If you’ve donated to theAdvocates for Student Achievement (ASA), you should ask for your moneyback. The pro-voucher “reform” group commissioned a poll on voters’attitudes before Milwaukee Public Schools board members face voters inApril. But the poll, which ASA leaders are presenting as scientific, isanything but scientific. Not only did the respondents confirm theresults that ASA was looking for“voters are looking for major change”and they “overwhelmingly disapprove of the direction of MPS”but thepoll also included sleazy, inaccurate questions about MPS BoardPresident Peter Blewett’s role in the Charlene Hardin travel dust-up(see “Jerk of the Week” for details).
Therest of the “legitimate” section of the poll is full of leadingquestions and obvious answers (and spelling errors). According to theresults, voters want board members who will set aside differences andwork togetherno kidding. Voters don’t have “a great deal of taxanxiety” but “a large majority want tax dollars spent moreefficiently.” Didthe ASA expect voters to support wasting tax dollars?
Even worse is thecomplete absence of questions about MPS Superintendent WilliamAndrekopoulos’ job performance, the school funding formula thatpenalizes Milwaukee, or anything positive about MPS. What’s more, thequestions imply that MPS board members are in control of the voucherprogram, when it is clearly mandated and managed by the stategovernment (and favored by out-state legislators, not Milwaukee’s representatives).
Thisdishonest, sloppy, unscientific poll should be junked. But, sadly,pro-voucher, anti-public-education candidates and their supporters inthe business community will use the survey as proof that their failedexperiment in school privatization is popular among Milwaukee voters. Please don’t fall for it.
Heroes of the Week: The Wisconsin Innocence Project
Robert Lee Stinson is a free man today thanks to the tenacious efforts of the attorneys and law students at the Wisconsin Innocence Project. Thelawyers and volunteer forensic odontologistsdentists, in otherwordsfound that the bite marks used as evidence against Stinson couldnot have been made by him. Now, after 23 years behind bars and fiveyears of work by the Wisconsin Innocence Project, Stinson has been exonerated. He may face a new trial. Let’s hope this one uses reliable evidence.
Jerks of the Week: Advocates for Student Achievement
Ifyou want to target an elected official, you might as well be honest andup front about it. The cowards at the pro-voucher group Advocates forStudent Achievement (ASA) commissioned a bogus poll about the MilwaukeePublic Schools. ASA released some of the resultsbut not the ones thatdealt with MPS Board President Peter Blewett. In those dodgy questions,the “push poll” asked highly misleading and inaccurate questions aboutBlewett’s role in the overblown Charlene Hardin travel saga. Forexample, the questions implied that Blewett approved Hardin’s junket toPhiladelphia. For the record, Blewett had nothing to do with Hardin’strip, and has criticized her actions. So why is the ASA being sosecretive about its polling? ASA presents a bland face to the public,but it’s really a front group for the pro-privatization crowd, andwhile it wants to plant propaganda in the minds of voters, it doesn’twant the public to know that it’s using sleazy tactics to try to defeatBlewett in the April elections.
Quote of the Week
“The largest spending bill in history is going to turn out to be the one in Iraq. If we’re going to talk about spending, I have a problem when we leave out that extraordinarily expensive, damaging war in Iraq,which has caused much more harm than good in my judgment. I don’tunderstand [the argument] from my conservative friends, building aroad, building a school, helping to get health care, that’s wastefulspending.”
Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), defending President Obama’s spending priorities
