It’s late April in Wisconsin. Although spring weather has not shown itself yet, newly elected members are present and being seated at their respective school boards. Congratulations new board member, your community voted and you should be proud of their confidence in you. The easy part, achieving election, is over for these new school officials. The hard part, doing the work of a school board, is just beginning.

The official work of the local school board is governance of the school district as outlined in Chapters 118 and 120 of the Wisconsin Statutes. It is relatively easy to be a member of a governing board. A member can read agendas and pre-meeting briefs, listen to reports, consider policy recommendations and discussions and go with the flow. Just vote with the majority and let the work of the school district unfold. However, the acts of governance provide only an organizational structure and process for a school board member’s real work.

When you speak of yourself as a school board member, in what context and how many times do you use the word “children?” If school district governance is the legal responsibility of a school board member, provision of a quality education for every child is the essential purpose of a board member’s work. Children are a board member’s clients. Each and every child in the school district is a board member’s ultimate constituency.

You may shake your head and say firmly, “I was elected by the local taxpayers to control school spending.” Or, “a group of parents concerned with (fill in the blank) asked me to run for election to see what I could do to resolve their concerns. I need to speak for them.” Or, “politically, I believe in local control of education and will do all I can to assure that federal and state interests do not supersede our local interests.” Or, “our school community is divided by significantly differing points of view about the school. I will try to mend these differences.” As true as these and other statements may be, the interests of taxpayers and adult constituent groups do not address the purpose to which you were elected. They and their interests are secondary at best to your concern for children.

Let’s examine why children and not adult interests are the focus of a school board member’s work. You are elected to fulfill the state’s responsibility in educating its resident children. Very concisely, the Wisconsin constitution authorizes the State Superintendent to supervise public education and the legislature to establish school districts. The State Superintendent sets the goals and expectation for public education in Wisconsin and “…each school board should provide curriculum, course requirements and instruction consistent with the goals and expectations established under sub. (2).” Your elected purpose is to provide a local school system that fulfills the state’s requirements and regulations and standards for the education of all children. That’s it. The remainder of Chapter 118 supports this purpose. And, Chapter 120 authorizes the scope and governance processes available to the school board for conducting its purpose of providing a public education. There is nothing in the statutes about decreasing local taxes, assuring activation of the special interests of some parents or community members, engaging in federal and state politics, or acting as a community social worker. These ideas are the political grist churned up in an electoral process. The statutory purpose of the school board and each of its elected members is educating children.

Newly elected board member, when you take your board seat, think children. Think broadly about the scope of your district’s educational programs and assure that all children have access to the knowledge and skills and problem solving processes they will need to become the next generation of community adults. The breadth of 21st century educational programs continuously expands as you contemplate the yet unknown needs of the year 2050 and beyond. Even though you don’t know the specifics of that future, you are responsible for educational programs that must provide children with ideas, skill sets, and dispositions they can adapt for success in their future lives. Then, think vertically to assure that each child is receiving the education she or he needs. Your programs must be deeply stacked to challenge and advance the gifted child and the child that learns quickly, as well any child who needs special assistance achieve quality learning. And, while attending to the needs of these exceptional children, your decisions about educational programs must advance the hundreds or thousands of children in your district who are in the middle ranges of aptitudes and abilities and will become the majority of their generation.

Certainly, there are topics that may appear to be outside the term “children.” But, they are not. Once you have a grasp of programs, you must contemplate program delivery and that means personnel and facilities. Every time you think about school district personnel – a teacher, coach, advisor, custodian, cook, or bus driver – consider how this person relates to children. There are many people who are experts in their field – math or chemistry or vocal music, safe driving, building maintenance, and food preparation. However, if they cannot establish quality connections with children and advance the learning, well-being, safety and nurturing of children, they should not be in your employment. Schooling is a people business and at the center of all the people working for and with the school district are little people. Your consideration of school personnel must always begin, revolve around and end with your concerns for children.

Because most school districts in Wisconsin have existed for more than a century, aging school buildings and grounds and the quality of these facilities are on the agenda of most school boards. Current interests in “greening” and economic efficiency blend with needs to upgrade infrastructure, especially technology, and board discussion of school spending builds community interest and concern whenever these topics are on a board agenda. But, even in these decisions, the essential interest for a board member is the education, safety and well-being of children. Board discussion about school facilities must advance teaching and learning with a healthy and safe physical environment. Money is the vehicle for accomplishing these ends; children are the compelling issue in these decisions, not money.

The seemingly controversial issues of educational programming, personnel decisions and facilities management can command public attention, especially the attention of local media. They also invite the comments and sometime tirades of the vehement who support or oppose board actions. A school board member’s chair can become heated by the verbal pyrotechnics. Although the majority of a board member’s term will be involved with the routines of educational decisions, there is nothing like a business meeting packed with parents, community residents and the media to cause a school board member to wonder “why am I doing this?” But, you know why.

So, now the hard work begins. How will you use your term of office to advance the learning, well-being and future promise of each and every child in your school district? It may be hard work and most often under-appreciated, but it is the hard that makes working to improve the lives children great.

A teacher’s voice. We all have heard a teacher talking. The sound is a part of each of us who has been schooled, whether in a public, private or home setting. Part of our growing up was caused by the sound of a teacher’s voice. Some of those voices have been lost to time; but one or two of those voices still talk to us no matter how long we have been away from their teaching.

Part of my job is to listen to teachers talk. It is great work. Even though I have done this work for almost forty years and am highly trained in pedagogy and instructional supervision, I am never more than one more child sitting in a desk in the back of the classroom ready to learn from the teacher who is talking.

Adults listen to a teacher’s voice differently than how a child listens to the same voice.

We listen for expertise. We listen for certainty. We listen for a context and message that makes sense to us. We want the teacher to demonstrate a mastery of subject matter. If the teacher is talking history, we want to hear names and places, dates and events, cause and effect, interpretation and meaning. We want a story that creates mental images of the history we learned as children and reassures us that our children also will know those same stories. If the teacher is talking chemistry, we want to hear the names of elements and balanced equations. We want to observe a scientific approach to verified knowledge. We want the truth of proven or disproven hypotheses. If the teacher is talking French or Spanish or Manchurian, we want to hear a mastery of dialect and observe the structure of grammar even if we do not comprehend the words. We want our teacher’s voice to convey to children that their teacher knows what she or he is teaching.

We want our teacher’s voice to be directing. Teaching a classroom full of children is not a place for a timid voice or the sound of the unsure. Lessons that are planned for student learning also need a voice that directs children through the learning activities. We want a voice that can move twenty to thirty children from their innate, self-engrossed, highly social normalcy into a lesson created for them. It doesn’t matter if that voice is younger or older, female or male; the voice must be heard and listened to by children. The directing words vary greatly teacher to teacher. Some use humor. Some immediately connect the moment to yesterday’s lesson. Some are challenging and pose questions intended to cause children to turn their attention toward the teacher’s purpose. As adults, we want the teacher’s voice to the voice of THE adult in the room. Our teacher is in charge of children.

Our teacher’s voice needs to know the children being taught. When the teacher uses children’s names in an easy and familiar fashion, we are assured that our teacher knows these children. When the voice smiles or frowns at what children do, we know that this voice knows the individual child in the class. When the voice laughs and children laugh, we laugh with relief that our teacher and these children are okay together.

I hear the teacher’s voice and draw supervisory conclusions.

Then, the child in me listens.

My child wants to hear my name and see the teacher looking and talking with me not at or over me. As a child, I know if my teacher knows me. Some of my teachers look across the room with wide eyes that don’t see me or my friends; they see the class and they see children who are not paying attention. That is when the teacher’s voice changes and I know that that particular voice doesn’t know me or any other child in this room very well. This teacher wants her voice to be the most important voice in this room. I want my teacher’s voice and eyes and the look on her face to be one and the same; interested in me and concerned with my learning.

The child in me wants to hear my teacher listen. There is a sound to listening. It starts with the listener being quiet. I know that it is the teacher’s job to teach and that means to talk. But, if all I hear are the teacher’s words, I know that my teacher is not listening. Listen! When I hear my teacher using my words, I know that my teacher is listening to me. When she uses my friends’ words, I know that she is listening to them. It gets even better when my teacher says that she agrees with what she heard. If she says “that’s right” or “very good” or even “okay” now again, then it is much easier to pay attention when she also says, “let’s look at (or say that) again.” I want to get it right and when I know that my teacher wants to help me get it right, I want it even more. Listening to me takes time and even more time when what I say or do needs correcting or refining. And, when she says, “have you thought about…,” she has me hooked. My teacher’s voice hooks me and pulls on my learning and doesn’t let go.

I hear a lot of teacher voices tell me what to tell them. Usually that means my teacher wants me to know exactly what she said and be able to answer true or false or pick out the right answer to a question from three or four possible answers. This voice is teaching, I suppose, but I am not really learning. I can do this. I memorize and recall what I need to tell the teacher from what I remember her saying. I listen to telling teachers all the time. But, I am not really learning. The teacher who has me learning is the one who hooked me. She is more interested in my voice than hearing me repeat her voice.

Learning in school doesn’t stop at the last bell when I hear my real teacher’s voice. Her words, her questions, her interest in me stays with me when I talk to my parents about “how’d it go in school today?” I have no interest in telling them about my “telling” teachers, but I usually tell my parents more than they want to hear about my teacher who listens and cares about what I say and do. Her voice stays with me day after day and year after year.

It is difficult to be an adult when the child in me is listening to a voice that is about hooking the minds of children and causing them to learn. I want to remain in that child mode and not be supervisory. Supervision is for the voice of the telling teacher. However, it is easy to be a fellow professional with my learning teacher’s voice, because she will want to know what I heard and saw and thought. Just like the children she was teaching, there is a learning child in her that also wants to learn and not just be taught. She will learn more and more about causing children to learn and still not know enough. Our conversation will be so very different than a talk with a “telling” teacher.

After years of doing this work, I know that I have not heard enough classroom voices that touch the learning child in me. The good news is that there are lots of classrooms where children are doing what the teacher requires and those children and their teacher are very successful in school testing and the metrics that compare what children have learned with the expectation of what they should have learned. In fact, every day of every school year there are many more instructional successes like this than we ever hear about when news media is more interested in reporting on problems and failures. Still, when I hear the voice a teacher who is totally focused on how and what children think and problem solve than in repeating common knowledge, it causes the child and professional listener in me to be hooked once again.

I hear these teacher voices over and over again.  They teach me still.

Opportunities to exercise flexibility sometimes giveth and sometimes taketh away.

The winter of 2014 grabbed Wisconsin and the upper Midwest and refused to let go. Deep snow falls and severe cold caused many school districts to cancel classes for children on an unprecedented number of school days. Current state law requires Wisconsin Boards of Education to schedule a school year of 180 instructional days. There is an allowance for up to five days of instruction that may be scheduled for parent conferences or cancelled due to emergencies such as inclement weather. Most school districts schedule at least two of the 180 days for parent conferences. The statutory instructional school year is 180 days and the real instructional year is 178 days. That leaves up to three days that may be sacrificed to Mother Nature.

When weather emergencies take more than three days of instruction, school administrators hustle to arrange a “make-up” instruction by adding days to the school year or adding minutes to remaining school days. Making up instructional days so in order to comply with the 180 rule is a requirement of law. With extreme fickleness, the superintendent who was a good and sensitive person in sparing children from walking to school or standing at bus stops in way-below-zero winter becomes a community pariah when replacing spring break days with school days or extending the school year several days in June or using Saturday mornings for making up missed instruction. Parents who have scheduled family trips on spring break or during the first days of summer don’t like their superintendent very much. Local pastors who hold catechism classes on Saturday and traditionally schedule summer Bible schools during the first week of an anticipated summer vacation declare that school is violating local traditions. Animosity to instructional make-up time of course includes children who understand Saturday mornings, a 3:00 dismissal from school, and spring and summer vacations as time that school owes them as compensation for their attending school in the first place. No one, including teachers, likes make-up days.

The Wisconsin legislature recently turned sympathetic ears to the problem of rescheduling weather-cancelled instructional time. Senate Bill 589 proposed striking the requirement of 180 days from the description of a mandated school year. The Bill retains a required minimum number of hours of elementary and secondary instruction and provides Boards of Education with flexibility in how they might arrange these hours. Without a required number of days, Boards may meet the required number of hours of instruction by lengthening remaining school days without tampering with Saturdays, spring break or summer vacation or using any combination of these compensatory measures.

http://docs.legis.wi.gov/2013/related/proposals/sb589

For example, the 1137 hours of instruction required for secondary schools can be accommodated in a 175 day instructional year comprised of 6.5 hours of instruction plus thirty minute lunch. Or, a school year could be 163 day instructional days comprised of seven hours of instruction. Or, any combination of instruction and lunch is possible as long as the total number of hours of direct instruction equals 1137.. The conceptual flexibility says that Boards are allowed to use fewer than 180 days as long as they meet the number of required direct instruction hours.

(WI DPI Standard (f)(121.02) requires 437 hours of instruction in Kindergarten, 1,105 hours of direct instruction in grades 1 to 6, and at least 1,137 hours of direct instruction in grades 7 to 12. Most school districts generalize a school calendar for the entire school district and base that generalization on the required hours of secondary instruction. Elementary schools may have a different clock schedule, but almost always share a district school calendar. The length of a school day typically is long enough so that the number of daily hours times 180 equals 1137 or 1010 or 437.)

http://cal.dpi.wi.gov/cal_daysover

Interestingly, two additions to SB 589 match flexible calendaring with state funding. The bill allows Boards to receive state funding for interim and laboratory sessions are that organized for direct instruction. Currently, many zero-hour classes and interim classes, for example classes held over a winter or spring break, do not qualify for state aid. If local schools valued these opportunities, they funded the costs outside of the district’s revenue limit calculations. SB 589 will fund these as regular education. In addition, the costs of online summer classes for any student in grades seven through twelve also will qualify for state aid.

This is good news for Wisconsin school boards. It would be better news if

1. the required number of instructional hours was a minimum and not a maximum. Now, these two, minimum and maximum, will become synonymous. This is how it may work. Current law requires 180 days of instruction, so most school calendars are 180 with an understanding that five days may be forgiven for conferencing or weather emergencies. Employee contracts are 180 instructional days plus a locally adopted number of professional development days. Wisconsin Act 10 and reduced state funding caused many Boards to trim collectively bargained professional development days from their annual school calendar. Many employee contracts became 180 or 182 day agreements.

With SB 589, 1137 hours of secondary instruction will define both the instructional year and the employment year. With little concession, a school year/employment year calendar can be accomplished in 163 to 175 days. Each day that is subtracted from the traditional number of 180 represents significant savings in salary/benefit and overhead costs for a School Board. For example, a 163-day school year is ten percent less than a 180-day school year and a district with a $10,000,000 personnel budget may save $1,000,000 with a reduced school year/employment calendar. Some Boards will not reduce their traditional calendar to a minimal calendar, but most will move in that direction due to financial reasons.

2. required learning by all children could be accomplished within a minimal number of instructional days. Sadly, very few Wisconsin schools have been able to cause a full year of academic learning within a 180-day school year. A school year with fewer days will not advance the level of child learning; it will widen the gap between what children should learn and what they really do learn.

Even with flawed assessments like the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination, only 36.1% of children in grades 3 thru 8 plus 10th grade achieved a proficient score in reading in the 2012-13 school year. In mathematics, 48.1% achieved proficiency.

http://wisedash.dpi.wi.gov/Dashboard/Page/Home/Topic%20Area/Academic%20Performance/WSAS%20%28WKCE%20and%20WAA-SwD%29

These levels of proficiency or non-proficiency were accomplished within a 180-day school year, or its remains after conferences and weather cancellations in 2012-13. Are there new reasons to believe that reading and math achievements will improve with fewer days of instruction? And, if a more rigorous assessment was used, like the SmarterBalanced Assessments, will the academic achievements of children in reading and math even match their best days on the WKCE? Probably not.

The old adage of “be careful in what you ask for” applies to the application of SB 189. Flexible relief from rescheduling instruction that is missed due to weather emergencies will be accomplished. Using a required number of direct instructional hours without a number of required days will result in shorter school calendars and shorter employment contracts. And, increased difficulty to cause children to meet academic achievement goals will follow.

How interesting it would have been if the Senate Bill required Boards of Education to schedule enough days of instruction to cause 80% of the children in grades 3 thru 8 plus grade 10 to achieve proficiency on the WKCE in reading and math in order to receive 100% of their funding using the revenue limit calculations. The percent of state aid would be diminished corresponding to levels of proficiency below the 80% requirement. Conversely, if schools can achieve 80% proficiency in less than 1137 hours of instruction, the school calendar may be shortened appropriately. This requirement does not care about bad weather or parent conferencing or school vacations. This requirement connects the school calendar and state funding to learning achievement. Boards, of course, could settle for a lower percentage of proficiency with a lower level of state funding and a shorter school calendar. It is all about priorities.

We live in a representative democracy. We elect governmental leaders and empower our leaders to represent our best interests in the making of laws and policies that will sustain our commonwealth and future prosperity and assure the balance of our freedoms and responsibilities as citizens of our nation, states and communities. This is a great thing and we cherish the ideals of democracy.

Does it work? Most of the time, but not always. In regard to public education, representative democracy has created an oligarchy of partisan politics in which the issues of educational public policy are not formulated for the education of children. Instead, the educational policies and practices of partisan oligarchs are designed to coalesce a constituency of voters who will use the electoral process to legitimate and maintain the political dominance of their chosen party.

Examine the educational platforms of the Republican, Democratic and Libertarian parties. The planks of these platforms represent the consensus of representative party leaders.

The Republican Party controls the US House of Representatives, hence the purse of our nation. The Republican Party controls twenty-four state governments by virtue of an elected governor and a majority of state legislators. The education of children is not addressed in the US Constitution but is the responsibility of the states. From the perspective of decision-making, the Republican Party is what President G. W. Bush self-described as himself: the Decider. The Republican Party has the power to decide the major issues of our nation.

The role of a minority party is to present an alternative perspective of significant issues. The Democratic Party and the Libertarian Party pose alternatives to the Republican’s power-based policy decisions.

Republican Party on education

• Shift to community colleges and technical institutions. (Aug 2012)

• No federal college loans; just insure private loans. (Aug 2012)

• Promote school choice and home-schooling. (Sep 2004)

• Support voluntary student-initiated prayer in school. (Sep 2004)

• Limit role of federal government in education. (Aug 2000)

• Increase access to higher education with savings accounts. (Aug 2000)

• Strongly support voluntary student-initiated prayer. (Aug 2000)

• Achievement is basis for access to college. (Aug 2000)

http://www.ontheissues.org/Republican_Party.htm#Education

Democratic Party on education

• OpEd: anti-school choice policy alienates Hispanics. (Mar 2013)

• Turn around struggling public schools; expand public options. (Sep 2012)

• Double investment in Pell Grants & more tax credits. (Sep 2012)

• Make college tuition tax deductible. (Nov 2006)

• Standardized tests to advance learning, not bureaucracy. (Jul 2004)

• Charter schools OK, vouchers not. (Jul 2004)

• Support lifelong learning and Distance Learning. (Jul 2004)

• Bush broke promise of NCLB by not funding it. (Jul 2004)

• Democrats are the party of public education. (Oct 2003)

• Education is top priority in Democrat presidency. (Aug 2000)

• Character education is an important aspect of education. (Aug 2000)

• Accountability is a key to public school success. (Aug 2000)

• Reduce class size, modernize facilities, hire new teachers. (Aug 2000)

• Enact new tax programs to enable more life-long learning. (Aug 2000)

• U.S. needs public school accountability, not vouchers. (Aug 2000)

http://www.ontheissues.org/Democratic_Party.htm#Education

Libertarian Party on education

• Let parents control all educational funding. (May 2008)

• Poor kids end up at worst schools in current system. (Nov 2000)

• Separation of education and State. (Jul 2000)

• End compulsory busing & compulsory education. (Jul 2000)

• Support a market in education to provide more choices. (Nov 2000)

• The state should stay out of education. (Jul 2000)

• Treat private school funding the same as public schools. (Jul 2000)

http://www.ontheissues.org/Libertarian_Party.htm#Education

These positions represent the educational priorities of the politicians who drive education in the United States and our fifty statehouses. How is the Republican platform interpreted into my state’s priorities? How does my Governor interpret the educational interests of the people of Wisconsin.

“We trust teachers, counselors and administrators to provide our children world-class instruction, to motivate them and to keep them safe. In the vast majority of cases, education professionals are succeeding, but allowing some schools to fail means too many students being left behind. By ensuring students are learning a year’s worth of knowledge during each school year and giving schools the freedom to succeed, Wisconsin will once again become a model for the nation.” — Scott Walker

For years, Wisconsin had the distinction of being a national leader in educational reform. From the groundbreaking Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to policies aimed at expanding the role of charter schools in communities across the state, Wisconsin was viewed as a pioneer in educational innovation and creativity.

Wisconsin used to rank 3rd in fourth grade reading, now we’re in the middle of the pack at best with some of the worst achievement gaps in the nation.

Fortunately, Wisconsin has turned a corner and is once again becoming a leader in educational excellence by refocusing on success in the classroom. This has been done by pinpointing the following simple but effective reforms:

• Improving transparency

• Improving accountability

• Creating choice

We are working to restore Wisconsin’s rightful place as an education leader. Our students, our teachers, and our state’s future depend on our continued implementation of reform.

http://www.scottwalker.com/issues/education

What is missing? Some would say, “If I have to tell you, you won’t understand,” but here goes. I select parts of “The Purpose of Education” by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“It seems to me that education has a two-fold function to perform in the life of man and in society: the one is utility and the other is culture. Education must enable a man to become more efficient, to achieve with increasing facility the legitimate goals of his life.

Education must also train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking. To think incisively and to think for one’s self is very difficult. We are prone to let our mental life become invaded by legions of half truths, prejudices, and propaganda. At this point, I often wonder whether or not education is fulfilling its purpose. A great majority of the so-called educated people do not think logically and scientifically. Even the press, the classroom, the platform, and the pulpit in many instances do not give us objective and unbiased truths. To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education. Education must enable one to sift and weigh evidence, to discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from the fiction.

The function of education, therefore, is to teach one to think intensively and to think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with reason, but with no morals.

We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence plus character–that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the accumulated knowledge of the race but also the accumulated experience of social living.”

http://www.drmartinlutherkingjr.com/thepurposeofeducation.htm

What if Dr. King’s two-fold purposes of education were the clear public policy for education?

Education must:

• Enable a man to efficiently achieve with increasing facility the goals of his life.

• Train one for quick, resolute and effective thinking.

• Enable one to sift and weigh evidence, discern the true from the false, the real from the unreal, and the facts from fiction.

• Give one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to concentrate.

• Transmit the accumulated experience of social living.

These “planks” contribute to the common good of everyone regardless of party affiliation. And, these planks provide an overarching focus for public education that assist the education of children now and for years to come.

Public education is not and will not be well served by a partisan oligarchy until we demand better of our leaders. When Robert Michels enunciated the “iron law of oligarchy” he pointed to the reality that democratic principles must inevitably devolve into oligarchies in order to sustain the organization of government. Michels also said that revolt at the ballot box may be the only peaceful way for citizens to throw off the existing oligarchs.

http://socserv.mcmaster.ca/econ/ugcm/3ll3/michels/polipart.pdf

“A little rebellion now and then is a good thing,” wrote Thomas Jefferson, 1787, in a letter to James Madison. Now and then is now.

Farce! This is not about improving K-12 education in Wisconsin. It is all about gaining support from Tea Party conservatives and the uninformed by a governor who is promoting his national standing as a presidential nominee.

As reported in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on February 21, 2014, “A bill that could halt the implementation of more rigorous and nationally aligned reading and math academic standards in Wisconsin’s public schools was written for state lawmakers by Gov. Scott Walker’s staff, new documents show.

Drafting notes for the academic standards bill that’s been hotly contested this week reveal that the governor’s office initiated the proposal and tweaked it for weeks before forwarding it to senators such as Leah Vukmir (R-Wauwatosa) to introduce.

That the governor supported the bill was already known; that his office created it was not. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel received the drafts through an open records request.

If passed, the legislation would be one of the most aggressive measures taken nationally to slow or stop the Common Core State Standards.

The set of nationwide academic standards have broad support from educators and the business community in Wisconsin, though there have been some implementation challenges.

But the strongest opponents have been mostly tea party Republicans who believe the standards amount to federal intrusion in local education matters. Education experts dispute that, noting the standards were developed by state superintendents, governors and curriculum experts.

The bill introduced in the Senate this week, and a companion measure that was pulled from a vote in the Assembly Education Committee Thursday, calls for the creation of a state academic standards board that would have authority to recommend new standards for public schools in academic subjects such as math, reading and science.

The state board would be mostly made up of political appointees, and lawmakers could adopt standards the board recommended, even if the state superintendent disagreed.”

Read more from Journal Sentinel: http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/standards21-b99209908z1-246343221.html#ixzz2u02zBMKG

The terrible irony is that this same politicized process was used by the Wisconsin legislature in the 1990s to write and edit the Wisconsin Model Academic Standards. Those “model” standards were graded as D- and F by the Fordham Institute. These “failed” standards would become the default standards for all Wisconsin schools until the legislature issues new “Wisconsinized” standards.