Why Report on K–12 Education in Wisconsin? Listen to Alan Borsuk.

Alan BorsukAlan J. Borsuk has been the Law School’s senior fellow in law and public policy since fall 2009—call it 14 years. So, for a not wholly impertinent point, he has some time to go before replicating his 37 preceding years as a reporter and editor at the Milwaukee Journal and Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In any event, during his time with us, he has kept his hand in the newspaper with the occasional—nay, frequent—column on K–12 education policy and practice in this region. Why?

Borsuk’s recent piece in The Grade, a nationwide online platform focused on journalism about education, will tell you. Here’s a flavor (the introduction):

I crossed paths with a former member of the Milwaukee school board a while ago.

He had moved on from the school scene, but I was still writing about K-12 education, as I had across more than 50 years.

“Do you feel like you’re living ‘Groundhog Day’?” he asked me, referring to the movie in which the protagonist repeats the same day over and over.

“Yes. All the time,” I told him.

At that time, I often felt like I was writing pieces I’d written so many times before.

But I was still doing it.

Why? Because damn it, it’s important.

That’s why I’m still at it all these years later — and why I decided to make what might be my last big project as a journalist a multipart series on longstanding problems in how most schools teach kids to read.

Education coverage should be energetic and powerful. I hope that showed in the recent pieces I wrote about literacy. But I also know there is more I could and should do.

There is more all of us in education journalism could and should do.

As with Borsuk’s work more generally, the whole thing is well worth a read. Find it here.

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Amid Different Views, Education Conference Participants Show Interest in Dialogue on Issues

The most interesting part of a conference on education issues at Marquette Law School’s Eckstein Hall on Nov. 17, 2022, arguably did not take place during the conference itself. It was in the 45 minutes after the formal end of the two-hour session. A significant number of those who spoke or who were in the audience stayed on in the room to talk.

People from some of the best known and firmest ranks of the conservative and liberal sides of Wisconsin’s long-standing education debates stood in small groups, talking with each other civilly and sometimes with some agreement on what was being said. In some cases, they were people who had never met in person previously.

Those in attendance included four of the nine members of the Milwaukee School Board and several staff members from the Wisconsin Institute of Law & Liberty (WILL), a leading force in conservative advocacy on education issues. Along with other school leaders, civic leaders, and people from a range of education involvements, people found a lot to talk about.

It would go too far to say minds were changed and problems were solved. But serious and level-headed exchanges about issues are one of the core goals of programs of the Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy Research and Civic Education, and that was a goal served during and in the aftermath of the conference.

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COVID’s Impact on Children Would Have Been Reduced If U.S. Were More “Child-centric,” Author Says  

“We need a child-centric society. We were revealed to be not a child-centric society.”

That was the way Anya Kamenetz summed up her perspective on how the United States as a whole dealt with the COVID-19 pandemic since March 2020, and especially its broad negative impacts on children.

If we were a child-centric society, the needs of children all over the country would have been addressed far better, not only in terms of health-related policy, but in terms of the social, emotional, and general developmental needs of parents while dealing with COVID, Kamenetz said.

Kamenetz, a former education reporter for National Public Radio, assesses the impact of the pandemic period on children in a new book, The Stolen Year: How COVID Changed Children’s Lives, and Where we Go Now. And she talked about the pandemic and children in an “On the Issues” program at Marquette Law School’s Eckstein Hall on Oct. 24.

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