Scott Girard:

Madison Teachers Inc. has filed a complaintagainst the Madison Metropolitan School District related to a survey sent out to staff last week.

The Prohibited Practice Complaint was filed Monday with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission and seeks an immediate cease and desist of the survey and asks that the district be made to destroy any records related to the responses before reviewing them.

The survey was only two questions long, but one of those questions asked staff how they would prefer the district deal with an anticipated $5 million to $9 million in additional budget cuts for the 2020-21 school year. The two options were to freeze most compensation increases currently in the budget, including base wage, or to eliminate 92 full-time equivalent positions while keeping wage increases intact.

Related:

Act 10

Four Senators for $1.57M

“An emphasis on adult employment“.

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Logan Wroge:

Madison’s teachers union is shifting its stance on school-based police officers and is now advocating they be taken out of the city’s main high schools — but only if 33 additional support staff are hired.

In a statement Sunday, Madison Teachers Inc. said it backs the removal of school resource officers, or SROs, stationed inside each of the Madison School District’s four main high schools — a move local activists have demanded of the district for years.

“We see the systematic racism that exists in our current structures and join the voices of our students and our community in calling for dramatic change in how we educate and interact with all of our students, especially those most marginalized in our schools and society,” MTI president Andy Waity said in the statement.

The major caveat, though, is MTI will only support the removal if certain positions at the four main high schools are staffed at recommended levels by the American Civil Liberties Union.

According to MTI, achieving those levels at each high school based on the ACLU’s “metric of equitable staffing” would require additional hires of:

One counselor, one nurse, one psychologist and four social workers for East.

One counselor, one nurse, one psychologist and five social workers for La Follette.

Two counselors, one nurse, one psychologist and five social workers for Memorial.

One counselor, one nurse and seven social workers for West.

“If we remove police officers from our schools, but do not adequately staff those same schools with social workers, nurses, counselors, and psychologists, we are perpetuating harm upon our most vulnerable young people,” the statement said.

2005: Gangs & School Violence Forum audio / video.

Related:

Act 10

Four Senators for $1.57M

“An emphasis on adult employment“.

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Noam Scheiber, Farah Stockman and J. David Goodman:

Over the past five years, as demands for reform have mounted in the aftermath of police violence in cities like Ferguson, Mo., Baltimore and now Minneapolis, police unions have emerged as one of the most significant roadblocks to change. The greater the political pressure for reform, the more defiant the unions often are in resisting it — with few city officials, including liberal leaders, able to overcome their opposition.

They aggressively protect the rights of members accused of misconduct, often in arbitration hearings that they have battled to keep behind closed doors. And they have also been remarkably effective at fending off broader change, using their political clout and influence to derail efforts to increase accountability.

While rates of union membership have dropped by half nationally since the early 1980s, to 10 percent, higher membership rates among police unions give them resources they can spend on campaigns and litigation to block reform. A single New York City police union has spent more than $1 million on state and local races since 2014.

Related:

Act 10

Four Senators for $1.57M

“An emphasis on adult employment“.

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration

Seth Saavedra:

On a union blog, MTEA president Amy Mizialko writes that MTEA is using the COVID-19 crisis to “strip back what has been wrongly imposed on our students—relentless standardized testing, scripted curriculum, one-size-fits-all online interventions.”

When asked if the “union’s insistence that its members not be required to work during the first three weeks of the shutdown may have contributed to MPS’ delays” she did not address that criticism directly. Instead she demurred, “We were finding our way with our families and students in something that was unprecedented.”

Not lack of enthusiasm and optimism isn’t shared by all MPS teachers.

Angela Harris, a first-grade teacher at Martin Luther King Jr. School and member of the Black Educators Caucus is frustrated by the delay, “I’m not saying we should have transitioned on day one. The biggest concern was the lack of planning and direction moving forward. Teachers could have been encouraged in those first three weeks to start identifying families who might be in need (of technology).”

One thing to note: Angela is much more representative of MPS students than the MTEA as about 71 percent of MPS teachers are White. Many suspect this disparity is why, when music programs were being shut for African American students, the MTEA remained silent while the Black Caucus spoke out, as they are now.

WEAC: $1.57 Million for four Wisconsin Senators.

My question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on teacher mulligans and our disastrous reading results.

Riley Vetterkind:

The Wisconsin Supreme Court on Tuesday swiftly rejected an attempt by employee unions to help defend Gov. Tony Evers’ stay-at-home order in court.

The four unions on Tuesday filed a motion to intervene as parties in a lawsuit the Republican Legislature brought last Tuesday to suspend the governor’s “safer at home” order. Doing so would have allowed the unions’ arguments to be heard in court.

But the conservative-dominated court, just hours after the unions submitted their filings, unanimously dismissed the request without providing an explanation. The court’s action could indicate trouble ahead for Evers’ executive order, especially since it has previously sided against Evers in other high-profile cases. Most recently, the court struck down Evers’ order delaying the April 7 election due to COVID-19.

In their motion to join the case, the unions — the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, Madison Teachers Inc., SEIU Healthcare Wisconsin and Amalgamated Transit Union Local 998 — argued the Legislature does not have the constitutional authority to be a party in the case and that the case does not meet the criteria for the Supreme Court to take it up.

The unions, which represent teachers, health care and transit workers, said Evers’ order protects them by preventing the spread of COVID-19 at schools, keeping hospitals from overflowing and ensuring health care workers get personal protective equipment. If the court revokes the order, as Republicans want, they said they fear infection rates, hospitalizations and deaths from the respiratory disease will increase and the economy will be threatened even further.

Related: $1.57 million for four state Senators.

Jim Bender:

More than 43,000 families in Wisconsin’s school choice programs likely will be surprised to learn that they constitute a “threat” to the state.

The editorial board of the Capital Times offered up that opinion in a recent attack on programs that serve these low-income and working-class families. The impetus for the editorial — what can charitably be described as a rant — was a school choice rally in the Capitol attended by more than 800 students and parents. It was also the first time a sitting United States vice president or president had been inside our state’s Capitol building.

In the 767-word editorial, the word “student” appeared but once. “Parent” and “family” were not mentioned at all. Milwaukee school board politics was heavily covered, however.

The editorial lauded Gov. Tony Evers for being “right” in opposing the state’s school choice programs. We can safely assume, therefore, that the editorial board will not object to assessing those programs based on criteria established by the governor during his tenure as Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Wisconsin’s three principal choice programs involve families in Milwaukee, Racine and the rest of state.

Let’s start with the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) where roughly 30,000 of the 43,000 students are enrolled. The DPI/Evers report cards rank schools using five categories, with the highest being “significantly exceeds expectations” or five stars. In the most recent ratings, this highest rank was awarded to 21 Milwaukee schools with a student population of color of at least 80%. Of those 21 schools, 14 are in the MPCP, five are autonomous charter schools and two are in Milwaukee Public Schools.

“An emphasis on adult employment”.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators 

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.

Alan Borsuk:

Let’s focus particularly on Evers’ call for using some of the money to return state support of general operating costs of public schools to two-thirds of the total bill (with the other third coming generally from property taxes).  

A bit of history: In the early 1990s, there was strong opinion, particularly for then-Gov. Tommy Thompson and Republican legislators, that property taxes in Wisconsin were too high and school spending was increasing too fast. The result was creation of what was called “the three-legged stool” that would provide something for school spending increases to rest on.  

The three legs were: A cap on how much money school districts could collect in state aid and property taxes; a rule known as the QEO which effectively put a lid on how much pay and benefits for teachers could increase; and a commitment by the state to pay two-thirds of school costs in exchange for reduced property taxes (which actually worked, at least for a while).  

Teachers unions’ hated the QEO and it died during the time Democrat Jim Doyle was the governor. Revenue caps (which also constrained teacher pay and benefits) are alive to this day.  

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.

At the Pence rally. A lot of people here with yellow sashes in support of school vouchers. Many nonwhite.

— Rocknrolli OneAndOnly (@RocknRocknrolli) January 28, 2020

.@vp mentions @GovEvers‘s absence and a bill to be reintroduced today by @RepBrostoff to phase out school vouchers in Wisconsin: “I know the governor can’t be here with us today so let’s make sure he hears this, we’re not going to let that happen.”

— Mitchell Schmidt (@schmidtmitchell) January 28, 2020

Molly Beck:

Vice President Mike Pence on Tuesday gave an election-year defense of President Donald Trump’s education policies — assuring parents at a Capitol rally that under the Republican president, children will not be stuck in poorly performing schools.

Pence and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos turned a state rally promoting alternatives to public schools into a stump speech for Trump, who needs to keep Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes in his corner as he faces reelection and an impeachment trial.

“I’m here in Wisconsin because this is where it all began,” Pence told a crowd of hundreds in the Wisconsin State Capitol’s rotunda, referring to Milwaukee’s private school voucher program — the nation’s first.

The visit to the statehouse — a first for a sitting vice president — put on alert local education officials and public school advocates who see the Trump administration as a threat to public school funding, which they argue has been decimated over the last 10 years by the programs Pence and DeVos promoted.

Mitchell Schmidt:

In a press conference after Pence’s speech, Rep. Jonathan Brostoff, D-Milwaukee, said his bill would phase out vouchers in the state and reinvest in public schools.

“(Pence) has no idea what’s going on here,” Brostoff said. “He represents a complete erosion of one of the most fundamental values and one of the greatest values of this country which is strong public education and that’s certainly a Wisconsin value.”

Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, and Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, also spoke at the event, with both vowing to uphold the state’s voucher program.

“As long as Republicans control the Legislature, we plan to keep it,” Fitzgerald said.

During his speech, Vos encouraged students participating in the event to cheer for Trump, Pence and DeVos and boo “those who don’t like school choice.”

The Democratic Party of Wisconsin held an event in response to Pence’s visit, where party chairman Ben Wikler called the event a celebration for the attack on public schools by President Donald Trump and his administration.

“Trump and his cronies are sabotaging public education because it’s not their children who go to public school,” Wikler said.

Logan Wroge (fails to compare total spending)

The Milwaukee voucher program started in 1990-91 under former Republican Gov. Tommy Thompson, who attended Tuesday’s rally.

In the first year, the program enrolled 337 students. Enrollment has grown almost every year. This fall, 28,978 students attended 130 private schools on vouchers in Milwaukee.

Another voucher program in Racine started in the 2011-12 school year, followed by a statewide program in 2013-14 and a fourth for students with disabilities in 2016.

In the Milwaukee, Racine and statewide programs, 42,392 students enrolled in private schools this fall using a voucher, or just under 5% of the total school-aged population.

The use of vouchers, though, has yet to catch on in Madison as only three schools in the city signed up to accept students this school year through the statewide program, which state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, said leaves Madison children with “limited choices.”

Scott Bauer:

Vice President Mike Pence touted alternatives to a public school education during a visit Tuesday to the state where the private school voucher program began, stopping in battleground Wisconsin for a noontime celebration in the state Capitol.

Pence, and U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos were both briefly drowned out by chants of “shame” from dozens of protesters who gathered one floor down in the Capitol building. The protesters, some carrying signs calling for the separation of church and state, also booed throughout their comments.

School choice — which includes private school vouchers, charter schools and other nontraditional options — has long been an issue that divides Republicans and Democrats, particularly in Wisconsin. Conservatives have championed offering students an alternative to public schools, giving Pence a chance to appeal to Republican voters in a swing state during national school choice week.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

In addition, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools.

2011: A majority of the Madison School Board aborted the proposed Madison Property Academy IB charter school.

Voucher schools spend far less per student than traditional government supported schools. Traditional K-12 School Districts capture local (property), redistributed state and federal funds, while voucher schools largely survive on state taxpayer funds.

Steven Malanga:

Government-union membership fell again in 2019, continuing a decade-long decline. Workers in public-sector unions now number 7.066 million, representing a drop of nearly 100,000 in one year and the smallest government-organized labor membership in 20 years. Since 2009, when the ranks of government-union members peaked at 7.896 million, public-labor groups have lost more than 10 percent of their membership. The percentage of government workers belonging to unions has dropped to 33.6, the smallest proportion of the government workforce since 1978. The most recent numbers illustrate how government unions continue to suffer from the hangover of the recession of 2008-2009, in part because of a slow rebound in government employment during the economic expansion that began in 2010. The numbers may also reflect some losses that unions have suffered in the wake of the 2018 Supreme Court Janus decision, which gave public-sector workers the right to opt out of joining a union or paying fees.

The trends are particularly ominous for public unions because 2019 should have been the year that they started bouncing back. In the tenth year of an economic expansion, state tax and local collections grew robustly, increasing by 9 percent in the second quarter and 5.6 percent in the third quarter, according to government surveys. States and municipalities subsequently hired more workers. The number of local government employees, for instance, jumped by nearly 100,000 in 2019, to 14.573 million. But these gains haven’t translated into increases in union membership, particularly in municipal government, the largest segment of public-sector employment. The total government workforce in America has returned to its pre-financial crash levels, but union headcount has failed to follow suit.

Related: Act 10.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

Lauren Fitzpatrick & Nader Issa:

Some CTU members have grumbled on Facebook about how their dues — a flat $55.85 per pay period — are being spent directly on political candidates. For example, the union put $215,000 into Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s failed campaign for mayor. The CTU also shifted $56,000 from its budget to the CTU-PAC.

“Can someone please post, again, the way to opt-out of your union dues going to support political candidates?” one teacher wrote on the “Members First” Facebook page of CTU members who have been pushing for more accountability on union spending. The group unsuccessfully ran a slate against the current teachers union leadership.

“That is on the minds of many members who are frustrated with the lack of transparency and accountability in political spending,” another member responded to the Facebook post. “Opting out of PAC voluntary contributions is an option, and sends a message and hopefully brings about change.”

Asked about the union’s political activities, Jennifer Johnson, the CTU’s chief of staff, says the CTU’s work is “inherently political.” But she notes that members can decide whether their dues go to the union’s PACs.

Related: WEAC: $1.57M for four State Senators.

Mike Antonucci:

As #RedForEd strikes hit West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arizona and a handful of other states, 2018 was dubbed the year of teacher protests. It was also the year of the U.S. Supreme Court’s Janus ruling, which promised to have a profound effect on teacher union finances.

In between those events, the National Education Association and its state affiliates completed their annual financial disclosure reports for the Internal Revenue Service detailing their income and expenditures. These reports are public records, because all these unions are exempt from federal income taxes. The reports are filed well after each affiliate’s fiscal year is complete, leaving us to examine disclosures that are now 18 months old. Even so, one affiliate, NEA New Mexico, has apparently not filed yet.

I have compiled information from the filings of NEA and its state affiliates for the 2017-18 school year. Their revenues totaled more than $1.66 billion, an increase of 3.1 percent over the previous year.

WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Rachel Cohen:

Meanwhile, a top priority for labor has been sitting quietly on Pelosi’s desk and, unlike USMCA, already commands enough support to get it over the House finish line. The Protecting the Right to Organize Act would be the most comprehensive rewrite of U.S. labor law in decades. It would eliminate right-to-work laws, impose new penalties on employers who retaliate against union organizing, crack down on worker misclassification, and establish new rules so that employers cannot delay negotiating collective bargaining contracts. Introduced by Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., in May, it already has 215 co-sponsors in the House and 40 in the Senate.

Wisconsin Act 10

2010: Influence and money: WEAC $1.57M for four (state) senators

2009:

To make matters more dire, the long-term legislative proposal specifically exempts school district arbitrations from the requirement that arbitrators consider and give the greatest weight to revenue limits and local economic conditions. While arbitrators would continue to give these two factors paramount consideration when deciding cases for all other local governments, the importance of fiscal limits and local economic conditions would be specifically diminished for school district arbitration.

An emphasis on adult employment.

Fiscal Indulgences

Will Flanders and Lauren Tunney:

“Act 10 shook the status quo for public employee unions in Wisconsin. And when workers get a say in the future of their union, the number of public employee unions in Wisconsin continues to shrink,” said Will Flanders, research director for the Milwaukee-based free market think tank. The report is titled, Democracy in the Workplace: Examining Union Recertification in Wisconsin Under Act 10.”

Much more on Act 10, here.

Related: WEAC – $1,570,000 for four senators.

Monica Potts:

There was general agreement among the Facebook commenters that no one in the area was paid that much — the librarian’s wages would have worked out to be about $42,200 a year — and the people who do actually earn incomes that are similar — teachers and many county officials — largely remained quiet. (Clinton has a median income of $34,764 and a poverty rate of 22.6 percent.) When a few of us, including me, pointed out that the candidate for the library job had a master’s degree, more people commented on the uselessness of education. “Call me narrow-minded but I’ve never understood why a librarian needs a four-year degree,” someone wrote. “We were taught Dewey decimal system in grade school. Never sounded like anything too tough.”

Many rural counties are also experiencing declines in whatever industries were once the major employers. In Appalachia, this is coal; in much of the Midwest, it is heavy manufacturing; and in my county, and many other counties, it’s natural gas and other extractive industries.

This part of Arkansas sits on the Fayetteville Shale, which brought in natural gas exploration in the early 2000s. For about a decade, the gas companies paid local taxes on their property, equipment and the money they made from extracting natural gas, and landowners paid property taxes on the royalties they earned. It was a boom. Many people at the time, here and elsewhere, expected that the money would last longer than it did.

Instead, the price of natural gas plummeted in 2009 and profits declined. Production slowed. One of the biggest natural gas companies in the area, Houston-based Southwestern Energy, stopped paying taxes to the counties here, arguing that the rates were unfair. The company and five Arkansas counties, including mine, are still locked in litigation over some of the money it owes (it recently paid a portion of it).

2009:

To make matters more dire, the long-term legislative proposal specifically exempts school district arbitrations from the requirement that arbitrators consider and give the greatest weight to revenue limits and local economic conditions. While arbitrators would continue to give these two factors paramount consideration when deciding cases for all other local governments, the importance of fiscal limits and local economic conditions would be specifically diminished for school district arbitration.

WEAC $1,570,000 for Four Wisconsin Senators:

How much do election-year firewalls cost to build? For the state’s largest teachers union, $1.57 million.
That’s how much the Wisconsin Education Association Council said last week it will spend trying to make sure four Democratic state senators are re-elected – enough, WEAC hopes, to keep a Democratic majority in the 33-member state body.

Although there are 15 Democratic candidates running for the state Senate, and 80 Democrats running for the state Assembly, the latest WEAC report shows that the teachers union is placing what amounts to an “all in” bet on saving just four Democratic senators who are finishing their first terms.

Additional Commentary.

Wiseye @ 24 September WisPolitics Lunch:

Jim Zellmer:

Thank you for your service Governor Evers.

Under your leadership, the Wisconsin d.p.i. granted Mulligan’s to thousands of elementary teachers who couldn’t pass a reading exam (that’s the “Foundations of Reading” elementary teacher reading content knowledge exam), yet our students lag Alabama, a state that spends less and has fewer teachers per students.

What message are we sending to parents, citizens, taxpayers and those students (who lack proficiency).

Governor Evers: I’m not sure how many mulligans we issued but they are all mulligans that the local school districts are asking for because there are people that generally speaking were people that worked in those schools while they are trying to pass that test they are very close to getting there hitting the mark there.

So I believe that the mulligans that we did issue were were the right thing to do.

The other thing that concerned me and I supported putting that piece in place around passing that test and I still do but the data that concerned me was that the test may have been biased and that it was probably.

34:09

Yes disproportionate number of people of color were not passing that test and this I know the state of Massachusetts had that problem and the state of Wisconsin had that problem. so given that there were we were and I can honestly say I don’t know what came out of the study but we are working with Massachusetts to take a look at that issue and see how how we can correct it.

2005: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before.

2009: “An emphasis on adult employment”.

When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

2010: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators

2011: A Capitol Conversation on our disastrous reading results.

The followup legislation lead to the MTEL based Foundations of Reading: an elementary reading teacher content knowledge examination.

Subsequently undermined:

The Wisconsin Department of Public instruction, long lead by our new Governor, Tony Evers, has waived thousands of elementary teacher reading content knowledge requirements (Foundations of Reading, based on Massachusetts’ best in the States MTEL requirement)

Alan Borsuk on MTEL and our disastrous reading results.

“the majority of ALL 11th-grade students in Madison read and write below basic proficiency. Translated: they are functionally illiterate.

“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results 

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

2021: Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results

More on our long term, disastrous reading results, here.

Interestingly, a number of local and state media folks attended this event, but I’ve seen no coverage of this vital question.

“an emphasis on adult employment”.

Betsy DeVos is coming to Wisconsin. So I’m heading to Milwaukee early tomorrow morning to join @MTEAunion and Milwaukee families in sending a crystal clear message: the Trump/DeVos team might not believe in public schools, but we do. https://t.co/XHUzMPbuVn

— Ben Wikler (@benwikler) September 16, 2019

Evers signs record number of executive orders in first year

Observer:

A week after Gov. Phil Murphy vetoed a bill strengthening disclosure requirements for contributions to “dark money” political groups, it was revealed that the state’s powerful teachers’ union contributed $2.5 million to a group pushing the pro-labor governor’s agenda.

New Directions New Jersey had refused to reveal who helped fund their work supporting the first-term Democratic governor. Murphy, who appeared in television advertisements paid for by New Directions as he fought with his fellow Democrats over the state budget, also never revealed the donor’s names.

But, as Politico reports, the donation was discovered by a longtime NJEA foe who came across information about the donation by reviewing minutes from union meetings.

The report comes a week after Murphy conditionally vetoed a bill that received overwhelming support in the state legislature. The governor’s office claims Murphy’s conditions will strengthen the bill. But critics say the governor insisted on conditions he knows will kill the reform measure.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Bob Wickers and Sam Coleman:

These are legitimate questions that none of us can answer. Even though taxpayers will have to fund whatever agreement is ultimately reached, the public knows virtually nothing about the proceedings. They won’t see any details until a final contract is approved, and they will likely never know about the offers and counteroffers along the way.

Transparency in negotiations involving public employee unions is prohibited by law in California, which means voters never know how public officials are performing one of their most important jobs.

It doesn’t have to be this way.
Many states and municipalities have ordinances mandating transparency in collective bargaining. Proposals, counterproposals and independent analyses are posted publicly. and negotiations are live-streamed. This kind of openness encourages adult behavior, good faith and compromise, and it can help avoid disruptive walkouts like the one we’re seeing now in Los Angeles.

Related: Act 10 and $1,570,000 for four Wisconsin State Senators./

Walker Bragman:

At the height of the conflict, O’Rourke publicly mused about disbanding the police union, calling it “out of control” and lamenting his colleagues’ unwillingness to stand up to the powerful political force. A year later, he was calling for “better checks on collective bargaining in the public sector.”

The fight came at one of the bleakest moments of the Great Recession, and the city was stuck in contracts with the police and firefighters unions that provided for annual raises and benefits. The city manager was proposing a 5 percent property tax increase and other hikes in fees to pay for them, but the city council wanted the unions to defer some of the wage increases and forfeit some of the holidays. The Firemen and Policemen’s Pension Fund was in need of more money, which meant they were open to negotiations, but O’Rourke was frustrated at how dug in he said they were.

Police unions have increasingly found themselves in conflict with progressive Democrats in cities across the country, and are notorious for defending even the worst officers on the force against charges of assault or murder. Chris Evans, O’Rourke’s spokesperson, said that when he relayed The Intercept’s inquiry to O’Rourke, O’Rourke’s first memory of the fight was that police were demanding a provision that would give officers a 48-hour window after a police shooting before they would have to answer an investigator’s questions. That provision is indeed in the contract; O’Rourke’s remarks at the time, however, were focused on officer compensation and El Paso’s strapped budget.

O’Rourke, in public, took particular exception to some of the demands from the police union in the ongoing negotiations, including its continued insistence on maintaining the wage increases, which he said amounted to 8 percent each year. In an August 3, 2010, meeting, a seemingly exasperated O’Rourke went so far as to ask the city’s attorney if there was a way to eliminate the union altogether.

“In my opinion, the basic problem with this whole setup is you’ve got a very powerful police union that’s been able to extract an unsustainable increase in salaries year over year and an unsustainable series of additional benefits,” he said, following an exchange over the city manager’s proposal to create a second police academy. “What are the provisions or opportunities for the voters of El Paso to go back to some other form of representation for the police officers?”

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Mike Antonucci:

What if I told you there was a corporation with franchises in every state — and one overseas — that collected $1.62 billion in revenues annually and paid virtually no federal, state, or local income taxes? That corporation is the National Education Association, whose 3 million members send contributions every paycheck.

The one price NEA does pay for its tax exemption is that it must file an annual financial disclosure report with the Internal Revenue Service detailing its income and expenditures. These reports are public records. They are filed well after each affiliate’s fiscal year is complete, leaving us to examine disclosures that are now 18 months old.

I have compiled information from the filings of NEA and all its state affiliates except Missouri for the 2016-17 school year. If we include an estimate for Missouri NEA based on its previous year’s filings, the total revenue collected by the union exceeded $1.62 billion, a $20 million increase over 2015-16.

Related: WEAC – $1,570,000 for four Wisconsin State Senators.

Peter Cook:

After spending eight long years at odds with the Obama Administration, the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) viewed the 2016 elections as an opportunity to reassert themselves within the Democratic Party and to regain a measure of influence over federal education policy. As a result, the two unions spent massive amounts to get Democrats elected to office, threw their weight Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president, and closely coordinated their efforts with national Democratic Party officials.

It goes without saying that things did work out as planned. While the two teachers unions spent tens of millions of dollars during the 2016 election cycle to get Clinton and other Democrats elected, in the end, they failed to deliver where it counts: the voting booth. As Greg Toppo at USA Today reported shortly after the elections, internal union figures revealed that one out of every three NEA members and one out of every five AFT members voted for Donald Trump.

Related: $1.57M for four senators (WEAC).

Mike Antonicci:

Just as local chapters are preparing for the loss of fair share fees, CTA also has the responsibility to prepare for this reality. There are currently two legal cases moving through the courts with the goal of reaching the U.S. Supreme Court as early as next year. We know losing fair share fees will have an immediate $7.7 million impact on the CTA budget. CTA is committed to maintaining services to our members and wants to avoid the staff layoffs of up to 50 percent experienced in Wisconsin and Michigan when they lost agency fee. This means we must plan ahead and that’s what we’re doing.

Related: WEAC: Four Senators for $1,570,000.

Kevin Williamson:

During the 2008 Democratic primary, Obama gave an off-the-record speech to a group of Wall Street financial executives in which he shared his frustration with the sclerotic and bureaucratic state of American education, and declared that he was close to publicly endorsing a nationwide school-choice program. (This is according to one of those in attendance.) The moneymen were enthused by this, but nothing ever came of it. In fact, Obama went hard in the opposite direction, working to gut the school-choice program in Washington, D.C., a popular program, which benefited urban black families almost exclusively. You don’t have to be a hard-boiled cynic to suspect that this has to do with the manpower and money-power of the teachers’ unions, who could have done a great deal more than they did to elevate Hillary Rodham Clinton over Barack Obama that year.

Related: WEAC: $1.57M for four senators.

Bill McMorris:

The two Republicans who broke ranks with their party and announced they would vote against education secretary nominee Betsy DeVos have received thousands of dollars from the nation’s largest teachers union.

Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) and Susan Collins (R., Maine) have each benefited from contributions from the National Education Association. Collins received $2,000 from the union in 2002 and 2008, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Murkowski, meanwhile, has received $23,500.

The NEA represents 3 million members, making it the wealthiest and most influential union in the country. The NEA, along with other labor groups like the American Federation of Teachers, has waged a fierce campaign against DeVos, a billionaire philanthropist and school choice activist.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Molly Beck:

A spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, said Act 10 has been an “undisputed victory for Wisconsin taxpayers.”

“Wisconsin’s declining union membership since the passage of right-to-work legislation only reflects that workers now have the ability to make their own decision about the costs and benefits of union membership,” said spokeswoman Myranda Tanck. “Senator Fitzgerald maintains that the heart of this issue is a simple matter of individual freedom.”

Nationally, according to Thursday’s BLS report, about 14.6 million workers were members of unions in 2016 — down by 240,000 members, or 0.4 percent, from 2015. By comparison, the union membership rate was 20.1 percent, or 17.7 million workers, in 1983.

UW-Madison economist Steven Deller said the level of union membership nationally has been declining for years — a trend that is likely to continue with large-scale, labor-intensive manufacturing being replaced with smaller-scale technology that requires more capital but less manual labor. Large-scale manufacturing companies tend to be unionized and their replacements are more likely not to be.

Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Act 10.

An emphasis on adult employment.

WEAC: $1.57 million for four senators.

K-12 Tax & Spending growth.

Madison schools 18k per student budget, up from about 15k in 2010.

Dave Umhoefer:

Dave Weiland, an Oconomowoc school district teacher and local union leader, thinks the state union was stuck in a 1920s mentality.

“The gravy train was running, and they didn’t see the curve,” he said.

Indeed, two years prior to Walker’s election, the path appeared to be moving in a different direction.

Bolstered by union might and money, Democrats swept to control of the state Capitol, then opened 20,000 more jobs to union representation and repealed limits on teacher compensation.

One group that got the power to organize: Home child-care workers — at a time when their industry was under scrutiny for fraud that cost taxpayers millions.

Two years later, Republicans were in charge.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Samantha Marcus and Susan Livio:

The constitutional amendment would require the state increase payments into the government worker pension fund. It must be approved by the voters in a public referendum. But Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester) has so far declined to hold a vote on the referendum until lawmakers resolve a transportation funding impasse.

related: WEAC: four senators for $1.57 million

Liam Dillon:

California’s largest teachers union has given more than $13 million to the effort to extend income tax hikes on California’s highest earners, according to newly released state campaign finance reports.

The report shows the California Teachers Assn. gave $3 million between April and June this year, in addition to the $10 million the union donated last month.

Before the $10-million contribution, supporters of the Proposition 55 campaign reported having $14 million in the bank. Also supporting the measure are the California Hospital Assn., Service Employees International Union and the California Medical Assn

. Related: WEAC, $1.57M for four senators.

and, Act 10.

Jeremy Lott:

Yet the emails that have been released highlight the rather one-way relationship between the Democratic Party and labor unions. DNC staffers see the unions as good soldiers in skirmishes with Republicans, as a pain when it comes to getting things done and, ultimately, as pushovers.

When brainstorming what to do about last week’s Republican National Convention, the DNC’s Rachel Palermo urged her party to “meet with the hotel trades, SEIU, and Fight for 15 about staging a strike.” She said the result could be a “fast food worker strike around the city or just at franchises around the convention.” The aim would not be to improve working conditions, but to bloody Republicans.

Alternately, the DNC could “infiltrate friendly union hotels and properties around the convention that Republicans will be patronizing to distribute ‘care’ packages” — probably not chocolates.

Palermo also noted that “SEIU has space in downtown Cleveland close to convention that can be the base of operations and host the wrapped mobile RV.”

Related: WEAC, $1,570,000 for four senators.

Mike Antonucci:

An initiative on the November ballot in Massachusetts would lift the state’s cap on charter schools just enough to allow 12 new charters or expansions of existing charters each year. That seems relatively innocuous as political issues go, but the Massachusetts Teachers Association (MTA) has made the referendum its line in the sand. It is devoting $9.2 million of its own budget to defeating the measure, titled Question 2 .

But why limit yourself to spending millions of Massachusetts teacher dues when you can get access to more than a million dollars of dues from teachers in other states? Just prior to the opening of the National Education Association Representative Assembly in Washington DC, the national union’s board of directors approved a $1.4 million grant to MTA from its Ballot Measure/Legislative Crises Fund to support the anti-charter campaign.

Related: $1.57M for four senators.

Wisconsin’s stürm and drang over “Act 10” is somewhat manifested in Madison. Madison’s government schools are the only Wisconsin District, via extensive litigation, to still have a collective bargaining agreement with a teacher union, in this case, Madison Teachers, Inc.

The Madison School Board and Administration are working with the local teachers union on a new “Handbook”. The handbook will replace the collective bargaining agreement. Maneuvering over the terms of this very large document illuminates posturing and power structure(s) in our local government schools.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham wrote recently (September 17, 2015 PDF):

The Oversight group was able to come to agreement on all of the handbook language with the exception of one item, job transfer in the support units. Pursuant to the handbook development process, this item was presented to me for review and recommendation to the Board. My preliminary recommendation is as follows:

Job Transfer for all support units
(See Pages 151, 181, 197, 240, 261)

Superintendent Recommendation
That the language in the Handbook with regard to transfer state as follows: Vacancies shall first be filled by employees in surplus. The District has the right to determine and select the most qualified applicant for any position. The term applicant refers to both internal and external candidates for the position.

The District retains the right to determine the job qualifications needed for any vacant position. Minimum qualifications shall be established by the District and equally applied to all persons.

Rationale/Employee Concern

Rationale:
It is essential that the District has the ability to hire the most qualified candidate for any vacant position—whether an internal candidate or an external candidate. This language is currently used for transfers in the teacher unit. Thus, it creates consistency across employee groups.
By providing the District with the flexibility of considering both internal and external candidates simultaneously the District can ensure that it is hiring the most qualified individual for any vacant position. It also gives the District opportunities to diversify the workforce by expanding the pool of applicants under consideration. This change would come with a commitment to provide stronger development opportunities for internal candidates who seek pathways to promotion.

Employee Concern:
The existing promotional system already grants a high degree of latitude in selecting candidates, including hiring from the outside where there are not qualified or interested internal applicants. It also helps to develop a cadre of dedicated, career-focused employees.

September 24, 2015 Memo to the Madison government schools board of education from Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham:

To: Board of Education
From: Jennifer Cheatham, Superintendent of Schools
RE: Update to Handbook following Operations Work Group

The Operations Work Group met on Monday September 21, 2015. Members of the Oversight Group for development of the Employee Handbook presented the draft Employee Handbook to the Board. There was one item on which the Oversight Group was unable to reach agreement, the hiring process for the support units. Pursuant to the handbook development process, this item was presented to me for review and recommendation to the Board. There was discussion around this item during the meeting and, the Board requested that members of the Oversight Group meet again in an attempt to reach consensus.

Per the Board’s direction, District and employee representatives on the Oversight Group came together to work on coming to consensus on the one remaining item in the Handbook. The group had a productive dialog and concluded that with more time, the group would be able to work together to resolve this issue. Given that the Handbook does not go into effect until July1, 2016, the group agreed to leave the issue regarding the hiring process for the support units unresolved at this point and to include in the Handbook the phrase “To Be Determined” in the applicable sections. As such, there is no longer an open item. When you vote on the Handbook on Monday, the section on the “Selection Process” in the various addenda for the applicable support units will state “To Be Determined” with an agreement on the part of the Oversight Group to continue to meet and develop final language that the Board will approve before the Handbook takes effect in the 2016-17 school year.

Current Collective Bargaining Agreement (160 page PDF) Wordcloud:

Proposed Employee Handbook (304 Page PDF – 9.21.2015 slide presentation) Wordcloud:

Background:

1. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has filed suit to vacate the Madison government schools collective bargaining agreement with Madison Teachers, Inc.

2. Attorney Lester Pines has spent considerable time litigating Act 10 on behalf of Madison Teachers, Inc. – with some success.

3. The collective bargaining agreement has been used to prevent the development of non-Madison Government school models, such as independent charter, virtual and voucher organizations. This one size fits all approach was manifested by the rejection [Kaleem Caire letter] of the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

4. Yet, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending more than $15,000 per student annually. See also “What’s different, this time?”

5. Comparing Madison, Long Beach and Boston government school teacher union contracts. Current Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham has cited Boston and Long Beach government schools as Districts that have narrowed the achievement gap. Both government districts offer a variety of school governance models, which is quite different than Madison’s long-time “one size fits all approach”.

6. Nearby Oconomowoc is paying fewer teachers more.

7. Minneapolis teacher union approved to authorize charter schools.

8. Madison Teachers, Inc. commentary on the proposed handbook (Notes and links). Wordcloud:

9. A rather astonishing quote:

“The notion that parents inherently know what school is best for their kids is an example of conservative magical thinking.”; “For whatever reason, parents as a group tend to undervalue the benefits of diversity in the public schools….”

– Madison School Board member Ed Hughes.

10. 1,570,000 for four senators – WEAC.

11. Then Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Schwerpunkt via wikipedia.

John Higgins:

After nearly a year of deliberation, the state Supreme Court ruled 6-3 late Friday afternoon that charter schools are unconstitutional, creating chaos for hundreds of families whose children have already started classes.

The ruling — believed to be one of the first of its kind in the country — overturns the law voters narrowly approved in 2012 allowing publicly funded, but privately operated, schools.

Eight new charter schools are opening in Washington this fall, in addition to one that opened in Seattle last year.

It was not immediately known what would happen with the schools that are already running. The parties have 20 days to ask the court for reconsideration before the ruling becomes final.

Related: WEAC, $1.57 million for four senators.

Washington policy center :

New research finds that some justices on the state supreme court have received political contributions from a lead party in a key lawsuit now before the court.

Parties in the case, League of Women Voters, Washington Education Association, et al vs State of Washington, are asking the court to strike down Washington’s charter school law, passed by voters in 2012, and bar children from attending a charter public school.

Charter schools are community-based public schools that operate independently of central district management. They are tuition-free and open to all students. In Washington, charter schools are designed to help poor families and children underserved by traditional schools.

Charter schools are popular with low-income parents who see education as the path to a better future for their children. Demand far exceeds supply. While 10 charter schools are set to open, the Charter School Commission this year rejected applications from 12 community charter school groups, leaving 4,900 children to wait for a future round of approvals.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for four senators.

Bill Lueders:

School choice proponents, many from out of state, funneled $64,000 directly into candidates’ coffers in 2014, through AFC and another group. (The AFC-affiliated funder, Wisconsin Federation for Children Political Fund, filed its last report Nov. 26, a month late, risking a penalty of up to $500. Its Washington, D.C.-based administrator did not respond to an emailed question about the late filing.)

In addition, AFC made independent expenditures of $866,000 to boost or oppose candidates. This adds to the nearly $10 million in state electoral spending by school choice proponents between 2003 and 2012, as tallied by the nonpartisan Wisconsin Democracy Campaign.

AFC’s spending in the Nov. 4 elections included $148,000 to help narrowly defeat Democrat Rep. Mandy Wright, a former teacher and school choice critic. It spent $123,000 to help Republican Todd Novak score a razor-thin win over Democrat Dick Cates. And it poured $240,000 into GOP choice proponent Howard Marklein’s successful bid for an open Senate seat.

Jensen is proud of these victories, which he says give it “a school choice majority in both houses.” He attributes this success to public support for school choice.

Yet, in its electioneering, AFC commonly doesn’t even mention school choice. It attacked Wright for allegedly using sick leave to attend a protest, which she insists is not true. It went after Cates for his vote on the local school board concerning the Pledge of Allegiance. And it ripped Democratic Rep. Gordon Hintz for threatening a female colleague and being cited in a massage parlor sting operation, both in 2011.

Related; WEAC: 1,570,000 for four (state) Senators.

Madison 2005 (reflecting 1998):

When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before
On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

In 1998, the Madison School Board adopted an important academic goal: “that all students complete the 3rd grade able to read at or beyond grade level”. We adopted this goal in response to recommendations from a citizen study group that believed that minority students who are not competent as readers by the end of the third grade fall behind in all academic areas after third grade.

As of 2013, the situation has not changed, unfortunately.

Madison, 2014, the view from Milwaukee:

The largest state teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, gave $1.3 million last month to the Greater Wisconsin Committee, a liberal group that has been running ads critical of Walker. Two of WEAC’s political action committees have given a total of $83,128 to Burke directly.

On the other side, the American Federation for Children said last year in a brochure that in the 2012 elections in Wisconsin, including the recalls that year, it had spent $2.4 million supporting pro-voucher candidates.

Along with family members, Dick and Betsy DeVos have given about $343,000 to Walker since 2009. The Grand Rapids, Mich., couple made their fortune in the marketing firm Amway and now support the voucher school movement.

The elections are critical because in general, each candidate’s stance on the issue of vouchers is largely dictated by their political party affiliation. If Republican candidates maintain control of both houses and the governor’s seat, voucher-friendly legislation is more likely to pass.

Democrats are trying to take control of the state Senate. Republicans hold the chamber 17-15, with one GOP-leaning seat vacant. Republicans have a stronger majority in the Assembly and the election is unlikely to change that.

Senate Democrats would oppose the expansion of voucher schools until standards and requirements are established that put those private schools on the same footing as public schools, Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said.

…….

Walker on Wednesday also challenged Burke’s record on the Madison School Board.

He noted that the graduation rate for black students in Madison is lower than the graduation rate for black students in MPS.

Walker said Burke has had a chance to use his Act 10 law to save the taxpayers millions in Madison, and put those dollars toward alleviating the achievement gap.

“She’s failed to do that,” Walker said.

Burke responded that Madison is a fiscally responsible district that is one of the few in the state operating under its levy cap.

Madison still has a contract because the teachers union there challenged the Act 10 law in court, and a circuit court judge ruling initially swung in its favor. The teachers union subsequently bargained a contract this year and next year with the district.

Then this summer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Walker’s Act 10 law.

Madison 2014, gazing into the mirror:

Gov. Scott Walker took the campaign against Democratic opponent Mary Burke to her front door Wednesday, accusing the one-term Madison School Board member of not doing enough to improve black students’ graduation rates in Madison.

Walker argued that the Madison School Board could have put more money toward raising graduation rates and academic achievement if it had taken advantage of his controversial 2011 measure known as Act 10, which effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers, instead of choosing to negotiate a contract with its teachers union for the 2015-16 school year earlier this summer.

“Voters may be shocked to learn that the African-American graduation rate in Madison (where Mary Burke is on the board) is worse than in MKE,” Walker tweeted Wednesday morning.

Burke shot back that Walker’s comments were “short sighted” and showed “a lack of knowledge” of how to improve student academic achievement.

In 2013, 53.7 percent of black students in Madison graduated in four years. In Milwaukee, the rate was 58.3 percent, according to state Department of Public Instruction data. That gap is smaller than it was in 2012, when the 4-year completion rate among black students was 55 percent in Madison and 62 percent in Milwaukee.

Overall, the 2013 graduation rates for the two largest school districts in Wisconsin was 78.3 percent in Madison and 60.6 percent in Milwaukee.

Under Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, the district has made progress in the last year toward improving overall student achievement, Burke said in a call with reporters. School Board president Arlene Silveira also said Wednesday the district has started to move the needle under Cheatham.

“Is it enough progress? No. We still have a lot of work to go, and whether you’re talking about African-American (graduation rates) in Madison or talking about (rates) in Milwaukee, they are too low,” Burke said. “But the key to improving student learning, that anyone who really looks at education knows, is the quality of the teacher in the classroom.”

Decades go by, yet the status quo reigns locally.

A few background links:

1. http://www.wisconsin2.org

2. Wisconsin K-12 Spending Dominates “Local Transfers”.

3. Mandarins vs. leaders The Economist:

Central to his thinking was a distinction between managers and leaders. Managers are people who like to do things right, he argued. Leaders are people who do the right thing. Managers have their eye on the bottom line. Leaders have their eye on the horizon. Managers help you to get to where you want to go. Leaders tell you what it is you want. He chastised business schools for focusing on the first at the expense of the second. People took MBAs, he said, not because they wanted to be middle managers but because they wanted to be chief executives. He argued that “failing organisations are usually over-managed and under-led”.

Mr Bennis believed leaders are made, not born. He taught that leadership is a skill—or, rather, a set of skills—that can be learned through hard work. He likened it to a performance. Leaders must inhabit their roles, as actors do. This means more than just learning to see yourself as others see you, though that matters, too. It means self-discovery. “The process of becoming a leader is similar, if not identical, to becoming a fully integrated human being,” he said in 2009. Mr Bennis knew whereof he spoke: he spent a small fortune on psychoanalysis as a graduate student, dabbled in “channelling” and astrology while a tenured professor and wrote a wonderful memoir, “Still Surprised”.

2009: The elimination of “revenue limits and economic conditions” from collective bargaining arbitration by Wisconsin’s Democratically controlled Assembly and Senate along with Democratic Governer Jim Doyle:

To make matters more dire, the long-term legislative proposal specifically exempts school district arbitrations from the requirement that arbitrators consider and give the greatest weight to revenue limits and local economic conditions. While arbitrators would continue to give these two factors paramount consideration when deciding cases for all other local governments, the importance of fiscal limits and local economic conditions would be specifically diminished for school district arbitration.

A political soundbyte example:

Candidate Burke’s “operating under its levy cap” soundbyte was a shrewd, easily overlooked comment, yet neglects to point out Madison’s property tax base wealth vs. Milwaukee, the District’s spending levels when state revenue limits were put in place and the local referendums that have approved additional expenditures (despite open questions on where the additional funds were spent).

I hope that she will be more detailed in future comments. We’ve had decades of soundbytes and routing around tough choices.

Madison’s challenges, while spending and staffing more than most, will continue to be under the political microscope.

I hope that we see a substantive discussion of K-12 spending, curriculum and our agrarian era structures.

The candidates on Education:

Mary Burke:

Education has always offered a way up to a good job and a better life. It’s the fabric of our communities, and it’s the key to a strong economy in the long term.

As co-founder of the AVID/TOPs program, a public-private partnership that is narrowing the achievement gap for low income students, Mary knows that every Wisconsin student prepared to work hard can realize their dreams if given the support they need. By bringing together area high schools, the Boys & Girls Club, technical colleges, businesses and the University, Mary made a real difference for students, many of whom are the first in their family to attend college. The first class graduated last spring, and in September, over 90% of those students enrolled in post-secondary education.

Mary believes Wisconsin schools should be among the best in the nation—and she knows that making historic cuts isn’t the way to do it. She’ll work every day to strengthen our public education system, from K-12 to our technical colleges and university system. Mary strongly opposed the statewide expansion of vouchers—as governor, she’ll work to stop any further expansion, and ensure that all private schools taking public dollars have real accountability measures in place.

Scott Walker:

“We trust teachers, counselors and administrators to provide our children world-class instruction, to motivate them and to keep them safe. In the vast majority of cases, education professionals are succeeding, but allowing some schools to fail means too many students being left behind. By ensuring students are learning a year’s worth of knowledge during each school year and giving schools the freedom to succeed, Wisconsin will once again become a model for the nation.” — Scott Walker

For years, Wisconsin had the distinction of being a national leader in educational reform. From the groundbreaking Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to policies aimed at expanding the role of charter schools in communities across the state, Wisconsin was viewed as a pioneer in educational innovation and creativity.

Wisconsin used to rank 3rd in fourth grade reading, now we’re in the middle of the pack at best with some of the worst achievement gaps in the nation.

Fortunately, Wisconsin has turned a corner and is once again becoming a leader in educational excellence by refocusing on success in the classroom. This has been done by pinpointing the following simple but effective reforms:

• Improving transparency
• Improving accountability
• Creating choice

We are working to restore Wisconsin’s rightful place as an education leader. Our students, our teachers, and our state’s future depend on our continued implementation of reform.

A look at District spending:

Per student spending: Milwaukee’s 2013-2014 budget: $948,345,675 for 78,461 students or $12,086/student. Budget details (PDF).

Madison plans to spend $402,464,374 for 27,186 students (some pre-k) this year or about $14,804/student, 22% more than Milwaukee. Details.

And, finally, 2010: WEAC: $1.57 million for four senators.

Jack Craver:

Total revenue for the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the largest union in the state, dropped from $26 million in 2011 to $20 million in 2012. WEAC, which represents 80,000 teachers across the state, has for years been a great force for the Democratic Party, providing millions of dollars on attack ads against Republicans on top of legions of volunteers.
The next largest public sector union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has also taken a financial hit. AFSCME Council 40, which represents county and municipal workers outside of Milwaukee County, reported its gross revenue dropping from $6.7 million in 2011 to $4.5 million in 2012. Reports for some of the other large AFSCME Councils, including Council 24, which represents state employees, are not yet available online.
Revenue for the American Federation of Teachers, which in Wisconsin largely represents academic staff at the state’s universities as well as a number of white-collar state employees, dropped from just under $4 million in 2011 to $2.6 million in 2012.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 150 — which represents many public sector healthcare professionals — saw its revenue drop from $937,000 to $783,000. Fortunately for that union, many of its members, including nurses at Meriter Hospital, are in the private sector, and are thus unaffected by Act 10.
The decrease in union money could spell serious trouble for Democrats as they try to recapture the governorship and gain seats in the state Legislature next year. Third-party ads in favor of Democrats are largely funded by labor, whether from individual unions or union-funded groups such as the Greater Wisconsin Committee or We Are Wisconsin.
With the largest unions bleeding dues, it will be hard for Democratic forces to compete with corporate-funded players on the right, such as Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which has already dumped $1 million into an ad buy celebrating Walker’s record as governor.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Laura Waters:

The Election Law Enforcement Commission (ELEC) just issued a report on special interest group spending for the Christie/Buono contest and the heavyweight is NJEA. Here’s ELEC Director Jeff Brindle in a press statement:

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Jason Stein:

In just two years, spending by the state’s public employee unions on lobbyists has plummeted from the summit of Wisconsin politics, leaving business interests uncontested at the pinnacle of Capitol lobbying, a new report shows.
The figures show the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state’s largest teacher union, spent nearly $2.1 million in the first six months of 2011 and $1 million in the first half of 2009, but a mere $84,000 in the first six months of this year. The union is spending less than one-tenth of what it once did.
The preliminary lobbying figures from the Government Accountability Board released this week are just the latest sign of the deep impact of Act 10, Gov. Scott Walker’s 2011 law repealing most collective bargaining for most public employees. The new figures on who’s lobbying state lawmakers follow a recent Milwaukee Journal Sentinel report showing that this same law had crushed the membership and finances of government labor unions as well as eliminating most of their former duties.
The Wisconsin Education Association Council was first or second in spending on lobbying in legislative sessions over the past four years and reached the height of its lobbying efforts in the first six months of 2011, as labor leaders tried feverishly but unsuccessfully to block Walker’s legislation.
But for the first six months of 2013, a critical period in which Republicans sharply expanded taxpayer-financed private voucher schools, WEAC’s lobbying spending was nothing special when compared with the other groups that have filed their lobbying reports with state officials. The once heavyweight contender now ranks 40th in the total spending at the Capitol, with its lobbying so far this year almost exactly matching the spending by two other middleweight interests: Marquette University and a conservation group.

Related:
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Jarrett Renshaw:

The state’s largest teacher’s union has formed a new political advocacy group that can raise unlimited amounts of money from donors during the upcoming campaign season, according to federal and state filings.
The move by the New Jersey Education Association underscores a growing trend in the state as donors and interest groups turn to the federal tax code to avoid the state limits on campaign contributions.
The New Jersey Education Association formed Garden State Forward in March of this year, according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service. The NJEA already has a state political action committee, but a spokesman said the new group will allow the union to focus more on issues, less on specific elections.
“We established it so, if we wish, we can express issue advocacy with our members,” NJEA spokesman Steve Wollmer said.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Bruce Murphy:

The word was out last year that Republican Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald intended to retire and make the big money working as a lobbyist. Two days after his term was up, he signed up as a lobbyist for School Choice Wisconsin.
Fitzgerald’s decision underlined the ironic facts of life in Wisconsin. Choice Schools may be badly underfunded, getting just $6,442 per pupil in public funding (about half of what public schools get), and may often pay lousy salaries to teachers. But those who lobby for school choice are doing just fine, thank you. Indeed, the pay is so good that three former Republican Assembly Speakers now do lobbying and advocacy for school choice.
The first to jump aboard the gravy train was former Speaker (and key figure in the legislative caucus scandal) Scott Jensen, who works for two Washington D.C.-based groups that work to increase School Choice funding: the American Federation for Children and the Alliance for School Choice, two sister organizations located at the same address, 1660 L Street NW, Suite 1000. Both groups have a key consultant, Chartwell Strategic Advisors, the one-man consulting company run by Jensen from his Brookfield home. In 2011, the most recent for which these groups filed federal income tax forms, Jensen earned $202,972, including $102,7346 from the American Federation for Children and $100, 236 from the Alliance for School Choice.
These groups have often worked to influence issues and elections in Wisconsin. A report by the American Federation for Children bragged that “With expenditures of $2,392,000, [AFC] engaged in hard-fought, successful battles to ensure educational choice majorities in both chambers of the Legislature” in Wisconsin, as the the Badger Herald reported.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

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Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.

Daniel Bice:

Rarely has the political payoff for a special interest group been as quick or blatant.
The American Federation for Children, one of the leading advocates for school choice in the country, brags in a recent brochure that it spent more than $325,000 – far more than the group has previously made public – to help elect state Sen. Rick Gudex in a closely contested Wisconsin race last fall.
Gudex won his seat by less than 600 votes.
Then, last week, the freshman lawmaker joined two other Senate Republicans in saying they were drawing a line in the sand by vowing to oppose a state budget bill if it doesn’t include an expansion of the state’s school voucher program.
“The American Federation of Children got exactly what they wanted,” said Mike McCabe, head of the left-leaning election watchdog group Wisconsin Democracy Campaign. “They want legislators who will go to the mat and make expanding the voucher program the bottom line.”
Just as interesting, McCabe said, is that the school choice organization is saying in its own material that it spent twice as much helping Gudex as it reported to state regulators. McCabe said his group is looking into filing an election complaint.
A source familiar with the American Federation’s political spending in Wisconsin called such a complaint “frivolous.” The organization, the source said, had abided by Wisconsin election laws.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Bill Lueders:

In 2011-12, GAB numbers show, Wisconsin contract lobbyists (hired guns) were reportedly paid $30.8 million. Meanwhile, in-house lobbyists (lobby group employees) reported their lobbying-related compensation at $24.3 million. Other lobby costs came to $7.8 million.
The session’s highest rollers, spending a total of $6.3 million, were public employee unions — Wisconsin State AFL-CIO, Wisconsin Education Association Council and AFSCME Council 11. Tellingly, 94% of this flowed forth in 2011, when the unions were fighting changes that would weaken their power; just 6% came in 2012, after these changes were made.
Other big spenders in 2011-12 include Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, Wisconsin Hospital Association, AT&T Wisconsin, Wisconsin Medical Society, Wisconsin Property Taxpayers Inc. and Wisconsin Counties Association. All came in between $750,000 and $1 million. They were among more than 50 groups to top the $250,000 mark.
In terms of time spent, Wisconsin Property Taxpayers, a “property tax relief and reform” group, led the pack with 13,267 hours. A quarter of this, the largest share, went toward backing new state rules on metallic mining. Those efforts failed in 2011-12 but sailed through this year.
Other big players, time-wise, were the three aforementioned unions and AFSCME International, Wisconsin Independent Businesses, Wisconsin Association of School Boards, Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, and the Wisconsin Hospital Association. All racked up more than 7,500 lobby hours.
In all, state groups reported 432,255 hours of lobbying — the equivalent of 100 people working full time over these two years.

A remarkable amount of money is spent on education lobbying. In 2010, WEAC spent $1,570,000 in an effort to re-elect four state senators. That is quite a statement and illustrates how things roll in the education world. Richard Zimman’s 2009 Madison Rotary Club speech is well worth reading.

Jack Craver:

CT: How has the method changed?
Bell: Literally it is member to member. It’s every member of the union talking to other people in those positions, reinforcing to them that collective action and collective advocacy is more than a collective bargaining agreement. Don’t get me wrong — I believe in collective bargaining and believe it’s a right our members ought to have, but shy of restoring it at the state level, collective advocacy is what the union is all about.
CT: And how has the “collective advocacy” changed?
Bell: We’re working more with organizing our members to engage their communities.
CT: Could you give me an example?

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Notes: Fund Balance is a District’s reserve cash/assets. The Madison School District’s fund balance, or equity declined significantly during the mid-2000’s, but has grown in recent years.

*The most recent survey was conducted by the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators and used a different format. The other surveys were conducted by the Wisconsin Education Association Council. WEAC didn’t respond to questions about whether it had results for the 2008-09, 2009-10 or 2010-11.

SOURCE: WASDA/WEAC surveys with comments from local newspaper reporter Matthew DeFour & Clay Barbour:
Matthew DeFour & Clay Barbour:

Wisconsin superintendents survey last fall found state budget cuts prompted school districts to eliminate thousands of staff positions, increase class sizes, raise student fees and reduce extracurricular offerings this school year.
But this week, Gov. Scott Walker’s office said those results don’t tell the full story and that similar surveys from past years show school districts fared better after his education changes went into effect.
Further, the governor’s office contends the organizations that conducted those surveys — the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators and the Wisconsin Education Association Council — were unhelpful, and in WEAC’s case actually worked against the administration as staff tried to compare recent results to past surveys.
“It’s unfortunate that WEAC stands in the way of survey data that they have released in the past, which shows the governor’s changes are working and are good for their members and the state’s schoolchildren,” said Cullen Werwie, Walker’s spokesman.
The older surveys show more school districts increased class sizes, reduced extracurricular programs, raised student fees and tapped reserves to balance their budgets in each year between 2002 and 2008 than they did in 2011-12.
In past years, about two-thirds to three-quarters of districts reported increasing student fees each year. This year, 22 percent of districts reported doing so.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators, Sparks fly over Wisconsin budget’s labor-related provisions and Teachers Union & (Madison) School Board Elections.
Describing the evil effects of revolution, Thucydides writes, “Words had to change their ordinary meaning and to take that which was now given them.” (P. 199 of the Landmark edition)
Politics and the English Language by George Orwell (1946).

Matthew DeFour:

A Madison Teachers Inc. endorsement hasn’t always guaranteed victory for Madison School Board candidates.
But this year, with union members mobilized by Gov. Scott Walker’s collective bargaining changes, the upcoming recall elections, a divisive debate over a charter school proposal the union opposed and a looming rewrite of employee work rules, the endorsement could be influential.
“It will be very hard for someone not endorsed by the teachers union to win,” said former School Board member Ruth Robarts, who won re-election in 2004 despite MTI labeling her “Public Enemy No. 1.”
Robarts is one of four candidates in 13 contested races over the past decade who defeated MTI-backed candidates.
This year the union endorsed incumbent Arlene Silveira over Nichelle Nichols, an executive at the Urban League of Greater Madison, which proposed the charter school plan.
The union also endorsed Michael Flores, who gained attention during Capitol protests last year, over Mary Burke for an open seat being vacated by Lucy Mathiak.

Teacher union influence can extend far beyond local school board elections. The influence process can be quite sophisticated and encompasses local and state elections along with the legal system. Teachers are certainly not the only groups to pull different levers, but a complete understanding of the K-12 governance model requires an awareness of the players (it is also useful to consider the “schw­er­punkt“, that is “creating a result around a central theme”). The following links are well worth reading:

• WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
• Arbitrator Rules in Favor of MTI vs WEAC over legal fees
• Sparks fly over Wisconsin budget’s labor-related provisions:
  

  To make matters more dire, the long-term legislative proposal specifically exempts school district arbitrations from the requirement that arbitrators consider and give the greatest weight to revenue limits and local economic conditions. While arbitrators would continue to give these two factors paramount consideration when deciding cases for all other local governments, the importance of fiscal limits and local economic conditions would be specifically diminished for school district arbitration.

• Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman in a 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:
  

  “Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Matt DeFour’s article failed to include a critical quote: “The school district election is just one piece in the larger chess match”.

UW-Madison Ed School Dean Julie Underwood:

Public education currently stands under twin towers of threat — de-funding and privatization. This is consistent with a conservative agenda to eliminate many public programs — including public education.
In Wisconsin, school districts have been under strict limits on their revenues and spending since 1993. These limits have not kept pace with the natural increases in the costs of everyday things like supplies, energy and fuel. So every year, local school board members and administrators have had to cut their budgets to comply with spending limits. Throughout these years, school boards and administrators have done an admirable job of managing these annual cuts, but taken together, reductions in programs and staff have had a significant and very negative impact on our schools and the education they can provide to children.
Unfortunately this year, these same districts have received the largest single budget cut in Wisconsin history. For example, high poverty aid was cut by 10 percent during a time when poverty in children has increased in Wisconsin. As a result, schools are cutting programs and staff. According to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction data, the cuts in 2012 are greater than the two previous years combined. These cuts will be compounded when next year’s cuts come due.

Related:

• WEAC (Wisconsin Teacher’s Union): $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
  

  How much do election-year firewalls cost to build? For the state’s largest teachers union, $1.57 million.

  That’s how much the Wisconsin Education Association Council said last week it will spend trying to make sure four Democratic state senators are re-elected – enough, WEAC hopes, to keep a Democratic majority in the 33-member state body.

• Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
• Grade Inflation for Education Majors and Low Standards for Teachers When Everyone Makes the Grade
• When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
• Mike Ford:
  

  have always been irritated by this line of reasoning, is it really that far-fetched that those who support school choice actually care about education? And who stands to gain if public education is destroyed?
  One longstanding criticism of voucher programs is they are part of a plot to allow private entities to profit off of K-12 education. If true, there should be a profit seeking school sector pushing vouchers for their own benefit. But is there one in Milwaukee?
  To get at this question I examined the non-profit status of private schools in Milwaukee’s voucher program. First, I put the Archdiocesan, WELS, and Missouri Synod schools tied to parishes in the non-profit column. Second, I cross-referenced the names and addresses of the non-Catholic and non-Lutheran schools in the choice program against a database of Wisconsin non-profit corporations I obtained from the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions.

Todd Finkelmeyer:

University of Wisconsin-Madison professors Julie Underwood and Julie Mead are expressing concern over the growing corporate influence on public education in an article published Monday.
In particular, they are highly critical of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which connects conservative state legislators with like-minded think tanks, corporations and foundations to develop “model legislation” that can be enacted at the state level.
Underwood is the dean of UW-Madison’s School of Education, while Mead chairs the ed school’s department of educational leadership and policy analysis. The two make their opinions known in an article they co-authored for the March issue of Phi Delta Kappan magazine, which serves members of the PDK professional organization for educators.
Underwood says much of the information in the article is an outgrowth of research she conducted while helping get the ALECexposed.org website up and running last summer.

Related:

• WEAC (Wisconsin Teacher’s Union): $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
  

  How much do election-year firewalls cost to build? For the state’s largest teachers union, $1.57 million.
  That’s how much the Wisconsin Education Association Council said last week it will spend trying to make sure four Democratic state senators are re-elected – enough, WEAC hopes, to keep a Democratic majority in the 33-member state body.

• Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
• Grade Inflation for Education Majors and Low Standards for Teachers When Everyone Makes the Grade
• When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?