Brother Bob Smith defends the Milwaukee Choice program in an essay--largely because Jim Doyle is taking up his position in the schoolhouse door once again. I don't know if the State budget will afford him the German Shepherd attack-dogs (or the National Guard...)
You can read all of it here; I'll focus on a small part:
In our elementary schools, we take pains not to label students with learning disabilities, including students who arrive from MPS with such labels attached. Students who have current individual educational plans receive assistance (at our cost) during the week, on Saturdays and after school. We do these things not because we have to but because we see the success of the student as priority. As researchers have pointed out, while more MPS parents than MPCP parents report that their children have learning disabilities (18.2% vs. 8.7%), the difference may result in the fact that private schools are less likely to label
There's a REASON that public schools "label" kids as 'learning-disabled': there's a helluvalot more State and Federal MONEY that comes with that label.
How many times must we say it? Follow the Money!
There's also the lawsuit that DPI settled while MPS was still fighting it that forces MPS to test and label more students.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, voucher schools by and large do not provide services to the most severely disabled students. That leaves MPS with a larger share of difficult and expensive students to teach, and that' documented fact not explained away by Brother Bob's anecdotes.
Umnnhhh yah...
ReplyDeleteAnd it also leaves MPS with 2x the revenues/student of the Choice schools--a fact that Andrekopoulis and the Board can't explain away, either.