Lubar Center – Page 17 – Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

From Diverse Standpoints, Experts Agree on the Need for Re-energizing K-12 Education

Post author:Alan J. Borsuk
Post published:May 4, 2021
Post category:Education & Law Lubar Center Public Speakers at Marquette

This story about the discussion during a program of the Marquette Law School’s Lubar Center for Public Policy and Civic Education appeared initially in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on May 2, 2021.

Pedro Noguera and Rick Hess talk to many school superintendents and principals around the United States. In general, they don’t find them to be oriented toward the sharp partisan divides that dominate education debate.

“When you talk to people who lead school systems, they are less ideological,” Noguera said. “They focus on practical matters.”

By “practical matters,” Noguera meant the daily things that lead to kids getting good educations, things like good teachers, good learning practices, and school cultures that offer warmth, safety and stability. Those are things he hopes will be given renewed priority as education recovers from the COVID pandemic.

“If there’s a silver lining to come from this experience with respect to education, I hope it’s a return to a focus on education that stimulates and inspires kids,” Noguera wrote in a book, co-authored with Hess, that came out several weeks ago.

Out-of-State Investment in Milwaukee’s Home Rental Market

Post author:John Johnson
Post published:April 18, 2021
Post category:Lubar Center Milwaukee Area Project

(Click here to download the entire report.)

I bought a home last year in Milwaukee’s Uptown neighborhood. It’s a nice place—one I’ve come to see as quintessentially Milwaukee. Kids walk to the playground at the end of the block. Adults walk to the coffeeshop. The mostly interwar-built houses are sturdily constructed on small lots. Typically, they’re worth about $30,000 less than the citywide average, so it’s the kind of place many people can comfortably afford to live. Since moving in, I’ve enjoyed getting to know my neighbors—school district employees, a firefighter, a welder, a guy who assembles circuit boards, the lady who feeds the cats. For a researcher like myself, meeting my neighbors hasn’t just meant striking up conversations on the sidewalk. I’ve also dug into the property records of the houses near mine. In doing so, I’ve learned that locals aren’t the only people interested in Uptown.

Since 2018, LLCs based outside Wisconsin entirely have purchased dozens of houses near mine. Ohio-based VineBrook Homes, Milwaukee’s most aggressive home buyer, owns five houses within three blocks of mine (part of the nearly 350 they have purchased citywide so far). Another national company, SFR3, owns several more. Sometimes the ownership is obscure. The duplex at 2702-04 North 49^th Street is owned by “2704 N 49TH ST 53210 LLC.” This particular LLC lists an owner’s mailing address in San Francisco. I’ve lost track of the number of flyers I’ve received encouraging me to sell my home. One Friday night, someone even called my cell phone, offering to buy my house.

My neighborhood is one small part of a wave of single family home and duplex purchases by large corporate investors, often with Wall Street backing.

Why Do Republicans Overperform in the Wisconsin State Assembly? Partisan Gerrymandering vs. Political Geography

Post author:John Johnson
Post published:February 11, 2021
Post category:Lubar Center

(This essay is adapted from an On the Issues program with Craig Gilbert, Mike Gousha, and John Johnson. Click here to view that program in its entirety.)

Wisconsin has a confusing political personality. A casual observer might perceive it as a blue state. After all, 2016 is the only year a Democratic presidential candidate lost the state since 1984. On the other hand, it feels very purple when you consider that Barack Obama is the only presidential candidate since Michael Dukakis to win an outright majority of the vote. In still more ways, you might think this is a solidly red state. Republicans have controlled the State Assembly for all but three years of my lifetime. Rather than encouraging a mood of bipartisanship, I think this combination of red and blue traits leads many Republicans and Democrats alike to believe that they are the “true” representatives of Wisconsin who are only stymied by the illegitimate interference of the other party.

My preferred description is that Wisconsin, politically speaking, is not one moderate state; rather, it is one very conservative state overlapping another very liberal one. This state of affairs, after all, isn’t new. Wisconsin gave the nation the rabid anti-communist senator Joseph McCarthy at the same time Milwaukee elected its third mayor from the Socialist Party. The varied nature of Democratic and Republican coalitions in Wisconsin—both geographically and demographically—gives each party advantages in certain kinds of elections. Republicans have long performed better in the state legislature than their statewide vote share would suggest. This advantage accelerated after the 2011 redistricting, by some measures doubling their previous advantage. But how much of the built-in Republican advantage in the State Assembly is due to deliberate partisan gerrymandering and to what extent it is the natural consequence of Wisconsin’s political geography?