Here & Now

Budget Watch: School Report Cards

Zac Schultz:

On a cold morning in March 1300 students arrive for another day of classes at East High School in Green Bay. The students at East have scored below the state averages in reading and math four out of the last five years. Nearly a quarter will not graduate on time. According to the state, East is a failing school. Just don’t tell that to principal Ed Dorff.

Ed Dorff:

The notion that this is being called a failing school really pisses me off.

Zac Schultz:

The official fails to meet expectationsdecree comes from new state report cards created by Governor Scott Walker, the legislature and the department of public instruction. Dorff doesn’t object to the accuracy of the numbers used to determine their score.

Ed Dorff:

We’re not going to hide from the data that are on there. They are what they are.

Zac Schultz:

In fact, he keeps a model report card in his office and brings it out during meetings with staff.

Ed Dorff:

Keep your eye on what our goal is. We want to go for the green. We be up in that green area.

Zac Schultz:

Dorff says there are other numbers that matter just as much. 55% of his students come from poverty, 18% are not proficient in English, and 20% are students with disabilities.

Ed Dorff:

We’re judged a failing school not on how we’re doing, but on who we’re doing it with. And that is wrong. That’s biased, that’s bigoted, that’s discriminatory, and to me it’s absolutely shameful.

Emmanuel Sanchez:

I was seven years old when I came here.

Zac Schultz:

Emmanuel Sanchez is one of East’s success stories. His parents moved to Green Bay from Mexico, and he learned English on the fly. He’s now looking to go to college at Northwestern University, and wondering how anyone can consider his high school to be failing.

Emmanuel Sanchez:

Our large diversity and scores don’t reflect the best, but I think as a school, when you’re in it, you definitely see the difference and you can’t really just go by the numbers.

Zac Schultz:

Just two miles away, Preble High School also received a failing grade, classified as meets few expectations. Inside, the school is a mass of humanity, with 2200 students, it's by far the largest in the district.

Natasha Rowell:

We’re quite a diverse school and very proud of it.

Zac Schultz:

Natasha Rowell is the principal at Preble. She says they have students and staff from 40 different countries. There's a tremendous amount of diversity in the Green Bay area public schools district. Perhaps best represented by the fact that even something as simple as a men’s room needs to be identified in three different languages.

Natasha Rowell:

You’ve got to be able to deal with students who speak a different language, students who may come to us very well-prepared, some come with no English language at all.

Zac Schultz:

Preble's student achievement scores are actually higher than the state average, but they were hit with major deductions for a high absenteeism ,and for not testing all of their non-English speaking students.

Jeff Kline:

If you let me design a report card, I can make Harvard look like a failing school.

Zac Schultz:

Jeff Kline is a social studies teacher at Preble.

Jeff Kline:

I am a huge supporter of Preble. This is my 11^th year here. I know the things that we’re doing both in and out of the classroom, and I know that it’s not reflected on the report card.

Zac Schultz:

The report cards came out last fall, but Governor Walker brought them back into the news during his budget address when he announced that he would tie $64 million in performance funding for schools based on their scores.

Scott Walker:

We want to recognize and reward excellence, and then replicate it in other places around the state.

Zac Schultz:

Beginning in year two of the state budget, the governor would allocate $24 million to the schools that score in the top two levels on next year’s report card. Another $30 million would go to schools that increased their scores by at least three points. The last $10 million would be available at competitive grants for schools with a failing grade, like East or Preble.

Scott Walker:

Under the current report card schools would get an average of $30,000 each. They can use the funds for things like rewarding exceptional teachers.

Zac Schultz:

One of the schools that would benefit from the performance funding is Green Bay’s MacArthur Elementary. Its score exceeds expectations, the second highest ranking.

Melissa Ellingson:

We’re proud of that and I feel like we have beaten the odds to some extent.

Zac Schultz:

Under Governor Walker's proposal, principal Melissa Ellingson would decide how to spend their performance funds. She couldn’t imagine picking individual teachers for a bonus.

Melissa Ellingson:

How do you determine who is the person most responsible for that child’s success?

Brenda Warren:

Bonuses to teachers is very difficult to do in a fair way.

Zac Schultz:

Brenda Warren is a member of the Green Bay school board. She doesn’t know why the report cards are linked to funding.

Brenda Warren:

Report cards were advertised as being tools for schools to use to identify areas that they needed to improve in.

Zac Schultz:

But performance funding isn’t the only major policy change linked to the report cards.

Scott Walker:

For communities where some schools fail to meet expectations, we include an expansion of the parental choice program in this budget.

Zac Schultz:

Governor Walker’s budget would expand the voucher program to any district with more than 4,000 students and at least two failing schools. That includes Green Bay.

Tony Evers:

I don’t believe the report card was designed to make high-stakes decisions.

Zac Schultz:

State superintendent Tony Evers worked with Governor Walker to develop the report cards, and had no idea they would be used to justify voucher expansion.

Tony Evers:

That wasn’t on my radar screen. That’s for sure.

Luther Olsen:

I almost think that the report card was an excuse for expanding school choice.

Zac Schultz:

Senator Luther Olsen was also involved in creating the report cards. He says they were designed to shine a light on how schools were performing. He warns, using them to expand school choice will prevent anyone from proving how well the report cards evaluate schools.

Luther Olsen:

It’s sort of like using a flashlight for a hammer. It's not ready, and you know what happens when you do that, it breaks the flashlight.

Tony Evers:

So if a high school is deemed to be failing, the system isn’t quite right there to make that determination. This is a pilot year.

Zac Schultz:

If school choice comes to Green Bay, St. Bernard Catholic School will be ready to welcome an influx of new students.

Kay Franz:

We like to call it parental choice, not school choice.

Zac Schultz:

Kay Franz is the principal at St. Bernard. She disagrees with the assessment of Green Bay’s public schools as failing.

Kay Franz:

By just using that one measurement, I believe that’s an unfair description.

Zac Schultz:

But she also thinks Green Bay’s catholic schools provide something the public schools don’t.

Kay Franz:

We’re also focusing on their spiritual and moral development as well in terms of our values as a catholic community.

Zac Schultz:

In return, the students will provide the private schools with tax dollars. In fact, the kids are literally worth more to the private schools than they are to the public schools. The Green Bay Area Public School District receives $6,100 per pupil in state aid, but Governor Walker’s budget would increase the value of a voucher student to $7,000 for grades K through 8, and $7,800 for high schoolers.

Dave Hansen:

And there are winners and losers here, but the losers are the public schools.

Zac Schultz:

Senator Dave Hansen represents most of the Green Bay school district. He says the worst part is Governor Walker's budget does not include an increase in per-pupil spending for public schools, which means districts like Green Bay are facing a projected deficit of $5 million and $6 million for next year.

Dave Hansen:

To me that’s inequitable, it's not fair. To be moving in this direction is just absolutely wrong.

Luther Olsen:

A lot of money goes to the voucher schools and those kids get a big increase in the spending and the public schools get a decrease.

Zac Schultz:

Senator Olsen would like to see schools get an increase of at least $150 per pupil. For Green Bay that would mean $3 million, which would cut their projected deficit in half.

Luther Olsen:

I believe there will be an increase. The question is how much.

John Nygren:

I’m pretty confident that we’ll come to an agreement between the two houses.

Zac Schultz:

Representative John Nygren is co-chair of the joint finance committee, which is working on the governor's budget. He agrees the school report cards need improvement, but says expanding vouchers can’t wait, because too many kids are not graduating high school. And without a diploma kids can’t find a good job.

John Nygren:

In often cases they ends up being a ward of the state in some way, shape or form, either on our welfare programs, in our corrections systems.

John Klenke:

We cannot have those people become part of a culture of dependence.

Zac Schultz:

Representative John Klenke is also on joint finance, and represents the east side of Green Bay. He says public schools represent a monopoly, and need competition through school choice.

John Klenke:

It’s not right to keep letting those kids fail because we’re not getting the resources to the right place or we’re not encouraging the right behavior.

Zac Schultz:

Opponents of vouchers say there’s no evidence the kids who are failing in public schools will do any better in private schools.

Brenda Warren:

Their demographics look very different from ours.

Zac Schultz:

School board member Brenda Warren explains one of the biggest drags on the report card scores in Green Bay is the high number of kids who speak English as a second language, many of whom also come from poverty. We charted the 33 Green Bay schools that received report cards. Schools that received lower grades were more likely to have at least 50% of their students economically disadvantaged and more likely to have at least 20% of their students who were not proficient in English. Warren says they’re doing their best, but the district has a large Hispanic population that needs extra help.

Brenda Warren:

We last year exited 700 of our students out of English as a second language altogether because they’re completely proficient in English.

Zac Schultz:

Danz Elementary meets few expectations, largely because they do not test enough of their English language learners. More than two-thirds of the students are Hispanic, two-thirds are not proficient in English, and 80% of the students are economically disadvantaged.

Gina Cornu:

Okay. Buena estratejia. Muy bien.

Zac Shcultz:

However, Danz is home to the district's Spanish immersion program. Principal Gina Cornu says they have to turn students away who want to transfer into the school.

Gina Cornu:

Many parents choose to bring their kids to my school because they want that experience for their kids.

Zac Schultz:

Kay Franz, principal at St. Bernard Catholic School, says 10% of their students are Hispanic, and if school choice brings more, they’re ready to teach them.

Kay Franz:

We are very familiar with how to educate those students and they’re being very successful in our system.

Pat Shafer:

What things can you really relate to that in that book?

Zac Schultz:

Pat Shafer is the reading specialist at St. Bernard.

Pat Shafer:

Our population of students with needs of any kind has grown each year.

Zac Schultz:

She says ideally they get English language learners at a young age.

Pat Shafer:

One of the things that is an issue when they come in middle school is, you have to get them caught up quickly.

Zac Schultz:

Franz says Danz Elementary is not a failing school. They have a good relationship with the staff and occasionally travel to Danz for advice.

Kay Franz:

We need some of their knowledge to help us ground our program so that we’re performing as best as we can for those students.

Terry Brown:

I think everybody wants parents to send their kids to the school of their choice.

Zac Schultz:

Terry Brown is the vice-president of School Choice Wisconsin, an interest group that has pushed for voucher expansion. He says the argument over where a student is best served is not for the state, it’s for the parent.

Terry Brown:

Let’s make every parent happy in Wisconsin. Let them choose their school. They wake the child up in the morning, they feed the child, they put the bag together for lunch, they wash the clothes. They can determine which school is best for their kid. They’re pretty smart people.

Natasha Rowell:

One of the things we want to prevent is students not being able to come to school because they don’t have clean clothes.

Zac Schultz:

Back at Preble, the reality is hundreds of kids don’t have parents who wash their clothes. But they can do that here. Principal Natasha Rowell says social workers can take poor students and their families to this private room where they can also pick out donated clothes and school supplies.

Lexi Sticka:

You don’t realize how many kids aren’t as advantaged as a lot of the kids that go here.

Zac Schultz:

Senior Lexi Sticka is one of the students who came up with the idea for this room.

Lexi Sticka:

I think just giving them the comfort of being able to come to school and feel that they fit in.

Zac Schultz:

At Danz Elementary, 2nd grade teacher Katie Mueller uses class time to make sure her students brush their teeth because there’s no guarantee they’re doing it at home.

Katie Mueller:

They don’t have toothbrushes or toothpaste, or the knowledge necessarily to value that it's a practical piece of our everyday existence.

Zac Schultz:

Katie says they realized tooth aches and hygiene issues were causing kids to miss school and fall further behind. She say, dealing with those kinds of issues are just part of the modern classroom environment.

Katie Mueller:

It probably does reflect our society today, but why not take advantage of that and help teach them, you know. Things have changed. We as teachers should change too.

Ed Dorff:

I’ve had kids come in, and there are kids coming in every day, coming into kindergarten, who don’t know their names. And that is not an exaggeration. They know the nickname they go by. They couldn’t tell you their address. They couldn’t tell you their phone number. They couldn’t tell you the ABCs, don’t know colors.

Zac Schultz:

Senator Luther Olsen says there’s no evidence these kids will be better off in a private school.

Luther Olsen:

It’s a whole new day of who we have for boys and girls in schools, and you can’t evaluate them all on the same level, because some kids come to school with more needs than others.

Terry Brown:

Ideally this is not connected to the failure of any particular school or district, because it’s a parental right.

Zac Schultz:

Terry Brown and School Choice Wisconsin would like to move past the failing school debate, because their ultimate goal is statewide choice, a voucher in every pack back.

Terry Brown:

The tax money, it just goes in the child’s pack back. Everybody pays in, every child is supported

Zac Schultz:

For opponents, like Green Bay superintendent Michelle Langenfeld, the question is where does it stop.

Michelle Langenfeld:

There is not a recognition that there’s a national movement in this way to privatize public education, and take public dollars to fund private institutions.

Dave Hansen:

Right now it looks like the governor is making the big push to privatize the whole works.

Zac Schultz:

But for Republican Luther Olsen, it’s a question of what can we afford.

Luther Olsen:

We have to decide how many school systems can we afford. According to this budget, we can’t even afford the public school system that we have now.