The demographic trends are undeniable. There will be more to fall. What are our taxpayer-supported universities doing to adjust to the new realities?
MILWAUKEE (CBS 58) — The president of Cardinal Stritch University announced Monday that the university will be closing, effective May 22.
In a video message, Dr. Dan Scholz said, in part:
“I would prefer that I shared good news with you, but my message is profoundly sad. I am here to report that the Sisters of St. Francis of Assisi have accepted the recommendation of the University’s Board of Trustees to suspend and cancel all educational services, activities and programs, effective May 22, 2023 and begin the winddown process of the university operations after the current spring semester.”
Dr. Scholz attributed the closure to “fiscal realities, downward enrollment trends, the pandemic, the need for more resources and the mounting operational and facility challenges.”
With the April election behind us, we can turn our attention to some of the structural issues that underlie our nation’s decline. The number one reason that our nation is weaker than it was a generation ago — and yes, it is weaker — is because of the collapse of our education system.
Once the envy of the world, our education system has been debased by the destructive culture of low expectations.
Nationally, student performance has been declining for many years. There are spurts of exceptionalism, but even they are pulled down by the sticky morass of mediocrity that has become the celebrated standard of our government educational system.
The inevitable result of a dumbing down of our education system is that we end up with graduates who lack the basic knowledge and critical thinking skills to successfully navigate adulthood or effectively participate in their God-given right to self-governance. It is our collective moral failure that we have failed our kids this badly and for this long.
The pandemic did not create the problems in our government schools, but it did lay them bare for all to see. As the schools deprioritized education in the face of a virus that posed negligible risk to children, parents were confronted with what their kids were being taught as they scrambled to fill the void. What parents saw was appalling. As the government schools have scaled back on rigorous core subjects in the name of equality, they have allowed activists to step into the void to indoctrinate kids into the latest leftist fads. Our kids may not be able to do math in their heads or name the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights anymore, but they can easily spout off on the perils of climate change. The government schools of today are not the same as the ones we attended a generation ago.
[…]
As these reforms are underway, it is imperative that we do not stop there. School Choice is only about the funding mechanism.
We cannot rely on our government — its policy makers or its unelected bureaucrats — to provide a quality education for our kids. They have already demonstrated their incapacity to do so.
In some cases, it is not for lack of good intentions, but government bureaucracies are not structured to deliver exceptionalism to individuals. Government bureaucracies are designed to deliver mediocrity to the masses, and that is exactly what they have done delivering education.
Since we have relied on our government to provide mass education, most areas lack enough private schools to provide the diversity of educational options to absorb true universal school choice. It is going to take a generation to fix this capacity problem. We have to start now by supporting the expansion of existing private schools and the creation of new ones. We must also support our friends and neighbors who choose to homeschool. Finally, we must be unforgiving in purging bad schools and the people who run them when they fail. Our children deserve better than a 5-year improvement plan.
Amid allegations of bias against Asian students in its admissions process, Harvard University welcomed its largest proportion of Asian American first-year students in its history this week.
From a pool of 56,937 applicants, the Ivy League university admitted a total of 1,942 students — its second-lowest admissions rate on record — to its Class of 2027. Of this batch, 722 were accepted through an early action process in December 2022, while 1,220 were notified of the regular decision on Thursday.
Asian American students composed 29.9% of the new admissions, marking a 2.1% increase from last year’s 27.8%. This, according to Harvard, is the group’s largest-ever acceptance rate.
Meanwhile, Black students made up 15.3%, followed by Latinx at 11.3% and Native American/Hawaiian at 2.7%. White students still composed the largest admissions group at 40.8%.
Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News last week:
The election on April 4 presents an unambiguous choice for voters about the future of Wisconsin. Daniel Kelly would keep the Wisconsin Supreme Court on its constitutionally humble and conservative path. Janet Protasiewicz has already trumpeted the kind of activism she would wage to turn the high court into a political weapon for leftist causes. As we have seen in other states, leftists do not have any qualms about muscling political victories through the courts when their ideas fail to win public support at the ballot box.
In recent weeks we have learned that Protasiewicz is not just the ardent activist who protested against Act 10 and giddily shares how she will tip the scales of justice when her “values” demand it. Not only have we learned that her long judicial record is one of callous disregard for victims of violent crime as she coddled felons. We also learned from Wisconsin Right Now’s reporting that she allegedly abused her first husband, who was over thirty years older than she, and that two witnesses have come forward who heard her regularly use racial slurs when she was a Milwaukee prosecutor.
The optimist in me hopes that some of Wisconsin’s leftists would feel the twang of guilt about voting for someone with such deep character flaws, but the realist in me understands that they are more interested in outcomes even if the vessel that delivers them is cracked. They will vote for Protasiewicz in droves. The rest of this column, therefore, is directed at conservatives who need to understand the gravity of the election and get off their duffs to vote.
The thing about judicial activists is that nothing is safe. Policies that were correctly adjudicated long ago by the court and considered settled will be resurfaced by activists to get a different outcome. Protasiewicz has already said that she considers Act 10 to be unconstitutional and Wisconsin’s electoral maps rigged, so expect those to be overturned by a Protasiewicz-led court. That will just be the start of an avalanche of legal activism to roll back important policies.
During Gov. Scott Walker’s administration, Wisconsin made giant strides to being Wisconsin closer to the Founders’ guarantees in the Second Amendment. The Legislature passed Wisconsin’s first concealed carry law to allow law-abiding citizens to exercise their Second Amendment protection to “keep and bear arms.” The Legislature further protected citizens by enacting the castle doctrine, a simple, but important, law that presumes that someone is under imminent threat if a thug forcibly enters their home, vehicle, or business.
As is their compulsion, leftists sued to overturn both concealed carry and castle doctrine policies when they lost the policy debate at the ballot box. Both policies were upheld by the courts. According to the Wisconsin Department of Justice, over 700,000 Wisconsinites have been issued concealed carry permits since 2011. If Protasiewicz is elected, we can expect those hundreds of thousands of licenses to be canceled. And no, it does not matter what the law or Constitution actually says. Judicial activists care not for the constraints of law. That is the point.
One thing that the pandemic reminded us is that in times of trouble, our government schools will choose institutional interests over the welfare of children every time. Given the decades of declining performance, increasing violence, and curricular malfeasance, this bureaucratic colonialism should have been obvious, but their collective response to the pandemic has crystalized their priorities.
Wisconsin’s school choice programs have been offering children an alternative path to getting a quality education and a successful future. When Gov. Tommy Thompson pioneered school choice in Milwaukee, the leftist institutional interests fought back in court. After a heated legal battle, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutionally permissible for religious schools to participate in the Milwaukee School Choice program. The U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear a challenge to the law, thus ending the legal challenge. The vote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was decided by a single vote. Had one justice ruled the other way, generations of Wisconsin’s children would still be trapped in failing schools and doomed to navigating life without a quality education.
Since that Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in 1998, the Legislature has steadily expanded Wisconsin’s school choice programs to benefit hundreds of thousands of children throughout the state. Should Protasiewicz be elected, expect those monied interests who want to build barbed-wire fences to keep our children in their failed institutions to relaunch their legal challenges to school choice knowing that a Protasiewicz-led court will rule in their favor. Janet Protasiewicz is telling anyone who will listen how she will vote on issues brought before the court and how she considers it her duty to put her finger on the scales of justice when the law says otherwise. Listen to her. In this, she is telling the truth.
The election on April 4 presents an unambiguous choice for voters about the future of Wisconsin. Daniel Kelly would keep the Wisconsin Supreme Court on its constitutionally humble and conservative path. Janet Protasiewicz has already trumpeted the kind of activism she would wage to turn the high court into a political weapon for leftist causes. As we have seen in other states, leftists do not have any qualms about muscling political victories through the courts when their ideas fail to win public support at the ballot box.
In recent weeks we have learned that Protasiewicz is not just the ardent activist who protested against Act 10 and giddily shares how she will tip the scales of justice when her “values” demand it. Not only have we learned that her long judicial record is one of callous disregard for victims of violent crime as she coddled felons. We also learned from Wisconsin Right Now’s reporting that she allegedly abused her first husband, who was over thirty years older than she, and that two witnesses have come forward who heard her regularly use racial slurs when she was a Milwaukee prosecutor.
The optimist in me hopes that some of Wisconsin’s leftists would feel the twang of guilt about voting for someone with such deep character flaws, but the realist in me understands that they are more interested in outcomes even if the vessel that delivers them is cracked. They will vote for Protasiewicz in droves. The rest of this column, therefore, is directed at conservatives who need to understand the gravity of the election and get off their duffs to vote.
The thing about judicial activists is that nothing is safe. Policies that were correctly adjudicated long ago by the court and considered settled will be resurfaced by activists to get a different outcome. Protasiewicz has already said that she considers Act 10 to be unconstitutional and Wisconsin’s electoral maps rigged, so expect those to be overturned by a Protasiewicz-led court. That will just be the start of an avalanche of legal activism to roll back important policies.
[…]
One thing that the pandemic reminded us is that in times of trouble, our government schools will choose institutional interests over the welfare of children every time. Given the decades of declining performance, increasing violence, and curricular malfeasance, this bureaucratic colonialism should have been obvious, but their collective response to the pandemic has crystalized their priorities.
Wisconsin’s school choice programs have been offering children an alternative path to getting a quality education and a successful future. When Gov. Tommy Thompson pioneered school choice in Milwaukee, the leftist institutional interests fought back in court. After a heated legal battle, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court ruled that it was constitutionally permissible for religious schools to participate in the Milwaukee School Choice program. The U.S. Supreme Court later declined to hear a challenge to the law, thus ending the legal challenge. The vote on the Wisconsin Supreme Court was decided by a single vote. Had one justice ruled the other way, generations of Wisconsin’s children would still be trapped in failing schools and doomed to navigating life without a quality education.
Since that Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling in 1998, the Legislature has steadily expanded Wisconsin’s school choice programs to benefit hundreds of thousands of children throughout the state. Should Protasiewicz be elected, expect those monied interests who want to build barbed-wire fences to keep our children in their failed institutions to relaunch their legal challenges to school choice knowing that a Protasiewicz-led court will rule in their favor. Janet Protasiewicz is telling anyone who will listen how she will vote on issues brought before the court and how she considers it her duty to put her finger on the scales of justice when the law says otherwise. Listen to her. In this, she is telling the truth.
Git ‘er dun. It’s good to see consequences for chronic failure. I hope that they can make swift improvements for the betterment of the kids.
Texas law authorizes the appointment of a Board of Managers based on the district’s inability to improve student achievement at its low-performing campuses. In particular, Wheatley High School earned seven consecutive unacceptable academic ratings for the school years from 2011 through 2019. For the 2021-2022 school year, Wheatley earned an acceptable academic rating, driven by an increase in the award of Microsoft Office Specialist Word certifications among graduating seniors.
However, Wheatley’s acceptable rating this year does not abrogate my prior legal requirement to intervene based on the seven consecutive unacceptable ratings that were addressed by the original Board of Managers order.
Furthermore, while Wheatley was earning seven years of unacceptable academic performance ratings, multiple other campuses received inadequate district support leading to persistently poor performance. To note one example, Kashmere High School had eight consecutive unacceptable academic ratings starting in the 2008-2009 school year. In 2016, I appointed a conservator to ensure and oversee district-level support for Kashmere. As a result of that intervention, Kashmere finally earned an acceptable academic rating for the 2018-2019 school year. However, while the
injunction was in place—which limited the authority of the previously placed conservator— Kashmere High School’s performance regressed, as it received a “Not Rated” accountability rating for the 2021-2022 school year with a scale score of 68 out of 100. To note another example, Highland Heights Elementary School has not earned an acceptable performance rating since 2011.
The district’s approach to supporting students with disabilities also continues to violate state and federal law. Starting with internal reviews going back to 2011, there has long been recognition from Houston ISD itself of problems in this area. Substantive action was not taken until a management team of conservators was appointed. Since then, Houston ISD has seen some improvements related to basic Child Find obligations. But there are still significant systemic compliance problems, including an ongoing inability to provide special education services to students without delays, which harms their academic progress
Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News earlier this week.
Frustrated by chronically poorly performing government schools and a well-heeled government education aristocracy that has an agenda far removed from the priorities of parents, education advocates have ignited an education reformation that is sweeping across America. Once a pioneer in education, Wisconsin looks like it will be watching from the sidelines due to unrequited loyalty to a failing bureaucracy.
The education reformation is manifesting in several forms that are being lumped into the moniker of “universal school choice.” While the mechanisms differ, the concept is the same. Reformers are decoupling education funding from the government education industrial complex and crafting programs that fund education for children irrespective of their race, creed, religion, socioeconomic background, or school of choice. They are programs that fund students and not systems.
Last year, Arizona became the first state to pass universal school choice. West Virginia got close, passing a broad plan that provides educational choice to about 93% of their children. Already this year, Iowa has passed universal school choice. The states of Florida, Texas, Utah, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Indiana are all advancing universal school choice and likely to pass some form by the end of 2023. Several other states are in earlier stages of considering universal school choice. It is conceivable that half of the United States will have universal school choice by 2025. Disastrously for Wisconsin’s children, our state is unlikely to be one of them. Gov. Tony Evers is a lifelong creature of the government education establishment and is vehemently loyal to defending the bureaucracy irrespective of its performance. He has demonstrated his willingness to veto any educational reform that threatens the entrenched power structure and is unlikely to shift his loyalty to children any time soon.
While the Republican majorities in the Legislature are strong, they lack the votes to overcome Evers’ vetoes without some legislative Democrats shifting their support to children. When Governor Tommy Thompson pioneered the original school choice program in Wisconsin, there was bipartisan support, and bipartisan opposition, for it. In today’s political landscape, it is unlikely that enough Democrats are willing to cross the yawning political divide to support kids.
The benefits of school choice have never been clearer. Dr. Will Flanders from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has released his fifth annual “Apples to Apples” research study which evaluates student outcomes across government, charter, and choice schools while controlling for student demographics. This statistical methodology controls for the fact that government, charter, and choice schools have dissimilar student demographics to provide a clear comparison of performance. Notably, this year’s study uses public data from the 2021-2022 school year report cards from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and is the first post-pandemic look at school performance.
The results are clear. According to the study, students in the Milwaukee Choice program are significantly more proficient in English Language Arts and math than their peers in government schools. Students in Milwaukee charter schools (still government schools that have been somewhat liberated from the crushing educational bureaucracy) also perform better than their government school peers, but only about half as much as their peers in choice schools.
In the statewide choice program, students in choice school also have better outcomes, but the benefit is not quite as pronounced as it is for kids in Milwaukee.
Tellingly, the data also bears out the well-known, if patently ignored, fact that spending has very little to do with performance in government or choice schools. This tells us two things. First, it tells us that once spending has reached a level that provides an adequate level of support for good teachers and a safe physical space, all of the additional spending is just waste. Wisconsin already funds education at a level where each additional dollar spent does not have any positive impact on student outcomes. That being the case, policymakers must ask themselves why they would force taxpayers to pay more when there is no measurable benefit to kids.
The second thing this data tells us is that it is the government school system that is retarding student performance. Choice schools operate with less money and produce better outcomes even after accounting for demographic differences in the student body. If the system is the problem, then why should taxpayers and parents be forced to continue to lavishly fund a failed system when demonstrably better systems exist?
I am well aware that such arguments rooted in data and genuine passion for educating children do not hold sway in the intellectually sclerotic mind of Governor Evers, but his term will eventually end and we cannot afford to lose another generation of kids to a failed government system.
While the Republican majorities in the Legislature are strong, they lack the votes to overcome Evers’ vetoes without some legislative Democrats shifting their support to children. When Governor Tommy Thompson pioneered the original school choice program in Wisconsin, there was bipartisan support, and bipartisan opposition, for it. In today’s political landscape, it is unlikely that enough Democrats are willing to cross the yawning political divide to support kids.
The benefits of school choice have never been clearer. Dr. Will Flanders from the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has released his fifth annual “Apples to Apples” research study which evaluates student outcomes across government, charter, and choice schools while controlling for student demographics. This statistical methodology controls for the fact that government, charter, and choice schools have dissimilar student demographics to provide a clear comparison of performance. Notably, this year’s study uses public data from the 2021-2022 school year report cards from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction and is the first post-pandemic look at school performance.
The results are clear. According to the study, students in the Milwaukee Choice program are significantly more proficient in English Language Arts and math than their peers in government schools. Students in Milwaukee charter schools (still government schools that have been somewhat liberated from the crushing educational bureaucracy) also perform better than their government school peers, but only about half as much as their peers in choice schools.
In the statewide choice program, students in choice school also have better outcomes, but the benefit is not quite as pronounced as it is for kids in Milwaukee.
Tellingly, the data also bears out the well-known, if patently ignored, fact that spending has very little to do with performance in government or choice schools. This tells us two things. First, it tells us that once spending has reached a level that provides an adequate level of support for good teachers and a safe physical space, all of the additional spending is just waste. Wisconsin already funds education at a level where each additional dollar spent does not have any positive impact on student outcomes. That being the case, policymakers must ask themselves why they would force taxpayers to pay more when there is no measurable benefit to kids.
The second thing this data tells us is that it is the government school system that is retarding student performance. Choice schools operate with less money and produce better outcomes even after accounting for demographic differences in the student body. If the system is the problem, then why should taxpayers and parents be forced to continue to lavishly fund a failed system when demonstrably better systems exist?
I am well aware that such arguments rooted in data and genuine passion for educating children do not hold sway in the intellectually sclerotic mind of Governor Evers, but his term will eventually end and we cannot afford to lose another generation of kids to a failed government system.
One of the cost-saving measures the school board insisted on was a “green lighting system” run on software installed by a company called 5th Light to control the lights in the building. The system was designed to save energy — and thus save money — by automatically adjusting the lights as needed.
But in August 2021, staffers at the school noticed that the lights were not dimming in the daytime and burning brightly through the night.
“The lighting system went into default,” said Osborne. “And the default position for the lighting system is for the lights to be on.”
Osborne said they immediately reached out to the original installer of the system only to discover that the company had changed hands several times since the high school was built. When they finally tracked down the current owner of the company, Reflex Lighting, several more weeks went by before the company was able to find somebody familiar with the high school’s lighting system, he said.
This not only hurts high performing kids by limiting their future, but it also hurts poor performing kids who are not given the help the need when their failures go unacknowledged. Please, get your kids out of these schools. Their goals for your kids are not your goals.
Republican Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin has slammed the decision by seven Fairfax County schools to withhold from their students whether they received a prestigious national merit recognition as ‘maniacal’.
Only awarded to 50,000 of 1.5million high-schoolers who score well on the PSATS, the prestigious award can help students compete for scholarships, honors accolades, and college admissions.
The schools – which include America’s best-performing public school, Thomas Jefferson High – have explained their decision to keep the results secret as a form of ‘equity.’ They insist it’s part of a new school strategy meant to provide ‘equal outcomes for every student, without exceptions.’ – but parents are furious.
As a result of the deception, pupils whom had been named ‘commended students’ by the National Merit Scholarship Corporation were purposely left in the dark so as to not ‘hurt the feelings of’ other students.
[…]
The admission by the schools of failing to notify their students of any national merit recognition they may have achieved means students will miss important college scholarship and admissions deadlines.
But 50 years later, new conflicts are emerging, as parents in some cities say their children are being forced to put on military uniforms, obey a chain of command and recite patriotic declarations in classes they never wanted to take.
In Chicago, concerns raised by activists, news coverage and an inspector general’s report led the school district to backtrack this year on automatic JROTC enrollments at several high schools that serve primarily lower-income neighborhoods on the city’s South and West sides. In other places, the Times found, the practice continues, with students and parents sometimes rebuffed when they fight compulsory enrollment.
JROTC classes, which offer instruction in a wide range of topics, including leadership, civic values, weapons handling and financial literacy, have provided the military with a valuable way to interact with teenagers at a time when it is facing its most serious recruiting challenge since the end of the Vietnam War.
[…]
High school principals who have embraced the program say it motivates students who are struggling, teaches self-discipline to disruptive students and provides those who may feel isolated with a sense of camaraderie. It has found a welcome home in rural areas where the military has deep roots but also in urban centers where educators want to divert students away from drugs or violence and toward what for many can be a promising career or a college scholarship.
And military officials point to research indicating JROTC students have better attendance and graduation rates, and fewer discipline problems at school.
There are plenty of classes that are required in school that do a far worse job of teaching anything. We’d be a better society if more kids stuck with JROTC even if they never enter the military.
There are many reasons that the cost of higher education has outpaced inflation. This is one of them.
The raises push UW-Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin’s base pay from $750,000 to $765,000 and UW-Milwaukee Chancellor Mark Mone’s pay from $452,090 to $461,132. UW System President Jay Rothman declined the 2% salary increase, keeping his pay at $550,000.
One chancellor, Joe Gow of La Crosse, saw his salary increase even more to bring his pay up to the newly approved salary range for chancellors of smaller UW campuses. Gow’s salary will increase 6%, from $247,661 to $262,719. Had he received only the 2% raise, his pay would have fallen below the minimum salary for his position.
The chancellors’ raises follow two previous rounds of salary increases within the past year. Most chancellors received 2% raises last January and again in April. Three chancellors — Mone, Gow and UW-Stevens Point Chancellor Thomas Gibson — received larger raises ranging from 4% to 7.5% last spring in order to to keep salaries competitive and bring some of them above the previous minimum pay range for their positions.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. I sure did. As I settle in to watch the Packers and write my column for this week, here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News last week.
A few weeks ago, in a regrettable spurt of optimistic exuberance at the prospect of Tim Michels defeating Governor Tony Evers and ushering in an opportunity to make great strides in advancing progressive conservative policies, this column advocated that education reform should be at the top of the priority list. With Evers’ electoral victory and Wisconsin deciding on divided government for at least another two years, reforming Wisconsin’s education remains the absolute top priority, but the tactics and realistic goals must, necessarily, change.
By every meaningful measure, Wisconsin’s government education system is failing kids. There are, of course, individual success stories, but the overall performance is systemic failure at all levels. According to ACT Aspire, Forward, and ACT testing data from Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction, Wisconsin’s kids are failing to learn basic reading, writing, and math in our schools. Roughly two-thirds of Wisconsin’s kids at every grade level are not proficient in language or math. It is utterly intolerable.
Bear in mind that those testing results are statewide averages. A large number of individual districts and schools are even worse. Again, according to DPI data, there are some Wisconsin schools where not a single child is proficient in language or math. President George Bush once lamented the “soft bigotry of low expectations.” There is nothing soft about the bigotry that abandons kids to ignorance.
Tony Evers and the Democrats like to sell themselves as the party of education. If that is the case, then they are terrible at it. The Democrats have had a stranglehold on the state DPI and most government education districts for decades. The result has been a steady decline in performance punctuated by catastrophic failures. They have abandoned at least two generations of kids as they continue to fund failing systems.
To be frank, watching someone brag about our government education system when less than half of our kids can read at grade level makes me angry. They should be angry at such failure. It makes a lot of parents angry. It should make you angry. Republicans should be angry about it. Not only is fixing education a moral imperative, but it is also good politics. Whichever party actually fixes education and gets more than 96% of our kids reading at grade level will stay in power for decades.
I am firmly convinced that the best and fastest path to quality education for everyone is to privatize our education system. Getting the government out of the business of delivering education and unleashing the power of competition is the proven path to performance. Unfortunately, with a governor who is a wholly owned subsidiary of the state teachers union, such needed reform is unrealistic. Governor Evers has shown that there is no length to which he will not go, and no bill he will not veto, in order to protect the monied interests of the government-education-industrial complex.
In light of the political realities, the Republican leadership will not be able to make the substantial changes necessary to radically improve educational outcomes. What they will be able to do, and what they must do, is become the party of accountability. Over the last five years, state taxpayers have increased spending on education by 19% to over $16,000 per student. This was during a period when people were losing their jobs, paychecks were shrinking, and inflation was just beginning to bite.
What did taxpayers get for their generosity and willingness to invest in education? Dumber kids. Over that same five-year period, the slow decline that was happening before the pandemic accelerated into collapse after many government educators abandoned kids to their illiteracy while continuing to collect their paychecks.
Legislative Republicans must tie funding to performance and force the closure of failing schools. Speaker Robin Vos has floated the idea of passing a bill that couples universal school choice with more spending on government schools. This idea is flawed because Evers has the most powerful veto pen in the nation and could simply veto school choice while accepting the spending increase.
Instead, Republicans should freeze education spending at its already inflated level and impose performance goals for continued funding. There is no reason that taxpayers should pay for a school where less than 20% of kids can read. Funding failure is explicit support for failure. Republicans must stop supporting failure like the Democrats and become the real party of education.
If Republicans play the same old Democrat game of pretending that the system is great and only needs more money, they will fail to capture the powerful electoral support of parents. Worse, they will doom yet another generation of kids to ignorance and exploitation. Our nation will be worse for their complacency.
To be frank, watching someone brag about our government education system when less than half of our kids can read at grade level makes me angry. They should be angry at such failure. It makes a lot of parents angry. It should make you angry. Republicans should be angry about it. Not only is fixing education a moral imperative, but it is also good politics. Whichever party actually fixes education and gets more than 96% of our kids reading at grade level will stay in power for decades.
I am firmly convinced that the best and fastest path to quality education for everyone is to privatize our education system. Getting the government out of the business of delivering education and unleashing the power of competition is the proven path to performance. Unfortunately, with a governor who is a wholly owned subsidiary of the state teachers union, such needed reform is unrealistic. Governor Evers has shown that there is no length to which he will not go, and no bill he will not veto, in order to protect the monied interests of the government-education-industrial complex.
In light of the political realities, the Republican leadership will not be able to make the substantial changes necessary to radically improve educational outcomes. What they will be able to do, and what they must do, is become the party of accountability. Over the last five years, state taxpayers have increased spending on education by 19% to over $16,000 per student. This was during a period when people were losing their jobs, paychecks were shrinking, and inflation was just beginning to bite.
What did taxpayers get for their generosity and willingness to invest in education? Dumber kids. Over that same five-year period, the slow decline that was happening before the pandemic accelerated into collapse after many government educators abandoned kids to their illiteracy while continuing to collect their paychecks.
Legislative Republicans must tie funding to performance and force the closure of failing schools. Speaker Robin Vos has floated the idea of passing a bill that couples universal school choice with more spending on government schools. This idea is flawed because Evers has the most powerful veto pen in the nation and could simply veto school choice while accepting the spending increase.
Instead, Republicans should freeze education spending at its already inflated level and impose performance goals for continued funding. There is no reason that taxpayers should pay for a school where less than 20% of kids can read. Funding failure is explicit support for failure. Republicans must stop supporting failure like the Democrats and become the real party of education.
Here is my full column that ran in the Washington County Daily News last week:
The outcomes of elections are always uncertain and replete with surprises, but it is looking more and more like the Republicans are going to do very well next week. If that should come to pass, I fervently hope that the Republicans govern boldly. Winning elections is the goal of politicians. Leaders act to use the power loaned to them by the voters to solve problems for the betterment of our state and nation, and boy, do we have some real problems.
The biggest problem facing our nation right now is inflation. There are many other problems, but runaway inflation kills nations. America is not invulnerable to the whirlwind economic forces that inflation unleashes that have obliterated a hundred nations before us.
Simply put, inflation happens when there is too much money in the economy chasing too few goods. Prices naturally rise and our dollar buys less than it did yesterday. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the core inflation rate was 8.2% in September and has been in that range since last year.
The core inflation rate is misleading because it assumes a basket of goods that is not meaningful to everyone. Inflation hits different goods unevenly. In that same September report, it showed that the price of food is up 91.4%, utilities are up 33.1%, and health insurance is up 28.2%. For people who eat and heat, inflation is hitting much harder than 8.2%.
The Federal Reserve has been trying to squeeze money out of the economy by increasing interest rates, but Fed actions are blunted in an era when the federal debt is 125% of our nation’s gross domestic product, according to the Congressional Budget Office, and federal government policies are swamping the country with cash. There has been a structural change in our economy where the levers of inflation have shifted to the federal government’s policies and the central bank is relegated to being an interested bystander. Our nation-killing inflation is a policy choice. If we want different results, we will need to make different policy choices. The federal government must dramatically reduce spending to get inflation under control. Reducing federal spending is the surest way to protect Americans’ wealth from the wildfire of inflation.
Should Sen. Ron Johnson be reelected, I hope he will use whatever power he has as one of a hundred senators in a bicameral legislature to oppose new spending and pull back existing spending. Lest we become Venezuela or Zimbabwe, getting control of inflation must be our top national priority.
At the state level, Wisconsin’s biggest problem is the deplorable state of our government education system. Despite lavish spending averaging over $16,000 per child per year (an increase of 19% in just five years), our kids are learning less than ever. Test scores have plummeted to the point that barely a third of Wisconsin’s kids can read, write, or do math at grade level.
Our government education system is not just an embarrassment, it is a generational brutality committed on our own children. We are condemning a generation of Wisconsinites to be less educated, less capable, and more ignorant than we are. We are robbing them of their potential and a lifetime of opportunities. Our state government schools’ failure to provide our kids with even a mediocre education – much less a good education – is a cruelty for which our kids will rightfully condemn us.
We are well past a time when tweaks and nudges will fix the problems with our government education infrastructure. It needs substantive systemic changes at all levels.
Wisconsin’s Democrats are the party of perpetuating failure. Last weekend, they even held a rally with President Obama at a Milwaukee high school where zero percent of the kids can do math or science at grade level according to the state ASPIRE exam. The only “solution” that Democrats champion for failing government education is to spend more money on doing the same thing. Their policy choices are about perpetuating and funding a solid Democratic voting bloc irrespective of the quality of the education our kids are getting.
Should Tim Michels be our next governor, it is imperative that he immediately tackle the task of fixing our government education system with meaningful changes like universal school choice, outcome-oriented funding, and even privatization. It will be hard and will spark the same kind of radical protests that we saw from government school employees when Gov. Scott Walker signed Act 10. Our kids and their futures are worth enduring whatever the entitled defenders of the status quo might do.
Elections matter. Good governance matters more. Our nation and state have real problems that need real leadership.
The outcomes of elections are always uncertain and replete with surprises, but it is looking more and more like the Republicans are going to do very well next week. If that should come to pass, I fervently hope that the Republicans govern boldly. Winning elections is the goal of politicians. Leaders act to use the power loaned to them by the voters to solve problems for the betterment of our state and nation, and boy, do we have some real problems.
The biggest problem facing our nation right now is inflation. There are many other problems, but runaway inflation kills nations. America is not invulnerable to the whirlwind economic forces that inflation unleashes that have obliterated a hundred nations before us.
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At the state level, Wisconsin’s biggest problem is the deplorable state of our government education system. Despite lavish spending averaging over $16,000 per child per year (an increase of 19% in just five years), our kids are learning less than ever. Test scores have plummeted to the point that barely a third of Wisconsin’s kids can read, write, or do math at grade level.
Our government education system is not just an embarrassment, it is a generational brutality committed on our own children. We are condemning a generation of Wisconsinites to be less educated, less capable, and more ignorant than we are. We are robbing them of their potential and a lifetime of opportunities. Our state government schools’ failure to provide our kids with even a mediocre education – much less a good education – is a cruelty for which our kids will rightfully condemn us.
How willing are people, including education leaders and politicians, to tackle the needs of kids? The generally predictable reactions to the NAEP scores don’t provide encouragement.
The huge disruptions in schooling nationwide are become matters more for unhappy memories than present concerns. And it appears that many aspects of education are returning to the way they used to be. That’s good in some ways — and worrisome in others. There were big needs before COVID. There are big needs now. Is there much willingness to address them urgently and honestly?
To paraphrase a comment I read, the biggest emergency may be if people don’t think there’s an emergency.
Well, there happens to be an election in a couple of weeks. Who is looking at our deplorable education system and calling for substantive changes to improve it? Who is saying that the only answer is to pour more money into the same systems and have the same failed leaders spend it?
MADISON — Members of the School Administrators Alliance (SAA), representing more than 4,000 public school principals, special education directors, business officials, school personnel administrators and superintendents throughout Wisconsin, have endorsed Governor Tony Evers for re-election.
SAA Executive Director Dee Pettack has issued the following statement regarding this endorsement:
“SAA does not often get involved in endorsing candidates in gubernatorial elections, as school administrators are nonpartisan in their approach to working with policymakers. However, we recognize that elections are about choices and priorities. This year, we believe the choice is so compelling and clear that we cannot remain silent. It is with pride and a clear sense of purpose for the public school children we serve that we endorse Governor Tony Evers for re-election due to his policy agenda for public school children in Wisconsin.
By virtually every single measure, education is far, far worse now than it was when Evers took office. Despite a lifetime in education, under the Evers Administration test scores have plummeted, violence in schools is up, and kids are struggling thanks to the disastrous policies of Evers and his ilk. And yet, we are spending more money than ever on government education.
What does it say about these “non-partisan” school administrators that they support Evers despite the damage he has done to our kids and their futures? Any school administrator who doesn’t disavow this endorsement should be fired immediately. They do not have our kids’ best interests at heart. And if they claim that they don’t want to weigh in on a partisan political issue… BS. Too late. They already have.
There were two high school girls from Milton and one from another district. The girls from Milton claimed they were in college, but the teacher knew the third girl was a minor, according to police.
“A small part of the conversations could be considered risqué but would not be inappropriate if the conversation was happening between two adults,” according to the press release.
Three of the messages were shared throughout the community. They include an image of man in an orange shirt with the following captions:
“Damn you’re cute. Have a boyfriend?”
“Been single for about a month. But you’re hot too. What class are you in?”
“I can stop bothering you if you’d prefer. But I’d like to see more of you.”
Parents identified the man as 8th grade math teacher David Kroeze. He was also a soccer coach and an advisor for the “Genders & Sexualities Alliances” club. Given the content of the messages, parents find it hard to believe Kroeze did not recognize the girls as minors.
The point of this is not to ridicule our governor for his pathetic work ethic and disinterest in actually doing his job. The point is to highlight how easy the governor has had it while his actions have destroyed livelihoods, crippled kids’ futures, and forced families into dependency.
Throughout the pandemic, Governor Evers was never touched by the consequences of his decisions. He never went a single day without a paycheck or generous benefits. He never had to cut back on groceries, turn down the heat in winter, or skip paying a few bills to get by.
Governor Evers never felt the pain of a small-business owner who sat at her desk and made the hard decisions to drain her family’s savings to keep the business afloat for another couple of months in the hope that they might be able to make it. Evers never sat across the table from good people and had to take away their livelihoods because there was no more money. The governor was blissfully eating ice cream in his free mansion when single moms went home and had to explain to their children that they needed to save money because she had lost her job.
Governor Evers never had to hastily call his parents to watch the kids because schools and child care centers were suddenly closed. He never had to watch his kid, who struggled with school, sink into failure and depression because virtual learning was not working for him. Evers never had to go to work during the pandemic as so many “essential” people did, and then come home and work another four or five hours to help his kids navigate recorded lessons and homework.
While Wisconsinites were struggling with Evers’ idiotic and tyrannical edicts during the pandemic, the governor kept his lackadaisical schedule, ate his ice cream, played pickleball, and led his best life at taxpayers’ expense. It is offensive.
It is equally offensive that the governor is continuing to dole out our tax dollars in dribs and drabs as “relief” and expects people to be thankful. He behaves like an abusive husband who hands his wife a bandage after beating the snot out of her and expects gratitude. His actions deserve contempt, not appreciation.
