Here & Now

Here & Now for Jan. 20, 2017

Frederica Freyberg:

I'm Frederica Freyberg. Tonight, the future of school choice in Wisconsin under the Trump administration. After that, a closer look at the implications of the Trump plan to uproot Obamacare. Then, in our look ahead, we’ll learn about the promises ahead for First Lady Tonette Walker’s Fostering Futures program. And WPR’s Shawn Johnson joins me for a Capitol Insight segment. It’s “Here and Now” for January 20.

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Funding for “Here and Now” is provided in part by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.

Frederica Freyberg:

A first look tonight at the Trump administration and the newly sworn-in president’s priorities for public education. Ahead of the inauguration, it was a week chock full of cabinet hearings in Washington, including the hearing for Secretary of Department of Education nominee Betsy DeVos. Ms. DeVos spoke to her support of something Wisconsin is very familiar with – school choice.

Betsy DeVos:

Parents no longer believe that a one size fits all model of learning meets the need of every child. And they know other options exist, whether magnet, virtual, charter, home, faith-based or any other combination.

Frederica Freyberg:

Thanks in large measure to Betsy DeVos, Wisconsin is ahead of most of the rest of the nation when it comes to private school and voucher programs. Our first guest has been at the forefront of the choice movement in the badger state. Jim Bender is the president of School Choice Wisconsin. Thanks a lot for being here.

Jim Bender:

Thank you for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

We just heard Betsy DeVos. What’s your reaction to her being picked for this post?

Jim Bender:

Well, I think following the general theme of this entire election process, change is coming. There’s no doubt about it. Exactly what form that’s going to take, we’re going to have to find out. But right now I think her statements there were reflecting where we are not just as a state here in Wisconsin, when you look at the polling on school choice and the support that’s there now and growing. So nationally you’re seeing the same thing. Milwaukee had the first voucher program 26, 27 years ago. Now there’s 25 states that have programs. 42 states that have independent charters. You’ve got hundreds of thousands of students in there. Nationally you’re seeing a growing movement. In Wisconsin you’re seeing a growing movement. And the poll numbers and general support just keep going up and up for educational options.

Frederica Freyberg:

Describe how influential Betsy DeVos was in Wisconsin with us being at the vanguard with that Milwaukee choice program?

Jim Bender:

So I think when the program started here, you had a number of people, my predecessor of School Choice Wisconsin, Susan Mitchell worked with Tommy Thompson, Howard Fuller, Polly Williams, Tim Sheehy at MMAC to get the first program started. After that happened, then there was much more of a national movement that got started once there was one solid program. Susan Mitchell and Betsy DeVos, at that point, were part of that national movement. Betsy has led the charge since then. It’s helped promote the Milwaukee program, expand it in various forms to other states and then in return now that we’ve expanded the program outside of Milwaukee to Racine and statewide, American Federation for Children, the organization that she ran, has been influential here in Wisconsin.

Frederica Freyberg:

So should she be confirmed to this secretary post, what might that mean going forward for Wisconsin?

Jim Bender:

So they’ve talked at least President-elect Trump, now President Trump, has talked about injecting like $20 billion into school choice across the country, which would be a dramatic increase. What I think we’re finding out is that, you know, it doesn’t sound anyway like there’s going to be a new federal program to administer those dollars. They’re really looking more at block grants and interjecting not just that new money for school choice, but as I have often said, I think the whole movement is going to be kind of de-emphasizing the federal role in education. So even for traditional public schools, I think they will get much more flexibility than they’ve had in the past without all the strings being tied to federal. So I think you’re going to see block grants. I think you’re going to see more money put down to the states. And I think everybody will be beneficial — or will benefit from a reduced role from the federal government in education.

Frederica Freyberg:

What kinds of regulations from the federal Department of Education would people like yourself like to see go away?

Jim Bender:

So I think from a school choice standpoint, the federal government right now doesn’t play much of a role. The programs here in the state of Wisconsin for vouchers are funded by state dollars only. There aren’t any federal dollars that go into it. From the traditional public school side, you’ve just got — whether you’re dealing with — you know, you’ve got different title funding for teacher prep. For low-income students, you’ve got IDEA, Title IX. You’ve got all these different functions. And I don’t think that — at least what I'm hearing, you’re not seeing necessarily a reduction in any of the funding of those items, but just the way they are administered will allow local districts to have a bit more flexibility with how they’re going to be applied. In other words, I think you’ve got a number of people here in the state that are full-time employees that are on compliance measures to make sure that the federal dollars are spent the way that they’re supposed to be spent. We just got done seeing school improvement grants for the country. $7 billion was invested from 2010 to 2015. Yesterday the results came out that those dollars had no impact on improving low-performing schools across the country. So we spent $7 billion over five years through the traditional system. Arne Duncan put it in place. President Obama, one of his key measures. It’s kind of telling that it came out the day before he left office that after those $7 billion got done, there was no improvement. Part of the problem was that plan had very structured ways in which you could spend the money and didn’t give the local schools the ability to be innovative with those dollars. And we just didn’t see any results.

Frederica Freyberg:

We need to leave it there. Jim Bender, thanks very much.

Jim Bender:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

The statewide expansion of school choice in Wisconsin accounts for 3,000 students beyond the core choice school districts. Those districts are Racine and Milwaukee. As of the current school year, there are 121 private schools participating in the Milwaukee parental choice program. Total Milwaukee enrollment is approximately 28,000 students. The program is estimated to cost more than $200 million in 2016-2017. Racine has 19 choice schools, serving about 2500 students. But it’s Milwaukee that has been ground zero for the national school choice movement. We go there now to a democratic member of the assembly education committee, who says it’s time to put the brakes on state money for choice schools. Representative David Bowen is in Milwaukee and thanks very much for joining us.

David Bowen:

Thank you so much for having me on your show.

Frederica Freyberg:

You're welcome. Now, putting the brakes on school choice at this point is going to take spike strips. It seems likely it will be further expanded here and nationwide. What’s your reaction to that?

David Bowen:

Well, I think the problem is that people are playing partisan games when we really should be looking at the evidence and at the data, right? We know for a fact that just because there is school choice, in a sense, it does not increase the educational outcomes of our students, of the preparedness that our families have as they deal with situations outside of the walls of their schools, rising poverty, especially in the state of Wisconsin. We’ve seen that there are challenges that just having competition and choice does not address.

Frederica Freyberg:

What do you think of Betsy DeVos being named Secretary of Education?

David Bowen:

Well, I think it was another move where we weren’t really looking at, you know, the person that’s best equipped to really focus on increasing educational outcomes. I understand Ms. DeVos has connections on the choice and privatizing education side that have led her to circles where people have picked her, you know. And I think that it more so should be someone that has the experience, that has the preparedness to take on such an operation of the Department of Education and truly be aware of everything that you need to be acclimated to, to really focus on improving educational outcomes, not just using skewed data and studies and big money that has influenced our politics and our education systems to change things the way that you see fit.

Frederica Freyberg:

Do you feel as though she represents a threat to public schools?

David Bowen:

I think she recognizes or resembles a threat to quality public education for all of our students. You know, I think that we have a long way to go to actually make sure that we are prioritizing, you know, the outcomes and the things that we need to do to increase those outcomes. And we need folks that are not going to bury their heads in the sand or just cherrypicking the things that they want to do. We need folks that are really committed to addressing the lack of focus that has happened on our education systems, where we’ve put them behind. We haven’t invested the amount of dollars that it takes, on rural and urban education, especially in Wisconsin. And we need folks that are not going to just see this as a partisan issue, but that are really committed to the outcomes of our young people and, you know, helping our families have access to a quality of life that compliments the experience that our children have in education.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, meanwhile, Governor Walker in his State of the State said his budget would include what he called a “significant increase for public schools.” So what’s your reaction to that?

David Bowen:

Well, the problem is that the governor continues to not focus on the educational outcomes of all of our students. In his State of the State he was talking about increasing funding for rural school districts, which is half of the approach that we need. I don’t think we can have another approach to improving education by pitting school districts against each other, rural and urban districts. Another situation where we are not really moving in the direction that we need to to address the fact that we have families all over our state that are affected by the things that are also happening outside of those school walls. We have a growing number of rural districts that are being impacted by poverty to an alarming rate. And I think the governor needs to change his focus.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. We need to leave it there. We’ll be watching for what’s in his budget. Milwaukee State Representative David Bowen, thanks very much.

David Bowen:

Thank you so much.

Frederica Freyberg:

In tonight’s closer look, how some medical doctors are eyeing the repeal of the Affordable Care Act? This week, Wisconsin Physicians for a National Health Program spoke out about their concerns. Dr. Melissa Stiles is a member of that group. Doctor, thanks very much for being here.

Melissa Stiles:

You're very welcome.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, you say that you have concerns about the rapid repeal of the Affordable Care Act without a proven plan in place. What are those concerns?

Melissa Stiles:

Yeah. Significant concerns. My main concern is that we don’t go backwards. We did make some tremendous strides with the Affordable Care Act in terms of expanding coverage, and I think fixing some of the inadequacies of our health care system. And my fear is we go backwards in terms of coverage and potentially losing coverage for 20 million Americans in the first year of the repeal and up to 30 million in the second is not the right direction.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, Obamacare, as we’ve come to call it, was not a proven plan when it was put in place either. So why this call, you know, for this new plan, whatever it might be, that it be proven?

Melissa Stiles:

Sure. Obamacare had some proof because it was — a lot of the major tenets of the plan were based on the Massachusetts plan. So there was some evidence that it did work. So there was a demonstration. When we look at what’s being put forth, and, as you know, we don’t have a plan put forth yet, but we could predict that ones put forth by Ryan and also Price in the past, of high deductible plans coupled with health savings accounts, there is no demonstration project for that, not even in a city, in a region, state or any other nation that has done that.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now, when you note Price, you mean the incoming DHSS Secretary nominee, Dr. Tom Price, and he has a plan that really closely mirrors — Speaker Paul Ryan's plan with some of those prongs of which you speak. So how would the repeal, getting closer to the ground, of the Affordable Care Act affect your patients?

Melissa Stiles:

Potentially the major — the people that were most affected by this were people that had small businesses — and I practiced in a small community, Bellville, for 25 years, had a number of dairy farmers. A lot of those couples had to have a second job for health insurance. I gave an in-service on the Affordable Care Act one evening in Bellville. It was packed. People finally saw the light that they could have health insurance without being tied to a job. There were people there with pre-existing conditions that now could get insurance. So those are the main people affected. I think when we also look at the 20 million people that potentially will lose insurance, those people were the most vulnerable. They couldn’t — they didn’t qualify for Medicaid and they were in this gap. And so now they had subsidies that they were able now to get insurance.

Frederica Freyberg:

And there’s a certain number of those people in Wisconsin as well.

Melissa Stiles:

There is. And the estimate is about 225,000.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what about the uncertainty of all of this for people who just got kind of used to the Affordable Care Act, for physicians and hospitals and, again, patients?

Melissa Stiles:

And a lot of organizations are calling for caution. The Wisconsin Hospital Association on their blog, on their website, calls for caution as we move forward. And the concern is not so much if we do repeal, not so much what we repeal it with. The concern is as much as how we do it. When you look at how everything is intricately involved, all now the pillars of what I consider our health care currently, Medicare, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and employer-based insurance, are all affected by any repeal of the ACA. When we look at the assurances that the ACA gave in terms of — you wouldn’t be denied for pre-existing conditions. You would not have your insurance cut off if you developed an illness. You had to wait up to 12 months if you had a job with a pre-existing condition to get insurance. Those same assurances are also for employer-based plans, along with no out-of-pocket costs for preventive services. So this affects not just people that are getting insurance, but the subsidies, it affects all of us. For Medicare, there are tremendous research going on in terms of how we really should look at value-based care. Also, close the loophole, what we call the doughnut hole for Medicare prescriptions, which is so vital for our patients.

Frederica Freyberg:

Also very important and very changeable right now. Dr. Melissa Stiles, thanks very much.

Melissa Stiles:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

Next, in our look ahead, the roll-out of a specific kind of care for a specially-affected population. Wisconsin First Lady Tonette Walker spoke about it at last week’s State of the State address.

Tonette Walker:

We call our initiative Fostering Futures. Fostering Futures is about creating hope by advancing principles of trauma-informed care across Wisconsin. Let me give you an example. If a child is belligerent and angry as he meets with his child welfare worker, we used to say, “What’s wrong with that child?” But with trauma-informed care, we teach people to ask the question, “What happened to that young person?” Instead of labeling the child as good or bad, this approach moves us to better understand what could be causing the behavior. Just so we’re clear, we know there still have to be consequences for their actions, but shifting to trauma-informed perspective gives us access to more tools for success and better outcomes.

[applause]

Frederica Freyberg:

First Lady Tonette Walker is on the steering committee of Fostering Futures, as is Elizabeth Hudson, a licensed clinical social worker with the Wisconsin office of Children’s Mental Health. Elizabeth, thanks very much for being here.

Elizabeth Hudson:

Oh, thank you so much. It’s a great opportunity.

Frederica Freyberg:

First just very briefly, what is trauma-informed care?

Elizabeth Hudson:

It's a good question and it’s a big concept and it’s very hard to sort of distill it down. But simply put, it is a principle-based culture change process. Many people have a sense that it is an intervention or a therapy, but actually it’s giving people information about what happens after exposure to stress that is toxic in our bodies and then with that knowledge how do we need to change how we are in relationships, whether it’s service relationships or community connections, et cetera.

Frederica Freyberg:

So how do you change? I mean, what is the thing that you do with trauma-informed care that’s different from what the people who have experienced this stress or this adversity might have found before?

Elizabeth Hudson:

Right. So I loved that Mrs. Walker used that phrase “it’s not really what is wrong with you; it’s what’s happened to you.” So before, we would probably be — and I was part of this system of, you know, being a professional therapist — have a label to identify a belligerent child with. And it might be a label like oppositional defiance disorder or reactive attachment disorder. And instead of being very proscriptive and medicalizing situations, with trauma-informed care we take a more I would say compassionate look, a less clinical look at behaviors to say, “Why does this behavior make sense? Why would a child who is being interactive with someone like a child welfare worker have a very negative reaction?”

Frederica Freyberg:

Does the sheer acknowledgment of that on the part of people like yourself help these people behave differently?

Elizabeth Hudson:

Well, it’s been one of the sort of great advances in having people with lived experience lead this movement in many ways, because those folks who have experienced early trauma or early adversity know how that’s impacted them, but they’ve never had the ability to share that as part of their medical history or as part of why they become involved in child welfare, other areas. So this has allowed them to give voice to what has happened and then we are now better able to figure out how to be effective.

Frederica Freyberg:

So this is a statewide initiative, and the First Lady talked about county workers being trained up and state workers. Are there other states across the country approaching this as a statewide initiative?

Elizabeth Hudson:

That's the key phrase, a statewide. There are states that are doing pockets of activity and have been. I’d say it’s been very popularized within the past four years, but it’s taken quite a bit of time for it to become generally acknowledged. And in Wisconsin, because we had for four or five years a really wonderful grassroots movement, we now have the partnership with leadership in state government and infrastructure that has such power to create social change now adopting this as something that they want to do. And that is very unique in the nation. And we’re being recognized as such.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, more reporting to do on this. Elizabeth Hudson, thanks very much.

Elizabeth Hudson:

Thank you.

Frederica Freyberg:

In tonight’s Capitol Insight, we’re joined by Wisconsin Public Radio Capitol Bureau Chief Shawn Johnson to talk money. It’s kind of like finding 20 bucks in your coat pocket when you pull it out for the winter, an unexpected if modest windfall. In this case state budget writers are looking at better than expected state tax revenues and lower than expected spending. More now with Shawn. Hi Shawn.

Shawn Johnson:

Hey Fred.

Frederica Freyberg:

So I want to take a look at those numbers right away, the kinds of numbers that budget writers are now looking at. State revenue estimates show $455 million more, with spending at $266 million less. So that’s good news. But people up at the capitol already have designs on $300 million of this, right?

Shawn Johnson:

It happens quickly as soon as you get a good revenue estimate, people have ideas for it. There’s no shortage of ideas when estimates are good. And so the thing to remember is that this money is not in hand yet.

Frederica Freyberg:

It's not like that $20?

Shawn Johnson:

It is not like that $20. It’s like pulling out an idea of $20 you’ll have over the course of two and a half years. It’s not there yet. It’s not to say that it won’t be and it’s the best number that legislators have and the governor has as he goes ahead to craft that budget. But it is a projection.

Frederica Freyberg:

So the $300 million is something that Speaker Robin Vos wants to make use of to help fill this transportation budget hole.

Shawn Johnson:

Yeah. So the way that the governor said he would raise transportation revenue is if he had a corresponding tax cut somewhere else in the budget. And so Assembly Republicans are saying, “All right, we have this money now. Let’s cut taxes by $300 million in the general fund.” They didn’t say how. And then we can raise revenues in the transportation fund. They didn’t say how they would do that either. So it’s really kind of a tax swap, but this new revenue estimate if it holds makes it possible.

Frederica Freyberg:

It’s interesting, though, because I know that the Republicans are intent, many of them, on this sustainable kind of revenue for transportation, but if this is a one-time, $300 million tax reduction, or would that be forever? Is that laid out at all?

Shawn Johnson:

We don’t know. If you look at the press release where they announced this plan, it was a lot of quotes and about one line in there that said, “Here’s basically what we want to do.” The governor’s office said they’re waiting on details of the plan. So are we.

Frederica Freyberg:

Well, it’s a good start at least to be able to talk about having these kinds of extra revenues. But you’ve reported before on the idea that sometimes these estimates don’t hold.

Shawn Johnson:

You have to look back to 2014. I mean, they had really good estimates in 2014. They came in almost a billion dollars higher than expected. Republicans quickly passed a tax cut. The estimates didn’t really pan out. By the 2015 budget they were facing cuts to a variety of agencies. So that’s the danger of putting too much stock in these estimates. When they’re off even by a little bit in terms of percentage, it can mean big cuts down the road potentially.

Frederica Freyberg:

It is good, though, notwithstanding the idea that, you know, it’s not cash in hand and they are just estimates because the governor has these proposals to increase funding for things like broadband and K-12 and other things. So at least they’re starting on the plus side with their estimates.

Shawn Johnson:

Right. I mean, Assembly Republicans have their ideas. The governor has been talking about stuff for months now where people were saying, “How are you going to do that?” Here’s one way you could do it.

Frederica Freyberg:

All right. Shawn Johnson, thanks very much.

Shawn Johnson:

Thanks.

Frederica Freyberg:

Now for an update away from the state capitol, in the woods of Wisconsin, where wolves are once again in environmental news. This week both of Wisconsin’s U.S. Senators Baldwin and Johnson signed on in support of legislation that would remove protections for the gray wolf in Wisconsin and several other states. The wolves have been protected under the Federal Endangered Species Act. The senate bill replaces protections with wolf management programs. And finally tonight, a look ahead to next week. That’s when I'll have an update on a Syrian immigrant living in Wisconsin seeking asylum. I’m Frederica Freyberg. Have a great weekend.

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Funding for “Here and Now” is provided, in part, by Friends of Wisconsin Public Television.