Wisconsin, like too much of America, now pushes at each turn for measurement, quantification, and numerical assessment of student performance. There should be measures – I merely have my doubts that displaying a top-line score describes meaningfully Wisconsin’s or Whitewater’s academic performance.
(Truly, the craze for measurement strikes me as half-clever person’s attempt to sound scientific and especially clever. It’s all over the country now, but when actual accomplishment among graduates proves lacking despite these scores upon scores, people will abandon confidence in these measurements. I believe in true scholastic achievement; cramming for – and later skimming over – these numbers won’t get America there.)
Looking deeper – and isn’t that the least one can expect of true scholastic accomplishments? – a few things about Whitewater (and nearby towns in the district) stand out.
(The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction report card for Whitewater is available online, and it’s more detailed than a single score or single sheet per school.)
Whitewater’s Economy. We are an economically struggling community, where forty-four percent (44%) of Whitewater’s students are economically disadvantaged.
That’s not a school district problem – it’s a community problem of the highest order.
We are the most prosperous and accomplished country on earth, but the American dream has not reached vast numbers of children in Whitewater. Until it does, arrogance, glad-handing, self-promotion, and crowing are disgraceful.
The champions of the status quo cannot win this argument; they’ll either try to conceal the truth or hope to change the subject as quickly as possible. Both tactics will prove fruitless: this is the genuine condition of the town in which they live.
I am confident that we can and will fix this problem in the years ahead. I am an optimist for a better future in Whitewater, for all her people. What’s been tried before has failed and will fail – a wholly different approach is needed: fewer big projects, fewer regulations, lower taxes, an emphasis on small businesses, and a shift to assistance for the needy that’s far less costly than the empty schemes of our self-important town squires.
Whitewater’s Increasing Diversity. What are the Whitewater Schools like?
They’re diverse and multicultural – there is no homogeneous student population. Just over sixty-seven percent (67.1%) of her students are white, almost twenty-six percent (25.9%) are Hispanic, three percent each Asian (3.2%) or black (3.3%), with under a percent (0.5%) being American Indian or Alaskan Native.
Whitewater’s looking more like America each day. That’s all to the good – America truly is exceptional and truly is admirable.
Comparing Schools. It’s almost too funny that even DPI urges readers that “[r]eport cards for different types of schools or districts should not be directly compared” but that a direct comparison between schools is the very thing one does by listing the top-line scores in bold font for each of our schools.
Lincoln Inquiry Charter School isn’t like the other schools in our district, but in displaying the data as a single number and picture for each school, one inevitably does exactly what DPI says should not be done. That school’s strengths and weakness won’t show properly in the same measure as conventional schools. Charter schools deserve a more specific (to their method) measurement.
There’s my point, from my initial paragraph, of course: it’s a none-too-clever approach to try to compare schools in such a simplistic way. It’s hardly the measure of a worthy education to do so.
Wisconsin shouldn’t be hawking reports on educational performance that fall below the standards of a suitably educated person.
There’s the only simple thing that DPI should be thinking about.
Although I wholly agree with you that our significant amount of economically-depressed families are a community problem and not a school problem, I must take issue with the (some of the) solution(s) you propose. I feel that our problems with the system of education lie in a larger system that has rewarded those with the resources to make the changes necessary to retain those said resources.
By and large, our nation’s families struggle financially due to the loss of middle income wages. What has happened to those jobs? They are all overseas, as our political system has allowed this by rewarding corporations that funnel money to selective campaigns. How many huge American corporations were bestowed with billions of tax-payer dollars in the form of tax credits? How much (or little) in taxes has our government collected from these record-earning corporations to pay for the vital services that keep them up and running? What do they give in return for the obscene amounts of money they collect on the backs of the working poor? They give us politicians that control us with fear. The type of fear they know works exceedingly well to control the masses. They force “Creationism” into science textbooks as though it were scientific fact. They fight for the moral high ground as they tout their “love the fetus (hate the child)” religious doctrine. As they sermon at the top of their mount of money, and pass (phony) judgment on those who have the nerve to question the (apparently new) teachings of Christ, they laugh at those they leave to fight over the scraps.
My father was a Deputy Sheriff for over 30 years. He had a union to protect him and his family. In fact, as a young person, most of my peers came from union backed households. We weren’t rich by any stretch, but we had enough to live a comfortable, modest life. We could afford to take a vacation now and then, and my Dad was left with a moderate pension that allowed him to retire without the worries about not having enough for his old age. Sure, he had to pay his dues, and there were times when he disagreed with his union, but their job was to take care of him, and they did.
Unions have made the news in a big way over the last several years. The very powerful in our nation (ie. the very wealthy) whose bulging pocketbooks are threatened by unions, fund the campaigns of politicians who promise fear, intimidation, religious doctrine and a newly mutated educational system to control and keep down the masses of poor that simply want a better life.
When union workers comprised nearly 80% of our U.S. workforce, the middle class flourished. As those corporations upped and seemingly fled in the dark of night to exploit the poor in underdeveloped nations, the middle class languished, but corporate America flourished and got bigger. So did their flags. Remembering history (thank a teacher) their paid politicians passed legislation akin to fear-mongering religious doctrine, as it worked in the fiefdom of the dark ages, why not now? As the hypocrisy worked, the more critical they became towards our system of education. They villianize the teachers, turn us against our own qualified, experienced, proven system of education for a mutated, punitive, propaganda-driven method of testing and testing and yet more testing. Punish underperforming schools. Poverty-stricken families don’t deserve properly funded schools, let alone a living wage. And what better way to control a populace than a poor, fearful, dumbed-down nation?
Families need backing, and support. That’s one way to improve how well educated our children are. How can two parents (let alone one) properly raise anyone, unless their money tree is in constant bloom? It doesn’t have to come from welfare. How about a system that rewards corporations for living wages? One of my solutions is not fewer regulations, but better regulations. Simply allowing corporations to regulate themselves, and expecting a better outcome is naïve at best. They are beholden to their shareholders and no one else. We need regulations that hold corporations accountable for their “God-given, unalienable right” to pollute our habitat, rape their employees and their communities, and sink our economy through methods that include religion, fear, and the flushing of our education system down a humiliating oblivion that other nations now consider a laughingstock. But then again this is America. The land of contradictions: Independence and Brotherhood, brother!
Thanks very much for your detailed comments. They’re my pleasure to read. I’ll offer a few additional remarks of my own, and you’ll see where we agree, and where we obviously disagree.
We’ve come through a Great Recession, and now have a stagnant recovery. What seems to be a loss of middle income wages seems particularly so from our present perspective, still so near to the recent recession. Our economy itself is now unsatisfactory for many, but it remains the same economy in basic arrangement that brought prosperity to millions under both Reagan and Clinton. I believe that we have seen the worst – as a nation – and will begin to enjoy a more traditional and supportive recovery nationally.
(See, along these lines of better growth, the contention that a recovery in housing will produce a more conventional and vigorous recovery: http://shadowfed.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Bordo-SOMC-Sep2013.pdf)
On unions, I don’t share your sanguine view that unions were and are a net positive for the economy, but that doesn’t matter to me as much as my conviction that any group at any time should be able to form a union to bargain privately against a business or publicly against the government.
It’s both startling and absurd to me that there are supposed libertarians today who are arguing against the right of people to bargain collectively against government. They may bargain rapaciously, as I think some municipalities have found, but that all people have a right to form unions seems fundamental to me.
I’m from a movement – that is, old – libertarian family, from a time before the word libertarian was even used. My late father and grandfather would never have imagined that anyone who claimed a place in the liberty movement would argue against the right to form a union.
They would have seen, though, as I do, that some unions will steamroll a weak employer or a weak municipal government with excessive demands. To me, as it would have been for them, the problem was with the business or the local government for caving to easily.
Communities with politicians who are too weak to bargain against unions don’t deserve tools (including restricting unions) to manage their weakness. Politicians who give away too much don’t deserve tools, they deserve to lose at the ballot box. Cities that tolerate politicians who give away too much deserve the fiscal and economic decline they bring upon themselves. I have no sympathy for office holders with all the existing power of incumbency behind them who claim the need for still more power over others (including restricting union rights.)
Public spending has been vast and excessive, though. Pubic unions share part of the blame for the troubled fiscal accounts of so very many cities and states.
As for corporations, and here I think you mean large ones, I’d give them not a single tax break, not a single subsidy. They deserve nothing except the right to compete in the marketplace.
On religious teaching in schools – there wouldn’t be a cultural conflict if parents had legitimate choices beyond public education. That’s why I believe in school choice and vouchers – taxing families like mad for a uniform public system denies free men and women the means to send their children to the private institutions of their choice. They’ve nothing left after the state has (1) taxed them so heavily and (2) insisted on a curriculum that denies them their right to teach their children as they see fit.
Now, I’m from a mainline, and high church, religious tradition – we were always taught a compatibility between God’s existence and evolution. But for those who want their children taught differently, why should they not have that right – to be able to use their money to go to a conservative religious school without paying all their taxes into a secular system?
My children have been part of the Whitewater public schools, but others should be able to send their children where they want, and take their money with them to support that educational right.
That’s the foundation of a truly pluralistic and free society.
On regulations – a government with the power to mandate wages between employer and employee is exactly the heavy tool that crony capitalists will use to advance themselves and bludgeon their competitors. The bigger the government, the more attractive and inviting its manipulation by other powerful actors. Government seldom becomes an honest broker between the powerful – it becomes a silent partner of one powerful faction against others, and against common people.
As for God-given rights, I have tried to read widely and seriously of comparative theology, and I know of no rights to pillage and pollute. One would guess they are not, in any event, recognized among the many religious common people of this nation.
We have had hard times, but I wouldn’t trade America’s economy with that of the euro-zone, as that area suffers higher unemployment and lower per capita wages. Others may think of us with derision if they wish; their contempt is not grounded in actual economic performance. (See, along this line, http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/03/08/u-s-economic-recovery-leaving-europe-and-japan-stagnant/.)
Most tellingly, no system in all history has allowed more people to rise from poverty into prosperity than free-market capitalism. Amazing? Well, yes.
True? Well, of course: http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21578665-nearly-1-billion-people-have-been-taken-out-extreme-poverty-20-years-world-should-aim
In fact, it’s one of humanity’s greatest successes.
Reason, I think, for optimism.
My best to you,
Adams
So I must pay for others to attend a religious school? I completely disagree with you on that. I am more than willing (and happy) to pay for educating America’s future, but not in a system that indoctrinates those students into their religious order. That is the parents’ job. Take your kids to church if you want them to learn about your religion. Pay out of pocket for private religious education or home-school if you want, but the state, in my opinion has no business treading the dangerous waters of sending anyone anywhere for a religious education.
Isn’t it the other way around – that parents shouldn’t be compelled or taxed to send their children to a secular school if they don’t wish to do so?
My wife and I have enrolled our children in Whitewater’s public schools, but I would not compel parents who wish a religious schooling to do so. When they’re taxed to support a secular program to which they object, without credits or vouchers to go where they’d prefer, I’d think they are the ones being compelled.
Wasn’t a staple in our founding as a nation the freedom of (and from) religion? Is that not why America stood as a beacon of light in a world that persecuted based on belief or non-belief?
I stand by our founding fathers who set up the amendments to safeguard and protect the public from abuses of power – including abuses of religious power. When religious doctrine is added to public school textbooks and taxpayers fund private (and seemingly now public) religious- based education, we no longer have that freedom – of religion, or from it. We become more like those countries ruled by religious leaders, and less like the freedom-loving nation we were set up to be. Once the line is drawn with which school gets funding and which does not, who then will be accused of an abuse of power? Religion has no place whatsoever in publicly funded education.
I wonder how many folks who hold your opinion are willing to stand up when Muslims wish to send their kids to an Islamic School, or a school of Wicca, or Hindu, Seik or a Buddhist school. What about a school for Atheists? Where is that line to be drawn? With the Catholics? Lutherans? Only major world religions? Who rights will tromped upon next?
I can agree to disagree. I love a good debate.
This seems the inescapable tension in a free society: to navigate safely between an unjust establishment of religion and unjust restrictions on free exercise of religion.
As both of these principles are constitutional, and as all constitutional provisions are equally valid (none having superiority over the rest), we’ve no choice save reconciling them as best we can.
It’s very true that we have been from our founding, are now – and I think we would agree must remain – a nonsectarian republic. (Has there even been, by the way, any society with an established religion that did not see a political corruption of the faith? It doesn’t seem so: religion does best it’s when separate and distinct from state power.)
Many will be satisfied, but many others dissatisfied, with the unavoidable balancing between freedom of expression and a prohibition against an established faith. These lines will shift over time, in one direction or another, and then likely back in the opposite direction. It’s only when that political battle ends that we will have reason for concern: one constitutional principle or another will have been vitiated to our detriment.
Not everyone will fairly and impartially defend the rights and beliefs of those of different convictions. And yet, we have on this continent successfully and rightly tolerated diverse views fairly well. There’s a respect for dissent in America that’s ably demonstrated in how many diverse beliefs coexist here.
We can certainly agree to disagree; there’s great fun and gain in a good debate. Your comments are my pleasure.