Rickert’s Reporting Gap

Today Chris Rickert had a column criticizing the Madison Metropolitan School Board for taking their eye off the ball of the achievement gap.

First, he starts out with the false assumption that the only way to close the achievement gap was Madison Prep(along with an obligatory shot at MTI).

Two years after a controversial charter school proposal brought Madison’s low-income and minority achievement gap into uncomfortably sharp relief, the problem seems to have again retreated into dirty-little-secret status.

Funding for the Madison School District’s plan to close the gap took its latest hit last week, and recent leadership changes at the district mean it could be a while before administrators feel prepared to give the problem the attention it deserves.

Meanwhile, this summer could have marked the end of the first school year of a bold experiment aimed at closing the gap. Alas, the nonunion Madison Preparatory Academy failed to get the go-ahead from a teachers-union-centric school board, so I guess we’ll never know what it could have done right (or wrong).

Rickert even asked MMSD about new Superintendent Cheatham’s plan to deal with the Achievement Gap and received an answer:

In a statement, district spokeswoman Rachel Strauch-Nelson said a “strategic framework” that new superintendent Jennifer Cheatham will introduce on July 29 “will directly address gaps in student achievement and the work we must do to ensure all students graduate ready for college, career and community.”

So he received word that shortly they will address the Achievement Gap directly and he still wrote his column about there being no urgency to close it? (is there an editor in the house?)

But wait, there is more:

Once the smoke cleared, Nerad’s plan was quietly cut by about half. Budget negotiations for the last school year resulted in another trim to the plan to $49 million, and just last week, Cheatham introduced a budget for next school year that would hold the plan’s funding flat.

More money could be allocated to existing gap efforts — as Cheatham’s proposed tax increase is less than half of what it could legally be — but she said Monday she was reluctant to suggest higher taxes before making sure every taxpayer penny was being spent wisely.

Not that the board, mindful of taxpayer reaction, would go for higher taxes anyway.

Indeed, while the district can rightfully be blamed for letting the gap persist, the gap won’t be eliminated unless the older, whiter people who make up the majority of district taxpayers are willing to accept a little more financial pain in service of the younger, more racially diverse people who make up the district’s student body.

Yes we do need people to accept a little more pain to fully fund our schools, BUT there is a huge unreported information gap in Rickert’s story. An 8,800,000 Gap to be specific.

The Madison School District stands to lose $8.8 million in general state aid this fall — the maximum amount allowed under state law — primarily because spending grew faster than in other districts, according to the Department of Public Instruction.

The reality is that truly closing the achievement gap becomes a bigger problem when the politicians that control the funding are working directly against you. A better last paragraph would have read –

the gap won’t be eliminated unless the older, whiter republicans who make up the majority of our legislature and Our Governor are willing to tell their big private school donors NO in service of the younger, more racially diverse people who make up the state public school’s student body.

However, do not count on that happening (or our state media reporting it).