Assembly bill would turn Wisconsin’s failing public schools into charters

[n2doc]

MADISON, Wis. — At the end of a long day of public testimony, a young teacher broke down in tears in the center of the hearing room. “We have students who don't own a pair of socks,” Amy Mizialko, a special education instructor in the Milwaukee public school system, told the Wisconsin State Assembly's Education Committee. “And they walk to school every day in the winter.”

Recovering her composure to register her opposition to the school accountability bill being heard, she argued that it would take resources away from children who have already been “forced through the cracks.” Like many other critics of the bill, Mizialko said the bill ignores schools’ broader socioeconomic context and the effects of poverty on children's learning.

“This legislation can't punish and starve our students of the resources they need to learn,” Mizialko testified, “and then declare that our students are failures.”

AB 1, drafted by Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt, R-Fond du Lac, aims to change Wisconsin’s current school accountability system, which was approved in 2014. As written, it would establish an Academic Review Board (ARB) that would have the power to incentivize and punish publicly funded schools based on performance. The board would have the power to approve alternative assessments in lieu of the state exam to determine how schools are performing. The bill also sets out the methodology for measuring school performance and stipulates that the ARB has the authority to convert a failing public school to a charter school.

more

http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/1/29/wisconsin-education-bill-would-turn-failing-public-schools-into-charters.html

[midnight]

1. Perfectly said:"“This legislation can't punish and starve our students of the resources they need to

learn,” Mizialko testified, “and then declare that our students are failures.”

[Half-Century Man]

2. Because nothing teaches children so much

as giving the pittance that was allocated for their education to a poorly regulated privately owned corporate parasite.

[postulater]

3. All part of Walker's plan. PCP not SOS.

PROTECT
CORPORATE
PROFITS

not

SAVE
OUR
SCHOOLS.

[Scuba]

4. K&R

[Lifelong Protester]

5. Again a sad K & R

Getting out of this profession (education) soon-it has been decimated in my state, in my lifetime.