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Score One for the Good Guys...
April 13, 2012
By Katy Venskus, DFER Wisconsin State Director
Voters in Milwaukee's 15th Aldermanic District made the right choice when they re-elected Common Council President Willie Hines last Tuesday. Hines has been a constant champion for his troubled North Side district, spurring neighborhood redevelopment, investment, and job growth. From the DFER perspective, he is a quiet, steady leader who has demonstrated repeatedly that he is not afraid to make bold choices when it comes to improving educational opportunities and outcomes for Milwaukee's kids.
For one, Alderman Hines is the reason the Rocketship Education Network selected Milwaukee as its first expansion site. He also led the charge to make surplus school buildings available to quality choice and charter schools. Alderman Hines has repeatedly made it clear that the status quo in the Milwaukee Public Schools is not acceptable. He's done this work with little fanfare and without playing the childish political games that are so common on both sides of education reform issues these days. Hines simply dug in and got the work done.
Several months ago, radical forces in the organized labor community made the decision that Hines' thoughtful, deliberate leadership was a threat to their power base and decided it was time to make him a test case. They recruited a young, aggressive candidate, Eyon Biddle, who had already won a seat on the Milwaukee County Board. He came straight out of the ranks of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) - one of the most liberal and politically aggressive unions in WI - and had all the major unions in his back pocket. If this candidate could take out Hines, labor knew it would have a chilling effect on other City of Milwaukee leaders who might be inclined to step out of line with the union. It was a small local race, but the stakes were awfully high for the future of education reform policy in Milwaukee.
REPUBLICAN FY 2013 BUDGET PROPOSAL
March 29, 2012
REPUBLICAN FY 2013 BUDGET PROPOSAL
DRAMATIC AND RECKLESS CUTS TO EDUCATION SPENDING
Yesterday, the U.S. House of Representatives began debate on its budget proposal for FY 2013, the upcoming fiscal year that begins October 1st. The debate resumes on the House floor today.
In Wisconsin:
• Almost 3,000 children will be eliminated from the Head Start program;
• Nearly 33,000 students with disabilities' costs will shift to states and districts as part of cuts to IDEA; and,
• Approximately 65,000 students from historically disadvantaged groups will have reduced or eliminated services due to Title I cuts.
Read more here.
Much Ado about Data , but What Does It All Mean?
March 12, 2012
By Katy Venskus, DFER Wisconsin State Director
There has been a lot of education data flying around Milwaukee in the last two weeks, but it's unclear what most of it means. And, what the city plans to do with it is even less clear.
The Department of Public Instruction (DPI) sent Milwaukee a nasty little Valentine on the 15th when it released the list of priority schools to be included in the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) waiver application. Priority schools, those in the lowest performance category statewide, are the persistently failing public schools that will require serious intervention strategies in order for Wisconsin's waiver application to be seriously considered.
The DPI then added all choice schools whose test scores resembled the failing public schools to the list of priority schools and proclaimed them the worst in the state. All but two of these schools are in Milwaukee. What's more - every high school in the city, except for the selective Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) that are allowed to academically screen applicants for admission, was included on the failing schools list. While this is not surprising to anyone who is paying attention, DPI did catch some people off guard with the inclusion of the private choice schools. While it is not news that there are lousy choice schools, it was surprising that DPI was willing to so blatantly play politics by labeling choice schools as failing using less data and much less credible criteria.
Moreover, a week later the fifth and final year of data in the School Choice Demonstration Project was released. This five-year longitudinal study of pupil progress in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) used test scores and other factors to compare student performance in the program to student performance in traditional Milwaukee Public Schools over a five-year period. The study followed a small population of students in a small sampling of private choice schools and traditional district schools.
Is Milwaukee back on the reform radar?
January 19, 2012
By Katy Venskus, DFER Wisconsin State Director
There used to be a time when Milwaukee was considered one of the most active education reform cities in the country. The City's private school choice program, the oldest and largest in the country, was our ticket to fame (or infamy, depending on who you ask) through most of the 1990's. The choice program was supposed to be a game changer to public education. It was supposed to set off a chain reaction of innovation and competition that would not only improve the lives of children, but change the way we configured our education policy for the City of Milwaukee. In short, we were going to be the hotbed of the reform movement for decades to come.
Sadly, the game changing education movement we expected didn't come to pass. There is no doubt, however, that the existence of parent choice in Milwaukee has changed the lives of thousands of kids. The movement that created and protected the choice program fostered the development of two of the City's best charter schools and promoted a small sector of independent charters authorizers and schools. Unfortunately, aside from these developments there has been little large-scale reform in Milwaukee since the mid-1990's. Instead of a catalyst, the choice program became a scapegoat for both political parties and many status quo stakeholders. The failing public school district in Milwaukee has been allowed to sink deeper and deeper into the quicksand while union interests and their status quo Democrats blamed the choice program for all the public schools considerable ills. The GOP used the choice program as the be-all-end-all urban education solution, and was happy to let thoughtful public school policy and funding fall by the way side. The independent charter school community put their heads down and tried to stay out of the political fray - they served small pockets of kids very well, but without the ability or the will to take their model to scale. As a result, Milwaukee, not only fell behind, we fell off the map entirely.
Three years ago the notion of Teach For America, Lighthouse Academies, National Heritage Academy, Schools that Can and even DFER being active and committed to this community was, at best, unlikely. Now, Lighthouse and National Heritage have schools in Milwaukee, TFA is about to triple the size of its corps in Milwaukee and Schools That Can has partnered with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and others on an ambitious plan to get 20,000 of Milwaukee's 120,000 school children in a high performing school by 2020. Most notably, Rocketship Education is poised to select Milwaukee as its first expansion city outside of California. As a Milwaukee Common Council charter school, they will bring their innovative and successful model to Milwaukee in 2013. Advocacy organizations like DFER and others have taken hold and continue to develop new allies in both parties committed to comprehensive reform. Reform minded candidates are being identified and trained to run for public office at all levels.
Moving Toward Quality
December 12, 2011
By Katy Venskus, DFER Wisconsin State Director
As one of the organizations on the front lines of the parent choice movement in Milwaukee, DFER has frequently found itself in the middle of a contentious debate among reformers as to whether or not quality choice was a more important objective than unregulated choice.
The Milwaukee Education Ecosytem is more diverse than most. Students in the City can attend traditional public schools, independent public charter schools or one of the more than 100 private schools that participate in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Families who meet the income eligibility guidelines (currently a family at or below 300% of the federal poverty line) can send their kids to a private school of their choice using a $6,400 annual voucher from the state. Despite all those options, Milwaukee students are still at or near the bottom of the pack when it comes to achievement when compared to their peers in other urban districts. (See here.) Clearly, in Milwaukee, choice and quality have not always gone hand-in-hand.
For political and ideological reasons, DFER has always been camped out on the side of public policy that protects choice, but fosters quality as well. The existence of education options in the city has not in and of itself improved the overall quality of education for its students. However, without the existence of choice, the rise of high performing schools over the years, especially those serving predominantly low-income kids, probably would have been stifled. If St. Marcus Lutheran, Milwaukee College Prep School, Bruce Guadalupe, or the HOPE School - to name a few - had not been given the opportunity to serve so many kids so well, Milwaukee would not understand what education success looks like. We wouldn't know what our other schools were missing.
Thanks to choice, we know that it is possible to take poor, urban kids - many of them students of color - and get great results. Milwaukee understands that all students can and should learn in all schools, but we need to get the schools right.
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