Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Grothman's Tell



By Jeff Simpson

Yesterday there was testimony in Madison regarding the republicans bill to stop local municipalities from enacting living wage ordinances. 

One of the people testifying was Peter Rickman who is a recent graduate of  the University of Wisconsin.   Glenn Grothman was not impressed(emphasis mine).  

Peter Rickman, a campaign coordinator for Wisconsin Jobs Now, a nonprofit focused on income inequality and workers' rights, brought an armful of research data and reports to support his testimony.
Rickman tried to engage bill author, Grothman, who also chairs the committee, in a debate on the topic but Grothman declined the offer.
Instead, Grothman commented on the high-level economic courses Rickman said he had taken while earning a UW-Madison degree by making disparaging comments about the university, which Grothman also attended.
“I took a few classes in economics at UW,” Grothman said. “And I’d almost consider that a minus.”
This of course is one of the top Business Schools in the country!  

 Thursday, there will be testimony on SB619, where the republicans would scrap the years of work we have done on common core state standards and appoint a group of hard core republicans and donors to write the Curriculum for Wisconsin Schools instead!   More information here

So let's wrap this up, Glenn Grothman thinks that its a minus to have taken classes at the UW-Madison school of business and now he is going to be in charge of appointing people who will be writing the curriculum for all of our children in the state.  

Let's review because this is VERY important.  

Glenn Grothman laughs at the University of Wisconsin Business School and now will decide what is taught in our statewide public schools.   

Let that sink in for a minute!  







 


For those not familiar with SB619, it could be the worst education bill yet), but here are the details:

                                                     Background Information on SB 619
Under SB 619, a new 15-member state board would begin replacing the Common Core State Standards within a year.  

This board would be charged with writing new model academic standards starting with English, reading and math within a year of the bill’s enactment. It would have three years to create standards for social studies and science. 

SB 619 calls for two members of that board to be appointed from private voucher schools  (schools that accept taxpayer-funded vouchers), even though those private schools receiving taxpayer money are not required to follow statewide academic standards for public schools. 

SB 619 could halt the implementation of more rigorous reading and math academic standards that local districts have already spent millions of dollars on, could inject an element of partisan politics into the setting of academic standards and could ultimately result in the state Legislature, not DPI, setting academic standards through a highly political process. 

Under SB 619, after the board has submitted its proposed model academic standards to the state superintendent, the state superintendent must, taking into consideration the academic standards submitted by the board, submit its own proposed model academic standards first to the legislative council staff for review and comment and then to the Legislature’s Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR). 

The bill provides that the JCRAR must either approve the proposed model academic standards or object to the proposed standards. If the JCRAR approves the model academic standards, the state superintendent must adopt the model academic standards. If the JCRAR objects to the proposed model academic standards, the JCRAR must prepare a new legislative bill that incorporates by reference the proposed model academic standards submitted by the board for introduction in both the senate and the assembly.  However, it should be noted that once such a bill is before the Legislature, it could be amended fairly dramatically by lawmakers. 

A legal memorandum, issued February 21st by the DPI, confirms that the Legislature would be able to modify a bill establishing model academic standards through any kind of amendment to such a bill.  (Attorneys at the Wisconsin Legislative Council have agreed with this conclusion by DPI).  Additionally, the DPI memo notes that SB 619 would impact all academic standards going forward, not just English language arts and mathematics. 

Lawmakers may be poised to vote this proposal out of committee next week and send it to the full Legislature.

PLEASE call your Senator and tell him/her to vote NO on this!  

13 comments:

  1. Every day the news is more and more horrifying. I called my State Senator Mary Lazic, sadly that's likely worse than Grotheman.

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  2. Econ Department is in The School of Letters and Science. Very math oriented in Madison.

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  3. The right wing Republicans controlling Wisconsin believe education is a disease like liberalism and science.

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  4. Grothman clearly is one of those wingnuts who thinks economists and other pointy-headed academics are all libruhls. Economics is the "dismal science" and some economic theory is certainly flighty and even wrong, but Grothman apparently would replace all that with his own gut hunches. And what a gut.

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    1. The voters who keep voting for Grothman need to stop it! JUST STOP IT! With the stuff that comes out if his mouth, they should be wearing brown paper bags over their heads!

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  5. These clowns campaigned on limiting government. They're limiting it all right.......taking away any local control and turning it over to the Republican controlled state government that we all know is bought and paid for by Special Interest money! We have to get these fools out of office or at least Walker so that government can be returned to the people and we are given our voice back. Do these idiots not realize that when the chickens come home to roost they're going to be held responsible for destroying this state.

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  6. Tell me how this kind of Power concentration and attack on education is different from the Nazis?

    The broad masses of a population are more amenable to the appeal of rhetoric than to any other force.
    Adolf Hitler
    Mein Kampf

    Seriously real here in Wisconsin.

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  7. Grothman still lives with his momma. Let that sink in.

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  8. Grothman is the Norman Bates of Wisconsin Republican politics.

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  9. What's so interesting here is that Grothman is a UW-Madison graduate (undergrad and law school) which I admit shook me but then I knew a decent number of morons there (although I knew many more smart, motivated, kind students). He's correct in that if you're pushing a Randian dystopic world-view you'll find little support within UW-Madison's Econ Dept. Ultimately, this isn't an argument of economics but a tussle between lowering wages to attract low-skilled manufacturing versus improving wages and purchasing power to attract innovative investors and higher skilled jobs. One brings with it underfunded schools and infrastructure, low purchasing power, lower life expectancy, increased health problems, dirty water, polluted air, cruelty to humans and animals, etc. and the other brings just the opposite. If the choice is Massachusetts or Mississippi then I choose Massachusetts but Wisconsinites seem to want to become Mississippi. Why?

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  10. Anonymous 12:26 is correct; Econ is not in the School of Business -- and that is more than a minor point calling for correction. Understanding the age-old battle of ideas -- of worldviews -- between Econ and Business makes the statement by Grothman even more worrisome. Okay, he's not an accountant or a marketer. But Econ is about how our economy works . . or, in Walker's Wisconsin, why our economy is not working, and too many Wisconsinites are not working.

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  11. Seriously...how does this woman hating moron keep a job????? FIRE HIM

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