Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Fair & Balanced

Charlie Dee takes the MJS to task for ignoring the opposition to the proposed mayoral takeover.

Dear Tom Koetting,

Thanks for you response a week ago to my complaint about your non-coverage of the Coalition to Stop the MPS Takeover. It has taken a bit of time to gather the information as we all have regular employment.

Attached is a record of Media Releases of events sponsored by the coalition as well as a record of your coverage. The Media Release for the November 3 event was sent to three people at the J-S: Alan Borsuk, Amy Hetzner and Eugene Kane. We will certainly take your advice in the future and send all releases to Erin Richards and Eric Aspenson.

I also appreciate and accept your apology for missing this obviously important event.

However, I must comment on two of your statements:

1. “The notion that we’re ignoring a significant body of opinion is nonsense, and I find it especially silly coming from someone who has been quoted giving his opinion in the newspaper….” and

2.“As for the editorial board, I do not regularly read our editorials. Anyone who knows me knows that whatever we have published has no impact on my news decisions. None.”

First, the fact that I was quoted by General Assignment reporter Jesse Garza in an article does not in any way mitigate the fact that your education reporters have absolutely ignored the Coalition to Stop the MPS Takeover, have never once even mentioned the coalition by name, have never identified the key organizations involved in the coalition and have systematically refused to cover any of our events.

Here is the reality you call “nonsense.” Fully 28 citizens organizations in Milwaukee representing more than 10,000 people, organizations as diverse as the NAACP, MICAH, Voces de la Frontera, various educational and labor groups, 9-5 and the National Lawyers Guild, are in coalition actively engaged on an issue that your paper covers several times a week. Yet, you have never mentioned the coalition or those organizations. Perhaps your judgment is that these groups are not “significant” or do not represent a “significant body of opinion.” If so, I surely challenge your judgment.

Second, while I have met you, I do not know you. So I’ll take you on your word that you do not read your paper’s editorials. However, with due respect, as clever a rejoinder as your statement may be, it is equally irrelevant. Do your education reporters not read your editorials? Do they not sit with your editorial board to interview school board candidates, take joint meetings with your editorial board and community leaders, do you all not share a common work space, eat lunch together and, perhaps, share a drink on occasion?

Give me a break, Mr. Koetting. You may not read editorials, but you KNOW exactly what position your editorial board has taken on educational issues and the MPS. It has leached into your mind just as surely as BPH has leached into both of our bodies. The absolute consistency of J-S education coverage and J-S editorials has been obvious for two decades now.

Your longtime education reporter, Alan Borsuk, has functioned for years as a virtual public relations machine for the school voucher movement, as well as for its primary spokesmen such as Howard Fuller and Bruce Thompson.

Here is something for you to consider. On February 2 of this year, Advocates for Student Achievement (ASA), a front group financed by the MMAC, held an event to roll out a poll for the purpose of influencing the MPS Board elections. That meeting blew up in ASA’s face as questioners from the audience, including myself, revealed that some of the polling involved “push-poll calls” and asked questions about the relationship between ASA and ASA PAC that were so clumsily answered that they revealed a level of collusion that is subject to a criminal investigation. (By the way, is your paper following up on that investigation?)

At that breakfast, I saw Bruce Thompson briefly step into the hallway to make a cell phone call. About 30 minutes later, Alan Borsuk showed up at the meeting. I asked him after the meeting why he had come so late, and he told me, “Someone phoned me and told me I’d better get down here.” He would not answer my question as to who called him. When I revealed that I had been the recipient of a push call, Allan asked what was said, and when I told him, he looked crestfallen and said, “Oh, that sure sounds like a push poll.”

But he did not write an article about this. The only coverage of the ASA fiasco was by Dan Bice, and it was minimal.

Now, I’m certain Alan hoped to sit in his office and produce the poll story ASA wanted about how vulnerable the ASA targeted candidates were. I also don’t think it’s a coincidence that these were the very candidates the J-S editorial board opposed. I’m equally certain that Alan’s disappointment stemmed from the fact that now he had two choices: either write about the push polling or ignore the whole thing. He chose to ignore it, thus revealing his obvious bias. He certainly couldn’t claim it wasn’t newsworthy. Imagine if, say, a teachers union was to engage in push polling on behalf of a candidate the J-S had defined as “anti-reform,” a formulation dredged in misinformation and bias. Can you honestly say Alan would have ignored that story?

Shall we go back to Joe Williams? His reporting of MPS issues was so biased against any MPS board member or MPS board candidate not supported by the MMAC and not pro-voucher that he was rewarded with a job as Executive Director of Democrats for Education Reform. While I have no way of proving it, I’d bet my first born son that Howard Fuller wrote a letter of recommendation for him.

How about Erin Richards? Do you really think, Mr. Koetting, that her reporting is balanced? Well, let’s see. In an article previewing President Obama’s visit to Madison last week, “Is there more to Obama’s state visit,” she quoted only two democrats. One was Jason Fields, who is for the takeover. The other was a democrat who is not even living in or associated with Wisconsin, Charles Barone, director of federal policy for Democrats for Education Reform. Wow, that’s the same place Joe Williams now runs, an organization that, amazingly enough, favors mayoral takeover!

What do you think, coincidence?

Why were no opponents of the takeover asked to comment, say for example, a leader of the Coalition to Stop the MPS takeover? Why were legislators opposed to the takeover not contacted? Are these questions also “silly?” Maybe there’s an explanation other than Erin Richards simply adopting the culture of the J-S and following in the footsteps of Williams and Borsuk. Perhaps Tamara Grigsby was unavailable to be interviewed. Maybe Spencer Coggs in Milwaukee was harder to reach than Charles Barone in New York City.

But I don’t think so.

I am an activist and an optimist. The former would be a fool’s errand without the latter. So I hope my opinion will lead to a change in your coverage so that it will become as balanced as you pretend it to be.

Sincerely,

Charlie Dee

Summit to look at public education in Milwaukee

Join me Thurday evening as I debate the merits of mayoral control and the disenfranchisement of urban voters.

Please visit this link:

UWM News

Interview regarding mayoral control

What are some of the major/root problems at MPS?

The greatest problem for MPS is unequal funding. Based on the state funding formula for education, a school of 400 in the Maple Dale / Indian Hill district (in Milwaukee County) would have begun the 2005-2006 academic year with more than 2 million dollars than a school of 400 in MPS, everything else being equal.

Couple the unequal funding with the extreme poverty in Milwaukee, and it is apparent that children in Milwaukee do not enjoy the same opportunity for a free and appropriate education as children in other districts. The governor has established multiple task forces on financing education, which have all returned the same answer: the state system for funding education is broken in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, nothing has changed.

There are many other problems surrounding education, but unequal funding coupled with the gap in social capital between minorities and whites is by far our greatest challenge.

Do you think a mayoral takeover would solve the problems at MPS? *If not, what are some possible solutions that need to be discussed?

Elected school boards were created a hundred years ago to end the corruption of school systems controlled by city hall. In the newly restored mayoral-controlled systems, old problems are recurring. New York City has seen a skyrocketing of sole-source contracts (also called no-bid or “buddy” contracts) since the reintroduction of mayoral control, at such a rate that it prompted two education activists from opposite ends of the political spectrum to join forces in opposing mayoral control. I understand that Chicago, another mayoral-controlled system, is apparently being investigated for, among other things, allowing middle-class white parents to circumvent admission policies to elite schools.

Research indicates that poor parents, especially minority parents, are totally disenfranchised under mayoral-controlled systems, which is one reason that studies indicate that the racial achievement gap has actually increased in school systems that are under mayoral control.

And how have the Milwaukee city charter schools fared? More poorly than MPS, by far. If the city cannot manage to get even a few schools to perform as well as MPS, then why on earth would we trust the city with a few hundred more schools?

Ultimately, the push for mayoral control is not much different from other reform schemes, such as vouchers and neighborhood schools. It is more than a coincidence that the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC) and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, advocates of vouchers, are also pushing mayoral control. They apparently want to do anything but address the root inequalities that plague Milwaukee and other urban districts.

But let’s look at a unique feature of MPS. Unlike most cities, Milwaukee’s recreation programs are administered through its school system. This unique structure has allowed MPS to align the recreation programs with the learning targets in our schools. This feature accounts for one reason that Milwaukee, despite funding inequities, has kept pace with suburban districts. This alignment is one reason that Arne Duncan, the Secretary of Education, wants mayors to be more involved in education (and Duncan stated a few weeks ago that Milwaukee is one of three cities that should keep its board). Ironically, in Milwaukee, mayoral control could, and almost certainly would, weaken the strong link between recreation and education programs.

But where was the mayor before the stimulus money appeared? The mayor never answered any one of my several invitations to support the board in lobbying to reform the broken system that the state uses to finance education. The mayor never joined our calls for adequate reimbursement of special education costs. Now, when the prospect of stimulus funding appears, so does the mayor, talking about how he needs to get involved. Just a coincidence?


Do you think that MPS should try to apply to the federal "Race to the Top" funds (the 4.5 billion dollars up for grabs nationwide)? Or should MPS find more long term solutions first?

The “race to the top” funds are available to states, not to local districts. Of course Wisconsin should apply, but it is not local policy or governance that dims our chances of receiving a grant. State policy is Wisconsin’s greatest obstacle. And the recent behavior of the state Department of Public Instruction (DPI) does not inspire confidence.

For example, the MPS Board and many other Wisconsin school boards have long agitated for dumping the expensive and useless Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE). MPS finally developed our own value-added assessments (although we still have to pay for and subject our students to the WKCE).

Check it out: The MPS value-added assessment has not only been adopted across Wisconsin (such as Madison and Waukesha) but by the entire state of Minnesota and by the Dallas Public School District. In 2006, Chicago Public Schools, one of the districts held out as a model for mayoral control, adopted the MPS value-added model. Just this past year, New York City, which the mayor frequently cites as a model, adopted the MPS model.

And what has been the response of the new DPI chief, Tony Evers? Instead of following the lead of so many other districts, Mr. Evers decided to appoint a task force on assessment, one that will study the WKCE and make recommendations that may or may never be acted upon. Meanwhile, Wisconsin will send millions of dollars to California, home of the WKCE producers.

But what is the solution? How can we improve MPS? Actually the answer is pretty simple. I will restate what our Board President Michael Bonds has often said: MPS will make great strides when the city of Milwaukee focuses on its job: closing the health gap and the unemployment gap and so many of those other things that lie outside of the school board’s purview.

Let’s just take one example. If you are black and suffer from asthma in Wisconsin, you are six times more likely than a white asthmatic to end up in the emergency room. The number one cause of school absence is asthma. If the mayor and the common council want to improve MPS, then they need to focus on improving the lives of Milwaukee families outside of the school day.

If they do, they will be amazed by the wonderful things that are going on inside of our schools. I know. My son has spent fourteen of his seventeen years in MPS and has enjoyed an education that I could not have purchased anywhere else. I’m sorry that the mayor’s children do not attend MPS. If they did, perhaps he would sing a different tune. For me, I just want every Milwaukee student to share the great opportunity that my son has experienced in MPS. That’s why I serve on this board, and I believe that is why 62% of my constituents decided to keep me on the board.

Thank you for giving me this opportunity to tell you what I think.