Pt. 1- School privatization FAIL in Wisconsin

Last week was back-to-school time here in Wisconsin public schools, and there have been several reports coming out illustrating the failures of the Fitzwalkerstanis and their defunding and privatization schemes when it comes to K-12 schools in Wisconsin.

First, let's look at Fitzwalkerstan's preferred alternatives to public schools. Gannett's Wisconsin papers recently produced an excellent report on Wisconsin virtual charter schools, and it shows that virtual schools fall way short of K-12 public schools on most meaningful metrics. The study said far fewer virtual school students take AP tests vs. public schools, virtual school students also performed below public school students in math, social studies, language arts and science. And it looks even worse when you look at graduation and retention.

In 2010-11, the latest year for which data is available, 87.6 percent of the high school seniors statewide had received a degree or diploma within four years. In virtual schools, only 53.2 percent achieved that.

• Statewide in 2010-11, 99.4 percent of all students completed the school term they started. In virtual schools, that number was only 83.3 percent. Only 1.4 percent of students statewide were required to repeat a grade that year, compared with 6.8 percent of virtual students.

• More than one-tenth of virtual school students — 12.8 percent — were listed as dropouts in 2010-11, compared with 1.4 percent of students statewide

Yet Walker and the WisGOPs eliminated the cap on virtual schools, despite the evidence that they are a failing method of teaching students. But hey, why would the Walker folks care as long as it throws some taxpayer dollars to their buddies in this shady business, right?

Walker and the WisGOPs also allowed for a lot more money to be thrown at voucher schools in the most recent state budget (and voucher proponents like convicted criminal Scott Jensen and John Gard have given huge campaign contributions to WisGOP, and even had a role in determining redistricting maps), which makes the recent LAB audit of the Milwaukee voucher school program worth taking a look at, to see if this is actually working.

The report says voucher schools are a mixed bag. There appears to be a slight advantage in growth of reading scores among voucher students vs. students who stayed in MPS, but the growth was basically the same in math, and when it came to overall test scores, voucher schools did worse. Even when voucher students were compared to equally economically disadvantaged students that stayed in MPS, the results were barely different.

Among fourth-grade pupils, smaller percentages of Choice pupils than MPS economically disadvantaged pupils scored at the proficient or advanced levels on the reading, mathematics, and science sections; and

 among eighth- and tenth-grade pupils, higher percentages of Choice pupils than MPS economically disadvantaged pupils scored at the proficient or advanced levels on the reading and science sections, while lower percentages of Choice pupils than MPS economically disadvantaged pupils scored at those levels on the mathematics section.

Smaller percentages of Choice pupils than MPS pupils scored at the proficient or advanced levels in every grade level and on every test section, except for on the eighth-grade reading section. The percentages of pupils statewide who scored at the proficient or advanced levels were uniformly higher than those of the other three groups of pupils.

So there's really no difference with voucher kids vs. other kids from poor families in MPS schools, which to me indicates a failure of voucher schools. Why? Because parents that would put their kids into a voucher school care enough about their kids' education that they're willing to try something that they think could help their kids' chances of success. If those students are doing the same as the general MPS population (which includes some parents who don't give a shit about their kids' education), then that tells me voucher schools aren't doing the job.

But that won't stop politicians like Robin Vos and Scott Walker from allowing more of these schools to open and have money thrown at it, because it means major money from Scooter Jensen and the voucher school lobbyists. Even when Republican legislators admit in private that it's poverty, not public vs. private schools, that is a main factor in determining a student's success. Remember this great video from Madison's Inn on the Park?



So no, it's not "working" when you look at the Walker/ WisGOP/ Bradley privatization schemes that are being floated as an alternative to public schools in Wisconsin. And in my next post, I'll show you how Walker and co. fail the very constituents that voted for them by screwing the public schools.