The Department of Public Instruction presented their plans to free Wisconsin from No Child Left Behind mandates to the Joint Committee on Education Thursday afternoon. If successful, this waiver could help promote reform in state classrooms well into the future.

Deputy State Superintendent Michael Thompson presented the Department of Public Instruction’s (DPI) latest application to qualify for a waiver from federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) standards. The new program would erase increasingly unattainable national standards for public schools and create a new system of educational accountability in Wisconsin. The program, Thompson argued, will “create a system that raises the expectation of what it means to be career and college ready in Wisconsin.”

DPI’s waiver would tap into the upcoming school accountability program to fairly assess the state’s public schools in a stronger way than NCLB’s “Adequate Yearly Progress” metric. The waiver relies on a dynamic system of goals and measurements to gauge how students within an institution are performing.  Every school and district will have rolling personalized goals that assesses where pupils currently are and what true growth would look like. Their goal is to create a fair and evolving system that holds schools accountable for not just student test results but their achievements in the classroom.

Questions swirled over the role of recently announced education programs like Read to Lead and the teacher grading system. Wisconsin has recently unveiled three reforms aimed at improving the quality of the state’s public schools. Though all three will have an impact when it comes to replacing NCLB, Thursday’s hearing made it clear that these reforms will operate more as Wisconsin programs than as federally mandated legislation.

The school accountability system, a program by which schools will be graded and categorized in Wisconsin, will be the foundation of the state’s NCLB waiver. However, other programs, like Read to Lead and the Educator Effectiveness reforms, exist outside the waiver. While they’ll play a role in accountability in Wisconsin public education, they were not pushed into action by this NCLB issue. Thompson assured legislators that the state’s upcoming education reforms were separate entities aimed at customizing and improving school performance in the Badger State’s classrooms.

These new methods will hold Wisconsin’s students to a higher standard when it comes to graduating from high school. The goal is to eliminate remediation for pupils in higher education and to create a breed of students that are more college-ready than ever before. However, this stricter metric likely means that the state’s testing scores will drop in the short term – an aspect that Thompson stressed won’t be a negative for the state, but a positive in the grand scheme.

The waiver garnered support from legislators, researchers, and teachers’ unions alike, though some were concerned that the program would not go far enough with its reforms in the future. Governor Scott Walker echoed some of the comments made at the hearing. “Continued collaboration with Superintendent Evers and a wide range of education stakeholders including teachers, administrators, and school boards will be needed to refine and submit a waiver to the federal government that will allow us to continue to innovate the way we deliver education in Wisconsin,” said Walker.  “The proposed waiver is a good starting point.”

Legislators also expressed concerns over standardized testing within the program. Past issues with the WKCE seemed to spur these issues. Other issues like teacher training and financial concerns also came up during the hours long public hearing, though the majority of testimony and discussion were in favor of the waiver.

This waiver presents an opportunity for Wisconsin to customize its standards without extended federal oversight. The proposed plans to reform both teacher and school accountability alongside the waiver will both take advantage of that. However, it will be up to DPI to make sure that these standards are stringent enough to raise the quality of education in Wisconsin. While that may be tough and provide some short-term testing disappointments, the effect of higher standards will resonate well into the future and help create a stronger generation of students in the Badger State.

The grades are out – Wisconsin is the worst in the United States when it comes to science curricula in the classroom. In the words of a recent study, our state’s science standards are “simply worthless.”

A 2012 report from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute gauged the strength of science programs across the nation. With several different approaches to teaching science in the classroom, every state presented a different challenge to students and analysts. This study, authored by a cabal of notable researchers, broke down the difference in science standards throughout the country. Without a “Common Core” of data standards for scientific studies, each state has a significant amount of freedom with which to determine what their students learn about science in the classroom.

However, many of these state-mandated standards leave students behind when it comes to comprehensive knowledge about the subject. Wisconsin’s is one of them.

The Badger State earned a failing grade when it came to the science standards that students are supposed to be held to, posting a 0/10 score and a “F” grade. This was the lowest recorded score in the entire study.

Wisconsin earned marks so low that they were practically nonexistent. The Fordham Institute study put blame on the state for tying their standards to the outdated National Science Education Standards (NSES) and failing to elaborate or personalize these guidelines to better fit its students.

The authors’ distaste for Wisconsin’s approach is apparent in the study:

Any educator who might hope to create a curriculum from the Wisconsin science material would be stranded in a dismal, content-free desert. True standards are provided for just three grades, and the content provided for those grades is almost nonexistent.

Scientific Inquiry and Methodology

Like most of the content standards, the standards for inquiry and methodology are devoid of any real substance. For example, a fourth-grade standard tells students, “When studying a science-related problem, decide what changes over time are occurring or have occurred.” What this is meant to signify—or what skills are intended for mastery—is impossible to know.

All Content Areas

It’s virtually impossible to evaluate the content of the Wisconsin science standards because almost none is presented. Of the eight strands, only three—physical science, earth and space science, and life and environmental science— address bona fide scientific content. (The other five are devoted to process and inquiry). Moreover, all the content that students are expected to learn at each grade is presented in less than a page. Thus, all the science content Wisconsin students are expected to learn is presented in fewer than ten pages.

These shortcomings were responsible for Wisconsin’s ranking of 51^st out of 51 states and Washington D.C.. The Badger State’s closest competitors at the bottom were Montana and North Dakota.

Science has been a subject that has fallen to the wayside in America. In 2009, only one-third of American students scored “proficient” or better when it came to scientific studies in the fourth grade. By eighth grade, this score sunk to 30 percent, and in 12th grade it was just 21 percent. All figures come courtesy of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as “The Nation’s Report Card.”

However, despite the lax science standards, Wisconsin performed above the national average when it came to NAEP testing in fourth grade, where 42 percent of students taking the test rated out at “proficient” or above. In eighth grade, the state’s results were the same as the national average. State data in 12th grade was not available.

Across the country, only five states and districts – California, Virginia, South Carolina, Indiana, and Washington D.C. – received “A” grades. Wisconsin was one of 10 states to earn a “F,” alongside Alaska, Wyoming, the Dakotas, and others. Michigan and Minnesota each earned a “C,” while Iowa and Illinois recorded “D”s. For the Badger State, this grade maintained the status quo of years past – Wisconsin also graded out at “F” in the 2005 version of this same report.

The Fordham report deals a damning blow to the state’s science standards. While many have often focused on the state’s reading and mathematics results, it appears that science has taken a back seat when it comes to creating a defined and comprehensive curriculum for Wisconsin’s students.

This lack of foundation may have a significant effect on the state’s lagging test scores in the subject. It could be leaving pupils behind the curve as they grow. Though some students will be able to go above and beyond the vague standards that Wisconsin puts out when it comes to science, others will be caught up in a less stringent system that provides little direction in this area of study.

[Madison, Wisc…] The Wisconsin Government Accountability Board has not posted scanned copies of the Governor Walker recall petitions online despite promises to the citizens of Wisconsin that they would do so.

GAB staff delivered copies of the scans to the Governor’s campaign late last week. The campaign, with the assistance of the Republican Party of Wisconsin, began reviewing the petitions at satellite offices across the state this weekend.

Once they scanned documents, they were going to make them public, having issued an alert to all media earlier in the day. The revelation was the top of many radio broadcasts Monday.

Such a public disclosure would have allowed the volunteers at the independent VerifytheRecall.com to also begin their effort.

But early this evening the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported GAB staff was going back on their promise, citing alleged privacy concerns by some who signed the public documents.

This is the latest development in a series of back and forth decisions by the GAB that promises more legal challenges ahead.

And it could thwart a massive effort by Tea Party groups to conduct an independent review of the petitions.

“Never before have regular citizens organized in this way to this scale in a nonpartisan sense to uphold the integrity of Wisconsin’s elections,” said Ross Brown,  Founder and President of the Tea Party Group, We the People of the Republic and co-organizer of the Verify The Recall effort before the GAB’s surprise announcement was made. “Our volunteers are anxious to start and committed to the effort.”

Brown said approximately 87 percent of the more than 11,000 volunteers who signed up at his website are from Wisconsin, although they do have volunteers from all but one of the 50 states.

“Verify the Recall has written a new play in the citizens’ playbook as to how we can preserve our clean and honest elections,” Brown said.

With Monday night’s revelation that the GAB was refusing to comply with their earlier public pronouncements, the Verify the Recall process could be in jeopardy.

As previously reported, the GAB had originally intended to only provide a cursory review of the signatures, having interpreted the statutes to put more of the verification onus on the recall targets. They had no intention of putting the signatures online.

In the days after the Senate petitions were placed online, social media sites and talk radio were filled with claims of problems with the petitions.

In late December, Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) received a memo from the nonpartisan Legislative Council, which explained the GAB was proactively choosing not to create a database and was not prohibited from doing so.

“The statutes do not impose explicit barriers to the creation of a GAB database that contains the names and addresses of individuals who sign recall petitions or to public availability of the database,” said Katie Bender-Olson, Staff Attorney with the Wisconsin Legislative Council in a memo to the Speaker “To the contrary, the statute enumerating the powers and duties of GAB may support the agency’s authority to create a recall signature database and make it accessible to the public.”

“The A in GAB stands for accountability,” said Speaker Fitzgerald at the time “I would hope this memo encourages them to provide the public with a nonpartisan source of important data that could help root out possible duplicate signatures and fraud.”

The memo continued, “There do not appear to be any specific statutory obstacles to the creation or availability of such a database,” Bender-Olson wrote. “Further, the GAB itself appears to believe that the creation of a recall signature database and the public availability of recall petition signature information are permissible.”

State Republican Party of Wisconsin Executive Director Stephan Thompson had earlier filed suit against the GAB requiring more aggressive verification procedures by the GAB. Waukesha Circuit Court Judge Mac Davis ruled this month that the GAB needed to check for duplicates and obvious fake names.

In the wake of Judge Davis’ ruling, and negative publicity surrounding their own comments regarding the potential validity of signatures of Mickey Mouse and Hitler, the GAB decided to scan the petitions, begin a more vigorous review and place the scanned copies of all petitions online.

On Monday morning they announced the signatures would be available later in the day. As the day went on, the information remained absent from their website.

In addition to the recruiting volunteers to data enter signatures, Brown’s group created a ‘no sign’ list, for which individuals could sign up to be notified if their names fraudulently appeared on the Walker recall petitions.

“Over 50,000 Wisconsinites have protected their name and address against fraudulent petition use by signing up for our “No Sign Registration List,” Brown told MacIver News Service.  “Individuals have also submitted the names of their deceased family members and underage children on this list. Verify the Recall will notify anyone who signs up for this list if their name and/or address is found anywhere on a recall petition.”

Without access to the petitions to create a searchable database, the ‘No sign’ list project would also not be able to be completed.

The MacIver News Service will have more on this story as it develops.

___

Recall petitions were to be posted online at the GAB Website.

Verify the Recall, the project of We The People of the Republic and the Wisconsin Grandsons of Liberty can be found online here.

[Madison, Wisconsin] As Governor Scott Walker prepares to deliver his annual State of the State address Monday night, one area of improvement to which he could point is the status of the state general fund’s cash flow.

Compared to this time last year, the projections are much rosier. The Walker Administration does not anticipate the General Fund balance to dip into the red in the next several months, a practice that happened often in the final years of the Doyle Administration.  The Administration did not need to rely on inter-fund transfers/borrowing to keep a positive balance in the General Fund in December and does not anticipate having to do so for at least the first quarter of 2012.

2011′s  Q1 forecast:

Forecast for 2012 Q1:

In December of 2010, the Dolye Administration offered the following warning to lawmakers:

“The General Fund may experience low balances intermittently from December 13th through January 3rd. During this time it may become necessary to exercise the authority granted under s. 20.002(11)(a), Wisconsin Statutes, pertaining to the temporary reallocation of certain eligible surplus moneys.”

One year later, Department of Administration Secretary Mike Huebch wrote:

“It is not anticipated that the authority granted under s. 20.002(11)(a), Wisconsin Statutes, pertaining to the temporary reallocation of certain eligible surplus moneys, or the authority granted under s. 16.53(10)(a) , Wisconsin Statutes, pertaining to the delay of payments will be utilized.”

The data comes from the quarterly reports the executive branch must submit to the legislature’s Joint Committee on Finance, per state statutes.

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MacIver News Service | January 21, 2012

[Wauwatosa, Wis...] What started out as an idea on Facebook mushroomed into a full scale political rally on Saturday as more than 3,000 people braved frigid temps to attend a ‘Celebrate Walker’ rally in support of Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker.

The event was not organized by any campaign, state or local Republican Parties nor by any established Tea Party group. It began as a way to say thank you to Walker, who may be facing a recall election later this year. As more and more speakers lined up to participate, including the Lt. Governor Rebecca Kleefisch, and several declared candidates for US Senate, interest in the event grew.

Despite media reports that ‘hundreds’ attended the rally, organizers put attendance at more than 3,000.

They say in their wildest dreams they imagined a crowd perhaps a third of that size would attend. It was the first pro-Walker political rally since recall organizers turned in petitions on Tuesday.

“A coalition of people who want more government money are going to try to drive him out,” said State Senator Glenn Grothman of Walker, who was not scheduled to attend the event.

In total, more than a dozen speakers took to the stage. Organizers held a bake sale in the back of the crowd to help defer costs. Several roamed the crowd selling pro Walker yard signs and bumper stickers.

Walker’s wife Tonette made a surprise appearance as well.

“We’re proud that you’re all here and ready to step up for us,” she said. “I had a conversation with Scott and he asked me to say a few things to you; He wanted me to remind you that the reforms are working.”

At this point the crowd began chant, “Yes they are! Yes they are!”

“We know they’re working because our property taxes are lower,” Tonette Walker continued. “We know they are working because the schools are saving money. We know they are working because the work climate is better now than a year ago.”

For someone not known as a motivating public speaker, Wisconsin’s First Lady had the crowd fired up.

“This is not about anger. If we make it about anger we are feeding into the Democrats hands,” she said. “We’re here to make a Wisconsin that is better for my children and their children; He wants you to understand it is not about anger.”

Attendees say Saturday marks the beginning of their counter offensive to the big labor-driven political activism in Wisconsin.

“The line is drawn here. If we let Scott Walker go down our country is going down,” Sen. Grothman said

[Madison, Wisc...] Governor Walker took the first steps in unveiling the state’s latest education reforms Thursday afternoon, discussing the final recommendations of three major K-12 efforts at a gathering of educational professionals.

“Improving our schools, measuring student achieving growth, and increasing accountability and transparency in education will help our children succeed,” said Governor Walker, who announced the reforms at the 2012 State Education Convention in Milwaukee. “While members of the working groups deserve credit for their recommendations, our work is not yet done. I encourage parents, teachers, school board members, and all community leaders to help implement these reforms that are key to our state’s long‐term prosperity.”

The Governor discussed the bi-partisan efforts behind the Read to Lead, Educator Effectiveness, and School Accountability programs that are aimed at improving public education and providing parents and students with a stronger, more transparent grading system for Wisconsin’s schools.

The three programs are all items that have been in the works for nearly a year. Task forces and design teams have labored to create a comprehensive system of accountability for schools, teachers, and students that have included input from almost every player in the educational process. Today’s announcement was the first public unveiling of the final recommendations of the school accountability and educator effectiveness programs. The Read to Lead guidelines were announced by Walker and Superintendent Tony Evers January 4.

The Educator Effectiveness program will give schools, administrators, and parents a better idea of how teachers are performing in the classroom. These evaluations will incorporate equal parts student outcomes and observed practices to create a balanced view at what educators bring to their classrooms.

Of the three reforms, the Educator Effectiveness plan was one of the most divisive. The Wisconsin Educators Association Council (WEAC), the state’s largest teachers’ union, refused to participate after a contentious battle over Act 10. Instead, the union organized their own focus group and released their recommendations for a new teacher evaluation system late in 2011. Another group of educators, the Southwestern Wisconsin Teacher Evaluation Consortium, devised a localized system to gauge classroom effectiveness. This group of over 60 school districts banded together to create a customized system for implementation in their schools. They have also worked with DPI to develop best practices that could be absorbed into the statewide program.

“We spent a significant amount of time last year engaged in design team processes to make important decisions about how to improve students’ reading scores, ensure every classroom has an effective teacher, and gauge school success by looking at both growth and attainment,” added Senate Education Chairman Luther Olsen. “This education package puts into law essential elements to help these initiatives succeed.”

The Educator Effectiveness program is based on widely accepted 2011 Interstate Teacher Assessment and Support Consortium (InTASC) Model Core Teaching Standards. They’ll give parents and administrators the clearest picture of the value a teacher adds to their classroom that Wisconsin has ever had. However, questions remain over how this data will be handled, what will constitute a “bad” teacher, and how long teachers have to receive poor grades for parents to be notified that a low-performing educator is teaching their children.

The second new piece unveiled today was the School Accountability system, which will grade and categorize schools based on factors like student growth and college or career readiness. This program will replace No Child Left Behind (NCLB) in the measurement of the state’s public schools, and will create a more accurate and realistic metric by which to rate Wisconsin’s institutions. Upcoming legislation for this act will have to be strongly influenced by the Department of Public Instruction’s upcoming waiver for release from NCLB standards.

The centerpiece of the School Accountability program will be a report card that touts a school’s grades and will be displayed prominently on the school’s website. How these schools are graded, however, is still unknown. Both the metric for these grades and the grading system (for example an A-F system compared to Proficient, Advanced, and other labels) has yet to have a formal release. While this represents a new step forward in transparency, the lack of easily understandable grades could create some confusion amongst parents and sap the program of its impact.

The two programs, along with the previously announced Read to Lead plans, are expected to have a significant effect on Wisconsin’s public education.However, whether or not these plans will go far enough to create true reform will depend heavily on their implementation.This implementation will be a hot topic in Madison over the next several months as lawmakers draft the legislation to make these programs a reality in the state’s public schools.

Although Superintendent Evers joined Gov. Walker at the Read to Lead announcement earlier this year, he offered this statement Thursday afternoon.

“[D]espite my leadership in these arenas and constitutional authority, I have not been involved in the drafting of the education proposals that have been announced,” said Evers. “Clearly, it is essential to see the details of this proposed legislation and ensure they match the intent and spirit of all the work that so many groups and individuals put into improving schools and academic achievement for all students in Wisconsin.”

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In the near future the final recommendations of three task forces dedicated to improving public education in Wisconsin are expected to be unveiled. This includes the work of the Wisconsin School Accountability Design Team, a group saddled with creating a metric by which the state’s schools will be graded.

The ultimate goal of this task force is to create a comprehensive and transparent system that helps parents, students, and citizens better understand the quality of their neighborhood schools. Ultimately, it would gauge the progress of both students and teachers and provide performance comparisons across districts, states, and even countries. It will take the place of the beleaguered No Child Left Behind program, a federal mandate that often failed to create meaningful positive change in the state’s public schools.

However, creating a metric to include all these goals is the difficult part. Issues like the inclusion of different subjects, determining which tests will be used to gauge progress, and how to weigh low-performing and underprivileged students has caused turmoil design team meetings that have occasionally become contentious. Some school leaders are concerned that they could be unfairly graded and carry the stigma of low-performance into the future. Others worry that a lax accountability system will offer little differentiation and obscure the transparency that the program is aiming to create.

Ideally, the school accountability program would include:

• Transparent grades that the public can easily digest. This means an A-F system that people can understand, rather than more cryptic terms. This will allow for an easy comparison across the state and across districts themselves. This will empower parents and help families find the right schools that fit their children best. While this will add an element of competition to the grading process, schools in danger of losing students thanks to low grades may find extra motivation for improvement.

• Extra attention – potentially through additional grading weight – for the lowest performing students. Florida’s school grading system, considered to be a model for Wisconsin’s school accountability program (or at least a starting point) emphasized the performance of the students that needed the most help. They essentially double-counted the reading and math scores of the pupils in the bottom 25 percent of their schools when factoring them into a school’s grade. This ensured an additional focus on students that are struggling without abandoning the performance of a school’s top students.

• Considerations to the amount of low-income students in a school. This would effectively curve the grading system to reward schools that are making progress with economically disadvantaged students. Wisconsin is a very unbalanced state when it comes to per capita income. The state’s 426 school districts often swing wildly from region to region when it comes to the economic backgrounds of students. Most often, areas with the highest concentrations of low-income pupils fare the worst when educational progress is measured.How to implement such a program has several moving parts. However, it’s clear that, in order to create comparisons that can be accurately gauged across the state, this is a necessary piece in ensuring fair, easily comparable grades from Milwaukee to Superior.

• Value-added testing data to gauge student progress and a teacher’s value over the course of a school year. Tests taken in the fall and spring could measure how students are learning at each grade within an institution. Not only would this show Wisconsinites how its students are progressing, but also fall in line with the upcoming Educator Effectiveness program, which will grade a teacher’s performance in the classroom. It would give parents a better idea of just what an educator has added to their child’s education.The idea behind value-added testing is that students that enter a grade behind their peers won’t drag down their classroom’s average. Instead of an overall grade level, this testing will measure the growth of a student – so if a student that has fallen behind is motivated and taught well enough to meet the class average, he or she would produce a higher value-added score than a student that maintains that average. In short, it rewards progression and penalizes regression beyond just what WKCE averages tell us.

• Proper standards for choice and charter schools. These schools should be held accountable as much as traditional public schools. The use of value-added testing and student data that tracks progress rather than benchmarks will ensure that these institutions are fairly graded and given more direct comparisons to the regular public schools in their regions.

• Turnaround measures for failing schools. So now that we know how schools are performing, what do we do with them? Policy needs to be put in place that allows these schools to remove ineffective educators and administrators and bring in the talent they need to make strides towards a better education. This should align with the upcoming teacher evaluation systems in order to help these schools identify which individuals are bringing value to their classrooms. This intervention will put an onus on underperforming institutions and highlight the need for real reform when students aren’t learning in Wisconsin’s schools.

• Data measurement systems that can sync with national and global rankings. This metric needs to be able to measure up from state to state and even across countries. Adopting Common Core of Data standards should help create a comparable and accurate system of measurement that allows us to compare Wisconsin’s schools with other across the country. Global comparisons are a bit trickier – but PISA or TIMSS testing, even on a limited basis, could provide valuable information when it comes to stacking Wisconsin’s public schools against those of worldwide leaders.

• Revisable options to accommodate a new breed of teachers and students. The accountability system has to have a dedicated board to track results and address any shortcomings the program may have. This includes adopting new measures and self-reporting flaws and problems that may arise and negatively affect schools.

Ideally, the school accountability design team will create a program that presents clear and understandable data for parents and students so they can better understand the quality of their public schools. This needs to go beyond an insulated neighborhood level to work beyond districts, into other states, and even to other countries. Wisconsin’s educational outcomes have hit a disappointing era of limited growth and even regression. Increasing the public’s awareness of just how strong their neighborhood schools are will not only empower parents, but pressure underperforming institutions to improve.

It will be a large task to undertake, and the debates that have raged at design team meetings suggest that consensus outside of major topics has been hard to find. Still, the successful implementation of a program that accurately grades Wisconsin’s public schools and delivers more information to citizens will be powerful. It will give legitimacy to the state’s more successful schools and spur improvement in ones that are falling behind. However, this metric must be comprehensive and fair to ensure that grades are earned properly rather than just being the product of a potentially gamed system.

This is a major task for the design team, but with members ranging from almost every aspect of Wisconsin’s public education, it’s something that can be done. If these groups can work together, we’ll soon have a comprehensive system by which we can grade schools. If these groups can’t agree or exercise too much caution in their system, we may just end up with another set of standards that tell us little about Wisconsin’s classrooms – almost like the WKCE.

If the system is well constructed and implemented properly, students, teachers, parents, and Wisconsinites everywhere will benefit.

Governor Scott Walker’s Waste, Fraud and Abuse Commission (WFAC) has issued their report and found a potential $445 million in savings for Wisconsin’s taxpayers annually. But as if to prove Weiss’ Law, Democrats in Madison are already complaining about the report.

Weiss’ Law was named after former New Berlin School Board member Matt Weiss who made the observation, “Nobody ever thanks you for not spending money.” Given the history of past efforts to root out waste and fraud in government including the Grace Commission and other commissions and reports, Weiss knew what he was talking about.

The Commission identified $82.6 million in local government savings and $373 million in state government savings annually. Hardly small change.

Some of the savings identified are already being implemented, such as changes in overtime for correctional officers. Those changes were made possible by the reforms in Act 10, which allowed the state to set the work rules outside of collective bargaining.

Other changes were spurred by the release of the interim report last year. For example, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services is examining how they will implement Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act program integrity provisions. They will also be contracting with private auditors to conduct audits of Medicaid suppliers on a contingency fee basis.

But what seems to have inspired the ire of the Democrats on the Commission, Democratic State Representative Mark Pocan and Democratic State Senator Chris Larson, was the emphasis by the commission to focus on the waste, fraud and abuse in programs for the needy.

In an interview with WTMJ-TV in Milwaukee, Larson said, “Where they go after people who are receiving food stamps and quest cards. They wouldn’t do the same thing for contracting or where money’s going to for the economic development corporation.”

But as the commission’s report makes clear, even as the amount of assistance spending has dramatically increased in Wisconsin, the amount spent on rooting out fraud has dramatically decreased. The report says, “At the same time benefit spending and recipient levels have risen, funding for recipient fraud prevention and detection has dropped.  In 2002, state spending on recipient fraud detection and program integrity efforts was $2.7 million. Between 2004 and 2009, funding to identify and 22 prevent recipient fraud decreased by 76 percent, from $2,340,000 to $561,892, while at the same time program eligibility expanded and new public assistance programs were created.”

As for why the Commission did look for savings in assistance programs, as Willie Sutton was famously misquoted, “That’s where the money is.” The Commission identified that increasing program integrity for assistance programs would result in $177,000,00 in savings.

Even Pocan and Larson recognized that’s where the money is in their alternative report. They suggested hiring more front line staff and administrative efficiency could result in $116.8 million to $177 million in savings each biennium.

One of the Commission’s recommendations for stopping fraud was the requirement of a photo id for aid recipients using Quest debit card for FoodShare. As the Commission says in the report, there have been a number of high profile cases of Quest card fraud, including the re-selling of Quest cards for cash. Requiring a photo id at the register (the same requirement if writing a check or purchasing decent cold medicine) would deter the reselling of Quest cards and their unauthorized use.

Pocan and Larson consider requiring a photo id to be an unnecessary burden on the state’s poor. Apparently the poor need not apply to assist Pocan’s and Larson’s fellow Democrats’ “Recall Processing Strike Force,” which also requires a photo id of participants.

Pocan and Larson also misstate in their report that the commission did not consider the question of using more in-house engineers at the Department of Transportation. “Unfortunately, these conversations were not part of the commission process.”

Actually, the question was dealt with quite extensively in section F on pages 50 – 57, including the Legislative Audit Bureau report that Pocan and Larson cite in their alternative report. The commission pointed out that the LAB report did not look at contractors vs. in-house engineers in the larger sense of continued pay and benefits even after a project was completed, only on the cost for a particular project to make the comparison. The Commission pointed out there was actually conflicting data and called for more study of the issue, even as the DOT is adding more in-house engineers to address the imbalance.

Perhaps that was because Pocan and Larson were in a hurry to try to score other partisan points. Seemingly forgetting the purpose of the commission, which is to ultimately reduce the burden on the taxpayers, as part of their alternative report on Waste, Fraud and Abuse, Pocan and Larson actually called for a tax increase on Wisconsin businesses. They complain that with the tax breaks given to businesses under Walker, “Wisconsin will loose (sic) $212 million in lost revenue.” Larson and Pocan call for raising taxes on Wisconsin businesses $46.4 million in the current biennium and $80 million in the biennium to follow.

But Pocan and Larson saw their alternative report as an opportunity to actually add back more waste in government spending. They call for the return of regional transit authorities that would raise taxes on local communities for passenger rail projects.

And if that was not enough, they also call on the state government to beg the federal government for the money for “high-speed rail.” While they see the $800 million in lost federal revenue, they are ignoring the long-term costs of the project and the likely additional burdens to the taxpayers.

California was a supposed beneficiary of Wisconsin’s refusal of federal stimulus “high-speed” rail money, but they are experiencing buyer’s remorse. California voters in 2008 approved selling $9.95 billion in bonds for the train’s costs. Recent polling indicates that the same referendum would not pass today. Costs are ballooning and the bonds aren’t selling.

Now the CEO of the California High-Speed Rail Authority, Roelof van Ark, and the Chairman of the Board, Tom Umberg, are stepping down as calls mount to abandon the wasteful project.

Judging from the alternative report, Pocan, who made headlines last year claiming the state was not in a fiscal crisis, seems bound and determined to send Wisconsin back into one. The alternative report is a reminder of the thinking that led to the state’s fiscal crisis before the reforms enacted by Governor Scott Walker and the legislature in 2011.

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Over a year ago, many Wisconsinites were disappointed when the state not only failed to receive hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grant money in the Race to the Top (RTTT) program, but also fell in the national rankings. While Wisconsin’s inability to embrace the RTTT reforms was troubling, experiences in winning states like Florida, New York, and Hawaii suggest that the state may have struggled to implement new programs with this funding thanks to the system’s stipulated timeframe.

We previously explored how federal oversight is causing problems in state educational agencies (SEAs). Since public education is so localized at the state level, places like Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and other SEAs wield most of the power when it comes to public schools. Dr. Frederick Hess’s study showed that federal mandates and interference can limit the efficiency of these organizations and ultimately cause more harm than good.

This is a trend that we are seeing again in 2012, this time with RTTT funding and regulations. RTTT has been a series of national competitions that has awarded billions of dollars in funding grants to states that are willing to embrace educational reform in areas like school intervention and rehabilitation, the emergence of charter schools, and addressing new methods in early childhood education. Wisconsin has applied for all three rounds of RTTT grants, and been rejected by grant coordinators each time.

For many, these failures were disappointing. Reasons for this failure included local educating agencies that failed to consent to changes that would increase teacher and schoolwide accountability as well as opposition when it came to increasing student access to charter schools. However, problems that are arising in Florida this winter suggest that the Badger State may have struggled to implement these RTTT statutes – especially if other key reforms, such as Read to Lead and the school accountability program were enacted at the same time.

Florida received a grant of $700 million in 2010, behind a different governor and education commissioner that they have now. They were given four years to implement the goals they laid out in their application, which includes items like enhanced teacher testing to ensure quality schools and an expansion of quality charter options. Unfortunately, despite a strong history of reform in recent years, the state was one of three – along with Hawaii and New York – that was identified by the U.S. Department of Education as having problems meeting their timeline.

A failure to enact the reforms promised could result in a redaction of the $700 million in federal money. New education commissioner Gerard Robinson has stated that Florida has put 22 new plans in motion to address the shortcomings. Issues such as contracting and the turnover in leadership within the state have led to the delay, but officials are confident they’ll be able to fulfill the grant’s requirements. However, it has yet to be seen if this will be enough to not only keep the significant amount of federal money in the Sunshine State, but also enact meaningful reform in a state that has been a pioneer in the past decade.

In Wisconsin, this could have been catastrophic. One of the major issues in the state’s application for RTTT funds was an illusion of buy-in at the local level. While the application made the state appear to have a vast majority of local districts on board for some significant reforms, many district teachers’ unions balked at requirements like those that tied student results to educator evaluations.

While 2011’s reform to the collective bargaining process between school boards and teachers’ unions would have helped expedite some of the policy changes contained in the state’s application, it’s easy to see how Wisconsin could have ended up in a similar position as Florida had they received RTTT funding. Major change in the classroom has been a slow moving process in the Badger State since significant reform dotted the 1990s. Even the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination – the state’s main standardized test – has had a slow road to replacement despite being outdated nearly from the day of its inception.

Other states are struggling to meet the federal timeline, and its possible that Wisconsin could have befallen the same fate had they been held to the same standards. Fortunately, upcoming reforms like Read to Lead and the school and teacher accountability programs will give the Badger State the opportunity to show that timely, effective reform can again be a reality in local classrooms.

So, is Wisconsin better off without Race to the Top funding? Probably not. But it’s not a stretch to suggest that the state could have struggled to enact sweeping reforms. Past problems with federal interference and issues with the efficient application of statewide policies would have made the application of RTTT’s changes a difficult one. The state’s final grant application made it clear that not everyone was on the same page. Add this disjointed status to the slowing effect of nationally mandated reform, and it’s entirely possible that Wisconsin could have ended up a loser even if they had won the $250 million they applied for in round two of the contest.

ZBB Energy, a Menomonee Falls based green energy company, is in a race to bring new green technologies to market as it finds itself in the center of the debate over whether government financial assistance can launch and sustain a green economy here in the United States.

President Obama visited ZBB Energy back in August of 2010 to promote the green economy and why the federal government should step in to get this sector of the economy off the ground.

“At this plant you’re doing more than making high-tech batteries.  You’re pointing the country towards a brighter economic future,” Obama said.

During his visit, President Obama vowed to create 800,000 green energy jobs by 2012.

ZBB Energy makes batteries specifically designed to store electricity from renewable sources. At least, that’s the plan.  ZBB Energy is in the middle of a major overhaul and currently does not have any products on the market. It plans to launch a new line within weeks.

“The product we’re developing will be the only storage device like it in the world,” Will Hogoboom, CFO, told MacIver News. “We’ve already closed orders for the new product even though it’s not in production.”

Investors and the stock market have not always appeared to share in the President’s optimism.  ZBB Energy stock ended the year at 71 cents a share. The day of Obama’s visit, the stock closed at $.70. Some believe investors are generally weary of green energy companies, especially startups, because these companies have high risk: they incur high overhead and generate low revenue while they attempt to develop new technologies that may or may not be profitable.

That’s where federal and state governments step in, providing those companies with massive tax breaks and loans. Many companies state in their SEC filings they could not survive without this preferred treatment. However, as we’ve seen, government favoritism is not a guarantee of success.

Solyndra, a solar panel manufacturer in California, received a $535 million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy in 2009. Two years later the company was out of business.

ZBB Energy has received significantly less help from the federal government than Solyndra. In June, the IRS awarded it a $14.7 million Clean Energy Tax Credit.  In 2009 it received a $1.3 million stimulus loan.

The stock market has been a consistent challenge for ZBB Energy. In December 2010, AMEX notified ZBB its shareholders’ equity was below the minimum $4 million required to continue being listed. This December, the company announced its shareholders equity was at $4.1 million and it was back in compliance.

However, ZBB’s stock still trends downward. It closed at $5.80 on June 18, 2007, three days after the company executed a 1:17 reverse split. Since then, it’s been downhill. On December 20, 2011 it closed at 74 cents a share and has not broken $1/share since September.

Courtesy of NASDAQ.com

ZBB’s market trouble is reflected in its SEC reports. Its Q3 revenue was at $1.637 million. ZBB’s payroll alone was $60,000 more than that. The total operating loss was $1.696 million.

The company hopes to turn all this around with the release of a new line of batteries, which are in the final stage of testing.

“Once we start actually producing and shipping, it will mean the world to us,” Hogoboom said.

The company has also added a number of new employees. At the time of its overhaul two years ago, ZBB employed 25 people. Today it employs about 60 people and has 7 open positions.

Over the past few months, while developing its new product, the company has also been forging new partnerships. In fact ZBB is opening a new factory in China in the next few weeks.

On December 15th, ZBB announced a new joint venture partnership with an unnamed “global technology company,” to help in product development. That partner is investing $800,000 in the project, and bought $700,000 of ZBB stock.

Company insiders appear to be confident. Hogoboom bought 14,000 shares on December 13. Buoyed by the government investment in the firm, investors purchased 1,307,860 shares over the last six months, all at market value.

To achieve President Obama’s goal to create 800,000 green energy jobs by 2012, the federal government has invested heavily in companies like ZBB. Yet, there is presently no official way to verify the success of such job creation efforts since the Labor Department does not track green jobs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics is in the process of conducting a survey to find out exactly how many green jobs there are in the country and hopes to have that complete by the middle of this year.

Meanwhile, announced expansion projects, a new product line, and large stock purchases have not been enough to give non governmental investors in the market confidence in this green energy “startup.” ZBB’s stock opened at 78 cents a share on December 15, 2011 and closed at 81 cents a share on Jan. 13, 2012.

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