In the years after Howard Fuller stepped down as superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools, he was seen by some liberal critics as a right wing-toady who had betrayed his old ideology by getting in bed with conservative school choice supporters. That view was always simplistic, as his bold call for reform of school choice, announced last week, proved once again. His new position – which could greatly alter the politics of school choice – raises many questions.
For starters, why the seeming flip-flop by Fuller? The answer is that he’s never been an ideologue. The old Fuller, after all, was a Democrat. He worked to get Democrat Tony Earl elected in 1982 and was rewarded with a position running the state’s Department of Employment Relations. And his commitment to public schools was personified by his work as MPS superintendent from 1991-1995, which included championing an über-liberal referendum to spend some $400 million to construct new schools, which was defeated by the taxpayers.
But Fuller was more often a critic of MPS, among other things proposing (in the late 1980s) to create an all-black school district that would be carved out of MPS. (That idea, too, went down in flames.) Fuller was always a supporter of alternative schools – or any schools, really – that would provide a good education for minority and low-income students. And he was always willing to work with business leaders and politicians of either party to accomplish his ends. For at least the last 10 years, that has meant mostly Republicans, as he embraced school choice as the solution to urban education in Milwaukee.
But the latest results of the five-year study on school choice, reported last week in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, showed there is no statistically significant difference in achievement between MPS and voucher schools. The schools are cheaper, but because of the partisan legislation battles over voucher funding, the program’s complicated funding formula awards most of the savings (some $82 million a year) to every place in the state but Milwaukee. This city’s property taxpayers are paying $45 million more annually for a program that appears to be having little positive impact on education.
The study suggests the competition with choice schools may have helped improve Milwaukee Public Schools, but that’s a tricky thing to measure. What does seem clear is that the results for choice schools on fourth-grade reading, fourth-grade math, eighth-grade science and (to a lesser degree) eighth-grade reading tests are wildly variable compared to results for MPS schools, which tend to bunch up together. What this suggests is that some choice schools could be doing very well, while others are disasters.
For some years, it has been clear that some choice schools have been run by hucksters who are in it for the money and may know little about education. “We’ve got to figure out a way to stop (them) from starting schools in the first place,” Fuller declared.
Fuller announced he would support Gov. Jim Doyle, yes a Democrat, in his push for more regulation of choice schools. This is a historic change of position for someone who has often provided the moral force behind vouchers, and will make it harder for Republicans and the more ideological voucher-ites to oppose stricter regulation.
Doyle’s budget bill already includes legislation to end the funding flaw that charges Milwaukee taxpayers $45 million more because of school choice. If this gets cut from the budget, it needs to be addressed as a part of any legislation to further regulate school choice. It’s also important, as Fuller notes, to make sure the new regulations don’t make it more difficult for the good voucher schools to operate. But the enforcement of some basic regulations is long overdue. “Who could argue with a notion of a bachelor’s degree for teachers?” Fuller asked. Who indeed?
Fuller’s transformation is likely to create more of a middle ground on an issue that has long provoked nasty left-right battles. The result just might be legislation designed to serve children rather than political agendas.
Is Shirley Soft on Crime?
A central tenet of challenger Randy Koschnick’s campaign against incumbent Wisconsin Supreme Court Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson is that her rulings on more than 70 cases (mostly on criminal matters) prove she is “out of the mainstream.”
Not true, countered Shepherd Express reporter Lisa Kaiser , in a story that provided no proof of her claim, as noted in my column last week. That gained me a wrist slap from the blogger the Illusory Tenant, but his argument was, er, illusory. Mr. Tenant says Kaiser didn’t have to read all 70-plus rulings to prove her point, which is true, but she did have to present some evidence for her claim, and offered none, which is why I slammed it as “pretend journalism.”
But happily, the Illusory one provides his own analysis of the cases, and it’s telling: First off, he notes that these 74 cases represent only 2 percent of the 3,500 rulings by Abrahamson. Secondly, he found that “more than half” of the 74 decisions (39) are 4-3 splits and “of those 39, the Chief Justice is with the dissenters 23 times, and with the majority 16 times. ” In short, if Abrahamson was out of the mainstream on most of these cases, so were the other judges who joined her.
I asked Seamus Flaherty , spokesperson for the Koschnick campaign, to respond, and he conceded the point, saying “it’s correct to say that a 4-3 case is a close call.” But Flaherty went on to note that in every 4-3 decision, Abrahamson sided “against the position of law enforcement.”
That’s quite a shift of position, essentially dropping the idea that Abrahamson is out of the mainstream, instead arguing she is wrong because “in every 4-3 decision she sided against the position of law enforcement,” as Flaherty added in his response to me.
That seems simplistic as well, because not everyone in “law enforcement” would be likely to agree with the particular prosecuting attorney on each of these 39 cases. (Indeed, to judge by endorsements, members of “law enforcement” are divided in this race, with many sheriffs and police groups backing Abrahamson.) Ultimately, Koschnick’s claim would seem to depend on the particular reasoning Abrahamson has used in these 74 cases, and he hasn’t provided much of a critique of that.
Similarly, the mere fact that Koschnick promises to be a conservative doesn’t mean he’ll be more of a “strict constructionist” than Abrahamson. Liberal and conservative judges have both been known to go by the “spirit” rather than the letter of the constitution. The issue is not that simple and literally gets down to cases – not their number, but their reasoning.
The Buzz
-Is the state going to help bankroll the Milwaukee Bucks? That would be my reading of a cryptic Journal Sentinel story telling us the state would provide $5 million in “bonding authority” for maintenance needs at the Bradley Center. I think of bonding authority as a loan, but in fact the $5 million is a grant, as Bradley Center spokesperson Evan Zeppos confirmed for me. That word never appears in the story. And of course any maintenance paid for by the state means it doesn’t have to be charged to the center’s main tenant, the Milwaukee Bucks.
-My report on the looming JS layoff of reporters was a bit simplistic, the Newspaper Guild admonished me, noting that such measures as a one-week unpaid furlough for all reporters might lower the number of layoffs needed. I hope they’re right. The guild has a blog that regularly updates the situation.
-Presumably to balance off its endorsement of Abrahamson, the Sunday JS offered dueling community columnists (argh) on the subject. Meanwhile, the news section has simply been asleep on this race. As newspapers fight for their lives, they note their key role in a democracy, but a paper that sits out campaigns undercuts the argument.
-The always-reclusive philanthropist Lynde Uihlein gave a rare interview to the Business Journal. Certainly a coup. But I was amused to see the five question and answer format is called “Take Five,” a near steal of the old JS page-two interview that used to run (though the five Q&As in the JS column were much shorter and punchier). Gary Krentz, the editor who oversaw this column, was on a daily basis scrounging and begging reporters for ideas: “any ‘Takes Five’ out there?” I’m sure he doesn’t miss that column.
-Who’s behind the movement to recall Gov. Doyle? That would be the groups The Right Side of Wisconsin and Citizens for Responsible Government, along with talk radio’s Vicki McKenna and others, as this blog details.
-And nuclear power is back. Or at least it’s vibrant enough to pay for lobbyists in Wisconsin, as blogger Bill Christofferson reports.
And can former Packer George Koontz put UW-Milwaukee’s sports program on the map? The Sports Nut ruminates, and manages to include a really embarassing photo of Bruce Pearl.
