Archives for category: Wisconsin
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »

“New Hustler Voucher Academy” in Milwaukee Closes

By dianeravitch
January 15, 2014 //
23

Thanks to blogger TeacherKen for drawing my attention to this startling story about a failed voucher school in Milwaukee.

A small religious school called LifeSkills Academy closed “in the dead of night” in December, after collecting $200,000 in taxpayer funds for the year. It became a voucher school in 2008 and had collected some 2 million dollars since then. By the time it closed, its enrollment had dwindled to only 66 students.

In the 2012-2013 school year, only one of its 66 students was proficient in reading or math.

Recall that Governor Scott Walker wants more voucher schools in Wisconsin.

Categories Vouchers, Wisconsin

Wisconsin: Republican Legislators Seek Dramatic Expansion of Charters

By dianeravitch
December 18, 2013 //
7

Wisconsin Republican legislators in the Assembly have introduced a proposal to open many more charters across the state, as well as to increase the number of authorizers of new charters. The new charters would take funding away from existing public schools and would be non-union. This legislation continues the radical assault on public education in Wisconsin and the extremist drive to privatize public education.

At present, most of the state’s nearly 200 charter schools are operated by districts and staffed with district employees. The proposed legislation would eliminate these charters, which might become magnet schools.

Similar legislation was previously rejected by the Senate Republican caucus.

There is always hope that moderate Republicans will slow the radicals’ efforts to destroy public education in Wisconsin. In most towns, the public school is a traditional, revered institution. True conservatives don’t blow up traditional institutions.

Think about it:

“When you wage war on the public schools, you’re attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You’re not a conservative, you’re a vandal.”

― Garrison Keillor, “Homegrown Democrat: A Few Plain Thoughts from the Heart of America”

Categories Charter Schools, Wisconsin

News from Wisconsin: “Reign of Error” Puts Voucher Advocates on Defensive

By dianeravitch
October 16, 2013 //
1

A progressive Wisconsin newspaper reports that “Reign of Error” has thrown voucher advocates onto the f
Defensive. Despite the obvious failure of vouchers in Milwaukee, Governor Scott Walker has expanded the voucher program to a larger geographical area and lifted the income limits for participants. His goal becomes clear: he has no interest in saving poor children from “failing public schools,” but destroying Wisconsin’s public school system and creating a market system. Markets never serve the needs of the poor. Markets favor the haves, not the have-nots.

“Reign of Error” is an antidote and guide to fighting the privatization movement. Everything they sell is failing. Everything they promote lacks evidence behind it. Some innocents have gone along with the siren song of “choice,” perhaps being too young to remember that “choice” was the battle cry of segregationists.

Don’t let the privatizers, libertarians, and government haters fool you. Defend public education. It belongs to the public, not to the entrepreneurs.

Categories Reign of Error, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Most Voucher Applicants in Wisconsin Attend Private Schools

By dianeravitch
August 16, 2013 //
64

At the behest of Governor Scott Walker, the Wisconsin legislature expanded the voucher program statewide, even though it did not raise test scores in Milwaukee over the past 22 years.

As critics of the program feared, 75% of those who applied for vouchers are are not currently enrolled in public schools. Two-thirds are enrolled in private schools now.

Instead of helping needy students “escape from failing schools,” the usual claim of voucher proponents, the program transfers funds to private institutions, religious and secular.

Governor Walker is doing as he planned: strangling public education.

Categories Wisconsin

No Accountability for Nonpublic Schools

By dianeravitch
August 12, 2013 //
26

A reader from Milwaukee sent this comment:

“You would think there would be accountability, but here in Milwaukee we have had religious school choice and charter for a number of years.

“There is practically no accountability to the state DPI regarding certification of staff, assessments, curriculum, open records, etc. We are requiring them to seek some type of private school accreditation, but give them multiple chances to achieve it. The same with fiscal responsibility. The genie is truly out of the bottle in Wisconsin, and I fear there is no hope unless suburban and rural areas realize very soon that money is being siphoned from their schools to the detriment of their children’s education.

“Oh, I should add that as of July 1st, a tax deduction is now in place for all families that send their children to private schools. It can be as much as 10,000 dollars per child
for high school. This, of course, means less tax money for public schools.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Vouchers, Wisconsin

Why Is Wisconsin Destroying Its Public Schools?

By dianeravitch
June 26, 2013 //
15

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

Categories Education Industry, Privatization, Wisconsin

Wisconsin Invests in Super-Rich TFA

By dianeravitch
June 25, 2013 //
30

The Wisconsin legislature allocated $1million to pay Teach for America to send 70 we teachers to Wisconsin schools.

It gets tiresome to say this again and again: Teach for America is a wealthy organization that sends ill-trained recruits to teach in under-resourced districts. These poorly trained young people, with no experience as teachers and no commitment to stay beyond two years, are expected to work wonders. They don’t.

Why does TFA charge districts anything? It has $300 million in assets. Is it renting out the kids? Selling them? Auctioning them off?

Categories Teach for America TFA, Wisconsin

NCTQ Report: Time for a Class Action Lawsuit?

By dianeravitch
June 21, 2013 //
52

A reader in Wisconsin is outraged. I can’t blame her. Should anyone with a degree be allowed to teach? Is professional education worthless? Scott Walker thinks so. So will others who read the NCTQ report, which graded teacher education with an F without bothering to visit any of the institutions it graded so harshly.

This parent writes:

Dear Diane,

My suggestion is far beyond my ability to assess; here’s my thought.

This report on the quality of teacher education is a smear against those, like my daughter, who have just completed their education. As an elementary and special ed teacher, she had to complete an entire year of student teaching, at great expense to her and her husband. It took her 5 years, total, to become a teacher. Now, in the pending Wisconsin state budget, Scott Walker is proposing alternate certification, where anyone with any bachelor’s degree can get certified to teach just by teaching. In essence, the experience gained using an emergency certification becomes the curriculum / criteria for certification itself. Therefore, teachers like my daughter, who have just completed their education will now be tainted by this study, when boards across the state decide that someone with “real world” experience would be preferable to candidates who dedicated themselves to this career from the beginning.

Is there no one who will address this outrage? We complain about the deep pockets of those who would destroy education. Maybe it’s time that those deep pockets became a legitimate target for a class action lawsuit.

Let the games begin!

Sincerely,

Xxxxcxcx

Categories National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ), Teachers and Teaching, Wisconsin

Voucher Research Funded by Walton Favors Vouchers

By dianeravitch
June 11, 2013 //
4

Logan T. Carlson, an investigative journalist for the Gannett News Service, noticed that the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas is funded by pro-voucher foundations, including the Walton Family Foundation and the Bradley Foundation. A group of researchers at the Project have been responsible for the five-year evaluation of Milwaukee’s voucher program. They found that the voucher schools did not affect students’ test scores, but led to a high graduation rate. Critics point out that 56% of the students who enrolled in the voucher program left before graduating.

Even more worrisome is the connection between the research project and campaign donors.

Carlson writes:

“The research conducted by the School Choice Demonstration Project at the University of Arkansas is paid for primarily by special interest groups that also donate to politicians pushing for the voucher expansion.

“A Wisconsin Democracy Campaign report on school choice special interest money shows that individuals with ties to foundations that have funded the School Choice Demonstration Project have donated more than $630,000 to Wisconsin politicians, most of them Republicans, during the past decade.”

Patrick Wolf, the lead researcher from the University of Arkansas, said his research was unaffected by the source of the funding. However, in an opinion piece he wrote recently, Wolf strongly endorsed school choice in Minnesota and warned Minnesotans that they had fallen behind in adopting school choice programs, such as vouchers and charters.

The reporter noted that the Walton Family Foundation had spent over $500 million in the past three years to support school reforms, especially vouchers and charters. In 2002, the foundation gave $300 million to the University of Arkansas, which the article calls Walmart University.

When the University established its Department of Education Reform, funded in part by Walton, it invited Jay Greene to chair the department. Greene is known as a strong advocate of vouchers. Patrick Wolf holds the endowed chair of school choice in the department.

Categories Vouchers, Walton Foundation, Wisconsin

Teacher: Governor Walker’s Punitive Policies

By dianeravitch
June 10, 2013 //
14

A high school teacher in Wisconsin looks at what Governor Scott Walker and the state legislature have in store for public schools. It bears mentioning that Wisconsin public schools have the highest graduation rate in the nation.

He writes:

I teach at a wonderful high school in La Crosse, WI. Here is what is coming for us as an early Christmas present, courtesy of Scott Walker and his Republican toadies in the legislature:

1. The (failed) Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) will be expanded to the entire state. There is no logic, other than “Choice must be good”.

2. There will be a new state charter board that will oversee all charters, including those already run by the school districts. There will be onerous new rules that will make compliance difficult, and that will remove any oversight, even of the charters that the districts themselves run. These changes will likely have the effect of killing many of the successful public charters. This should open the door for lots of private charters, given their rampant success in Louisiana, Florida, and New York.

3. Possible continued freeze on revenue, so that even when the governor says there will be more money for schools, it will really just be a tax refund, no actual money in the schools’ coffers.

4. Removal of many/all the already flimsy restraints on the current voucher program. This could mean, in just a few years, that every child currently enrolled in a private school could start receiving a voucher to attend that school. A child would not have to ever have attended a public school of any type, much less a “failing” public school. This money would come directly from the state aid a district receives. So, our district could end up losing money for students that have never attended our (successful) schools.

These things are being sold as “Every parent should have the constitutional right to choose the appropriate education for his/her child” or even more simply “This levels the playing field” or some other moronic statement that has no relevance to the decisions being made and the consequences of those decisions.

If you have any way to help get the word out, or if you have the ear of someone who is “in on” the decision-making, please help. These changes could start very small, very innocuously, and within 2-4 years our public school system would be decimated beyond repair.

Thanks

John Havlicek
Spanish Teacher Central HS
Dept. Chair WLD
La Crosse, WI 54601
handyman.coach@yahoo.com

Categories Charter Schools, Vouchers, Wisconsin
« Older Entries
Newer Entries »