11 things to watch this school year
The competition to enroll kids in schools in Milwaukee appears to be at least as intense as ever, maybe more so.
As a new school year gets underway, it’s time to check the educational climate report.
Very hot: Special education vouchers. Republicans who control the state Legislature passed a law that allows private schools to receive money to educate students with special needs.
The program is hitting a much more active stride this fall. Jim Bender, president of School Choice Wisconsin, told me interest is “white hot” across the state.
Many private school students now qualify for annual payments generally running $12,000.
As happy as people involved in private schools are over this, public school advocates are at least that unhappy.
For one thing, private schools are in line to get more state money per student for special ed kids than public schools are getting (property taxes generally make up the gap for public schools).
Hot: New leadership for Milwaukee Public Schools. Keith Posley, who was picked by the school board to lead MPS in April, is off to a fast start.
He led the way in dropping proposed budget cuts to individual schools, in launching campaigns around enrollment and attendance, and calling for new steps for schools in the high-poverty 53206 ZIP code.
Posley has said remarkably optimistic things, such as proclaiming that standardized test scores for MPS will exceed the state average soon.
If that comes to pass, he should be given the Nobel Prize or something. But he also should be held to seeing at least some of his optimism justified.
Hot: The “market share” battle. The competition to enroll kids in schools in Milwaukee appears to be at least as intense as ever, maybe more so.
This is true across all streams of schools and between individual schools. Enrollment means money means staff means vitality.
What the enrollment landscape will look like when official figures come out this fall will be important to watch.
Hot: Anything that deals with the social-emotional needs of students, from mindfulness to trauma-sensitive counseling to mental health assistance to character education.
This is true, in varying forms and degrees, for probably every school in Wisconsin.
Mild: Spending in schools. Since Wisconsin has a two-year budget cycle, there isn’t much new, except for a revenue increase of about $200 per student for all publicly funded students that was approved by the Legislature in 2017.
Whatever things were like last year in classrooms is probably what they’re going to be like this year.
Even in MPS, the popular move that avoided cuts in school budgets only means schools have the same amount of money they had last year, which no one was so thrilled about.
Unseasonably cool: New schools opening in Milwaukee.
For years, the roster of schools in all sectors (MPS, private schools, charter schools) was constantly changing. There are probably a bunch of reasons why things are more settled.
A couple arrivals: Rocketship has opened a charter school on the north side, in the Silver Spring Neighborhood Center, to go with its south side school. And the Carmen charter schools are opening a fourth location, a middle school on the south side.
A stalled front: Talk about allowing school districts to decide for themselves when to start school. Why is it state law that, in general, public schools can’t open before Sept. 1?
Because the tourism industry wants it that way, and nothing is going to change that.
Hot: A sense of unease about the quality of schools across the state. Look at results released Aug, 22 of the Marquette Law School Poll (disclosure: I have a bit of a hand in work on the poll). “Jobs and the economy” was listed as the most important issue facing Wisconsin. “K-12 education” was right behind, a decidedly more prominent place than in the past.
And 44% of voters said schools are “in worse shape now than a few years ago,” compared to 15% who said schools are better.
Most interesting, there was new evidence that there is more support now for increased school spending. In 2013, the poll asked voters which they would prefer, property tax cuts or increased school spending.
The result was property tax cuts 49%, school spending 46%. In the new results, 61% said school spending, 32% said property tax cuts.
Stormy: Well, the governor’s race, of course. If you’ve got the state superintendent of public instruction, Tony Evers, as the Democratic candidate, going against Republican incumbent Scott Walker, who says he is “the education governor,” education is going to be in the spotlight.
I’ll write more about this later, but here’s a thought: Given the realities of politics in the state Capitol, I suspect, when it comes to education, the election is more about the winner stopping what the other guy wants than it is about the winner starting new things in coming years.
Cold: Actual improvement overall in student performance statewide, and especially in Milwaukee.
The needle hasn’t moved in a couple decades on most every big indicator of student success.
While there are a lot of kids who are doing great, there are huge, depressing problems, especially for low-income and minority students.
Two reports were submitted to the Milwaukee School Board in August on student performance on tests other than the statewide tests.
I was particularly grabbed by the poor results for kindergarten, first and second grade kids when it comes to whether they are on track to be good readers and for ninth and 10th graders getting ready to take ACT tests as juniors.
Looking at the results made me worry, once again, about the future not only of thousands of kids, but of the Milwaukee area economically.
That pre-ACT test is called Aspire and is given statewide. Maybe this should be a school year when everyone takes that word seriously. How serious are we about high aspirations for all kids and what more can we do to help them aspire?
I’m afraid that the outlook for good answers is cloudy, at best.