We Endorse Tony Evers for State Superintendent of Public Instruction

Mar. 28, 2017

2:46 p.m.

Photo credit: Tony Evers for State Superintendent Facebook page

We enthusiastically support Tony Evers for state superintendent of public instruction and are urging Shepherd readers to vote for him on Tuesday, April 4. At a time when we are seeing public education, the cornerstone of our democracy under attack at both the state and federal level, it is important to have a tireless and dedicated advocate for the highest quality education for our children running the State Department of Public Instruction. Evers has proven himself to be such a person. He is a strong advocate for public education and is a check on the abuses of a Republican-controlled government. With Betsy DeVos running the U.S. Department of Education promoting Trump’s and the Republicans’ privatization agenda of more publicly funded private voucher schools and additional experiments with our kids’ education, we need a strong public school advocate in that position.

Evers has a long history in public education and worked his way up from a classroom teacher to school principal to eventually getting elected to be the state superintendent of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction in 2009. Since then, he has worked hard to provide fair, appropriate funding for our students at the same time Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators were gutting public education budgets, from K-12 to our technical colleges and UW System. As State Superintendent, Dr. Evers is an independently elected, constitutional officer with powers and responsibilities over the state educational infrastructure. Despite his constitutional authority and his decades of experience as an educator, the Republicans unwisely tried a political power play to curtail his power and failed to support his well-considered policy agenda. Had the Republicans not played political games and implemented Evers’ Fair Funding for Our Future policy proposal, we wouldn’t have these great disparities in funding among our school districts and the state would be properly funding our public schools. Instead, Republicans decided to support publicly funded private voucher schools and went back on their promise to hold them accountable.

We strongly support Tony Evers in the April 4 general election. Evers is a strong advocate for a fair, well-funded education system that reaches all corners of the state, from the classrooms of the City of Milwaukee to the rural schools “Up North.” We encourage you to vote for Tony Evers on Tuesday, April 4.

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Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was an original a...

Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was an original advocate for Public Schools. He was not of the mindset of "good schools are only for the ruling class", that was already what Colonial America had, like those Ivy League schools in Democratic New England that a good old Country boy cannot see the point of. -- let me correct the ignorant, colleges have a long history of being Conservative, the only reason they were painted unfairly as "liberal" was because of American policies of the 60's that allowed going to college as a way to avoid the Vietnam draft. Policies that knew a good military needs tech-smart people to build better war-machines. It back-fired back then and the hippies checked in instead, giving it that Liberal reputation.I see Evers as more likely to promote school for all, not to hold back the best for the most "favored" class of citizenry... as I am sure that a HUGE part of the Milwaukee suburbs believe. By that I mean suburbs wanting better schools for white Christians, keep the non-whites and foreign-looking corralled in the Milwaukee poverty neighborhoods, where they do not have the property tax base needed to load up their schools with proper support for either college-prep or good old clock-puncher's job skills taught in High School (auto-repair, machine-shop, restaurant skills, etc.) Every Conservative seems to claim we need more skilled workers who are not brain-washed by liberal universities, people who show up on time sober and ready to work, who are not bucking to replace the boss-man. (They want to use the young to do high-energy work at low pay, then have them move on before they get old and need healthcare, move on before they get vested in retirement plans or profit-sharing, or move on before they get the seniority to rise above the boss's nephew or son-in-law.)Who do you think is going to deliver that good school for both the blue-collar class and the white-collar class? I don't think Holz will do that as well as Evers. Holz may be more about "Masters degrees for Public school teachers is not going to teach the 3-R's any better than a Convent-educated Catholic Nun"... which is what many of you think you really want. Parochial school on the public dime, less than a quarter of what Public Schools cost... all to make sure no more teachers get "Cadillac Health Insurance". You want that for real people who make things, not for anyone on taxpayer dollars. But when you made a Voucher school, you just put it on "taxpayer dollars", like the very institutions you complain about.)Maybe that is the kind of school a "Good Conservative" attended, and is why they do not have the well-rounded, multi-cultural skills needed to succeed in today's world that needs smart people with tech-skills and marketing skills that can sell to places outside of America... We need to "make money off of them" to make America Great again. Selling only to other Americans is not going to make America rich.

WaukeshaGuy more than 7 years ago

I listened to the debate between Evers and Holz Su...

I listened to the debate between Evers and Holz Sunday Apr. 2nd, not a whole lot of difference between them except that Evers has already been there 8 years and 8 years before that as Deputy Superintendent.The only standout dividing issue between them was not really school choice, vouchers, state takeover of school boards in blue-voting cities or full support of Act 10 like the Conservatives will paint this. It seemed to be the issue of guns on school grounds (nothing said can matter here) and Common Core, which in my mind is not very well understood.Both point out that throwing money at the "color achievement gap" problem will not get anywhere, but neither acknowledge that this means you may as well cut school funding and go back to building highways in every place but blue-voting Milwaukee, Madison, Racine-Kenosha, and such. All over the state local school districts have been voting to raise their property taxes to help their own schools, people want to support education of their own young. Both acknowledge that poverty and safety in the schools is a far more important problem to solve than money for "liberal" teachers.On the issue of students not wanting to enter the teaching profession, Holz himself stressed that a key part of that is the students watching their own teachers need to see that teachers really are happy in their job as a teacher, not all miserable because of Common Core record-keeping, "teaching to the test" or Act 10 is trying to punish them, or hearing their parents bad-mouthing the teachers at the dinner table. Conservative-minded Parents may be the reason nobody wants to be a teacher. Note I said "happy about teaching", not "happy about pay and benefits."I am sure you in your Private enterprise jobs are not just unhappy about the pay increases not being there, but even more unhappy about your Private company's own internal paperwork, on-line record-keeping, basically corporate bureaucracy. Government bureaucracy is not what really stands in the way in private business. In absence of government regulations, your business will still have its own bureaucracy to make sure people stay on task, corporate insurance rates stay low, not one penny goes to waste on reality. That includes out-sourced jobs. your hidden stockholders are the ones most difficult to please, not your business managers who are just caught in the middle.One thing was clear, Holz was not in anyway trying to hint that priority must go to white students before students of color. I think that is the prime motivation for "School choice" and "Vouchers" as implemented in Milwaukee. In the rest of the Midwest, school choice was seen more as getting your future athlete into the school that the college scouts are watching. (That says something about Wisconsin and the "color gap" right there.)The topic of "permanent teaching license" also did not get Holz to divide against Evers. I think everybody knows that this is all about allowing a teacher to teach for 40 years with no going back to that blasted "liberal university" for continuing education. Holz acknowledged that for the basics, this might work, but for specialized training like staying current in career preparation Vocation-Technical areas, upgrading the teacher's knowledge is important.Holz made the point that one way to get students interested is to put career training back into the High Schools, like auto-repair, machine shop, or culinary arts. Evers was not against this. Students do see a reason to come to school when it is to learn things that they can use to get a job, it seems parents cannot afford to keep kids at home past age 17 or 18 these days, (that is when IRS tax breaks for most of them go away.)Even the issue of knocking teachers down to the same health insurance terms as the rest of us (we typically pay 25% of our premiums and have to pay 5-10 thousand in deductible before insurance kicks in was not on Holz's front burner.Conservatives paint Common Core as a Democratic Obama offering from Washington DC, Evers rebuked that Common Core was created by educators AND PARENTS all over the country, not by Washington. Holz painted Common Core as just extreme record keeping and documentation of each student, leaving us think it is like turning over your "permanent file" over to the feds, without saying it in as direct of language. Fake News at its finest. Evers was pointing out how Common Core is important in areas like Milwaukee where families are constantly on the move, due to parent's evictions, students being taken in by Grandma when mamma cannot handle them on a school day schedule, it is important that all the schools in the area teach to the same curriculum, so a change of school is just a social burden, not an academic hardship.Evers is okay with school going private, knows money follows the student, it has to, it cannot stay with teachers in empty class-rooms.My take on Common Core... some parents may complain that as schools change how they teach, such as "new math", or "sight words" instead of "phonics", it means parents who barely got through school themselves are fearful they will not be able to do their kids make-up homework when their own children are being allowed to attend to their social status competition or athletics instead of keeping up on academics. Common Core or not, I think that we need to get as much academics in before puberty strikes, get that Algebra, Grammar, Civics in before the hormones drive your kids into caring only about who gets the jock, who gets the cheerleader.

WaukeshaGuy more than 7 years ago