The School of Don Walker

Several people have used the phrase “old school” when talking about Don Walker. I know what they mean and it is certainly intended as a compliment.

But I want to make sure no one thinks that what Don did as a news reporter and editor for 37 years in Milwaukee was in any way out of date.

The Don Walker approach to news was to get to know all you can about important subjects and to tell what you know to the public in as clear and straight-forward a way as you could. That’s something we need so much these days. That’s why whatever he wrote, whatever subject he was covering, his reporting was a must-read for anyone who wanted to know what was going on.

That’s one big reason – but only one – why Don will be missed. He collapsed and died Friday at home, apparently of a heart attack. He was 62.   

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The Rule of Law in the United States

US Supreme CourtThe highly regarded World Justice Project, an independent organization in Washington, D.C. that promotes the rule of law, has used 47 indicators organized around nine themes to generate a so-called “Rule of Law Index.” Using this Index, the World Justice Project then ranked 99 of the world’s nations according to the extent to which the rule of law was truly operative in those nations’ daily life. The United States ranked nineteenth.

This ranking is surely respectable. Americans could conceivably be pleased the United States compares so well to nations such as Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, and Venezuela, which do in fact appear at the bottom of the World Justice Project’s ranking. But at the same time Americans could be disappointed that the top four nations are, in order, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. What’s more, other nations with a common law heritage such as Australia, Canada, and New Zealand also rank higher than the United States.

The ranking is especially surprising given familiar American boasting that their nation lives by the rule of law rather than by the rule of men and that their nation is exceptional in this regard. A belief in the rule of law, in my opinion, has been a central tenet of American ideology since the earliest decades of the Republic. However, all ideological tenets should be subject to vigorous critique, lest they be used for political purposes.

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Sampling the Strong Stew of Thoughts at Eckstein Hall Education Conference

Given the long list of controversial and major decisions to be made soon as the process of setting Wisconsin’s state budget for the next two years comes to a head, it was remarkable how much agreement there was among speakers at the wide-ranging conference on kindergarten through twelfth grade education policy Monday at Eckstein Hall.

“Pivotal Points: A Forum on Key Wisconsin Education Issues as Big Decisions Approach” brought together key figures involved in politics, schools, and education policy before a full-house audience in the Appellate Courtroom.

Yes, there were differences. But speakers covering a spectrum of views found a lot in common, including the need for stable, adequate funding of schools and stable, effective approaches to dealing with assessing students and tackling the challenges of schools where success is not common.

The four-hour conference opened with welcoming remarks from Marquette University President Michael R. Lovell and ended with something close to agreement by a Republican and Democrat involved in State Assembly education policy that “low performing” schools need support and help more than they need to be closed.

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