A Lesson From St. Louis
(And it Has Nothing to Do With Baseball)

By George Lightbourn

On the banks of the Mississippi River sits St. Louis, a once great American city that has fallen on hard times.  In many ways, St. Louis is a mirror image of Milwaukee: both have a significant German heritage, both have seen their populations decline in recent decades, and both have seen their per capita incomes drop compared with other cities.  Both have distressed public schools. 

  Neither St. Louis nor Milwaukee is standing idly by.  Both have put shoulder to the wheel and are making strides to recapture their places among the great American cities. 

But neither city has been able to reverse the slide of their public schools.  In Milwaukee, parents are voting with their feet.  Increasingly families are opting to send their children to choice or charter schools or are taking the more drastic step of moving them into suburban schools.  Similarly, St. Louis parents have flocked to the only available alternative, charter schools. 

Study after study has shown both school systems to be in crisis be it in the academic performance of the students, the safety in the schools or the value students bring with them when they enter the workforce.  In both cities, the makeup of the school boards swings from reform to union-friendly majorities.  All of the wind expended in campaigning for school board seats and in holding onto board seats has done nothing to reverse the downward decline of the schools.

However, St. Louis schools recently received a push from state government.  That push came in the form of some tough love when the State Board of Education moved to decertify the St. Louis schools.  Further, the board moved to set up a state governing board to operate the schools.  State government is taking over St. Louis schools.

In Missouri, state government said "enough is enough!"  They had heard enough excuses.  They had seen enough unacceptable test data.  They had heard from parents, teachers and students about the second-rate nature of St. Louis public schools.

Here in Wisconsin, state government has apparently not had enough.  Apparently a 30% dropout rate doesn’t constitute a red flag.  The fact that 70% of MPS graduates attending UW-Milwaukee need remedial classes must be normal.  And it must be ok that seventh grade African American boys in MPS read three grades below white girls. 

Not only has Wisconsin state government chosen to look the other way on this incredibly disappointing performance, every year the state writes out a nice fat check to MPS, the largest check the state writes to anyone.  In the world of alcohol and drug abuse, this is considered enabling.  Like the weary sibling of a drug addict, we write that check out and hope that things will turn around in MPS.  But we know they will not turn around. 

What will it take for Wisconsin to finally say that enough is enough?