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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Forget About That Local Democracy Bit

One of the insights of Public Choice theory (a way of viewing political actors as self interested agents) is that intensely interested parties may often be able to exercise disproportionate influence over public policy to benefit their own interests at the expense of the common good. This proposal to vest greater control over local school districts and school boards with the state Superintendent of Public Instruction strikes me as a prime example.

I have no idea whether placing MPS under the responsibility of the Mayor would have helped what every one agrees are completely unacceptable outcomes. The idea was to place responsibility for the schools with a public official to whom more people pay attention and whose election and re-election is more salient, i.e., more people pay attention. School board races attract few voters and tend to be denominated by those who are self interested in the status quo or in particular proposals for reform. This results in a weaker demand for acountability on the part of the general public. If the mayor had to run for reelection based, in part, on the performance of the schools, it is more likely that something would get done.

One of the arguments against the takeover, however, is that it would diminish the voters’ direct control over the schools. 

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April 12: The Voices of MPS Leadership Experience

Who knows better the challenges and problems of heading up the Milwaukee Public Schools system than the people who have done it previously? 

While former MPS superintendents have generally adhered to a policy of not speaking up on what their successors ought to do, four people who have held the top post in the system will appear together at Marquette University Law School on Monday, April 12, to share their thoughts.

The four are Robert Peterkin, superintendent from 1988 to 1991 and a professor at Harvard since then; Howard Fuller, superintendent from 1991 to 1995 and head of the Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette since then; Barbara Horton, acting superintendent in 1999 and now head of a charter school in Milwaukee; and Spence Korte, superintendent from 1999 to 2002, now retired.

Peterkin has headed Harvard’s program to train urban superintendents in recent years and has rarely spoken publicly about Milwaukee issues. While Fuller has been one of the nation’s most prominent voices for school choice programs, he has been cautious about speaking about MPS. Korte has also generally avoided the spotlight since retiring from MPS. Horton has the unusual distinction of having also been a member of the Milwaukee School Board for five years.

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