What Gov. Scott Walker is about to do to Wisconsin’s public schools

By Valerie Strauss

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker is busy these days, what with preparing to officially join the gaggle of Republican candidates vying for the 2016 GOP Republican nomination and planning to sign a new state budget. What’s in that budget is deep cause for concern for Wisconsin’s public education system, as Bob Peterson, founder of the Rethinking Schools magazine and former president of the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association, explains in this post, which appeared on his Education for Democracy blog and which I am publishing with permission.



By Bob Peterson

Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker is expected to do two things in the next few days: Formally announce his candidacy for for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination and sign Wisconsin’s biennial budget. The first may receive national attention, but it is the second that will disastrously affect Wisconsin if the budget isn’t changed — and that should receive national play.

Buried within the budget are 135 non-budget policy items — a toxic cocktail of attacks on public education, democracy, environmental protections and labor rights.

For Wisconsin’s schools, the budget is a blueprint for abandoning public education. In Milwaukee, in addition to insufficient funding, the budget includes a “takeover” plan that increases privatization and decreases democratic control of the city’s public schools.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2015/07/08/what-gov-scott-walker-is-about-to-do-to-wisconsins-public-schools/