Here & Now

2013 Department of Public Instruction Debate

Frederica Freyberg:

I’m Frederica Freyberg. Tonight on “Here and Now,” a visit with the candidates running for state school superintendent. Election day is April 2. And for the next half hour we’ll go over issues and school policy with the challenger, state representative, Don Pridemore and the incumbent, current state superintendent, Tony Evers. And welcome to you both.

Tony Evers:

Thank you very much.

Don Pridemore:

Great to be here.

Frederica Freyberg:

Before we begin, as kind of a preface to our conversation, we remind you that Act 10 has dramatically reduced the power of teacher unions. Charter and virtual schools are popping up all over the state, and we are grading schools based on student achievement and the governor wants to dramatically expand the use of vouchers. So with all of that on the table, we suggest that we appear to be in kind of a transformative moment regarding the future of public education in Wisconsin. As candidate for superintendent of schools, what in your minds are the most important changes we can make toward the betterment of k-12 education? And first with that question to you, Representative Pridemore.

Don Pridemore:

I think we’ve been historically looking at education. We’ve really been controlled by the teachers unions for many, many years. And anytime you have a monopoly situation, you usually see a degradation in the product. And that’s what I’ve been seeing historically. And I believe adding things like choice, virtual schools, charter schools only adds to the competition we have amongst education. Competition made our country great, and I think competition will work to improve public education as well.

Frederica Freyberg:

And Superintendent Evers, what are the most important changes that you see we can make toward the betterment of k-12 even in this moment of change?

Tony Evers:

Sure. I’d suggest that the last four years we’ve had significant changes in our public schools and things that we’re working on, like adopting the common core state standards, finding better ways to use technology so we can personalize learning, offering dual enrollment opportunities for our kids and making sure that our new assessment system works in a way that really provides information to teachers so that they have good information to make wise decisions, a new accountability system, teacher evaluation system. All those things. And in my 36 years of public education, we’ve never had more initiatives and reform efforts than we have right now. I believe those are the keys. In addition, with students that are struggling, we have to– we are piloting now a way to intervene earlier, to really find out where kids become at risk much earlier so we can intervene earlier. So all these things together in addition to systems around positive behavior, I think are transformative in and of themselves. Competition is something that is part and parcel, always been part of public education. The fact of the matter is I don’t believe that vouchers have been proven to increase that competition and improve student learning in the 19 years it’s been in Milwaukee. So I prefer to really focus on the things that we have laid out on our plate, some of them that I’ve actually worked with the governor on.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you dispute the idea that school choice has not introduced competition to the betterment of the education?

Don Pridemore:

Well, it has. It has introduced competition. Unfortunately, when you have a monopoly, what we’ve had prior to school choice, they’re very slow to change. We see that in Milwaukee. That was the hope the legislature had when they introduced that concept about 18 years ago. All you have to do is go into a choice school and you can see a difference between how they teach, what they teach, you see the excitement in the kids. They’re there to learn. Many of them have already had further education on their minds when they attend. The teachers are there not because they’re looking for a big salary or benefit package. They are there because they are passionate about teaching. And that’s why they’re there. I believe the discipline that is– and the safety that’s there in the choice schools is improving the environment that kids learn in.

Frederica Freyberg:

If you wanted to say one more thing about choice and then we’re going to move on.

Tony Evers:

I would just reject the notion that somehow the teachers in our public schools are there only for the paycheck and are there only to further themselves. I encourage everybody that believes that to get into a public school classroom across the state of Wisconsin. I’ll give you an example in southeastern Wisconsin using technology. It looks significantly different than it did just five years ago. Kids are engaged in their learning, they own their learning, and they self-regulate in a great way. So I’m just saying that it is not this way in public schools as described.

Frederica Freyberg:

I want to move along and ask you, starting with you again, Superintendent Evers, whether you think that Wisconsin schools need more state funding or less.

Tony Evers:

Well, we’re coming off a historic cut in public education, a significant cut a couple years ago, almost $800 million. Our schools are still reeling from that. I understand that some of the benefit give-offs that the teacher and support staff have cover some of that. But there’s 3,000 less positions in our public schools now than there were back prior to Act 10. We need to be able to keep our doors open. We have school districts that are struggling mightily with resources, and I believe the present budget would provide no increases for our public schools, for our traditional public schools, the ones that were cut so significantly last time. Gas is going up. Everything is going up in the system. And the infrastructure. We can freeze people’s salaries forever, and we’ll eventually have no one wanting to go into the profession. So in order to move forward, we have to have additional resources.

Frederica Freyberg:

Representative Pridemore, do you think we ought to spend more on schools or less?

Don Pridemore:

Let me clarify one thing too. I didn’t mean to give the impression that I disparage public schools. There are a lot of good public schools out there. The problem is that there are too many students that are failing in our public schools. Even if you compare the 78% graduation rate, that’s still 22% of the kids that have fallen through the cracks. And that’s what my main concern is. There are many great teachers in the public school system, and I applaud them for being there. And as far as the revenue problems, I mean, being in the legislature and looking at the economy, the job situation, the unemployment rate, I don’t see us able at this point to grow that pot bigger than it is now. By growing that pot means that you either have to take money from some other source or tax– raise taxes. And neither one of those are palatable in the legislature right now. So we may want to put more money into education, but it’s not possible right now until we get the unemployment rate down, until we actually take use of these graduates to fill jobs that are currently available out there, but their skills don’t match their jobs.

Frederica Freyberg:

Superintendent Evers, in fact you would like to take money from other places that the governor’s budget puts it, and put it back into schools.

Tony Evers:

Absolutely. This started last time around, where the transportation fund was now being supplemented by the general fund. We’re moving hundreds of millions of dollars from the general fund to the transportation fund under the present budget. So we’re prioritizing roads. We’re prioritizing an income tax cut that would give a family of four reportedly a $7 a month income tax cut. We’re prioritizing that. We’re prioritizing $73 million for voucher schools. We’re prioritizing that. Not we. The budget prioritizes that. So there’s priorities all the way along. To say that $1.5 billion proposed surplus at the end of the biennium is poverty, I just don’t buy that argument. There’s priorities being made in this budget, and I’m suggesting the priorities be changed.

Frederica Freyberg:

And you also are quoted as saying that you believe that Governor Walker’s budget for k-12 schools represents the continued defunding of public education.

Tony Evers:

Revenue limits over the last several decades or 15 years when they’ve been in place have kept schools at just barely an inflation rate, which– the thing– you know, the whole issue about funding that people tend to forget is that we have all these initiatives that we’re working on now to improve schools, and without adequate resources, we aren’t going to be able to implement them. And so not only am I concerned about keeping the doors open. I’m concerned about that the revenue is such that we are able to do these initiatives that we’re working on.

Frederica Freyberg:

Representative Pridemore, please weigh in.

Don Pridemore:

Well, certainly. I believe what we did last session in Act 10 actually improved the school situation. The money that was asked of teachers to pay into their own pension and health care benefits saved school districts a lot more than what they were reduced in terms of student aid. The governor himself declared the first year of Act 10 in operation saved $1 billion in tax money and that all was kept in the district. So on the surface, yes, money trades places in a situation with Act 10, but overall the school districts have benefitted. And all you have to do is talk to the administrators and they’ll tell you that fact.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about this budget? Oh go ahead.

Tony Evers:

I was going to say, you may talk to a handful of administrators that would admit that. The cuts that went into– came out of teachers’ pockets and their paychecks, that would have happened without Act 10. The unions had already ceded to that issue. Act 10 was about de-unionizing public schools, and I understand Representative Pridemore’s happiness with that. But I’ll tell you a little bit about unintended consequences of that. I was meeting with 19 teachers of the year a few weeks back who were talking about all the initiatives and their excitement about that. But before long– and these are great teachers, energetic teachers, love their kids. They’re talking about fear. They’re talking about the fear that they face about speaking up in the workplace where things have concerned them. They’re talking about fear of what the community is thinking about them. We put targets on the back of our instructors and our support staff in the state, and that is an unintended consequence or I hope not intended consequence that we have to overcome.

Frederica Freyberg:

Representative Pridemore, in your candidate statement that you presented for Wisconsin Public Television, which will be airing for voters to see, you did make it clear that you are really anti-teacher union, and in fact you said that their domination has crippled our educational system. But didn’t Act 10, of which we were just speaking and which superintendent was speaking about, basically remove the union’s muscle? Aren’t we kind of past that now?

Don Pridemore:

Well, we are just seeing the effects of Act 10, certainly. The teachers’ union has been, should I say, minimized to some degree, but they’re still out there. I mean, some districts still maintain a union structure. I have nothing against unions, but unions do what unions do, and that is to make sure their membership increases and make sure they get the highest salaries and benefits that they can possibly capture. And anytime when you have a monopoly over the system, when you have the ability to put money into campaigns not only for DPI superintendent, but for local school boards and you get friendly people on those boards and the relationship between the negotiators and the school boards are very friendly, you see this out-of-balance condition. And that’s what’s been happening for the last 40 plus years.

Frederica Freyberg:

I’m going to move along to the issue of school choice. Representative Pridemore, why do you support expanding school choice throughout Wisconsin to at least nine additional districts?

Don Pridemore:

I thought the governor was very creative when he proposed this. You know, we were thinking about, again, doing the same thing we did a session before and that’s picking certain locales within the state that probably were asking for choice. Kenosha, for instance, Green Bay and those areas. So– but the governor said, well, let’s put the issue where the problem exists. Let’s allow the districts that have failing schools to come to the choice table and use that then as a way to give kids an equal opportunity for education. And that’s what he did.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you feel as though there ought to be kind of a voucher in every child’s backpack?

Don Pridemore:

Well, we may eventually go to a system like that. I mean, that would be the ultimate free market solution to, you know, giving kids a choice. Every child does not necessarily fit into a public or a private situation. So by giving parents and students the option of a school of their choice, I think there’s the ultimate free choice in the market.

Frederica Freyberg:

Superintendent Evers, you oppose expanding choice in this way. Why?

Tony Evers:

Well, the present system in Milwaukee has been in place for, I think 19 years, maybe 20 years. So it’s beyond the experimental phase. And how the free market has worked there is that the schools that receive vouchers achieve at no level higher than Milwaukee public schools and in many cases lower. We put several , I think it’s $1.3, $1.5 billion over the past years into the program, and it doesn’t show any discernible difference. Milwaukee Journal Sentinel said the evidence is scant that the choice schools are improving student learning. So to kind of make choice in and of itself a value that’s going to increase student learning, there’s no evidence to support that. In addition, I have to say that the use of the report card to kind of be a gatekeeper for that, first of all, that report card was never developed for that. It wasn’t to be used as a hammer. It was to be used as a flashlight so that we could find out what schools are struggling, which ones are doing well and have best practices spread across the state of Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

What about the issue, Representative Pridemore, about achievement in choice schools being equal to achievement in the public schools, which they are kind of replacing?

Don Pridemore:

Well, I think a lot has to do with, statistically, is how you measure achievement. My measure of achievement is to ask the parents what they think their kids– how they’re being educated. Why is the program continuing to expand? If parents didn’t think choice schools were a better option for their kids, they wouldn’t be putting their kids in those programs. Look at the graduation. Look at the kids that are prepared for the next level, whether it be employment or further education. There’s a definite dynamic there in the choice schools that you don’t see in many public schools. And that’s why the option has to be there and that’s why it’s so popular, and that’s really a level of achievement that I would prefer to use than a one-time, one-day test.

Tony Evers:

It’s interesting. We can say schools are failing, and which I don’t believe they are, based on a test, and then, however, the choice schools we can’t just use test scores, we have to use something in addition to that. To me, the bottom line is, if test scores in schools for 19 years hasn’t been any different, and the Marquette poll just recently said that 80% of our– 80% of our citizens believe our schools are doing very well.

Frederica Freyberg:

And the same poll said 51% would like to see choice expanded as well.

Tony Evers:

Right.

Frederica Freyberg:

I wan to ask you, Representative Pridemore, two years ago the choice program expanded, as you know, outside Milwaukee to Racine. Now, I was interviewing the Racine budget director this week, the Racine school district budget director, a former Republican lawmaker, who is in favor of choice and voted for it in Milwaukee. I asked him what message he would send to other districts that are now kind of possibly going to have choice programs in this new budget, and he said he would tell them that their local school taxes will go up. So how do you justify that?

Don Pridemore:

Well, look at the cost of educating a child in a choice school versus a public school situation. Overall, the taxpayers save money. The voucher program spends $6600 per choice student. Public schools in Milwaukee are just below $14,000. So you can tell right there there’s a disparity. Choice schools have found a way to educate their kids at a much lower rate. And not only that, but when the choice schools were started way back when, we only took the poorest of the poor. And if you don’t think there’s a relationship between poverty and education achievement, then I think you have to go back and look at the statistics. So what we are comparing here, more of the middle class public school situation with a below middle class situation of students, and we’re trying to compare those two and they don’t necessarily compare apples to apples.

Frederica Freyberg:

But is it okay in your mind that local property taxpayers in a choice district, one that has now opened up to choice, would pay more in taxes?

Don Pridemore:

Well, that’s only– that’s only if you don't– if you lose students in a school, you have to compensate for that. You can’t just keep the same amount of buildings, classrooms available, same amount of personnel. If you want to maintain the infrastructure, you have to adjust to the population of the students. And that’s where the taxpayer– local taxpayers are being hurt.

Tony Evers:

Well, they’re being hurt because their students– it happened in Milwaukee, it happened in Racine, already going to the parochial school or the private school now. They weren’t even in the public school. So now we’re subsidizing children that are already in the schools. Now, that’s just public policy in the state of Wisconsin. People have to understand. It is going to cost more money. And, again, this is a– this frustrating thing for me around this particular issue, I accede that the schools in Milwaukee– we will always– at least for the immediate future, have choice schools. But we spend so much time talking about this issue, especially from a philosophical point of view, not concerning ourselves with the actual achievement of all kids, and it just sucks the air out of the room. We have to be focused on the interventions and the programs and the reform efforts that we know are going to improve student learning.

Frederica Freyberg:

On that score I will say that this same Racine budget director, that being Mark Duff, said that it is true that while his taxes had to go up, he said, that it did inject this competition into his district and made them work faster toward making their schools better. Isn’t there that?

Tony Evers:

Well, there may be that kind of initial feeling, but Milwaukee public schools have slowly increased their achievement, but it’s not attributed to the competition. It’s attributed to the fact that we had some really significant reforms under Dr. Thornton since he came there. So the competition piece, I think it’s apple pie and motherhood and all Americana. But in public education, I just don’t believe it is what it's cracked up to be.

Frederica Freyberg:

Wisconsin has embarked, as we know, on new accountability measures for school, including these new report cards that we’re talking about and are now in use. But one way the governor expects those to be used is to give $54 million in bonuses, basically, to high-performing schools, and $10 million toward schools with bad grades from those report cards. Representative Pridemore, what’s your position on this kind of bonus incentive payments?

Don Pridemore:

Well, again, we are providing money for the best-performing schools, and that should be an incentive to continue to improve. It’s part of the free market system. It’s something that– an idea I think is needed. You might be able to argue about the numbers involved, but I think it’s a governor’s initiative to bring more merit into the top-performing schools, and I do support that idea.

Frederica Freyberg:

Superintendent Evers?

Tony Evers:

Well, if this is free market, this is how it’s going to work. The top-performing schools are almost exclusively wealthy schools, so we will be providing more wealth to wealthy schools. My proposal around this issue is significantly different. We are going to give resources to the high-performing schools to identify those best practices, not to reward them for being wealthy, but to identify the best practices in those schools and share them across the state. At the lower end, we wanted resources to support reform efforts in the schools. That’s wholly different than the whole notion of providing more wealthy schools more wealth.

Frederica Freyberg:

Representative Pridemore, obviously some schools have higher numbers of students who come from families with low incomes, or English as a second language, or these kinds of students whose parents have to move all the time. Do you think that these students in a school correlate to achievement, high numbers of students like this in a school, correlate to achievement?

Don Pridemore:

Well, yeah, I do, generally speaking, overall. There is a correlation between poverty and achievement. But we also have many examples in the world, in society, that the American dream really is to move out of poverty and into the middle class and to the upper middle class. It’s part of the American dream. And we should not suffocate that by our programs through the government. You know, you go back to the funding issue as well. If we are giving merit pay to high-performing schools and if you can correlate those high-performing schools are from the more wealthier districts, who’s paying more into the school system? If we’re going to base this on property values, in terms of aid to schools, you can argue that those districts are paying a lot more into the system than they’re getting back.

Tony Evers:

Well, then if that’s the case, if that is going to be the theory of action going forward, clearly this disequity we have now is like this, it’s going to be like this. If they’re paying more because there's more wealth or property wealth or wealth in your pocket, and as a result of that we achieve higher and then as a result of that we’re going to give you more money, the disequity in the state will just explode.

Frederica Freyberg:

Representative Pridemore though, how does a teacher in a school break through those kinds of demographic barriers to try to compete for this incentive money and get a good grade on their school report card? How does a teacher do that?

Don Pridemore:

Well, you have to look at the level at which these students come into the classroom and at what level do they leave. That to me is the basis for performance. The more creative, the better the teacher is, should– should prove in how that student is ready then for the next grade.

Frederica Freyberg:

You know what? I have to leave it there. And I’m sorry to cut you off there, but we really only have one minute left, and I wanted to give you each an opportunity to tell voters why they should vote for you to be the next superintendent of Wisconsin schools. I’ll take with you, Representative Pridemore.

Don Pridemore:

Thank you. My candidacy is built around local control and my experience in the private sector, in the government sector. I think it gives me a perspective on both sides of the issue here. If you don’t have public– or private sector experience, I don’t think you really know that much about how the real world works in terms of our educational system, as well as any other aspect of life. So but local control, most of the programs that are coming through DPI and Department of Education are really about taking away local control. But I believe that the local people know their students, their teachers, their environment, businesses in those communities, and they are much more able to make decisions that benefit those kids, more so than a one size fits all program.

Frederica Freyberg:

Superintendent Evers.

Tony Evers:

I’ve been in public education for 36 years as a teacher, as an administrator, a regional administrator, deputy state superintendent. I was fortunate enough to have people of Wisconsin vote me in four years ago. We’ve got an aggressive agenda around reform and transforming our schools. Frankly, I have built a broad coalition of people across the state, not just the teachers, but Republicans and Democrats. I’ve worked with the governor on some really important initiatives. I’ve worked with business people to make sure we have more dual enrollment opportunities in our schools. So I developed a broad coalition that I think will help me be reelected, but more importantly, it's going to help me going forward, moving our system forward.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right, thank you to you both. That’s our program for tonight. Good night.