Big Differences, Civil Words in Debate over Future of County Government

A curious thing happened at the end Thursday’s hour-long joint appearance at Eckstein Hall of State Rep. Joe Sanfelippo, who wants to reduce the role of the Milwaukee County Board, and County Board Chairwoman Marina Dimitrijevic, who is fighting Sanfelippo’s proposals:

A lot of people stayed on to talk. Dimitrijevic talked with whoever came up to her. Sanfelippo did the same. County Executive Chris Abele, who was in the audience, had almost a dozen people gathered around him at some points. Other people lingered and mingled through much of the Appellate Courtroom.

Usually, the room clears pretty quickly at the end of events of this kind. But for some reason – an interest in talking about the issue? the availability of the main figures? the chance to catch up with people? – this was a group that didn’t seem to want to leave. There were probably almost 50 people, out of an audience of more than 200, still in the room 15 minutes after the session ended.

Maybe this was a little bit different way of demonstrating how the public policy programs that Marquette University Law School has been hosting for the last half dozen years are meeting their goals of furthering serious, informed conversation on major issues. The notion of being a crossroads for such a discussion starts with the presenters at these sessions, but it often extends to the informal conversations before a program, during breaks, or afterwards. 

Continue ReadingBig Differences, Civil Words in Debate over Future of County Government

Charter School Session: Performance, Perspective, and Passion

Charter schools are “the strongest wave of educational reform in the United States” and they’re not going away, one of the nation’s premier charter school researchers told a conference at Marquette University Law School this week. So what can be done to make the overall results of the movement more positive?

At the conference, titled “Charter Schools: Assessing the Present, Looking to the Future,” Margaret (Macke) Raymond, director of the Center for Research in Educational Outcomes (CREDO) at Stanford University, outlined policy implications of research she has led that includes data from 30 states.

“State policy matters a lot and there are specific policy variables that will get you a fair amount,” Raymond said. For example, authorizers of charter schools need to play their role well if they are to foster high performing charter schools while keeping weak operations from ever opening or closing them down if they are getting poor results. Having multiple local authorizers of charter schools (which Milwaukee has) and having a cap on the number of charter schools (which Milwaukee and Wisconsin do not have) leads to poorer results, Raymond said.

Charter schools are publicly-funded schools that operate to a large degree in independent and self-governing ways, freed from some of the rules and constraints put on conventional public schools. A little over two decades old, the charter movement has grown rapidly, with more than two million students in such schools nationwide. In Wisconsin, there are more than 200 charter schools. Authorizers, most often public school boards but sometimes other government agencies or even private non-profits, give a charter school permission to operate and at the end of a contract period, usually five years, have the power to withdraw that permission based on performance.

Continue ReadingCharter School Session: Performance, Perspective, and Passion

Important Points Won Even as ACA Case Was Lost, Paul Clement Says

Paul Clement’s arguments did not carry the day when it came to the outcome a year ago of the historic United States Supreme Court decision on the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the federal Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare. But his arguments were supported by a majority of the justices on important points that will have an impact for years to come in Congress and in the judicial system, Clement said in delivering the Hallows Lecture 2013 in the Appellate Courtroom of Marquette University Law School’s Eckstein Hall this week.

Clement, formerly solicitor general of the United States, has argued 65 cases before the Supreme Court. He was the lead attorney in presenting arguments to the Court on behalf of 26 states that challenged the health care law. The Court heard a remarkable six hours of arguments focused on several major aspects of the challenge.

“The challenge for the challengers was to run the table to the tune of going 15 for 15” on legal points involved in the case, Clement said. “The good news is the challengers went 14 for 15. The bad news, from the perspective of my clients, is that 14 out 15 isn’t good enough. . . . Getting a really satisfying opinion from four justices still counts as a loss.”

The question at the heart of the case was whether there would continue to be a meaningful limit on the power of the federal government to impose laws such as the Affordable Care Act on the states, Clement said. He said, “I do think in some respects, the single most important takeaway from the decision was there were not five votes to say that there really is no meaningful judicial review of federalism constraints on Congress. There are constraints—again, the power is very substantial, very broad in the wake of the New Deal precedents of the Court, but it remains a limited power.”

Continue ReadingImportant Points Won Even as ACA Case Was Lost, Paul Clement Says
Newer Posts
Older Posts