MPS Future and Vouchers

I plan to come back to this blog when I find a bit more time, but I wanted to point out two escellent articels by Alan Borsuk in this morning's Journal Sentinel. Both bring us up to date on important developments in Milwaukee education:

• The first is a recap of the series of articles he and Sarah Carr wrote on the voucher program. It even has a web site where information on each individual school can be looked up.
• The second discusses that changes that started with the Neighborhood Schools Initiative five years ago and are still continuing.

Both are sophisticated, nuanced report, in sharp contrast to the one-dimensional attacks on vouchers or MPS reform that are still too common.

This excellence in educational reporting contrasts to an embarrassing episode in the August 21 Crossroads section. A column appeared about appointing US supreme court justices which was credited to Frank Zeidler. The column was a clear fraud, since the positions expressed were standard conservative arguments. (When no correction appeared on Monday, I sent an e-mail to the editor stating flatly that Zeidler could not have written it.) The question is why no one at the Journal Sentinel recognized its fishiness. I think part of the explanation comes in the Journal Sentinel having outsourced its national and international news. People interested in questions of the supreme court would not be attracted to the Journal Sentinel. One hopes the sharp bookkeepers at corporate office won't find a way to oursource education reporting. (For the correction, click here. The whole August 21 Crossroads seems to have disappeared from the Journal Sentinel's web site.)