unless a document is linked here, all the info available can be found at the link immediately above).

Election of Officers.  Maya Cole and Beth Moss deserve thanks for their service as President and Vice President this past year.  Whatever you think of their leadership, the jobs are difficult and time consuming, especially in a year like the one we’ve had.

PUBLIC APPEARANCES.  Word on the street is that there will be a substantial turnout of teachers seeking the restoration autonomy in the use of Monday Early Release planning time that was recently lost in the under-the-gun contract negotiations.  You can read more here and here.  It seems to me that there is a combination of real concerns and symbolic politics in play on both sides.  I don’t see the district rolling this back when they hold all the cards (thanks to Walker).  I’d suggest a compromise that changes the mandatory activities from once a month to twice.

BOARD PRESIDENT’S ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REPORTS.  Recognitions for accomplishments by students and staff and other feel good items like the project Orange Thumb garden.

SUPERINTENDENT’S ANNOUNCEMENTS AND REPORTS. Much meatier.  Five is items, none starred for action at this meeting, but some may go forward without Board action.

Talented and Gifted Update and Recommendations (the Preliminary DPI Audit Findings and Administrative Recommendation to not contest are here).

Too much here for this post.  I plan to get back to this in the coming weeks or months.

The price tag is an increase in the TAG budget from $1,123,249 to $1,725,880.  This does not appear to include the $60,000 increase for Youth Options and the $70,000 for CogAT tests in the Superintendent’s  (earlier) Recommendations.  I’m not sure why not.

Both identification and follow through are problematic, both in practice and theory.  One frightening revelation from the Preliminary Audit is that MMSD was “unable to provide a list of identified students.’  Think about that.

Anecdotally (and with TAG in MMSD, the lack of data is a big problem), I’ve talked to a handful of parents this year whose children scored in the highest identified grouping on one test or another without the referral process for identification being triggered.  The DPI confirms that this has been hit-or-miss.

I remain skeptical on that there will ever be a  rigorous and equitable identification process that covers “general intellectual, specific academic, leadership, creativity, and visual and performing arts.”  I’d love to see the filings in a complaint based on the “leadership, creativity, and visual and performing arts” areas.  I’m not saying give up — at least not here (for a provocative exploration of that idea, see James H. Boreland “Gifted Education Without Gifted Children The Case for No Conception of Giftedness“) — there is clearly room for improvement.   I am saying there are some basic definitional and conceptual issues that are not going to go away.  I’ve touched on these here; for more see Carol Fertig. “Conflicts in the Definition and Identification of Giftedness.”

Then there are all the questions about what follows identification…

One last observation is that the initial complaint centered on course offerings at West, that issue is only a small part of the DPI findings, has at least tentatively been settled via the changes enacted this year and is only addressed in a very indirect way in the Compliance Plan.

Superintendent’s Goals for 2011-12

I have to say that I was impressed (and somewhat surprised) by the degree to which the past goals had been achieved.  Much more impressed here than with the Strategic Plan report.  Maybe this is a function of the drafting and interpretation of the goals, but hats off to Supt. Nerad.   I think that more specificity is needed going forward on some.

Reorganization of Public Information Department

Three quick thoughts.  First, Joe Quick and the role of Legislative Liaison will be missed.  I think this position was under-utilized recently, but valuable none-the-less.  Second, Marcia Standford is an excellent choice for the Community Engagement work.  Last, I like the realism reflected in the document in acknowledging that if you cut almost $200,000 from the budget and add new responsibilities, you can’t do everything you were doing before.  “More with less,” works better in theory than in practice.

Badger Rock Contract Changes

Some small things clarifying BRMS terms fro withdrawing from the contract.

Additional 4K Sites

I had to read this one twice to believe it.  It appears that in 2011-2012 MMSD will not be offering 4K at the MMSD Allied Drive Learning Center primarily because “Parents have raised concerns about their children being placed at the MMSD Allied Drive Learning Center for 4 programing, therefore some students (20) have been considered for transfers to other sites.”

Other reasons are given, but since Allied is still on the list for 2012-2013, they seem like window dressing to me.

MMSD could, say that the Allied kids — who have great needs and few options — should be given more consideration, they could say no to the transfer requests.

Instead they appear to be pandering to prejudice.  What lesson is being taught here? How does that fit with the Mission Statement line about “embracing the full richness and diversity of our community.”

I haven’t followed this as closely as I should have.  I know that the issue of location and access in relation to poverty was raised earlier (see this story by Matt DeFour), and that some reconsideration was promised.  I’m not sure what happened next, but you can compare maps on the District 4K site (keeping in mind the latest developments).

I think that this is worth calling attention to and protesting.

Student Achievement and Performance Monitoring

K-12 Alignment

Standards and Test, the good and the bad.  Mostly — but not all — the bad in my opinion (see these old posts for some of it and stay tuned for more).

Literacy Plan (Literacy Program Evaluation and Budget Requests, LITERACY RECOMMENDATIONS, LITERACY PROGRAM EVALUATION ANNUAL TASKS AND ACTIVITIES).

It looks like the cost is $611,000, most (all?) of which is covered in the earlier Superintendent Recommendations.   One other note is that i don’t think meeting and records for the this group were posted regularly.  When the Board approves the creation of a body that includes more than staff, this should be done as a matter of course.

Instructional Materials Purchase Plan

$415,000 more in purchases tied to the Literacy Plan.  I don’t think this money is part of the costs above or the Superintendent’s Recommendations.

Operational Support

Prepayment of District Debt
I discussed this here (the Fund Balance, surplus material).  My position is that some for escrow is good, but let’s spend to improve our district now.

March Financial Statements

All things considered, lo0ks good.

Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men Future Direction regarding Funding Levels

Seeking some clarity on how MMSD’s contribution to the Madison Prep budget will be calculated and handled if this comes to fruition.  Everyone needs to know how this would impact existing schools and programs and that isn’t clear, at all.

Proposed MMSD Energy Policy and Administrative Guidelines

Just what it says.

Plan for Use of Title I and Flow-Through American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) Funds (IDEA-ARRA Funding Memo, Title I ARRA Budget Revisions memo, IDEA ARRA Funding Plan spreadsheets)

There have been a lot of changes in plans along the way, with money allocated, not spent and reallocated.  Last year when a similar set of documents should about $7 million allocated, but not spent I made an informal bet with Erik Kass that they wouldn’t get it all spent by the deadlines.  I think Erik is going to win.

Proposed Revisions to Board Policy 8005-Employment

It looks like some new language around consistency in interviews and follow-up questions.

CONSENT AGENDA

All the items with linked documentation are on the main agenda.  Nothing jumped out at me.

Legislative Liaison Report
*1 Senate Bill #95—Mandate Relief
*2 State Budget Bill/Revised Revenue Projections/Save Our Schools Proposal
*3 Reauthorization of Elementary and Secondary Education Act
*4 School Voucher Proposals
*5 Children At Risk

I’ve written about SB 95 twice before (here and here).  I’m not all that impressed with the “Save Our Schools” proposals which accede to at least $300  million in state aid cuts, do nothing about local control and generally accept the “we can’t afford to adequately fund education” paradigm.

The use of some of the increased revenue projections for schools is good, as is the shift of the Levy Credits from misdirected property tax relief to education.  More on this later in the week.

The ESEA thing is interesting.  It is from the national school administrator’s group and asks for full local flexibility in moving money among Title programs.  I don’t like it.  the regulations may be unduly cumbersome, but I don’t trust many local officials to not divert money for kids i poverty to other uses.

I don’t see anything on the Children at Risk Program or the Voucher legislation here.  Vouchers, yech.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | May 22, 2011 · 6:17 pm

Meet The Billionaires Who Are Trying To Privatize Our Schools And Kill Public Education

For most of you reading this, dear advocates of public education, none of this that I am about to mention will be very new information for you. But given Sam Dillon’s report on the front page of the New York Times today, I think perhaps momentum is building in reexamining the emerging role of the wealthy in this country in re-writing the assumptions of what public education is, and should be in the future. This post was also prompted by an excellent piece by our own Ruth Conniff, writing in the Isthmus this week.

Dillon has performed a yeoman’s task of putting together, in a short article, the convoluted inter-workings of the Bill Gates education philanthropy’s strategy for overhauling the nation’s education policies. In some cases the Gates Foundation is immediately engaged in financing educators to offering direct challenges to teacher unions on such issues as the seniority system and and the use of student test scores to evaluate teachers. In other cases, Mr. Gates has actually created entirely new advocacy groups, while at the same time financially supporting many Washington education analysts with contacts with journalists, even giving grants to some media organizations.

“It’s Orwellian in the sense that through this vast funding they start to control even how we tacitly think about the problems facing public education,” said Bruce Fuller, an education professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who said he received no financing from the foundation.

“It’s easier to name which groups Gates doesn’t support than to list all of those they do, because it’s just so overwhelming,” noted Ken Libby, a graduate student who has pored over the foundation’s tax filings as part of his academic work.

The impact of the foundation’s role in education policy is immense. Dillon reported that it had developed and promoted common core academic standards that have been adopted in 45 states in recent months.

While the foundation has nominally supported the AFT and the NEA, it was also a supporter of a campaign focused on the “Waiting for Superman” film, a piece of agit-prop that was quite critical of the AFT head, Randi Weingarten. Two other Gates-financed groups, Educators for Excellence and Teach Plus, are focussed on giving non-union voices to newer teachers.

In Wisconsin, as Ruth Conniff has so eloquently stated:

There is something horribly fascinating about watching Wisconsin Republicans discuss their plans for our state’s school system.

First, they swing the bloody ax:

  • The biggest budget cuts to our public schools in state history, nearly $900 million. Kerchunk.
  • A bill to create a statewide system of charter schools whose authorizing board is appointed by Scott Walker and the Fitzgeralds, and which will funnel resources out of local schools and into cheapo online academies. Kerchunk.
  • Lifting income caps on private-school vouchers so taxpayers foot the bill to send middle- and upper-income families’ kids to private school. Kerchunk.

and then goes on to document the slow drip-drip of multiple camel noses under the tent, as local authority is usurped and for-profit charters and vouchers begin to gather size and influence within the system from a slow trot to a gallop, balkanizing and dismembering public education as we currently know it.

Despite the public outcry and some nervous chatter from the sidelines from some Republicans, as Conniff as so astutely pointed out,

… this is a sideshow. As Wisconsinites are becoming increasingly aware, the real money in state politics is streaming in from a nationally financed campaign to destroy public schools and privatize education. Olsen’s second-biggest individual contributor, according to the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign data, is Richard Sharp of the Richmond, Va.-based Alliance for School Choice.

The American Federation for Children, which hosted Walker in Washington, D.C., is a spin-off of the Michigan-based group All Children Matter, which has poured millions into phony issue ads in state legislative races and been the defendant in multiple campaign-finance lawsuits, including one here in Wisconsin.

Both groups were founded by Michigan billionaires Dick and Betsy DeVos, who brought Walker out to be a star speaker in Washington.

While he was there, Walker gave a shout-out to disgraced former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, who now works for the American Federation for Children, along with Brian Pleva, who used to run the powerful Republican Assembly Campaign Committee here in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, James Bender, former chief of staff for now-Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald, is now a lobbyist for School Choice Wisconsin.

In fact, school choice groups are poised to become the single most powerful lobby group in the state, edging out bankers and realtors; who would thought such a thing was possible just a few short years ago?

As a new report by Think Progress’ Zaid Jilani has pointed out, Wisconsin is, of course, not alone in being inundated with billionaire’s money to undermine, undercut and to privatize public education.

For over 45 years vouchers were up for a vote in states 25 times, and were rejected by voters 24 of those times. As I noted a couple of years ago on AMPS, these same set of billionaires that Jilani cited (he noted that the American Federation for Children alone spent $820,000 in Wisconsin during the last election) have the money and the organizational power to reach their ultimate goal, unless we begin to stop them in their tracks.

Jilani noted that:

While the goals of the figures in this movement are varied, their assault on our public education system is one and the same. Joseph Bast, the president and CEO of the Heartland Institute, explained his own thinking about vouchers once, saying, “The complete privatization of schooling might be desirable, but this objective is politically impossible for the time being. Vouchers are a type of reform that is possible now, and would put us on the path to further privatization.” It’s up to Americans to protect their schools, teachers, kids, and communities from that fate.

Robert Godfrey

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by | May 19, 2011 · 7:34 pm

That Was Strange — MMSD Budget Hearing Report

Patti Smith, “Aint It Strange” (click to listen or download).

Short meeting, short report.

I got there 15minutes late, a very sparse crowd, maybe 4-5 people who weren’t there in a professional capacity, more reporters than citizens.  Strange.

By the time I got there public testimony had ended and Ed Hughes had already withdrawn his “Gift Card” Budget Amendment (more on that below).

I got special dispensation to testify and spoke briefly thanking staff and the Board for doing well under difficult circumstances and given the underlying structural issues, asked them to keep open minds on the use of the potential additional $10 million in revenue authority and identified a couple of places they should consider (addressing mobility and making supplemental allocations based on equity measures real again).  I was told that three people testified; I’m not sure if that included me.

They wrapped up and that was it, over by 5:30.  I ran into three friends afterwards who were on their way to the hearing.    I told them they had another chance on Sunday.

I think there are a lot of factors at play in the lack of attendance and interest.  Here are some:

  • Everyone understands that their actions are constrained by state matters.  In some way this is a victory, because not too long ago we heard a lot of  “don’t whine about the state, there are local mismanagement issues that are the problem.”  In some way this is a loss also.  By far the biggest factor in the fiscal situation is a broken system of state finance aggravated by cuts in state aid and diminished local authority, but there are choices on many things in the Budget that are local and I believe some of these choices are problematic.  When people rallied to protect their favorite programs or to keep their school open, they also became aware of and involved in these choices.  I think that was good.
  • They have generally done a good job under the circumstances.
  • There is no “cut list” to excite interest.
  • One friend said to me that “everyone I know is doing state stuff.”  See number 1.

Like I said in an earlier post, I think there are still things worth advocating on, worth getting excited about.

There was some excitement around Ed Hughes’ proposal in the media today.  Despite pleas from Dave Blaska this excitement did not translate into cyber-warriors actually bothering to attend the meeting and testify.   As of now 116 comments on the Wisconsin State Journal story, most of them ill-informed and hostile.

The odd thing about so much of this that Ed has been a Board Member who has repeatedly pushed back at the Unions.  Most of his new critics don’t know the history and don’t care to.  Ed gets that there is a  tension between the adversarial and collaborative aspects of the Board/Union relationship, and has on occasion pulled toward the adversarial more than I think is good.  I’m not privy to the nuts and bolts of negotiations, but that’s the impression I have and certainly his budget amendment last year calling for a freeze in pay for non teacher MTI affiliate members  backs up this impression.

Read these  posts by Ed  (1, 2, 3, 4) and his responses to Blaska at the above link to learn a little more about where he is coming from.    He is  not (as Blaska characterized)  “cowed” by the Union, but he probably does have “conflicting emotions” because he understands the tensions and also understands that the district staff is the most important factor in fulfilling the mission of providing quality education to all students.

To me this amendment was a nice gesture.  It doesn’t change much, it certainly doesn’t make up for the financial hits district staff are taking, but nice.  It isn’t the kind of thing I’d propose, but  it is something I could support.

I think it is sad that a relative few knee jerk anti-Union/anti-Teacher/anti-Public Education/anti-Public Sector trolls and flamers can create an atmosphere where a proposal like Ed’s doesn’t stand much of a chance.

Sad.

Thomas J. Mertz

Addendum — Ed Hughes has some clarification on what happened;  Susan Troller offers some background and context.

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by | May 16, 2011 · 8:57 am

Senate Bill 95 Testimony

Sisyphus 1, by Davor, click on image for more.

The Lyres, “Don’t Give It up Now” (click to listen or download).

Thank you for this opportunity to testify on Senate Bill 95.

Due to time limitations  — both the time allotted here and the very, very short time between the release of the Bill on Friday and the scheduling of this hearing for today  — I will be confining myself to only two of the topics covered in this wide ranging measure.  Those are the dilution of the Student Achievement Guaranty in Education (SAGE) and the use of student standardized test scores  as a determinant of educator employment conditions.  I will note that I believe every section of this Bill should be thoroughly sifted and winnowed.

Before directly addressing the proposals on SAGE and the use of student standardized test scores, I’d like to say a few things about the broader trend in educational thinking and policy in Wisconsin.

Not too long ago Senator Olson chaired a Special Committee on Review of State School Aid Formula.  I sat though most of the meetings of that committee.  Although little came of it, there was a sense of optimism and ambition in the work of that committee, a sense that we can and should do better.    This spirit was captured in the title of the presentation by Professor Alan Odden “Moving From Good to Great in Wisconsin:  Funding Schools Adequately and Doubling Student Performance,” (paper of the same title here) .  It should be added that Doctor Sarah Archibald, who is anow dvising Senator Olson, was part of that work.

Almost no one is seeking greatness any more.  At best people are seeking to push the limits of “doing more with less;” at worst there is an unspoken acceptance that the children of today and tomorrow will not have the the breadth and quality of educational opportunities that their older brothers and sisters were provided.    Things like physical education for all children are now  apparently luxury we cannot afford and so you have before you a Bill which eliminates that requirement.   Maybe this one policy change isn’t the most important, but it wouldn’t be before you if academic subjects, arts education, technical education, agricultural education and in fact the entire curriculum weren’t threatened in districts around the state.   How sad that it has come to eliminating physical education requirements in order to at least partially fund other educational offering.

There are better ways.  The Special Committee Senator Olson chaired heard about some of them, others have have been put forth since then.  I happen to believe that revenue reform needs to be part of the answer, but the recent revised revenue projections provide a way halt the decline without altering the tax structure.  Joint Finance leadership has indicated they won’t consider this.  Perhaps they could be convinced otherwise, perhaps members of this committee could remind them of the responsibility of  each generation to give the next the tools to create a better future.

The proposed “flexibility” for SAGE is like the Phys Ed proposal, in that it is a step backward, only it is worse.  SAGE  is Wisconsin’s only state program targeted for children in poverty and this is crucial,  legally, educationaly and as a matter of social justice.

In the Vincent v. Voight  decision the Wisconsin Supreme Court noted that “Poverty undisputedly leads to distinct learning problems” and identified addressing these problems as part of the test of the constitutionality of a school finance system.

Odden and Archibald  — like every other proposal for reforming education finance in Wisconsin  —  followed this lead,  proposing 30%+ additional resources for free and reduced lunch students .  In a similar manner the School Finance Network  proposed a broader and genuinely more flexible poverty categorical aid to improve educational equity and outcomes.   Allowing districts to partially opt out, improves nothing.  It simply denies more children in poverty the benefits of a a successful program.

SAGE isn’t perfect, but the results have been good.   The research by the Value Added Research Center is worth reviewing to get at the details, but the results have been convincing enough that Odden and Archibald included it in their strategies for doubling achievement,  recommending that “schools be resourced for class sizes of 15 for grades K-3 and 25 for grades 4-12.”

Even scholars who are generally skeptical about the efficiency of class size reductions recognize that the effects are more pronounced for children in poverty.  One of the prime functions of our public schools is to break the cycle of inequality by providing opportunities.  We haven’t come close to doing this.  Instead of limiting access to these opportunities, as SB 95 does, we should be looking to expand access by fully funding.

Since education reform proposals originating in Florida seem to be popular with some these days, I’ll close this section  by noting that state class sizes in kindergarten through 3d grade are Constitutionally limited to 18 students (22 4th through 8th and 25 in High School).  If every young student in Florida can have the benefits of a class limited to 18, I would hope that Wisconsin could at very least not make it easier to take these benefits away from our economically disadvantaged students.

On the expanding the use of standardized tests in relation to teacher employment I’ll be brief.

First, the test that is in place is the WKCE and consensus is that the WKCE is deeply flawed as a measure of student learning, much less teacher effectiveness (something it is not designed to measure) .  It is my understanding that the earliest we will have a new assessment is 2014, which means that the earliest we would have multiple years of data to work with is 2016.  So even if you accept that these new assessments will be  appropriate tools to measure student learning and teacher effectiveness — which I do not — for at least the next 5 years SB 95 ties educator employment conditions  to WKCE results.  How can this be a good idea?

More generally, I’ll again turn to Professor Odden (I don’t believe Doctor Archibald was part of this project).  He wrote: “Merit plans in education have conceptual, strategic, technical, and political shortcomings” and advised against trying them till other options– such as knowledge and skills based systems had been exhausted.  Conceptual because of the collaborative nature of teaching and learning.  Strategic because they target the extremes instead of seeking to improve teaching across the board.  Technically because of the impossibility of designing a plan that equitably covers all teachers in all subjects in all grades in all schools….. And politically, because most educators will oppose them, creating hostility that undermines organizational unity.

I could elaborate on this list and add to it.   Almost every scholar who does not have a vested interest in standardized tests and their application is skeptical of their application to the evaluation of teachers.   This skepticism includes value added analysis.  Scholars across the spectrum,  including  the The Economic Policy Institute, The National Academies, Math for America, The Brown Center at Brookings, the Rand Corporation,  and even The American Enterprise Institute have cautioned against or rejected the use of standardized test based value added models for high stakes decision making.

Instituting a standardized test based teacher evaluations will require devoting more resources — time and money — to tests, testing and the analysis of these tests.  A recent decision in Charlotte-Mecklenburg North Carolina captures the absurd state of education policy-making.  The Charlotte Observer reports:

Next week CMS will launch trial versions of 52 new tests, including an exam for kids as young as kindergarteners who must be tested one-on-one. The tests will be used to evaluate teachers, as the budget shrinks and officials prepare to lay off faculty.

52 new tests, so they can figure out which teachers to lay off in order to do the least harm.

In closing I offer a quote from a School Superintendent in Pennsylvania, where similar “mandate relief “legislation is under consideration:

“This does not promote education, it simply promotes laying off more educators,… these so-called mandate reliefs are just more smoke and mirrors.”

Much of SB 95 is about presenting the illusion of helping schools and students and distracting from the reality that our state is abandoning our commitment to providing every student a quality education.    It is time to leave the the smoke and mirrors and get back to working for greatness.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | May 13, 2011 · 10:07 am

“Flexibility” = Decline = Ugly

Remember warnings about your face getting stuck in some ugly expression? I think the champions of “flexibility” in Wisconsin and elsewhere need loud and repeated warnings that their “flexibility” in educational policy (along with privatization, cuts in funding, destruction of local control…) in fact constitutes a possibly permanent acceptance of declining educational quality  and is an ugly betrayal of our traditions and our responsibility to our children.  They are bending our schools out of shape and our children will be stuck with it.

Here is the latest iteration from the Chairs of the Assembly and Senate Education Committees (it is being fast tracked and will be the subject of a hearing in the Assembly Education Committee on Monday May 16).:

TO: Legislative Colleagues

FROM: Representative Steve Kestell & Senator Luther Olsen

DATE: May 12, 2011

RE: Co Sponsorship – K-12 Mandate Relief Legislation

We are introducing legislation to provide public schools more flexibility and mandate relief in several areas: 

  • In the semester in which a student is a participant in a high school sport, that sport can count as the student’s phy ed credit.
  • Explicitly authorizes a school district to contract for a variety of services, including orientation and mobility training, educational interpreters, audiologists, speech therapists, pupil transition services, and any services approved by the state superintendent of public instruction; and makes the costs of such a contract eligible for special education aid.
  • Under current law DPI must prorate state aid payments to school districts for transportation costs if the amount appropriated does not cover all eligible costs. Under this bill, if funds remain after DPI pays all approved claims, DPI must distribute the balance to school districts on a prorated basis.
  • Current law allows a school district to use up to 25 percent of the moneys it receives from the common school fund in a fiscal year to purchase school library computers and related software. This bill eliminates the 25 percent limit.
  • This bill allows a school board to use the results of standardized examinations to evaluate teachers without the presence of the conditions described in current law.  Under current law, the results of standardized examinations may not be used to discharge, suspend, or formally discipline a teacher or as the reason for the nonrenewal of a teacher’s contract.  This bill provides that the results of standardized examinations may not be used as the sole reason to discharge, suspend, or formally discipline a teacher or as the sole reason for the nonrenewal of a teacher’s contract. 
  • This bill eliminates the requirement that no more than 200 teaching days be scheduled in the regular day school period in any school year for Milwaukee Public Schools. 
  • This bill permits SAGE flexibility for a school board that has entered into or renewed a SAGE contract to choose not to comply with the class size limitation requirements in one or more grades covered by the contract in one or more schools in the school district and in one or more years of the contract term.  Offering this flexibility will help maintain SAGE in schools that might otherwise be forced to drop out of the program for financial reasons. 
  • This bill authorizes a school board to refuse to enroll a pupil during the term of the pupil’s expulsion from a public school in another state if the grounds for the pupil’s expulsion would have been grounds for expulsion in this state.  
  • This bill permits a school district to use such law enforcement records as the sole basis for taking action against a pupil under the district’s athletic code. 
  • This bill provides that, in years in which a November general election is held, the school levy certification date is moved from November 6 to November 10.

An LRB copy of the legislation will follow.

The deadline for co-sponsorship is TOMORROW Friday, May 13 at Noon. Please contact Representative Kestell’s office at 6-8530 or Senator Olsen’s office at 6-0751 to be added as a co-sponsor, or reply to this e-mail to sign onto the bill.

Some of these are OK — allowing  a longer school year in Milwaukee, some transportation adjustments, even the school levy certification date change appears to be about a real issue with scheduling referenda.  Others are ugly.

Number 1 appears to be a way to limit the need for Phys Ed classes and teachers.  Number 2 brings the privatization mania into the public schools.  Number 4, like the ARRA shifts from investments in people and books to investments in technology.

I think number 7 is the biggest betrayal here and the most telling example of the acceptance of decline.  The SAGE class size reduction targeted to early grade children in poverty is just about the only source of state education funds that recognizes and addresses economic inequality.  It has been underfunded for years, placing a burden on local districts to make up the difference.  Last session the Democrats — in the name of flexibility — raised the class size limits.  Now the Republicans want to add more “flexibility” allowing districts to ration class size reductions year-to-year and grade-to-grade.   Now we are saying to poor children that we can’t do for you what we know is right, what we did for your older brothers and sisters.  Can we at least get a “sorry’?

Of course the biggest betrayals and sources of decline overall are the pending Biennial Budget’s  reduction of state school aid by $843 Million in combination with a hard 0% growth  cap on the power of school boards to generate revenues.

Like with SAGE, this backwards trend began with the Democrats.  It was Governor Jim Doyle who in his first term dumped the 2/3 state support guarantee.   It was Democrats who in the last Biennial Budget cut general school aids by about $300 Million.  And all of this against a backdrop of 17 years of bi-partisan refusal to fix a broken school funding system which even when “fully funded” required annual cuts to programs and services in most districts.

The thing about going backwards is that simply getting back to the starting point becomes harder and harder and returning to a forward direction almost impossible.    After the last Biennial Budget UW Public Budgets Scholar Andrew Reschovsky did some calculations  on how much it would take to return state school aid to the growth levels of the previous decade. If Wisconsin wanted to completely offset the cuts done in 2009-11 it would require $1,552.4 Million in additional state aid; to simply return to the old trend line without making up for the cuts would take $664.4 Million in additional state aid.

Suck in reverse.  Decline is the new new normal; almost nobody is talking about getting back to where we were and even fewer are trying to move the state forward (the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools — WAES —  is just about the only consistent voice reminding people of the possibility of a truly better way).

We’ve heard a lot from Governor Walker and the Republicans about how we need to cut budgets in order to not burden our children with public debts and deficits (they absolutely refuse to consider revenue reforms which could address these).    But their supposed concern for the  next generation doesn’t extend to providing them the same level  of educational opportunities that their older brothers and sisters had.   This, like “flexibility” is a betrayal.  They don’t care about our children’s future; they care about dismantling the public sector.

Walker is also big on “tools” except when it comes to giving our children the tools they need to be prosperous and successful.

Just this week, they have made it clear that their program goes beyond “no new taxes” when  despite pleas from WAES, the Wisconsin Association of School Boards,  State Superintendent Tony Evers and others, they refused to consider the use of any of the projected revenue increases to diminish cuts to education (and here).  They seem to be happily stuck in reverse, in decline.

There is one piece here that I need to touch on before closing and that’s number 5, the expanded use of standardized tests for teacher evaluation, discipline, suspension, nonrenewal,  and dismissal.    I’ve written about what’s wrong with this many times before (see here  and and the video here posted by Robert Godfrey).  There is so much more to say, but for now I’ll just quote a recent column from  John Ewing, president of Math for America (read the whole thing!).

Making policy decisions on the basis of value-added models has the potential to do even more harm than browbeating teachers. If we decide whether alternative certification is better than regular certification, whether nationally board certified teachers are better than randomly selected ones, whether small schools are better than large, or whether a new curriculum is better than an old by using a flawed measure of success, we almost surely will end up making bad decisions that affect education for decades to come.

That last line about sums it up with this whole “flexibility” package: “bad decisions that affect education for decades to come.”  Stuck with ugly.

Thomas J. Mertz.

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Filed under "education finance", Accountability, Best Practices, Budget, Contracts, education, finance, Gimme Some Truth, Local News, National News, School Finance, Scott Walker, Uncategorized

by | May 12, 2011 · 9:07 pm

Alternative History

From Mike Hukabee’s “Learn Our History” series.   This is so wrong and so scary.

Thomas J.  Mertz

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Filed under Best Practices, education, Gimme Some Truth, National News