(From The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, November 3, 2009)
By ERIN RICHARDS
On the anniversary of his election, President Barack Obama will visit Madison on Wednesday to talk about the progress states are making on education reforms he’s championed since taking office and the imminent competition that will have many of those states vying for extra federal stimulus funds for schools.
According to the White House, Obama and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan will visit James C. Wright Middle School in Madison to praise Wisconsin for coming up with innovative ways to improve education in the state and for using the federal government’s $4.35 billion Race to the Top initiative as a way to prompt those changes.
But is that it?
Or is there more to the president’s visit than just a pat on the back for Wisconsin?
Many suspect the latter for a number of reasons:
• The reforms. Praise for change would technically be premature, as the state Legislature has not approved several education reform bills to which the president might refer. Those bills include proposals to eliminate the firewall between student achievement data and teacher evaluations, share student data between K-12 and post-secondary institutions and tweak the state’s charter school law. The full Legislature is expected to pass those bills Thursday.
• The mayoral control issue. Milwaukee is wrestling with the most contentious potential reform measure of all: changing the governance of Milwaukee Public Schools so the city’s mayor can appoint the superintendent and set the tax levy. A bill for that reform has not been drafted in the Legislature.
• The governor’s race. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett has not announced whether he will run for governor, and some say Obama, who has intervened in local politics in other states, might be coming to offer behind-the-scenes support for Barrett, a Democrat, to replace Gov. Jim Doyle.
• The achievement gap. Wisconsin deserves more of a finger wag than a pat on the back when it comes to test scores for African-American students. Wisconsin has some of the worst scores in the country for African-Americans in reading and math. In terms of Race to the Top, a national report this summer, before education reform bills were drafted, said Wisconsin had the least-possible chance of any state to obtain extra funding.
• The timing. Race to the Top applications for the first round of grants will be finalized and released by the federal government in the next few weeks, and some speculate that reforms such as the mayoral governance issue will have to be approved or dropped by Thanksgiving. The Legislature’s regular session ends Thursday. If the MPS governance bill gets drafted, it will have to be introduced in a special session.
Whether the president will comment on any of these other issues is unclear. But a lot of people both locally and nationally are attaching particular significance to the visit.
Possibilities
Does it mean Wisconsin is a shoo-in for Race to the Top? Does it mean Obama and Duncan are in favor of mayoral control? Why would Obama come to Wisconsin to talk about education reforms, when other states also have been aggressive in proposing changes? Why talk in Madison instead of Milwaukee, where the most active debate on education has been brewing?
Barrett said Obama coming to Wisconsin demonstrates the federal administration’s recognition that leaders in the state are working to improve education.
“I don’t think he would be coming here if he felt we were ignoring the philosophy his administration embodied,” Barrett said Tuesday.
For the education reform measures pending in the Legislature, a last-minute stroke from the president, combined with the fact that none of the bills has been as controversial as the mayoral control issue, might simply grease their passage through both houses.
A White House spokeswoman on Tuesday alluded to the fact that the administration also likes another one of Doyle’s proposals: a bill to require three years of math and science for high school students.
Will the president say anything about the debate over mayoral control in Milwaukee, the 800-pound gorilla in the room when it comes to talk of education reform measures in Wisconsin?
White House staffers didn’t mention that proposal when they briefed reporters Tuesday, but Mark Jefferson, executive director for the Republican Party of Wisconsin, said he thinks it’s on their minds.
“The motives behind the president’s interests aren’t necessarily in the state’s best interests,” Jefferson said. “I still think this is part of the strategy he and Governor Doyle put together to put Barrett into the governor’s race and to build support for an MPS takeover.”
Rep. Jason Fields (D-Milwaukee), who favors Doyle’s proposal to allow the mayor of Milwaukee to appoint the MPS superintendent, said you can’t ignore the fact that Duncan, who will join Obama in Wisconsin, is a well-known supporter of mayors taking over urban school systems.
In terms of the governor’s race, Barrett on Tuesday brushed aside implications that there could be an underlying political motive in Obama’s visit, related to the race for governor.
“I can’t believe that the president of the United States would be doing that over someone who hasn’t decided what they’re going to do yet,” Barrett said.
Some perplexed
State Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon) said he was still a bit perplexed that the president was coming to Wisconsin at all, what with the economy, health care, Afghanistan and Pakistan on his agenda.
To that, Charles Barone, director of federal policy for Democrats for Education Reform, responded:
“We’ve got a president who can walk and chew gum at the same time.”