Archives for category: Walker, Scott
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Jennifer Berkshire: Hopeful Signs of a Movement to Save Public Schools in Wisconsin

By dianeravitch
July 13, 2018 //
4

Jennifer Berkshire writes here of the encouraging signs of a strong grassroots movement to save public schools in Wisconsin, despite the best efforts of Governor Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature to crush the teachers’ union and to offer school choice, both charters and vouchers.

She begins:

“It would be easy to write the story of Wisconsin’s current union landscape as a tragedy. In this version of events, the bomb that Governor Scott Walker and his allies dropped on the state’s public sector unions has worked just as intended: The ranks of the unions have thinned; their coffers are depleted; their influence over the state and its legislative priorities has been reduced to where, in 2017, the state teachers’ union no longer employed a lobbyist at the statehouse.

“All of this is true.

“But there is another, more hopeful story to be told about Wisconsin, seven years after Walker officially kicked off his war on labor. It involves parents and teachers and local grassroots activists coming together to fight for the public schools in their communities. While Walker and the Republicans who control Wisconsin’s legislature got their way in 2011, there is a robust ongoing debate, throughout the state, about the role of public education and who should pay for it.

“Just as in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Colorado, states roiled by teacher and parent uprisings this spring, school funding has emerged as a flashpoint in Wisconsin. In the place where the modern era of scorched-earth-style state politics began, local activism around public education may just transform Wisconsin’s political culture.”

She identifies groups that are working in a nonpartisan way to increase school funding, to offset the dramatic tax cuts that ravaged their public schools.

State leadership has a simple ethos: “Privatize everything.”

By contrast, parents and teachers are mobilizing to keep their schools funded.

“Today, the Wisconsin Public Education Network is at the forefront of a statewide effort to support Wisconsin’s public schools and the 860,000 students who attend them. DuBois Bourenane and a small army of parents, teachers, school officials, and ordinary citizens are shining a relentless spotlight on the $2 billion in cuts made to the schools here by Walker and the GOP-led legislature, and demanding a fix to Wisconsin’s deeply inequitable school funding system.”

She identifies other groups that have formed to defend students and public schools.

One of the biggest drains on the state education budget is vouchers. Advocates have pushed the idea of breaking out the costs of vouchers so taxpayers can see clearly what vouchers cost them. In Milwaukee alone, where 32,000 students use vouchers, the cost was $269 Million in the last year alone. (Voucher students do not get better results than those in public schools).

Ironically, Gov. Walker is running again as “the education governor,” despite the fact that school funding is less now than a decade ago.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Milwaukee, Privatization, School Choice, Unions, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Peter Greene: Believe It or Not: Scott Walker Running as “Education Governor”

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2018 //
17

Stop laughing. Stop choking. Scott Walker plans to run for his third term on his record on education.

Is this what the Koch brothers told him to do?

“Walker’s signature achievement in the realm of education is Act 10. Walker likes to call the 2011 proposal of this bill “dropping the bomb,” and that’s a fair characterization. The bill shifted pension and health insurance costs to teachers. It took a shot at undermining Wisconsin’s flagship university. And most notably, it stripped public employees of the right to collectively bargain, while also doing away with any sort of job protections– teachers would only be contracted one year at a time. Then in 2012 he took a machete to school funding, only so that five years later he could offer some money back to school districts– but only if they could prove that they had used Act 10 to cut teacher pay. It was a clever way to force the hand of districts that were still trying to do the right thing, what we might call “a dick move.” Meanwhile, his legislature has been working hard to stop throwing money at public schools and start throwing it at vouchers and charters.

“Act 10 was supposed to make the Wisconsin economy boom. It didn’t– Wisconsin’s growth was low for the region. It was supposed to beat down the union. It did do that a bit. It was supposed to turn teaching into a buyer’s market, where no job was secure and the cost of labor was kept low. It did that, too. And it was meant to transform the teacher “workforce” into a group of young temps who would not stick around long enough to rock the boat or threaten the piggy bank. That seems to be working. And while this may not have been an intended result, Wisconsin is also facing “historic teacher shortages.” The pipeline is drying up. It’s almost as if something has made teaching a far less appealing profession than it used to be.”

And yet Walker plans to run on his abominable education record.

This guy should be voted out. ASAP. Without delay.

Wake up, Wisconsin. Reclaim your proud tradition of progressivism and retire the blockheads who control your state.

Categories Education Reform, Privatization, Stupid, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Where Was the National Democratic Party During the West Virginia Teachers Strike?

By dianeravitch
March 6, 2018 //
82

 

An article in the Daily Beast asks the question that is the title of this post.

Another question: Where was President Obama and Secretary Arne Duncan when Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stripped away collective bargaining, and union members encircled the State Capitol in protest? Answer: absent.

They did, however, find time in March 2011 to fly to Miami to join Jeb Bush in celebrating a “turnaround school” whose staff had been replaced. (A month later, the same high school was listed by the state as a “failing school” slated for closure, but the national media had moved on.)

Categories Bush, Jeb, Democrats, Duncan, Arne, Florida, Obama, Turnaround Schools, Unions, Walker, Scott, West Virginia

Wisconsin: Expansion of Vouchers Divides Communities

By dianeravitch
January 10, 2018 //
21

 

Wisconsin’s Governor Scott Walker and the state legislature expanded the voucher program despite its failure in Milwaukee. To zealots, evidence doesn’t matter. In some small communities, the voucher money is subtracted from the local public school to subsidize students already enrolled in religious schools. The many will see their education impoverished to subsidize those who never attended public schools. Others are fearful that the fabric of community life will be injured by this diversion of public dollars and civic support to private schools.  Walker is a favorite of the Koch brothers, which may explain his eagerness to destroy public schools. The Koch’s backed him as a candidate for president in 2016, but he didn’t last long. His love of vouchers is destabilizing communities across the state.

 

“When Superintendent Sue Kaphingst moved to Chilton less than a year ago, she marveled at how the northeastern Wisconsin community rallied around its local school district.

“Nestled to the east of Lake Winnebago about 75 miles north of Milwaukee, Chilton and its 3,900 residents felt cohesive. Football stars acted in the high school musical. Parents, students and school board members created a yarn art installation on the Chilton Middle School lawn to demonstrate that they were all connected. The high school theater was built with millions from a local family who owned pet supplies company Kaytee Products.

“But there’s a new development here and in other communities across Wisconsin that will test those ties: school vouchers. Four years after the GOP-led Legislature approved a statewide voucher program, the number of private schools registered to receive taxpayer-funded tuition subsidies has sharply increased. Together with the longstanding Milwaukee voucher program and the more recent Racine voucher program, close to 300 private, predominantly religious schools from Lake Superior to the Illinois border are poised to receive taxpayer funding for an estimated 33,750 students this fall, according to Gov. Scott Walker’s proposed budget.“For the first time, the Chilton School District could face either an enrollment drop because children will use a voucher to attend the local Catholic school they couldn’t otherwise afford, or more likely, the district will have to raise taxes to fund vouchers for children who already attend the private school.

“Together, the state’s voucher programs are expected to cost about $263 million in 2017-’18, according to Walker’s budget proposal.

“While President Donald Trump is pitching to boost federal spending on school choice programs by $1.4 billion — a down payment on his promise of $20 billion — Wisconsin is already demonstrating the complexities of expanding private-school choice to exurban America. Now that private schools outside of densely populated Milwaukee and Racine can tap into voucher funding, new tensions are bubbling up between religious conservatives eager to offer more students a religious-based education and district advocates who fear losing resources to private schools now competing for the same pot of public dollars.

“There’s only so much money,” said Kaphingst, the Chilton superintendent. “You’re taking from one for the other.”

Categories Koch Brothers, Vouchers, Walker, Scott

Wisconsin: What Happened to Teachers After Scott Walker Crushed the Unions?

By dianeravitch
November 21, 2017 //
24

David Madland and Alex Rowell of the Center for American Progress reviewed the impact on education of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s infamous Act 10, enacted in 2011, which crushed unions.

Some teachers left the profession or the state. Salaries and benefits declined. The average age and experience of teachers declined. Teachers moved from district to district, seeking higher pay.

They wrote:

“Six years ago, the state of Wisconsin passed the highly controversial 2011 Wisconsin Act 10, which virtually eliminated collective bargaining rights for most public-sector workers, as well as slashed those workers’ benefits, among other changes. These attacks on public-sector workers are spreading throughout the country. Iowa recently passed an Act 10-inspired law with similar policies affecting public-sector workers and their unions.1 Other states and members of Congress are considering enacting such policies, and with its ruling on Janus v. American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), the U.S. Supreme Court may act to weaken public-sector unions and teachers’ ability to collectively bargain.

“This issue brief examines the impact of the law on Wisconsin’s K-12 public education system and state economy. While this brief focuses on Act 10’s impact on Wisconsin teachers based on the data available, the same forces driving changes in the teaching workforce can also affect the broader public sector. Proponents of Act 10 insisted that reducing collective bargaining rights for teachers would improve education by eliminating job protections such as tenure and seniority-based salary increases. As Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) argued, “We no longer have seniority or tenure. That means we can hire and fire based on merit, we can pay based on performance. That means we can put the best and the brightest in our classrooms and we can pay them to be there.” However, the facts suggest that Act 10 has not had its promised positive impact on educational quality in the state.”

Teachers have lower pay, lower pension and health insurance benefits. There is more turnover as teachers move from one district to another seeking higher pay. Act 10 had its intended effect of smashing unions, which represented 14.1% of workers in 2011, but only 9% now.

What kind of country thinks the way to get better teachers is to cut their pay and benefits?

Scott Walker is a puppet of the Koch brothers. His vision of the future is mean and stupid.

Categories Koch Brothers, Teacher Pay, Teachers and Teaching, Unions, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Tim Slekar: Wisconsin Teachers Win a Lifetime License But Lose Their Profession

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2017 //
6

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, a lackey of the Koch brothers and ALEC, is always on the lookout for new ways to undermine the teaching profession.

Tim Slekar reports that he found a clever new way to deprofessionalize teachers.

The legislature just approved fast track certification (lowered standards) and “lifetime licenses” for those already teaching and after 3 years of teaching service for new teachers.

Slekar writes:

Do teachers really think a “lifetime license” was included in the Walker budget to actually help teachers? Seriously. This Act 10 Walker? This is the guy who maligned teachers for having a job with health care and retirement benefits. Why would he all of sudden do something positive for teachers?

He hasn’t! A ‘lifetime license” is just the newest way to promote a lifetime of low wages and a diminished professional status.

Back in the day, he notes, teachers had collective bargaining and a strong union to protect their profession, but Walker got rid of that with Act 10.

Now all they have to do to get a “lifetime license” is to ask for it.

Something is rotten in Denmark and in Madison. What Walker really wants is to lock teachers into a low-wage job.

Scott Walker joins the Wall of Shame, a dishonor he richly deserves for his continued efforts to destroy public schools and the teaching profession.

Categories Teacher Pay, Teachers, Unions, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Wisconsin: Can This Man Beat Scott Walker?

By dianeravitch
August 26, 2017 //
8

Tony Evers, the State Superintendent of Instruction in Wisconsin, has announced that he will run against Scott Walker for governor. Walker is a puppet of the Koch brothers who achieved national notoriety for breaking the state teachers’ union in 2011 and for advocating for charter schools and vouchers. Despite the poor performance of vouchers in Milwaukee, which adopted them in 1990–Walker expanded them.


Tony Evers, Wisconsin’s state superintendent of public instruction announced on Wednesday, August 23 that he plans to run for governor against Scott Walker. In his speech declaring his candidacy, he promised to invest in children, public schools, and the middle class, and declared that he will heal the political divide exploited by Scott Walker and Donald Trump.

“Make no mistake—Donald Trump is using the same playbook Scott Walker has been using in Wisconsin for years to create divisions and pit people against each other,” Evers said in his announcement speech to about seventy-five people at McKee Farms Kids Crossing Dream Park in Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

The setting for his announcement was symbolic of the values Evers’s candidacy represents, he said: a public park where kids of all backgrounds come to play together: “It’s democracy for little kids—I love it.”

“We must be clear: Trump and Walker are not the symptom of our divisions,” Evers added. “They are the cause.”

Evers is optimistic that voters will respond to a better, more community-minded vision if one is presented to them.

He points out that on the same day Wisconsin voted for Trump, majorities in local school districts all over the state (including in Republican areas) voted to raise property taxes on themselves to support their local public schools.

“On the morning of November 9, when you looked at the results of referendum after referendum, they told a completely different story from the election of Donald Trump,” he noted in an interview with The Progressive.

He made a similar point in his speech: “Scott Walker’s policies have forced almost a million people to raise their own taxes in the last three elections. And these are local people—Democrats, independents, and Republicans.”

That’s important because it shows, in Evers’s view, that when it comes to issues where people feel they have a direct stake in their communities—like maintaining their local public schools—voters do not support the Republican slash-and-burn agenda. As Evers puts it, “Local communities get it. Walker doesn’t get it.

Evers himself has won statewide election three times with big majorities, while fighting Walker’s budget cuts and efforts to expand school vouchers, which further drain resources from public schools. In the last election he won 70 percent of the vote and carried 70 of 72 counties.

His candidacy is all about the core issue of defending public education as an engine of democracy and equal opportunity—an issue that has been at the center of Wisconsin politics throughout the Walker era.

Categories Charter Schools, Education Industry, Privatization, Vouchers, Walker, Scott

Peter Greene: Scott Walker Attacks Teachers and Public Schools Again

By dianeravitch
April 6, 2017 //
20

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker thought he could run for president based on his hardline hatred for public school teachers and public schools. He was rushing to enact Betsy DeVos’s agenda even before she became Secretary of Education. And his agenda is even more expansive because he wants to drive teachers out of public schools. It is hard to believe that Wisconsin was once a progressive state with this guy as governor.

Peter Greene here reviews Walker’s latest attacks on public schools and their teachers.

First, he proposes to punish any district that is not strictly enforcing his infamous Act 10, which slashed teachers’ pay and shifted the cost of their health benefits and pensions to teachers.

Second, he proposes to eliminate any required number of instructional hours for students. Wisconsin, under his backwards leadership, would be the only state in the nation that did not set forth a minimum number of instructional hours. He claims this would provide “flexibility,” but in reality it would be a boon to cybercharters and others who will cut instructional time and teachers to save money. For more on this proposal, read here.

Greene observes:

Not that this is about cutting costs. Oh no. And that may be true– it may be more about reducing the need for staff. Can’t find enough teachers who want to work under Wisconsin’s increasingly regressive system? Split your school into morning and afternoon school meeting every other day and you can get twice the students, at least, served by one teacher. Have trouble staffing classes that don’t actually affect your state report card? Cut ’em and send the kids home early.

More than that, this also serves as a big blast of freedom for charters. Set your charter up however you want, teaching whatever you want, meeting as often as you want, with as few teachers as you want. Scott Walker says that’s okay. Come be an edu-preneur, and we won’t tell you what you have to do, ever.

Would this reduce the number of teachers in Wisconsin? Of course– and thereby weaken that damn union and its ability to stand up to guys like Scott Walker. And of course this also accomplishes the goal of making public schools less and less attractive so that charter schools can look better by comparison (without having to actually get good). Will this have any effect on the education of rich folks who can afford to make sure their children get into real schools that do real educating? Of course not, and that’s undoubtedly part of the point–

Scott Walker has pushed hard on many reformster ideas, but the unifying principle seems to be one of the lowest of all reformy ideas– wealthy folks (who deserve their wealth or why else would they be wealthy) should not have the government taking their well-deserved money to provide services for lousy poor people (who must deserve to be poor, or else they wouldn’t be). And that include those damn teachers, who not only keep taking money they don’t deserve, but keep using some of it to try to organize revolt against their rightful rulers. These peasants need to be sent packing and forced to understand that their Betters will decide what these Lessers deserve– and the short list of what these Lessers deserve does not include an excellent, free public education.

Really, I try to be civil on this blog. So, either Scott Walker is determined to drive every last professional teacher out of the public schools, or he is a moron. Or both.

Categories Charter Schools, Corporate Reform, Teacher Pay, Teachers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

NEWS: Working Families Party Sweeps Milwaukee School Board Elections!

By dianeravitch
April 5, 2017 //
20

This is one of the very first reactions to the Trump-DeVos (and Scott Walker) agenda to destroy public education.

RESISTANCE! It works, especially at the ballot box.

​
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: April 4, 2017
CONTACT: Marina Dimitrijevic

STUDENTS, WISCONSIN WORKING FAMILIES PARTY SWEEP MILWAUKEE; STATEWIDE EDUCATION ELECTIONS

Milwaukee board tilts to public education majority opposing corporate operators; profiteering

MILWAUKEE – The Milwaukee Board of School Directors now has a pro-public education majority with tonight’s election of all Wisconsin Working Families Party-endorsed candidates. Tony Baez, who is the new District Six representative on the board, along with incumbents Larry Miller and Annie Woodward, can now begin to eradicate the corporate profiteering that is draining resources from our schools while failing to deliver quality education for our children. Together with other advocates on the board, they have the ability to transform how education is delivered in Milwaukee. Working Families Party also supported Tony Evers in his successful run for a third term as the state’s superintendent of public instruction.

“This election is part of the resistance to the dangerous troika of Donald Trump, Scott Walker, and Betsy DeVos. If Wisconsin Working Families and our partners, including the teacher’s union, had not been involved, corporate interests and privatizers could have succeeded in tipping the balance of the school board, carrying out the Trump agenda and destroying our public schools,” said Marina Dimitrijevic, executive director of Wisconsin Working Families Party. “While the anti-public school forces recruited and funded candidates, they lost because voters want quality public schools for all students. We are building a template and record of taking on corporate operators and winning.”

Wisconsin Working Families Party worked for months to elect a slate of public school champions who will advocate for more resources for our school system, fight off unaccountable voucher expansion, and put forth an aggressive policy agenda that trusts teachers, invests in our student’s success, and adds to the quality of life for working families in Milwaukee.

“The Wisconsin Working Families Party saw that a District Six victory could be key to creating a pro-public school majority on the school board as well as having a dedicated voice for Latino students. They recruited me to run, supporting me throughout the election progress. I’m proud to work with Working Families because we share a vision and a drive to support and deliver a quality education to all of the students in our diverse city,” said Dr. Tony Baez, the newly elected District Six member of the board. “Thanks to Working Families’ campaign support and community organizing, we’ve turned the tide in Milwaukee against privatization and charter schools.”

Beyond assisting the candidates, Wisconsin Working Families Party mobilized volunteers and members using grassroots people power to help our endorsed candidates win. More than 60 people volunteered for several Saturday canvasses, contacting more than 2,000 voters through canvassing or phone calls. The organization also sent mailers to educate voters about the candidates and the issues in the campaign.

“Wisconsin Working Families Party recognized that this election posed a unique opportunity for change on the school board, held onto that vision, and ran until we won,” said Kim Schroeder, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association. “This election is a clear repudiation of the vouchers and corporatization that have drained out schools and failed our students. We have a template of how to organize and win.”

This election marks the second successful Wisconsin Working Families Party campaign to elect a pro-public education majority to school boards. In April, 2016, Wisconsin WFP worked with the Racine Education Association to elect eight of nine candidates to the Racine United School Board after Wisconsin’s legislative Republicans forced through a restructure of Racine’s school district governance.

Costly experiments with vouchers and charter schools have not yielded promised results. A study by the Public Policy Forum found that Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination test scores for voucher students lag behind those of MPS students, particularly for voucher students who attend predominantly voucher-funded schools. And schools with high concentrations of voucher students have lower WKCE test scores than their public school counterparts.

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The Working Families Party is a grassroots political organization. With chapters in Wisconsin and a dozen other states, as well as a membership that spans the nation, the Working Families Party works to advance public policies that make a difference in the lives of working people, like raising the minimum wage, stopping bad trade deals, taking on Wall Street, tackling climate change, and combating racial injustice. Working Families brings these issues to the ballot box and the halls of government at the federal, state and local levels.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Milwaukee, Resistance, School Choice, Trump, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin

Valerie Strauss: Democrats Paved the Way for Betsy DeVos

By dianeravitch
January 21, 2017 //
41

 

 

Valerie Strauss wrote an excellent article about the hypocrisy of Democrats who now loudly oppose Billionaire Betsy DeVos, but spent the last eight years bashing teachers, unions, and public schools while pouring billions of dollars into the proliferation of privately-managed charter schools. Once Democrats became cheerleaders for school choice, they abandoned the principle that public schools under democratic control are a fundamental public responsibility.

 

I urge you to read this article, which recounts the perfidy of Democrats who fell for privatization and betrayed public education. In many cases, support for charter schools opened the door to billionaires and hedge funder donations, to groups like Democrats for Education Reform and Education Reform Now and Families for Excellent Schools. Think Corey Booker, Andrew Cuomo, Dannell Malloy. Think of the silence of the Democrats as the U.S. Department of Education spent more than $3 billion on charter schools. How do they now express opposition to DeVos’s love for charters (and vouchers). She has exposed their hypocrisy.

 

Both of my last two books are about this theme–how the Democrats embraced privatization and opened the door to vouchers.

 

So I have to add a couple of points to her accurate summary:

 

In March 2011, President Obama and Secretary Duncan were in Miami with Jeb Bush to celebrate the “turnaround” of Miami Central High School. At the same time, thousands of working people were protesting the anti-labor policies of Scott Walker in Madison. Neither Obama nor Duncan ever showed up in Madison to show support for the teachers and union members who support Democrats.

 

The other point that needs to be added is that a month after Obama, Arne, and Jeb met to toast the turnaround of Miami Central, the state education Department in Florida listed it as a “failing” school that should be closed. I reported this in “Reign of Error.” The press never did report it. Why were Obama and Arne burnishing Jeb’s “credentials” as a “reformer?” Paving the way for Jeb’s good friend Betsy DeVos.

 

Let’s see if Democrats rediscover the importance of public education, where all kids are welcome, no lottery, no exclusion of kids with disabilities. In public schools, not every child can get admission to every school, but every child must be served and enrolled. Not some, but all.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

have to add

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Democrats for Education Reform, Duncan, Arne, Education Industry, Education Reform, Obama, Privatization, Race to the Top, Testing, Vouchers, Walker, Scott, Wisconsin
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