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Daniel Bice | No Quarter

School choice advocate George Mitchell blasts ex-lawmaker Annette Polly Williams

After she criticizes Scott Walker's expansion plan, Mitchell calls her racist and irrelevant

A blog post about former Rep. Annette Polly Williams’ criticisms prompted George Mitchell, a longtime school choice advocate, to come out with guns blazing. »Read Full Article

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  1. Mitchell = corporate shill.
  2. Polly Williams is correct.Her work on school vouchers in the '90's was sincere... give (only) low income students a chance to escape poorly performing schools.The voucher movement has since morphed into a middle-class or higher entitlement program to pay for private education while leaving public schools to pay the bills. This is not what Polly had in mind.

    It was not and is not racial... it is economic. Economically disadvantaged students of any race statistically perform at a lower level. Study after study proves this. It was true then it is true now. She is right to criticize the direction it has gone.

    As for the Mitchells, they are despicable in using someones' good intentions for political and personal gain.
  3. Can we really solve poverty without educating our young people?

    We are not looking down the road to say how will charter schools benefit us 30 years from now. The meaning of our education and degrees is being seen under a new light judging by today's standards. Degrees are depreciating in value.

    I am aware of several employers that promote high school skills brush up courses for their employees because they don't consider older diplomas as worthy. I took one of those courses as a challenge feeling it couldn't of been more than fluff. Expected to pass with little effort since I had over 20 years of experience in accounting. Dang I failed on areas I knew backwards and forwards like payroll because I didn't know how modern benefits worked since I retired. That course was diabolic to test strengths of skills along a timeline of evolution of payroll and HR. The instructor pinpointed accurately the time I last worked in payroll based on my knowledge alone without knowing my background. As a professional I was most impressed. The rigors of the testing was very true life to situations you would see managing a large payroll department.

    Learning is a lifetime process. We are fooling ourselves that ending that process with any degree is enough.

    The future of our public schools is in adult education to offer opportunities like skills brush up. Sending the unemployed back to high school I think would be very productive to get them trained on current software, brush up communication skills and get them job ready.

    We are moving from a system of employment where promotion was based on seniority to one that is skill based. In this thinking one never finishes their education. You graduate as they say now only when you retire.
  4. Mitchell is nothing more than a high paid shill for the rich and powerful who are intent on destroying the public schools of Wisconsin. This guy wants the taxpayers to foot the bill for all of the WMC members kids to attend their exculusive private schools--whites only of course. He is 100% wrong attacking Polly Williams.
  5. The Mitchells apparently feel the need to privatize goverment services. They had an integral role in the backroom politics that privatized child protective services in Milwaukee County, the only county in the state privatized.
  6. Many job boards are advertising positions at charter schools all over the country. These are temporary services doing the advertising to hire licensed teachers. Why is teaching staff being outsourced barely a year into some of the states charter school systems?

    Nationwide substitute teachers with temporary agencies are making $60-100 a day which works out to about $7.50 an hour. If you go through a two year college program that can cost upwards of $5000 you too can be a charter school substitute teacher making $7.50 an hour. A school system that spend only $5000 per student, per year on public education would of invested $60K in a high school graduate. Add in another $5000 for their two year substitute teacher degree that is a $65,000 investment.

    On wages of $7.50 an hour the substitute teacher working 10 months a year would be eligible for entitlements including public housing, not likely to pay taxes and likely to receive earned income credit. There is little chance taxpayers would recover their $65,000 investment in the public education of that worker to be work as a substitute teacher. This means the charter schools do not have to compensate their substitute teachers to be able to go out into the free trade marketplace to afford to buy housing, food, transportation or medical care at full price. Their employees are milking off entitlements including unemployment in the shuffle to hire them through temporary agencies that rotate so they get laid off.

    Many charter schools are staffing classrooms for the entire year with substitute teachers. States are issuing more substitute teachers licenses than ever before. Many of these substitute teachers have Bachelors degrees and nothing is being done to qualify them for regular teaching licenses.

    Substitute Teachers Union taught by the pirates of privatization to live for free off the government under the new welfare system. With entitlements my pay is more than a prosecutor and its all free.
  7. As the former Wisconsn Insurance Commissioner, Susan Mitchell's attempt to privatize insurance regulation in Wisconsin was an unmitigated disaster. Even staunch free marketer Alan Greenspan admitted that the financial service industry's failure to police itself was a leading contributor to the most recent financial meltdown.
  8. Exactly why does Mitchell need to come after a 70 plus year old retired legislator? He sounds like he has some continuing and unresolved issues. By the way, did he ever finally get his college degree?



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