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By Erin Richards
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
November 7, 2011

One of the area’s largest business groups is announcing a strategy to close the education gap in Milwaukee by expanding the number of high-performing schools, changing legislation to help schools thrive and meet the needs of future employers, and grading city schools on a common public report card.

The Milwaukee Metropolitan Association of Commerce’s agenda for improving education is the highlight of the group’s blueprint for economic prosperity, which it will unveil Wednesday to more than 1,500 member organizations at Miller Park.

The plan intends to close the achievement gap for Milwaukee’s 127,000-student population across all school sectors as well as better connect school curriculum to jobs that many of the area’s manufacturers say they are struggling to fill.

Some of the actions the MMAC is calling for will likely be unpopular with those in Milwaukee Public Schools. For example, the group supports establishing a special turnaround district in MPS for low-performing schools that would be headed by a different superintendent. The plan also calls for recruiting more national charter school operators that may compete with MPS for students.

The goals of Schools That Can Milwaukee, a local nonprofit that’s aiming to get 20,000 students into high-performing public, public charter or private voucher schools by the year 2020, form the bedrock of three “pathways” MMAC is calling for its members to support.

Those goals include:

• Expanding and replicating the handful of existing high-performing schools in the city, a list that currently includes five charter and voucher schools with high poverty rates that are getting consistently high results: Milwaukee College Prep, St. Marcus Lutheran School, Bruce Guadalupe, Notre Dame Middle School and Carmen High School of Science & Technology. The MMAC estimates it would take $40 million to $45 million in capital costs to expand those programs and reach an objective of nine new schools.
•Transforming high-potential schools in the traditional MPS, voucher and charter systems to high-performing schools. The goal would affect about 9,000 students and be accomplished by focusing on school leadership coaching, best-practice sharing and a strong collaboration with MPS.
•Recruiting and supporting national networks of charter schools. Most recently, the MMAC and Schools That Can Milwaukee have worked aggressively to pave the way for Rocketship Education, a nonprofit charter management company in California, to expand to Milwaukee. The group got the green light from Milwaukee’s Common Council last week to create up to eight schools in Milwaukee.

Future charter school management operations to be targeted include the Knowledge is Power Program, or KIPP, one of the most high-profile, highest-achieving national charter school networks. The MMAC estimates it would need to supply start-up support of about $3 million to help with start-up costs for 14 to 17 schools in the national charter category by 2017.

The MMAC estimates it will take a total of $48 million in capital costs and $21 million in annual operating costs to get 20,000 students in high-performing schools by 2020.

Less the $12 million it has in committed funds for current capital campaigns and another $14 million it has for operating support, the MMAC estimates the balance needed to support the 20,000 student goal would be $36 million in capital and an additional $7 million in annual operating support between now and 2020.
MPS reaction

MPS Superintendent Gregory Thornton said in a statement Monday that he agreed with collaborations with the business community that would lead to a greater number of high-performing schools.

In a reference to the nonprofit that has become the star pupil in MMAC’s plan, Thornton added: “As we celebrate Schools That Can, I will continue to work tirelessly for schools that can’t, because all are critical to the future of our city.”

MMAC President Tim Sheehy said the group’s plan works in tandem with Milwaukee Succeeds, another citywide initiative driven by the Greater Milwaukee Foundation that’s mobilizing nonprofits, business leaders and education groups to support city children from cradle to career.

“We need (business leaders) to know there’s an urgent strategy to close this achievement gap, and we’re encouraging them to concentrate their resources in a place where it’s going to be effective,” Sheehy said. “The need for our members is persistent if our market is going to be globally competitive in the world.”

Bob Peterson, president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association union, said that while he supported the MMAC’s commitment to helping restore funding for MPS schools, he disagreed with some of their other proposals. He said he thought finding someone else to lead the low-performing schools in Milwaukee instead of the current superintendent was absurd.

He said while the MMAC is supporting the restoration of technical education training, it remained largely silent when Gov. Scott Walker cut funding for the state’s two-year technical colleges.

“Silence in the face of injustice is complicity,” Peterson said.

The MMAC plan also calls for more in funding for nonprofit groups like Schools that Can and Teach for America, which recruits high-achieving college graduates for teaching careers – and which Rocketship uses as a direct pipeline for talent.

Former Bucyrus CEO Tim Sullivan, who serves as the chairman for MMAC, said the educational agenda rose to the forefront because it was high on members’ list of concerns.

“I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again: We don’t have a jobs crisis in Milwaukee, we have an education crisis,” Sullivan said. “You’re starting to see traction because there’s urgency among businesses that are saying we need (these skills) and we need them now.”

Sullivan believes that pushing every child to achieve a four-year college education has produced a mismatch on two levels. Manufacturers in Wisconsin, he said, are looking for technical skills that require a two-year postsecondary education or even just technical skills that can be learned with the right kind of vocational high school experience.

Meanwhile, there aren’t enough graduates with four-year degrees in science and engineering to keep up with the demand, Sullivan said.

Sullivan said the MMAC supports legislation that brings back a more solid dual-enrollment vocational model for high school students. Such an option would allow students to satisfy some graduation credit requirements with vocational training and potentially be on track to get a job right out of high school.
MPS proposals

For MPS specifically, the MMAC intends to lobby for a number of legislative proposals, including:

• Exploring the creation of a special turnaround district within MPS, which would cluster the lowest-performing schools and operate in a district that could work outside the current teachers’ contract. The district would be run by a separate superintendent who would report to a different governance body, likely one appointed by the governor, mayor or state superintendent of education.
• Eliminating the internal cap on charter school enrollment in MPS. This item seeks to address a memo of understanding the administration has with the teachers union that limits the percentage of children in MPS who can be in nonunion charter schools to 8%.
• Count voucher students in the enrollment numbers that determine state aid for MPS.
• Restructure the pension plan to a defined contribution plan for newer MPS employees.
• Restore funding cuts to MPS.

Grading schools

Another key initiative that the MMAC has been working on for nearly two years includes publishing a common school report card for all schools that receive public funding in Milwaukee.

With the help of researchers at the Value-Added Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and organizations such as greatschools.org, the group has a team working on producing a report card by January that would rank schools by performance.

The common report card would measure effectiveness based on schools’ state achievement test scores and growth over time on those tests, student attendance, retention rates of students, and at high schools, ACT scores and graduation rates. The report card will include traditional public schools in the city, charter schools and private voucher schools, which receive public funding.

Sheehy said the organization supports the system of choice in Milwaukee, which allows students to attend a greater variety of public and private schools than they would otherwise be able to in most other American cities.

But the idea that choice will lead to better quality overall because parents will choose strong schools over poor schools hasn’t played out well over time, he said.

“We’re big believers in the fact that choice alone won’t lead to quality,” Sheehy said. “But without choice, we won’t have quality, either.”

The report card, which should be ready for distribution in early January, is intended to help parents make good choices during the school enrollment period in February.