WEAC History Book Chp 9

WEAC launched a major statewide advertising campaign to promote Great Schools. This photograph is from one of the television commercials seen in the spring of 2000.

In September 1999, WEAC launched Great Schools, a far-reaching initiative developed to engage communities in efforts to define the schools they want and to redefine the union and its “brand.” At its most basic level, Great Schools was built on the premise that Wisconsin has quality schools that benefit everyone who lives in the state, that they got that way because of quality education employees and the involvement of citizens at the local level, and that they can only remain that way through the support of citizens and elected officials.

To strengthen that involvement and support in every classroom in every school building in the state, WEAC organized local committees whose task was to create a vision of how their schools could best meet the needs of all children. Ultimately, Great Schools was begun as a grassroots effort to return responsibility and authority for school quality to local communities, as well as to rally the public around the simple, undeniable premise that “every kid deserves a great school.”

As part of the Great Schools Plan, WEAC organized a field operation that endeavored to set up one-on-one interviews between WEAC members to talk about Great Schools and get member feedback regarding their goals for their schools and their profession. In one year, 30,000 of WEAC’s 90,000 members engaged in these one-to-one communications.

Throughout its history, WEAC has been an aggressive advocate for its members throughout the state and a driving force in the improvement of public education in Wisconsin. At the time that Great Schools was conceived and developed, Wisconsin already boasted one of the finest public education systems in the entire country. A snapshot of statistics demonstrated the quality of Wisconsin’s public schools. When Great Schools began:

• A typical teacher had a master’s degree and 16 years of teaching experience.
• Wisconsin high school students were 1st in the nation for seven consecutive years on the ACT college entrance exam.
• For 11 consecutive years, Wisconsin high school students had scored #1 or #2 on the national ACT college entrance exam.
• 72% of Wisconsin high school students were going on to post-secondary education.
• 91% of all Wisconsin students completed high school, one of the highest rates in the nation.
• In 1999, the percent of students scoring advanced and proficient on the Wisconsin knowledge test improved in every grade. Fourth grade reading scores led the way with a dramatic 8% increase.
• Wisconsin’s 8th grade science students had scored 2nd in the world on an international test comparison.
• Wisconsin’s 4th grade reading scores ranked 6th in the nation.
• Nationally, Wisconsin had the highest percentage of teens either in school or working.
• SAT scores of Wisconsin’s public school students had increased steadily over the decade and consistently lead private and religious school SAT scores.

WEAC had been a major force in causing the improvements that brought Wisconsin schools to where they were. Great Schools provided an opportunity to celebrate their success and begin the process of guaranteeing their future.

In order to help spark the local conversations and introduce the Great Schools brand to the general public, an aggressive, statewide media campaign was launched in the spring of 2000. Combining substantial television and radio advertising with a statewide billboard campaign, newspaper advertising, and support on a redesigned WEAC web site—OnWEAC—the high-profile media campaign was the largest in WEAC’s history, and it instantly established the concept and priorities of Great Schools as the education standard in Wisconsin.