Wisconsin

The ultimate objective of private school voucher advocates is a statewide system of private school vouchers for all Wisconsin school children. Voucher expansion is not only bad education policy. It is bad fiscal policy as well.

It’s no longer good enough to just know that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker’s 2013-15 budget proposal is bad for kids in the state's public schools. Now that you know it, think about telling your friends and neighbors and, equally important, ask your elected representatives to change the plan. Here's how.

What started as an anemic bump in aid for Wisconsin public schools has been reduced to a pittance through politicized accounting games that are funneling desperately needed funds towards private charter schools and voucher programs. This lack of funding only exacerbates the state's broken school funding system, which has relentlessly widened the gap between the cost of quality education and the state’s share of that cost, resulting in decades of underfunding.

Tying school funding to performance and making repeated allusions to the mythical Free Market Fairy don't constitute systemic, supports-based reform. That's a nonsensical proposal that presumes that staff in high-needs schools are failing because educators lack the motivation or know-how to help students succeed. Let's stop fooling ourselves and start provide students, teachers and schools with the resources and opportunities they need to succeed.

With Valentine’s Day nearing, my family just took its annual love survey. Using a privately-run, publicly-funded love rating system, my family members and I rate our love for one another using a scale of 1 to 5. While the surveys are done individually and anonymously, the answers are compiled collectively and the results are shared publicly. Why, you may ask, do we go through this annual ritual and analysis of our family love? Because who better to turn to in matters of love than business-minded reformers. These data meisters profess that we must measure what we value. In our family, we value love, so – hence – the love meter matters.

On February 27th, the Opportunity to Learn Campaign will be hosting a webinar on racial justice with the Applied Research Center, an OTL ally. The webinar will provide advocates and organizers with valuable tools for framing and combating racial disparities in our nation's education system. Sign up here!

Have you ever felt that you fell through the looking glass hand-in-hand with Alice to a place where up is down, north is really south, and wrong is actually right? If you watched Governor Scott Walker’s State of the State message on Tuesday you might very well have felt you were in Wonderland where everything you know in your heart of hearts is wrong for kids and public schools was talked about as a viable education reform strategy.