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Saturday, October 24, 2015

Walker has done nothing to improve Minority Graduation Rates.

To put it in a way Republicans and their voters can understand; Scott Walker's Act 10 and voucher expansion isn't improving minority graduation rates. jsonline:


Even after 25 years of vouchers in Milwaukee and the expansion statewide, Walker is failing to close the graduation gap under Act 10 and vouchers. Especially for those Republicans who are pretending to care most about black student achievement.
The graduation rate for white students rose to 92.9% ranking third nationally, widening the gap between black and white students to 26.8 percentage points.
What a success? And while it takes from 8 to 12 years or so for current policy to show up as an improvement or failure in our national scores, Walker is taking credit for all the progress mad by preceding administrations, all the while tearing it apart:  
Wisconsin's gap in graduation rates between black and white students widened slightly in the 2013-'14 school year to become the largest in the country, at a time when many states are narrowing that gap, according to preliminary data released this week by the U.S. Department of Education.

Wisconsin's overall graduation rate rose by more than half a percentage point to 88.6% in 2013-'14, the most recent year available ... But the rate for African-American students held steady at 66.1%, failing to keep pace with gains seen by their Wisconsin counterparts and those in almost every other racial, ethnic and special-needs category.
The reason? Republicans have been focusing in on spreading private voucher money to higher income families with students already in private schools for mostly religious reasons, and not our economically challenged inner cities for improving public education.  
An estimated 26,900 students who live in the city of Milwaukee are using vouchers to attend 117 private schools, the vast majority of them religious. Public spending for the current school year will exceed $190 million. Once a school is running, is the fact that parents are choosing it enough to justify continued public funding? That's pretty much the case now.
Walker's Act 10 "tools" to fix education over his last 5 years have done nothing for elementary minority students reading and math scores. Instead of attacking Common Core and Tony Evers, and praising white student scores, legislators should have been working with the State Superintendent to improve minority graduation rates and basic reading:  
Fourth-grade reading scores for black students were the second worst. And black students in only three states had lower average math scores than Wisconsin's black fourth-graders and eighth-graders.
So will Walker be blamed 8 years from now when minority graduation rates still stink or possibly decline? I can hear the accusations of "Walker derangement syndrome" now.

Speaking of the State Superintendent Tony Evers, Republican efforts to oust Evers and change the state constitution isn't even close to what the public wants.
When asked if the head of the state Department of Public Instruction should be elected or appointed, a resounding 84 percent of Wisconsin Surveyrespondents favored keeping it as an elected position. The survey shows almost all Democrats -- 92 percent -- feel the superintendent should remain an elected position while 73 percent of Republicans agreed. 

2 comments:

  1. The only interest Scott Walker has in black people is locking them up ASAP. Has Walker ever gone to a black community meeting or a black church? Of course not, and he never will. Black people aren't giving him money, so they don't count. Scooter doesn't want to improve the lot of Wisconsin blacks because he needs them as fodder for his privatized prison system. If I was black, that would make me feel pretty special.

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  2. Nice try the democrats are in charge of all of thee areas. they have not been cut for staff. incompetent leaders.

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