Milwaukee Democratic legislators wrote a letter to their colleagues urging them to oppose the state takeover of low-performing Milwaukee public schools. Any students of a school taken over would be transferred to the control of a charter operator or a voucher school. This is not “reform,” it is privatization.
Ironically, the public schools of Milwaukee perform as well as, or in many cases, better than the local charter schools and voucher schools.
What would be fair, if the Legislature passes the takeover bill, would be a mandatory transfer of students in low-performing charter schools and voucher schools back to the public schools.
It would create chaos, but “reformers” love disruption. Fair?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
And this will get rid of poverty and other conditions that lead to “low performing” schools by doing what?
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Good one, Peter.
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Objective: Eliminate the possibility that the public will or can have any responsibility for public education even though they are paying for this vital service. How?
“Create a separate school district outside of MPS under the management of a Commissioner selected and supervised by the Milwaukee County Executive. The Commissioner would have the power to transfer the lowest rated public schools out of MPS control and place its operation and management under the authority of a charter or voucher school. Teachers would be immediately fired regardless of merit.”
Note that this strategy that can be continued every year until all schools are under the management of the Milwaukee County Executive, because the system of evaluating schools is rigged so there will always be some schools that are the “lowest rated public schools.”
Stack rating public schools every year guarantees that transfer. The number of schools transferred in any year is a matter of tinkering with the specific ratings that will produce the transfers.
This sounds exactly like the reasoning of some gurus at the Brookings Institute who thought that the most efficient way to raise test scores would be firing the teachers whose students made the lowest scores, about 25% of teachers every year. Churn, Churn, churn.
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The public needs to organize to fight this insertion of corporate power on the children of the city. Corporations will continue the attack until the community refuses to accept these unacceptable terms.
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Seriously? They wrote a letter? They had two chances to get rid of Scott Walker and they failed miserably both times. So now they write a letter. Why bother?
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Just check out the CV of Milwaukee County executive Chris Abele, who his father is an who he replaced…As Rod Stewart once sang, “Every picture tells a story, don’t it?”
Check Wikipedia for the CV.
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I spotted this phenomenon, almost exactly laura lays it out in st. Louis, in 2007…an added item…..which I have not yet been able to connect to the story, was the murder of a former special needs student…..who. with the support of the elected board’s president, was bringing legal action against slps related to the consequences of what his legal representatives said was a very severe physical beating. The account of the beating was in the records of family services for four years, and then was removed. After a brief report of him having 12 bullets fired into him, there was no follow up to ….other than some derisive comments about the elected board making 20,000 dollars available for extra security to protect the Board president. I am glad any time I see a comment which emphasizes the connection of those disenfranchising urban voters with the same people seeking more privatization. It adds up to a form of re segregation. yesterday, Another interesting aspect of the st. louis takeover…..it is futile to ask for an explanation….A Kipp school, (they have 15 bankers on their board) made a deal with the SLPS appointed board…..give us a building free…..and we will allow you to count the testing scores of our carefully chosen students on your report to the state…….when the state takes over…..they can make up their own rules.
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Isn’t it a little late for Democrats to object to privatization?
The Agnostics will be irrelevant to ed reform going forward. The privatization crowd doesn’t need them anymore.
How did they think this was going to end? Some bipartisan happy medium where all schools are supported? A magically equalizing market?
They didn’t say anything when it mattered so now they get the Scott Walker vision. At least he has one.
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