EDUCATION

Borsuk: Can call for urgency and consensus on education take hold in Wisconsin?

Alan J. Borsuk

In six phrases, I can summarize a provocative recent morning in Madison.

No Time to Lose. That is the title of a report by the National Conference of State Legislatures, a bipartisan group. It offers a concise and compelling set of recommendations from a task force on education, with the goal of raising overall success to levels that some other nations are achieving and that the developing world economy requires.

Wisconsin State Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), chair of the Senate Education Committee, was part of the task force. How much does the report’s call for urgency and consensus on education square with the realities of a place such as Wisconsin, where a lot of education quality issues seem to be drifting along?

“Kids who have only the basic skills are in deep trouble.” That is a quote from Marc Tucker, president and CEO of the National Center on Education and the Economy, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit, who keynoted the session in Madison at which about 60 educators, politicians, business people and others considered what Wisconsin can and should do with recommendations such as the ones from the task force.

Calling for stronger curriculum and higher expectations, Tucker sounded remarkably optimistic for someone who described a lot of reasons to be worried about the state of education. In a world where educational success is increasingly linked to economic success, the U.S. is puttering along in the middle of the global pack. Wisconsin is an example of a place where many students are achieving only that basic level of skills and where low-paying jobs and weak economic success are keys to the forecast for coming decades without substantial improvement.

Top performing countries ensure that children arrive at school ready to learn. This is a key observation in the state legislators’ report. It’s good if home life and prekindergarten experiences build that for a child. But the report says that in countries with high educational attainment, “if the family cannot or will not provide those supports, then society steps in.”

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But talk to teachers not only in Milwaukee but statewide about the readiness of many kids at the start of elementary and you’ll find a ton of reasons to worry — and hints that things are getting worse. Olsen told me that he thinks there is some improvement in early childhood programs in Wisconsin, thanks to steps such as the state’s five-star rating system for day care programs. But are we really doing what we could if we wanted all kids to be ready for school?

It’s going to get worse before it gets better. John Forester, executive director of the Wisconsin Schools Administrators Alliance, said that to me after the conference, which was convened by his organization. He was talking about teachers and teaching in Wisconsin.

The number of college students enrolling in programs to become teachers is down. Schools statewide are finding it harder to fill teaching jobs, especially in areas such as math, science and special education. Many teachers continue to feel their profession is not respected.

“In order for it to get better, we’re going to have to reimagine the profession as one that has much greater responsibility and much higher respect from the public,” Forester said. “I think that’s a big challenge. It’s one of the fundamental building blocks of the highest performing nations in the world.”

In the recent campaign for state superintendent of public instruction, incumbent Tony Evers called often for showing teachers more respect, which, as he often said, costs nothing. Was Evers’ overwhelming victory (70% of the vote) a statewide endorsement of that thought or did the total turnout (less than 20%) make a search for such messages unmeaningful?

Overall, I’m not aware of much change or improvement in prospects for teaching careers statewide.

You need a broad consensus on goals. This is from the legislators’ task force, Tucker and just about anyone else who is interested in meaningful improvement.

I was more optimistic on this front seven or so years ago, when there seemed to be a pretty wide agreement nationally on raising the bar for American kids and giving the term “proficient” a definition that was consistent across the U.S. There’s not much evidence of that consensus anymore, as the political problems around the Common Core standards show. And in Wisconsin, consensus is not a term that merits much use.

Olsen had an interesting thought: Don’t look to the Legislature for consensus or for pushing changes like the ones in the task force report. He said the business community, as well as educators themselves, are in better positions to spur real improvement and build some unity.

“Never, never give up onstudents.” Tucker said this to the Madison audience. But amid all the inequalities in opportunity, life and school experiences, and outcomes among Wisconsin’s children, and with the low level of urgency so many attach to improvement, it is hard to argue that we are practicing what Tucker preached.

Is any state picking up on what Tucker and the national task force advocate? Betsy Brown Ruzzi, vice president of the council on education and the economy, told the Madison audience about four states that are working actively on what they might do: Kentucky, Maryland, Indiana and Delaware.

Neither Tucker nor the legislators’ report offers silver bullets, Olsen said. These are big, systemic changes, and change is hard. The small audience in Madison wanted to pursue such changes. Forester said he wants to find ways to expand on that and build “traction” for these ideas.

I like the shot of optimism underlying all this, even though I’m kind of pessimistic overall. But I suggest Wisconsinites ought to take the first four words of the legislators’ report seriously: No time to lose.

Alan J. Borsuk issenior fellow in law and public policy at Marquette Law School. Reach him at alan.borsuk@marquette.edu.