There are so many things wrong with a new plan from two suburban Republican legislators to change how Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) are run it’s difficult to know where to begin.
Let’s start with the plan coming from two suburban Republican legislators, Sen. Alberta Darling and Rep. Dale Kooyenga, who know little about the problems Milwaukee schools face and weren’t elected to decide how Milwaukee schools should be run.
Add that their plan would drastically affect schools neither the legislators’ own families nor the children of anyone they represent would ever attend.
Then toss in the fact that the plan deliberately excludes any input from any educational professionals who know anything about urban education or have any responsibility for educating Milwaukee children.
That includes the MPS district’s impressive new superintendent, Darienne Driver, and every member of the MPS Board of Directors democratically elected by Milwaukeeans to run their schools.
The educational ignorance behind the plan couldn’t be more glaring.
The plan turns control of a growing number of Milwaukee schools over to Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele, a county official who was not elected on the basis of any background, knowledge, experience or interest in running schools.
Regardless of what anyone thinks of Abele, who’s elected not just by city voters but also by suburban voters, many of whom have nothing but contempt for city schools and the children who attend them, there is no conceivable logic to giving Abele responsibility for Milwaukee schools.
It would make just as much sense to put the names of every elected official in Wisconsin into a hat—the state’s goofy new treasurer, small-town mayors with time on their hands, dog catchers if dog catchers are still elected anywhere—and draw out one of them to run Milwaukee schools.
Privatization Isn’t the Answer
Further evidence Darling and Kooyenga don’t have a clue how to improve education for Milwaukee children is that their plan would require Abele to hire someone else—again no educational credentials required—as “commissioner” to choose voucher or charter school operators to run MPS schools with low test scores.
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For more than two decades state legislators intentionally avoided gathering information about the actual performance of private voucher schools in Wisconsin that might have allowed them to make such an ignorant proposal. They no longer have that excuse.
After diverting around a billion dollars in taxpayer money mostly from Milwaukee Public Schools to private voucher schools, where how money is spent and how students perform are kept private, legislators finally checked to see how voucher schools were doing in educating comparable students.
Without publishing the individual test scores of voucher students, an independent academic evaluation revealed that students from comparable backgrounds performed just as well or better in Milwaukee Public Schools than they did in private voucher schools.
Somehow the documented failure of voucher schools to improve student performance hasn’t stopped Darling and Kooyenga from pretending that turning Milwaukee schools over to voucher and charter operators will somehow miraculously improve education.
The Republican plan obviously fails educationally. It also fails as democracy.
If the Legislature really wanted to create an intelligent plan to improve schools for Milwaukee children living in poverty, it should not only involve professionals who know something about education, but also legislators representing Milwaukee families.
But since Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans won control of the Legislature, they no longer believe in democracy. Republicans believe the party that wins power by hook or by crook or by corrupt gerrymandering has the right to run roughshod over anyone in the state who didn’t vote for them.
If Wisconsin were still a democracy, Democratic legislators elected to represent Milwaukee’s interests would have a voice in any state plan for Milwaukee’s schools. But since it’s not, Republicans can pass anything they want, totally ignoring anything Milwaukeeans want for their children.
That’s too bad because Bob Peterson, president of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association—that’s right, the dreaded Milwaukee teachers union—recently proposed a dramatic reform that really could improve educational opportunities for every student in MPS by giving them access to the best-funded and best-performing schools in Milwaukee County.
If Darling and Kooyenga really wanted to improve education for Milwaukee children of any race or income, they could simply merge city and suburban schools into one district and allow city kids to go to the same well-funded schools as suburban children.
It’s basically the city-suburban school integration plan former Milwaukee state Rep. Dennis Conta once proposed to stem white flight from city schools and create equally well-funded, quality schools countywide.
That sure would beat a phony suburban plan to dismantle MPS at the same time a companion Republican proposal kills Conta’s successful Chapter 220 program, which financially rewards suburban districts for voluntarily creating racially diverse schools by accepting minority students from Milwaukee.
