Scott Walker's Hokey Pokey

Eliminating collective bargaining for Wisconsin public employees was all about balancing the state budget. Until it wasn't.

Expanding the Milwaukee voucher program was all about equal educational opportunities for low-income children. Until it wasn't.

Howard Fuller is absolutely right to threaten to "get off the stage" and refuse to strike a deal with the devil.

“I will never fight for giving people who already have means more resources. Because, in the end, that will disadvantage and squeeze out the possibility of poor parents having some of these options,” said Fuller.

This is not to say that Fuller won’t consider raising the income threshold to serve more of Milwaukee’s working poor. In the interview, he talks about aligning the requirements for entry into the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program with those of Wisconsin’s BadgerCare program, which provides health care to state residents who earn less than 300 percent of poverty. “That would capture over 80 percent of the households in the city,” he said. “So if your real objective is to expand the level of support, you could do that and still retain a focus on low-income and moderate-income families.”

But if Wisconsin and other states want to make their vouchers universally accessible to families of any income level, “it may very well be that it’s time for people like me to get off the stage,” he said. “Maybe it has to be a different movement going forward, but if that’s the way the movement has to be going forward, it’s not something that I can be a part of.”

While I disagree with Fuller's approach to expanding vouchers rather than focusing on reform of and investment in public education, I admire his steadfast adherence to principle and his commitment to advocacy on behalf of disadvantaged children and families.

Others in Wisconsin -- including UW-Madison Chancellor Biddy Martin -- need to come to the same conclusion. What YOU may think or want something to be about probably isn't why this right-wing governor is your new friend. Just say "no, thank you." There are alternatives that may need to wait for more thoughtful and progressive leadership in Wisconsin.

Trampling workers' rights. Privatizing public education. THAT's what it's all about.

AP Photo: Andy Manis

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Grasping At Straws

Illinois is sure to be disappointed if it continues to move forward with a private voucher program (SB 2494) for Chicago Public Schools. Just ask Wisconsin-- and Milwaukee.

Clearly, the Chicago Tribune editorial board ('Liberate the kids'), which is cheering the process on, has not done its homework, not checked its sources, and not looked to its neighbor to the north for guidance. Or it is simply drinking the Kool Aid mixed by Voucher Inc.:

And there's evidence that vouchers improve public schools. A 2009 report by The Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice examined 17 studies on the impact of voucher programs. Sixteen studies found that vouchers improved student achievement in public schools; one study found they had no positive or negative impact. In other words, competition works.

There is also plentiful evidence that vouchers do NOT improve public schools, including the on-going evaluation of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program -- the longest-standing voucher program in the country, just a short drive up I-94 from Chicago.

To look to the Friedman Foundation for guidance on this issue is akin to turning to Karl Rove's new book as a definitive history of the George W. Bush administration. From a University of Illinois professor, Dr. Christopher Lubienski, here's a critique of the Friedman report cited in the Tribune editorial:

[T]he report, based on a review of 17 studies, selectively reads the evidence in some of those studies, the majority of which were produced by voucher advocacy organizations. Moreover, the report can’t decide whether or not to acknowledge the impact of factors other than vouchers on public schools. It attempts to show that public school gains were caused by the presence of vouchers alone, but then argues that the lack of overall gains for districts with vouchers should be ignored because too many other factors are at play. In truth, existing research provides little reliable information about the competitive effects of vouchers, and this report does little to help answer the question.

Competition does not work. Plus, what evidence exists to suggest that these Chicago-area private schools will do any better a job of educating the students who would be taken out of the public system? I can't wait to see that evidence because I'm fairly certain that it doesn't exist. That raises questions about the Tribune's utter disregard of this issue: "What if student performance doesn't improve in private schools? Simple: Parents will vote with their feet." But if there's no comparable evidence of student performance between public and private schools, how can parents (consumers) make informed judgments about their child's education? In addition, what if there are insufficient openings at private schools for students wanting to go? Will the voucher be sufficient to cover the tuition and associated costs at these schools for low-income students?

What would be preferable to this exercise in grasping at straws would be energy directed toward a more difficult series of conversations about school-based policies like teacher quality, school leadership, teaching and learning conditions and overall school improvement, in addition to community-focused strategies such as early childhood education, after-school programs, quality child care, and school health in the city of Chicago that get to kids' readiness to learn when they come to school.

Vouchers are not the answer, but a major distraction from more efficacious approaches that should be the focus of the Illinois Legislature.

Image courtesy of Laura Lee.

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Movement on Teacher Residency Requirements

As a follow up to my post last September ("Teacher Residency Requirements"), there appears to be legislative movement in both Illinois and Wisconsin to eliminate such requirements in Chicago and Milwaukee, respectively. Both cities require teachers to be residents in order to be employed in the public schools.

From District 299: The Chicago Schools Blog (Alexander Russo), 3/8/2010:

It's an age-old question for Chicago, which is one of few big cities to require teachers to live inside the city limits. Teachers complain about it. Once in a while they get caught living outside the city and have to move or leave their jobs. The recession in making jobs scarcer and the city more expensive. And now State Sen. Steans has introduced language [Residency Bill SB 3522 (Amendment 1)] that, with the support of the CTU, would remove that requirement.

From Wisconsin State Journal editorial, 3/10/2010:

Republicans in the Wisconsin Legislature and the state's big teachers union are on the same side pushing for a smart school reform in Milwaukee.

They're backing Assembly Bill 89, which would prohibit Milwaukee Public Schools from requiring their teachers to live in the state's largest city.

My belief is that, while this might be good politics or even economic policy, it is bad education policy. In urban school districts that struggle to attract and retain talented and effective teachers, such a residency policy needlessly reduces the number of qualified candidates for teaching vacancies and lowers the quality of the overall selection pool.

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Spin Cycle

Education Next apparently has provided a platform for school choice advocate George Mitchell to shill for voucher schools outside of the state of Wisconsin. Here is his latest spin on a study that shows the high school graduation rate to be 12 points higher in seven Milwaukee voucher schools compared with 23 Milwaukee public high schools.

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story by Erin Richards provides the crucial quote regarding causation from the study's author, John Robert Warren, a sociology professor at the University of Minnesota:

"We still don't know whether it's going to the voucher school that causes you to be more likely to graduate, or if it's something about the kinds of families that send their kids to voucher schools would make them more likely to graduate," he said.

Then there's the whole question of which and how the voucher and public high schools were chosen for purposes of comparison. More questions than answers. Unlike Mitchell, I neither see this report as providing "another piece of evidence suggesting that urban students benefit when afforded more educational options," nor "new data" to encourage President Obama and Education Secretary Duncan to take "a second look at the power of parent choice."

The study was funded by the voucher-advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin, run by Mitchell's wife, Susan. The Mitchells have split from national school choice leader Howard Fuller who is devoting his current efforts to furthering accountability and quality in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program.

After the spin cycle, be sure to rinse.

For past perspective on Voucher Inc, please visit here.

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Teacher Residency Requirements

Apart from being marginally good local politics to require city employees (including teachers) to live within city boundaries, why would an urban district create barriers that make it more difficult to attract the highly effective teachers that it needs?

Ask Chicago and Milwaukee. (Boston, too, has a residency requirement for city employees, but it excludes teachers.) Any others out there we should be aware of?

From the Chicago Tribune (9/11/2009):

The city, for its part, maintains that teachers should be contributing to the tax base that funds their schools, among other reasons.

From the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel (1/24/2008):

The residency rule has been controversial for years. Some say it is unfair and MPS needs good teachers too much to restrict the pool of possible teachers. Others say it doesn't actually have much effect on who teaches overall and it's good for the city to have employees live within the city line. Efforts in the state Legislature to repeal the residency rule recently have not succeeded.

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Stimulus: Milwaukee's Odds

Recent stories suggest that policymakers and education leaders are beginning to bank on competitive funding under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) that in actuality will only flow to reform-minded, results-oriented states and districts. I'm talking about the competitive $4.35 billion Race To The Top grants (for states) and the $650 million What Works and Innovation Fund (for school districts and nonprofits).

With regard to the What Works and Innovation Fund (WWIF), some things are clear. In order for a school district to be eligible to apply, they must meet four specific criteria, one of which is having met or exceeded the state's Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) objectives for student achievement for at least two years.

This criterion alone will render many school districts ineligible for this competitive funding. And that's OK, says the U.S. Department of Education. This WWIF is intended to take effective innovations to scale, not to provide districts in-need with additional resources. That's what the major injection of Title I funding in ARRA was intended for.

So it was curious to see this press release cross my desk ("Governor Doyle, Mayor Barrett Announce Effort to Reform MPS"). The joint release from Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle and Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett unveils a 5-point plan "to drive innovation, school improvement and fiscal responsibility" in Milwaukee Public Schools. Plank number one is this:

Compete for American Reinvestment and Recovery Act (ARRA) funding - Working together with educators, parents, and the community, Governor Doyle and Mayor Barrett will lead Milwaukee-based efforts to compete for federal incentive grant funding available through the ARRA.

These highly competitive federal grants are intended to reward states and districts that are making major reforms to successfully reduce achievement gaps and improve student learning. There are a few clarifications needed here. First, Milwaukee won't be eligible to compete directly for the WWIF because it is a district "in need of improvement" under the No Child Left Behind Act--in other words, it hasn't met AYP objectives at all (and this in a state that has tried to game the system by unrealistically projecting that nearly all achievement growth will occur in the out years). Second, Milwaukee could apply for the What Works and Innovation Fund in partnership with a nonprofit, assuming that nonprofit could demonstrate impact along those 4 objectives. Third, Milwaukee could benefit from a successful Wisconsin state application to the Race To The Top fund. But looking at the chief criteria for that competitive fund--rigorous academic standards and high-quality assessments, pre-k to college data systems, making improvements in teacher effectiveness and the equitable distribution of teachers, and intensive support to low-performing schools--suggests that Wisconsin, at best, is a 30-to-1 shot. Given its track record (or lack thereof) on some of these education policy elements in recent years, it's going to have a difficult time competing with leading states. And the Education Department has been very clear that these dollars will flow to a select number of states. My money is on Wisconsin not being one of them. I'm an optimist--but I'm not that optimistic.

If I have time, perhaps I'll explore some of these policy issues in greater depth and why Wisconsin's recent failures to lead on reform will likely cost it these additional resources.

One thing is clear: State policymakers and district leaders should do their homework--and consider the odds--before counting on these competitive monies to fuel education reform. The check may well not be in the mail.

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UPDATE: Milwaukee Voucher Program

Dr. Howard Fuller -- a Milwaukee-based national school voucher advocate, long-time champion of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, and former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent -- today announced his support for greater regulation of voucher schools, as proposed by Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle in his biennial state budget. (Nice summary of the Governor's proposal at Blogging MPS.)

I am glad to see that Governor Doyle has not backed away from the proposals he made for greater accountability in the voucher program back in 2005 and 2006--specifically, higher standards for voucher-school teachers and public reporting of standardized tests for each voucher school. With Democrats now in control of both houses of the Wisconsin Legislature, the path has been cleared for needed reforms to the program -- reforms in the best interest of students and parents.

Read more in Alan Borsuk's Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel story ("Key voucher advocate says more regulation, standards for program needed"). Excerpts below:

Howard Fuller, the former Milwaukee Public Schools superintendent who is now a central figure nationally in advocating for school choice, said he wants school leaders to join with Gov. Jim Doyle, legislative leaders and others in working out new ways to assure that students of all kinds have quality teachers in quality schools.

"We can't just keep wringing our hands about these terrible schools," Fuller said. "We have a moral responsibility to our children to not accept that."

Fuller was reacting both to a new set of studies of the voucher program and to a dramatically different situation for voucher supporters in the state Capitol.

In Madison, with both houses of the Legislature now controlled by Democrats, prospects are strong for passage of legislation pushed by critics of the voucher program that would impose stricter rules on many fronts. Such proposal have not passed in recent years because Republicans controlled at least one house of the Legislature and voucher leaders - including Fuller - resisted many of them.

In his state budget, Doyle called for changes in the voucher program, including requiring teachers to meet higher qualification standards and requiring the voucher schools to give standardized tests and report the results publicly.

"Many of the provisions he has in there are sensible and reasonable, and we ought to do this," Fuller said.

Reacting to specific proposals made by Doyle, Fuller said, "Who can argue with the need to have standards for how kids move from one grade level to another?" He said the same was true for such ideas as setting stricter standards for graduation, annual hours of instruction and handling of student records in a standardized way that allows such things as school transfers to be made smoothly.

The state Department of Public Instruction released a list recently of 57 new applicants to participate in the voucher program next fall. Most of them were people who have not run schools before and appeared to have little structure or backing for their plans.

"We've got to figure out a way to stop people (such as those) from starting schools in the first place," Fuller said. "Who in their right mind would argue that we don't have to do something like that?"

State law currently requires voucher school teachers to have high school diplomas. Fuller said, "Who could argue with a notion of a bachelor's degree for teachers?"

What about the private schools giving state standardized tests and making the results public?

"We clearly have to do that," he said.

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The Role of Education In Moving The Milwaukee Economy Forward

An interesting report on Moving The Milwaukee Economy Forward was released in early June by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI).

I always consider the source of policy reports like this prior to digesting the recommendations. Given WPRI's self-professed status as a "free market" (read: anti-government) think tank and its heavy reliance on Bradley Foundation and Roe Foundation monies, I generally approach its offerings very cautiously. Despite the potential for bias, I honestly find this report to be a balanced and worthy contribution to the public policy discussion in the state of Wisconsin and in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. In addition, I really like the breadth with which it investigates what's needed to strengthen and retool the Milwaukee area economy. (I guess you could call this a backhanded compliment?)

With respect to the report's education-related recommendations, I offer some cheers and jeers:

Cheers: The report includes some excellent (although not always particularly detailed) recommendations on early childhood education, project-based learning, high school graduation and restructuring the senior year of high school.

Jeers: The report falls short in ignoring some critical structural issues that Wisconsin must address in order to improve and reform its education system. These include school finance, including revenue limits, an over-reliance on local property taxes, and the qualified economic offer. In addition, it doesn't sufficiently address the need to raise educator quality in Wisconsin and in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), in particular. That would include a focus on new teacher induction and mentoring, the MPS teacher residency requirement, additional and differentiated compensation and high-quality professional development.

If you're concerned about the economy and/or education in Milwaukee, this report certainly deserves your attention.

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