We are rapidly on course to create a dual-level school system for Wisconsin students. In smaller cities and rural and suburban areas, school systems will continue to spend about $10,000 per pupil. That is a bit less than the national average of $10,499, as a recent Census Bureau report found.
But in big cities such as Milwaukee and Racine, and perhaps in Green Bay and Beloit, more and more students will be educated at choice schools that spend about $6,400 per pupil. These school systems tend to have students who are poorer, more likely to have learning disabilities, and they are typically the most challenging to teach. Yet Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators propose to spend less than two-thirds of the average per-pupil spending in other schools in the state and nation.
This situation, I might add, is not simply the fault of Republicans. Many Democrats, in hopes of killing school choice, have adamantly opposed spending more on vouchers in the past, so the per-pupil rate has always been absurdly low. On the other side are Republicans who can’t lose with school choice: It undercuts public schools and lowers the number of teachers union members in cities such as Milwaukee. And it allows them to portray themselves as reformers trying to do something about failing schools.
But the way to fix failing schools is not to spend far less per pupil on education. Some make a case that choice schools outperform Milwaukee Public Schools; some argue the opposite. Both sides are technically correct; it just depends on which statistics and interpretation you choose to accept. But remember, the discussion about school choice started because there was widespread dissatisfaction with MPS. Some have argued the district is so bad it should be shut down. So if the district is this bad, why would we be satisfied with a replacement that is barely better – or even worse?
As a Milwaukee Magazine story on the small schools experiment at MPS found, these small choice schools have trouble staying in operation without doing constant fundraisers to get additional dollars. The reality is that $6,400 per pupil isn’t enough. You may find some good teachers willing to work for low wages because they believe in the mission, but those will be the exception. Funding this scanty will doom schools to constant turnover of staff and an unending scramble to raise more money.
No Republican legislator would want this kind of education for their own district or their own children. Yet they have become convinced they are somehow achieving a positive reform for Wisconsin by creating cheap schools in Democratic-leaning, urban areas. What they are really doing is turning Wisconsin’s poorest cities into nationally unique islands of educational impoverishment.
A CAPCO Supporter or Not?
As a Sunday Milwaukee Journal Sentinel story declared the CAPCO bill I have been writing about has, at least for now, been put on hold. But I can assure you the lobbyists hired by the CAPCO companies will continue to do their best to get this legislation passed.
Meanwhile, it’s worth considering the curious role of Tom Still, the president of the Wisconsin Technology Council, in getting this bill passed. The group plays a key role in advising the state on how to build a new economy and support the creation of high-tech start-up companies. The council is a non-profit and gets about one-third of its funding from the state of Wisconsin, Still notes.
Still himself is the classic capital insider, a former associate editor of the Wisconsin State Journal who now serves on the board of directors for the Wisconsin Security Research Consortium, the UW-Extension Board of Visitors, the UW-Madison College of Engineering Industrial Advisory Board and the WiSys Technology Foundation Advisory Board.
Still is well-paid: The most recent (2009) federal tax form for the Wisconsin Technology Council shows he gets $202,377 in total compensation. Because his group is heavily dependent on state funding, however, you have to wonder just how honest his group can be in giving advice, whether the Republicans or Democrats are in power.
Take the case of the CAPCO bill. Still writes a monthly op-ed column for the Journal Sentinel and wrote one a month ago that I characterized as recommending the CAPCO bill. Still takes issue with that, arguing that his column simply described the bill.
Really? The column tells us that the state government is “getting back to the business of business” with two bills that are about economic growth. “Both are issues Democrats and Republicans can support,” he declares. As for the bill that includes the investment in CAPCOs, it “builds on the success of the widely acclaimed and often duplicated” law passed in 2005, and will address the need for “follow-up investing by venture capital firms in emerging companies.” Still also notes that the bill is “a modified version of an approach used in many states.” But he is not recommending it?
Still and his council are supposed to be experts in this field. So don’t legislators – and readers of his op-ed column, for that matter – need to know that the CAPCO bill has been condemned in state after state that has tried it, and has gotten little government funding to true venture capital firms or emerging companies. Shouldn’t Still have mentioned that a Minnesota study of an earlier Wisconsin CAPCO program concluded that it actually displaced the total amount of venture capital funding in this state?
The truth is that Still’s council has a history of backing CAPCO, and back in 2003, the last time the state considered a bill to increase CAPCO funding, Still’s group recommended $200 million in funding for CAPCOs.
This is someone whose group is specifically funded by the taxpayers to “give the state advice and issue white paper reports,” according to Still. Yet they are recommending a bill that many experts say will simply bilk taxpayers and will pay off well-placed companies from other states, along with the lobbyists they hire. Perhaps the state should look elsewhere for advice on how to build a new economy.
The Buzz
-The Sunday JS story on the background of Walker’s budget repair bill was interesting on many counts, particularly the connection between Republican state senator Mike Ellis and Democratic state senator Tim Cullen. Both are veterans who knew each other since the 1970s, and you get the sense that Ellis basically provided cover for Cullen, so the Democratic senator could sneak out of Madison and join the other 13 state senators who were fleeing to Illinois. I wonder how this revelation has gone over with Walker and the bill’s hard-core proponents?
-For all the fans of Milwaukee News Buzz, I must note we have discontinued it. We will putting more resources into insidemilwaukee.com and developing more of a news presence on that site.
And the Sports Nut considers: why does everyone hate the Miami Heat?
