Good-bye education, hello experimentation. That’s what we will leave our children.

I just had a conference with my 12 year olds health teacher, and she told me this about Wisconsin and its quality of education, and I'm paraphrasing: 

Parents she's talked to come to Wisconsin with the full knowledge they might be paying higher taxes, but that's okay, because they also know their kids will be going to a great schools. 

Now what? She mentioned that many experienced dedicated teachers are retiring due to the threat to their benefits. These are our best, pushed out and vilified by Gov. Walker.  


On the other hand, the wealthy just got a huge hand out by Gov. Walker, when he announce in his budget proposal that the state will lift the income cap on school choice in Milwaukee. Whew, those private schools were getting expensive. 

jsonline: The governor's 2011-'13 budget proposal also could lead to a massive expansion of Milwaukee's private school voucher program by phasing out the income requirements and eliminating enrollment caps on Milwaukee families as well as expanding eligibility to all private schools in Milwaukee County.

So far vouchers have not made any difference in educating our kids, and in many cases, came in behind public schools and were badly managed. So what would Walker do to make sure the expanded voucher program improves?  Get rid of testing!!!!

Walker also hopes to remove a requirement that students in the voucher schools take state tests, possibly scuttling new efforts to gauge whether the private school choice program has any meaningful impact on academic achievement.

Not only that, we’ll have an easier time recruiting just about anybody to teach in our classrooms.

USA Today: Allowing charter schools to be created anywhere in the state and ending a requirement that charter school teachers be licensed by the state. Instead, they would be required only to have bachelor's degrees.

Snow cancelations? Forget it. Missing days? Forget it.

Eliminating mandates requiring school districts to schedule at least 180 days of classes annually (and) employ reading specialists.

The reading specialists will help make up for the less qualified teaching staff. Got it covered. And finally...I'm breathless, this:

But Walker also introduced plans to eliminate grant programs for Advanced Placement courses, alcohol and drug abuse prevention, nurses, alternative and at-risk education, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics education.

Well, we may leave our kids with no chance of succeeding as adults, but at least they won't have high taxes. And the publics top choice for reducing state deficits; tax increases. Oh well.