Recently The Herald-Independent columnist and writer for the right-wing \"think tank\" WPRI, recently “reported” on the state of the Monona Grove School District.
You may have read some news stories lately about how some school districts are doing quite well under Gov. Scott Walker’s budget, despite a drastic decline in school aid.
Monona Grove is not one of them.“We’re not great,” said MGHS Superintendent Craig Gerlach of the district’s financial situation.
Districts that have prospered under the Walker budget constraints “may have been in a better situation than we were beforehand,” he said.
The Walker budget is slightly more rewarding to school districts that have growing student populations, he said, “but we’re more in the ‘slightly declining’ enrollment situation.”
The district spends about $13,000 per student, Gerlach said, but will receive about $600 less per pupil this year than last.
MGSD will also lose about $1.2 million in other state money.
The budget is “relatively balanced” this year, partly because the district received $850,000 in federal job stimulus funds, but that is one-time money that won’t be around next year.
MGSD did save some money because teachers are now being forced to contribute to their own health insurance and retirement funds.
However, the health insurance savings were less than in some other districts because MG teachers are in the state health insurance program, not the much higher priced WEA Trust plan, said School Board President Susan Fox.
The teacher buy-in saved the district about $1 million, she added, and the district will see another $500,000 in savings beginning in July 2012, when the buy-in goes into effect for other district employees.
“Overall, my understanding is that more than 50 percent (of Wisconsin school districts) are hurt by this budget, in spite of the so-called ‘tools’” to lower costs, Fox said.
“The districts that have been touted as success stories — Kaukauna and Fond du Lac, for example — have indeed been able to reduce spending under the Walker plan. So if the only measure of success is saving money, it has worked for them,” she said.
“However, if one looks at the quality of teaching and learning that will take place, I’m not so sure,” said Fox, a former teacher.
“Both of those districts are requiring high school teachers to teach six classes instead of five, thus reducing prep time to probably one hour per day. Kaukauna reduced its class size from 30 to 26, I think, but with six classes instead of five, teachers can still have more total students — more papers to grade, more kids with whom to try to build relationships.”
“Teachers there also can be assigned various supervisory duties, with no extra pay, thus further reducing prep time. This situation does not bode well for improved student performance, since teachers have less time to grade more papers and less time to collaborate on different strategies to reach students with varying needs,” she said.
“I think to call their systems a success in terms of improving education, or even in delivering the same as what they have had in the past, is premature.”
Fox also said, “Even though I am opposed to adding to the workloads of teachers by assigning an additional class, we may see that at Monona Grove also, when we tackle the 2012-13 budget. Our choices will be quite limited.”
While we know that the \"walker success\" story schools are not as successful as we were led to believe. This shows that the MGSD will be greatly effected by the monumental cuts in education imposed on us by Scott Walker and the Wisconsin republicans. Well Sunny, who unfortunately has a bully pulpit , could not let the story end there. She had to find some way to help the right wing cause, so much like her colleagues at WPRI(for instance), she found some made up numbers, reported them as fact to make her case. 21st century “journalism” at its finest.
While I can see Fox’s point that one cannot measure academic success by the amount of money that is NOT spent, another news story I stumbled across seems to indicate that improvement is eluding Wisconsin students despite a real increase in per-pupil spending.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, 66 percent of Wisconsin eighth-graders scored less than “proficient” on the National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test in 2009, the most recent year available.
That is the same level as in 1998, when state spending on education was $4,956 per student.
Adjusted for inflation, that figure would be $6,546 per pupil in 2008 dollars, but instead, the actual 2008 per-pupil spending was $10,791 – a $4,245 increase in real spending.
Hmmm not sure where she got those numbers and she did not tell us…luckily MGSD School Board Member Peter Sobol recognized them.
Last February, in the heat of the Wisconsin’s battle over the rights of public employees, the “CNS News Service” (a conservative think tank) released a report showing that while Wisconsin’s test scores, as measured on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), had stagnated, per pupil education spending had increased by a whopping 64 percent between 1998 and 2008.
This report ricocheted around the blog-o-sphere, with attendant outrage, before landing in the pages of last week’s Herald-Independent (Sunny Schubert’s column “View from the Pier”). This report would be a stunning indictment of Wisconsin’s education spending except for one thing: It isn’t true.
In reality per pupil education spending in Wisconsin has increased only 8 percent in inflation adjusted dollars since 1998, less than 1 percent per year. Inflation adjusted spending hasn’t increased at all since 2003.
And where has this 8 percent gone? We know it hasn’t gone into the paychecks of teachers — who have seen average salaries shrink in real terms. It hasn’t gone towards more teachers – average class sizes have increased. But as any employer will tell you, health care costs have increased more than 50 percent in that time, and are soaking up an increasing percentage of the education dollar.
In 1998 Wisconsin pre-K-12 spending stood at 4.5 percent of GSP. That ranked us in the top 10 nationwide. Similarly, our NAEP assessments ranked in the top 10. In 2011 pre-K-12 spending is estimated at 4.0 percent of GSP. Per pupil spending has sunk to 17th, and NAEP results have slipped to 21st.
In short, while other states are, on average, increasing their investment in education, Wisconsin is slipping behind. The results show in lack of progress on outcomes, a trend that is almost guaranteed to continue under the current funding system.
If we are going to have a productive debate about public education we all need to start by looking at the facts, then drawing conclusions- not by looking for ersatz “facts” to support pre-existing opinions from ideologues.
And if we only want average outcomes for our students then average investment will do. In the end, you get what you pay for.
CNS news is her source? No wonder that was conveniently left out of the column. But hey Sunny owns up to her mistakes right?
And speaking of reporting, Monona Grove School Board member Peter Sobol says I reported bad numbers last week on Wisconsin per-pupil spending.
“In 1998, school funding in Wisconsin averaged $7,527 per pupil, not $4,956,” Sobol e-mailed me.
“The $4,956 number came from a false report from the CNS news service. CNS used only the direct instruction number from 1998 instead of the total expenditures (which they use for the 2008 number).
“CNS has a history of false ‘reporting’ like this and is widely viewed as unreliable. Given their history I’m sure the error was not an innocent mistake,” he added.
Sigh. I apologize to you, my readers, for forgetting the First Rule of journalism: If your mother says she loves you, check it! (See “dumb blonde,” above.)
I did not check my source, which is particularly galling because in the same column I ragged on people for passing on questionable information via e-mail. Mea culpa – and I mean that most sincerely.
Like Jerry Orbach the dad says to Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing, “When I’m wrong, I say I’m wrong.”
So CNS has a history of reporting false numbers. CNS news service is a clearly labeled right wing “news” website and Sunny “didn’t check her source”? She has been in the newspaper business for how many years and decided to just take CNS’ word? Had she never heard of CNS before or did she just assume that any right wing news source was 100% correct, 100% of the time? Or could it be that it is hard to double check made up numbers?
I report, you decide!
