[Milwaukee, Wisc...] With a proclamation that student performance was the only rubric that mattered, an optimistic Dr. Gregory Thornton addressed questions Wednesday night regarding his new post as Superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools.

The veteran administrator pointed to his experience in choice programs and major cities as a major influence on his decision to take the position in Milwaukee. “One of the attractions to Milwaukee was choice. I wanted the zip code not to be the driving factor as to determine whether or not a kid was successful,” said Thornton, whose past experience as Chief Academic Officer in Philadelphia aligned him with the state’s Educational Improvement Tax Credit, a program similar to Milwaukee’s Parental Choice Program. “In this financial crisis that we’re in, the choices that are not good, I need to get them off the menu.”

Thornton, just 20 days into the job, spoke to a packed room at the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce and discussed the schools’ current problems, as well as his efforts in the battle to bring better educations to local students. 

Thornton initially addressed that he had to “face the brutal facts” of poor reading skills amongst students, economic struggles, and declining populations immediately in his new post. However, with a hand picked staff, the former administrator with experience in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina, expressed hope that Milwaukee’s embattled public schools could be turned around. With students as the “hub of the wheel” of education, Thornton laid out three key targets in his mission of reform; student achievement, efficient operation, and student retention.

A common theme of the night was tying the community back into the city’s public schools, as local business and educational leaders often questioned the school system’s current place in the everyday lives of Milwaukeeans. Citing a need for greater community buy-in, Thornton touched on programs that he plans to institute, including an “Under-credentialed, over-aged” program for continuing education to combat high school drop-outs, an increased emphasis on community members filling roles in a more complete curriculum to produce more well rounded and capable students, and sweeping improvements in the lowest-performing public academies in order to help change public perception and bring recognition to the hardest working educators.

When asked if the public would continue to be subjected to a ‘we can’t afford to do this’ line of thought when it came to school reforms, Thornton responded simply “We’re going to hear ‘we can’t afford not to do this’.”

Before leaving, Thornton appealed to the community a final time.

“We have to stop looking at the past and start looking forward as a community for the children. I can’t do this without you. It takes all of us,” Thornton said.

Share

“This plan will not only reach deeper into the pocket books of Wisconsin families and further deteriorate the state’s fiscal situation,” said State Representative Robin Vos, a Republican member of the legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance. “But it will also take away our freedoms by imposing even more government intervention in our everyday lives.”

According to the Department of Health Services, the Healthiest Wisconsin 2020: Everyone Living Better, Longer sets out several major health improvement targets, including smoking prevention, lowering  obesity rates, ensuring access to good nutrition and increasing exercise levels. The plan also emphasizes the need to improve systems that support health, such as research, health literacy, sustainable funding, partnerships and information systems.

But Vos and others note the plan covers far more topics than the popular positions outlined in the press release issued by DHS.

Vos said some of the most egregious parts of the plan include:

• Placing community health centers that may provide sexual and reproductive services in middle schools
• Creating universally-mandated early childhood education for children as young as 3 years of age
• Raising the alcohol tax
• Implementing dram shop laws to place liability on tavern owners and workers, rather than those who commit alcohol-related offenses
• Restricting alcohol consumption at public events like Summerfest or the State Fair
• Reducing the number of businesses that sell alcohol including, bars, liquor stores and grocery stores

“You can be sure that a plan that suggests reducing the temperature of tap water as a measure of injury prevention is only designed to make sure that government is involved in every facet of your life from the cradle to the grave,” said Vos.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Walker also assailed the wide-ranging plan.

“It’s a surprise no one that Jim Doyle’s last few months in office are riddled with tax increases and ballooning government,” said Walker.

Vos said the Democrat’s plan was a catch-all of liberal, nanny-state policies that Wisconsin couldn’t afford to do even if the intrusive policies had merit.

Vos said the Medicaid program currently has a $600 million deficit due to years of program and eligibility expansions implemented by Doyle. He noted that deficit grew further this week when the Supreme Court ruled that the state must replace $200 million in raided Patient Compensation Fund money.

“Public health would best be served if we could afford the programs we already have,” said Vos. “This administration should get back to work fixing the current deficit, instead of wasting time creating an even larger one under the auspices of public health.”

See our earlier coverage, here.

Share

According to the Department of Health Services, the Healthiest Wisconsin 2020: Everyone Living Better, Longer sets out several major health improvement targets, including smoking prevention, lowering  obesity rates, ensuring access to good nutrition and increasing exercise levels. The plan also emphasizes the need to improve systems that support health, such as research, health literacy, sustainable funding, partnerships and information systems.

“Everyone — public health departments, educators, health care providers, advocacy  groups, employers, community coalitions and residents — can use this plan to make progress on at least one of  these important goals,” said State Health Officer Seth Foldy.

The objectives also hit on some hot-button issues that may make the plan politically unpalatable.  A push for universal pre-kindergarten, for example, would stretch currently strained public education budgets even further. Elsewhere in the plan the Department of Health Services states its intent to “promote policies that assure societal norms regarding healthy sexual expression.”

The document also includes several obscure policy goals, including one proposal to “Allocate funding to establish the use of electronic methods of payment at farmers markets.”

Critics assailed the plan as an attempt to grow government and increase taxes.

“It is ironic that the day after the Supreme Court ruled the Doyle administration’s raid of the patient compensation fund was unconstitutional that the Democrats announce they won’t address that issue and instead will tie the next Governor’s hands and force him to deal with it; meanwhile they unveil this expansive new plan to increase the cost, scope and size of government,” said State Representative John Nygren (R-Marinette). “It is hypocrisy at its worst.”

Wisconsin Statute Section 250.07 (1)(a)  requires the Department to produce a public health agenda for the people of Wisconsin at least every 10 years.

“The vision, goals, and mission of this plan are anchored in a set of core values that form the moral and aspirational compass for the plan,’ writes Department of Health Services Secretary Karen Timberlake at the beginning of the proposal. “These include using science and evidence to solve problems, set policy,  and take action; striving for fairness and justice; relying on leadership at all levels; and seeking to prevent rather than treat disease, injury, and disability.”

According to the Department, more than 1,500 people statewide participated in the development of the plan, and implementation is scheduled to begin this fall.  The objectives outlined in the vast document will be integrated into the work of foundations, universities, state and local government agencies, private industries and healthcare organizations.

Links

Healthiest Wisconsin, Everyone Living Better, Longer

Healthiest Wisconsin 2020 Focus Area Profiles

Share

“Because health care providers have protected property interests in the Fund, we conclude that § 9225 of 2007 Wis. Act 20 is unconstitutional because it authorizes an unconstitutional taking of private property without just compensation.”

The ruling, which Capitol observers say is a stunning rebuke of the Doyle Administration’s budgeting practices, reversed a lower court ruling and will force the state to reimburse the $200 million to the Fund. The State of Wisconsin currently has only $45 million in projected reserves on their books.

“Governor Doyle and his legislative followers broke a promise to families and the medical community when they raided the fund,” said State Representative John Nygren (R-Marinette). “This raid has already driven up health care costs and is now going to contribute to an already huge state budget deficit.” 

State law requires doctors and hospitals to contribute to the fund to pay for medical malpractice claims that exceed the $1 million paid by private malpractice insurance. Until the raid, the fund has helped keep malpractice insurance costs lower than most  other states.

In October 2007, the state legislature approved a proposal from Governor Jim Doyle to balance the state budget by transferring $200 million from the Fund to pay for ongoing state operations.

The Wisconsin Medical Society filed suit. After losing their case in Dane County Circuit Court, the case was appealed. The Wisconsin Supreme Court heard oral arguments on April of this year.

“We are extremely gratified with today’s Supreme Court ruling because it is a great victory for patients, their families and health care professionals across Wisconsin,” said Wisconsin Medical Society President Thomas Luetzow, MD. “This ruling sends an important message that the Fund is not a piggy bank. The raid was wrong, and justice has been served.”

Share

“Critics have characterized School Choice as a temporary experiment, one that should be feared by parents and the public,” said MacIver President Brett Healy. “Our research shows that in fact school choice in the broadest sense — parents rejecting the arbitrarily assigned neighborhood public school for a different school — is a fundamental part of Milwaukee’s educational landscape.”

The MacIver Educational Choice Census reveals that 87,191 of the 115,022 Milwaukee school children are educated in a place other than their traditional, geographically-assigned public school.

Total K-12 population in City of Milwaukee 115,022

Milwaukee 2009 Enrollment	Total Students	% of Total Student Population
Traditional Public Schools	27,831	24.20%
Charter Schools	17,612	15.31%
Public Online Charter (Virtual) Schools	977	0.85%
Open Enrollment public school transfers	4,562	3.97%
Chapter 220 public school transfers
-Interdistrict Transfers	2,720	2.36%
-Intradistrict Transfers	24,796	21.56%
Three-Choice Enrollment*	6,883	5.98%
Private Schools	28,893	25.12%
Homeschooling	748	0.65%
Students Exercising Choice	87,191	75.80%
*Estimate based on MPS reporting of students attending neighborhood schools (District Communications Plan May 2008 – Revised 11.25.09)

“The MacIver Educational Choice Census reveals that the concept of choice in education is something parents, particularly in Milwaukee, are embracing,” said Healy. “All across Wisconsin, families are demanding options; and rather than limit these options with arbitrary enrollment caps, lawmakers should empower parents and meet their constituents’ demands for unfettered access to the schools of their choice.”

______

The MacIver Educational Choice Census was compiled by Education Policy Analyst Christian D’Andrea using figures provided by the State Department of Public Instruction, the Milwaukee Public Schools, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, the Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual School Families and EdReform.com.

Share

However, Reggie Bicha, the Department’s Secretary, informs lawmakers that efforts to crackdown on overpayments have helped place the program on the rebound.

“We are confident that these efforts have also had a significant impact in the Department spending over $46 million less in Wisconsin Shares payments than the Act 28 bugeted level,” wrote Bicha. “This has been an important year of progress for the Shares program, and I appreciate the opportunity to share this information with the Committee.”

The Department has been required to provide the legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance with monthly reports since mid 2009 after widespread reports of abuse within the program.

In June, the Department of Children and Families spent $196,300 on fraud prevention and investigation, and had $29,044 in expenses related to recovering overpayments due to error or fraud.

As a result of those expenditures, DCF recovered $133,356 in overpayments and/or restitution in June ($70,575 in child care overpayments to individuals and $62,781 in overpayments to child care providers).

$174,570 in overpayments to suspended providers were newly reported this month, bringing the cumulative total overpayments to suspended child care providers in the program to more than $5.3 million. $2.3 million of which has been collected, leaving $3.0 million in overpayments still being pursued.

Two more child care providers were suspended from participating in Wisconsin Shares in June, bringing the total number of suspended providers to nearly 150.

Thursday’s notice was the last for the fiscal year. To date, the department has spent $1.7 million for staff-related costs that support fraud prevention, investigation and overpayment collection activities.

Share

“The goal of the project is to give teachers, and through teachers the students, basic information that they use to explore the topic of climate change. Obviously it’s in the news a lot, so they can explore and decide for themselves what they believe about it,” said Mary Hamel, one of the guide’s co-authors.

The book quotes the beleaguered United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and includes images of the planet Earth on fire, a polar bear stuck on an ice-floe and a gasoline pump tied up in knots under the heading: Causes of Climate Change.

Hamel says the guide presents straight facts and allows students to draw their own conclusions about whether or not climate change is even occurring. However, Representative Jim Ott (R-Mequon), who worked as a meteorologist for several decades prior to becoming a legislator, argues the guide only presents one side of the story.

“It completely leaves out the fact that there are some very respected scientists who take the opposite view of the view they call the consensus, the overwhelming evidence,’ Ott said. “Well there are some very respected scientists that take an opposing view. That in itself, I would think is not accurate science.”

Ott says many of the practical exercises in the guide involve students taking up the role of environment activists, aggressively pursuing global warming policy changes.

“They basically are telling students to lobby for climate change legislation,” Ott said as he quotes from the book. “‘‘Everyone, including young adults, can bring about change by being active and engaged citizens. They can encourage lawmakers that alleviate or lessen the impacts of climate change.’ The DNR is telling students they should be calling me and telling me that I should enact policies that will fight climate change that they assume is happening and being caused by us? I have some real problems with that.”

The DNR wrote the 86-page guide two years ago to address a perceived need in the classroom. A grant from the Wisconsin Environmental Education Board (from UW-Stevens Point) helped pay for its production.

The DNR does not keep track of how the guide is being used in classrooms. Officials with the department say they are looking for ways to encourage teachers to provide feedback, which has been lacking.

So far, 6,000 copies of the guide have been mailed out or downloaded, although DNR officials said they could not identify which schools were using the guide.

Bill Osmulski has more in this video report from Madison; and, the MacIver News Graphic, seen below, includes excerpts from the text book.

This online and video material is free to be reproduced, with attribution.

Share

[Madison, Wisc..] The Doyle Administration is moving quickly to have Wisconsin be one of the first states to implement a health insurance exchange, which the recently passed national health care reform requires of all states by 2014. The effort faces a key deadline this Friday.

The national “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” has given all states four years to establish an AHBE (American Health Benefit Exchange), although more than a dozen states have sued to prevent implementation of the law on various Constitutional grounds.

Currently Wisconsin manages it’s various health care services through a computer system called CARES (Client Assistance for Re-employment & Economic Support). CARES handles over a million transactions a day.

The Wisconsin Department of Health Services regularly awards contracts to maintain and enhance that system. Despite no federal or state mandate that it do so, DHS has mandated that the next contract awards will require the vendor to “develop, operate, maintain and enhance an automated system that will support the AHBE.”

The request for proposal was released on May 13, and requires potential vendors to explain how they will comply with federal regulations and provisions for the AHBE.

Yet, the RFP also states “Federal regulations have not been published at the time of the development of the RFP and state business requirements and system requirements have not yet been created.”

However the vendor designs the AHBE, Doyle’s DHS has demanded it “must build upon the existing CARES System architecture or a direct, viable, and sustainable interface with that architecture.”

When the vendors’ proposals are scored, their plans for the AHBE will count towards 10 percent of their total score. The deadline for proposals is this Friday, July 16th. The contract would start on September 1, 2010.

Currently the CARES workload for the state’s vendor is split between 20 percent maintenance and 80 percent development/enhancement. DHS asserts incorporating the construction and maintenance capacity for a health care exchange will not require additional state resources and that the maintenance/development workload ratio will be unchanged despite the addition of the AHBE

The current CARES vendor is Deloitte Consulting L.P. The total fixed monthly price for its services is $110,000. The actual hours invoiced per year are: 146,498 in 2009, 140,808 in 2008, and 121,933 in 2007. DHS allows 25,000 billable hours per month. There are currently 2,000 active CARES workers comprised of state, county and contracted staff.

Other potential vendors who were present at a demonstration on June 2, 2010 include Adobe Systems, Benefit Focus, Ceridian, CGI, Choice Administrators, Compuware, Connecture, ConnnextionsHealth, Dell, IBM, IO Datasphere, Strategem, and Vision IT.

See this video for our previous reporting on this issue.

Share

“When Wisconsinites talk of school choice, they automatically think of the ground-breaking Milwaukee Parental Choice Program that gives low-income parents the freedom to chose the best school for their child,” said MacIver President Brett Healy.  “The MacIver Educational Choice Census shows that choice is widespread throughout the entire state, with more than 20 percent of all Wisconsin students choosing a school other than the traditional neighborhood school.”

The MacIver Educational Choice Census reveals that 222,086 of the 1,026,606 Wisconsin school children are educated in a place other than their traditional, geographically-assigned public school.

Total Wisconsin K-12 Population 1,026,606
	Number of Students	% of Population
Traditional Public Schools	801,569	78.30
Students Exercising Choice	222,086	21.70
-Public Charter Schools	37,432	3.66
-Open Enrollment transfers	28,025	2.70
-Online Public Charter (Virtual) Schools	3,635	0.36
-Chapter 220 transfers	2,925	0.29
-Private Schools	130,800	12.78
-Homeschooling	19,269	1.88

“The MacIver Educational Choice Census demonstrates that Wisconsin families want and expect high-quality options – public, private, virtual or charter – no matter where they live,” said Healy. “Rather than limit a student’s opportunity to achieve a brighter future with restrictive enrollment caps or arbitrary geographic borders, policymakers should look for ways to promote more freedom and more educational choice across more of the state.  As the choice census shows, educational choice is increasingly becoming an important part of the Wisconsin way of life.”

The MacIver Educational Choice Census was compiled by Education Policy Analyst Christian D’Andrea using figures provided by the State Department of Public Instruction, the Milwaukee Public Schools, the Wisconsin Coalition of Virtual School Families and EdReform.com

Coming soon: The MacIver Educational Choice Census examines Milwaukee’s population.

Share