Today’s poll out of Marquette University showing Governor Scott Walker with a head-to-head advantage over likely Democratic challengers ought to give recall supporters some heartburn. There is evidence the volume and passion of recall supporters will not translate into an actual election victory.
Consider, in 2010 Walker defeated Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett by a 52% to 47% margin. The Marquette poll shows Walker polling ahead of Barrett 50% to 44%. Walker also holds a polling advantage over Kathleen Falk (49% to 42%) and Tim Cullen (50% to 40%). While a significant number of Wisconsinites continue to oppose Walker, the numbers look very similar to the 2010 election, which of course, Walker won.
The wild card may be the electorate’s unfamiliarity with potential candidates. Some 35% and 51% of voters say they have not yet formed an opinion on Tom Barrett and Kathleen Falk respectively. And there is of course the issue of turnout; the one million recall signatures shows anti-Walker forces know how to mobilize.
More telling than the head-to-head poll numbers are citizen views on the direction of Wisconsin. In October, WPRI polled Wisconsinites and found only 38% thought Wisconsin was moving in the right direction (57% thought the state was on the wrong track.) Today’s Marquette poll asked a similar question and found 50% think the state is moving in the right direction (46% think Wisconsin is on the wrong track).
The approval rating of the Governor has similarly changed since October. The WPRI poll showed just 42% of Wisconsinites approved of Walker (56% disapproved). The Marquette poll shows a 50% approval rating (45% disapprove).
What explains Wisconsin’s evolving views? Some of the change could be due to the fact these are two different polls with slightly differently worded questions. The differences in opinion, however, appear too stark to be explained entirely by methodology. Likely, the recall Walker movement, like most social movements, is struggling to maintain broad support the further we get from the chaos of last Spring.
Despite what Kathleen Falk says, much of the recall movement is built on anger. Public employees were understandably upset about receiving less pay today for the same work they were doing yesterday. Curbs on collective bargaining only added to the feeling that public employees were under siege. I imagine most Wisconsinites (like myself) were sympathetic to their anger. Easily politicized issues such as cuts to education spending only added to the feeling that Wisconsin was headed in the wrong direction.
Now almost a year after the debate on Act 10 began, public employees are still understandably upset. However our public institutions, like schools, have survived. I have no doubt that sympathy for public employees remains; however these polls suggest the passion of public employees and those sympathetic to their condition is not enough for a majority of Wisconsinites to support the extreme measure of recalling a Governor.
The Marquette poll, along with the absence of collective bargaining as a campaign issue, suggests that the gubernatorial recall election of 2012 may look a lot like the 2010 gubernatorial election. It is obviously early and things will change during the campaign, but the chances of the 2012 recall having the same outcome as the 2010 Governor’s race appears substantially higher today than it was even last fall.
The front page of this morning’s Journal Sentinelfeatures an article detailing UWM professor Marc Levine’s latest report on black male unemployment in Milwaukee. The numbers in the report are depressing. Levine uses U.S. Census data to show that just 44.7% of working age black males in Milwaukee are employed, only Chicago and Cleveland have lower rates.
Levine’s number differs from the traditional unemployment rate because he includes people that are not in the labor force among the ranks of the unemployed. These numbers are particularly disturbing, 26.5% of black males between the ages of 24 and 54 are not even in the labor force. Levine cites high disability and incarceration rates as factors contributing to this dismal statistic.
My initial reaction to the report is to blame Milwaukee’s education system. No doubt the city’s poor performance on the Urban NAEP is related to this low employment figure. Levine confirms the link between education and rates of employment, but offers a caution:
“The black male employment rate has fallen continuously since the 1970s, even as the percentage of high school graduates among black males in the region has more than doubled, and the percentage of black males with college degrees has tripled.”
My hunch in explaining this paradox is that the growth in educational attainment among black males has not kept pace with the scope of the decline in the manufacturing sector. That sector has, as Levine shows, bottomed out since 1970.
Levine proposes several familiar policy strategies to address the litany of social issues that are both rooted and manifest in black male employment. Ideas include “public job creation,” “drug policy reform,” and job training and placement. None of these are bad ideas, just stale ones.
Buried deeper in this morning’s paper is an article chronicling a sparsely attended national meeting of black conservatives that included Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke. Clarke expressed the need to find black conservatives to go into “the gallows of our urban centers” to address issues like unemployment. Clarke’s comment begs the question, why is there no comprehensive conservative urban policy?
Milwaukee, like most cities, is dominated by a single political party despite the entrenchment of social problems like unemployment under their watch. Conservatives have advocated policies like school choice that benefit urban areas, but overall have not articulated a clear urban vision. To not do so is a missed political opportunity for conservatives, but more importantly a missed opportunity for city residents that might benefit from conservative policies.
Political reality likely means Conservatives will give preference to policies geared toward their political base, which lies outside cities. Nonetheless, a goal of mine on this blog going forward will be to articulate an alternative Conservative approach to urban policy problems like those highlighted in Levine’s report.
Falk has relevant experience as Dane County executive, just as Santorum brings experience as a U.S. Senator. Both come off as likeable, competent and reasonable…until the topic turns to union and social issues. Perhaps helpful in a primary, the perception that Falk is the union candidate, much like Santorum’s ultra-conservative position on social issues, is a liability in a general election.
Kagen and Paul both appeal to very specific constituencies. Paul to libertarians willing to overlook some of his strange views and suspect past for the greater cause of libertarianism, and Kagen to a slim majority of voters in northeast Wisconsin seeking to vote for anyone but a Republican in the Democratic landslide elections of 2006 and 2008.
Dave Obey = Newt Gingrich
Obey, like Gingrich, has been around long enough to have a lengthy public record that will prove problematic in a primary and general election. More problematic, Obey strongly endorsed Tom Barrett last fall. The chances of Obey entering the gubernatorial race are similar to Gingrich’s chances of winning the GOP nomination. Just about nil.
Peter Barca, Kathleen Vinehout, and Jon Erpenbach = Michele Bachman, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain
This diverse crop of candidates has one thing in common; they are not going to win.
So what does this admittedly silly exercise say about the recall race? I think Barrett and Cullen have the best chance of defeating Walker in a general. Barrett because of name recognition and familiarity among the electorate, and Cullen because of what I deemed earlier “the false appeal of a return to normalcy” in Wisconsin politics. Whether either of these candidates can win a primary election that will be dominated by public-sector union interests is another question.
And I certainly would not discount the possibility of a wild-card candidate emerging from this political circus. Perhaps are own version of the Governator.
“The so-called loophole was inserted into the state budget at the final stage of approval in June by members of the budget-writing Joint Finance Committee. The last-minute language allowed voucher schools to expand from their sole location in Milwaukee to Racine.”
It is worth pointing out that the while the language enabling the expansion of school choice to Racine did occur near the end of the budget process, expanding the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) to Racine was hardly a new concept. A proposal to bring vouchers to Racine was included and passed in the original Assembly version of the 2007-2009 budget (it was eventually removed during the budget process).
Anyways, what the article refers to as a “loophole” is really the statutory language used to identify Racine for program eligibility. Cities cannot simply be named in a budget when legislators wish a state program to apply only to that city. Instead, legislators use criteria to identify places without explicitly naming them. To identify Racine for vouchers, several criteria were used, including being a city of the second-class and qualifying for poverty aid.
Milwaukee is similarly identified in the statutes to be eligible for the MPCP. Technically, the program is available to all cities of the first-class, however Milwaukee happens to be the only one in the state. Madison, by virtue of having over 150,000 residents, could go through a legal process to join Milwaukee as a city of the first-class. Doing so would make Madison eligible for vouchers and other programs currently limited to Milwaukee. The city of course has chosen not to seek the first-class distinction, likely because it would make a host of statutes currently impacting only Milwaukee applicable to Madison.
Just as Madison could theoretically meet the criteria to become eligible for the MPCP, a number of cities could meet the criteria to become eligible for the Racine voucher program. It is really not a “loophole,” nothing suggests legislators had the intent of setting certain identification criteria as a backdoor to more vouchers. In fact, Senator Mike Ellis and Representative Robin Vos introduced legislation after the budget passed (see testimony here) to ensure the program does not expand beyond Racine. Governor Scott Walker committed to signing this legislation.
Though I quibble about calling the situation a loophole, it is hard to fault DPI for wanting legislators to finish the job. So why haven’t they? It appears that this bill, a boring measure to confirm legislative intent with no visible opposition, is another casualty of Wisconsin’s ongoing political paralysis.
Unsurprisingly, the new WPRI report on reforming teacher compensation (authored by yours truly) has some critics. The response from the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) in today’s Journal Sentinel was disappointing, but totally expected. WEAC calls my proposal a distraction. President Mary Bell states it is unfair to administrators who, among other things, do not have time to “develop a system for distributing funds.”
Opposition from WEAC to $50 million in new funding for teachers on the grounds that administrators will not have the time to find a way to spend it was a surprise. The real threat of the proposal, I imagine, is that it ties additional funding to school performance, and allows principals in successful schools to manage as they see fit.
More disappointing was the reaction from UW-Madison professor Allan Odden in Sunday’s Capital Times. Odden has done extensive high-quality work on teacher compensation and motivation. He tells the Capital Times, “it’s much better to have a salary schedule based on effective categories than to give money to the principal and the principal decides who gets rewarded.” I disagree with the notion that a set of categories defining a quality teacher exists; the range of needs for Wisconsin students is too large for a single framework.
It is also essential that the development of compensation policies, like all education policies, begin with the goal of raising measurable student achievement. The reasons teachers are successful matter less than that they are successful. In the report I point to a quote by Economist Eric Hanushek, with which I could not agree more:
“For a long time, we’ve tried to find out what it is about schools that leads to higher achievement of kids and whether schools can be a good instrument in closing achievement gaps. That research has gone on now for over 40 years and my summary of it is pretty simple: Good teachers are the one resource that is important. Yet we don’t have any descriptors of what a good teacher is. While some teachers are much more effective than others, we can’t necessarily identify what it is about them — is it their experience, their training, their personality?
Also quoted in the Capital Times article is UW-Madison professor Adam Gamoran. He points to a RAND Corporation evaluation of a merit-pay experiment in New York as evidence my proposed approach will not work. The experiment provided bonuses of up to $3,000 per-teacher in New York City schools that met performance targets. After three years, RAND found participating schools did not outperform non-participating schools.
The program was similar to what I propose in that it gave schools some leeway in how to distribute bonuses, and that it rewarded school success. However, several key differences make its conclusions immaterial to the potential of my framework. First, money was distributed as cash bonuses to teachers. As Gamoran points out to the Capital Times and as I a point out in the report, teachers are often motivated by things other than money. That is why I proposed giving principals the ability to spend the money on teachers as they see fit; including for things like development, release time, or anything else that improves the school’s work environment.
Also problematic in the New York experiment was the use of a formal school committee to decide how performance-based funds would be distributed to teachers. Not surprising, most schools just gave every teacher in their building a slight bonus. My framework allows a principal to make management decisions both on the front end when hiring staff (through the elimination of tenure), and on a day-to-day basis. The goal is to incentive a positive collaborative relationship between management and staff, not just give teachers in good schools a little more salary. There are numerous other differences including the scale of the additional resources offered (an extra $1,000 per-pupil versus an extra $3,000 per-teacher) and the way school success is measured.
Most important, my report does not propose nor advocate merit pay. The advocated framework seeks to normalize the teaching profession by giving managers the flexibility and resources to lead, and teachers their rightful position and influence as the most important factor in raising student achievement.
Teachers are the most important factor in determining the success of students. No technology, curriculum, or standard can supplant the need for a quality teacher in every classroom. We know children learn differently, we know there is no single recipe for a successful teacher, yet we continue to pay teachers as if they are interchangeable assembly-line workers producing an identical commodity called education.
In a report released this week I propose dumping district-wide lock-step pay schedules that reward only formal education and years on the job in favor of a compensation reform that rewards and motivates teachers in a way conducive to raising the academic achievement. I do not propose a merit pay system that gives bonuses to individual teachers in return for raising test scores.
Why? The track record of such systems can at best be called uneven. Teachers are not uniformly motivated by monetary compensation. Research by UW-Madison professor Allan Odden and others shows teachers value collaboration and student success above other factors. Any reform that does not recognize this is doomed to fail. No less important, students need schools that deliver consistent teacher quality from start to finish so that the work of a good teacher in one grade is not undone by a sub-par teacher the next.
The proposed reform is simple, give school leaders significant resources in exchange for school-level academic success and require that additional resources be spent on teachers. The reform would work as detailed below:
Every five years, school leaders will choose a set of objective, measurable indicators by which their school will be judged.
Schools that meet their targets will receive an additional $1,000 per enrolled student.
The principal of the school will have significant flexibility on how to spend the additional money to reward and motivate teachers. For example, the funds could be used for teacher development or to provide differential pay to recognize the value or productivity of individual teachers.
The proposed system is geared toward raising achievement. Incentivizing success encourages principals to build school cultures that attract and empower quality teachers by making their performance the key factor in obtaining additional funds. It also encourages high-performing schools to expand by offering additional funding on a per-pupil basis; more students means more funding for school staff.
The shortcomings of Wisconsin’s education system cannot and should not be placed solely at the feet of Wisconsin’s 77,000+ teachers. WPRI’s latest report recognizes the importance of teachers by proposing a significant new funding stream that can provide new classroom resources, schedule flexibility, opportunities for collaboration, and fiscal incentives for teachers in successful schools.
I made the classic mistake of looking at the comments section of an online article and to my surprise found something that made some sense. The relevant comment was in response to a Journal Sentinel article on the utility issues holding up the proposed Milwaukee streetcar. Someone named apaldino2150 wrote at 3:32 this morning:
“A two mile rail line allows people to move around more freely? Quit peeing on my leg and telling me it’s raining out!”
Eloquent prose it is not. But it encapsulates my feelings on this project.
I instinctively want to support the streetcar. I am an unabashed urbanist and Milwaukee booster that recognizes the role a modern transit system plays in economic development. However more important, and too often lost on many opponents of rail, is the positive impact a good transit system can have on the quality of life for city residents. I use the Milwaukee County Transit System (MCTS) frequently and often find myself frustrated waiting for a bus that fails to appear at my stop despite what the schedule in my hand tells me. It is nice of MCTS to put a time of arrival on the bus schedule, but if a bus does not actually come at that time, it really does not help me.
Rail addresses this problem; a fixed line does not get caught in traffic or get re-routed. It offers certainty and speed. The problem with the streetcar proposal is, as pointed out by the early morning commenter, it is unlikely to improve the quality of life for Milwaukee residents. The maps on the streetcar website suggest that even proponents of the project recognize this. Below the map of the actual route is a larger map dotted with destinations and “potential future extension” routes that if built would connect my south-side neighborhood (and a host of others) with the airport, downtown, Marquette, Miller Park, and UWM. It would be a system I, and many others would use daily.
But the potential routes are only that; the actual streetcar will take a rider from the Intermodal station to the Easte Point Pick ‘n Save. The distance covered is small, and includes no natural destination to drive up ridership. It is hard to see why people will use this thing.
The counterargument to my concerns is that getting some kind of rail system installed is a necessary first step to bigger things. I want that argument to be true, as of now Milwaukee transit leaves much to be desired when compared to peer cities. Long term, I hope we get a modern transit system that serves neighborhoods and city destinations in a way that improves the quality of life for Milwaukee residents.
“My suspicion is that the LOUD VOLUME and the unyielding certitude that defines political discourse are signs that reveal that someone else is shaping your thinking.”
The column immediately brought to mind a passage in the memoir of the recently departed Christopher Hitchens, who wrote in response to criticism of his evolving political beliefs:
“I had become too accustomed to the psuedo-Left new style, whereby if your opponent thought he had identified your lowest possible motive, he was quite certain that he had isolated the only real one. This vulgar method, which is now the norm and the standard in much non-Left journalism as well, is designed to have the effect of making any noisy moron into a master analyst.”
Both of these statements are insightful, and depressing. Can a Democracy function when volume has become more important than substance? To answer my own question, it can function, but certainly not well. It is tempting to blame the sorry state of political discourse in Wisconsin on a polarizing Governor or an obstructive legislative minority, but alas the dysfunction is not confined to Wisconsin.
I put at least part of the blame on the democratization of media. While the proliferation of alternative media has served an important watchdog function and likely improved the overall quality of political journalism, it has had the latent effect of giving every close-minded individual a source to reinforce their position (and yes, I am aware I am writing on a blog). Whether you are a birther, a truther, or believe the Koch brothers control the universe, you can find someone to confirm your views against all logic and evidence. Those are extreme examples of course. More damaging and more prolific are the otherwise open-minded individuals that expose themselves only to left or right leaning media.
I certainly do not advocate curbing the flow of information as a solution. I will not even claim to have a solution, though I do find cause for hope in the generational theory offered by Morley Winograd and Michael D. Hais. They place much of the blame for the state of American political discourse on the baby-boomer generation, arguing that the millennial generation (born between 1982 and 2003 and including yours truly) is less partisan and more likely to pursue a pragmatic path. Most comforting, substantial evidence is presented in their book, Millennial Momentum, that the dysfunction of today is not unique; previous eras experienced and overcame similar gridlock.
Perhaps I am guilty of doing what I just criticized, finding a source to confirm my bias that the generation of which I am a member can do better than those prior. But perhaps we will do better. We have to, right?
George Wagner brings out the old “What’s the matter with Kansas” argument in today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. For those unfamiliar, “What’s the matter with Kansas” was a book written in 2004 by Thomas Frank that argued Kansas residents supported Republicans despite it being against their economic interest. The implication is that Kansas conservatives are ignorant and/or being distracted by social issues.
Wagner applies the sprit of the argument to income inequality, citing a finding that Americans, “even traditional Republican constituencies,” support a more equal income distribution. Yet, Americans somehow do not support raising taxes on CEOs. Why? Wagner says the reason is ignorance, writing: “most Americans believe that wealth distribution is a lot more equal than it actually is.”
I agree with Wagner that growing income inequality is a potential problem. Data from the Department of Revenue indicates that between 1996 and 2009 the percentage of all Wisconsin tax filers with annual incomes between $20,000 and $70,000 has decreased from 43% to 40% while the percentage of all filers with incomes above $200,000 increased from 0.78% to 1.71%. To the extent that is attributable to an inequality of opportunity, it is troubling.
However, it is not clear why a higher percentage of Wisconsinites are earning more than $200,000 today than in 1996. More wealthy Wisconsin residents can be viewed as a positive, especially given that the percentage of total state tax revenue being collected from filers earning over $200,000 annually has increased from 14.9% to 25.3% between 1996 and 2009. More importantly, the increase in wealthy Wisconsin residents is certainly not the reason that 46% of Milwaukee children are impoverished, as Wagner alludes. Increasing taxes on the rich, a solution that Wagner argues Americans are too ignorant to support, will not in and of itself decrease poverty.
I’ll call this the housing project principal, based on that well-meaning urban policy failure. People needed better housing, so cities built public housing projects. It solved the immediate problem facing the homeless and those with inadequate housing, but did nothing to address the myriad of social issues of which a lack of adequate housing was the most obvious symptom. Yes, poverty is a lack of income, but it is so much more. Simply taking money from the wealthy and giving it to the poor does not address urban education failures, infant mortality, inadequate health-care, crime, or any other of the social problems that are also symptoms and causes of poverty.
Growing income inequality is a problem if it means that the United States is no longer an egalitarian society where everyone has a chance at success. One of the reasons I blog so often on urban education is that addressing policy failures in that arena is necessary for our society to get closer to true equality of opportunity. The discomfort I and others have with proposals to simply soak the rich comes not from ignorance, but a desire to enable success rather than punish it.
As expected, the Madison Metropolitan School Board voted 5 -2 last night against authorizing the Madison Prep charter school. Only two board members overseeing a school district with an African-American graduation rate below 50% saw fit to support a new approach
Those voting against the school did offer reasons. Board member Beth Moss told the Wisconsin State Journal she voted no because of concerns about the school’s ability to serve students needing more than one year of remedial education. Board member Ed Hughes said he could not support the school until after the Madison teachers union contract expires in 2013.
But no worries, Superintendent Dan Nerad told the Wisconsin State Journal he has a plan:
“Nerad has said next month he will introduce a plan to address the achievement gap between white and minority students.”
I cannot help but compare what is happening in Madison today with the desegregation lawsuit led by Lloyd Barbee in Milwaukee back in the 60s and 70s. Barbee struggled to prove the Milwaukee Public Schools were segregated because the district refused to keep records on or even refer to race in district documents. To do so would prove there was a problem.
School board approval of a non-union school designed to address the struggles of minority pupils would be admitting that Madison too has a problem. So instead of a new school with a new approach, we have excuses and the vague promise of a plan.