A few weeks ago, the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance did a study of Milwaukee Public Schools, which found it spends more money than 15 other districts studied and has poorer academic results. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and reporter Alan Borsuk swallowed it whole, raising not one question about it.
Someone should have. Because it’s a bizarre study. And it raises troubling questions both about the Taxpayers Alliance and the way these studies are reported.
Let’s begin with its analysis of spending. A typical study would compare Milwaukee to districts or cities across the country, including the Midwest, East, West and South. Why? Because spending levels vary by region, with southern states generally spending the least on education and other governmental functions
The Taxpayers Alliance, by contrast, included no school districts in the West, just one from the East and four from the Midwest. Ten of the 15 districts chosen were southern. That’s absurd. You don’t need a study to know Milwaukee will spend more than the median on education when 10 of the 15 districts are southern.
Eliminate the southern districts from the study and Milwaukee’s spending ranks about average for the five districts left.
From there the study gets even weirder. Milwaukee has a population of 602,782, but among the school districts this study compares it to are Shreveport, La. (200,706), Fayetteville, N.C. (172,860), Pensacola, Fla. (306,621), and Mobile, Ala. (191,966). I have reported education studies for many years and have never seen Milwaukee compared to cities this small.
The Alliance had an interesting theory to justify its choices. It was looking for cities with a similar average household income and similar percentage of college-educated adults as Milwaukee. The fact that so many southern districts were similar to Milwaukee sets off alarm bells about both the amount of concentrated poverty and the challenge for educators here.
But doesn’t that make it fair to compare these cities to Milwaukee when it comes to something like student achievement? Perhaps, but once again, the Taxpayers Alliance chose a very poor way to draw its conclusions.
Average achievement by school districts is always difficult to compare, because districts across the county use different tests. So this study’s solution is to simply compare the gap in average test scores between an urban area and its surrounding state. Since the gap between Milwaukee’s and Wisconsin’s test results tended to be bigger than in the other 15 school districts studied, this supposedly shows Milwaukee is doing the poorest.
There are three problems with this approach. For starters, the smaller gap in test score performance between Shreveport and Louisiana, or between Mobile and Alabama, may merely show that the entire state did poorly. Southern states tend to have lower achievement, so once again, the inclusion of so many in the study makes this comparison misleading.
Secondly, this approach is biased against Wisconsin, a state where most of its urban poor is concentrated in one city – Milwaukee. Of course the gap in achievement will be bigger here than in a district like Columbus, whose surrounding state of Ohio has many urban poor students in Cleveland and Cincinnati. Another city in the study is Fort Worth, Texas, where you’ll find most of its urban poor in cities like Houston and Dallas. Another city is St. Louis, where you’ll find many urban poor in Kansas City, Mo.
Finally, it’s worth asking whether any of the 15 cities studied have state laws that transfer students under both the Chapter 220 program and open enrollment. Milwaukee loses thousands of students through the two programs, and it’s likely that many are less poor than the average MPS student. This tends to concentrate the urban poor even more in Milwaukee’s public schools and may contribute further to that test score gap.
All told, this is a very weak study. Once upon a time, Borsuk might have been asked to do a second day “thumb sucker” piece analyzing the study, and perhaps calling experts for their opinion. He certainly knows the issues. But nowadays, the JS simply swallows any “reputable” study sent its way and chooses how much play to give it based on factors that rarely reflect the quality of the research.
Taxpayers Alliance Under Fire
Last week, a “verbal skirmish” erupted in the state Capitol over the political ideology of the Taxpayers Alliance, as a Wisconsin State Journal story reported. A press release by the liberal group One Wisconsin Now noted that the Alliance’s president, Todd Berry, would be speaking before the Wisconsin chapter of Americans for Prosperity, a group that promotes low taxes. One Wisconsin Now had earlier done research showing that board members of the Taxpayers Alliance donated $288,000 to Republican candidates and $24,500 to Democrats since 1991.
This prompted Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison) to call the group “GOP-leaning” and suggested the media note its strong ties to Republicans and big business when reporting its studies. Berry replied that his board is bipartisan and he speaks to any group that invites him.
I don’t think the alliance can be called Republican. As Berry noted, his group was heavily criticized in the 1990s by Republicans, specifically the administration of former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, for reporting the huge increases in spending that occurred on his watch.
Berry also seems to have tried to diversify his board. I suspect the campaign contributions picture might not look as starkly Republican if you looked at just the last five years. But the group still attracts fiscal conservatives to its board. That’s because its studies tend to push the idea that government spends too much.
And that’s where the group’s bias arises. Yes, the alliance has done some very good research over the years. But as its name suggests, the group was formed to provoke concern about taxation. And that can color its results.
A case in point was the MPS study discussed above: Its findings on spending should have set off alarm bells, but didn’t. Its findings on achievement, by contrast, may simply show hubris: Perhaps a group that specializes in research on taxes should be more careful about extending its reach into the far different realm of educational research.
Coffeehouse Controversy
Some observers, including at least one business competitor, are raising questions about the rent paid by the Alterra Café at the Lake, which occupies the old pumping station owned by the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District.
Back in 2001, MMSD chose Alterra over Starbucks and one other company after a public bidding process. Alterra got a long-term lease (five years plus renewable for five years, through the year 2012). The MMSD spent about $1 million to refurbish the building, and MMSD officials estimate Alterra itself spent several hundred thousand on improvements to create its café.
As it turns out, the café quickly became hugely popular and a coup for Alterra. So others want in. Right now, Alterra is paying just $1,920 per month in rent. That’s absurdly low. So low, in fact, that Alterra is proposing a new contract whereby it would pay $11,989 a month! After that, the rent would rise over time to match the increase in the Consumer Price Index.
One reason for this increase is that the amount of square footage occupied by Alterra increased as it took over tables in the back room overlooking the pumping apparatus. The new contract would charge for 3,197 square feet, rather than the old (and questionable) figure of 1,760 square feet. And there is still nothing in the new contract about rental of the parking lot that serves Alterra.
These are issues that need a full airing before any new contract is signed. And the MMSD board should consider whether a new process of public bidding is appropriate.
What Alterra has created is a unique jewel, a café that’s become a beloved spot for Milwaukeeans. But the taxpayers also need assurance that their interests have been protected.
The Buzz:
-Is Doug Neilson bored? The head of Milwaukee’s convention and visitor’s bureau, Visit Milwaukee, announced he would be leaving at the end of this year, after nearly nine years on the job. Neilson is 59 and simply says he will be looking for other opportunities in San Francisco.
–Bill Bablitch, a former state Supreme Court justice and Democratic legislator, would be expected to favor the more liberal candidate in the upcoming election, Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson. Instead, Bablitch provided fodder for her opponent’s tough-on-crime campaign by telling the Journal Sentinel that Abrahamson “seems to be well out of the mainstream when it comes to criminal matters involving the criminal rights of defendants.”
Bablitch, of course, was often at odds with Abrahamson when he served on the court, not over substantive matters, but over the way Abrahamson ran the court. (She does not suffer fools gladly.) So Bablitch looks for opportunities to get revenge.
-I’m informed by someone who has seen the paperwork for the proposed MacIver Institute that the position paying $120K is reserved for Scott Jensen as director, while the reporter/researcher position would get $72K. That’s more like it: There’s no reason to overpay a journalist.
-Have we finally seen an end to the Journal Sentinel’s run of stories besmirching the reputation of Marc Marotta, the attorney and one-time aide to Gov. Jim Doyle? That seeming campaign was detailed in one of my past columns. But the announcement last week that there was nothing illegal about the UW-Milwaukee contract for the Kenilworth Building would seem to have killed the last of these overplayed stories, proving again that Marotta is innocent of all wrongdoing.
-And the Sport Nut blasts Packers general manager Ted Thompson for sleeping on the job.
