But first, for the first time in 59 years, a sitting president visits Wisconsin's capitol city. And what a sight, Air Force One descending into the capitol city, touching down and setting off all manner of ground security. The presidential motorcade closed streets all along the selected route before making its way to the early afternoon speech, all of this so that President Barack Obama could appear at a Madison middle school for some tough talk on reforming America's schools and education.
Frederica Freyberg:
The big applause after a Gov. Doyle welcome. President Barack Obama bounded on stage to deliver his message of education reform.
Barack Obama:
The currency of today's economy is knowledge, and yet we continue to trail other countries in a number of critical areas. Meanwhile, African-American and Latino students continue to lag behind their white classmates, an achievement gap that will ultimately cost us hundreds of billions of dollars because that's our future workforce.
Teacher:
Please turn it in tomorrow.
Frederica Freyberg:
According to the U.S. education department, Wisconsin has among the worst achievement gaps between white and black students in the nation. President Obama says the time for wringing our hands over such longstanding problems is over.
Barack Obama:
It's time to stop just talking about education reform and start actually doing it. It's time to make education America's national mission.
Frederica Freyberg:
And so the administration will award a piece of the more than $4 billion to states, but only if they change the way they are educating students. The first hurdle for states like Wisconsin? Getting rid of laws that prohibit tying student test scores to teacher evaluations.
Barack Obama:
We say if you've got one of those laws, you want to compete for these grants, get rid of those laws.
Frederica Freyberg:
Check this one off on our Race to the Top checklist. A day after the president's visit, the state Legislature passed a bill getting rid of the old law prohibiting tying test scores to teacher evaluations and the state teachers' union supports the change. Of four measures the president says states need to meet to compete for the money, another is setting higher standards and giving better tests.
Barack Obama:
So we're not just interested in, can they fill out a bubble, right? What we want to do is to take a look generally, are our kids learning and gaining the critical thinking skills that they need to succeed?
Tony Evers:
I would say by next spring we'll be looking at standards. And then of course that kind of feeds into testing, what we're going to do with testing and our accountability system. It's a big project. But it's exciting. We're in a real good place right now.
Frederica Freyberg:
So check off the reform requirement to change standards and testing, because Wisconsin is phasing out its current tests and setting tougher standards. Next on the president's to-do list? Tracking student and teacher progress so the information can be used to help student learning.
Barack Obama:
If we're going to collect data on how kids are doing, let's make sure the teachers have it in usable form so that they can actually start doing a better job.
Frederica Freyberg:
Again, a check-off on this item. The state Legislature has just passed a bill that would require schools from preschool through college to share and track student data, like test scores, over time. Last but not least, President Obama says to compete for potentially tens of millions of dollars, states must move to transform its lowest-performing schools.
Barack Obama:
Close a school for a time and then reopen it under new management. Even shut down the school entirely and send the students to a better school nearby.
Frederica Freyberg:
All of Wisconsin's education reform measures are designed to improve lowest-performing schools. But the full Legislature has not yet acted on a specific bill that would give the state superintendent of schools authority to change a school's curriculum or make wholesale personnel changes.
Frederica Freyberg:
Of course, some of the state's worst-performing schools are in Milwaukee, and there are sweeping and controversial reform moves to improve learning in that district. Among them, what's become known as the mayoral takeover of MPS. What it would allow is the mayor to hire and fire the superintendent of schools and take budget, curriculum, and collective bargaining authority from the elected school board and give it to the superintendent. Here's what Milwaukee School Board President Michael Bonds said about the move recently on this program.
Michael Bonds:
The mayor constantly cites the black/white achievement gap, but he fails to cite the fact that Milwaukee led the nation in unemployment, poverty, income disparity, housing segregation between blacks and whites. I thought that the mayor has not shown ability to effectively lead the city, let alone trying to run a school district.
Frederica Freyberg:
Bonds has said he will resign if the so-called mayoral takeover is passed into law. Here's what Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett tells us.
Tom Barrett:
It's about the children. What can we do to improve the education of children in Milwaukee Public Schools? That’s all I care about.
Frederica Freyberg:
Milwaukee state Sen. Lena Taylor is a lead supporter of the reform.
Lena Taylor:
I don't believe it's a mayoral takeover. It's governance change. It's mayoral involvement. We needs all hands on deck in order to be able to address the issues that exist in our schools. I believe the mayor has the relationships to be able to bring more people to the table.
Frederica Freyberg:
Taylor says the school board would still have the important role of connecting with the parents on the issue of discipline. But another Milwaukee lawmaker, Rep. Christine Sinicki, isn't buying the idea as a necessary reform to compete for Race to the Top money.
Christine Sinicki:
There is nothing that I have seen so far in this proposal that says you have to have a mayor run your schools. The president did not mention that at all in his speech.
