(The Center Square) – Add Wisconsin’s largest teachers union to the list of groups opposing Wisconsin’s planned education changes.
The Wisconsin Education Association Council on Tuesday formally opposed the proposal to change how kids in Wisconsin learn reading, as well as the planned increase in funding for choice schools in the state.
“This isn’t a compromise. It’s a betrayal. Wisconsin educators are outraged about the damage the forced retention of third graders based on one standardized test score on one day will do to future generations. Under this bill, students who don’t pass one standardized test are at risk for a lifetime of stigmatism,” WEAC President Peggy Wirtz-Olsen said in a statement about the changes to reading education. “Dedicated teachers who are working tirelessly to help their students are blamed and shamed. Demoralizing educators and punishing students is the last thing struggling students need. This plan is destructive to the entire mission of Wisconsin Public Schools.”
The plan to change how kids are taught reading hyper-focuses on elementary school students, with the goal of making sure kids can read at grade level before they reach the fourth grade. In addition to $50 million in funding, new state-paid-for lesson plans, and new training, the legislation also includes the possibility that some kids will be held-back in third grade if they are not reading well enough.
The union also, unsurprisingly, is opposed to sending more state money to students and families who choose to leave traditional public schools.
““Along with holding back third graders based on one test score, which research shows is harmful to children, proposals circulating call for historic increases in taxpayer funding for private voucher schools. Special education for private voucher school students is reimbursed at 90 percent while public schools would receive only 33 percent reimbursement,” Wirtz-Olsen added. “Wisconsin is sitting on a $7 billion budget surplus and this so-called funding compromise only compromises our students. A child graduating from a public school this month has never seen a state funding increase that has kept up with inflation.”
Wirtz-Olsen and WEAC are asking Gov. Tony Evers to veto the reading changes, the school choice money, and requirements that Milwaukee Public Schools add armed guards or police officers to school buildings when those plans get to his desk.
