Wisconsin

Every revolution needs a declaration. Against a backdrop of surging grassroots discontent with how the nation's K-12 public schools are currently governed, a diverse coalition of leaders from across the country have joined in support of "An Education Declaration to Rebuild America."

Nothing good happens in Wisconsin's Capitol between bar time and breakfast. Majority members of the Joint Finance Committee (JFC) proved that last Wednesday in the wee hours of the morning by passing a budget that puts devotion to political dogma ahead of the futures of our children.

Proponents of charter schools and charter expansion consistently overlook serious issues with how these schools can selectively shape their student enrollment. A report from the National Education Policy Center describes 12 practices that charter schools use to push out or discourage enrollment of students with special needs, those with low test scores, English learners, or students in poverty.

Organizers in Wisconsin are becoming increasingly frustrated with policymakers using school funding to advance bad policy programs like vouchers rather than striving to fund all schools fairly and adequately.

May 17th is the 59th anniversary of the historic Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision. Decades later, students, parents, teacher and advocates are still fighting against education policies that leave students of color and low-income students deprived of the resources and opportunities they need to succeed. But a grassroots revolution is brewing, what blogger Jeff Bryant has been calling an "education spring," and this past week has seen headline-grabbing victories and inspiring actions.

Wisconsin is marching inexorably down a path toward two separate publicly-funded education systems for our K-12 students. One is our traditional public schools; the other is a system of private voucher schools largely funded by taxpayer dollars.

Standards-based reform creates an inherent system of winners and losers by raising the bar and assessing who makes the cut. Supports-based reforms provide and strategically align the needed resources so each student has the opportunity to reach that bar—and surpass it.

The National Center for Education Policy (NEPC), an OTL ally, has a new, must-read book about the change our nation needs to make from thinking about the achievement gap to trying to fix the opportunity gap that underlies it.