Another Down Year for MPS Enrollment Predicted

The past and present foretell the future – at least that’s the case when it comes to the forecast by Milwaukee Public Schools officials for enrollment for next year.

Look for another down year for the main roster of MPS schools and for more city kids to attend school in the suburbs and charter schools not staffed by MPS teachers, Superintendent William Andrekopoulos says in a new report to the School Board.

A third of all Milwaukee children receiving publicly funded education are doing so outside of the main roster of Milwaukee Public Schools, a fact that sheds important light on the educational landscape of the city. I looked at the current figures for this year in my weekly column in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on Sunday.

That figure is likely to go up a notch — maybe from 33 to 34 percent, maybe a bit higher — next year. 

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Constitutional View, Not Catholicism, Behind Scalia’s Opinions on Abortion

scaliaAs a Catholic whose views are in line with those of Pope Benedict XVI, US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia personally opposes abortion.

But what explains his opinions in every abortion-related case that has come to the court since Scalia became a justice in 1986 is not his Catholicism but his “originalist” interpretation of the US Constitution, the author of a new biography of Scalia said Monday.

Speaking at an “On the Issues” forum at Marquette Law School, Joan Biskupic told host Mike Gousha that Scalia has “parallel passions,” Catholicism and the law.

”You just cannot forget that he’s so darned conservative on the Constitution, independent of his Catholicism,“ Biskupic said. Scalia simply does not see anything in the text of the Constitution that supports giving a woman a right to have an abortion.

Biskupic said she found in researching Scalia’s life that his views on the Constitution have been consistent for all his adult life. People she talked to from each stage of his life described him as an originalist.

Biskupic described Scalia as a “many-layered” person.

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An Academic Expert Weighs in for Mayoral School Control

Professor Kenneth K. Wong of Brown University and several associates put out a book two years ago titled “The Education Mayor: Improving America’s Schools,” which immediately became the book to read if you were interested in mayoral control of public schools. And Wong is probably the number one figure in academic research about how mayoral control works.

The book was the most thorough examination of the results of efforts to give mayors control – or at least strong roles – in schools in dozens of cities across the United States. And there was something in it for pretty much everybody – supporters of mayoral control focused on conclusions about greater administrative effectiveness in such systems, critics pointed to conclusions that the impact on academic achievement had been generally small in most cities.

But Wong was in Milwaukee this week and, in a presentation to about 25 people at the Milwaukee Athletic Club, came down firmly on the side of mayoral control, including in Milwaukee. In his talk and in an interview following his talk, Wong said data that have come in since the book was written has been increasingly encouraging for mayoral control advocates. 

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