Tweeted Scott Walker, and...
In speaking with reporters Wednesday, Walker referenced a visit to the private voucher school St. Marcus School in Milwaukee earlier in the day to draw a contrast with Madison’s public schools. He noted 96 percent of children at St. Marcus — which has a student body that’s about 80 percent black and is 89 percent low-income — go on to graduate from high school, according to a report card the school released on its website.
“That’s a stark contrast, not only to Milwaukee where 62 percent of the African-American kids graduate” in four years, Walker said, citing 2012 graduation rates. “Shocking to many people, it’s actually even lower here in Madison. In Madison, the African-American graduation rate is 55 percent. I think that’s interesting because when Mary Burke was running for the school board, she talked about the achievement gap. And yet you see the achievement gap for African-American students in terms of graduation is actually worse in Madison than it is in Milwaukee. We have ways that we can help. One of those is expanding choices for low-income families around the state. That’s something I’ve supported, and will continue to push. That’s something that Mary Burke has clearly said she opposes, and would like to limit the number of choices that families like I saw today had at St. Marcus.”
Prior to running for the School Board, Burke pledged $2.5 million to open Madison Preparatory Academy — an independent charter school proposed by the Urban League of Greater Madison geared toward low-income, minority students that was ultimately voted down by the board at the time.
ADDED: Here's a Breitbart article from January 2012 about Madison Prep:
"Promising Wisconsin Charter School Proposal Suffocated by Defenders of the Education Establishment." It was voted down before Burke was elected to the School Board, and she did make a huge gift (which in the end wasn't used):
"I understand we are in tight budget times and don't want concerns about the cost of Madison Prep or the availability of public funding to supercede [sic] the need for the school board to approve it," Burke was quoted as saying.
"I am confident Madison Prep will be a great opportunity for children and want to see it happen. I hope my gift helps the school board overcome its financial concerns."
But, alas, the steadfast organizers of Madison Prep failed to consider the overwhelming costs of union labor.
Posts
108 comments:
California data shows that charters specifically targeted to these poor minority populations get the best results.
Given the large amount of supporting data its surprising that they have not expanded faster in this niche.
I taught inner city refugee and immigrant children for the public schools in the Deep South. I Sent my daughter to Catholic schools and it wasn't even a question.
In other words, the results in both school systems suck. Why? Lack of accountability.
Charter schools are not the answer to everything, but they do show what can be achieved in a school which is more focused and accountable.
But the real change will come only if all schools in places like Madison and Milwaukee have a high level of accountability. This means firing the people who are not getting the job done and replacing them with people who will. Good luck with that under our current politics. The Democrats and the unions will stand in the way until the politics change.
Protecting bad teachers is part of defending women from the back of Scott Walker's hand. so what that requires stomping the school childern to educational death... that is just a delayed abortion and therefore is the eternal right of women forever and ever, death without end.
I'm not a voter in Madison or Wisconsin so perhaps that is the reason I am not shocked to learn it.
Madison, for all its do-gooder rah-rah and caring(tm) is still one of the most racist cities in the US.
That's by the numbers. Schooling is only one indication of Madisonian racism.
Madison should be ashamed of itself.
John Henry
David said...
In other words, the results in both school systems suck. Why? Lack of accountability.
Charter schools are not the answer to everything, but they do show what can be achieved in a school which is more focused and accountable.
But the real change will come only if all schools in places like Madison and Milwaukee have a high level of accountability. This means firing the people who are not getting the job done and replacing them with people who will."
Exactly right. excellent analysis.
My takeway from the added bit:
1. Mary Burke thought the idea of a charter school in Madison was a good one and pledged 2.5 million of ehr own money to see it through.
2. It was voted down before she was on the board.
3. She is on the board now.
4. She hasn't been able to persuade the other board members to her pre-board point of view.
Why not?
You can spend money all day long on schools, but if they don't have good students......there won't be any positive outcomes.
Oh, come on, it's not like we NEED to educate Madison blacks.
Not when America's First Black President is set to bring in millions of Hispanics to take their jobs anyway.
As long someone other than the black parents can be blamed, everyone is satisfied.
Public school administrators who do not "come up to snuff" should be charged with "Misconduct In Public Office".
Burke doesn't really give damn about black graduation rates. She more concerned with the centralization of schools, the professional education bureaucrats and teachers unions. Typical "Liberal"
The public education system run by liberals is heavily segregated and racist? You mean they want black kids to fail in school and be forever dependent on government handouts in addition to importing even more poor people who will work for little and go on the dole?
It is almost like democrats are trying to create a permanent underclass or something.
Charter schools represent a generally-less-than-successful attempt (country-wide) to establish public-financed schools not run by union-influenced school boards and teachers. So why the rule that requires school board sponsorship?
Bureaucracy prevails in all politically-derived solutions, so the failure to get parents involved in the education of children will always results in bad schools and poor-performing students.
St. Marcus School's covenant, on the other hand, represents a dedication not oriented to union wants. There is a world of difference between a church-sponsored school environment and most poor-neighborhood charter schools particularly in the commitment to education of and for the children.
Burke said. “But the key to improving student learning... is the quality of the teacher in the classroom.”
Burke spoke the inconvenient truth. Nevertheless, supports Teachers Union to entrench bad teachers to victimize hapless poor black kids.
Achilles said...
"in addition to importing even more poor people who will work for little"
Hey, how else can you get your low-paid maids and gardeners.
Derbyshire thinks it's because black students are too dumb to be educated.
I think it's a sociological truce between teachers and blacks not acting white. Each side gets something out of it.
Eliminate welfare for high school drop outs and for teenage mothers and watch high school graduation rates soar.
RecChief said...
alternately:
1. Mary Burke thought the idea of a charter school in Madison was a good one and pledged 2.5 million of ehr own money to see it through.
2. It was voted down before she was on the board.
3. She wanted to get elected to the school board. To do that, she needed to get along with the union
4. She changed her position, and now is running for Gov with the support of the Unions
what does that tell you about her?
Parents refuse to be accountable for the education of their children. What makes anyone think the govt can do a better job????
But the key to improving student learning... is the quality of the teacher in the classroom.”
Apparently not.
http://educationrealist.wordpress.com/2013/10/31/teacher-quality-report-lacking-a-certain-quality/
++
But as Dan Goldhaber himself observed,
..we see that Black and other minority students appear to benefit from being matched with a Black teacher regardless of how well or poorly that teacher performed on the Praxis tests, and these positive effects due to matching with Black teachers are comparable in magnitude to having the highest-performing White teachers in the classroom. Removing the lowest of performers on the exam would necessarily remove some of the teachers that appear to be most effective for this segment of the student population.
...
And RAND found less than that:
(RAND study link in original)
"The results show large differences in teacher quality across the school district, but measured teacher characteristics explain little of the difference. Teacher licensure test scores are unrelated to teacher success in the classroom. Similarly, student achievement is unaffected by whether classroom teachers have advanced degrees. Student achievement increases with teacher experience, but the linkage is weak and largely reflects poor outcomes for teachers during their first year or two in the classroom."
++
Voucher and charter schools are allowed to pick and choose which students they accept and which they don't. Public schools have to accept each and every child that shows up.
Voucher and charter schools take tax dollars from the public but have zero accountability to the taxpayers. Public schools are accountable to a school board which is elected by the community.
The two systems are so vastly different and have such different rules that only an idiot would try to compare the two. Or a partisan hack. But I repeat myself.
“But the key to improving student learning... is the quality of the teacher in the classroom.”
This statement shows exactly why this person is a marxist. The key to improving student learning is parents that give a damn. Not most, but a majority of single parents just don't give a damn.
I'll be castigated by the lib's for that view, but throw a rock into a pack of dogs and the one that yips is the one you hit.
Voucher and charter schools are allowed to pick and choose which students they accept and which they don't. Public schools have to accept each and every child that shows up.
I do not believe this is true. I know in FL and NY the students are chosen by lottery. But the parent does have to enter the child in the lottery to have a chance at getting into the charter.
Some charter schools may have a lottery program in place, but it is still easier for them to expel students for minor infractions than for a typical public school to do so.
Vouchers are for private schools, and those schools (oftentimes for-profit) are the sole decider of who is allowed in and who is not.
Madisonfella linked to an article which suggested in-black-students-chronically-absent-from-school. And then asks who's fault it is?
the black kids skipping school first and foremost. Then their parents for not making them to to school. Then the school for not being stricter about holding their kids and teachers accountable.
You can pump as much money as you want into schools. If the kids aren't going, then they aren't going.
So where are the kids? Probslbly a lot of them are simply roaming the streets getting into trouble, like Michael Brown.
And I get if cops cracked down on truant kids, who happened to be black, because those are the kids that are chronically absent, it would be considered racist.
The governor,regardless of party, is the least culpable.
RHHardin said: that the system in public schools is "a sociological truce between teachers and blacks not acting white."
That's an idea I never heard before. Milwaukee public schools are at the bottom nationally as far as educating African Americans. But why, There's two ideas I know are wrong:
1. the African-Americans have genetic IQ deficit as the "scientific" racists say. "Scientific" racism isn't true anyhow as a general proposition and anyhow doesn't explain why Milwaukee, of all places, is at the bottom now and was not at the bottom in the Nineties and 2. All the poorly performing schools are staffed by uncaring teachers. This isn't true. In Milwaukee many poorly performing schools are staffed by people who do care and probably the same is true in Madison. But the needle doesn't move much on performance whether they care or not.
So what is the cause? In Milwaukee the question is a little sharper because the question is: why did Milwaukee fall to the bottom in terms of helping African-American students? Something changed and some cause that's nationwide was suddenly intensified in Milwaukee between the Nineties and now. So if we could understand what happened in Milwaukee we could understand the national phenomenon.
For instance RHHardin's idea. Why did more students in Milwaukee join the "sociological truce" beginning in the Nineties? Or did the initiative come from the teachers' side? from the unions becoming politicized?
What I've heard about blacks in Wisconsin, and presumably the ones in Madison are no different, is that many of them are former residents of Chicago housing projects who headed north with their Section 8 vouchers, drawn by welfare benefits that are generally higher than in Illinois. To the extent this is true, and not blogospherian hyperbole, it would mean that this segment of the population was not selected for ambition or future time orientation or indeed any other positive qualities.
Peter
School boards such as Madison, ought to read Dr. Steve Perry's book, When Push Comes to Shove. He is the principal of a magnet school and they have to take anyone who applies. Unfortunately they only have so many slots, but even white middle class parents want to send their kids to his school.
The school is Capital Preparatory Magnet School in Hartford, Connecticut. They've sent 100% of its mostly low income, minority, high school graduates to four-year colleges every year since it started in 2006.
This man doesn't play. It doesn't matter if the parents aren't interested in their childs education, many aren't. He expects results from the teachers and for the most part he gets them. Since he gets public funding he has to play by the same rules as public schools (unlike charters), so he can't just fire a teacher. Even when he found one sleeping in her classroom during class he couldn't just up and fire her.
Mary Burke supported Madison Prep? I'm impressed.
Kelly
The students who go to magnet schools are self selected. Their parents at least care enough to apply and the students are willing to go, knowing that they will have to work when they get there. I know someone who went to Cal Tech from a Milwaukee magnet school but that doesn't show the schools are good for African-Americans In general they are poor and getting worse.
According to Perry that isn't the case at all. I've heard him interviewed, he said many parents don't put in the effort, maybe they don't know how. He said its up to the teachers to hold the kids accountable. I think someone who can send 100 percent of low-income, minority students to college ought to be listened to.
But lets say you're right, even IF it's because they are self selected, doesn't this tell you something about traditional public schools and the need for specialized schools??
The Drill SGT said: "4. She changed her position, and now is running for Gov with the support of the Unions"
Does she, in fact, now disavow her previous support for Madison Prep?
Welfare migration can't really explain much. In the study I read over a six year period in the Eighties about 30% of the new welfare cases in Wisconsin (about 27,000 people) came from out of state. Of that 30%, 27% came from Illinois. It wasn't broken down as to whether these Illinois immigrators came from Chicago, let alone whether they came from the projects. So 1/3 of 1/3 is 1/9 or about 11% or about 3000 people might have come from Chicago. About 40% of the total went to Milwaukee. No telling whether how many of these were the dreaded Chicago immigrants (who were all Bear fans). So we might be talking about 1200 people. The influx of 1200 people over six years can't explain much about Milwaukee schools over the same period where there were over 70,000 students - "Chicago" is not an infectious disease like Ebola (and Milwaukee is still part of Packerland).
Kelly
I agree that the public schools are terrible and I think there should be a variety of ways - charter, home schooling, online to create competition. But there are public schools which try and which have trouble raising the level. Since Act 10 they can get rid of bad teachers and they do. But still performance doesn't really rise much. Yet performance fell in the Nineties. So that is why I am interested in some general explanation such as rhhardins idea of a "sociological truce" or else the idea of a friend of mine that the 25,000 who are out of the Milwaukee public schools and in suburban or charter schools created the drop when they left.
?Or maybe those two causes worked together?? - the "truce" began when the one's who did want an education aka "being white" left for the white suburban school?
We have ways that we can help. One of those is expanding choices for low-income families around the state.
That's why Mary Burke is spending so much time north of Hwy 29. Vouchers sell reasonably well in southeastern Wisconsin, but everywhere else people know they are getting hosed. Now rural districts are being asked to send even more money from their pot of funding for more voucher expansion?
The left succeed in their power-lust when they keep the failed teacher's union establishment in place teaching nothing to our children and creating more poor, uneducated democrat voting blocks.
75% of my prop tax bill goes to the schools. It's cute that MM only thinks charters and vouchers have no accountability.
The teacher's unions support Planned Parenthood which has lowered the African-American birth rate to below replacement level and it is still falling. They also support amnesty for Hispanic immigrants which will legalize them as workers and that will increase the African-American unemployment rate to far above 11%. This is an open secret, i.e., known but not discussed among Democratic politicians and so not known and not discussed among African-American Democratic voters. I don't want to hear a word about Republican racism while Democrats work to destroy the African-Americans as a group and replace them with Hispanics.
San Francisco has also done poorly with black kids test scores compared to statewide results and vs other large school districts. This was apparent since the testing system went in in the 90's.
The reason given, as I heard it from informed people, is that the black population has been declining due to the incredible increase in rents over the last 30+ years, and this affected the black middle class much more so than the poorest as they live in public housing. Recently more public housing has been reduced with the use of section 8 vouchers, which often don't cover San Francisco rents, which forces people to move elsewhere. Section 8's also tend to be used by those with better initiative and capability of working the system.
The effect is of concentrating the poorest in a remnant still living in public housing. Its no surprise they will do worse in school than the average of the black population.
That is San Francisco.
I don't know what the trends have been in Madison with respect to how the black population has been affected by changes in housing costs and employment. I would look there first if you people in Wisconsin want an answer.
Five hundred and twelve students across the state are receiving vouchers to attend private schools this school year. The most going to Northeast Wisconsin. The Green Bay and Appleton areas each had 53.
Yeah, that's really hosing the state education budget.
I recently learned that peeps just won't shut up about politics, even when one is waiting for cancer treatment.
Had 2 what looked to me to be 60s boomers reading the NYT and sniffing about the quality of AM TV shows and the dumbing down of America. This wasn't the 1st time they said it. Even tho I'm a boomer I look younger do I said since the boomers have officially been in charge for a couple of decades, it's not surprising. They skedaddled as fast as they could, huffing away.
Nothing's gonna change until discipline is allowed. Kids in general know they're untouchable, doesn't matter if they're rich, poor or in between. Snots are snots and lawsuits are filed. Sometimes suits should be, tho, cos of teacher arrogance.
Both St. Marcus and St. Lucas participate in the taxpayer-funded voucher program and are members of the conservative Wisconsin Evangelical Lutheran Synod (WELS). This is the extreme wing of the Lutheran Church, which asserts that the Roman Catholic pope is the Antichrist, condemns homosexuality as a sin, teaches the belief in evolution and the age of the earth as 6,000 years old and prohibits women from voting in church meetings.
Yay! Send them mo money.
@ Wildswan:
Thanks for those welfare migration statistics, it does seem that what might have been blogospherian hyperbole is, in fact, blogospherian hyperbole.
It is, however, an established fact that Wisconsin imprisons a higher percentage of its black male population than any other state.
Peter
wildswan said...
There's two ideas I know are wrong:
1. the African-Americans have genetic IQ deficit as the "scientific" racists say. "Scientific" racism isn't true anyhow as a general proposition ...
There is no doubt at all about the 15-point IQ gap between blacks and whites (or the 5-7 point difference between whites and Asians), which has been consistently and repeatedly measured and is essentially unchanged for at least 50 years.
So what is the cause?
It'll remain a mystery as long as liberal creationists ignore science.
The teacher's unions support Planned Parenthood which has lowered the African-American birth rate to below replacement level and it is still falling.
You've mentioned that several times, ignoring the fact that the black birthrate is higher than the birthrate any group except mestizos. Why?
I don't want to hear a word about Republican racism ...
Progressives 'n' socialists are still the real, actual racists, just as they always have been.
Peter
See, Wisconsin is a liberal state yet it educates its African-American population in the public schools of Milwaukee and Madison worse than other states and then (??cause and effect??) it imprisons a higher percentage of its African-American population than other states.
But the Wisconsin liberals don't try at all the deal with this. Talk about your knuckle draggers. They just repeat labor slogan from the Thirties and civil rights slogans from the Sixties. They don't think or ask questions about the 21st century. And the result is that they themselves are damaging (in the schools and soon in employment through immigration amnesty) and even wiping out (through Planned Parenthood) the African-Americans - the supposed focus of their concerns. I consider this a sin against God and a crime against humanity and a to-be-expected result of 21st century liberalism
"Public schools are accountable to a school board which is elected by the community." School boards are elected by the teachers union.
"“That’s a stark contrast, not only to Milwaukee where 62 percent of the African-American kids graduate” in four years, Walker said, citing 2012 graduation rates. “Shocking to many people, it’s actually even lower here in Madison. In Madison, the African-American graduation rate is 55 percent."
Yay! Send them more money.
2 + 2 = Jesus
Better that than 2 + 2 = 5.
"St Marcus Lutheran School Superintendent said last year on his blog that “St Marcus is unapologetically Christian and follows the teachings of the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Evangelical Luther Synod.”
"On Evolution “It appears that American citizens don’t have the privilege of stating that the evolutionary explanation of the origin of this universe, the earth, and man is not only questionable, but also unscientific, and irrational, and just plain wrong.” The earth is only 6000 years old and “…was created with the appearance of age. On the first day everything looked older than it was.” Source
The earth just looks old. Doesn't mean it is.
Yeah, it sucks that schools like that are our best option.
Teaching kids the earth is 6000 years old is better than....not teaching that? No thanks.
Character development, or perhaps corruption, begins at home.
Anyway, begin the reform at home. Continue the reform at school. For the latter, competition serves as positive reinforcement. What doesn't break you, makes you stronger.
"garage mahal":
We agree the evidence shows the Earth is much older than creationists believe.
My question is this:
Could God have created a world in any way He chose or must God be limited by your scientific theory?
In what other ways are you willing to limit God?
"The teacher's unions support Planned Parenthood which has lowered the African-American birth rate to below replacement level and it is still falling.
You've mentioned that several times, ignoring the fact that the black birthrate is higher than the birthrate any group except mestizos. Why?"
The African-American birthrate fell below replacement level in 2006. It's true the white birthrate fell below replacement level right after abortion was legalized in 1973. But here's the difference. The white birthrate flattened out at about 1.8 when it fell and has stayed there since the Eighties. But the African-American birthrate has been falling steadily though more slowly since 1973. In 2006 it went below replacement level and if graphed the trend is still pointed down. Since the African-American family has also fallen apart since 1973 it is safe to say that the trend will continue - down. It isn't going to stop at 1.8. That, as Darwin pointed out, is how a group gets wiped out. And this group is not going to be much supplemented by immigration which has been true of the European group.
The Hispanic birthrate is above replacement level. They have a European Catholic background and share with us the experience of living on the American continent. The only reason to object to them is that they will compete with the African-Americans in the workforce at a time when the African-American unemployment rate is 11%. And if the Hispanics are all suddenly legalized then this competition will hit the African-Americans like Katrina. Obama ... - well what does he care?
Ferdinande says:
"There is no doubt at all about the 15-point IQ gap between blacks and whites (or the 5-7 point difference between whites and Asians), which has been consistently and repeatedly measured and is essentially unchanged for at least 50 years."
There is doubt. You are saying that the median intelligence in the African-American community is 85. That is just above retarded. And according to you 50 of the community is below 85 so a huge percentage is actually retarded. Everyone (almost everyone) knows that African-Americans as a group are much smarter than that and so they know the IQ tests are measuring something other than intelligence.
Furthermore these tests were run by members of the English and American eugenics societies such as Cyril Burt, Arthur Jensen, Chris Brand and Richard Lynn. These people didn't look at reality and compare it with their results and ask what was going on. They just kept saying that the Africans and their descendants had a genetic IQ deficit. Cyril Burt was shown to have cooked his statistics. Arthur Jensen used Burt's statistics before he knew about the fraud. So those two are out as sources. Then the Pioneer Fund (founded by eugenic society members) funded new studies (by eugenic society members) and these studies got the same results. HJ Eysenck of this new group also believed in astrology and oublished on the subject and Eysenck said his methods were the same "scientific" statistical methods in both cases - proving an IQ deficit and proving the truth of astrology. I could go on.
madisonfella said...
Public schools are accountable to a school board which is elected by the community
In point of fact, school boards are often more accountable to the Teachers Union which has greater influence on elections and, until Act 10, actually had a say in how the taxpayer's money was spent and how the school was administered.
So if you want true accountability to the parents, you have to reduce the influence of the Teachers Union. Welcome to the fight Madisonfella!
"Creationists ignore science." I'm not a creationist. But in the Thirties it was the Protestant creationists who blocked the teaching of eugenics in the public schools. In the case of William Jennings Bryan vs. Clarence Darrow the book in question, Hunter's Civic Biology, was teaching the inferiority of some races and the need to restrict their numbers. It was William Jennings Bryan who opposed this teaching; it was Darrow who supported it. Darrow also got two cold-blooded killers off on a murder charge by showing that they were merely following the theory of the survival of the fittest.
So the creationists are opposed to eugenics while some of those who support evolution also support the degraded and degrading teachings of eugenics. Showing that none of us are right about everything
The most effective way to achieve accountability is to put more power in the hands of the parents, starting with the power to choose a school for their children.
Until you make the parents the customers of education with the freedom to go elsewhere, there is no effective incentive for teachers and administrators to improve their product.
For example, I work with a local private school and a few years ago we had a teacher who was under-performing. Nothing egregious, just not doing a good job. Before the 2nd quarter was over, we had her reassigned to tasks that she could handle and moved a more capable teacher into her position. We did this because we serve the parents and we were putting forward a crappy product. We saw a problem and we took care of it quickly because we knew who our customers were.
Now, try to do that in a public school. First of all, you have no incentive to make a switch because the parents are locked in anyway and second of all, you can't make that switch because of the power of union over your administrative decisions. At best you can do something for the next year, if you want to, but in meantime your students and your parents will have another two quarters of shoddy service.
"The most effective way to achieve accountability is to put more power in the hands of the parents, starting with the power to choose a school for their children.
Until you make the parents the customers of education with the freedom to go elsewhere, there is no effective incentive for teachers and administrators to improve their product."
THIS. Unions are why the public school system is failing.
iowan2 said...
Parents refuse to be accountable for the education of their children. What makes anyone think the govt can do a better job????"
I was told by a teacher, once, that Educators were there to teach my kids properly and my sole job as a parent was to support the professionals in this endeavor. I politely but firmly told this teacher that my tax dollars hired this person to teach my kids the 3 Rs, and I would take responsibility for the rest.
My point is, the position of the education industry seems to be that parents should hand over the responsibility for educating children to members of the teachers union. Who then whine and bitch because parents have handed over responsibility for educating children to members of the teachers union.
And then teachers get snooty when you are actively engaged in your child's education.
"The most effective way to achieve accountability is to put more power in the hands of the parents, starting with the power to choose a school for their children.
Parents already had that choice. It's called open enrollment. In the public system you have a school board who is elected by the people. In the voucher system there is none of that. You have no say on how your tax dollars are spent.
HIS. Unions are why the public school system is failing.
THIS is such bullshit. If that were true states with little to no union representation would be outperforming those that don't. And we know that sure the hell isn't the case. Can't believe how brainwashed you are.
WELS has around 400,000 members. Yet Garage is trying to tie in their beliefs with every person who isn't a "progressive" or liberal.
Why?
"blacks not acting white"
Acting white is a failed model. To be successful, students need to learn to act Asian.
"Parents already had that choice. It's called open enrollment."
Moving from one Union school to another isn't very helpful. It's the incentive structure that needs to change.
garage mahal said...
Parents already had that choice. It's called open enrollment.
Open enrollment is an improvement but you are still stuck within the public school system, your request can be denied, and the open enrollment period is limited to a few months out of the year. So it's hardly a real choice.
In other words, I claim that I should have the right to eat where I like and you respond that the restaurant you choose for me has enlarged their menu and that's all of the choice I deserve.
In the public system you have a school board who is elected by the people. In the voucher system there is none of that. You have no say on how your tax dollars are spent.
Nonsense. Parents, who are voters, choose. Thus the money gets funneled to schools that provide the best service (as determined by the actual customers.)
The system in which I have no say is a system in which the Teachers Union dominates the decisions in terms of how the school is administered and how the taxpayer's money is spent.
My experience with school boards is that they consider parents irrelevant at best but more usually as barely tolerable annoyances.
I have been at numerous school board meetings where the boards attitude towards petitioning parents was openly contemptuous.
They don't answer to parents as such. Most big city school boards answer to the local political machine. They are, nearly every one of them, would be professional politicians on their career path.
:I claim that I should have the right to eat where I like and you respond that the restaurant you choose for me has enlarged their menu and that's all of the choice I deserve.
You can eat already eat anywhere you like. You want me to pay for a restaurant to be built near where you live.
"garage mahal":
I ask that you consider my questions above @ 12:05 pm.
garage mahal wrote:
Teaching kids that sex isn't based on biology but is a social construct is better than....not teaching that? No thanks.
Blogger garage mahal said...
You can eat already eat anywhere you like. You want me to pay for a restaurant to be built near where you live.
Since you're a taxpayer, you pay one way or the other. So then the question is whether your money is spent more efficiently in a public school system or in a choice system. The advantage of the choice system is that teachers and school officials have an incentive to put forward a product of such quality that people will want it, because otherwise the market will put them out of a job.
However in the public school system, you have to practically pull teeth to shut down a failing school, assuming you can do it all.
To go back to the restaurant analogy: if the cook and the server know that I have to eat at their restaurant regardless of good or poor the food is, what's their incentive to provide me with a good meal?
In an ideal world, I would be opposed to vouchers. But in the world we live in, I am unwilling to sentence children to a life of poverty and despair.
Oh FFS
Parents who care about their children more than their second homes and other toys send their kids to private schools. Private schools are uniformly better. Always.
Recchief
"I was told by a teacher, once, that Educators were there to teach my kids properly and my sole job as a parent was to support the professionals in this endeavor."
All the other problems, unions, govt mandates, sketchy curriculum, etc, this is the problem. The educational establishment, which is leftist to the point of pure communism, and linked by soul deep beliefs, with the Democrat Party, do not believe that parents are qualified to rear their own children.
I was told as a student to ignore my parents, they meant well, but did not understand, nor capable of understanding enough to participate in my education.
I was told as a parent, though my interest was important. All decisions about education were best left in the hands of the professionals .
Bullshit. Teaching reading writing and arithmetic is not challenging to any parent.Phonics, and rote memorization. Simple, It worked for centuries, and everything that the professionals have foisted on society since the 50's has been a failure.
Come on, "garage mahal", and answer my question posed above.
I'm interested to read what a man of science such as yourself has to say on such a matter. I can answer "as an atheist the proposition of God is a silly notion and therefore the question is unimportant" assuming that is how I truly feel. But if I do so answer then I offend believers.
So I'm interested to read what you think, under some possible definitions of the word think.
Blogger iowan2 said...
Recchief
Teaching reading writing and arithmetic is not challenging to any parent.Phonics, and rote memorization. Simple, It worked for centuries, and everything that the professionals have foisted on society since the 50's has been a failure.
Nothing scares public school officials as much as homeschooling. The fact that parents can and do teach their kids as well and usually better than the "professionals" exposes them for the shoddy product they offer.
Birkel
You are asking a not too smart high school graduate with some college sophmoric ideas to explain himself? He has the one liners he gets from his grad student girlfriends and the internets.
Yet another red hot take from Johnny Reb. He knows how each individual school district in Wisconsin is faring. Really, he does.
You can't tell how each school district in Wisconsin is faring?
We certainly can in California. The data is available for anyone to be sufficiently well informed.
Or at least as well as most school board members are capable of being informed. Most of the relevant data is posted publicly from demographics to academic performance to enrollment trends to finances.
Every school in Wisc has a report card that is available onlinr.
Yes the data is available and feel free to check the non-results from the nation's longest running school choice experiment. That's the point.
Home schooling? Do you support that movement, "garage mahal"?
Home schooled students use zero public resources but their parents still pay taxes. Is that fair, "garage mahal"?
Isn't home schooling a longer running school choice program than any other? Do those students perform relatively well?
*crickets*
madisonfella: " Public schools have to accept each and every child that shows up.
Voucher and charter schools take tax dollars from the public but have zero accountability to the taxpayers. Public schools are accountable to a school board which is elected by the community.
The two systems are so vastly different and have such different rules that only an idiot would try to compare the two. Or a partisan hack. But I repeat myself."
In NYC, the Catholic school leaders have repeatedly said they would take the lowest performing 10% of students in public schools and would educate them with better results for less money than is spent now.
Guess who says "no"?
Think about it, the Catholic schools would take all the garage mahals and still the public schools with a net "+" in retained $$/student and the lefties still refuse.
The reason is obvious, can't keep indoctrinating all your failed garage mahals if you let them escape your educational gulags.
Do I support home schooling, "birkel"? Sure. Yes.
Unions are clearly part of the problem. So is the lack of competition that the public schools have. So is the bloated bureaucracy that chews up too much of the funding, and interferes too much with what should be local decisions. The unwillingness of schools to discipline appropriately, and the virtual guarantee of advancement, is part of the problem. The biggest part of the problem, though, is lack of family involvement, and support of the teachers.
Fernandinande,
"There is no doubt at all about the 15-point IQ gap between blacks and whites (or the 5-7 point difference between whites and Asians), which has been consistently and repeatedly measured and is essentially unchanged for at least 50 years."
ANd don't you dare implicate white supremacy in it - it has to be genetic defects in blacks - just as early Christians knew "God did it" whenever lightening struck.
Just Diet Racism at it's best,...
Whites put almost three centuries of American slavery in one chapter of their school textbooks.
That's how little they care about telling the whole bloody truth of what they've done here.
But they're happy to claim WE'RE genetically inferior.
I'd say white's documented mass murder reduces their claim to projection,...
The desire to hide slavery and it's effects - even from themselves - doesn't say much for them either.
Just sayin'....
So we have heard that the cause of blacks doing so poorly in Madison is:
1) Parents
2) IQ
3) A bunch of other reasons, none related to Madison's rampant racism.
All of those reasons apply fairly universally across the US.
How come they hit Madison blacks so especially hard?
79% of Dane county blacks don't take ACT vs 65 (WI) 50% (US)
48% of Dane county 3rd grad blacks are not proficient in reading vs 42% of WI blacks (and 11% of Dane County whites)
50% of DC blacks do not graduate with a regular diploma in 4 years vs 36% for WI as a whole (and 9% for whites)
Much more here:
http://racetoequity.net/dev/wp-content/uploads/WCCF-R2E-Report.pdf
What the Hell is going on in Madison? You make 1950's Missisipi look positively enlightened.
Or is Madison racism OK because you all care so deeply.
Not enough to actually do anything beyond talking about how terrible those southern racists are. But you do reallly, really, really, really, really care so that is good enough.
Stop complaining about racism and just stop doing it!
John Henry
Interesting question re IQ.
There isn't going to be an answer soon, unless science finally unpacks the mystery of human thought and consciousness.
However, on the black IQ business, it is clear to me that here is a population that far under performs its potential, and that part of that, though certainly not all of it, is very ineffective public education. We know for a fact that we can improve the K-5 test scores for this population by a standard deviation, entirely through targeted teaching methods and well organized well managed programs. This has been achieved by public schools, entire school districts, a couple of states (going by NAEP), and voucher schools.
As for Madison black students - strongly suggest you look into housing and employment trends for the causes. Madison is not the only liberal gentrified nirvana where this happens. San Francisco is the same.
Good list, exhelodrvr1. The reason I support choice is that it would have a positive effect on all but the issue of parental involvement. The current system is failing. Only the ideologue and the self-interested can argue that we don't need to change.
I'd still like to know whether Mary Burke has backed away for her support of Madison Prep.
Most of the people elected to our school board are retired teachers. I think this is true everywhere. We have elected one non-teacher in reaction to the board voting against what the community wanted. In the Chicago area the school boards always settle teachers strikes by raising their pay.
So, Governor Walker is fake-concerned about African American graduation rates in Madison schools? How about he gets actually concerned about the fact that the quality of life of African American children in his Wisconsin is worse than in any other state.
Anyone can run for school board and new blood is needed on most boards. But the issues are very complex because the financial questions are very important just now and because the lunch issue is becoming more and more important and and because there is rising impatience with non-performance and yet the boards are filled with lefties from the teacher's unions. So jumping into a piranha tank might be more fun.
I will note that the likes of "mrs. e" would be the first to tell us how horrible the South must be for blacks, given the long history of Democrats imposing an unfair and constitutionally impermissible legal structure that targeted blacks.
But now that a political target is in Wisconsin, "mrs. e" is willing to use whatever bull shit assessment from whatever foundation funding by whichever Leftists to make Wisconsin out to be a horrible place for blacks.
Transparent bull shit.
so to it your kid is in school everyday.See to it your kid does their homework,,,,everyday. Tell your kids, everyday, do not make babies you are not prepared to rear in a two parent family. It is the parents primary resposibility to make sure the kid leaves High school ready to go into college or learn a trade.
This is not complicated. It is surely not a Federal problem, it is barely a state problem, only enough to provide funding.
Funny thing, none of this is affected by the race of the student.
Big city school boards tend not to have retired teachers but political up and comers.
Madison may or may not fit this model but even such a small city as San Francisco does. Successful candidates very often go on to county, city, or state elections.
Crack emcee: "ANd don't you dare implicate white supremacy in it..."
LOL
I think you meant "Asian Supremacy" dumbs***.
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