FREE WHITEWATER

Education, New Whitewater, School District

Whitewater Educational Referendum Post 3: An Invitation

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Like so many others in Whitewater, I am a believer in both proper schooling and lifelong learning.  My father and uncle first introduced me to campus life when I was still a small boy. 

Years later, I had the pleasure of their visits to campus when I was a student.  On those visits, my father enjoyed walking with me through the university’s main library, with long row upon long row of many generations’ works, reminding me of both the hope and humility that accumulated learning suggests. 

After this referendum, however it may end, our schools will have an ongoing task ahead: What will we teach, and how will we teach it?  One may consider this the broad curriculum, of academics, athletics, and the arts. 

In this sincere spirit, I have an invitation to extend to the administrators, teachers, and supporters of education in this community:

I’ll offer this space, for an ongoing written discussion of topics of our schools’ broader curriculum.  We may each pick a set of topics we’d like: I would suggest a few topics, and any number of others may choose topics they’d like to discuss. 

Each topic’s discussion could continue, in post and reply, throughout a week.  One person begins, another replies, and that’s how the conversation goes: post, reply, further replies, back & forth during a week, on a designated topic.

Examples of written discussions like this are available online from the Cato Institute and at the Wall Street Journal in discussions of books, for example. 

Our discussion would be as important as any of those.  We, in Whitewater, can do just as well in conversation as, if not better than, anyone in those publications. 

There are so many in Whitewater who care about education as education, as subjects of study and the teaching to advance them.  Are you not tired of politicking, of finance-driven discussions, and shabby public-relations efforts to boost one statistic or another?  Isn’t learning more than that, more than peddling?

Make no mistake, a New Whitewater is inevitable.  There are years yet ahead in its progress, but there’s no going back.  The future writes the history of the present; it won’t be written in the language or from the viewpoint of a few clinging only to past practices and ideas.

Of our district administration, faculty, and all residents who support education, I’d ask: why not join in a forward-looking discussion on what matters most?

We can pick a time after this referendum to begin: what’s at stake is even bigger than an election.  I have, as do so many others in town, the patience of conviction. 

Members of our community will, I’ve no doubt, have this discussion.  Why not have it together?  We will do better together, one can be quite sure.

I’ll be here, available for scheduling that substantive discussion, waiting patiently just a click away:

adams@freewhitewater.com
.

Previously: Whitewater Educational Referendum Post 1: Overall Politics and Whitewater Educational Referendum Post 2: Local Campaign. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.29.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Midweek in Whitewater will be cloudy with a high of forty-eight.

On this day in 1929, Wall Street (and so America) suffers its greatest stock crash. Here’s how the New York Times reported the losses:

Stock prices virtually collapsed yesterday, swept downward with gigantic losses in the most disastrous trading day in the stock market’s history. Billions of dollars in open market values were wiped out as prices crumbled under the pressure of liquidation of securities which had to be sold at any price.

There was an impressive rally just at the close, which brought many leading stocks back from 4 to 14 points from their lowest points of the day.

From every point of view, in the extent of losses sustained, in total turnover, in the number of speculators wiped out, the day was the most disastrous in Wall Street’s history. Hysteria swept the country and stocks went overboard for just what they would bring at forced sale.

Efforts to estimate yesterday’s market losses in dollars are futile because of the vast number of securities quoted over the counter and on out-of-town exchanges on which no calculations are possible. However, it was estimated that 880 issues, on the New York Stock Exchange, lost between $8,000,000,000 and $9,000,000,000 yesterday. Added to that loss is to be reckoned the depreciation on issues on the Curb Market, in the over the counter market and on other exchanges.

Google-a-Day asks a sports question:

In the longest-running prime time sports program on TV, what was the nickname of the person who replaced Don Meredith during the 1974 pre-season?

From the Saline Project‘s Emmy-winning team, here’s a Halloween animation of Frankenstein’s monster:

frankenstein_mvhv

Elections, School District

Whitewater Educational Referendum Post 2: Local Campaign

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There are a few aspects of the referendum campaign that stand out. Here are five notable characteristics of the local campaign:

1. No organized opposition. There’s no organized opposition to the budget referendum. None at all. There is a district campaign on the referendum’s behalf and a tandem Whitewater YES effort among some residents, but nothing else.

Succeed or fail, no one who supports the referendum will be able to say that they faced an organized opposition. Michael Clish at WFAW suggested that most referendums have no organized opposition. He’s right about recent votes in Jefferson County, but not about our past.

Whitewater had more open controversy over school referendums years ago than she does today.

2. Something old, something new. The pro-referendum effort is a joint effort between district and pro-referendum residents.

Between the district and Whitewater YES, they are using a mix of old and new media to advance their cause: (1) a district website with a presentation and video, (2) a Facebook page for the pro-referendum group, (3) two postcards from the district, (4) door-hangers, (5) a letter writing campaign to local newspapers, (6) two radio appearances on WFAW (one by residents, one by district officials), (7) appearances at community meetings by district officials or activists, (8) favorable coverage in the Banner, (9) favorable coverage in the Register, and (10) an embedded video recording about the referendum on Whitewater Community Television’s website.

What’s the most important of all these? The postcards and door-hangers: they will reach the most people, including people not decided on (or opposed to) the referendum. That’s the audience that matters: those who are not supportive, but where some might be persuaded.

Other activities no doubt took more work and time, but no information about the referendum will reach more people than the information in the mailings and door hangers.

3. Content. Virtually all the information from the district is on the cost of the referendum. The district is leading with its budget manager (Nathan Yeager), and not its curriculum coordinator (Kelley Seichter), so to speak.

I praised the last referendum’s organizers, and it’s mostly the same group now.

Still, I would not have advised a presentation so heavy on financial information. I’ve typically advocated that one should Lead Substantively, Support Fiscally.

This is the opposite approach.

It’s a cautious approach, and almost a majoritarian one in its assumptions about the electorate.

When I write about the curriculum, I’m writing about means not ends, about classes and programs not mere results.

Honest to goodness, is there anyone who truly believes that a declining sample of standardized test-results means more educationally than what sharp students are studying, reading, and doing each day?

This community deserves better than to see a few hawk its high school as a rural version of a Japanese cram school or a giant Sylvan Learning Center.

I’ll be writing about Whitewater even a generation from now, and I dare say not once during those many years ahead will I think proper schooling means so little, or can be achieved so easily.

Others have made an opposite choice, to tout and keep touting (October on WFAW and in the Register) standardized scores on the sketchiest of educational bases.

These scores should have been more than a political talking-point or crass program of the landlords’ and realtors’ lobby.

4. Conservatives. In particular, there’s no open opposition to the referendum among city or town conservative leaders. Some are supporting it, others are quiet.

Mostly-conservative towns nearby have seen a similar dynamic. That suggests to me that there are some Walker voters who are not supporters of his administration’s educational policies. They like him and what he’s done, but not wholly, in every instance.

Even in these partisan times, that possibility suggests that voters are not so singular in their views, after all.

5. Risk of this budget-intensive campaign. On November 5th, the day after the election, a referendum win will answer a budgetary question for the district for the next four years. A loss will be particularly hard, however, because district leaders will go into the spring on an effort that has been mostly about finances and less on the curriculum.

Failure would be no easy spot: the district would face a crunch over money, and that crunch would involve fighting over the curriculum at the same time the district tried to balance its budget (what to keep, what to save, what classes or teachers matter most).

The two would be thrown together under conditions of greater stress and urgency in the spring than this November.

Working under a spring deadline is the worst time to talk a lot about the curriculum: academics, athletics, and art have substantive value that should be considered, initially, away from a ledger-driven timeline.

In that way, this hasn’t been a cautious effort at all, but a risk-taking one.

Previously in this series: Whitewater Educational Referendum Post 1: Overall Politics.

Tomorrow: Whitewater Educational Referendum Post 3: An Invitation to a Discussion.

Elections, School District

Whitewater Educational Referendum Post 1: Overall Politics

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This is the first of three posts on the Whitewater Educational Referendum. In this post, I’ll look at the overall political climate for the referendum, one week out from the election. There are three key considerations for the referendum, but only two of them are commonly discussed.

1. The gubernatorial election looks to be close. In this gubernatorial election year, Walker-Burke is polling as a close election. That’s not what most people expected at the beginning of the year. Both polling and conventional opinion would have placed the race somewhere between Scott Walker’s first win over Tom Barrett in ’10 and his recall win over Barrett in ’12. (I thought the same in a January prediction on the race; mine was a garden-variety assessment common at the year’s beginning. No particular data were involved; it was just a hunch that Walker would do fairly well based on his last two statewide races.)

That’s not what this race look like now: most polls, and so most poll aggregators, show this to be a very close race. As of this morning, the Huffington Post aggregator has the race Walker 46.6, Burke 45.8, RealClear Politics has it Walker 47, Burke 46.8, with only the newer Cap Times aggregator showing the race farther apart, at Burke 51.9, Walker 48.1 (of the two-party vote).

If you’re reading that Team Walker is testy about the race, you’re reading solid reporting, and you’re probably reading that news because the race is closer than the WISGOP had hoped or expected. Those stories don’t mean Gov. Walker expects to lose; they reveal that he’d hoped for an easier time of it.

The school district goes into a statewide race with a closer margin between the parties statewide. It’s reasonable to assume (1) that the vote locally will be closer than Walker-Barrett 2010, and that (2) Walker will win the towns outside Whitewater, and Burke will carry the city proper.

2. The last referendum was close. In the spring (4.3.12) rather than the fall, the last operational referendum passed in a close vote, 1,817-1,750. (I’m using the online election results from Walworth, Jefferson, and Rock counties, not considering absentee ballots.)

The April 2012 election was mostly a GOP affair, with a contested presidential primary; Pres. Obama was assured his renomination and so his supporters had less reason for concern about the Wisconsin primary’s outcome. Easily more people cast votes in the contested GOP race than the uncontested Democratic one.

3. Undervotes. Everyone in the district knows the gubernatorial race looks to be close, and that there are differences between a spring primary’s electorate and a fall electorate. But you may not have heard about the number of undervotes between the top of the ticket and a referendum question. Undervotes are simply a voter’s legitimate and lawful choice not to make a selection in a given contest. There might be a hundred ballots cast on election day, but a referendum question, for example, might get only ninety votes for or against. Those voters not making a selection for the referendum either way would be called undervotes.

In the last referendum vote, there were more undervotes than the margin between support and opposition on the question.

Perhaps some voters only wanted to vote in the presidential primary, perhaps some voters didn’t see the referendum question, etc.: there were more votes cast for the candidates at the top of the ballot than for candidates or questions lower down.

But voters will have to find and select the referendum. In the last referendum vote, for example, even in an area as small as the Rock County portion of the district, there were 285 votes cast for or against the referendum, but 39 undervotes, too. Although only Rock County lists undervotes in its publicly-posted results, one can discern a similar if smaller pattern in wards for Walworth or Jefferson counties.

The referendum question will be on the back of the ballot, and it will not be the only referendum question (there’s a statewide transportation question). Voters on the school referendum question will have to follow to the back of the ballot, and want to vote on the referendum when they do. The first step is remedied by information, but the second only by persuasive information.

Some voters will be interested almost exclusively in the gubernatorial race: after years of wrangling between the parties, and now millions in campaign ads, that’s understandable.

Of the three topics I’ve listed, the first two have received political notice in town. The third, on undervotes, not as much. Yet, undervotes may be greater than the deciding margin of votes cast if this should be a close vote.

Next: Whitewater Educational Referendum Post 2: Local Campaign

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.28.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be partly cloudy with a high of fifty-four.

Common Council meets tonight at 6:30 PM.

It’s Jonas Salk‘s birthday, and Google commemorates that day with a doodle:

googledoodle

On this day in 1919, the House of Representatives passes the Volstead Act:

While the Eighteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibited the production, sale, and transport of “intoxicating liquors”, it did not define “intoxicating liquors” or provide penalties. It granted both the federal government and the states the power to enforce the ban by “appropriate legislation.” A bill to do so was introduced in Congress in 1919. Later this act was repealed by the Twenty-first amendment.

The bill was vetoed by President Woodrow Wilson, largely on technical grounds because it also covered wartime prohibition, but his veto was overridden by the House on the same day, October 28, 1919, and by the Senate one day later.[9] The three distinct purposes of the Act were:

to prohibit intoxicating beverages,
to regulate the manufacture, sale, or transport of intoxicating liquor (but not consumption), and
to ensure an ample supply of alcohol and promote its use in scientific research and in the development of fuel, dye and other lawful industries and practices, such as religious rituals.[10] It provided further that “no person shall manufacture, sell, barter, transport, import, export, deliver, or furnish any intoxicating liquor except as authorized by this act.” It did not specifically prohibit the use of intoxicating liquors. The act defined intoxicating liquor as any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol by volume and superseded all existing prohibition laws in effect in states that had such legislation.

On this day in 1892, a fire leaves thousands homeless:

1892 – Disastrous Fire in Milwaukee’s Third Ward
On this date an exploding oil barrel started a small fire in Milwaukee. It spread rapidly and by morning four people had died, 440 buildings were destroyed, and more than 1,900 people in the Irish neighborhood were left homeless. It was the most disastrous fire in Milwaukee’s history.[Source: Historic Third Ward]

Google-a-Day asks a sports question:

What year was the term that refers to the four-year period between Olympic Games first used?

For today’s Halloween animation, let’s go with Bigfoot:

sasquatch_mvhv

Politics

Clash is a good thing, not a bad thing, for policy debates

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In debating, clash is neither a hostile encounter nor an English punk group. 

Anyone who was ever a high-school or college debater knows that debaters define clash between two sides as adversaries’ discussion of the same claims or topics, simply from opposing points of view. 

That means clash is a good thing: both sides are talking about tax legislation from 1987, for example, but with conflicting views about whether the legislation was beneficial. 

If one person’s talking about tax legislation from 1987,  but the other side is talking about foreign policy from that year, there may be no clash at all – the sides aren’t even debating a common topic.  It’s all about 1987, but that’s so broad a subject there’s no clash, no point of dispute worth hearing. 

Debate judges want to hear clash. 

In political debates, it’s desirable, too: candidates who differ should engage each other on those differences. 

Now go one step farther, and think about elections: it’s usually not enough simply to turn out one’s base – there will be some undecided voters and even opposing voters a candidate might win over. 

The key to success may depend on going where those undecided and opposing voters are, and trying to persuade some of them. 

If one finds those voters, one might have to brook a bit of clash – of a congenial discussion with a resident where there’s a difference over a topic. 

Most campaigns need to go where there might be some clash in the discussion, and then handle that clash with sangfroid.  

That’s why speaking to sympathetic gatherings of a few may be less valuable than speaking to large gatherings of the skeptical or opposed.  

Wisconsin’s not been a state where residents have had much taste for clash as debating defines it. Today, there’s probably less clash, and more reliance on a sympathetic audience, than ever before.  

That’s too bad: clash in debate sharpens, elevates, and so improves, our public life.  

Politics, Press

The Last Newspaper Gubernatorial Endorsements You’ll Notice

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We’ve eight days until this gubernatorial election, and it’s been quite the battle. 

However happy or sad you’ve been with ’14, here’s one thing you likely won’t notice in ’18: newspapers’ political endorsements. 

That’s because print newspapers either won’t be around by ’18, they won’t be making endorsements by ’18, or their few remaining readers won’t be looking at those papers for more than inserts and sports coverage.

Of the two big papers in the state, the Journal Sentinel no longer endorses, but the State Journal still does. 

After the ’12 recall election, the JS abandoned endorsements, disingenuously contending that they thought endorsements were less helpful than simply writing about particularly policies.  They may be less helpful, but that’s not why the paper abandoned them, as just about anyone connected with the paper will admit in conversation: reader ire at unpopular endorsements is too hard for a financially fragile enterprise to bear. 

(Now that Journal Communications will be a newspaper-only group, and their broadcast television and radio stations will go with Scripps, they’ll be even more vulnerable.  The papers proudly announced that on the day they are split off they will be leaving debt-free.  Their first day of independence will be the only day that newspaper group is ever again debt-free. )
 
The State Journal still makes endorsements, but one can guess that each and every endorsement weights on Lee’s finance team. 

Only a few years ago, either paper would have made endorsements freely, whether popular or unpopular with readers, and still have been confident of ongoing readership.  If there’s any paper in America that sanguine today (except perhaps the Wall Street Journal), then I’m not familiar with it. 

Closer to home, local dailies face the same problem, but they probably have even less chance of survival as dailies than does the JS.   (What they do about endorsements won’t change their fate: a man falling from a thousand-foot cliff wouldn’t appreciably worsen his prospects by smoking a cigarette on the way down.) 

Have 2014 newspaper endorsements been irritating for you?  Cheer up: you’ll have one less thing about which to worry the next time around. 

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.27.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

Our week in town begins with partly sunny skies and a high of seventy-four. There’s an even chance of rain later in the day.

Posts this week will include commentary on the schools referendum (two on politics for Tuesday, the curriculum apart from the referendum on Wednesday), videos for Halloween, and on Friday FREE WHITEWATER’s annual Scariest Things in Whitewater. (This year will be the eight annual edition of that post).

It’s Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday:

Theodore “T.R.” Roosevelt, Jr. … [a] (October 27, 1858 – January 6, 1919) was an American politician, author, naturalist, soldier, explorer, and historian who served as the 26th President of the United States.[3] He was a leader of the Republican Party (GOP) and founder of the Progressive Party insurgency of 1912. He is known for his exuberant personality, range of interests and achievements, and his leadership of the Progressive Movement, as well as his “cowboy” persona and robust masculinity.[4] Born into a wealthy family in New York City, Roosevelt was a sickly child who suffered from asthma. To overcome his physical weakness, he embraced a strenuous life. He was home-schooled and became an eager student of nature. He attended Harvard College where he studied biology, boxed, and developed an interest in naval affairs. He quickly entered politics, determined to become a member of the ruling class. In 1881 he was elected to the New York State Assembly, where he became a leader of the reform faction of the GOP. His book The Naval War of 1812 (1882) established him as a learned historian and writer.

On this day in 1864, a solider from Waukesha sinks a confederate ship:

On this date William Cushing led an expedition to sink the Confederate ram, the Albermarle, which had imposed a blockade near Plymouth, North Carolina and had been sinking Union ships. Cushing’s plan was extremely dangerous and only he and one other soldier escaped drowning or capture. Cushing pulled very close to the Confederate ironclad and exploded a torpedo under it while under heavy fire. Cushing’s crew abandonded ship as it began to sink. The Albemarle also sunk. Cushing received a “letter of thanks” from Congress and was promoted to Lieutenant Commander. He died in 1874 due to ill health and is buried in the Naval Cemetery at Annapolis, Maryland. [Source: Badger Saints and Sinners by Fred L. Holmes, p.274-285]

Google-a-Day asks a sports trivia question:

What is the name of the twin of the wife of the Super Bowl XXXVI MVP?

How ’bout a 3D animation, from the Emmy-winning artists and directors at The Saline Project, to start our Halloween week? For today, a vampire:

006_the_vampire_mvhv 2

Daily Bread

Daily Bread for 10.26.14

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Good morning, Whitewater.

We’ve a beautiful Sunday ahead, with sunny skies and a high of sixty-two. Sunrise today is 7:22 AM and sunset 5:56 PM. The moon is a waxing crescent with eight-percent of its visible disk illuminated.

Friday’s FW poll asked if a woman who became stuck in a former boyfriend’s chimney tried to climb down from true love or nuttiness. Over seventy-seven percent of respondents said Genoveva Nunez-Figueroa’s actions were evidence of nuttiness.

On this day in 1881, a there’s a gunfight at the O.K. Corral:

The Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was a 30-second gunfight between outlaw Cowboys and lawmen that is generally regarded as the most famous gunfight in the history of the American Wild West. The gunfight took place at about 3:00 p.m. on Wednesday, October 26, 1881, in Tombstone, Arizona Territory. It was the result of a long-simmering feud between Cowboys Billy Claiborne, Ike and Billy Clanton, and Tom and Frank McLaury, and opposing lawmen: town Marshal Virgil Earp, Assistant Town Marshal Morgan Earp, and temporary deputy marshals Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday. Ike Clanton and Billy Claiborne ran from the fight unharmed, but Billy Clanton and both McLaury brothers were killed. Virgil, Morgan, and Doc Holliday were wounded, but Wyatt Earp was unharmed. The fight has come to represent a period in American Old West when the frontier was virtually an open range for outlaws, largely unopposed by law enforcement who were spread thin over vast territories, leaving some areas unprotected.

The gunfight was not well known to the American public until 1931, when author Stuart Lake published a largely fictionalized biography, Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal, two years after Earp’s death.[1] Published during the Great Depression, the book captured American imaginations. It was also the basis for the 1946 film, My Darling Clementine, by director John Ford.[1] After the film Gunfight at the O.K. Corral was released in 1957, the shootout became known by that name. Since then, the conflict has been portrayed with varying degrees of accuracy in numerous Western films and books.

On this day in 1818, Wisconsin gets her first counties:

1818 – First Counties in Wisconsin Declared
On this date Lewis Cass, governor of the Michigan Territory, declared the first counties in Wisconsin. The counties included Michilimackinac (all areas drained by Lake Superior tributaries), Brown, and Crawford counties, which were separated through Portage. Michilimackinac County is now part of the state of Michigan. Governor Cass later became the Secretary of War under President Andrew Jackson, as well as the Minister to France and a Michigan Senator. Cass, a Democrat, also ran for president in 1848, but lost to Whig Zachary Taylor due to factions within the Democratic Party and the formation of the Free Soil Party. [Source: Historic Elmwood Cemetery and Foundation]