Milwaukee Public School System

Charter Operators Face Challenges in 'Scaling Up'

The pace at which the highest-performing charter-management organizations are “scaling up” is being determined largely by how rapidly they can develop and hire strong leaders and acquire physical space, and by the level of support they receive for growth from city or state policies, say leaders from some charter organizations viewed by advocates as successful.

From the 1999-2000 to 2008-09 school years, the number of students enrolled in charter schools more than tripled, from 340,000 to 1.4 million, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. The proportion of all public schools that are charter schools more than doubled, from 2 percent to 5 percent, during that same period, but that growth has not been uniform across the country.

To explore what might be obstacles to growth for successful charter operators, Education Week interviewed leaders of five of the seven charter-management organizations, or CMOs, in the NewSchools Venture Fund’s portfolio that the fund sees as producing...

Racial History of Milwaukee from 1963 to today | Milwaukee ...

We begin our Journey on the Road of Race through the events, which transpired in Milwaukee using 1963 as a reference point. Three significant events transpired that year which should have allowed us to clearly identify those dark elements in our culture that held racial, ethnic and class harmony hostage and identify new strategies to propelled our city forward toward new heights of economic opportunity, educational achievement and human understanding. The single three most important events in setting the stage for the struggles of an urban complex in trouble must start with the national backdrop of those 1963 events of: 1) an estimated 200,000 people join the March on Washington where Martin Luther King delivered his famous I Have A Dream speech; 2) NAACP field secretary, 37-year-old Medgar Evers, is murdered outside his home in Jackson Mississippi and 3) Four young black girls attending Sunday school are killed when a bomb explodes at the Sixteenth Street Baptist Church, a popular location for civil rights meetings in Birmingham Alabama. In 1963 Milwaukee Alderwoman Vel Phillips, who was Milwaukee’s first black alderman, 1956-1971, complained about a local Dark Side of government that allowed absentee landlords to make a profit in the district she represented serving on the Common Council. The Alderwoman of Color complained that these slumlords were allowed to get by with little or no maintenance. The City health commissioner concurred that major violations in the area included garbage and rubbish nuisances, insufficient rat proofing and defective heating units. Fortunately, progress on the national scene at the Warren Supreme Court and the Congressional Levels led by Presidents Kennedy and Johnson overshadowed those local forces trying to hold our urban areas back. On the national level during the 1960s, Civil Rights progressed from 1964 passage of 24th Amendment abolishes the poll tax; President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Congress passes the Voting Rights Act of 1965, making it easier for Southern blacks to register to vote. As late as 1979, 15 large Milwaukee manufacturing companies reported that two-thirds of their black employees held low-paying, unskilled and semi-skilled jobs, compared to only 29% of their white counterparts. People of Color were winding up on the statistical short side of the emerging Gap Analyses, as pervasive racial discrimination appeared to persist throughout the city.

Milwaukee public school system, desegregation costs, 1976-1979

The Milwaukee public school system, a brief history and description

Big-city politics, governance, and fiscal constraints

Black Enterprise

The death and life of the great American school system, how testing and choice are undermining education