When archives read like today’s front page

Our backyard has never looked this good, thanks to all the time my wife has put into gardening.

One of our neighbors says her time at home has left her house so clean, you could eat dinner off of the basement floor.

I can’t match these things when it comes to accomplishments due to staying at home so much. But I did wade into a couple of tubs of memorabilia that had gone unattended for a long time, including a selection of newspaper stories going back many years.

They make for timely reading. Among the news stories I found:

Then: Sept. 7, 1976, The Milwaukee Journal. This was the first day of courtordered desegregation of Milwaukee Public Schools. I organized the newspaper’s coverage that day. The hope was that this was “the beginning of an exciting new era in Milwaukee education,” as one story put it. Which, of course, isn’t an accurate way to describe the era since then. Desegregation overall in the Milwaukee area has been limited, at best, and, by some measures, segregation of Black students particularly has increased in recent years.

Now: The Milwaukee School Board passed a resolution in June calling for a new effort to desegregate schools across the Milwaukee area. Good luck.

Then: Sept. 26, 1986, The Milwaukee Journal. I wrote a story that focused on the sharply differing levels of educational success of kids in the suburbs and kids in the city. I quoted John Witte, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor: “To the extent that education achievement is equated with life chances, these two groups face very unequal opportunities.”

Now: Yup.

Then: April 19, 1995, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, with a large front page headline, “Fuller quits.” After almost four years as superintendent of MPS, Howard Fuller resigned, saying the system was too mired in the status quo to make necessary changes.

Fuller fought particularly with the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association and with school board members supported by the union. I wrote a piece, which quoted Fuller saying that each day he was superintendent, he asked himself, “Howard, can you make a difference for kids today?” He said he had reached the point where he changed his answer from yes to no.

Now: Fuller went on to 25 years as a professor at Marquette University and as a nationally prominent advocate of school choice programs. At the end of June, Fuller, now 79, retired from Marquette and resigned from leadership positions in national organizations. (My guess is he will still ask himself that question each day.)

The teachers union has had ups and downs over the years. But despite the Act 10 state law passed in 2011 that reduced its formal power, its actual influence on education in Milwaukee may be higher now than it was in 1995.

Then: November 1995. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a large series of stories examining MPS. I was one of the reporters who worked on the project. The main headline on the front page of the first day: “Status quo, not kids, comes first.”

Now: No further comment needed. Then: December 1997, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. I wrote a series of stories about controversies over how to teach reading. Referring to the need for children to read adequately by the end of third grade, I wrote, “The press is on for children to jump this crucial hurdle well and early.”

Now: Still trying to do something about the thousands of children in Milwaukee and statewide who are not getting over that hurdle. There’s been hardly any overall improvement.

Then: October 2003. Another Journal Sentinel project. This time the subject was controversies over the best ways to teach math, against a setting of overall poor math achievement, particularly for low-income children in Wisconsin.

Now: No solution to this math problem yet.

Then: Nov. 14, 2003, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a headline at the top of the front page that reads, “State leads nation in test gap for white, black 8th graders.” I was working on stories that were going to be pegged to the upcoming 50th anniversary of the 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision finding school segregation unconstitutional.

In looking at results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, I saw that Wisconsin’s gaps by race were consistently the largest (or very close to largest) in the nation for fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math. To my knowledge, this story was the first time that fact was spotlighted publicly.

Now: Everybody around here knows this. And the facts haven’t changed.

Then: August, 2008. The Journal Sentinel ran a series of stories by Dave Umhoefer and me describing how an MPS Neighborhood School Initiative in prior years, including spending more than $100 million on construction, had changed little. There was little evidence the money had been spent effectively.

Now: In discussing ways to re-open schools amid coronavirus concerns, MPS leaders have said that reassigning many students to neighborhood schools to reduce busing should be considered. This would likely mean a lot of tumult over assignment changes. Milwaukee schools overall continue to lean heavily toward busing and parents lean toward choosing schools not in their neighborhood.

For a lot of people, extended time at home has led them to tackle things that have long gone without meaningful attention. You know those T-shirts that have been popular in recent times that say, “Milwaukee Home”? In the name of home improvement of the most ambitious nature, maybe we should tackle Milwaukee’s big home projects that have long gone without meaningful attention.