Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Issue of the Week: This Is What Privatization Looks Like
Plus Hero of the Week
If you
care about public education, looks like you're bound to be heartbroken during
Gov. Scott Walker's term.
Walker and Republicans in the state Legislature have already taken steps to make Wisconsin a grand experiment in the privatization of public education, from preschool to post-grad.
Step 1: Strip teachers and faculty of their collective bargaining rights. Not only will this allow administrators to cut pay, increase class sizes and gut certain programs like art and gym, but it also will decrease the power of teachers' unions in elections. By contrast, Walker provided an exemption for law enforcement unions—unions with members that traditionally vote Republican and contribute to Republicans.
Step 2: Slash funding for public K-12 education by $834 million, but continue to fund school vouchers at the same rate as last year, or $6,442 per pupil. (Wouldn't want private schools to make the same kind of sacrifices as public schools, of course.) Cut funding for the UW System by $250 million and Wisconsin Technical College System by $71.6 million while making it easier for the UW's flagship campus, UW-Madison, to hike tuition.
Step 3: Lie about how public school districts would come out ahead after the cut in state aid as long as those controversial collective bargaining changes are implemented. Unfortunately for Walker, state Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts (D-Middleton) crunched the numbers provided by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau and found that Walker's savings estimates were off—way off. While Walker had claimed that 94 of 424 school districts would see cuts next year, Pope-Roberts found that an additional 87 districts, or 181 total, would see cuts next year. Walker's estimates for the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) were off by $12.5 million—not small change for an already cash-strapped district.
Step 4: Expand the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Let rich kids into the program even though their parents can afford private school tuition. Allow suburban private and religious schools to get in on the action. Eliminate the requirement that these schools administer standardized tests and report the scores to the public. End the requirement that teachers have a license or that MPS teachers live in the city. Don't address the funding flaw, which increases property taxes for Milwaukee homeowners. And the more students in the voucher program, the bigger the property tax increase at the local level.
Step 5: Let Republican legislators expand the voucher program and charter schools even further. State Sens. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa) and state Rep. Robin Vos (R-Racine) are working on legislation that could take vouchers statewide. Walker is planning on creating a state charter board made up of political appointees and removing the cap on charter school enrollment.
Mind you, there's no compelling data showing that voucher or charter schools provide a better education than public schools—including the Milwaukee Public Schools. Yet Walker, Darling, Vukmir and Vos are willing to gut public education in favor of pouring money into private and religious schools that won't have to report scores to the state, can't assure parents that teachers are fully qualified, and don't have to fight for funding in highly contentious state budget battles. That's because Walker and his Republican allies have already decided in favor of privatization—at the expense of Wisconsin's long tradition of strong public education that is accessible to all.
Heroes of the Week: SeedFolks Youth Ministry Volunteers
Located at 2029 N. 20thSt., Alice's Garden is a 1-acre community agricultural project in Johnsons Park—on land that once belonged to Samuel Brown, an abolitionist whose farm was the birthplace of the Underground Railroad in Milwaukee.
Today, volunteers from SeedFolks Youth Ministry and the SeedFolks 4-H Club sponsor and maintain Alice's Garden, which offers area children and their families a chance to get their hands in the earth and grow their own healthy food. The garden welcomes neighborhood and community children, April through October, for various gardening programs and projects. Classes from schools in the neighborhood and surrounding areas come to the garden for hands-on environmental learning and gardening. The programs are offered at no cost to participants.
Walker and Republicans in the state Legislature have already taken steps to make Wisconsin a grand experiment in the privatization of public education, from preschool to post-grad.
Step 1: Strip teachers and faculty of their collective bargaining rights. Not only will this allow administrators to cut pay, increase class sizes and gut certain programs like art and gym, but it also will decrease the power of teachers' unions in elections. By contrast, Walker provided an exemption for law enforcement unions—unions with members that traditionally vote Republican and contribute to Republicans.
Step 2: Slash funding for public K-12 education by $834 million, but continue to fund school vouchers at the same rate as last year, or $6,442 per pupil. (Wouldn't want private schools to make the same kind of sacrifices as public schools, of course.) Cut funding for the UW System by $250 million and Wisconsin Technical College System by $71.6 million while making it easier for the UW's flagship campus, UW-Madison, to hike tuition.
Step 3: Lie about how public school districts would come out ahead after the cut in state aid as long as those controversial collective bargaining changes are implemented. Unfortunately for Walker, state Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts (D-Middleton) crunched the numbers provided by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau and found that Walker's savings estimates were off—way off. While Walker had claimed that 94 of 424 school districts would see cuts next year, Pope-Roberts found that an additional 87 districts, or 181 total, would see cuts next year. Walker's estimates for the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) were off by $12.5 million—not small change for an already cash-strapped district.
Step 4: Expand the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. Let rich kids into the program even though their parents can afford private school tuition. Allow suburban private and religious schools to get in on the action. Eliminate the requirement that these schools administer standardized tests and report the scores to the public. End the requirement that teachers have a license or that MPS teachers live in the city. Don't address the funding flaw, which increases property taxes for Milwaukee homeowners. And the more students in the voucher program, the bigger the property tax increase at the local level.
Step 5: Let Republican legislators expand the voucher program and charter schools even further. State Sens. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills) and Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa) and state Rep. Robin Vos (R-Racine) are working on legislation that could take vouchers statewide. Walker is planning on creating a state charter board made up of political appointees and removing the cap on charter school enrollment.
Mind you, there's no compelling data showing that voucher or charter schools provide a better education than public schools—including the Milwaukee Public Schools. Yet Walker, Darling, Vukmir and Vos are willing to gut public education in favor of pouring money into private and religious schools that won't have to report scores to the state, can't assure parents that teachers are fully qualified, and don't have to fight for funding in highly contentious state budget battles. That's because Walker and his Republican allies have already decided in favor of privatization—at the expense of Wisconsin's long tradition of strong public education that is accessible to all.
Heroes of the Week: SeedFolks Youth Ministry Volunteers
Located at 2029 N. 20thSt., Alice's Garden is a 1-acre community agricultural project in Johnsons Park—on land that once belonged to Samuel Brown, an abolitionist whose farm was the birthplace of the Underground Railroad in Milwaukee.
Today, volunteers from SeedFolks Youth Ministry and the SeedFolks 4-H Club sponsor and maintain Alice's Garden, which offers area children and their families a chance to get their hands in the earth and grow their own healthy food. The garden welcomes neighborhood and community children, April through October, for various gardening programs and projects. Classes from schools in the neighborhood and surrounding areas come to the garden for hands-on environmental learning and gardening. The programs are offered at no cost to participants.
Sounds like a plan. I think most parents with kids in private school believe their kids are getting a better education from teachers who make very little. I was at a private school graduation and 100% graduated high school with 92% going to 4 year colleges. I could care less they don't have standarized test scores. What counts is the kids go to college, get good jobs, and become good Republicans. My guess is cheating is extremely wide spread on standarized tests in MPS. I can't imagine a school full of short-bussed hookey players scoring anywhere close to what kids in private schools do.
Ahh, yes, Privatization! The goal being that as long as profit is allowed to be made, then the organization will self-run at maximum efficiency, hiring the most productive, firing those who cost more than they are worth. Also means serving the most profitable markets, and wisely refusing to serve unprofitable or mediocre markets.
Think carefully about that last point... refusing to serve markets that "have no worth" to that business.
You look at any group of people around you. You quickly know who you want to deal with, and who you want to avoid. You will be very selective of who you hire, and somewhat selective of who you will serve.
Point is, "Private" will never be universal, will never cover all. You still have the problem of what to do with that portion that you do not want to serve. If there is no place for the "waste" of society to go to, what do you do?
I think we could keep a few public schools open for the "not wanted." But perhaps students would try harder so they would not be labeled as unwanted. Those that can't make the grade could attend a public option. In the public options they could choose to take classes so they could advance to the private option, do public service and perhaps get paid, or just drop out and not show up like many do now. When I was in college I met many Latin American people who came to the US for education. Everyone of them came from private schools. They spoke of their parents making less money than the average family in the USA but they lived in nice homes with servents. Thats the kind of paradise we could have if we cut out all the welfare and over spending on education.
Right in our own back yard, and all across the country charter and voucher schools have shown they provide inferior education but lucrative opportunities to scam the public and still the comments are aimed with malice. Please just be grateful you were able to receive a good education. Which should have given you the good sense to not judge others by there circumstances. Really Livingston, (short-bussed hookey players) is this what you learned in public school or private?
The head of a former Milwaukee voucher school has agreed to plead guilty to mail fraud and money laundering, according to federal court records. State educators are seeking criminal charges against the executives of a charter school operation after an audit found they had misused at least $25.6 million in public education money, including $2.6 million for personal expenses.If you dare do a little more research on what the premise of this article was about.
No doubt there will be a few that will scam the system. But I don't think they will scam the system to the extent the public schools have scammed it. Look at all the teachers that have stolen millions of taxpaper dollars under the guise of salary, benefits, and collective bargaining. If we only allow a certain amount of dollars per student, let the charter school spend it as they like. If the parents don't like the education their kids are getting they will be free to pick another school. Only the good schools will survive and the poor schools will go out of business. Schools that give studends a compelling reason to come will thrive. Imagine how much we could save if public school teachers salaries were reduced to the actual market rate that the private schools pay? I'm thinking perhaps about $25,000 a year versus and average of $76,000 in the public schools. If we could cut teacher salaries by $50,000 a year think of the millions that could be saved!!
Hi Angel2Close- many public school teachers and public school administrators in WI have been accused and convicted of crimes related to sexual abuse of students, viewing porn at school, shoplifting, etc... Can I use that fact to impune all public schools, as you've done to the voucher schools? Or would that somehow be unfair?
djlresearch and othe Republicans here have an excellent idea. Cutting teach salaries to $25,000 would save a lot of money. But why not save even more money by using some of our incarcerated prisoners (non-violent only, of course) to teach in the public schools? That's free! Let's face it, in Milw you're only going to have the worst of the bunch left in the public school enrollment soon when the white suburbanites are all in parochial & private. Tough prison inmates would make better test proctors and "minders" for these kids than union teachers with masters degrees.
I think thats the idea to put the best students in the best schools, regarless of they are suburnites or white. And to keep the worst students separate so as not to disturb the learing experience for the more mostivated students.
I'm all for exploiting prison labor and I'm sure we can use them in our schools as assistants but not as teachers, unless of course they are licensed. I think prisoners would welcome the opportuntiy to be of service to the state and its unlikely they would riot on the captiol over petty payroll issues. We definitley should consider prison labor for janitorial and landscaping duties. Even security.
Recently had several students transferred in from Expensive Private Schools.....they are lagging very behind my Pulbic School Kids.
I don't know exactly how it works but I'm guessing a lot of Asian kids go to MPS. Because their culture is OCD about studying and making good grades I'm guessing without the Asians, standardized test scores would be much lower. And what about the 50% or so that don't ever show up. Seems to me we should score them as zeros in the average. If the Asian kids transfered to private schools and we averaged in all the zeros, my guess is the average standardized test score would very far behind the private schools.