Messing with local government

After double-digit tax levy increases, critics of Milwaukee Public Schools have argued that an appointed school board would work better than an elected board. Then they looked at their tax bills from the technical colleges to conclude that technical college boards would work better if they were elected rather than being appointed.

Meanwhile, Milwaukee County Board Chairman Lee Holloway wants to get rid of the county executive position. County Executive Scott Walker raised the stakes, recommending to get rid of all county government.

Why should we leave the city and towns out of this discussion? Let’s get rid of them as well and form a metropolitan government. Does every hamlet really need its own police or public works departments? St. Francis could save a ton of money if it combined its school system with Cudahy’s.  »Read more

Making kids smarter

If you see a child’s report card with mostly As, how do you react?

Most Americans respond, “That kid is smart.” But most Asians say, “That kid works hard.”

East Asian countries are turning out record numbers of engineers and scientists because they believe that academic achievement is rooted in hard work, not native intelligence. Americans believe that IQ is determined through our genes, but Richard Nisbett says in his new book, Intelligence and How to Get It, that environment plays a bigger role. In fact, we can make people smarter; we can improve IQ.

Nisbett is not some feel-good author who will be making rounds of the TV talk shows. He is one of this nation’s premier cognitive psychologists at the University of Michigan.

Nisbett says that the greatest stumbling blocks to improved intelligence are poverty, poor schools, and a lack of belief that students can do better.

Poor prenatal care, nutrition, and environmental factors such as lead poisoning all hurt poor children. “There is every reason to believe that IQ and achievement gaps in the U.S. would be reduced if people of lower SEC [socioeconomic status] had higher incomes,” argues Nisbett.

We place poor children in schools with the largest class sizes, teachers with the fewest years of experience, and fewer support services. Frankly we really don’t believe they can learn.

Nor do these students believe in themselves. They lack hope. Just having teachers tell children that they can get smarter can have big impacts on achievement and IQ; they will work longer and harder, says Nisbett.

The average IQ of Americans is much higher than that of our ancestors, and that increase cannot be explained through evolutionary development. Only improvements in the environment and education make any sense. And the gap between whites and blacks is shrinking in this country-in fact, the IQ gaps among all ethnic groups are shrinking. On IQ tests, the greatest gains for blacks began in the 1950s, corresponding with the civil rights movement.

So children born in poverty are not doomed, says Nisbett. We can make them better educated; we can make them smarter.

Terry Falk is the Milwaukee Public Schools Director for the Eighth District, which includes Bay View. To contact him, call (414) 510-9173 or email falktf@milwaukee.k12.wi.us.

All Wisconsin schools need improvement

Many years ago I attended a rally at the state capitol in Madison. Teachers, parents, and school officials all clamored for changes in school funding. Everything went well until a Madison School Board member proclaimed, “Welcome to Madison, the home of Wisconsin’s best public school system.” He was soundly booed. Don’t tell people that your school system is better than theirs.

Nevertheless, Madison was portrayed as a premier Wisconsin school district. No more. This past month three of its four high schools made the Wisconsin’s list of “schools in need of improvement” due to poor test scores. For the first time, two Madison elementary schools face sanctions because they made the list two years in a row.

Our largest school district makes the newspaper front page more often, sometimes giving the impression the rest of the state is doing just fine. It isn’t. As the recession continues, the list of DPI’s failing school districts is likely to grow.  »Read more

Milwaukee failed swine flu test, needs to face existing epidemics

In April, when students at a New York Catholic school came down with flu-like symptoms, school nurse Mary Pappas contacted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), confirming a major outbreak of swine flu. Pappas became the first true hero in fighting this epidemic.

New York City government provides school nurses for all its public and private schools. Milwaukee city government provides none. The city turned the responsibility of school nurses over to the school system several years ago, and Milwaukee now has far fewer school nurses than it once had.

Wisconsin is 47th in the nation in public health spending. The swine flu epidemic didn’t produce the massive deaths once feared, but it did expose our community’s lack of preparedness.  »Read more

Let’s see what sticks

The McKinsey Company report on Milwaukee Public Schools, “Toward a Stronger Milwaukee Public Schools,” was released April 9. It outlines how MPS uses its money. Everyone should read it. The report outlines many of the financial problems facing MPS and makes some excellent recommendations.

We must confront the health care costs affecting MPS and, for that manner, the entire community. Everyone is ducking the issue.

We have too many half-empty school buildings or buildings too small to adequately run programs. McKinsey says we need to consolidate programs and close buildings.

We have too many 60-passenger buses carrying only 15 students. Bus companies must use smaller buses.

McKinsey should have stuck to just a half-dozen really great ideas that had broad community support. Unfortunately, they went with the “let’s throw as much against the wall and see what sticks” mentality and some of their ideas are simply loony. Here is just a sample.  »Read more

True business leaders value students

Our son, Carl, was lucky. Toward the end of his junior year at Juneau High School, he received an internship at Miller Engineering. Art Miller and his staff trained students in computer-generated drafting and made sure that interns learned something about engineering. If a student needed time off to finish a major school paper or prepare for an exam, that was what they were supposed to do. Their education came first.

When Juneau High School closed, Miller Engineering lost its link to student internships and went without high school interns for a few years. When I got elected to the school board, I gave Art Miller a call wondering if he wanted to reestablish internships with another high school.

Art told me that he actually had thought of giving me a call himself. He wanted to do more. Art told me that he could easily hire a kid like our son or a suburban student, no problem. What Art wanted to do was to hire a city kid who just “needed a break.”  »Read more

Picking a new superintendent

Milwaukee’s school superintendent, William Andrekopoulos, will retire in June 2010, just short of his 62nd birthday. His eight-year tenure as MPS superintendent makes him one of the longest serving urban superintendents in the nation.

Around the country, big city superintendents are lucky if they serve more than two or three years. This is not good news for these school systems.

Continually changing superintendents ultimately changes nothing. Lower level employees figure they can pretty much ignore the directives of short-term superintendents. Soon everything will return back to normal, whatever that might be.  »Read more

Does class size matter?

In the 1990s, Tennessee cut class sizes across that state with dramatic increases in student achievement. Other states followed Tennessee’s lead, most notably California with its own class-size reduction program.

But a recent reanalysis of the Tennessee data by Northwestern University professor Spyros Konstantopoulos shows that lowering class size in Tennessee did not bridge the achievement gap between low and high achievers. Many of the achievement gains found in Tennessee did not materialize in California.

Critics of lowering class size now point to these experiences as proof that class size doesn’t matter. But that is not what the data say.  »Read more

Rethinking K-8 schools

So many Milwaukee students never advance beyond the ninth grade that MPS has a name for it-”The Ninth Grade Parking Lot.”

Many Milwaukee elementary schools converted to kindergarten through eighth grade (K-8) schools because we thought K-8s were superior to middle schools. This was well supported by research. John W. Alspaugh of the University of Missouri and others concluded that the fewer transitions between schools the better. So students who transitioned only once to high school do better than students who transition twice-from elementary to middle school, then to high school.  »Read more

Obama and educational success

What is most likely going to make you successful, hard work or luck?” This question I posed to my high school senior English class some years ago.

“Luck,” they responded.

Here was a group of mostly African-American seniors who had played by the rules, stayed in school, and did their homework. They were willing to try the hard work thing, but they really thought most people who made it had luck on their side.  »Read more

MPS system could collapse in three years

A man falls out of a window from the top story of a skyscraper. On the way down, he is heard at each passing window shouting, “So far, so good.”

Milwaukee Public Schools will not go bankrupt next year. In three years it will.

Many call for MPS to get its fiscal house in order. That’s all well and good, but the state rewards school systems only if they tax themselves to the revenue limit. »Read more

ACT should encourage critical thinking

This spring, most Milwaukee juniors will be taking the college entrance test, the ACT. This is the next step in my goal to require the ACT for all MPS graduates.

A year ago I outlined in a Compass article that states like Illinois, which require the ACT for graduation, have experienced a dramatic increase in students going to college, staying there, and graduating. »Read more

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