Category Archives: Quote of the Day

by | October 2, 2008 · 10:59 pm

Quote of the day — Not welcome

“We must not continue to welcome into Madison more at-risk populations from elsewhere because we will never have sufficient resources to provide for them.”

Madison Alder Thuy Pham-Remmele

This attitude makes me sick.

We are a wealthy and prosperous city in what by any standard is a wealthy and prosperous nation.  Maybe some can enjoy their wealth and prosperity while turning their back on the less fortunate or in Alder Phan-Remmele’s words, the “at risk.”

I believe that instead we should try to spread that prosperity to the less fortunate.  I am proud that our city and our schools devote resources to the “at risk,” I think both should do more.

And Alder Phan-Remmele, without our attention the “at risk” aren’t going to disappear, they will continue to struggle in cycles of poverty and become more desperate.  Many in Madison, some elsewhere, but in the nation and on the planet we share.  With our attention, with the opportunities and support we can afford to provide some will cease to be at risk and will be productive and contributing and the cycle will be broken.

Unfortunately, less directly and for what appear to be better reasons, Mayor Dave Cieslewicz has voiced similar thoughts.  The Mayor is correct that concentrations of poverty in housing and in schools are not good and that there are real benefits, educational and otherwise in affirmative policies of economic diversity (The Equity Task Force included this in their recommendations, but like many things the Equity Task Force offered, it was never discussed publicly by the Board of Education and has not been enacted).

But once again I say, that Madison is large enough, wealthy enough and diverse enough that we can achieve these benefits without hanging up the “not welcome” sign.  I’ll also add that resources like SAGE and Title I money may not follow poor children to the suburbs (as they don’t in some Madison Schools), and that the loss of the services these provide may undercut the gains of increased economic diversity.

Brenda Konkel has much more.

I also point again to the ideas of the Schools and the Common Good.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | September 27, 2008 · 9:12 pm

Quotes of the Day – Broken System, Broken Record Edition (#1)

John Hartford, “Dont leave your records in the  sun” (click to listen or download)

Last week, Milwaukee Superintendent William Andrekopoulos strung together the words “State, “Finance,” “Schools,” “System,” and “Broken.” At AMPS, we’ve strung those words together in a variety of ways ourselves or quoted others using these words on more than one occasion.

It thought it might be fun to see who else has said this or similar things about school finance in Wisconsin, who else has given voice to the truth that in Wisconsin, the school finance system is broken.

Here we go, not comprehensive and in no particular order.

We need to do a better job of looking out for taxpayers, and we will. It means making work pay, by encouraging and fostering economic development that pays family-supporting wages and respects the environment. It means ensuring healthy communities, through public health programs and a new, more powerful and consumer-friendly, organization of how we buy prescription drugs and health insurance. It means fixing our broken system of school funding, and making an ironclad guarantee to every Wisconsin child that this state will give you a good start in life a quality education that enables you to succeed in tomorrow’s economy.

Governor Jim Doyle, 2002 victory speech.

The school finance system is broken and needs to be fixed or the quality of public education will suffer significantly.

Cooperative Education Service Agency #3, “Can Wisconsin avoid an educational crisis?” 2007.

Everyone agrees that the school funding system is broken.

Wisdom, “Education Position Paper,” 2007.

Wisconsin’s school-funding system is broken, it needs to be thrown out, and the Legislature needs to come up with a better plan…

Wisconsin PTA, 2007.

First, it’s clear that the school funding system is broken at the state level. I encourage you to join me in calling upon Governor Doyle and our state legislators to fix this broken system that every year forces school boards around the state to cut budgets.

Madison District 12 Alder, Satya Rhodes-Conway, 2007.

Wisconsin’s K-12 education funding system is definitely broken. After 15 years of living under revenue caps and a funding formula that leave school districts with an approximate 1% deficit every year, our schools are increasingly finding themselves having to cut programs and staff. This is especially true in our rural schools where declining enrollment is an issue.

47th Assembly District Candidate, Trish O’Neil, 2008.

The Oshkosh school system isn’t broken; the state funding formula is. I disagree that we have to “fix” our school system because of the budget problems the funding formula creates. Until the state changes the formula, we should ask through an annual referendum to exceed the state budget caps.

Oshkosh Board of Education Member, John Lemberger, 2008.

The current system of funding public education in Wisconsin is broken.

Milwaukee Board of School Directors President, Peter Blewett, 2008.

The school funding system is broken and it was created broken.

Professor Emeritus, Economics,  University of Wisconsin-Platteville, John Simonson.

Partners in WAES believe that Wisconsin’s school-funding system is broken beyond repair and should be linked to the needs of children, giving each of them—no matter where he or she lives—the opportunity to meet rigorous academic goals.

Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, 2004

School Funding is Broken

  • Mandates, needs and costs continue to grow faster than allowed revenues.
  • Annual service and program cuts of 1-2% over the last 14 years.
  • Over 100 districts in Wisconsin have held referenda in the last year.
  • After 14 years of cutting, essential services are in danger.

Community and Schools Together (CAST), Madison, 2007.

The system is broken. We’ll have to raise taxes.

Superior parent and school board member Kris Kintop, 2003.

We want to be clear that we are painfully aware of the broken system of funding public education in Wisconsin,

Madison Board of Education Member, Lucy Mathiak, 2007.

Wisconsin has conducted several studies on how we can fix the funding of our education system. Isn’t it time that the governor and Legislature start looking at those recommendations and consider other ideas instead of foolishly tinkering with the same old broken system?

Dave Zweifel, the Capital Times, 2007.

The school finance system is broken and needs to be fixed or the quality of public education will suffer significantly.

Dean Isaacson, Platteville School District Administrator, 2008.

Wisconsin is extremely fortunate to have one of the best public education systems in the country. But our school funding system is badly broken, and we are headed in the wrong direction. School districts throughout the state are cutting programs and staff and closing schools. Children have returned to school this fall to find fewer academic choices and larger class sizes.

If we are going to jump-start our economy, we need to find a better way to provide schools with resources to meet the needs of children so we can be assured that we are turning out future workers who can help our state’s businesses thrive.

Dan Burkhalter, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Education Association Council, 2007.

The state school finance system is “broken.

Pete Etter, interim superintendent, Black Hawk School District, 2007.

To be continued.

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", AMPS, Best Practices, Budget, education, finance, Local News, Quote of the Day, Referenda, referendum, School Finance, Take Action, Uncategorized

by | September 26, 2008 · 6:27 pm

Quote of the Day — Faith Based Policy

We should have no difficulty conceding Milwaukee’s [Parental Choice Voucher Program’s] disappointing record while remaining coolly confident that sensible K–12 market reforms have the potential to boost productivity, spur purposive innovation, provide more nuanced accountability, and make the sector a magnet for talent. [Emphasis added]

Frederick M. Hess

Note that this faith is a faith in “the market.”  That’s been working out real well lately.

I prefer this kind of “faith based policy.”

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under Best Practices, education, Gimme Some Truth, Quote of the Day

by | September 21, 2008 · 4:37 pm

Quotes of the Day and Sources to Consider

Graph courtesy of Community and Schools Together (CAST)

Graph courtesy of Community and Schools Together (CAST)

Excerpted from Wisconsin State Journal editorial:

Wisconsin received more evidence this week that its taxes are too high….

The study, from the Pacific Research Institute in association with Forbes magazine, should give state and local policymakers new incentive to control spending so that taxes can be reduced….

There are reasons to be suspicious of some of the study’s assumptions about what contributes to prosperity….

Wisconsin should beware that prosperity requires public investment in the seeds of growth, including education…

State and local policymakers face tough decisions as they prepare the next round of government budgets. They should redouble their efforts to rein in spending so that tax cuts will become possible.

It appears the editorial board is confused and conflicted.  They are eager to cite a study they acknowledge as flawed because it provides red meat for their anti-tax appetites.  They recognize that public investment in education and other things is the key to prosperity yet call for tax cuts.  Maybe they should have just kept quiet.

The problem with this kind of editorializing is that it creates a climate where the investments we need, like in education, get lost in the general anti-tax stance.  The graphic at the top is one measure of local investment in education and it shows that this is far from an area that needs “redouble[d] efforts to control spending.”  Instead it indicates that due to the broken state school finance system, our investment has been lacking and that we can and should invest more by passing the November 4, 2008 referendum.

There are good reasons to doubt both the conclusions and the source of the “study.”   As the editorial notes, New York —  with an economic growth rate of 4.4% last year —  is ranked last, while South Dakota’s 2.3% growth rate is accompanied by a number one ranking in “Economic Freedom.”  Obviously the relationship between “economic freedom” and prosperity is not as simple as the authors would like us to believe.  I don’t want to go into the assumptions behind the construction of their index, but I do want to note that as usual with these right-wing think tank things, taxes are given much weight and no attention is paid to government fees.  Wisconsin’s fees are relatively low and this skews thing mightly.

The source, The Pacific Research Institute has been linked to Big Tobacco, the campaign against paper trails for electronic voting, anti-immigrant rhetoric in the battle against expanding government health care programs, attacks against LINUX and open source software, and work on behalf of the privatization of water rights. See a pattern here?

I happen to know one of the authors of the current study, Eric Daniels.  Eric and I were in Grad School together; a nice enough guy but nobody I’d look to for policy or moral guidance.  Eric is an acolyte of Ayn Rand.  Eric’s section of the report is the historical portion and it is a masterpiece of selective use of sources and data, sprinkled with authoritative pronouncements derived from Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, all disguised as scholarship.

In an interview with EdNews, Doctor Daniels had this to say:

You’re right that there seems to be an emphasis in socialist countries is on helping the less fortunate, but it is only the most benign aspect of the much more perverse deeper emphasis, which is the morality of altruism. The socialist nations demand more than just help, they demand the sacrifice of the strong to the weak, the intelligent to the feeble minded, and the moral to the immoral…

Any honest man with a knowledge of history should see that those who want to help the less fortunate ought to embrace capitalism.

He believes that both the Democratic and Republican parties of are guilty of pushing this dangerous socialist agenda.  In a sense he is correct about this, in that both parties correctly see a positive role for government that goes beyond protecting persons and property and includes things like education, food and drug safety, infrastructure…  In these days of Lehman Brothers and AIG, that he is wrong about the virtues of unfettered capitalism should go without saying.

I think I know why the State Journal was so confused.  They started with the mistaken assumption that the likes of Eric Daniels had anything useful to contribute.

Support a better vision of the common good, Vote Yes for Schools!

Thomas J. Mertz

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Filed under "education finance", Budget, education, Elections, finance, Gimme Some Truth, Local News, Quote of the Day, Referenda, referendum, School Finance, Uncategorized

by | September 5, 2008 · 2:17 pm

Quote of the Day – [School] Districts at a Disadvantage

It wasn’t until after a recent school board meeting while listening to the views of a vote no taxpayer that “it” hit me. This opponent of the upcoming referendum will vote no due to rising taxes in his township. He said, “I can no longer afford to pay the $50 a year that it will cost me to support the Rhinelander School District’s referendum because my township continues to raise my taxes and I need this $50 to pay for those.”

It was at this moment that the “Catch 22” hit me and I realized that school districts are at such a disadvantage. Taxpayers have little say over tax increases from other governmental agencies when they need something, yet schools are required to get voter approval. The fallout of this situation is school districts so often being wrongly accused and somehow responsible for rising taxes, along with the divisions in the community. He said, “The $50 per year that it will cost me for a successful referendum is just too much to support education, students, and our community.”

Dave Wall, letter to the editor, Rhinelander Daily News

Mr Wall is exactly right.  I am reminded of the fact that the City of Madison is budgeting based on a 4% annual increase.  School districts under the revenue caps budget for increases of about 2.5% and require referenda to issue debt over $1 million.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | September 2, 2008 · 2:24 pm

Quote of the Day — Back to School Edition

From today’s Wisconsin State Journal lead editorial

The message to policymakers is equally clear: Wisconsin’s schools, colleges and universities have a vital role to play in the state’s economic success.

They should be held accountable for their performance. But they should be given the resources to perform well.

Investments in education pay dividends that enrich students, families and the state.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | July 30, 2008 · 1:13 pm

Quote of the Day – Dale Schultz on Referenda

This is State Senator Dale Schultz‘s second appearance in the AMPS Quote of the Day series.  Congratualtions.

“The No. 1 issue people talked to me about was their frustration with the referendums that ‘seem to be popping up increasingly’ in southwest Wisconsin….I think people would like to see some alternatives to the current system.”

From the Dubuque, IA Telegraph Herald

Maybe he should tell this to Frank Lasee next time the GOP gets together?

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | June 23, 2008 · 3:21 pm

George Carlin on NCLB, Education and More

Warning, expletives not deleted (it would have been wrong to delete the expletives of the man responsible for bringing the “Seven Dirty Words You Can’t Say on Television” all the way to the Supreme Court).

Don’t rest in peace George; keep stirring up trouble wherever you are.

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | June 4, 2008 · 11:35 am

Quotes of the day

From Milwaukee Public Schools, 2006-7 School Report Card (click to see full report card). When value added is implemented in MMSD, we can expect similar reporting. Note that the gray areas are \

From Milwaukee Public Schools, 2006-7 School Report Card (click to see full report card). When value added is implemented in MMSD, we can expect similar reporting. Note that the gray areas are “error bands,” indicating 95% confidence intervals.

From an email sent by a DPI employee to Peter Sobol of the Monona Grove Board of Education.

… The WKCE is a large-scale assessment designed to provide a snapshot of how well a district or school is doing at helping all students reach proficiency on state standards, with a focus on school and district-level accountability. A large-scale, summative assessment such as the WKCE is not designed to provide diagnostic information about individual students. Those assessments are best done at the local level, where immediate results can be obtained. Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum.

From the WCER Value Added Research Center (contracted with MMSD and MPS).

Benefits of Value-Added Methods

Value-added methods “get the story right” by correcting for errors in the test scales, identifying and adjusting for bias in the administration of the test, in student participation, or in classroom treatments. In addition, one of the overriding goals of the work is to be transparent and fair. It is in everyone’s interest for schools to be as productive as possible for all students.

All teachers should be able to deeply understand and discuss the impact of changes in practice and curriculum for themselves and their students. Leaders should be able to make resource allocation decisions (money, staffing, etc.) informed by the best available data. Value-added methods can both showcase high levels of achievement as well as reward those who have mastered the art of improvement.

The MMSD value added analysis will rely on WKCE tests.

Anyone see a problem?

I’ve been working on a long post about the basics, benefits and limits of Value Added Analysis. Still a lot of work to do on that. Till then, here are two recent stories from Education Week (registration may be required).

New Uses Explored for ‘Value Added’ Data

Scrutiny Heightens for ‘Value Added’ Research Methods

Thomas J. Mertz

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by | May 8, 2008 · 6:14 pm

Quotes of the Day

From the Wisconsin Center for Education Research report:

Educational equity issues within the school district [MMSD] are the source of much public controversy, with a relatively small but vocal parent community that is advocating for directing greater resources toward meeting the needs of high achieving students. This has slowed efforts to implement strong academic equity initiatives, particularly at the middle and early high school levels.

From Matthew Yglesias:

The rhetoric of No Child Left Behind is, I think, an appealing one. The idea is that, well, no child should be left behind. It’s an essentially egalitarian aspiration — the school system should try to do well for the hardest to teach kids, included ones coming from difficult backgrounds and ones who simply for whatever reason have a hard time with school. The idea of “gifted” programs is basically the reverse vision — that the school system should focus on the easiest cases and push them to the highest level of achievement possible.

There’s not a stark either/or choice between the hard cases and the easy cases, but at some level you do need to make a decision about priorities. Insofar as we’re serious about educational equality, that will to some extent involve shortchanging the best and the brightest. Insofar as we’re serious about taking the most talented as far as they can go, that will involve shortchanging equity. The former strikes me as more desirable than the latter, especially for people who want to think of themselves as being on the left.

From Michael Bérubé:

If we as a society are going to make decisions concerning prioritizing scarce educational resources, it makes sense to me, for us to consider what kind of output we desire. Do we want to, for example, maximize the number of future American Nobel prize winners and enjoy the fruits of the breakthroughs that our most gifted can achieve, or do we want to maximize the educational level of the median American worker? Both results have great value, and if we were to quantify them in terms of dollars, I’m not sure which one would prove to be of greater value to society. But I think these are the questions we should be discussing. And that devoting our resources to maximizing the future opportunities of our least educationally apt children for the sake of doing so, without examining the costs, is fuzzy-headed. Which may or may not be a liberal value. But as liberals we do acknowledge that society is not just a collection of disparate competitive individual maximizers, but that we live in a community where cooperation is also an important value. And that maximizing the strength and resources of that community is itself a liberal value.

The National Access Network just reported that “the United States now has the highest relative childhood poverty rate among developed countries.” When the test scores of white American students are reported separately and compared to the test scores of students in developed countries, the United States ranks third highest. In contrast, if Hispanic and African American test scores are compared to the same international scores, the United States ranks last and next to last. It noted that “the authors of a 2001 Wisconsin study concluded that a weighting of 3.4 times the base cost for education was needed for poverty students to reach state standards.” In a new paper on class size reduction efforts, research found that “Wisconsin SAGE class-size reduction experiments showed positive effects on student performance, especially for disadvantaged students.” Economists estimate that reduction efforts targeting disadvantaged schools nationally would cost about $2 billion, and as the evidence shows, it would reap many benefits.

Robert Godfrey

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