Zeus Gets Greedy

By Jeff Simpson 

Zeus Rodriguez, cousin to Assemblywoman Jessie Rodriguez (R-Scott Jensen), has decided to go for the money.    

Until recently, Rodriguez was president of Milwaukee's St. Anthony School, the country's largest K-12 Catholic school system.  

The standards are so high at St. Anthony School that they hired Mr. Rodriguez to run their school, despite having zero experience in education.  

He did however, have experience, and a huge conflict of interest, in running a "non-profit" Hispanics for School Choice. 

How someone could run the "largest Catholic school system in the country and also run a "non-profit" especially where the two are not exactly equal is a question that needs to be asked. 

A quick look at the results and that question is easily answered.   

Rodriguez greatly increased the numbers of students attending St. Anthony.  

He was hired by St. Anthony a year later, in 2011. Since then the school has grown from about 1,476 students in four buildings to almost 2,000 students in five buildings, plus 280 employees.

Every child in the school means more and more dollars to pay for "presidents".   However the one thing that Mr, Rodriguez did not deliver is results or a high quality education(despite making that his priority(wink wink)).   

 As president, Rodriguez said, he aimed to focus on improvement."Our model was: Let's get aggressive. Accountability. Testing. Internal reviews. Let's improve," he said.

Like most urban schools serving predominantly low-income students in Milwaukee, overall state test scores for St. Anthony were and still are low. In the fall of 2010, just 7% of children could read proficiently, and about 10% could do math on grade level.

State data shows they jumped considerably by the fall of 2013: 12% of children were proficient in reading; 19% were proficient in math. That beat the average math proficiency score for all voucher schools but was the same for reading.

St. Anthony scores about the same as Milwaukee Public Schools; score comparisons vary, depending on whether all students or just low-income students are compared

While they have improved very slightly, I would guess much of that improvement came from the extra 500+ kids they sold snake oil too and stole from the public schools.   

88% of the kids in his schools are NOT proficient in reading and 81% of his students are NOT proficient in math,   In most schools that is a very solid F.    

It could possibly be blamed partly on the massive turnover at the school or it could be blamed on hiring a president to run a school who is a college drop out with zero experience in anything but selling Snake Oil.   

Mr Rodriguez had this to say:

"I feel like I've been called to effect change for underserved kids," Rodriguez said.

The problem is we see by the (lack of ) results he has delivered  for his kids and the fact he is now expanding his reach into other states (like Wisconsin), run by anti education far right ideologues, that maybe he was misquoted.   

This seems a more fitting quote for Mr. Rodriguez:

"I feel like I have been called to collect change(and dollars) by taking advantage of underserved kids".   

 

Privatization Ploy

By Jeff Simpson

Not that we need a study to tell us that voucher schools do not perform as well as public schools, we have the test scores to prove it.   Professor Gordon Lafer gave us one anyway:

A new report reveals that legislative moves to convert struggling public schools in Milwaukee into private charters─whether for-profit or non-profit─may actually damage the academic futures of far too many of the city’s children.

The report, “Do Poor Kids Deserve Lower-Quality Education Than Rich Kids? Evaluating School Privatization Proposals in Milwaukee, Wisconsin,” was written by Professor Gordon Lafer in conjunction with the national think tank Economic Policy Institute (EPI).

A special briefing on this provocative study will be held at 11 a.m. on Thursday, April 24, in the ground floor rotunda of Milwaukee City Hall, 200 East Wells Street. You can join Dr. Lafer and public school supporters from the area to hear about the growing private charter industry and its impact–often negative–on Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and students.

There was a strong push by Wisconsin legislators in the last session to enact bills aimed at closing low-performing public schools and replacing them with less accountable, privately-run and often-for-profit enterprises. Considering many of the unanswered questions, EPI commissioned Prof. Lafer to actually look at the impact these privatization efforts would have on MPS.

The report is an eye-opening investigation into the rapidly growing private charter industry and the effects profit motivated schools can have on the depth and quality of education children receive.

Voucher and for profit schools perpetually get outperformed by public schools, and yet almost like clockwork, the tea party shows up to argue the wrong side of the issue(facts be dammed)!

 

U.S. Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), a prospective presidential candidate in 2016, will be in Milwaukee next week hosting a school choice roundtable at St. Anthony School.

The event will follow a Chicago roundtable the day before and will be held at St. Anthony School's middle school campus April 23. The event is co-hosted by Hispanics for School Choice and the Libre Initiative, a national conservative Hispanic organization whose spokeswoman, Rachel Campos-Duffy, is married to U.S. Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.).

Paul, son of former Texas congressman and libertarian presidential candidate Ron Paul, is a Tea Party Republican, self-described "constitutional conservative." He's considered a likely 2016 presidential candidate.

St. Anthony's is Wisconsin's largest Catholic school. St. Anthony School president Zeus Rodriguez is also president of Hispanics for School Choice, a Milwaukee-based organization designed to reach out to and represent the Hispanic community on issues of school choice.

Milwaukee's school choice program is the country's largest and first for low-income students. It allows low- and middle-income students to attend participating private schools using state-funded vouchers to pay tuition.


It is funny to me that a serial plagiarist would talk about school choices.  Since he is not a serious student I would guess he does not care too much about your child's education.  

Also full disclosure, Zeus Rodriguez is the brother-in-law of  Assembly rep Jessie Rodriguez (R- Scott Jensen) whose seat was bought and paid for by the formerly convicted felon.   The Rodriguez has ALOT of personal money riding on the perpetual expansion of using public school dollars to line their pockets.

I will give them some credit though, they have not cashed in on our public school dollars the way their peers at Lifeskills Academy have! 

Also full disclosure, Mr. Rodriguez once invited me to come speak at his school and when I accepted promptly disappeared and apparently rescinded the offer.   I wonder how many on the roundtable will be anti voucher schools?