Each week, the Website WisOpinion.com asks our own Brian Fraley to debate Scot Ross from One Wisconsin Now in an exchange of emails. The topics are chosen by the two participants and the views expressed reflect their own personal opinions and do not necessarily represent the official policy positions of the organizations for which they work.
This week the duo discuss education funding, MPS and the upcoming Son of Stimulus bailout of state and local governments.
From Fraley’s entry:
When the MacIver Institute devotes hundreds of hours reporting on and analyzing the mess at Milwaukee Public Schools, we do share these horror stories, but it is hardly cherry picking. MPS is a perfect example of everything that is wrong with public education. Zero attention is spent on assessing value, or return on investment. Instead, the dollars going into the system are the only metric used to determine success. Milwaukee’s per-pupil expenditures far exceed the state average and continue to go up every year. For that, we have a bloated administration, consultants and counselors out the yin-yang and kids who can’t read or do math at grade level. The achievement gap between students of color and their white peers in MPS is the largest in the nation. The number of empty seats on stage at every graduation is staggering. Bad teachers who continually fail their students can’t be fired because they’re protected by a union that celebrates mediocrity. But we conservatives, who believe we shouldn’t keep throwing good money after bad and should instead improve the outcomes at public schools, are the bad guys?
Read the entire exchange, here.