Yellow Bus

When Superintendent Thornton gave the School Board a list of newly recommended textbooks, I raised some serious concerns. Why were we recommending a paper textbook for a course in website design? Aren’t digital textbooks and online services becoming cost effective even when we factor in the cost of laptops and tablets? Aren’t digital textbooks continually updated while paper versions for current history and the sciences woefully outdated before the next textbook adoption? Computers offer great promise for unlimited and current information on any topic. Online instruction can be individualized for each student’s needs. But author Nicholas Carr in his book, The…

Milwaukee Superintendent Thornton announced that Milwaukee Public Schools will not have to lay off any teachers for this coming school year. He attributed this to unexpected savings in healthcare expenditures by the district. Around the state, school districts have been reeling from the skyrocketing health insurance costs. In the crosshairs of many districts is the requirement through negotiations that their school districts purchase health insurance from the teacher union sponsored WEA Trust. Let us set the record straight. MPS has never, and I mean never, had insurance from the WEA Trust. The sign on the union building across from Milwaukee’s…

No sooner had Scott Walker become governor than the state’s largest teacher union, WEAC, proposed breaking up Milwaukee Public Schools into several districts. This put them at odds with its largest affiliate, the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association. The division was quickly papered over when WEAC president, Mary Bell, dropped the proposal after Gov. Walker began stripping bargaining rights from public employees. But WEAC’s proposal illustrated two points. First, the teachers’ union was perfectly willing to throw Milwaukee under the yellow bus if it meant protecting education in the rest of the state. This “throwing red meat (Milwaukee) to the lions…

Milwaukee’s Carmen High School of Science and Technology has some of the highest test scores in Milwaukee Public Schools even though the school has no entrance requirements for incoming students. But Carmen has one problem when it comes to measurements of academic success. It graduates far fewer students at the end of four years than many high schools. That is because Carmen will not accept a passing grade less than a “C” in any course. Get a grade lower, and a student has to retake the course in order to get credit. Many of its students take an extra year…

When the Wisconsin state legislature cut university funding in this budget cycle, the UW System Board of Regents simply increased tuition by 5.5 percent. This is the sixth year in a row that the regents took such actions. College graduates are being crushed by a mountain of debt. Present federal regulations do not allow an individual to walk away from college debt through bankruptcy. Is a college degree even worth it anymore? An alternative system may be found on online coursework. Even traditional universities have gotten into the act. For brick and mortar institutions, online courses might bring in just…

Some six years ago, Salman Khan started tutoring cousins by placing video math lessons on line. Soon people who weren’t even related to Khan were watching the videos. So Salman Khan created a free online instructional service called the Khan Academy. Traditional classroom teachers found the same videos online and starting turning the educational process upside down in what is now known as “flip” education. In traditional education, the teacher gives the classroom instruction, students ask questions, and the teacher assigns homework to reinforce the lesson. The teacher checks the homework the next day completing the educational loop. But in…

We have tried zero tolerance to combat violence in our schools. We have added locker searches, safety assistants and police, security cameras, door buzzers and metal scanners. Milwaukee Public Schools even considered giving school officials the authority to handcuff out-of-control students. We have suspended and expelled students at record numbers to the point where Milwaukee has had one of the highest rates of suspensions and expulsions in the nation. But all these actions only made our schools marginally safer. Some would argue our actions increased violence. How about more preventive actions? MPS introduced a number of mentors in several secondary…

We have tried zero tolerance to combat violence in our schools. We have added locker searches, safety assistants and police, security cameras, door buzzers, and metal scanners. Milwaukee Public Schools even considered giving school officials the authority to handcuff out-of-control students. We have suspended and expelled students at record numbers to the point where Milwaukee has had one of the highest rates of suspensions and expulsions in the nation. But all these actions only made our schools marginally safer. Some would argue our actions increased violence. How about more preventive actions? MPS introduced a number of mentors in several secondary…

We have tried zero tolerance to combat violence in our schools. We have added locker searches, safety assistants and police, security cameras, door buzzers, and metal scanners. Milwaukee Public Schools even considered giving school officials the authority to handcuff out-of-control students. We have suspended and expelled students at record numbers to the point where Milwaukee has had one of the highest rates of suspensions and expulsions in the nation. But all these actions only made our schools marginally safer. Some would argue our actions increased violence.  How about more preventive actions? MPS introduced a number of mentors in several secondary…

A hundred Milwaukee School employees filed into the Central Office auditorium on Tuesday, May 15th when a School Board committee took up the system’s budget for the next school year. Many carried cardboard signs with the words “Do the Right Thing” to protest the possible cuts to health insurance. Some speakers accused the Board of being heartless, not caring if employees even lived or died because of a lack of health insurance. It isn’t much fun to chair a Milwaukee School Board committee when that committee has to look at where to cut the budget, but it was my job…