Reforming MPs Is Essential
Every healthy city needs a well-regarded public school system that produces an educated local workforce. Without good public schools, a community will have difficulty attracting new residents or businesses or even keeping the ones it already has. Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) certainly has many success stories, including the outstanding academic performance and reputation of Rufus King High School, Golda Meir School and the Milwaukee German Immersion School. Without question, many MPS teachers and staff are extremely hard-working and dedicated. But looked at as a whole, MPS is a failing system that continues to harm the community – socially and economically. A large portion of Milwaukeeans have lost faith in MPS and go out of their way to avoid its schools. How many thousands of residents has Milwaukee lost over the years as a result of families fleeing MPS? Meanwhile, those who remain are left footing an ever-larger bill for a system that few of them use.
The problems of MPS are numerous, far-reaching and grave. They include:
• Chronic budget problems, including falling state aid and unfunded post-retirement benefits for MPS employees.
• An increasing property tax levy, including a nearly 15% increase in the most recently approved budget.
• A continuing and accelerating decline in enrollment (down 10.8% in just the past five years).
• Poor academic performance of MPS students, as measured by their scores on state standardized tests and the ACT exam.
• The unsuccessful Neighborhood Schools Initiative, in which MPS spent $102 million to construct new or expanded school buildings to boost enrollment at neighborhood schools. Anticipated enrollment increases have not materialized.
• Chronic student attendance issues, including truancy and drop-out rates that are more than three times the statewide averages.
So what can be done?
Milwaukee’s taxpayers, businesses, parents and children have waited long enough for real, sustained improvements in the quality of the city’s public school system. That’s why I have developed – based on the successes of other big cities, months of discussion with civic leaders (both inside and outside MPS) and a great deal of common sense – a multi-faceted proposal for improving Milwaukee Public Schools.
To set MPS back on the right course, we need to explore new approaches in the following areas:
1 - Governance
The current elected School Board is both incompetent and ineffective. It has been unwilling or unable to make the reforms necessary to turn MPS around. MPS needs a new board of directors that is appointed by the mayor and confirmed by the Common Council. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s editorial board has even endorsed this change in MPS governance.
2 - Bureaucracy
A bloated bureaucracy goes hand-in-hand with an inept school board. MPS needs to cut spending and positions in its administrative departments and redirect precious resources to classrooms and students.
3 - Quality Staff
MPS must do a better job of attracting and keeping good teachers, while weeding out incompetent ones. Similarly, MPS needs to recruit and support top-notch principals, since these individuals set the tone for success or failure of individual schools.
4 - Back-to-Basics
Curriculum basics (math, reading, writing) and teacher-led instruction need to be emphasized. Educational fads and student-led instruction should be dropped.
5 - Boarding Schools
MPS needs to establish one or more single-gender boarding high schools that provide students with stable, structured “home” environments conducive to learning.
6 - Busing
Even though it is no longer under a court order to integrate its schools, MPS spends a staggering amount – over $55 million annually – busing children from one neighborhood to another. Even with continued busing of special-ed and specialty-school students, the amount of busing could be dramatically reduced, freeing up millions of dollars for expenditure in MPS classrooms.
7 - Neighborhood Schools
Coupled with a reduction in busing, MPS must reaffirm its commitment to neighborhood schools. The financial investment in these schools has already been made; now it is time to establish enrollment policies that strongly encourage parents to use their attendance-area schools. Every Milwaukee family should feel confident that it can receive a first-rate education at its neighborhood school.
8 - Discipline
MPS teachers spend far too much time trying to maintain order in their classrooms. One or two disruptive students can sharply reduce actual instruction time in a classroom, making it difficult or impossible for other students in the room to learn. MPS needs to establish and follow policies of strict student discipline, including removing disruptive students from the classroom whenever necessary to ensure that teachers
can do their jobs.
9 - Morals and Ethics
Rather than its current emphasis on tolerance, non-judgmental attitudes and students doing what makes them feel best, MPS must attempt to instill in our children basic moral and ethical standards that are accepted by the vast majority of Milwaukeeans, including the “Golden Rule,” personal responsibility and respect for self and others. Students should also receive civics instruction, so that, as adults, they may become engaged participants and valuable contributors to the community.
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