Task Force Recommendations are Ambitious Agenda
Recommendations from a task force appointed by the
governor to study Wisconsin’s education system provide a playbook
for the debate over school improvement in the coming months, according
to Wisconsin Education Association President Stan Johnson.
“The Governor’s Task Force on Educational
Excellence spent months studying Wisconsin’s education system
and came up with some provocative recommendations,” Johnson said.
“We encourage all Wisconsin residents to review the recommendations
and join the debate about the best way to make sure every kid attends
a great school.”
The task force recently issued 40 recommendations,
including eliminating the Qualified Economic Offer law, expanding the
SAGE class-size reduction program, closing the achievement gap, and
modifying state-imposed revenue controls.
“Wisconsin has the best public schools in the
nation,” Johnson said. “However, public education is facing
new challenges that must be addressed. The task force rightly focuses
on our challenges, such as closing the achievement gap, attracting and
retaining quality teachers, early childhood education, and funding schools.
The report is a guide for every state resident to join the debate about
these critical issues.”
The task force report said that repealing the Qualified
Economic Offer law is “a necessary first step to ensure Wisconsin’s
students of tomorrow have the teachers they need.”
According to the report, “If this Task Force
could achieve one goal, it would be to improve the chances that every
Wisconsin student has a quality teacher. Decades of academic studies
confirm what we learn first as students, and then again as parents:
nothing matters more to children’s education than the quality
of their teachers. We can build state-of-the-art classrooms, equip them
with modern computers, buy the best textbooks, and hire the best administrators,
but unless there is a quality teacher leading the class, we have failed
our children.”
Other recommendations include:
- Start-up grants to help school districts begin 4-year-old kindergarten
programs; rewarding districts that adopt community approaches to integrate
child care providers with the 4K programs; and funding the successful
TEACH and REWARD programs to attract and retain highly qualified childcare
teachers.
- Improving the successful Student Achievement Guarantee in Education
(SAGE) small class-size program for kindergarten through third grade
by increasing the current reimbursement rate from $2000 per student
to $2,500 and allowing additional schools to participate in the program.
- A 10-school pilot study in high poverty areas to determine whether
an extended school year would result in improved educational outcomes;
exploring the concept of a residential school for children from homeless
families; and a study of the possibility of using average daily attendance
for all 180 school days as a basis for state aid as an incentive to
increase attendance and reduce truancy.
- Significantly increasing the bilingual-bicultural education categorical
aid appropriation and providing additional funds on a per-pupil basis
to school districts that do not meet the enrollment thresholds to
be required to offer bilingual-bicultural education programs, but
have bilingual-needs children who should be served.
- Creating a new categorical aid program to reimburse costs incurred
for high-need, low-incidence special education students, and also
recommends significantly increasing the special education categorical
aid appropriation to meet more adequately the educational needs of
this population.
- Increasing the state’s transportation categorical aid, which
has not been increased since 1981, so that districts with especially
high transportation costs, including small rural districts, will not
need to cut necessary educational programs just to pay to transport
students to school. The Task Force suggests that funding for the transportation
aid be provided by the state’s Transportation Fund, rather than
the general fund.
- Committing additional funds to categorical aid programs to compensate
districts with large numbers of students with higher-than-average
costs (children with disabilities, economical disadvantaged children,
English language learners, and student with high transportation costs).
- A professional "cost out" study to determine how much
an adequate education costs for a child in Wisconsin. The task force
recommends using the result of the cost out study to set the "low
revenue ceiling" at a more meaningful number, thereby establishing
a voluntary "foundation level" for Wisconsin school children.
- Additional revenue limit relief for schools districts with declines
in enrollment. Further, the Task Force recommends that all school
districts be required to prepare a Master Plan to create a long-term
strategy for how education will be delivered, including how districts
will deal with the educational and functional effects of significant
declines in enrollment, and, as a result, fewer dollars.
WEAC General Counsel Bruce Meredith was a member of the task force.
The report is available online at http://edexcellence.wisconsin.gov/final_report.asp.
Posted July 13, 2004