The CEO of @Ford has 5,000 mechanics jobs he can't fill, even at $120G. Says we need trade schools. We have CTE, but that doesn't stand for "Can't Take Exams." You still need to be good at math and reading. New from yours truly for @nypost https://t.co/HfmGVJc8nh

There;s a lot that's troubling about tonight's @milwaukeeMPS committee action on Carmen, but disappointing that @rorylinnane included none of the voices of the Carmen students, parents, or educators who spoke at tonight's hearing in this story

@cfc_mke @DrJillUnderly @WisconsinDPI @MilwaukeeMPS "Just 36% of Black students in MPS are enrolled in schools that met expectations, compared to 74% of Black private school students and 83% of Black students in public charter schools."

@cfc_mke @DrJillUnderly @WisconsinDPI @MilwaukeeMPS "This year, 15% of Milwaukee students—more than 1,300 additional kids—are enrolled in schools that Fail to Meet Expectations. What does that mean in practice? In these one-star schools, just 8% of students are proficient in ELA and 6% in Math."

@cfc_mke @DrJillUnderly @WisconsinDPI @MilwaukeeMPS "...under City Forward Collective’s own School Quality Metric—which adjusts the report card data to mitigate distortions from a broken grading curve—61% of Milwaukee students attend schools that are not meeting expectations."

In today's Corner, I shared @cfc_mke's take on School & District Report Cards. Cutting through the mess @drjillunderly's @wisconsindpi has made, we see progress at MKE public charter & private schools, academic challenges @milwaukeemps, and troubling school quality gaps for

More of this level of coverage! Good, fair piece from @KathrynMerckTV @CBS58, trying to make sense of where things stand after the mess @WisconsinDPI made of state assessments and School/District Report Cards. Look for our take @cfc_mke on the results later this week.

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We’ll be sharing our full take on the MKE Education News & Views blog this week, and stay tuned for some new tools from @cfc_mke to help parents & community stakeholders make sense of the data.

When 1 in 3 MKE schools failing to meet lowered expectations—and 60% of students are in schools below expectations using CFC’s school quality metric, there’s work to do.

That said, these Report Cards remain our best-available snapshot of how all publicly-funded students and schools are doing. And frankly, the picture isn’t great.

We’ve been on record with our concerns: DPI’s changes have lowered expectations, made comparisons more difficult, and buried this important info to make it hard to find and harder to understand. We STILL need honesty, transparency, and accountability for student outcomes.

More to come from us @cfc_mke over the next few days, but I shared our initial thoughts on today’s @WisconsinDPI School & District Report Cards on @620wtmj earlier today.

I don’t think eliminating DPI entirely is viable - we need a state education agency for any number of reasons, esp in the face of the federal retreat from this role. But as with MPS, it does seem that structural & governance reform at DPI at least merits discussion.

During @DrJillUnderly’s tenure, the exercise of unilateral and unaccountable power has been a recurring theme: lowering assessment expectations, delaying notification on MPS’ finances, the handling of these misconduct cases. Criticism on each of these issues has been bipartisan.

4 is trickier — but it’s worth noting that WI is the only state with an elected state superintendent, that’s not accountable either to a Governor or to a State Board of Education. It puts a lot of unilateral power in a single person - without checks & balances.

Great tool - in @cfc_mke's recent polling, affordability topped respondents' concern list. Even (especially!) in K12 edu, we need to advance policy solutions that are responsive to families' concerns. Yet another reason why "more $" isn't the answer to fixing school performance

Fun fact: School districts make up 90% of charter authorizers, but only oversee 48% of charters via @QualityCharters

@WisconsinDPI One small item: its time we stopped using the term "emergency" licenses. More educators are entering the field through alternative pathways - think mid-career switchers or programs like TFA & @cfutmke. In many cases, these are great teachers. Quality matters > credentials.

Even beyond the mishandling of misconduct investigations, @wisconsindpi's licensure processes are broken. WI needs a deep, fundamental overhaul, one that removes bureaucratic obstacles and focuses on what matters for students: safety & effectiveness.