Is James Wigderson really a dummy?

By Steve Carlson and Jeff Simpson

It’s tough to watch a once great man tumbling into decline. There was a time when human Foghorn Leghorn and occasional Topo Gigio impersonator James Wigderson was a genuine force in Wisconsin conservative politics. A time when the unrelentingly raw, merciless stench of his haphazardly hyperbolic and buffoonishly bellicose rhetoric could not be ignored, much like your aging, alcoholic uncle’s periodontitis scented halitosis wafting across the picnic table at a close quarter family reunion on a hot Sunday afternoon. But no more.

A quick perusal of the Not Quite Right Wisconsin website, where Wigderson serves as editor, reveals a recent body of work woefully bereft of substance, wit or originality.  There are small minded ramblings about Mandela Barnes and bongs, Milwaukee street cars and bikes, that Scot Ross, essentially, is an asshole, and so on and so forth.

The majority of Wigderson’s output, though,  appears to be little more than a parroting of the latest press release from the misnomerly named “ Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty” , the Bradley Foundation funded old white guy club where “ ride to the sound of the guns “ seems to be the corporate motto. Law, Liberty, Guns. Sounds kind of like a Warren Zevon song!

Wigderson’s articles so dutifully repeat WILL’s views on everything from health care policy, to DPI powers, to school choice that, against one’s will, an image slowly comes to mind of Wiggy perched precariously on WILL CEO Rick Esenberg’s lap, his jaw flapping in time to an unseen and unheard metronome while Esenberg’s lips seem to barely move.  Try to unsee that!

It’s a neat trick though one shudders to wonder where Esenberg’s forearm has been. Note to Esenberg: you can now get hand cleaning towels by the bucket!

Same As It Ever Was

By Jeff Simpson

One thing we know about our friends on the right, especially the folks at Wisconsin Law and Liberty (WILL) is that they love to file frivolous lawsuits.   Rick Esenberg, has to justify his $200,000 + year salary(running his "non profit") by using his law degree to sue anytime a Democrat in WI sneezes. 

Now we see on White Right Wisconsin( I read it so you don't have to), that a "teacher" is joining the lawsuit to keep ACT10 since the operating engineers are trying to have it ruled unconstitutional. 

The "teacher" name is Kristi Koschkee and her argument is:

“As a public school teacher who refused union membership, the lawsuit will restrict my freedoms in the classroom,” Koschkee said in a statement released Friday. “The public unions are once again trying to use the courts to handcuff all teachers, union or not, to collective bargaining agreements. If the unions are successful, it will hurt my ability to do what I love: teach students.”

Kristi Koschkee, was much more famously known as her maiden name during the ACT10 battles of Kristi Lacroix.  LaCroix who was a teacher, then left to try and start an alternative to teachers unions(irony alert), and now is apparently teaching again.   Along the way, Ms. Lacroix also had a stint with the Knot my Wisconsin goon squad, all the while complaining about the supposed vitriol spewed at her by union supporters.   She more than fulfills her daily dose of irony! 

Now Kristi Koschkee's argument, is that by restoring collective bargaining, it will hurt her ability to teach students.  Not exactly sure how that would happen but it makes for a great line to throw red meat out to the hard core right wing base that will never be able to understand the nuance or lack of logic in her statement.   The fact that WILL can base an argument on such loose logic explains what you need to know about them also.     That is why they are known for frivolous lawsuits, they have unlimited Michael Grebe money to clog the courts. 

While I do not know when or why Kristi returned to teaching, there is something I do know for certain about her contract.  Thanks to ACT 10 that she so vocally promoted, she (and all teachers in WI) make $2000 less in base pay than they did pre Act10.

Thanks to White Right Wisconsin we know that the attacks on public education are nevereneding with a certain, well funded group in WI and we need to continue to stay vigilant.

Our kids are depending on us! 

  

 

You're (Not) A Good Man, Charlie Sykes

By Jeff Simpson

Chuck Sykes made bigger news today than he should have, by saying he was leaving his radio show at the end of the year.

Charlie Sykes, who has helped shape conservatism and some of its leading local figures for more than two decades, is leaving the air at the end of the year.

What Bice meant to say was that Charlie helped define a new brand of conservatism(Who is Ike anyway?)in the eastern corner of Wisconsin.   Sykes, as we have seen by the lack of actual influence of Wisconsin Republicans on the national stage, has had a very minimal effect on national "conservatism".

As we pointed out a couple weeks ago, Charlie has started trying to rework his public persona and too many "journalists" are working with him to allow that too happen.

Politico had a puff piece where they used an example to show how Charlie has changed:

“Yeah! Let me make a comparison, and I don’t mean this in a bad way,” Audrey says. “They’re talking about phasing out breeding of pit bulls. Well, not all pit bulls are bad.”
 “You’re comparing American citizens, Muslims, to rabid dogs,” Sykes responds.
 “No, I’m saying, they’re talking about phasing out the breed because so many are bad. No one wants to phase out poodles! I mean, there’s no Lutherans doing this! We never know when one of these people are going to be radicalized.”
 “One of these people,” says Sykes.
 Sykes ends the call. He’s silent, broadcasting dead air. He looks upset, like he’s stopped breathing. He goes to a commercial break.
 “OK, that doesn’t happen very often,” he says off-air. “I’m not usually absolutely speechless.” He says his listeners never talked like this until recently.
 “Were these people that we actually thought were our allies?” he asks.

Interesting question Chucky,  the quick answer is YES!

The Politico piece was written in August, where the blatant racism took Charlie's breath away.

Charlie recovered quickly though, and within a couple months, was back at it with winks and nods towards the Audrey's of Wisconsin.

Our Friends at Wisconsin Law and Liberty (WILL) will be holding a Soiree in Milwaukee coming up, where there is a $100 entry fee to see a conversation between Dr. Charles Murray and (you guessed it) Charlie Sykes.

While $100 seems expensive, it is a small price to pay, when you can gather a room full of people who look like you and find an "expert" to tell you that you are superior to everyone who does not look like you!

Doc Murray has made a career telling white people that they are smarter than black, women, and latino's. That of course fits the perfect profile of someone that WILL would get as a guest of honor and Charlie would want to spend the night speaking with.

The white nationalist Dr. Murray, who also happens to be a good friend and ally of Paul Ryan, will be at the University Club of Milwaukee on Wednesday October 12th from 6:00-9:00 pm.

Cash Bar will be open at 6:00, followed by a serving of bigotry, discrimination and narrow-mindedness, dessert will be a fresh serving of Jim Crow, made from Charlie Sykes own recipe.

In between the courses, Charlie Sykes and Dr. Murray will be discussing the wonders of white people.

In the end its no surprise that Charlie Sykes will be the lone person on stage with Dr. Murray.

The question that needs to be answered though, is will Audrey be in the front row?

Two Questions For Rick Esenberg

By Jeff Simpson 

The Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) recently became the last district in Wisconsin to switch from a union contract to an employee handbook.

The Madison School Board approved an employee handbook Monday that will replace the current union contract when it expires next summer.
The handbook became necessary due to Act 10, the 2011 state law that eliminated most collective bargaining for most public employees.
Madison took a while to get to this point. The Wisconsin Association of School Boards said it knows of no district other than Madison where workers still are covered by a pre-Act 10 union contract.
When the contract expires June 30, 2016, the handbook’s policies and procedures will guide interactions between the district and its roughly 6,000 employees.
While some school boards used Act 10 to dictate major changes in working conditions, cutting costs in the process, Madison took a different approach. The board instructed administrators to work collaboratively with employee representatives on the handbook’s language.

One of the biggest problems in Wisconsin today, is we weigh experts opinions/ observations equally with non experts opinions. We brought you this recently on the anti cure debilitating disease bills, when reporters would weight a doctorate degreed Professors opinion with Julainne Applings.  

We see that again here, when the reporter went to non education expert Rick Esenberg from Milwaukee to get his opinion on the Madison School Districts workings:

While the board was free to take this approach, it didn’t necessarily serve taxpayers well, said conservative lawyer Rick Esenberg.
“Basically, you can have a more effective school district if you don’t have rigid work rules,” said Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty.

I have two questions for Mr. Esenberg that I doubt were ever asked or that he would be able to answer:

1.  What items specifically in the MMSD new handbook does not serve the taxpayers of Madison?  

2. Can you give us some examples of "rigid work rules" that stand in the way of a school district being effective?  

It is hard to have a public debate when there are so many column inches being devoted to pure unadulterated ignorance.  

The only way that I see hand books hurting taxpayers, is the fact that you have to have School District Professionals put hundreds of hours into drawing them up, that time could have been used much more effectively elsewhere had ACT 10 not taken away so much local control.

 

"When evil men plot, good men must plan." Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 
 

“In our glorious fight for civil rights, we must guard against being fooled by false slogans, such as “right-to-work”. It is a law to rob us of our civil rights and job rights. …Its purpose is to destroy labor unions and the freedom of collective bargaining by which unions have improved wages and working conditions of everyone. Wherever these laws have passed, wages are lower, job opportunities are few and there are no civil rights” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

Yoooooooooo Hoooooooooooooo - WILL

By Jeff Simpson

If you want to know what happens are private/voucher's are expanded, especially if they are expanded to special needs children!  

At the private Prep school in New York, principal Kimberly Taylor had this to say about her students:

Dragging one of the two students in front of the assembly, Taylor can be heard saying, “This is a retard. How embarrassing, a disgusting embarrassment, get him the hell out of my sight.”
In another recording, the principal can be heard insulting a male student who has fallen down.
“Get your (expletive) up and be a man,” Taylor said. “God, for God’s sake, you animals, some of you.”

This private prep school looks great - on paper, but now we know the rest of the story.  

Im betting,dollars to donuts, that WILL stays exceptional quiet about this one.  

Lets Begin By Understanding Who They Are

By Jeff Simpson - Cross Posted at Purple Wisconsin

  The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty(WILL), run by fellow Purple WIsconsin blogger Rick Esenberg, recently released a report which unsurprisingly tells us that charter/voucher schools in WI have it rough and are over regulated.  

That the law branch of the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation would come up with such findings surprises no one.  WILL is an extremely well funded "non profit" and they have the Bradly Foundation to thank.  It is always good to keep your donors happy, so advancing the agenda of the public school profiteers, is to be expected.   

Let's take a look at who WILL is.   This "study" was put together by three people, Rick Esenberg, CJ Szafir and Martin Lueken. A quick check of credentials and we see that neither Mr. Esenberg, Mr. Szafir nor Mr. Lueken have spent a day working in a public school, nor are they certified or eligible to teach in a public school.   Martin Lueken was a recent hire to the team, courtesy of the private school pushing Walton family.  

In New Wisconsin, working on a Republican campaign is all of the credentials you need to be an expert on any topic.  Not a single education credential went into this report, and future reports to come from WILL,  on voucher/private schools.  

Now that we see who they are, let's take a look at the four main findings they came up with. 

1.  State accountability laws on the school choice programs are at least as rigorous – and probably enforced more aggressively – than anything imposed on public schools. However, unlike public schools, schools in the choice programs must meet their mark or be immediately dropped from the programs, which will cause many schools to close.

We can look in WILL's backyard, to see this is blatantly not true.  As we pointed out recently:

Witness the example of Milwaukee voucher schools Ceria M. Travis Academy(437 students, K-12) and Travis Technology High School(179 students). These two schools receive over $4.6 Million Wisconsin taxpayer public education dollars and are being told to shape up or get kicked out of the voucher program.

After three years of not serving their kids, are being told to shape up or you might eventually get kicked off the program of taking taxpayer money(currently approx.  $5 million a year!)  So much for "immediately" when this school has received close to $35 million of our public education tax dollars and counting.    

2. The Department of Public Instruction interprets the accountability laws in ways that deviates from the statutory language, making it more demanding than originally intended.

There should be an asterisk here.  The DPI interprets the laws in ways that deviate from statutory language according to WILL.   WILL has a history of filing frivolous lawsuits to serve partisan purposes, so keep that in mind when reading these reports.  

3. Policymakers should consider the current accountability scheme on schools in choice programs before implementing any new regulations.

Here we actually agree, lawmakers should take into account current accountability of voucher schools. As we found out at the Travis Academy and Travis Technology High Schools(emphasis mine): 

But new documents and former employees have raised concerns about the internal workings at Ceria M. Travis Academy, a private school that's received more than $35 million in state voucher payments through the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program since 1996.

Complaints filed with the state in 2014 and obtained by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel through an open records request allege that the school has violated state law by employing people without bachelor's degrees to teach students.

And former and current staff members say the close-knit family business has crossed a number of other lines that, while not illegal under state statutes governing private voucher schools, may be holding children back from getting the kind of education they deserve.

They say Dorothy Travis Moore, the founder and CEO of Ceria M. Travis Academy Inc., employs an unusually high number of family members and that it's hard to tell where the money for education goes, as classrooms lack adequate resources.

School officials counter that a recent review of the schools by an independent accrediting organization found the programs to be operating in accordance with state law.

That review was requested by the Department of Public Instruction as it sought to follow-up on the claims made via email about unqualified teachers at the school.

Double-checking the review's conclusion is difficult.

Travis Moore and Wilnekia Brinson, her daughter and vice president of the organization, declined to provide the Journal Sentinel with staff rosters from 2014-'15 and 2013-'14, as well as a current list of individual staff titles and salaries.

Because voucher schools are private, they do not have to make such information public.

We agree that voucher schools, taking public money should be held to the same standards as public schools.  Want to know how much money your favorite public school teacher makes?  They are all published in this paper.  

4. New accountability measures should be tailored with an appreciation for the value of diverse approaches and parental choice. There are a number of ways to measure school performance, and different families will place different weight on these measures and the outcomes that they reflect.

This is WILL's way of saying do not judge voucher schools based on test scores the same way that you judge public schools.  Which is smart because voucher schools seem to always come up short.   

As we pointed out, with the complete debacle of the Travis voucher schools, in the backyard of WILL and others, there has been complete silence.  

The silence was reinforced yesterday, after putting out their 16 page report, Mr. Esenberg added this disclaimer.   

The recent story regarding the Ceria M. Travis Academy illustrates this. I - and WILL - are not familiar with the school and, for that reason, take no position on its recent difficulties.

They know Nothing, they know nothing! 

Finally, why is this so important to know?  The Republicans who control the gerrymandered State legislature have made expanding vouchers and a school accountability bill top priorities.   During this debate amongst themselves, you will hear them reference this report and subsequent reports that WILL puts out on this issue.   

It is important to know it is not worth the paper it is printed on and if legislation is passed based on this report, we have all been shortchanged!   

George WIll Say Anything

 George Will recently attempted to come to the rescue of W.I.L.L.(Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty)with his syndicated column.

The Justice Department’s perverse but impeccably progressive theory can be called “osmotic transfer.” It is called this by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), which is defending Wisconsin children against Washington’s aggression. 

  I know most people think that W.I.L.L. is just a tool, used by Michael Grebe, to help advance Scott Walker's career and file frivolous lawsuits.  They also serve another purpose - desperately trying to privatize our public schools.      Which leads us to the question, of who in Wisconsin's, children are they defending exactly?   

Not mine.  My children attend a public school that routinely outperforms private/voucher schools in WI.  

Nor are they defending the casual observer, who is a parent of a special needs child either.  If  they were to rely on the President and General Counsel of W.I.L.L., to help them make an informed decision on what is the best option for their child.   

Fellow Purple WIsconsin blogger Rick Esenberg, wrote a blog recently complaining that the voucher/private school(he mislabled it school choice)for-profit business was being unfairly scrutinized. 

  Mr. Esenberg told us that schools have to, by law, have to "take all comers"(with an exception for space.  While that is true, what Mr. Esenberg left out was that private/vouchers schools are currently being sued for "actively counseling students with disabilities out of their programs".  

For those of you who would ask - Why would they recruit these students and the counsel them out, it is because of something we have in WI called the "third Friday count".  School and district budgets are determined by the number of students in attendance on this date.  If the privat/voucher school can just keep these children enrolled long enough to reach this important date, they can then keep the money the state designates per student.   They can also then send the special needs child back to public school, the money per pupil stays behind but the costs for educating that child does not. 

Despite the hurdles, public schools welcome these children back, with open arms.  Not because of the money, which for a while is nonexistant, but because it is the right thing to do.  

Secondly, Mr. Esenberg misses the story again as he says these students  "may not get the same services or accommodations in a private school that they will get in a public school."   The reality is they will NOT get the same services, because by law the private/voucher schools do not have to provide them.    A voucher school is required to offer only those services to assist students with special needs that it can provide with minor adjustments.    There are not many special needs students that just need "minor adjustments" especially when you are a school not prepared for them run by unlicensed teachers. 

Then the closing argument that Mr, Esenberg makes is so incredibly mindboggling, that it makes me give thanks that it's not my money on retainer:

*  Public schools get funding to provide these services that is largely unavailable to choice schools.

Public schools do get funding(albeit it nowhere near enough for most of these students) hence the "public" in the title,  Private schools, hence the private used as an adjective, are private and do NOT get tax money to provide these services.  

* Just as importantly, federal standards for accommodating students with disabilities do not - and ought not - apply wholesale to private schools. The value of school choice is to encourage a multiplicity of approaches

Democratically elected(well semi-democratically elected anyway) legislatures, who after much study (hopefully), have put together best practice,  for the way to treat special needs children in the schools,  that public schools have to comply 100% with,  are fine but if a school run by a profiteer, wants to send unlicensed teachers into a classroom of special needs children and use proven ineffective ways to teach them.   That is the way the cookie crumbles I guess. 

*  Not all behavioral disabilities should be medicalized in the way typically encouraged by federal standards. Parents ought to be able to choose between alternative approaches for their children.

Seriously?  If Mr. Esenberg does not understand that every special needs child in a public school will have what we call an INDVIDUALIZED education program(IEP).  INDIVIDUALIZED being the key word there.   

For those like the President of WILL who do not know what an IEP is:

Each public school child who receives special education and related services must have anIndividualized Education Program (IEP). Each IEP must be designed for one student and must be a truly individualized document. The IEP creates an opportunity for teachers, parents, school administrators, related services personnel and students (when appropriate) to work together to improve educational results for children with disabilities. The IEP is the cornerstone of a quality education for each child with a disability. 

A team of individuals get together, and decide what is individually best,  for each individual student.   Parents already get to choose what is best for their own children.  

If you are truly defending "Wisconsin's children" shouldn't you know what options are available to them currently?  Trying so hard to divert our desperately needed resources from public to private schools, It seems like you and your organization, are the one they need defending FROM!


cross posted at Purple Wisconsin