State government is not keeping its promises to our public schools
In today’s global environment, students in Wisconsin are no longer competing just with those in nearby school districts or states, but rather with kids all over the world. That’s why it’s now more critical than ever that our public schools are successful.
For decades, our schools have done what we needed them to do. As long as adults provided the resources, the education system provided the opportunities students needed to learn in school and succeed in life.
That has all changed over the past 20 years. Despite a longstanding and successful partnership, the state now pays a smaller share of the cost of quality education. Most recently, Governor Scott Walker and his predecessor Jim Doyle have made devastating cuts to school aid.
As a result, today’s young people receive a lesser quality education, even than their older brothers and sisters. There are fewer teachers in classrooms and fewer programs and services for students, which translate into lost opportunities. At a time when we should be focusing on 21st century learning, we are instead tangled up in endless political debates and budget cuts of the past.
Students walk out of class in Rhinelander to protest budget cuts and teacher lay-offs
A sleeping giant ... the young people of Wisconsin who's education is threatened by recent legislative action ... has been awakened.
Students in Rhinelander walked out of class last week to protest budget cuts─forced on the district by the most-recent state budget─that resulted in the laying off of four teachers.
"We don't ever have a voice about what goes on in our schools,” said one student as a group of about 50 picketed in front of Rhinelander High School in northeastern Wisconsin.
New study says little doubt remains that budget hurts kids and their schools
The evidence keeps piling up – the cuts to public education in the 2011-13 budget are not good for children, their schools, or their communities.
Two of Wisconsin's leading education professionals studied the impact of the budget and published a policy brief entitled, "Making Matters Worse: School Funding, Achievement Gaps and Poverty under Wisconsin Act 32." The findings were startling but not unexpected: Reductions in state aid and revenue limit authority – leaving school districts with $1.6 billion less revenue – are and will be devastating, especially for children from poverty.
James Shaw and Carolyn Kelly wrote the policy brief for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis. It examined the impact of the budget on school funding, teacher quality, student learning, and property taxes. Shaw and Kelly are state educators with expertise in school reform and school leadership development.
The pair's key findings are:
State budget cuts hit high poverty districts the hardest.
High poverty districts have less state revenue to support the needs of children and taxpayers in high poverty districts pay taxes at increasingly higher rates.
Reductions in employee compensation hit high poverty districts the hardest.
Reductions in the size of the workforce hit high poverty districts hardest.
Act 32 (the budget) increases funding gaps for poor and minority students.
In other words, “this study paints a grim picture of funding gaps in Wisconsin public education. … The reductions in state support for public education threaten to increase achievement gaps, and challenge Wisconsin’s constitutional and long-standing commitment to equal education opportunity.”
In order for children to receive the opportunities they need for future success, they first need quality teachers who are supported in their critical work. Ensuring that the best and brightest teachers are in our classrooms means that students will receive the educational opportunities they need to thrive.
Any actions that diminish these opportunities are wrong.
Act 21, the legislation offered by Governor Scott Walker and approved by the state legislature, gives the executive branch the power to rewrite WERC rules before they go into effect. Using that new power, the governor’s office wrote the rules interpreting Act 10, the law limiting the ability of Wisconsin teachers and other public employees to engage in collective bargaining.
Understanding the devastating impact of aid cuts to schools in the last state budget, Secretary of State Douglas La Follette, a candidate in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, recently endorsed “A Penny for Kids,” a one-cent increase in the sales tax to restore the cuts and begin a re-investment in our children and their futures.
“A Penny for Kids,” along with “Fair Funding for Our Future,” is at the heart of the reform campaign of Opportunity to Learn-Wisconsin. La Follette was speaking at a candidate forum in Stevens Point, April 19.
According to the Secretary of State, “A cut to education funding of this magnitude is deplorable. It is plain that the results are larger class sizes, fewer subject offerings, and a reduction in quality of education in our public schools.” He said would strongly support “A Penny for Kids”, which would increase funding for public schools and the state's university system through a one-cent increase in the sales tax.
Superintendent Evers will introduce funding reform plan again next year
When Opportunity to Learn-Wisconsin decided to endorse State Superintendent of Schools Tony Evers’ school-funding reform plan it hope he would make it part of his next budget. He has and the network is looking forward to standing with him for “Fair Funding for Our Future.”
Evers was recently the guest of Steve Walters on the WisconsinEye show, Newsmakers. They covered a wide range of topics, from the state’s entry in the new Race to the Top funding chase to Read to Lead to the politics of education is Wisconsin.
The State Superintendent said the damaging cuts in aid and revenue limit authority that limited the opportunities young people need to learn will continue next year. Evers said he “will again this fall recommend to the Governor and the Legislature a news school-funding plan to restore that aid.”
Opportunity to Learn Wisconsin kicks off statewide; Campaign backs new funding system, restoring cuts
From left to right, Jasmine Alinder, LaShell Drake, and Maria de Jesus Dixon discuss the merits of the State Superintendent's school-funding reform plan.
The verdict is in: 20 years of neglect and a year of devastating cuts have left public school children throughout Wisconsin with fewer opportunities to learn and to succeed in life after school.
Those were the conclusions reached, March 24, 2012 at the kick-off statewide conference of Opportunity to Learn-Wisconsin (OTL-Wisconsin), a network of educators, students, organizations, school districts, and citizens.
More importantly, the 75 advocates gathered at the United Way of Dane County in Madison for the daylong sessions decided it was time to act and how:
First, OTL-Wisconsin endorsed “Fair Funding for Our Future,” the school-funding reform plan of state schools’ superintendent Tony Evers, as sound education and public policy. The plan is politically viable and a powerful first step that makes long overdue changes to the Wisconsin’s 20-year-old funding system crisis.
Setting itself apart from other efforts, however, OTL-Wisconsin has taken as its goal to push Sup. Evers, the Governor, and the Legislature to ─ at a bare minimum ─ restore the devastating cuts made to public schools in the last state budget and begin to reinvest in our public schools. The group endorsed a one-cent increase in the sales tax – Penny for Kids—to accomplish this. Read more...
Wisconsin was well represented at national OTL conference in D.C.
Wisconsin and the Midwest were well represented at the 2011 National Opportunity to Learn Education Summit in early December in Washington, D.C. Efforts in the Badger State are part of the countrywide effort coordinated by the Schott Foundation, a non-profit pro-public education headquartered in Cambridge, MA.
December’s event, “United Communities for Education Justice and Action,” was an exciting gathering of grassroots advocates, philanthropic partners, policymakers, youth organizers, national organizations and researchers committed to closing the opportunity gap. Those attending shared advocacy and policy strategies and strengthened networks to build a state and national movement for change, including OTL Wisconsin and OTL Midwest.
And Education Town Hall began the three-day event. Included on the panel were Rev. Jesse Jackson, found and president of the Rainbow Push Coalition, Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, and Dr. John Jackson, president and CEO of the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
Discussion centered on whether or not opportunities to learn in quality public schools are a moral imperative.
The remainder of the conference was a mix of panels, speakers, and break-out sessions. Diane Ravitch, author and education reform activist, highlighted one session. The one-time architect of No Child Left Behind explained how she broke with idea that more testing actually means more learning and came to be an advocate for opportunities to learn. Children come to school from various places and positions, she said, including from poverty. It is the school’s job to give them the opportunities the need to overcome those challenges.
Also on the agenda were break-out sessions on strengthening educational opportunities in rural communities, building youth power to reclaim their own education, engaging communities to improve schools, and messaging and strategy tools to build an opportunity to learn movement.
Wisconsin had a large contingent at the OTL summit in Washington. While a great event, it was, however, only a start to what needs to be accomplished back home. That’s why the March 24 event in Stevens Point is so important. If you agree that public schools need resources so that they can give all children the opportunities they need to learn then you want to attend the “Building A Movement Kick-off.” Click here for registration information.
New IWF tax expose: GE pays $0 state tax
General Electric is a major Wisconsin manufacturer of medical-imaging equipment, a good employer for an estimated 3,000 state workers, a boon to many communities and a stimulus for high-tech development in the state.
But even with these kudos to GE—America's largest manufacturing firm—there is a problem. GE has become the nation's No. 1 symbol of federal tax avoidance.
The Institute for Wisconsin's Future'slatest tax newsletter provides the first national documentation of GE not paying income tax at the state level. GE has been become the national poster-child for corporate tax avoidance.
Rutgers study finds that money matters in those things that make education work
Have you noticed it is OK to bail out Wall Street with billions of taxpayers dollars, but we can’t “just throw more money” at the problems in public education. We can save the automobile industry with an infusion of cash, but we talk about closing schools that “don’t produce” on the test.
The argument from some so-called school reformers is that money isn’t really the issue. “They say that public spending on education has risen dramatically in recent decades, but the United States has still fallen behind other countries on international assessments,” according to Valerie Strauss in an article in The Washington Post.
Well, a new study by the Shanker Institute goes a long way toward putting that argument to rest, saying of course money matters: It’s not about throwing money at a problem. Instead, it is about providing the right number of resources so that children have the opportunity to succeed.
“Revisiting the Age-Old question: Does Money Matter in Education,” was written by Rutgers University Professor Bruce Baker. In a review of the research, he finds school resources that really make a difference─class size reduction and getting and keeping quality teachers, for instance ─ “are positively associated with student outcomes” and, on the whole “the things that cost money benefit students, and there is scarce evidence there are more cost-effective measures.”
Click here to read the WAES reaction to this story.
Green Bay finds that personal attention, dealing with poverty decrease drop-outs
Once you cut through all of the political claptrap and philosophical nonsense, education isn’t rocket science. Kids are eager to learn and parents want their children to grow to be sound and successful. Educators want nothing better than to leave children better than when they found them, and communities want the next generation to be better prepared then they were.
What, then, is standing in the way?
The Green Bay Press Gazette comes as close to a good explanation as anyone else has, in a recent article describing how the district is trying to "help" kids stay in school and succeed. The answer: Treat them as individuals and address issues of poverty.
It’s time to take the politics out of play, because education isn’t a game and politicians have done enough harm. Instead, we just need to do what works ─ what experience, intuition, and research have proven ─ give kids the opportunities they need to succeed and, in most cases, they will.
What Americans keep ignoring about Finland’s school success
Be more like Finland, education reformers in America say. We all agree the U.S. has to improve its schools and the Finns have one of the world’s reigning super powers.
We agree: Let’s model what we do after the Finnish system that was ranked number one by Newsweek last year, but also no private schools, values equity, has no standardized tests, has little school choice, doesn’t engage the private sector, and doesn’t even have the word “accountability” in the Finnish language.
In other words, if we want our schools to be more like Finnish schools, says a recent article in The Atlantic , we need to make some pretty drastic changes. For example, “decades ago, when the Finnish school system was badly in need of reform, the goal of the program that Finland instituted, resulting in so much success today, was never excellence. It was equity.”
It’s hard to imagine Americans, especially our elected officials, making those changes, but that might very well be the key.
The Atlantic article, based on an interview with one of the leading Finnish authorities on education reform, Pasi Sahlberg, said: “The problem facing education in America isn't the ethnic diversity of the population but the economic inequality of society, and this is precisely the problem that Finnish education reform addressed. More equity at home might just be what America needs to be more competitive abroad.”
Walker policies costing Wisconsin jobs
Gov. Scott Walker’s economic policies have caused so much job loss that Wisconsin is trailing the national pace of job creation.
If only Wisconsin had matched the national pace of job creation since April, about 34,000 more families would have a breadwinner with a full-time job, the report says.
Wisconsin lags the national economy because of Walker’s “cuts only” approach to budgeting. His policies have pulled billions of dollars out of the state economy, the worst possible action he could have taken during a difficult economic period.
Walker’s cuts include:
Cuts in state aid for important programs at the state and local level
Cuts in aid to low-income families
Cuts in take-home pay for hundreds of thousands of public employees
Rejections of federal dollars.
The indirect ripple effects of these policies will alone cause the destruction of about 18,000 full-time jobs, according to IWF’s economic simulations.
The report also includes estimates of the impact on a number of individual counties.
Simon
family talks school funding 
The evidence keeps piling up – the cuts to public education in the 2011-13 budget are not good for children, their schools, or their communities.
In order for children to receive the opportunities they need for future success, they first need quality teachers who are supported in their critical work. Ensuring that the best and brightest teachers are in our classrooms means that students will receive the educational opportunities they need to thrive.
Understanding the devastating impact of aid cuts to schools in the last state budget, Secretary of State Douglas La Follette, a candidate in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, recently endorsed 
General Electric is a major Wisconsin manufacturer of medical-imaging equipment, a good employer for an estimated 3,000 state workers, a boon to many communities and a stimulus for high-tech development in the state.
Have you noticed it is OK to bail out Wall Street with billions of taxpayers dollars, but we can’t “just throw more money” at the problems in public education. We can save the automobile industry with an infusion of cash, but we talk about closing schools that “don’t produce” on the test.
Be more like Finland, education reformers in America say. We all agree the U.S. has to improve its schools and the Finns have one of the world’s reigning super powers.
Gov. Scott Walker’s economic policies have caused so much job loss that Wisconsin is trailing the national pace of job creation. 
