New Joe Williams book

Connoisseurs of MPS board fights will recall that Joe Williams covered MPS for the Journal Sentinel over several years before moving on to the New York Daily News. He had a singular knack for making the often arcane board controversies into matters of high drama. I received a note that he has a new book coming out October 7 titled: Cheating Our Kids: How Politics and Greed Ruin Education. He promises that Milwaukee, "figures prominently in several chapters." As a former greedy politician myself, I look forward to reading it. It can be pre-ordered from Amazon.

New MPS Leadership

The annual organization meeting of the MPS board holds a strange attraction--offering drama, bitterness, and surprises. Tonight's meeting made it abundantly clear that the board is split along party lines. Even the opening role call underlined this division, with Reformers answering "here" to the Defenders' "present." I leave it to a better psychologist than I to figure out whether the difference simply reflects group identification or a difference in views as to how active a board member should be (voting "present" on an issue is to obstain, after all).

An early mini-drama was played out over a Morales proposal to change the voting procedure. Although it was unclear exactly what she had in mind, apparently it involved being able to argue the merits of the candidates. Not necessarily a bad idea, I think, but it appeared to be a last minute idea that had neither been fully developed nor discussed with anyone in the Reform group. The proposal was defeated 5-4 along party lines.

The board then elected officers in its traditional fashion, with each member announcing their preference in turn. Ken Johnson was elected president by the five Reformers, with all but one of the Defenders voting for Peter Blewett. (Morales voted for Joe Dannecker, but this seemed a tactical move, since she did not support Dannecker for vice president.)

Again voting along party lines, the board elected Dannecker as vice president on a 5-4 vote.

Not at all surprisingly, the board voted not to increase its own pay.

Overall, I got the impression that several of the Defenders were quite bitter about their current minority role. This does not bode well for collegiality but may be good for reform.

Time ripe for MPS reform?

The headline for an editorial this morning expresses the hope and expectations for the new board: "Time ripe for MPS reform." But will MPS be noticeably more effective in two years than today? Will the public perception that MPS is irrelevant to the daily lives of Milwaukeeans--reflected in the miserable voter turnout--start to reverse?

The challenge for the reformers is to develop a few priorities that will start to reconnect MPS to its communities. Their danger is that they heed the calls to build a consensus with the defenders, resulting in little reform, poorly implemented.

End free busing!

One of the most important challenges faced by the administration and new board is to make the Neighborhood Schools Initiative work. Kids have to get off buses and move into neighborhood schools. This has a number of advantages, especially in encouraging schools once again to play a role in creating strong neighborhoods. But without stronger measures, it seems unlikely there will be a significant reduction in busing or a significant increase in attendence at the neighborhood school.

One approach is simply to end busing. Denver, for example, ended busing when the state subsidies stopped and reassigned all students to schools in their neighborhoods. Probably the strongest argument against such a drastic measure is fear that it would kill the citywide specialty schools--the Montessori, arts, gifted and talented, language immersion, and others that attract students from all over the city because of the strength of their programs. From a business sense it hardly seems intelligent to kill the most successful products. Thus MPS has arrived at a standoff: it needs to drastically reduce busing but not at the expense of killing the specialty schools.

There is a solution that could achieve both aims: keep busing but charge parents for it. Thus, parents who found busing beneficial because it allowed their child to attend a specialty school could continue to do so if that was high on their priority list. Those parents who chose busing as a form of free day care might take another look at real day care.

If parents paid the cost of busing there would no longer be reasons for the rules aimed at reducing the number of children eligible for busing but also forming an incentive to send kids to distant schools so they would qualify for free busing. For example, when my daughter was five, I found she did not qualify for a bus ride because her day care was too near the school. If we had moved her to a center across the city she would have qualified for a free trip. Because of the MPS rules, I was unable to get her on the bus even if I paid for it.

An immediate criticism of this proposal is that it is unfair because low income parents will find it harder to pay for busing than middle class parents. One solution might be to set up a fund to subsidize busing on a sliding scale based on income. But if MPS has the money for such a fund, is busing the best use for it? One can think of many uses that might better benefit low-income students: subsidized tutoring after school, a longer school day, or books for the student's home, for example.

Andrekopoulis the election winner?

In an interesting article in this morning's Journal Sentinel, Alan Borsuk points out that the superintendent is a "significant winner" of the election. This is both because control by the reform group on the board would give the Andrekopoulis more support in pursuing his agenda and also because Danny Goldberg's opponent would likely have joined Tom Balistreri as a strident critic of Andrekopoulis. I encourage everyone to read this article.

I note that the Journal continues to have trouble figuring out how to identify the two groups--or "factions" in Journalese--on the board. Borsuk identifies the reform group through indirection: that it has been on the short-end of the 5-4 split on the board over the past two years and that none of its members were endorsed by the union. I continue to think my terms of "reformers" and "defenders" are both far more succinct and recognize that the differences are not superficial personality clashes but instead reflect very different views on the role of the board.

Reformers and Defenders

With the recent school board election the balance on the board has shifted from five to four in favor of one group to five to four in favor of the other. But what should each of these groups be called? Despite the many years of this divide, even the members of these groups have trouble agreeing on labels. In its report on the election results the Journal Sentinel reverted to the practice of identifying each group with an organization that supported it: “candidates backed by the teacher’s union and those backed by the school choice community.”

But both these designations are problematic as well as cumbersome. Teacher union backing only helps explain behavior on the minority of issues of concern to the union; on most issues the union is indifferent. The use of school choice as the defining issue is even more problematic since the school board has no say in the school choice program and the school choice community sat out the last election.

In an effort to come up with better terms, I took a look at how the supporters of the two groups described their favored candidates. Specifically, I looked at what terms the endorsement editorials in the Journal Sentinel and the Shepherd Express used to praise the candidates the endorsed and to criticize their opponents.

There is no question about the Journal’s favorite term. In a fairly short editorial, I count it using “reform” or “reformers” nine time. But, one may ask, doesn't everyone want to be considered a reformer? Does also claim the mantle of reform? Not at all. In a much longer series of endorsement editorials, the Shepherd does not once mention reform.

Instead of reform, the Shepherd wants strong loyalty to MPS from its board members. One candidate is described as a “defender of public schools.” A second is an “advocate for public schools.” A third a “passionate advocate of public education.”

What form does this defense of public education take? In the Shepherd’s view it largely consists of opposition to anything that might compete with conventional public schools. The only word I found shared by both editorials was “charter.” But the attitude towards charter schools were diametrically opposed. While the Journal praised candidates’ involvement charter schools as reflecting a willingness to innovate, the Shepherd found such involvement showed alarming disloyalty to MPS.

Thus the reformers and defenders–and their supporters–have very different philosophies as to the proper role for board members. Reformers want the board to push for improvement while defenders see it as protecting MPS from its enemies.

Wisconsin Citizen Action

A flyer from Wisconsin Citizen Action sets a new low for sleaze:

Rampant corruption. No accountability. Dangerous criminals in taxpayer-supported schools. Does that sound like a program you would support? Danny Goldberg does.

More on the Shepherd Express

A while back, I expressed surprise about actually agreeing with the Shepherd Express. In their school board pre-election articles, however, they returned to form. In an article speculating on pro-voucher money the paper expected in the election, the paper said "Bruce Thompson .... wouldn't reveal his plans for this election." I suspect most readers would interpret this to mean the paper asked me for my plans and I refused to discuss them. In actuality the Shepherd never talked to me. So I never had a chance to refuse to reveal my plans.

The reporter did leave a message on my phone but stressed that there was no urgency in returning the call. When I called back, his message said he was out of town for the week. I haven't heard from him since.

This could be racked up to sloppy reporting, but over the years I have noticed the Shepherd's sloppiness has a purpose. If a story works against the cause of reform in MPS, the Shepherd will run it whether or not it is true.

This is unfortunate on several levels, I think. First unethical journalism hurts our society whatever the ideology of the publisher. Second, there are a number of strong conservative voices in Milwaukee; it would be beneficial to have a strong, trustworthy, liberal voice to balance them.

Bicycles and School Board Elections

With the (sort of) coming of spring last weekend, I took a bike ride from the East Side to Muskego. One striking change crossing into the suburbs was the explosion of signs for school board candidates. By contrast, in Milwaukee, even in districts with races, the number of signs was pitifully few.

Why do suburbanites care so much about their school systems? Part of the explanation is simply size; MPS seems too large and too remote. But suburbanites also recognize their stake in the schools. Even if they have no children in the schools, their property values and their neighborhood depend on the attractiveness of the schools.

In Milwaukee, unless they either work for the schools or have children enrolled, most people seemed profoundly uninterested in who runs the schools. The schools simply seem irrelevant to most.

Can this situation be changed? Part of the answer may be to really push the Neighborhood Schools Initiative to restore the local school as the glue that holds its community together.

Another is to get better leadership on the school board, so that once again there is a sense of progress. This morning's Journal Sentinel points out that Kevin Ronny, Danny Goldberg, and Bernardine Bradford offer much more effective leadership than their opponents.