The Role of Education In Moving The Milwaukee Economy Forward

An interesting report on Moving The Milwaukee Economy Forward was released in early June by the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WPRI).

I always consider the source of policy reports like this prior to digesting the recommendations. Given WPRI's self-professed status as a "free market" (read: anti-government) think tank and its heavy reliance on Bradley Foundation and Roe Foundation monies, I generally approach its offerings very cautiously. Despite the potential for bias, I honestly find this report to be a balanced and worthy contribution to the public policy discussion in the state of Wisconsin and in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. In addition, I really like the breadth with which it investigates what's needed to strengthen and retool the Milwaukee area economy. (I guess you could call this a backhanded compliment?)

With respect to the report's education-related recommendations, I offer some cheers and jeers:

Cheers: The report includes some excellent (although not always particularly detailed) recommendations on early childhood education, project-based learning, high school graduation and restructuring the senior year of high school.

Jeers: The report falls short in ignoring some critical structural issues that Wisconsin must address in order to improve and reform its education system. These include school finance, including revenue limits, an over-reliance on local property taxes, and the qualified economic offer. In addition, it doesn't sufficiently address the need to raise educator quality in Wisconsin and in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), in particular. That would include a focus on new teacher induction and mentoring, the MPS teacher residency requirement, additional and differentiated compensation and high-quality professional development.

If you're concerned about the economy and/or education in Milwaukee, this report certainly deserves your attention.

U. of California Proposes Sweeping Admissions Changes

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that the University of California System is considering changes to its admissions policies that would "de-emphasize test scores and give the system's nine undergraduate campuses greater flexibility in choosing their freshman classes." The plan was proposed by faculty leaders concerned that an over-emphasis on student test scores disqualifies capable and deserving low-income and minority students from being admitted to UC campuses.

Since the 1960s, California's premier public-university system has promised admission to at least one of its campuses to the top 12.5 percent of the state's high-school graduates, as determined primarily by grades and test scores. Under the faculty plan, the proportion of students who are guaranteed a spot would be reduced to about the top 10 percent. The remaining spots would go to students chosen by individual campuses, which would more closely consider applicants' personal backgrounds.

The changes may not impact top UC campuses -- such as Berkeley and UCLA -- because those schools already employ a comprehensive review of each student's application and they are highly selective institutions.

Mark Yudof, the new president of the UC System, recently arrived from Texas, says that he is "sympathetic on the merits" of the proposal but wants to see more details.

Read more:
Chronicle story
LA Times story
SF Chronicle story

Musical Elective of the Week

The Musical Elective of the Week is Great Big Sea.

Great Big Sea [web site] is a band that hails from Canada -- our neighbor to the north -- specifically, St. John's, Newfoundland. It originally formed in 1993, securing its first album contract in 1995, and just released its ninth studio album, Fortune's Favour, in June 2008.

GBS is probably best described as a folk-rock outfit, but also plays traditional tunes from its Irish, English and French heritage and incorporates many such melodies into its original songs. Band members -- including Alan Doyle, Sean McCann, and Bob Hallett -- also play a variety of instruments, including the guitar, accordion, bagpipes, bodhran, fiddle, mandolin and tin whistle. The band describes its music this way: "Our songs come from the sea and the cliffs and the rocks and all the other natural beauties our country provides. Without her we simply couldn’t exist."

Overall, my favorite Great Big Sea album in 2002's Sea of No Cares. It includes the title track as well as the single "Clearest Indication" as well as a mix of traditional songs such as "Yarmouth Town" and "Own True Way." My other favorite Great Big Sea songs include "Ordinary Day" from 1997's Play (and 1998's U.S.-only Rant and Roar), "Consequence Free" from 1999's Turn, and "Shines Right Through Me" from 2004's Something Beautiful.

GBS is known and has gained a following as much for its raucous live shows as for its catchy singles from its nine studio albums. If you want to catch the wave, check out (with a Canadian pronunciation, please) Great Big Sea's tour schedule. For you local Madison readers, GBS is coming to the Majestic Theatre on September 11th, and for those of you trapped inside the Beltway during the hot DC summer, my sympathies. Get on out to Wolf Trap on August 22nd to see GBS. The rest of you need to do your own homework!

I could really use to lose my Catholic conscience
Cuz I'm getting sick of feeling guilty all the time
I won't abuse it, yeah I've got the best intentions
For a little bit of anarchy but not the hurting kind

--"Consequence Free" from Turn (2000)

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Extra Credit--Past Musical Electives of the Week:

Griffin House
Dave Carter & Tracy Grammer
Neil Finn
Ray LaMontagne
Stuart Stotts
Dan Wilson
Kathleen Edwards

Obama Said What About Education????

Obama is giving a pretty good speech to the NAACP right now, and Liam and I were just sitting here listening and pretty psyched when he finally started talking about education. But no sooner had he begun to outline his plans for educational reforms, then CNN's Campbell Brown cut in and faded him out! As if, ok, education, booooring. She returned a few minutes later, once the education part was done.

ED in '08? Not working folks... not working. And CNN producers along with Campbell "Veep stakes baby...I don't understand the stock market" Brown are officially part of the problem.

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UPDATE: Here's the education-related text from Obama's speech:

And here’s what else we’ll do – we’ll make sure that every child in this country gets a world-class education from the day they’re born until the day they graduate from college. Now, I understand that Senator McCain is going to be coming here in a couple of days and talking about education, and I’m glad to hear it. But the fact is, what he’s offering amounts to little more than the same tired rhetoric about vouchers. Well, I believe we need to move beyond the same debate we’ve been having for the past 30 years when we haven’t gotten anything done. We need to fix and improve our public schools, not throw our hands up and walk away from them. We need to uphold the ideal of public education, but we also need reform.

That’s why I’ve introduced a comprehensive strategy to recruit an army of new quality teachers to our communities – and to pay them more and give them more support. And we’ll invest in early childhood education programs so that our kids don’t begin the race of life behind the starting line and offer a $4,000 tax credit to make college affordable for anyone who wants to go. Because as the NAACP knows better than anyone, the fight for social justice and economic justice begins in the classroom.

Great (Read: Well-Funded) Places to Work

Today the Chronicle of Higher Education released its Great Colleges to Work For report and also the findings from a Michigan survey about family friendly policies in higher education. There is a single clear cross-cutting finding that brings "duh" to mind: The best colleges and universities to work for are those flush institutions which have the funds to do nice things for their professors.

Appearing at the top of nearly every list for the big schools (whether it's best compensation & benefits, best facilities, work-life balance, job satisfaction, or confidence in senior leadership) are wealthy public & privates: Stanford, Emory, U.Michigan-Ann Arbor, Ohio State... Sure, there are several lesser-known schools on the list (among the best small schools for example), and there are plenty of wealthy places not on this list. But on the whole, it's clear that providing faculty with what they need to do their work & enjoy it requires money. Legislature: listen up!!


Now... where are we on this "balance" thing? Ha! Read the report for more....

Here is where we need to go, now:

1. PAID time off for new biological mothers during AND after the pregnancy.
2. PAID time off for new biological fathers.
3. Stop the tenure clock for new mothers and new fathers, and grant ADDITIONAL extensions for the biological mother (who therefore experiences a pregnancy) and the nursing mother (which in itself is a medical event).
4. Grant UNPAID leave to care for children beyond the 12 weeks (!) allowed by FMLA.
5. Allow for negotiated reduced appointments for parents with child care responsibilities (need not be extraordinary!)
6. Provide for a period of modified duties (e.g. reduced teaching), for example for 1 year, for new parents.


Where should the $$ come from? The report has many good ideas, but most importantly moves beyond simply drawing down the professor's sick leave , vacation leave, and disability benefits. There should be special university AND departmental funds for this purpose. It is absolutely appalling that many schools continue to treat pregnancy and childbirth as any other disability AND simultaneously exert special requirements on moms taking time off (e.g. forcing them to "pay back" their time off, making up teaching later for example) but not imposing those requirements on others taking disability leave (e.g. because of a heart attack).

I could go on and on, and perhaps since I am going through this personally on a daily basis, I'm not in the best position to make policy recommendations. Plus, I have this incredibly supportive husband who's decided to prioritize my career and our family... we should all be so lucky!

Have a good day, folks.

It Doesn't Add Up

Every couple of months it seems a new (inter)national report is released bemoaning the performance of American students in mathematics or recommending improvements. But what is clear from today's Washington Post editorial on John McCain's voodoo economics is that math lessons didn't always 'take' for past generations of students either. McCain - a self-professed economics neophyte - either doesn't know that 2+2=4 or refuses to acknowledge it. I'm not sure which is worse.

Unsure and Underpaid: No Surprises Here

TIAA-CREF just released a study about early career professors, focusing on those in tenure-track positions. The goal was to learn more about how they assessed their graduate school training and their confidence in their ability to do their current work. The study also covered several other important topics, including the extent to which assistant professors must rely on outside sources of income to make ends meet.

The study finds that the majority of new faculty feel unprepared to do their job, with women reporting lower levels of confidence in their abilities than men. Furthermore most faculty are working for pay outside of their institution, earning between $6-15K per year to supplement their approx $50K 9-month base salaries.

Let me just say : No surprises here! When I landed this very sweet job at Wisconsin, having just graduated from the highly-regarded sociology program at U. Pennsylvania, I arrived and immediately felt as incompetent as I've ever felt in my life. On a daily (hourly) basis I found myself thinking (saying), "I have NO idea how to do this. I can't do this. I'm terrible at this. I'm going to get fired..." I felt bad for my first class of graduate students, most of whom could tell (as their later evaluations revealed) that I hadn't a clue how to teach. In fact, it was my first class ever, since I spent my time at Penn wisely building the research portfolio that enabled me to get a job at a great school like Wisconsin. I never TA'd, and most certainly never taught a summer course-- I've still never taught in the summer actually-- since I was socialized to understand the importance of grant-writing and publishing, relative to those other potential activities.

As for doing non-University work, I've been doing that since grad school too. How was I to survive on $13K per year in Philadelphia, if I insisted on being able to enjoy a good meal once in awhile, and to live alone, rather than with a roommate, so I could get some work done? Certainly some might rightly consider my priorities there a tad off, but the point isn't whether they were right or wrong, but that they led me to seek consulting. When I started consulting I was a third-year grad students (with an MA), and earned about $600-800/day. By the time I graduated I was working for 3 different organizations, and had a couple of dissertation fellowships, bringing my annual income up to approximately $30K. This made for a very hectic, but decent life.

It's very, very hard to consult while doing the work required of an assistant professor, but as my 9 month salary is only $57K, I absolutely have to. Before having a child, maybe it was more or less optional, but now with my annual childcare bill running around $15K, it's a necessity. Since I began here I've done somewhere between $5-15K of consulting a year, and most of the time those gigs are directly related to my academic work, get me good outside connections in the policy world, and will (eventually) result in some peer-reviewed pubs.

I say all this to put more specifics and a face on the survey statistics TIAA-CREF collected. I could envision some positive ways universities could work to minimize outside consulting without having to officially increase our salaries-- for example, by awarding us a cut of the indirect costs associated with our grants, or allowing internal grants to be used to cover childcare, or by providing a childcare stipend or quality on-campus childcare with enough spaces available for faculty kids... In the absence of that-- and perhaps even in the presence of it, since many consult because they enjoy it, and not because they need the money for childcare-- outside work will go on.

Now, lest I leave you with the impression that I dislike my gig here, a few parting thoughts. If I had it to do over again, I say with 99% certainty that I'd still choose a faculty career. And I haven't even enjoyed tenure yet. I'm not alone -- 92% of those in the TIAA-CREF survey said the same, even though more than one third report that the workload is heavier than they expected. According to the survey, we love our jobs because we enjoy teaching, working on campus, and serving society and we like the challenge the job presents. We stay in spite of a workload we find too heavy, pay that is too low, and the knowledge that work often takes priority over the rest of our lives, leading our family and friends to criticize us, we don't see them as often, and we work even when we're sick. Barely one fourth of us feel that we have time to read for pleasure or keep up with the news, and only slightly more find the time to exercise. Yet we stay, and we want to stay. Odd ducks, aren't we?