This blog is written largely for the benefit of non-Indians, readers who have no affiliation with one of the hundreds of federally recognized tribes, eleven of which are found in Wisconsin. I teach a course on federal Indian law at Marquette’s law school, and the questions that follow are just a few of the ones that I often encounter personally or hear in public discussions.
Can you change the world with a conference? Patch things up with a few panel discussions? The answer, of course, is rarely yes. So I don’t make any huge claims about what was accomplished at the conference, “Fresh Paths: Ideas for Navigating Wisconsin’s New Education Landscape,” on Nov. 17 in Eckstein Hall. (I say that as a person who worked on organizing it.)
But stirring the pot can move the cooking process forward. Spreading important and provocative thoughts can get people thinking along lines they might not have considered previously. Bringing a wide range of committed people together can lead to conversations – informal, as well as formal – that start something rolling.
I hope, and I’m even a bit optimistic, that we served some of those purposes at the conference, sponsored by Marquette Law School and the Marquette College of Education and attended by almost 200 people. The audience included key education policy figures across the spectrum, from union leaders to an advisor to Gov. Scott Walker.
I thought of the conference as a musical piece in four movements: What can be learned from what has been done in developing a new school system in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005; getting a handle on the rapidly developing movement nationwide to overhaul teacher evaluations as a key to improving teacher effectiveness; a look at community efforts to improve educational outcomes overall in Milwaukee; and general assessments of what is needed in educational thinking to move Wisconsin forward. That meant we had three keynote speakers, all of them figures of national standing who were fresh faces to Wisconsin’s educational debate, and more than a dozen panelists, including important figures in state and local education policy.
Feel free to sample the nearly five hours of video that we have posted online from the conference. And let me share with you a few moments that stick out for me:
Henry and Elizabeth Robertson were involved in a mortgage fraud scheme in the 1990′s. Many years later, they were charged with and pled guilty to wire fraud for their part in the scheme. Despite an unusual and compelling story of self-motivated rehabilitation, they were sentenced to 63 and 41 months of imprisonment, with almost no comment by the district judge in response to their arguments for lenience. Earlier this week, however, the Seventh Circuit vacated the sentences based on this lack of responsiveness. United States v. Robertson (No. 11-1651).
The decision rests on a line of Seventh Circuit cases going back to United States v. Cunningham, 429 F.3d 673 (7th Cir. 2005). These cases, which have not been followed in some other circuits, require district judges to address nonfrivolous arguments for a sentence below what is recommend by the sentencing guidelines. As I discussed in this article, I think the Cunningham rule should be adopted more widely and enforced more rigorously. For that reason, I’m glad to see the Seventh Circuit reaffirm the rule in Robertson.
Although it does not purport to break any new legal ground, the decision nonetheless has some noteworthy aspects.