When WISTAX Reports Misfire: Milwaukee Public Schools

On public education, the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance serves the conservative agenda by creating reports designed to erode confidence in the value and quality of our public education system.

When it comes to education dollars, conservatives see a zero sum game. The higher the commitment to public education in a community, the less willing the community is to invest shared resources into tax loopholes and giveaways to hand-out minded corporations. Given the conservative, pro-corporate historic and continuing board membership of WISTAX, this is hardly surprising and requires even more careful scrutiny of the methods its uses when it “analyzes” Wisconsin’s education system.

This is not the only front on which conservatives are attacking public education. Conservatives have another goal for our education system: transfer public education dollars into the hands of private enterprise. America’s education system is among our greatest resources. Literally, hundreds of millions, even billions, have enjoyed the highest standard of living in history because of the benefits reaped from a quality public education.

Public Education as a Conservative Target of Opportunity

But with so many Americans having benefited from the world’s strongest public education system, the only way to advance the conservative agenda against our public schools is a systematic campaign attacking the quality of education. Why change what’s working, after all?

This is where the “science” of WISTAX serves the conservative agenda. The largest Wisconsin school system is the Milwaukee Public Schools. Milwaukee schools comprise the most students and the most ethnic and socio-economic diversity by far of any district in the state.

Anti-public education zealots and opportunistic profiteers have targeted MPS because of its size and the challenges it faces – owing to the economic and social demographics of its population.

When WISTAX Attacks: Milwaukee Public Schools

The manipulation of data and selective use of statistics by WISTAX to support the conservative agenda for education is fully displayed in the WISTAX December 2008 report in “The Wisconsin Taxpayer” entitled, “Milwaukee Schools in a National Context.”

WISTAX goal in this report is to create the impression that MPS spends its resources poorly, does poorly on standardized tests and the Milwaukee community does not pay its fair share to support MPS.

These conclusions by WISTAX mirror the right wing’s consistent anti-Milwaukee agenda. In attack after attack, conservatives try pull resources from the state’s largest metropolitan area – everything from calls to slash social services to counting prisoners who come from Milwaukee but are housed in rural correction centers as being residents of the municipality in which they are incarcerated, further reducing federal resources and legislative representation for the state’s largest city. Forty-percent of state prisoners, as of 2008, were from Milwaukee, yet these 8,400 prisoners were all considered non-Milwaukee residents when it comes to allocating legislative seats and for the purposes of attained federal resources.

Readers of this WISTAX report on MPS are left with three distinct impressions about Milwaukee Public Schools:

1. Too much is spent on MPS and its employees.
2. Milwaukee is not paying its fair share for MPS.
3. MPS is not teaching its students effectively.

These “conclusions” are by no means hidden to the report’s readers. Even with a cursory reading of the report, one’s eyes are drawn to the bolded, graphed conclusions reinforcing the three above points, so central to eroding confidence in MPS, and by extension, public education investment in Wisconsin.

The WISTAX Menu: Apples and Oranges

One of the ways in which WISTAX makes the case for change, whether on spending or on taxes, is creating the impression that in some way, Wisconsin, and in this case Milwaukee, compares poorly with other states and school districts.

The way WISTAX leads its audience to the conclusion MPS performs poorly requires them to create the impression WISTAX is comparing MPS to other like districts. MPS is not without challenges, but false comparisons do not create or even suggest effective solutions.

But with this report, the curious way WISTAX creates “comparable” school districts is a glaring indication its conclusion was much more important than the reliability of it data.

In its analysis, WISTAX says “To put MPS in a national context, it was compared to 15 other districts nationwide.” WISTAX determined the best indicators to achieve this result were:

• City and school district size
• Household income
• Percent of the population with a college degree

Size Matters. WISTAX says it created this random matrix of comparable districts by using city and school district size. Looking at the sizes of the districts, the cities and their relation to one another, this on the surface does not make any sense, when considering the 16 districts WISTAX concluded were most comparable.

Ranking the size and district size shows the city of Milwaukee is the seventh largest in 2006 city population (602,782) and MPS enrollment for 2005-06 was fourth highest (92,395). The relation between city and enrollment was 15.3 percent. If WISTAX were using relationship between districts and enrollments as a measure, this would also be suspect, as the range between the 16 districts leading to its conclusions about MPS have a relational range of between 34.2 to 4.8 percent.

The Intellectual Poverty of Ignoring Poverty. To create the impression it has assembled a legitimate pool of comparable districts in its MPS report, WISTAX shows its card by a glaring omission: no inclusion of poverty rates for district children.

Educating children living in poverty is more costly than educating more affluent children, because there is a less stable support structure in the child’s life and community that promotes education success. WISTAX chooses to ignore poverty rates and instead includes a miasma of suspect comparisons using statistics for percent of the population over 25 with a college degree and average household income of 35-44 year olds. WISTAX also includes percent of students eligible for free or reduced lunch and percentage of students with individualized education programs.

Why is poverty not included? Using data from the same time period as the WISTAX report finds MPS is actually the nation’s 28th largest school district and has the 12th most children in poverty (39,231). More telling, of the 70 largest school districts in the nation, MPS has the third highest percentage of children in poverty – a staggering 32.5 percent. While a handful of the districts compared to MPS in the WISTAX report may have similar poverty percentages, there are only two with similar poverty populations.

The manipulation of data by WISTAX to create the impression MPS is failing and not worth the investment of public dollars is insidious – particularly when conservatives will use this biased report to argue for the continued extraction of public dollars from the children of MPS. Consider this observation from the International Monetary Fund, no bastion of liberalism, about the continuing cycle of poverty as it relates to education:

The reason is simple: when any child fails to acquire the basic skills needed to function as a productive, responsible member of society, society as a whole — not to mention the individual child — loses. The cost of educating children is far outweighed by the cost of not educating them. Adults who lack basic skills have greater difficulty finding well-paying jobs and escaping poverty. Education for girls has particularly striking social benefits: incomes are higher and maternal and infant mortality rates are lower for educated women, who also have more personal freedom in making choices. [International Monetary Fund, 2004]

Poverty truly distinguishes MPS from almost every other district in the WISTAX set. Among the 16 districts, MPS is third in the number of children in poverty and fifth in the poverty rate. As well, it has the fourth most students.

Given the universally-accepted fact that children living in poverty may require more resources to ensure their education success, if poverty rates were put up front and center, two results would occur:

First, readers of the WISTAX report would make the determination MPS is not like the vast number of districts in the comparison, because it is larger, has more children in poverty and a higher percent of students living in poverty than the other districts – and consequently, the cost of educating those students is higher and MPS faces challenges unlike most of the other districts in measuring the performance of its students.

Second, readers would question how WISTAX came to decide these districts were the most accurate ones to include in a comparison with MPS. Without the ability to compare districts to MPS, the conclusions about MPS spending, staffing, revenue reliance and testing evaporate.

WHAT WISTAX IGNORES

There are a number of other considerations unique to Milwaukee and the state of Wisconsin which are ignored by WISTAX in the MPS report. A full analysis of any of the impact these have on the educating of children of MPS and the incomparable challenges it faces, would warrant full scrutiny – unless, as the evidence shows, WISTAX has pre-determined conclusions that its omission of information and manipulation of data is intended to reach.

Those conclusions consistently reinforce the conservative agenda overwhelmingly supported by the past and present board members of WISTAX. As documented by One Wisconsin Now’s WISTAX Watch, the board members of WISTAX during President Todd Berry’s tenure are central in the conservative movement’s causes, organizations, business interests and fundraising for Republican politicians. More than 90 percent of WISTAX board members’ giving since 1994 has gone to Republican or non-partisan conservative candidates.

Consider these questions WISTAX neither addressed nor included in its analysis of Milwaukee Public Schools:

WISTAX reports the “fringe benefit spending” for MPS was highest in its groups, but conveniently ignores that health care costs both in Wisconsin and Milwaukee, specifically, are repeatedly documented to be among the highest in the country. The third paragraph of the report concludes that MPS is among the highest-spending districts in its small sample, noting its “fringe benefit spending was highest among the districts studied.” Indeed, the benefits paid by MPS were higher, but the WISTAX study conveniently leaves out the disproportionately-high cost for health care in Wisconsin and Milwaukee.

Wisconsin Employers pay over 25 percent more to provide health benefits than the national average. “Employers in Wisconsin pay an estimated 26.5 percent more to provide health benefits than the national average, according to a respected national survey released Monday. The annual survey by Mercer Health & Benefits LLC found that health benefit costs average $9,516 this year for each employee in Wisconsin, compared with $7,523 nationally. That's $1,993 in additional average costs for each employee. The Mercer survey also found that costs in Wisconsin rose this year at a faster rate, 9.3 percent on average, compared with 6.1 percent nationally.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11/21/06]

Previous reports showed Milwaukee area health care premiums were as much as 55 percent higher than the Midwest average in 2000 and 39 percent higher than the Midwest average in 2003. As late as 2007, the cost for health care premiums per employee was almost $1,000 higher than the national average. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11/3/09]

No discussion of Milwaukee being among the most segregated cities in America and any potential impact. If WISTAX truly wanted an accurate data model, the impact of Milwaukee’s determination as among America’s most segregated cities would warrant discussion. Milwaukee’s distinctive segregation was first reported by the U.S. Census, which made the conclusion in the last full census in 2000. African Americans face increased job struggles in the state’s largest city. For instance, the city’s unemployment rate for African American males hit a staggering 57 percent in 2009, the second-highest in the nation, according to a report published by the Employment and Training Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

The impact of one quarter of students in Milwaukee in the school voucher program. Over $100 million is now devoted to the Milwaukee private voucher program. In 1997, pro-private school voucher forces colluded with the campaign of Jon Wilcox to elect him to the state Supreme Court, resulting in the largest fine in Wisconsin election history. After this scheme successfully helped him ascend to the high court, the conservative justice cast the deciding vote to uphold the constitutionality of the system. Since then, Milwaukee has become ground zero in the battle to extract public education dollars to finance for-profit private school ventures with taxpayer money.

The WISTAX study of the supposed inefficiencies in MPS gives intellectual fodder for right-wing politicians and think tanks to push aggressively to give more taxpayer dollars to private, for-profit voucher schools.

FINAL CONSIDERATION: WISTAX IMPACT

Was WISTAX report effective? Read this story from the state’s largest newspaper, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, after the report’s release in February 2009. In it the reporter echoes nearly verbatim the results of the WISTAX manipulated report. The methodology is unquestioned and WISTAX findings are provided an uncontested forum.

Closely following the release of the WISTAX study on MPS, ultra-conservative state legislature Ted Kanavas (R-Brookfield) wrote an editorial for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel in which he advocated the abolishment of MPS altogether, citing “raises in [teacher] salary and benefits” as a major problem with the system and, of course, protecting the private voucher program as an alternative.

Milwaukee Magazine’s Bruce Murphy had a different take on the WISTAX report and asked critical questions about the credibility of the WISTAX analysis as well. Among his thought-provoking points was the overreliance on schools in the South (10 of 15) and lack of schools in the West. WISTAX showed its bias, because Southern schools traditionally spend less on education than other regions, making the higher MPS placement a fait accompli. According to Murphy: “Eliminate the southern districts from the study and Milwaukee’s spending ranks about average for the five districts left.”