Charlene Hardin

Some time back, Schools Now promised to profile the four Milwaukee School Board members facing election this year. Unfortunately it stopped at only three. Part of the reason for procrastinating is that it is hard to talk about Charlene Hardin without talking about personality and behavior.

She can be charming in person, but at board meetings is often belligerent. A typical example occurred at the committee meeting considering renewal of Afro Urban Institute. Larry O'Neill expressed is unhappiness with her behavior:

At the meeting, we had board members screaming, shouting at the superintendent, pounding on the table. It is false to say there was not help from the administration. The review committee recommended that it was time to revoke the charter. It was well documented. It doesn't help to do some of the things that were done at that meeting. We don't want to set up children for failure.

Oddly, her outbursts often include appeals to the board to work together.

Other than passionate defenses of any group getting funds from MPS--no matter how ineffective, it is hard to associate any set of policies with Hardin.

School board elections start

Assuming sufficient signatures survive, there will be three district school board races this April, but no primaries.

In the eighth district (south west side), Larry O'Neil decided not to run for re-election. The two candidates to replace him are Danny Goldberg and John Malloy Hagen.

Kevin Ronnie will run against School Board President Peter Blewett in the sixth district (west side).

Bernadine Bradford will run against Charlene Hardin in the fourth district (north side).

In the fifth district (east side and near south side), Jennifer Morales is unopposed, reflecting in part perhaps a belief that she was politically in synch with the political views of many of the east side activists and would be hard to beat. The lack of a contest also seems to reflect a lack of interest in MPS on the part of most east siders, few of whom have children in MPS.

More on this race as it develops. Coming up next: why MPS is important.

Cheating in Texas

The Dallas recently published two articles alleging cheating in several Houston schools on the Texas state tests. It appears that teachers gave students cues so they would score higher on the tests. When these students moved to middle school, suddenly their scores were much lower. Former teachers report that they were told to give their students more help.

At a few Milwaukee elementary schools, there is a similar decline in sixth grade, but it appears no one has examined the reasons.

Part of the problem is that for some schools, principals, and teachers, high test scores become an end in themselves. Rather than looking at the tests as a measure of what students are learning and using them to improve learning, teachers come to look at the scores themselves as the goal. It is then a relatively small step to look at anything that improves the scores as a good, even if it does not improve student learning, and in fact gives a false impression of learning.

Perhaps that cultural shift helps explain why such cheating can go on for years.