A comment from a reader:
Dear Readers,
I have been in public education for more than 30 years. I am a recognized leader and have received many awards for excellence and advocacy for children. Wisconsin right now is the “wild west” of educational practice.
I am deeply committed to excellence in practice. I will advocate for strong models for quality improvement and student learning. As a district Carnegie Foundation is completing a case study on our work with a focus on our quality improvement model. I am working with among the best educators I have had the great privilege to work. The early results are remarkable, and I am confident we will be a national model of excellence.
Our Governor and our legislators are walking away from the needs of our schools and our community. Each of our schools is exceeding state expectations. We are in the top 10% performing school districts in the state.
We have lost 41% of our state aid, our local property taxes have gone up by 19%, and our local legislators have each voted to expand private vouchers across the state of Wisconsin, and an income tax credit for parents sending their children to private schools. Our community will off set the costs of this for the entire state of Wisconsin because we are considered a property rich districts. Our community is middle income, but we are the 3rd largest manufacturing community in the state. Therefore, our property values hold at a greater rate than the values around us.
The politics nationally, and within are state, are losing site of community values, the best interest of local economies, and the future for our state.
As a state we indicate we are committed to quality performance, and preparing students for strong post-secondary transitions.
Locally, we will continue to cut 2 million dollars of programming each year under the revenue limits as our legislators advance a dual system for education.
They know and have acknowledged that they will not be able to sustain adequate funding for public schools.
We have among the strongest schools in the nation. We continue to advance policy that will unravel what our local communities value for their children.
The local legislators have stopped advancing policy to reflect local values. They are passing budgets at 2 in the morning with less than an hour of debate. There is no public input and no evidence to support the voucher expansion.
Wisconsin policy makers are walking away from the strength of their schools.
Sincerely,
Pat Greco
Superintendent
School District of Menomonee Falls
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Pat,
“We are in the top 10% performing school districts in the state.” Whoop de dooo!
What do you mean by that statement? How is that measured? Have you rejected RaTT funds? Have you refused to “go along to get along” playing the “we’re number one game”? Or have you been part of the problem and not saying/doing anything to combat the educational malpractices of the last dozen years? If you’ve been fighting it what exactly have you, personally, done in your various positions during the last 12 years? Or is this just the case that the shit is hitting the fan finally for your district?
It appears to me that you’ve been part of the whole problem by going along to get along, and “Well, we have to comply with all the laws” type thinking. How many students have you harmed by instituting these various educational malpractices instead of standing up and exposing the insanities that have been NCLB and RaTT? Are you willing to lose your position to do so?
There is no compulsion to answer this old fart Spanish teacher’s questions. If I were in your position I’d ignore these untidy, dirty little questions that all administrators and teachers who have gone along to get along refuse to even acknowledge and whose hands are bloodied with students beaten hearts and mind from instituting these various educational malpractices.
Harsh, yes, but it’s what you need to hear and acknowledge.
Duane
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Duane,
I have tremendous respect to the teacher I work with and have demonstrated that for the over 30 years in my career. We commit to monitoring student achievement with classroom measures, staff, student, parent feedback, and the state performance measures. We are not a race to the top state. And we receive very little state aid. Wisconsin supports their schools predominately through local property taxes. Our community locally off sets the expenses of education across Wisconsin because our property values are considered high.
We service families with middle income. We serve a community that cares about education.
Wisconsin schools have been under revenue limits for more than 20 years and the funding system does not keep pace with inflation. So each year programming is reduced.
Nationally we have significant policy issues to face. Boards, taxpayers, administrators and staff all need to weigh in on what they value and want to sustain for their local communities. We are placing our high performing schools in very vulnerable positions. And, long-term, we will regret this period of policy making for our communities and our local economies. Education is a primary driver in long-term success. Local economies are directly connected to the community assets of their schools, parks, services.
The sets ahead are important, and the focus needs to stay on investments that matter most for the students, families, and communties.
Sincerely,
Pat Greco
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Duane,
Do you suppose that you might be making too many assumptions about this superintendent based on very little evidence? Sounds to me like you need to quit in solidarity with all those who have already lost their jobs during this insanity. Is that the only ethical course?
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When are the voters going to throw the bums out of office and put in those who are in their best interests? This is the problem with this country. It is time for us once again to wake up as happened with Civil Rights and the Vietnam War and stop this.
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Both parties have cut state aids to public schools. When the Dems controlled both houses and the Governorship, they did nothing to fix school funding and expanded vouchers in Milwaukee. We have “thrown the bums out” several times since 1993. They are all about low taxes and getting re-elected.
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Duane,
Really think about what you would have done in her situation. Would have taken the money in the hope that next year, the legislature would fix the mess? Or would you have allowed a faster downward spiral in the hope that parents would wake up, finally, and do something? I don’t know the right answer. I do know that the WI legislature has allowed these cuts to continue since 1993. I wish that my kids could have had the education I did. I feel sick when I think about how education funding has become all about politics and not about kids.
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Katrina & 2O2T,
Yes, what I say, directed at administrators and teachers specifically in order to tweak their conscience a bit can be harsh. So be it. I decided about a year ago that whenever I spoke with an educator I would personally confront his/her complicity in the educational malpractices that each person has agreed that they are just that, educational malpractices.
I had been certified to be an administrator (since 98). I specifically chose to stay in the class room and not do administration because I knew I couldn’t implement the nonsense that was going on. That was a personal choice. I could have made quite a bit more money by going along to get along but I just couldn’t be a part of it.
And I have fought this “data driven” crap, educational standards and standardized testing enough (as department chair) that I have been chased out of one district in which the administration had the “my way or the highway” attitude. Yes, I survived that and continue to fight and struggle against the idiocies. I’ve got many a reprimand to show for it. And I know what it is like to be ostracized for not “going along to get along”, and it’s not pleasant.
But the best way to fight it is to close my door and let the students know that it is pure bullshit and that in my class I don’t operate that way and they should be challenging these educational malpractices as much as possible.
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What would you have that superintendent do that you know he has not done? I have no reason to be fond of administrators. It took me far too long to realize that few of them had my back. I don’t really blame them anymore; I am just disappointed in them and tired of feeling disposable. When it comes down to it, Duane, I feel like you are really calling most of us gutless. Maybe we are.
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Duane, I think you’ll like this article.
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/edweek/courage.htm
It speaks to the courage I believe you are describing. No matter the debate, having courage to simply ask, “Why are we doing this?” in education is a great step.
Thanks for the debate to you and others.
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I’d say move to Illinois but it’s not going to be much better here, soon.
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Things are really bad when Illinois gets offered as an alternative to Wisconsin.
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Ohio is just as bad. We had this RttT shoved down our throats for the paltry sum of $125K for the entire district for Prof Dev. (Joke Prof Dev – here’s the mandate, you figure it out, we only have 1/2 hour, do it on your own time, and by the way, it should be in your lesson plans within 2 weeks) Anyone who was objecting to ANYthing was quickly shoved out the door. It was terrible and continues to be so. Our district managed to get Excellent with Distinction scoring for 5 years, but we were told that we would probably fall off that “pedestal” once RttT took hold. This insane testing, with computerized tests from K upward, in schools that don’t even HAVE computers for all to use or even more than one per classroom (for teacher use) are expected to “perform” at some level that makes NO sense. They have shoved all the curricula downward.
To accuse the teachers as being complicit in all of this … is absurd. Do you think that the teachers should have gone on strike? Do you think that would have changed the superintendent’s mandate that we would have to perform well, or else, or that he had much of a choice but to be nasty about all of it? How could he buy into it? Pride. Ratings. Being the little school that could do what the bigger school districts couldn’t, with less money. We have had no raises there since 2007.
I agree that we should stand up to this, but when the economy was tanking and teachers were being abused for even the appearance of dissent … they hung on to their jobs, thinking this would pass … since this kind of stuff has happened cyclically for years. I don’t think that will be the case this time.
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Mr. Greco,
I feel horrible for your district. I do have to add something. While Milwaukee has lived with vouchers and huge losses of money (last year $53 million), the community surrounding MPS has been silent. Now that the suburbs are feeling the pain of Act 10 and the future of vouchers, we are hearing how horrible this will be. The whole budget being signed on Sunday is anti-public education, anti-middle class and anti-children and adults who live in poverty. All I can say is “Good Luck!” Now you will all know what we’ve been complaining about in MPS for years!
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The BRADLEY Foundation has been supporting the privatization of education in Wisconsin.
More info.. ( Move over Koch brothers, A ….)
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/05/03-7
( Massive Bradley Foundation education privatization campaign exposed.)
http://www.onewisconsinnow.org/press/massive-bradley-foundation-education-privatization-campaign-exposed.html
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The Koch brothers/ ALEC ( American Legislative Exchange Council) has been supporting ($$$) Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker to move quickly with bills to benefit the corporations and not the people. ( State legislatures sitting with lobbyist to pass laws)
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For more info…
http://www.alecexposed.org. ( ALEC exposed- go to : privatization of education)
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Another article about ALEC education agenda in Wisconsin.
(Scott Walker GOP slip ALEC education agenda into Wisconsin budget)
http://www.prwatch.org/news/2013/05/12099/scott-walker-gop-slip-alec-education-agenda-wisconsin-budget
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