Avoiding the “Every School Left Behind” Inevitability

Maybe, in 2001, it seemed like 2014 was too far away to be worth much worry. In 2011, it’s not so far away. Not that it’s clear what is going to be done now about what was one of the more idealistic, well-intended, but ridiculous, notions ever put into federal law.

In 2001, and with strong bipartisan support, Congress approved the No Child Left Behind education reform law. Amid its complex notions, there were some clear intentions: Congress and the president (George W. Bush at that point, but Bill Clinton and Barack Obama would say much the same) were tired of putting a lot of money into schools across the country and not seeing much to show for it. They wanted to see the American education world buckle down to work especially on improving the achievement of low income and minority students. And they wanted every child to be reading and doing math on grade level by – oh, pick a date far away – 2014.

So they called the law No Child Left Behind. A wonderful idea – are you in favor of leaving some children behind? I’m not.

But given the real state of children, the obstacles so many face, the entrenched depth of so many issues, and the simple realities of what could be accomplished, it was an unrealistic idea. Even if everything went great, we were never going to reach 100% proficiency by 2014, or by any date.

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Pension Concessions Request Puts MPS Union in an Unhappy Place

The Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, the union for Milwaukee Public Schools teachers, had two lines of defense against making  concessions as the financial squeeze on MPS tightened.

The first was that, due to langauge in the bill backed by Gov. Scott Walker and Republican legislators, if the MTEA agreed to any changes in its contract, which goes through June 2013, the entire contract would be wiped out. The second was that the union had already made concessions when it settled in September 2010 and just wasn’t going to make any more. 

The first line of defense stands to be erased in the light of changes made by the legislature’s joint finance committee that would allow the MPS contract to be changed without bringing down the roof.

And the Milwaukee School Board, as described ina Journal Sentinel story,  put the question squarely to the union last week of whether it is going to stick by the second response. The board asked that the union to agree to have teachers pay 5.8% of their salaries toward their pensions. Although that is technically the way the system works now (with MPS paying a matching amount), MPS and many other school districts have paid both shares of the pension payments for many years.

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Correction: Make That Milwaukee Montessori

I made a sloppy error in the section of the blog item posted Monday rounding up some recent education news. I named Downtown Montessori as a voucher school where many parents opted to have their children not take Wisconsin’s standardized exams. I meant to say Milwaukee Montessori, a private school on the west side that takes part in the voucher program. Downtown Montessori, on the south side, is an independent charter school where all the students take part in the state exams, Virginia Flynn, the head of school, said. My apologies. The blog item should have read like this:

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