Here & Now

On the Issues: Education

Frederica Freyberg:
We begin tonight’s special with a spotlight on education. Specifically the challenge to create equity with minority achievement. Solutions to this stubborn problem elude leaders from both the major parties.
The fact remains, African American student performance in Wisconsin falls far behind that of white students. And that academic achievement gap especially in the state’s urban districts goes back decades. Now in the election year that has both candidates staking a claim on being the education governor, sparring over the issue is front and center.

Teacher:
The brain connects all to the nerves in the nervous system throughout the brain.

Frederica Freyberg:
Students in this advanced high school class in Milwaukee excel academically.

Teacher:
Biggest one that we found out is the frontal lobe.

Frederica Freyberg:
But their success is not the norm in the district. In fact, the latest statewide tests for elementary and middle schoolers show that whereas 46% of white students are not proficient in math, 86% of black students are not. Put a different way, just 11.5% of black students tested proficient in math. The same holds true in English. 85% of black students tested were not proficient, compared to about 49% of white students. The gaps are wider in Milwaukee. One of the urban districts that drives achievement gaps in Wisconsin. A district that has led the nation in such academic disparities. Republican Scott Walker squarely blames his democratic challenger, superintendent of public schools, Tony Evers. Tweeting in the midst of this race for governor, “after calling the effort to close Wisconsin’s achievement gap a priority and promising significant improvement, Tony Evers has failed to make notable progress in his nine plus years in office.”
Governor Walker blames you as superintendent of public instruction for Wisconsin’s worst in the nation achievement gaps between black and white students. Why shouldn’t he blame you?

Tony Evers:
Well because he has done nothing. My budgets consistently, over time, have put money in the budget for things that are really important, such as students with disabilities. Achievement gap in Wisconsin is about a number of issues where kids need an extra lift and he has consistently not funded those projects. Whether it’s students with disabilities, English learners, kids in poverty. Those things have been in my budget since the day I’ve been state superintendent. He’s ignored it. He’s essentially he’s the typical politician again pointing fingers when the fingers should be pointed at him.

Frederica Freyberg:
Asked about this issue in their first debate a week ago, Walker invoked his latest schools budget, which increased per pupil spending by $400 over two years.

Scott Walker:
But I think more than anything, it’s not just about funding. Because for example, Milwaukee, they outpace by almost 40% the amount of funding versus the average school district in the state. It’s about making sure those resources are targeted.

Frederica Freyberg:
Walker’s 2017-19 budget adds $636 million in new spending for schools, including $5 million in new money for Milwaukee public schools and districts that receive the lowest grade on school report cards.

Scott Walker:
As we decrease state spending, we also increase flexibility.

Frederica Freyberg:
His first state budget as governor cut $782 million from school funding. For his part, Evers’ school budget request for the next biennium, includes nearly $16 million targeted to five urban districts. Funding toward things like 3-year-old kindergarten, expanded summer school and enhanced salaries for highly-trained teachers. But what really moves the needle on narrowing the achievement gap? Researchers like Eric Grodsky at UW-Madison are in the midst of a four-year, $5+ million grant to try to figure that out, finally.

Eric Grodsky:
So you’re asking why haven’t we fixed it.

Frederica Freyberg:
It’s complicated, he says.

Eric Grodsky:
Schools are asked to do a ton of different things. They’re also, you know, they’re asked to sort of be social workers. They’re asked to make sure kids have adequate food. They’re asked to make sure that the behavioral norms in a school are conducive to learning. None of these are unreasonable but they all are taxing.

Frederica Freyberg:
Grodsky says research is increasingly pointing to the importance of early learning, before children even get to kindergarten.

Eric Grodsky:
Our research has found, consistent with national studies actually, that a lot of the inequality you see in say, eighth grade achievement test scores, you can see in kindergarten scores on literacy skills or on mathematic readiness.

Frederica Freyberg:
For its part, the Milwaukee School District says it has this year embarked on a new plan that focuses on at teaching at grade level, but helping students who’ve fallen behind by focusing on the needs of individual students.

Jeremiah Holiday:
For example, a student who may be at an eighth grade level, and there may be an achievement gap where the student may be functioning at a sixth grade level, our plan is that you know what, our focus is our teachers are going to teach at the eighth grade level and then they’re going to begin to differentiate ?????

from there to get our students where they need to be.

Frederica Freyberg:
Dr. Jeremiah Holiday says the district will laser in on reading, writing, and math, and has freed up $11 million from the administration office to go directly to the classrooms. From educators to researchers to politicians, the mission is clear. Narrow, then erase the gaps.

Eric Grodsky:
It’s on us. We have to work together to get this done. The consequences are really severe if we don’t.

Frederica Freyberg:
Consequences like achievement gaps in higher education, skills gaps and generational poverty. Again, Laurel and Shawn, this issue is something that these two “education governors” are going at each other over.

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, and I mean, in the context of this campaign, the reason is because you have Tony Evers who brings to this race his resume, running the state’s education system. It’s Scott Walker has been bringing this up, who brought it up initially in an effort to try to undercut Evers’ resume there.

Frederica Freyberg:
And yet Tony Evers’ budget does talk about things to do towards this issue.

Laurel White:
It does. So, he’s talked about a number of issues specifically in his budget. His budget has a large increase in spending. And one of the places that he is increasing most markedly is for mental health care for students. And this is something that people have really focused on in terms of tightening that achievement gap is really providing mental health services and things like trauma-informed care.

Frederica Freyberg:
And trauma-informed care is also something that the governor is looking closely at, because of course, his wife, the first lady, is very involved in those efforts.

Laurel White:
Absolutely. That’s sort of her key issue. So, we’ve seen a lot of talk about that.

Shawn Johnson:
And this has all been part of the greater school funding debate, as part of this race. Let’s hear what the candidates have to say about paying for schools while keeping taxes in check.

Tony Evers:
Scott Walker in his first budget took hundreds of millions of dollars out of the, out of our K-12 system, and we have never recovered from that. And so we have extraordinary needs. I hear about it all across the state. And frankly people in Wisconsin know it too. Scott Walker can claim he’s a low tax guy, but over a million people in the state of Wisconsin have voted to increase taxes on themselves for their public schools because the state is not doing their fair share.

Scott Walker:
Tommy Thompson showed us years ago you can fund two-thirds and still lower the property tax burden on the hard-working people of the state. We did it in the last budget, with historic actual dollar investments in the schools, still lowering property taxes and we’re going to do it again going forward. That’s important. Both of my kids, Matt and Alex, are here. They both went to public schools in Wauwatosa. My nieces are going to public schools today. I want every child to have access to great education but I also want to make sure, particularly for our seniors, that we don’t see the kind of property tax increases of 27% in the decade before we took office.

Frederica Freyberg:
So schools and taxes. What’s new here is that Scott Walker is saying the state will get back to funding two-thirds for education. What does that mean?

Shawn Johnson:
Yeah, that’s — you hear that thrown out a lot. Two-thirds, being the state would pick up two-thirds of the cost of public education in Wisconsin. Local property taxpayers pick up the rest, basically. This is something that was a benchmark established under Tommy Thompson. It went away in law under Governor Jim Doyle, although Doyle still tried to hit it as a goal on a couple budgets. It’s not something that Walker has hit in his tenure, but he says now that he wants to hit that in his next budget if he’s re-elected.

Frederica Freyberg:
And it’s something also that Tony Evers has said he would do.

Shawn Johnson:
Evers has said it consistently, going back to earlier in this campaign and during his tenure as state superintendent. So he’s had that goal for a while. For Scott Walker it’s been relatively recent.

Frederica Freyberg:
The other thing that Tony Evers was saying just there was that people have voted to raise taxes on themselves to fund their schools and what he’s talking about are these referenda in local voting districts where people say, “No, we need more money to do this or that for their schools.”

Laurel White:
That’s right. That’s something that Evers has talked about a lot actually. He mentioned it in his state of the state address last year. And he calls these the “Scott Walker taxes.” Things like raising the referendums for school spending. He’s also talked about road spending. So he says the governor claims to be a low taxes guy but sort of inadvertently people are paying more for these things and that they’re willing to pay more for education, actually.

Frederica Freyberg:
But in terms of the education governor mantle, Tony Evers’ budget, his requested budget going forward would increase the amount of funding going toward K-12.

Laurel White:
That’s right. It would be a pretty substantial increase, actually. He proposed a $1.4 billion budget in his budget proposal for this year. The governor hasn’t released his official proposal yet. That’s something he would do in January if he’s re-elected. So we can’t make an apples to apples comparison, but comparing it to the budget we have in place right now, it’s a pretty big increase.