The Post-Election Education Landscape: Vouchers Up, WEAC Down

Two quick education-related comments on Tuesday’s election outcomes in Wisconsin:

First, this was a banner outcome in the eyes of voucher and charter school leaders. Governor-elect Scott Walker is a long-time ally of those promoting the 20,000-plus-student private school voucher program in the city of Milwaukee, and he is a booster of charter schools both in Milwaukee and statewide. But just as important as Walker’s win was the thumpingly strong victories for Republicans in both the Assembly and State Senate, which will now come under sizable Republican majorities.  

What will result?

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Craigslist “Adult Services” Proponent Fired by School District

Sch_building Interesting education and employment law story in the New York Times brought to my attention by one of my employment law students:

A teacher at a Bronx elementary school has been reassigned after writing on a Web site about her past as a sex worker.

In a short online article in The Huffington Post on Sept. 7, the teacher, Melissa Petro, criticized Craigslist for shutting down its “adult services” section, which carried sex-related advertising.

Ms. Petro wrote that from October 2006 to January 2007, she “accepted money in exchange for sexual services I provided to men I met online.”

She said that she used Craigslist to meet men and it provided “a simple, familiar forum through which I could do my business with complete anonymity, from the safety and convenience of my own home.”

This is a fairly standard public employee free speech case applying the Pickering framework, probably coming down to whether the online article in question substantially disrupted the teacher’s ability to be an effective teacher in the school (by dint of her relationship with her supervisors, colleagues, parents, or students). When you are talking about elementary school, you also have to consider concerns about good role models and the impressionable age of the children.

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Kopp Offers Hope in Commencement Speech for Better Education Results in Milwaukee

In May 2009, Kalyn Gigot was sitting in the audience at Marquette University’s commencement ceremony as a no-doubt proud graduate. But it was a year later, at Marquette’s commencement Sunday, when Gigot was individually singled out for attention and praise in the graduation address.

What did she do in between? She joined Teach for America, the nationwide organization that puts thousands of high-caliber college graduates into high-needs classrooms for the first two years after graduation. Gigot has been teaching this year at Northwest Secondary School, a Milwaukee Public Schools middle and high school program near North 72nd Street and West Silver Spring Drive.

Wendy Kopp, the founder and CEO of Teach for America, received an honorary degree at the commencement and, in her strongly localized speech, described how much Gigot had accomplished in her year teaching math to sixth and seventh graders.  Students who were generally three years behind in their math skills have made substantial progress, the learning atmosphere in Gigot’s classroom has improved sharply as the year has gone on, and Gigot has gone to lengths to get to know her students and their families, including home visits of seventy-two of them, Kopp said. 

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