Tag Archives | Scott Walker

Legislative update: Milwaukee voucher expansion clears Assembly

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On June 16, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

The Wisconsin Assembly passed Gov. Scott Walker’s state budget early today, which would expand the City of Milwaukee’s school voucher program to schools in Milwaukee County and in Racine. Despite a plan to bring the choice program to Green Bay, The Associated Press reported that Republican leaders failed to generate enough support in the face of strong opposition from Green Bay school leaders.

The budget bill passed along party lines, with no Democrats voting in support. The Senate will take up the measure later today.

The Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, the oldest school voucher program in the nation, currently serves about 21,000 students at 102 private schools in the city.

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Fuller: Milwaukee choice program should expand to other Wisconsin cities

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On May 31, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Civil rights and school choice champion Howard Fuller today released a statement through the American Federation for Children supporting a proposal to expand the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to other cities in Wisconsin.

In recent weeks, Fuller has reacted strongly against a plan from Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate the income threshold that regulates entry to the voucher program, but he called Walker’s plan to expand the program to other cities one that gives poor and working-class families the education options they deserve.

His full statement reads as follows:

I believe that poor and working class families deserve to have options that allow them to seek better educational opportunities for their children. Programs like the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program are one of those options. I would strongly support any efforts by parents, elected representatives and concerned citizens from other cities in Wisconsin such as Green Bay and Racine to establish such a program in their communities. I recognize that both Racine and Green Bay have some good public schools but not every child has access to them. I want every child in these two communities to be able to go to a high quality school that will transform their lives whether that school is public or private.

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The American Federation For Children and Malcolm X

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On May 11, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, Religious education, School Choice, Unionism

Let’s be clear. The American Federation For Children spends significant sums of money to elect candidates who support educational options, and it usually does so in direct competition with teacher unions. But those who dismissed the AFC 2011 National Policy Summit as either politically or philosophically monolithic are playing some partisan games of their own.

Yes, as a Salon columnist readily noted on Monday while depicting the event as “right wing” and “religious right,” the two-day summit in Washington indeed featured speeches by two Republican governors, Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and Scott Walker of Wisconsin. Both governors have pushed education agendas that include private school options.

But let’s also fill in the rest of this picture. The event was emceed by a black Democrat and former D.C. Council member, Kevin Chavous. Those sharing the stage over the two days included: Michelle Rhee, a Democrat and former D.C. school chancellor; Ann Duplessis, a black Democrat who served in the Louisiana Senate and is now New Orleans’ deputy chief administrative officer; Alisha Morgan, a black Democrat and Georgia representative; Anthony Williams, a black Democrat and Pennsylvania senator; Kenneth Campbell, president of the Black Alliance for Educational Options BAEO; and Julio Fuentes, president of the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options.

The federation’s annual education advocacy award was handed to Howard Fuller, the former Milwaukee superintendent and BAEO founder who has called private options for poor black students the civil rights cause of this era. The conference closed with a rousing call to action by an African-American minister from New Jersey, Rev. Reginald Jackson, who invoked the memory of Malcolm X. “We must assure that our children get a quality education,” Jackson intoned, “and, as Malcolm X said, by any means necessary.” Continue Reading →

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A defense of Scott Walker and universal choice from an unlikely source

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On May 2, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

In today’s Wall Street Journal, John O. Norquist, a former Democratic mayor of Milwaukee, defends an effort from Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker to eliminate the income threshold regulating entry to the Milwaukee voucher program, which currently is open only to low-income students. The threshold has had the effect, Norquist writes, “of isolating low-income students from other more affluent students.” By contrast, most Western nations have a much greater enhanced form of parental school choice, and their urban centers are economically and racially diverse as a result.

People with children and money don’t cluster outside European or Canadian cities to avoid sending their kids to school with the poor. And the poor who live in cities have the opportunity to attend public, private and parochial schools that are appreciated by a large cross section of parents.

American liberals have been reluctant to embrace school choice, fearing it will drain resources from government-operated schools. Yet isn’t it even worse to support a system that rewards concentration of the rich in exclusive suburbs segregated from the poor? Of course there are affluent people (Bill Clinton and Barack Obama come to mind) who enroll their children in urban private schools like D.C.’s Sidwell Friends, which still has some children enrolled from the choice program. Many more, including middle-class parents, would live in economically and racially diverse cities once school choice was universally available.

If expanded, Milwaukee’s choice program will demonstrate this to the whole country.

Opposition to Walker’s plan to expand the program has come in recent weeks from a stalwart defender of the school choice movement, Howard Fuller. While Fuller has supported raising the income limit of the Milwaukee voucher to include more moderate-income people, he said making the program universally accessible to students in all income levels “essentially provides a subsidy for rich people.”

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Black, Hispanic legislators urge caution in expanding Milwaukee voucher

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On April 26, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Members of the Wisconsin Legislature’s Black and Latino Caucus wrote Gov. Scott Walker and legislative leaders recently expressing concern that “outside forces and ideology will dominate this discussion” over the proposed expansion of the Milwaukee voucher program. In particular, the members have called for maintaining the accountability standards governing the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program put in place two years ago as well as maintaining the income limits. Gov. Walker has called for eliminating the income threshold, which currently limits eligibility to those students who come from households at 175 percent of poverty. Not long before the Black and Latino Caucus sent the letter, longtime choice champion Howard Fuller told the Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee that he would oppose any program that “essentially provides a subsidy for rich people.”

Just as Fuller has done, the legislators recommended aligning the income threshold of the voucher program with the BadgerCare initiative in Wisconsin, which provides health care to state residents who earn less than 300 percent of poverty. “It is common sense that the level of poverty that qualifies a family for healthcare should be the same as that which qualifies a family for the choice program, always intended to be for low-income persons,” the legislators wrote.

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Fuller: I will oppose a subsidy for rich people

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On April 13, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Yesterday, we highlighted Howard Fuller’s alarm over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to eliminate the income threshold for entry into the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program. The Black Alliance for Educational Options now has posted Fuller’s comments to the Wisconsin legislative Joint Finance Committee, to which Fuller closed by saying:

I am a person who has taken blows for years from people who have said this program for some has never been about poor people. They warned that once the program got established the real agenda would surface, which is to get money for rich people. I have never believed and do not believe now that many people who have fought for the program over the years had this as their purpose. But, this is exactly what this provision does. I want everyone to understand that if this provision becomes law, I will become an opponent of a program that I have fought for over 20 years. I will never support a program that essentially provides a subsidy for rich people.

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Don’t let Howard Fuller off the train

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On April 12, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Those who favor private learning options for poor children can count few champions for their cause more passionate than Howard Fuller, who is almost singularly responsible for the success of Milwaukee’s voucher program, the nation’s oldest. That’s why we should take seriously Fuller’s heartburn over Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to remove the income restrictions to the voucher and open the Parental Choice Program to wealthier families.

If Walker is successful, Fuller told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel yesterday, “that’s when I get off the train,” and further called Walker’s proposal “egregious” and “outrageous” during testimony of Wisconsin’s legislative Joint Finance Committee.

The point Fuller is making is one that too often gets lost in the debate over education reform generally and vouchers specifically: Programs such as Milwaukee’s began with the sense that families of wealthier means already had options beyond the neighborhood public school, and that poor families might benefit from public policies that empowered them to find the best fit for their children. And that sense still pervades current means-tested efforts such as Florida’s tax credit scholarship and the pending measures in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Any movement in education reform is larger than one person, but let’s not dismiss the jaw-dropping implications of Fuller’s alarm. State legislatures may feel momentum toward greater school choice and choice advocates may be emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s move to legally insulate an Arizona tax credit scholarship, but Fuller would have us remember who needs our greatest help.

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Protecting the child by balancing interests

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On February 22, 2011 in Education and Public Policy, General, Parental Choice, School Choice

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker’s consternation over the political power of public-sector unions is certainly understandable, but in the arena of public education we should be careful before we disempower any group. The better option is to bring more, not fewer, voices to the table.

Madison might resurrect its progressive history by allowing parents into a decision-making process that does more than just decide a compensation package for teachers. The thousands of state workers who have descended on the Wisconsin Capitol argue that protecting their ability to bargain for their pay and benefits directly affects student achievement in the classroom. That may or may not be true, but giving parents a legitimate role is one way to make schools more responsive to the needs of families.

This is easier said than done, of course.

Among the more extreme approaches is the kind of parent-trigger law recently exercised in California. Families at McKinley Elementary School in Compton powered their way into a proceeding that has long been the province of school boards and teachers unions. In that case, the Parent Revolution serves as the other union at the table, petitioning for an overhaul so dramatic at the troubled school that a charter operator would take over.

The California Teachers Association is in revolt over the idea, as is the school district, which at one point ordered McKinley parents to take outlandish steps to verify their petitions and now wants to “clean up” the law that empowered them in the first place.

Recent comments from Ben Austin, the Parent Revolution’s executive director, have lessons for Wisconsin:

Our theory of change is not to get rid of unions. We’re progressive Democrats. But they don’t see this as about change. They see it as about power. Continue Reading →

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