Vos argues WisGOP/ALEC way on K-12 schools is working. FAILS

Apparently Thursday's press release from Dems, which used an LFB analysis to show that voucher schools are stealing from K-12 public schools and grabbing increasing amounts of state taxpayer dollars, has left a mark. I summarized those findings in this blog post, and found that post getting retweeted over 30 times, and nearly 900 pageviews in the 48 hours since, which means some people must be nodding their heads with the conclusions (I just throw stuff up the flagpole here, I have no control over whether people notice or care).

It's also telling that the voucher lobby and Assembly Speaker Robbin' Vos (R-ALEC) felt a need to respond within a day of that Dem release on voucher schools. There must be serious concern in their polling that people have caught onto the scam that voucher schools are, because they wouldn't make such a big effort pushing back if they felt their position was solid and/or believed by the general voter. Let's break down what appeared in Robbin's Friday release, which he titled "The Spin Facts on School Funding," see where his claims come from, and whether they add up.

Funding for public education is the largest general fund area making up 45 percent of the Wisconsin state budget. Republicans allocated nearly $10.6 billion for K-12 education over two years, according to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) budget analysis. This investment is larger than the amount Democrats put toward public schools when they were in the majority during the 2009-11 budget cycle.

The claim is technically true (watch for this rating to show up on Wisconsin Politi-"fact"), as we do spend $158 million more in this budget from GPR for public schools vs 2009-2011 under GPR (state taxpayer) aids. But Vos conveniently leaves out that 2009-11 was a budget drastically affected by Bush's Great Recession, and practically all areas of the budget had to take cuts as more people were out of work and the state lacked revenues as a result.

He also leaves out that this is a paltry 1.52% increase over 6 years, and that's in total dollars. When you adjust for inflation, we're spending less today (and Robbin, I'm being generous here, as I'm not assuming any inflation between 2015 and 2017). I'm using the combined amounts of regular K-12, High Poverty, and Categorical aids to come up with these numbers.

2009-11 Public school aid in 2015 dollars $10.995 billion
2015-17 Public school aid in 2015 dollars $10.553 billion

So that's over $400 million LESS going to public schools in this budget if you adjust for inflation, despite there being more resources available due to the growth of the Obama Economy over that time. In addition, even if you adjust for the slightly lower enrollments in public schools (most of which is due to the expansion of vouchers over that time), it's still a drop in aid of around $215 per student today vs 2009-11.

Robbin' also tries to argue that "we're spending a lot of money so get off our WisGOP backs." Also note the tired (and disproven) quote that vouchers improve choices and quality of K-12 education, despite 25 years of evidence in Wisconsin that it has not.

“Over the next decade, LFB estimates spending on public schools will top $94 billion while the funding level for school choice will equal less than 1 percent of K-12 education spending over the next decade,” said Speaker Vos. “We are committed to providing the best possible education to every child regardless of where they live or where they choose to attend school.”

This is a classic case of mixing and matching when spinning figures. $94 billion over the next 10 years for K-12 education would be a massive increase from today, but it also uses all sources of funding (GPR and otherwise) for all types of schools (including vouchers) That's not what last week's memo discussed, as it was limited to GPR funding for K-12 public schools. And projecting any future expenses for education is a sham because any legislature can change those figures on the spot, including the funneling mechanism that gives taxpayer dollars to the GOP campaign contributors that run voucher schools.

This is pathetic spin by Robbin' Vos, and it doesn't work when you look into the figures for more than 5 minutes. Strike one. Let's see what else the Speaker tries to argu.

The cost to educate a choice student in this budget (LFB weighted average) is $7,353. The average per pupil spending for public students is more than $13,000, which is higher than the national average. In addition, LFB has found that if the choice program didn’t exist, most public schools would get less state support.

More RW BS of mixing and matching stats to make an argument. When discussing cost of education, it leaves out that private schools also have funding sources beyond state aid, just like public school do. This includes donations and tuition from non-voucher students, but does Robbin' actually produce a stat which shows TOTAL COSTS OF EDUCATION for a voucher school, not just the payment by the state? Of course he doesn't! In fact, I'm not sure one even needs to be reported by voucher schools, which seems pretty amazing given that taxpayers are funding these schools like public schools, and should therefore get the same level of accountability as public school spending.

Also not mentioned is the fact that much of that private school tuition for non-voucher students can now be written off on the parent's taxes, and both the voucher payment and the tax write-off enables private schools to raise tuition to a higher level than the market would otherwise indicate. Strike two, Robbin'. What else you got?

By looking at just a few basic standards from the Department of Public Instruction, it’s clear Wisconsin has excellent schools that provide a quality education to students around the state. In 2015, reading scores for 4th and 8th graders went up. Plus, the state’s graduation rates are above the national average.

The reading score stat is nice overall, but leaves out that within that same test, Wisconsin has the worst gap in the nation between black and white students. This is something voucher schools were supposed to diminish in Milwaukee through "competition", and instead the gaps have become worse and more disgraceful over time.

In addition, having "above-average" graduation rates is something Wisconsin has had for years, mostly because of the state's previously-strong investment in public education. In fact, since DPI changed its measurements in 2004, Wisconsin's graduation rates have been among the best in the best in the nation. This was true before the Age of Fitzwalkerstan began in 2011, and last year's figures actually signal a decline from previous years (click here to see many of these measurements).

Wisconsin HS graduation rate
2004-05 88.8%
2008-09 89.0%
2010-11 90.5%
2012-13 92.1%
2014-15 88.8%

Now 88.8% is still pretty good, and a testament to the foundation of strong schools that we had before then. But there is no proof to Vos's assertion that the increase in voucher schools under GOP policy has helped the performance of Wisconsin's K-12 education, and if anything, things are worse now than when the WisGOPs came to power 5 years ago. Strike three Robbin', now get the fuck out!

This attempted spin to justify vouchers leads to this question. What was so messed up in Wisconsin schools that Vos and the rest of the ALEC crew decided to screw it up? Here's what the ALEC boys thought was screwed up- public school unions tended to back Dems, and voucher schools tend to give money to Republicans. So Vos and the ALEC crew decided to use our taxpayer dollars to funnel money to their financial backers, and then they try to cherry-pick stats and make up ideological reasons to keep the scam going. It was all a political move (as was Act 10) and it used the state treasury to kick back rewards to their allies.

The ALEC crew in the Capitol is not interested at all in improving K-12 education, or in increasing the investment in public education, and they don't care that past, current and future de-investment hampers our communities and economic competitiveness. Don't believe any whiny WisGOP press releases that come out over the next 4 months that try to claim otherwise.

Education in Walker budget- declining again

I know our governor is paid off and wants to wreck public services any chance he gets, and nowhere is this more flagrant that it is with the K-12 education budget. Our media originally tried to protray Walker's proposed education budget as some kind of "increaed investment", because it plans to slightly increase K-12 funding to public schools between 2013-2015, but still leaves us around $600 million under the total amount we had in the 2009-2011 budget.

Even the Journal-Sentinel had to tell its readers the truth about how Walker's education plans add little to public education, has the money go toward property tax relief and not instruction, and it sends huge amounts of money to voucher schools.

For public schools, Walker is proposing a 1% increase in state general aid, though he has also proposed several other separate increases in state money for specific items.

But Walker is also rejecting an increase in the state-imposed cap in revenues that public schools are allowed to raise from both the state and local property taxpayers. That means that school districts would have to hold a voter referendum to spend any more in public money than they do now.

Walker's proposed increase in state general aid for public schools would be $129.2 million over two years. For the much smaller system of voucher schools, the increase would be $73 million - $45 million from the state and $28 million from local property taxpayers.

Walker's giveaway to the voucher organizations (who have the last 3 GOP Assembly speakers lobbying for it at the Capitol) is made even more obvious when you look at the Department of Public Instruction's budget request for 2013-2015.

When the DPI made their budget for 2013-2015, it asked the Governor to give back $574 million in general K-12 school aids and tax credits. Walker didn't even give them half of that. Likewise, Walker would raise the amount of money going to voucher schoos above and beyond the $56 million increase that DPI asked for. And scarier, Walker's education plan would allow other districts to be opened to vouchers, whether the majority of taxpayers in those places want it or not.

Among the choice programs and initiatives funded in Governor Walker’s budget are:

Wisconsin Parental Choice Program: Open the choice program to school districts with at least two underperforming schools (those receiving school report card grades of "fails to meet expectations" or "meets few expectations"), at least 4,000 students, and at least 20 students intending to participate in the program. This expansion will be capped at 500 students statewide for fiscal year 2014 and 1,000 students statewide for fiscal year 2015. Eligibility requirements for students would be similar to current choice program eligibility requirements.

Now explain to me how these schools will be judged to be "underperforming?" Through test scores? Graduation rates? Not doing enough Louisiana and Florida-style "teach to the test" curricula to placate the Michelle Rhee crowd? It's a system that is set up for massive cheating and distorted outcomes that have little to nothing to do with preparing students for further learning and the adult world. Instead, it is a blatant scam intended to defund and deligitimize public education, and it is a pathetic giveaway to campaign contributors. We'll see if it's allowed to get through as is (a similar attempt died in the Senate last budget, and there are fewer GOPs in the Senate now than there were in 2011).

If vouchers worked, I wouldn't be so forcefully against this plan. But as the Public Policy Forum showed again last week, vouchers do not improve educational outcomes, and many of these schools in Milwaukee do worse than Milwaukee Public Schools.

For example, the Public Policy Forum study showed that MPS and Milwaukee vouchers schools have similar levels of students from economically disadvantged backgrounds (MPS 84%, vouchers 79%) and minority students (MPS 86%, vouchers 80%), so it's pretty much an apples-to-apples group of students. But when it came to test scores on the annual WKCE test, MPS was the clear leader. MPS students had slightly higher numbers of students scoring at "proficient" or "advanced" at virtually every grade level between 3rd and 10th grades in both years than voucher schools did. In math, MPS destroyed the voucher schools, having between 7 and 20% more of its students be proficient in Math than voucher school students did.

The one advantage the Public Policy Forum says voucher schools have is that they have a lower per-student cost when it comes to education than public schools do, partly because voucher schools pay their teachers less and generally offer lower amounts of benefits (with the lower test scores, you could also argue it's proof of "you get what you pay for"). But the PPF also says that a reason voucher schools have low costs is because the offer fewer classes than public schools do.

MPCP schools may opt to control costs by not providing expensive instructional offerings, such as teacher specialists (art, music, etc.), or by offering only certain grade levels.

For example, in this year’s census, 39 of 110 MPCP schools report having no art, music, PE, library or technology specialist teachers. Schools report a total of 52 art teachers, 52 music teachers, 72 PE teachers, 30 librarians, and 51 technology teachers, which represents a program average of less than one of each type of specialist per school.

Of the 18 schools reporting five or more specialist teachers on staff, two-thirds are high schools. For many years school choice advocates have noted that the voucher value is too small to fully fund comprehensive high school costs, which likely contributes to the relatively few high schools participating in the program. As a result, schools are now able to charge high school students whose families earn above 220% of the federal poverty level the tuition difference.

So yes, voucher schools may be slightly cheaper than public schools, but its students have a whole lot fewer classes to choose from, and they don't perform as well on tests. And if the school is run poorly or goes under, there is little recourse for the school or the taxpayers that paid into them (unlike public schools, which will continue to exist year after year, and have school boards that can hold teachers and administrators to account).

With this in mind, there is no legitimate reason to expand this failing program, and to throw more taxpayer dollars at it. But we all know Scott Walker's never really cared about results, but instead cares about what gets him and the voucher interests PAID. So that's why this garbage is slated to end up in the state budget. It's up to us to expose this failure and shut it down before it takes hold and debases all types of education in this state. Because if the Walker education plan comes in, we will be less competitive economically as the level of talent coming into the workforce declines, and the most talented people will leave Wisconsin for somewhere that values critical thinking and quality education. We can't let that happen.

Listen to Superintendent Evers. Stand up for public education

As many state agencies officially submitted their budgets to Gov Walker’s office on Thursday, State Superintendent Tony Evers used the day to say he would plan to ask for more funding to deal with the gaps that are widening in many districts around the states. Superintendent Evers included a statement to the press along with his speech in the Capitol rotunda, and he pointed to the demonization of “union thug” teachers and defunding of public education as two developments in Wisconsin that must end in order for K-12 to get better in the state.

“To promote excellence for every student, we cannot ignore the critical staffing shortages many of our districts face. To put it simply, not enough of our young people are considering careers in education,” Evers said. He recounted his experience as a member of the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents while dining on college campuses. “Not once in eight years have I sat down for lunch next to someone who told me they were pursuing a career in education,” he said. “Data to back up that anecdote shows graduation and enrollment in Wisconsin educator preparation programs is down when compared to 2009 levels. On ACT’s survey of test-takers, fewer students are indicating that education is their preferred field of study.”

To address staffing shortages, Evers adopted emergency rules in August designed to reduce hurdles for districts without sacrificing the quality of the teaching profession. He noted that additional changes will require long-term solutions that address the status and pay of educators. In his budget, he will be seeking additional resources for rural schools to compete on a level playing field for teachers. “But one strategy is free and we can do it today,” he said. “We need to end the negative rhetoric surrounding the teaching profession. Teachers teach because they care about kids. We ought to treat them with respect and pay them as professionals.”

The issue of educator pay is intrinsically linked to how we fund our schools. From 2009 to 2014, Wisconsin ranked near the bottom for change in teacher pay according to the U.S. Census Bureau, a 2.4 percent decrease in take home pay over six years. “When the founders of our state crafted a system of public education, they put great value on the idea of an equitable system,” Evers said. “I believe the public is with us on the need to address funding reform. In the past five years, passage rates for referenda have drastically increased. Today almost 80 percent of questions asked are approved. Citizens are voting to raise their taxes because the state is not pulling its weight. Polling also continues to show that the public favors adding more funding for our schools. But for every eight districts that can pass a referenda in today’s environment, there are two that can’t. That creates a system of haves and have nots—and it is not acceptable.”

I’d call that a serious throwing of the gauntlet by the usually mild-mannered Evers (who is up for re-election in April 2017, by the way), and I think it’s badly needed. The current ALEC-owned crew at the Capitol is not going to do anything to help these gaps or improve the ability of public schools to excel, because they’d rather get campaign contributions from race-baiting jackwagon Scott Jensen and his buddies in the voucher lobby.

Evers ended his address by telling district superintendents that they have to step up and go public with the many challenges that K-12 schools are facing these days, and after having that conversation, move those talks into action.

I want to close by asking something of each and every one of you. It’s not small, and it won’t be easy. We desperately need broad support to achieve excellence for each and every child. We also need people who are willing to be honest; people willing to talk to each other about inequities; people willing to find strength in the diversity that makes Wisconsin, and America, great. I am convinced that if we can speak up together with candor and without fear, solving our problems around school funding and school staffing will come. It will come for every kid in Wisconsin.

Superintendent Evers is right on the money, but I will also add that K-12 officials need to understand that working "behind the scenes" and thinking the current WisGOP Legislature can be of any assistance with is simply not true. If you care about stabilizing and improving public education in Wisconsin, and know that it is the key to maintaining our economic competitiveness, you must remove all Republicans from the Legislature anywhere you can, and make sure Tony Evers defeats his voucher lobby puppet next April.

Sure that's being partisan, but it's being partisan on the side of quality of public education that all Wisconsinites deserve to have available, and to benefit from. That shouldn't be a matter of party politics, but as long as Scott Jensen and the ALEC crew are calling the shots for the Wisconsin GOP, it is. KNOW THIS.

For more on this, listen to a guy who I'm going to see in Madison in 2 weeks- Lewis Black (of course, the language is NSFW).


"It all starts with education, that's where it starts. You fuckin' look for great teachers, you don't fuck around, and you pay them. It just that simple."

Wisconsin's Way once meant strong public schools. Not anymore, and we gotta bring it back

I noticed the recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum on school spending by the state’s preK-12 schools. And over the last 2 decades, lawmakers in this state have refused to keep up our investments in public education to an alarming level.

Per-pupil spending on public PreK-12 schooling in Wisconsin grew from $8,574 per pupil in 2002 to $12,740 in 2020, an increase of 48.6% that was the third smallest rise of any state (after Idaho and Indiana). Over the same time period, the nation’s per-pupil spending grew by 75.2%, from $7,701 to $13,494 (see Figure 1). These figures are not adjusted for inflation, which rose 43.9% over those years, or somewhat less than the increase in Wisconsin’s per-pupil spending…..

From 2002 to 2020, public PreK-12 school enrollment across the country increased by 1.8%. In comparison, Wisconsin’s enrollment declined by 3.8%. The state’s loss of students means that Wisconsin’s current per-pupil spending figures look better than they would if both state and national enrollment had held steady since 2002.

So Wisconsin does even worse compared to the rest of the US when you look at total resources spent overall on public education, with that number being at or even below the rate of inflation.

Instead of staying economically competitive by improving education, wages and our work force, our state has generally decided to "increase competitiveness" in a different way over that time period.

The drop in the state’s per-pupil spending rank occurred over the same years that Wisconsin was reducing its tax burden, or the share of residents’ income paid in state and local taxes. From 2002 to 2019 (national figures are not yet available for 2020), this percentage dropped from 11.2% to 10.3% ....This drop of 0.9 percentage points may seem relatively insignificant, but it amounted to $2.59 billion less in state and local tax revenues collected in 2019 alone.

State and local taxes are the primary funding source for PreK-12 public education in Wisconsin and nationally. For example, in 2019, state and local revenues funded 93.4% of Wisconsin’s school spending and 92.3% of the nation’s. In addition, PreK-12 education is the largest expense for state and local governments combined, both in Wisconsin and across the country. That relationship makes it difficult to hold down taxes without consequently limiting education spending.

There’s a direct line in this relationship via the strict revenue limits from Republicans in the Legislature over the last dozen years, which restrict the amount of money that districts are able to raise via property taxes, as well as the amount of money public school districts can spend.

Not surprisingly, this means that Wisconsin went from being above the national average for investing in its public schools to below it in less than 20 years.

Additional data from the Census Bureau’s school finance survey provide further context. In 2002, 4.8% of state personal income went toward current spending on public PreK-12 education (compared to 4.2% nationally). By 2019, that share had dropped by 1.15 percentage points to 3.6% of Wisconsinites’ personal income, a hair below the national average. (The latter also rounded to 3.6%, a drop of only 0.6 points from 2002.) As Wisconsin has lowered its relative tax burden for residents, one consequence has been less spending on [public] education compared to the rest of the country.

As a side note, voucher schools in Wisconsin have received a much larger increase in state resources over the same time period, and have no such revenue limits to control their tuition. If that sounds like one-sided BS, that’s because it is.

If you dig into that Census Bureau school finance survey, and adjust for income (which matters as a tax base for resources), you find that Wisconsin is consistently in the bottom half of US spending and revenue in a number of areas.

Wisconsin rank in preK-12 spending per $1,000 of income, FY 2020
Revenue
Overall revenue 31st ($41.20 vs $41.90 US)
Federal sources 37th ($2.67 vs $3.14 US)
State sources 20th ($22.62 vs $19.69 US)
Local sources 27th ($15.91 vs $19.07 US)

Spending on Operations
Overall spending 27th ($20.99 vs $22.01 US)
Instructional Salaries 32nd ($13.16 vs $13.42 US)
Employee Benefits 26th ($5.65 vs $5.93 US)
General Administration 25th ($0.78 vs $0.69 US)
School Administration 42nd ($1.82 vs $1.98 US)

And in looking at those stats, one state kept coming showing up at the bottom of these stats over and over. The RW “free state” of Flori-duhhhhh.

Florida rank in preK-12 spending per $1,000 of income, FY 2020
Revenue
Overall revenue 50th ($28.70 vs $41.90 US)
Federal sources 31st ($2.96 vs $3.14 US)
State sources 50th ($10.90 vs $19.69 US)
Local sources 32nd ($14.84 vs $19.07 US)

Spending on Operations
Overall spending 49th ($15.15 vs $22.01 US)
Instructional Salaries 50th ($8.62 vs $13.42 US)
Employee Benefits 50th ($2.69 vs $5.93 US)
General Administration 50th ($0.23 vs $0.69 US)
School Administration 49th ($1.34 vs $1.98 US)

And yet, look who thinks that “49th/50th in investment in our public schools” is something we should copy!

Sure, but how’s your ice fishing?

Florida is thriving under conservative reform. Wisconsin is next when I’m governor. https://t.co/DgWOUjaxqY

— Rebecca Kleefisch (@RebeccaforReal) July 6, 2022

1. Most of those "rankings" come from 2019, and pretty much pre-dates DeSantis' "reforms". I'm guessing Fla won't look so good when those rankings get updated.

2. Hey Becks - we saw how this state floundered under your first round of GOP “reforms”, and how getting rid of the advantages we once had in public education and quality of life/services had us fall behind for job and wage growth. We sure as hell shouldn’t be looking to turn our state into a 3rd World Banana Republic(an) cesspool like Florida.

Florida’s “use tourism and toll roads to fund stuff while de-investing in social services and let the rich get away with paying very little” isn’t a model that will work for anywhere long-term. And that’s especially true for a state like Wisconsin that’s 1. An icebox for several months and 2. In severe need of a growing work force. Instead, we have to rebuild us back into a high-quality of life place that people want to move to and raise families in.

That includes ending the defunding of our community schools, disrespect of teachers and resentment of education that Republicans have done throughout the 2010s and 2020s. Add in the fact that stimulus funds run out in the next 2 years and huge resource constraints are set to return to our schools unless we change course, we need to bring back the Wisconsin Way that so many of us took pride in when we grew up here in the 20th Century. Which won't happen if GOPs are allowed to be in charge anywhere.

Evers K-12 plan shows where Walker's stunts fall short

I know our media doesn't like to go over policy when discussing election campaigns, but I think we should take some time to talk about K-12 education. Not only because it is by far the largest expense of state tax dollars, but also because State School Superintendent and Democratic candidate for governor Tony Evers released his plan for public education for the next biennial budget this week, which will be integrated into the Department of Public Instruction's upcoming budget request.

One part of that plan includes a proposed $600 million that Evers wants to add in special education aid over the next 2 years. This is a portion of the DPI budget that has not been increased since Walker took office 7 1/2 years ago, which means the state barely covers 1/4 of designated special education costs today.

I'll go over the special ed topic at some other time, and instead I want to go over the other aspects of Evers' proposal, which Wispolitics went into detail on.

Evers as part of his “Fair Funding” plan [Tuesday] will propose indexing revenue limits to inflation. The limit caps how much schools can spend through a combination of state aid and property taxes.

Indexing the limit to inflation would almost always put it above the current revenue limit of a 0% increase per pupil. Those tight caps have pushed many districts into referenda just to keep operating as they currently are.

Obviously, this plan will be spun as “wanting higher property taxes” by WisGOPs. But Wisconsin school districts that had referenda asking to go over those caps had more than 3/4 of them approved over the last 2 years. In addition, the Marquette Law Poll from June showed that a majority of Wisconsinites are OK with their property taxes being raised for schools.

Which would you prefer, lowering property taxes or increasing spending on public schools? 59% say public schools, 35% say property taxes. #mulawpoll

— MULawPoll (@MULawPoll) June 20, 2018

Evers would also plan to bring back a level of state aids that we had grown used to in Wisconsin until the last 10 years.

His plan also will call for guaranteeing that the state fund two-thirds of each student’s education. The budget Gov. Scott Walker introduced in February called for funding 64.6 percent of public school costs after the state’s commitment dropped below 62 percent in 2012.

This would allocate more state money to the schools and lock it in for the future. But the obvious problem is the $1 billion structural deficit the state will be facing for the next budget due to the pre-election spending spree Walker and other Republicans went on to blow the small surplus of funds that we had.

How will we continue to come up with enough money to fulfill that “2/3 funding promise”? That’ll be a question sure to be asked, and the reason it'll be difficult to answer is due to the Republicans’ “Starve the Beast” agenda on public services.

Wispolitics notes a couple of other parts about the Superintendent’s proposed 2019-21 budget for DPI.

Evers also will call for:

*changes to the way pre-K students’ attendance is counted for the purpose of distributing state aid. Currently, state law requires that students enrolled in full-day programs be counted as one-half pupil, rather than one pupil. Under Evers’ plan, students in those full-time programs would be counted as one in calculating state aid.

*a state component to match the federal 21st Century Community Learning Center grant program. Under the current framework, the federal Department of Education provides grants to DPI for administering summer and after-school programs that often serve students from low-income families. President Trump last year moved to eliminate the program under his budget proposal. Under the state program, DPI would be able to fund CLCs the agency would otherwise have to deny if there’s a shortage of federal dollars, per a spokesman.

Both of those are interesting ideas, particularly the incentive for Wisconsin schools to have full-day pre-K, since having it would give districts more money under the state’s general aid and per-pupil aids.

The CLC proposal is a direct effect of Trump/DeVos education policies that devalue public education, and you can see how those regressive moves would kick the responsibility down to the states. It also illustrates tax cuts at the federal level being used as an excuse to get rid of certain programs (even if they work), and how tax cuts in by state legislators in Wisconsin will make it tougher for the state to deal with these programs that are handed off to them by Trump and DeVos.

Note that “education governor” Scott Walker isn’t promising anything past the one-time increases K-12 schools will see for this upcoming school year (and even that bump in funding isn’t enough to prevent some districts from cutting staff and services). Which tells you that our schools will be back on the chopping block if the voters of this state are stupid enough to return Walker and other voucher proponents into office.



It’s a cagey move by Evers to use his state budget submittal as a way to draw that contrast, and it’s a good marker for Tony to throw down to separate himself for both the primary and general elections. The polls and the referendum results show that Wisconsin voters want to see that commitment to K-12 public schools restored as well.

7 years after Act 10, it should be obvious that Scott Walker and his millions in dirty DeVos dollars don’t have anything to offer the majority of Wisconsinites that want to see their schools be adequately funded. Evers or any other Dem that might emerge from the August 14 primary would be wise to talk up their plans to restore the commitment to K-12 public education that Wisconsin used, and keep Gov Dropout off-balance.

Vouchers defraud while public schools struggle to stay open

The Wisconsin State Journal’s Molly Beck was guilty of committing an act of journalism over the weekend, showing that numerous private schools whose students were given vouchers for K-12 education had been shut down over the past decade for underperformance, and at a huge cost to state taxpayers.

Over the past 10 years, Wisconsin taxpayers have paid about $139 million to private schools that were subsequently barred from the state’s voucher system for failing to meet requirements related to finances, accreditation, student safety and auditing, a Wisconsin State Journal review has found.

More than two thirds of the 50 schools terminated from the state’s voucher system since 2004 — all in Milwaukee — had stayed open for five years or less, according to the data provided by the state Department of Public Instruction. Eleven schools, paid a total of $4.1 million, were terminated from the voucher program after just one year.

So did the state get its money back from these fly-by-night schools failing? OF COURSE NOT, and the vouchers’ biggest lobbyist joined the State Senate’s Education Chair in saying it should stay that way.

Recouping money sent to shuttered schools isn’t a feasible option, since the money is gone, [School Choice Wisconsin President Jim] Bender and {State Sen. Luther] Olsen said. Bender said the money was used for educating children and not squandered in most cases.

“The idea that you would go back and get money that was used for education is a misguided perception,” he said.

Bender warned against assuming that, because some schools closed, the entire system has failed. He said when poor-performing schools close, the students who attended those schools can move to a school that is meeting requirements.

If a kid’s school fails and underperforms in giving a good education, the kid can just go somewhere else in another part of town. Shit, that's good enough for Jimmy Bender. I’m sure that’s not disruptive at all socially (the “new kid” never has a problem adjusting to a different school, right?), and I’m sure being 2 years behind his/her peers in the classroom due to the last school’s crappy job won’t be a drag on his/her learning at this one.

Does Jim Bender have a clue about kids’ lives and how to improve their chances for success? Likely not, but he doesn’t care about that too much, because he and his backers are getting paid well in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan. Beck’s article mentions that voucher schools will receive $210 million in state aid this school year, and Governor Scott Walker has mentioned that he would like this number to go much higher in the future, perhaps to the point that there are no limitations on how many students could get vouchers throughout the state.

Of course, unlike the number of students in Walker’s voucher plan, the taxpayer dollars to fund those vouchers aren’t unlimited. And often, voucher funds are accumulated by taking away state aid to public schools. Remember this picture I showed around a few weeks back, as schools were starting up in Wisconsin? Note which parts of the state have a ton of beige and red.



Those beige and red areas are where districts projected to get cuts in state aid for 2014-15. That’s not cuts per student, that’s cuts in overall aid, and a lot of those cuts have led to situations so desperate that WQOW-TV in Eau Claire reports that 83 Wisconsin school districts will have referenda in 3 weeks, mostly asking to raise property taxes for their schools. In many of these cases, the referenda are in small, rural school districts that need to raise taxes just to keep the lights on and to keep operating at their current levels. This is the direct result of Scott Walker and the WisGOP Legislature funneling off state aids from these districts, and sending them over into vouchers, which often go into these newbie schools that have shown no evidence of providing a quality education.

It is especially noteworthy that these districts are having financial difficulties 3 years after Act 10 was put into effect in many of these places. Walker and WisGOP honks may talk up the “savings” from Act 10’s “tools”, and sure, they did lower costs to the general taxpayer in the short-run (by raising the costs to that certain group of taxpayers called school district employees), but those haven’t been nearly enough to make up for the continual cuts to public education, especially in rural Wisconsin. Add in the problems in attracting and retaining teachers in many districts, with the huge amount of retirements in the field over the last 3 years and fewer UW System students entering teacher training programs after seeing the denigration of the profession, and you can see how imperiled the quality of our state’s education system is.

But you didn’t think Scott Walker actually wanted to IMPROVE education in Wisconsin, did you? Silly goose. He just wanted to throw more taxpayer dollars to Jim Bender’s and (convicted criminal) Scott Jensen’s GOP money-funneling operation at the voucher lobby, and hurt Dems’ political chances in the process.

So three years after Act 10, with the prospect of huge increases in property taxes and/or increases in class sizes and reductions in school services in the places that badly need a strong public education to level the playing field, how’s that “divide-and-conquer” strategy on education working out for us? If you’re not a rich person who stands to grab the new $30 million private sector tuition tax break and/or work for WisGOP and WisGOP donators, it’s probably sucked.

Lewis Black summed it up in his own inimitable (and NSFW) way at a stand-up performance last week. People who disinvest in public education are short-sighted greedheads who should not be put in charge of anything past a hot dog stand, and those who rip on public school teachers and call them overpaid are pathetic a-holes.



"It starts with education, you fuckin' look for great teachers, you don't fuck around, and you pay them, if you want your kids top be taught well."

Vukmir tries talking up WisGOP K-12 policy- reveals more failures and shell games

It’s becoming pretty obvious as the next school year begins that the 5 ½ years of defunding and disrespect of public education by the Wisconsin GOP is taking its toll on the state. State Superintendent Tony Evers made emergency moves this week to allow for more long-term subs and other measures to stem off a teacher shortage that has resulted from applicants not wanting to work in many underfunded, underpaying districts. And this reality is clearly influencing the state’s voters, as Dems have been on the attack with numerous memos from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau showing the effects of these cuts, including one from State Sen. Janet Bewley last week that showed the vast majority of Wisconsin’s school districts receive less state categorical aid than they did in 2010-11.

As WisGOP flails in the polls partly due to these education policies, State Senator Leah Vukmir (aka “The ALEC Queen”) tried to turn back the tide by sending up another memo to the LFB. Vukmir followed by giving out a press release in her typically (no-) class manner, along with a shout-out to the voucher movement that pays her campaign contributions.

“My Republican colleagues in the Legislature and I are committed to funding students whose parents choose public schools. Since 2012 we have increased state aids to public education, and we will continue to budget with students’ best interests in mind. Thanks to state Republicans, students in Wisconsin are getting a quality education, and they’re doing it with expanded opportunities that weren’t available before.

“Here’s my advice to my Democrat [zing!] colleagues unhappy with education in Wisconsin: perhaps aim to improve education policy by diversifying educational opportunity, as opposed to showing more interest in employee-protectionist policies. Recent primary results indicate that Wisconsinites overwhelmingly support educational alternatives. It is becoming rather tiresome that some Democrats continue to criticize effective policy initiatives while simultaneously turning a blind eye to schools failing our youth.

The duplicity and bullcrap in Vukmir’s statement is pathetic enough (hey Leah, didja see the recent ACT scores and their racial gaps, along with statewide teacher shortages? And why don't you care about the underperforming voucher schools that close up shop mid-year, stealing our taxpayer dollars while leaving students stranded and unstable?), but let’s take on her statement that Republicans are adding funding to education.

The LFB memo split up funding four ways, with the state being one leg of that foundation. To the LFB’s and Vukmir’s credit, it looks like they they only counted public school aids, and didn’t include the hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars thrown at voucher schools in this time period (counting voucher money is a GOP trick to say “we spent more money on K-12 education!”, because those scumbags think voucher schools are the same as public ones- except for the public accountability part). It also looks like they used what was actually spent out, as opposed to what was budgeted.

When we break down those figures from 2010-11 to ‘14-15, we see the following changes.

Change in funding 2010-11 vs 2014-15
State aid- DOWN $95.0 million
Federal aid- DOWN $205.0 million
Property taxes- UP $61.3 million
Other local revs (gifts, fees, etc.)- UP $53.8 million
TOTAL SPENDING – DOWN $184.8 million

Uh, that doesn’t seem to prove your point, ALEC Queen Leah. We spent less on education in 2014-15 than in 2010-11, and cuts in aid from the state accounted for over half of that decline. This also illustrates the Walker/WisGOP shell game of shifting costs down to the local property taxpayer and individuals

Oh wait, Vukmir ranted something else in that release about Act 10 “savings” (read: money taken from teachers and staff) making up for the loss in state aid and that funding has been increased since the Walker/WisGOP’s cuts of $437 million in that first year. I suppose part of that is true - the state gave out $342 million in additional aids to public schools between 2011-12 and 2014-15. But it leaves out the fact that the 2014-15 level was still below 2010-11’s, both on a total and per-student basis, and that’s BEFORE inflation is figured in.

Vukmir also doesn’t mention that local taxes and fees have gone up in that time period as well.

Change in local funding 2011-12 vs ‘14-15
Property taxes- UP $107.7 million
Other local revenues- UP $19.9 million
TOTAL LOCAL SPENDING- UP $127.6 MILLION

Another stat in this memo breaks down these figures on a per-student basis. I suppose in WisGOP world, this could be used to show that the slight decline in public school enrollment of 2,900 over those four years makes the publics look less “efficient”. Except that the per-student costs are still below the figures of 2010-11, and it makes the tax-shifting look even worse.

Change in per-student revenues, 2010-11 vs ’14-’15
State aids- DOWN $90/student
Federal aid- DOWN $236/student
Local Property taxes- UP $91/student
Other local revenues- UP $64/student
TOTAL- DOWN $182/student

So much for Walker and WisGOP cutting your property taxes and out-of-pocket costs for the last 5 years.

And the increase in per-student revenues since 2012 barely matches the rate of inflation, with no magic bullet like “Act 10 savings” to hold down real-world costs. In fact, after a one-time drop in property taxes for 2011-12 the property tax increases have been larger with each passing year.

Change in property taxes per student, 2012-’13 to ‘14-’15
2012-13- UP $5
2013-14- UP $41
2014-15- UP $86
TOTAL $132

And that’s before the slate of referenda that was passed for the 2015-16 and 2016-17 school years are taken into account, so you can count on that number going up when this is refigured for the coming years.

So no, ALEC Queen, the small amount of crumbs you have tossed back into public education in the last 4 years don’t come close to making up for the cuts you imposed on these districts 5 years ago. In addition, the numbers you were trying to spin clearly show that Wisconsin property taxpayers are shelling out more of their own money to make up the difference for your negligence and vandalism. And no matter how many angry press releases Leah Vukmir sends out, those fiscal facts don’t change, nor does it change the reality that Wisconsin districts are not able to pay for retain talent under today’s constraints.

Underfunding and denigrating one of the state’s few advantages (public schools) isn’t working out, it isn’t making schools more stable, and it’s not improving the human capital that comes out of those schools. Time for a new plan, and getting rid of the ALEC types like Vukmir who squander the Act 10 “savings” on handouts to unproductive corporates and voucher schools.

K-12 voucher deal makes an already-large giveaway even more massive

A few recent developments have piled up as the state budget and other bills go through the Capitol this month. One I wanted to catch up on relates to a major boost in K-12 funding, particularly for the state’s already-huge voucher program that helps pay for students to attend private schools.

As part of a sweeping agreement between Republican leaders and Evers to boost state and local funding for municipalities, public, charter and private voucher schools will receive a boost in state dollars as well.

Some Assembly Republicans, including Speaker Robin Vos, have touted the agreement as an "expansion" of the private voucher school programs in Wisconsin. It does not expand the programs, however — enrollment in the programs stays the same — but it does increase the amount of money each voucher is worth, which could allow private schools to expand the number of non-voucher seats the school may accommodate.

One provision being considered will increase the amount of the taxpayer-funded voucher private schools receive per student. Under the bill, payments would increase from $8,399 to $9,500 per K-8 student and from $9,045 to $12,000 per high school student. Payments for students in the voucher program for students with disabilities would increase to $14,677 per student from $13,076. Charter schools would increase from $9,264 to $11,000 per student under the deal.

I was struck by the paragraphs that followed this information in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel’s story on the voucher bill, where a private school president accidentally exposes the BS inside the pro-voucher argument of “it’s cheaper to teach students with vouchers”

John Hoch, president of St. Thomas More High School in Milwaukee, told lawmakers Monday in a public hearing on the bill that educating one student "costs far more" than the current $9,045 amount and requires additional fundraising efforts.

Increasing vouchers could let some schools add seats or increase pay, Hoch said, but "for others, it could mean the difference between keeping their doors open or having to end operations entirely. The situation is that dire."

Huh, why doesn’t Robbin’ Vos, Devin LeMahieu not feel the same way about public schools in communities that have these issues, with less state aid per student and no tuition to back them up? (easy answer – no Betsy DeVos or Bradley Foundation donations in that).

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau gave a breakdown of the voucher bill, and it’s even more a bonus payment that you may think. That’s because the LFB says that voucher schools will also benefit from the increase in revenue limits that public schools are slated to get in the state budget.

Then all of these figures rise again for 2024-25. Cool deal if you're on the receiving end of this subsidy.

The voucher increases also mean that public schools will lose more state aids. That's because a sizable portion of these vouchers are “funded” by taking money away from the public K-12 school district the voucher student lives in, even if the kid never took a day of classes in the public schools.

And that taking of funds has increased throughout the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, blunting any (still below-inflation level) state aid increases that those districts may have received in recent years.

I freely admit that I might be slightly off on the exact numbers because the LFB is mixing and matching a lot of variables, but you can see the point.

The taking of state aids from publicm schools have also led to property tax increases on residents of the districts where voucher students live. After all, losing 1 or even 10 students in a school isn’t going to cause that school to close, and it won’t cause a change in the overhead costs of operating it. So the funds have to be made up somehow.

I can see why Vos and the WisGOPs are sending this in a standalone bill, because if the voucher increase was part of the budget, Evers likely could have vetoed some/all of the per-student increases out (since the move would save taxpayer dollars), and the Legislature likely wouldn’t be able to override it. Instead, if Evers vetoes this voucher bill, then WisGOPs can hold up the budget in the gerrymandered Legislature, with public schools and everyone else getting no increases at all.

In reaction to this, State Rep. Darrin Madison (D/Socialist-Milwaukee) had an amazing statement on the voucher school bill, explaining why it makes an already uneven playing field even more slanted against low-income Milwaukeeans.

Unfortunately, AB 305 and K-12 education has now been brought into the equation at the expense of our public education system. One of my predecessors, Annette Polly Williams, was the author of the first school choice legislation in the nation. I must acknowledge the history and positive intent of school choice driven by the historical disparities between Black and brown students in public education. It is important to note that in a public school system that relies on local taxes for funding, these disparities are directly related to the history of redlining and white flight in the most segregated city in America. The Speaker even referenced Polly’s vision today on the floor, even though she had to distance herself from the school choice movement in the 2010s because what was supposed to be an experiment and opportunity for low-income students of color from Milwaukee turned into a strategic divestment from our public school system.

I understand the intent behind the decisions that parents and families are currently making in order to send their young people to the best schools for their child. However, we also have to address the harm that school choice can cause children, including special education students or students with identities that are not respected in their school. Additionally, choice schools have access to private funding sources and do not need this historic investment of public funds. Most importantly, choice schools should not be the solution to discriminatory practices such as redlining or school segregation, nor were they ever intended to be a solution for students who suffer from the recurring divestment of public education that we have seen under this Republican-led legislature. Though we have a long way to go, the only way to ensure accountability of public funding and educational outcomes is to truly invest in our public schools so that every child, no matter their identity, background, or zip code, can get the quality education that they deserve.”

And Republicans have zero interest in dealing with the societal inequities that Rep. Madison is referencing, and now are imposing more controls and demands on how the City spends its funds through the shared revenue bill.

I know sometimes you have to make deals to get bigger budget packages done, and I take small solace in the fact that the limits on voucher enrollment aren’t expanded further. The $325/$650 increase in revenue limits is needed for public schools, who have been choked by absurdly low limits under WisGOPs for years, although there is still catch-up to do.

But it feels like Evers may have given up too much on the voucher side as part of that deal. The hope I have is that he’s thinking that Dems can win with fair maps in 2024 and this and other inequities can be corrected in the next budget. And maybe the WisGOPs sense it to, which could make Robbin’ Vos want to bank this big increase in voucher payments before he quits to cash in loses power as Speaker.

Just like ALEC planned- less Wisconsin teachers, and less want to be

In today's edition of "Gee, whaddya know?", the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel took a deep dive into a recently-released report which gives hard numbers behind teacher staffing in Wisconsin, and how those ranks are being thinned in the post-Act 10 world. While the results of the Public Policy Forum’s report aren’t surprising, they do illustrate that teachers are leaving the profession in higher numbers, both in the Milwaukee area, and statewide.

Among the findings:

■ Wisconsin saw a spike in departures between the 2010-’11 and 2011-’12 school years. Act 10, the state law restricting bargaining rights for public employees, including teachers, took effect in the intervening summer. But the report could not definitively point to the law as the cause.

■ Milwaukee Public Schools, the state’s largest district, lost 9% to 15.4% of its teachers annually over a four-year period. But others, including Waukesha and several in rural communities, saw higher rates.

■ While departing teachers tended to be retirement age, more than a third in the Milwaukee area were in their 20s and 30s. New teachers with less than five years of experience were the second-largest group to leave.

■ More than a fourth of the teaching workforce in metro Milwaukee is over 50, suggesting that departures will increase, and about 62% of the replacement teachers come in with no prior experience.

Making this situation worse is that there is a smaller amount of potential teachers entering the pipeline. The PPF report goes on to report that enrollment in the state’s college teacher education programs has declined significantly in the 2010s.

A casual look at the data shows the number of students enrolled in teacher preparation programs has declined sharply over the [2008-2014] period. Statewide, enrollment levels have fallen 27.9%, from 12,323 students in the 2008-09 school year. Public universities saw the biggest impact of the decline with enrollments falling 31.5% over the six years. Private colleges experienced a decline of 18.2% over the same period. Indeed, 28 of the 41 programs in the sample saw enrollments fall since 2008-09.

Looking at individual programs, UW-Oshkosh was affected the most, with enrollment falling by 1,526 students (70.1%) since 2008-09. UW-Whitewater and UW-Eau Claire also experienced large decreases of 679 and 272 students, respectively. Some colleges appear to have added students over time, though enrollments have declined from their peak. For example, UW-Milwaukee had

499 students enrolled in its program in 2013-14, an increase of 251 students compared to 2008-09. However, enrollments fell by nearly 50% from a peak of 962 students in 2010-11.

The PPF paper is careful not to directly blame Act 10 for this decrease, claiming that the real decline didn’t start until 2012-13 (a year after Act 10 was passed) and that other Midwestern states also had declines in teacher education programs. But this is easy to explain, as students who were sophomores and juniors in 2010-11 (when the Act 10 “bomb” was dropped) would be likely to continue with their major instead of changing gears and having to likely take more time to complete their degrees. Once those students left, and once Governor Walker was retained in the June 2012 recall election, it became evident that Act 10 provisions would remain in place, and students adjusted their careers afterwards.

It’s also not surprising that other Midwestern schools would see declines in teacher education programs in the 2010s. As this chart from a 2014 report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities shows, Wisconsin may have had the largest cut in inflation-adjusted K-12 spending per student in the Midwest between 2008-2014 at over 15%, but Iowa, Illinois, and Michigan also had cuts ranging from between 8.6% and 11.7%, putting all those states in the “top” 20 for cuts per student.



This translated into a sizable drop in local government employment in the first half of the 2010s. Students attending college at that time would rightfully have seen that other areas of the economy were hiring more than education was, and likely shifted their career choices that direction.

The double-whammy in Wisconsin is that Act 10 also reduced take-home pay for teachers and condoned right-wingers and local yokels to denigrate the profession, making that career choice for teaching less worthwhile in take-home pay and satisfaction. It’s almost like the rules of supply and demand don’t just affect business owners, but they also have an effect on what potential workers choose to do as well. Imagine that!

Unfortunately, the Public Policy Forum’s study ends with the 2013-14 school year, which means it does not measure the added cuts to public education and increased voucherization that has happened in Fitzwallkerstan since that time. As the CBPP notes, Wisconsin was the only state in the Midwest to continue to cut funding for K-12 education in 2015-16, and had the 4th-largest cuts to K-12 schools in the country, going against the nationwide trend of restoring funding to public schools.



So with K-12 teachers aging and a lack of new college graduates on the horizon to replace them, how can schools keep on having classrooms staffed at an adequate level? One of WisGOP's answers: Lower the standards of becoming a teacher! Remember this from last year, after a UW-Madison student delivered a petition with over 37,000 signatures protesting licensing “reforms”?

Under the proposal, the Department of Public Instruction would be required to give a teaching license to anyone with a bachelor’s degree in core subject areas like English, math, social studies and science. People who demonstrated knowledge in non-core subjects also would be eligible for a teaching license, even if they didn’t have a bachelor’s degree.

“Nobody, nobody wants to lower the licensure standards for teaching in Wisconsin,” [UW-Madison education student Briana] Schwabenbauer told [Edgewood College professor Jed] Hopkins and Tim Slekar, dean of the Edgewood School of Education, on their on their BustEd Pencils podcast.

“It’s become a movement,” said Schwabenbauer. “We’ve built up this momentum around the idea that we need higher standards in our education system and to meet those standards we need to push our educators, not discourage them from going into education.”

Hours after a press conference announcing the delivery of Schwabenbauer’s petition, Rep. Mary Czaja, R-Irma, announced her proposal was being redrafted.

Czaja told the Wisconsin State Journal that under new language being drafted, individuals receiving the proposed alternative teaching licenses and permits could work only part time and in one school. The revised proposal would also require anyone teaching in a non-core subject area to have at least a high school diploma, something not included in the original language.

The proposal was eventually modified to allow for “experience-based” teacher licensing in certain STEM and technical fields, and to allow for reciprocity with other states if the teacher had at least one year of teaching experience in that other state. But you can see where this is heading, and if the ALEC/GOPs maintain control of the State Legislature after November’s elections, I have little doubt this proposal to lower teaching license standards gets resurrected to handle the “crisis” that is resulting from fewer people wishing to become teachers.

And that’s all part of the ALEC plan, isn’t it? Defund public schools, lower the status of the teaching profession, discourage some of the best and brightest from pursuing it as a career plan, and then use that as the excuse to say “See! Public schools aren’t working these days!” This allows for an excuse to funnel more taxpayer money into private schools, whose operators (and churches) kick some of that money back to them in campaign assistance. Combine that with stupid tax policies that starve the state of revenues and leads to more budget crises and K-12 public education cuts, and the cycle starts all over again.

It’ll only stop when we remove the scummy politicians and their ALEC puppetmasters from the Capitol. Know this, and act accordingly.

Rural schools have been screwed in Fitzwalkerstan

A lot of the talk when it comes to public education in Wisconsin often discusses what to do with eliminating disparities between city schools with high levels of poverty and their suburban counterparts with low poverty. But there’s a third area of Wisconsin K-12 education that has been badly left behind in the Age of Fitzwalkerstan, and that’s the state’s rural public schools.

Today, the top Democrats in the State Assembly released another memo from the Legislative Fiscal Bureau that shows small school districts have been the ones most affected by the cuts to public education that have been a central part of Scott Walker and the WisGOP Legislature’s budgets since 2011. To do so, the LFB was asked to compare the 2010-11 general aid payments to the ones for 2015-16, and it also compared the changes that hit the 1/3 of Wisconsin districts which receive sparsity aid (which started in 2008-09, and goes to districts with small enrollments and low population density) with the other 2/3rds of districts.

Change in general aids 2010-11 vs 2015-16
All Wisconsin districts -4.3%
Schools w/o sparsity aid -3.7%
Schools with sparsity aid -13.5%

And even if you include the sparsity aid into these figures ($14.95 millon in 2010-11, $17.67 million in 2015-16), this means the sparsity aid districts still have lost 12.0% of their funding from the state- over 3 times the rate of losses of larger school districts.

These huge aid reductions are a double-whammy for these often-remote districts, as many have smaller property tax bases to try to make up the difference for these state aid cuts, and are more likely to lack the resources to compete for talent with districts with more community amenities.

In a rarity for Wisconsin Dems, Rep. Shankland accompanied these facts with solid, concise messaging that nailed the problems caused by the current GOP funding scheme.

“There is no denying that our state’s rural school districts face significant challenges,” said Rep. Shankland. “What isn’t helping our rural communities is the fact that Republicans have had over five years to invest at a reasonable level in rural schools and improve the state’s school funding formula so it will work for our rural communities. Instead, we've seen Republican legislators massively expand the private voucher program, taking hundreds of millions of tax dollars away from our public schools over the next decade.”

Shankland concluded, “Our rural districts are at a breaking point. They’ve pinched all the pennies they can. Rural school districts cannot continue to rely on band-aid programs that come and go with each state budget as they figure out how they’re going to keep their doors open for the children of their community. It's time to commit to sustainable funding for our public schools and ensure our children have the best opportunities to succeed in life.

Even more than urban places, rural communities rely on high-quality public education to maintain their quality of life, and there is little else tying those communities together. This bond has been broken under GOP control of Wisconsin, leading to less state funding, less resources for rural schools, and higher property taxes.

In order for Wisconsin’s small towns to avoid becoming Appalachian-style dead-end places in permanent decline, they need to kick out the many GOP legislators that claim to represent “small-town values”, but are actually destroying them through their defunding and disrespect for public schools. The numbers released by the LFB show the damage, and with the current WisGOP crew promising to pursue educational “zones of innovation” in the next budget (aka expanding on the privatization and defunding of public education), the only way to change our direction is to change the legislators.

On the first day of classes, the "education governor" visits...a taxpayer-backed charter school

Our Fair Governor made an interesting choice for his “First Day of School” photo op today.

Had a great time welcoming back students at @LaCasaWI this morning! We’ve made historic investments in our K-12 public schools and charter and choice schools because we want to ensure every student receives access to a quality education. #StudentSuccess https://t.co/9rHBEYxO1h pic.twitter.com/sXai0COY1X

— Governor Walker (@GovWalker) September 4, 2018

La Casa de Esperanza isn’t a technically a “voucher” school, as there’s really no student tuition to be paid for, but is instead a “2r” independent charter school, which is defined by the Department of Public Instruction as follows.

The terms "2r" or "2x" refer to the section of the charter school law within s. 118.40 that grants these entities authority to authorize charter schools. All independent charter schools are considered non-instrumentality schools since since the employees of the school are not employed by any school district but are instead employed by the operating organization of the charter school.

Which of course means that those teachers lack union protections and any kind of publically elected oversight other than the leaders at UW-Milwaukee, (who is the authorizing agency that lets the La Casa operators run the school), and UWM officials have about 1,000 bigger things to worry about than the operations of some charter school in Waukesha.

Odd enough to have that photo op at a charter school and not a typical public school, but look at what happened inside of the school doors.

During the visit, Brad Piazza of La Casa de Esperanza's Board of Directors presented Governor Walker with the Legacy Award for his leadership on parental choice in education."Providing a quality K-12 education that prepares students for college, career, and life is my top priority," said Governor Walker in a statement. "We've made historic investments in our K-12 public schools and charter and choice schools because we want to ensure every student in Wisconsin receives access to a quality education regardless of their ZIP Code."

Which likely means Mr. Piazza’s has or will give a nice check to the Betsy DeVos/Scott Jensen conduits, which will be spit out over the next 9 weeks in ads that will never say the word “vouchers" or "charters", and are 50-50 at best to even mention education.

Since Walker and WisGOP took office in 2011, funding "2r" independent charters like La Casa have risen by more than 20% from $57.425 million to $68.976 million, and the per-student payment to these schools has risen from $7,775 in 2011 to $8,612 for this school year (10.8%). And in 2015, just like vouchers, these 2r schools were allowed to open outside of Milwaukee and Racine, and La Casa de Esperanza was the first school outside of those 2 cities to take advantage.

In addition, the nearly $69 million that the 2r schools are getting comes from funneling away $69 million of general formula aids from Wisconsin school districts …even if the student never attended a regular public school.

Meanwhile, Democrats on the state’s Joint Finance Committee used the first day of school to remind us of the larger Walker/DeVos/Jensen education scam paid by taxpayers – vouchers for students to attend private, religious schools. The numbers come from a memo sent by the Joint Finance Committee to the JFC Dems on the subject.

In the 2017-19 biennium so far, voucher schools have received $269.6 million in state funding, while public schools have seen a $90.6 million reduction in state aid. (And this is only for the voucher program. Aid reductions to independent charters and other privatization programs are on top of this).

· Approximately $475 million of taxpayer dollars were paid to voucher schools over the 2015-17 biennium, during which time public schools in those districts faced a $150 million aid reduction

· Private school voucher programs in Wisconsin have already received over $2.5 billion [$2,576,900,000 approx.] in total state funding, and that number is only growing.

“As our children go back to school, we want the best for them and their bright futures. But Republicans have funneled millions of tax dollars to unaccountable voucher schools while our K-12 public schools continue to go to referendum just to keep the lights on," said Rep. Katrina Shankland (D-Stevens Point).

“Instead of funneling tax dollars to private schools, the legislature should fairly fund our public schools so that everyone in Wisconsin has the same opportunity to learn and succeed.” “Taxpayers have the right to know how much of their hard earned dollars are going toward voucher schools, especially since voucher schools are not required to meet the same accountability standards as public schools and have shown no significant improvements over public school performance,” said Sen. Jon Erpenbach (D-Middleton).

And no matter how much our “education governor” (hold on, I’m doubled over in laughter…OK, better) tries to claim that his one-time bump in per-pupil and sparsity aids somehow makes up for 7 prior years of underfunding and denigration, the money-funnel from public schools to campaign contributors in the voucher/charter lobby doesn’t lie.

So it seems fitting that on the first day of school, Walker showed up at the independent charter school that has taken advantage of his laws expanding of where state school aids can flow to. It reveals Gov Dropout’s true objectives on K-12 education- removing local control from voters and their school districts, busting teachers’ unions through these “independent” schools, and giving state money to private operators who will reward his campaign handsomely.

School year starts in Fitzwalkerstan under teacher shortages and major ethnic gaps

As the Summer winds down and another school year is on the horizon, we’re already starting to see hints that it could be a rough one in many of Wisconsin public districts. Despite the fact that college-prep scores remain strong, there are cracks showing in the foundation that used to be one of Wisconsin’s greatest economic and social strengths.

State Superintendent Tony Evers laid out the truth at a pro-public education event in Wauwatosa yesterday, saying the Walker/WisGOP policies of lower state aids and disrespect of public education and educators over the last 5 years is paying off in a very bad way. Most notably, the current school funding situation is leading to a shell game that results in higher property taxes through voter-approved referenda (often required just to keep the lights on and the classrooms upright), and greater disparities in performance among districts.

“And the reason we're passing referenda is because people like you all across the state, are saying, 'this is b.s,’ we have to support our schools, if the state is not,” he said.

But Evers said the downside is that school referendum efforts in some poorer communities like Milwaukee are less likely to succeed, making worse what he calls the gap between have and have-not school districts.

Evers said the Department of Public Instruction will ask Gov. Scott Walker in the next state budget to focus on having an equitable distribution of state aid for schools, noting he understands any additional dollars may be limited.

Evers said he's especially concerned about teacher shortages in some districts in Western and Northern Wisconsin. He said he's engaging stakeholders from around the state to identify and propose solutions that help school districts address critical staff shortages.

"I think it's about money. I think teachers are underpaid," Evers said. "And second of all, the kind of dysfunctional dialogue we have about public schools, where it always seems to turn to the teachers as the villains here. That's a national issue, but I think it's amplified here in Wisconsin.

That teacher shortage led to Evers outlining emergency steps being taken by DPI to get more teachers in the classroom when the new school year begins in just over a week.

Allowing educators near or in retirement to apply for a nonrenewable, five-year license without professional development requirements.

•Increasing the number of days a short-term substitute can be in the same assignment from 20 to 45

•Expanding criteria for renewal of emergency licenses to include attempting required tests for licensure

•Adding new pathways for teachers to add additional licenses based on content tests

I could land a cheap shot here and point out that Wisconsin’s average ACT scores suffered a sizable drop last year (as the headline in this story indicates), but because I’m not a Republican, and therefore not a dishonest a-hole, I think that number can be excused. Those numbers dropped because 2015-16 was the first year all Wisconsin high school seniors took the test, increasing the pool of test-takers by 42 percent (with many of the new test-takers likely to be lower scorers, since they weren’t taking the college board beforehand), so I don't think the scores themselves are major cause for concern. In fact, Wisconsin was 4th out of 20 states that has virtually all of their graduating students take the ACT - pretty good, although behind our neighbors in Illinois and Minnesota.

But what is disturbing is the massive racial gaps that persist in the state listed as “worst in the country for African-Americans.” Not only did all Hispanics, Native Americans and African-Americans score between 3.6 and 5.6 points lower than their white counterparts in Wisconsin for 2015-16, those gaps persist even when limited to high school students who took “an ACT core curriculum” with 4 years of English, and 3 years each of math, science and social studies.

Average ACT scores of Wis students w-core curric.
White 23.2
Asian 21.9
Multi-racial 21.7
Hispanic 19.5
Native American 18.8
African-American 17.3

Then combine the fact that White students are more likely to take a core curriculum (59%) than Hispanics (47%), African-Americans (43%), and Native Americans (35%), and that non-core students of all races scored 2-4 points lower, and it’s an awful double-whammy that leaves minority groups at a significant disadvantage. Maybe that whole ALEC “de-invest and privatize public education and ghettoize poverty the cities” mentality of the last 25 years isn’t working so hot when it comes to bridging the racial divide in K-12, so perhaps we need to try another way.

Unfortunately, that other way won’t come from the current WisGOP wrecking crew that’s owned by the voucher lobby and other haters of public education. In fact, that 262-dominant group wants to keep all other schools in the state second-class, to allow their mediocre selves to stay on top and lessen competition in the workplace. These sliding results and large gaps are just what the ALEC crew want to claim schools are “failing.”, and continue the money funnel from convicted criminal Scott Jensen and other privateers.

Which means if we want to keep our talented teachers and improve our schools for ALL students, we need new blood inside the Capitol. That can only be done by removing as many of these enemies of public education this November. The recent words from Superintendent Evers and the reports from DPI prove that fact more than ever.

Fund special ed just like we would for vouchers, and stop all those annoying referenda!

If you're annoyed by the prospect of having to deal with referenda to keep your community's public schools afloat, State Sen. Chris Larson recently brought up a way that could avoid some of those ballot questions. Why not have the state pay more for special ed, and lower your district's property taxes in the process?

Larson, a Democrat from Milwaukee, called on Republican lawmakers to convene a special session to use some of the state's budget surplus to raise state reimbursement of special education costs to 90%. A Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo requested by Larson showed the move could cost about $970 million annually, if costs next year are similar to this year.

Republicans previously rejected calls to raise the reimbursement rate. Gov. Tony Evers had proposed raising the rate to 60%, after calls for an increase from a broad coalition of business executives, public school leaders and private school leaders. Republicans walked it back to 33%, a slight increase from the previous rate of 30%.

That leaves districts on the hook to cover the rest of their costs. Most districts had to pull between $1,000 and $2,000 in regular education funding for each district student to cover special education services in the 2019-20 school year, according to a report by the Education Law Center, a New Jersey-based nonprofit that advocates for equitable school funding.

In addition, previous studies have shown that many higher-poverty districts have higher percentages of students in need of special education than schools in more affluent district, which furthers constrains resources for those often higher-cost services. For example, the Education Law Center noticed that Milwaukee Public Schools have to deal with higher burdens from special education services than the North Shore suburb of Whitefish Bay does.

The special education reimbursement shortfalls tend to be highest for districts with higher rates of poverty, an analysis by the Education Law Center found, as those districts have higher numbers of students with disabilities who need special education services....

[For example], in the 2019-20 school year, 84% of MPS students qualified as low income, and 20% were identified as having disabilities. In Whitefish Bay, 2% of students were low income, and 11% had disabilities. MPS had to use about $2,000 of its general funding per student to cover special education costs, while Whitefish Bay had to pull about $1,100 per student.

Larson then combined the two concepts and noted that if the state funded 90% of those special ed costs, there would be a much lower need for referenda, because schools wouldn't need to use as much of their "regular" property-tax supported funding to pay for special ed.

Unreimbursed special education costs were equivalent to 63.8% of the annual dollars sought via operating referendum in those 68 districts.

In 16 districts, unreimbursed special education costs accounted for 100% or more of the annual operating referendum amount

Two-thirds of districts with operating referenda had unreimbursed special education costs equivalent to at least half of the annual referendum amount

57.0% of the recently-passed Milwaukee Public Schools referendum ($143.5 million out of $252 million) can be attributed to unreimbursed special education costs.

Another reason Larson chose the 90% reimbursement figure is that it's the same percentage as voucher schools get for their special needs scholarships that go to students with special needs that attend those voucher schools. This costs of this state-funded program for voucher schools has risen substantially since it became law in 2017, including an increase of more than 50% in funding for this current school year.

So if it's good enough to raise funding for voucher school special ed, why wouldn't it be good enough for the rest of the state? Or at least give each school the $15,000+ per special education student in state funding that voucher schools get under the special needs scholarship.

It's yet another example of how 14 years of GOP favortism towards voucher schools have hurt our community schools and the students and parents who rely on them, and led to higher property taxes for all of us. And it's yet another thing that has to be fixed when we get new legislators and fair maps in place for the next session.