After days of lost class time for Wisconsin students, teachers have returned to school. Yet Governor Scott Walker (R) is still faced with the demands of teachers unions who are pushing against reforms that would restructure teacher pension and benefit plans and reform unions’ collective bargaining power. While unions announced over the weekend that they would concede the pension and health benefits piece of the proposal, they continue to demand that their collective bargaining authority remain intact. Some may see this as a good start, yet such action only manifests …
Last week, students in several Wisconsin school districts were unable to attend school when classes were cancelled due to thousands of striking teachers throughout Madison and surrounding districts. While most teachers have returned to their posts today, protests continue in opposition to Governor Scott Walker’s (R) proposal to reform collective bargaining and pay down Wisconsin’s $4 billion deficit. As part of a budget repair bill that has stalled in the Senate, education employees would have to contribute 5.8 percent of their salaries to cover the cost of their pensions and …
MADISON, Wis. — Teachers’ unions and representatives of every liberal interest group in the country may have taken over the streets of Madison for demonstrations, marches and speeches, but inside the Wisconsin governor’s mansion its chief tenant remains calm and resolute. The Badger State’s budget will be balanced, Gov. Scott Walker (R) assured The Heritage Foundation in a one-on-one interview. The stakes in Wisconsin are high not just here, but across America. “I’ve said all along the protesters have every right to be there, but I’m not going to let tens …
MADISON, Wis. — The fight in Wisconsin’s capital is marked by a fundamental disagreement over Gov. Scott Walker’s budget proposal. Protesters claim it’s a blatant assault on labor unions, while the governor’s supporters say it’s about government spending, plain and simple. The Heritage Foundation sent a team to Wisconsin to report on the action. Our video captures the claims of pro-union protesters as well as state Sen. Leah Vukmir, a Republican supporter of Walker’s budget plan. “It’s about rights; it’s not about the money,” protesters called out. Many told us …
A new study published by School Choice Wisconsin finds that students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP)—the largest voucher program in the country with more then 20,000 students—had a graduation rate 18 percent higher than students in Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS). Author John Robert Warren of the University of Minnesota finds that: Overall, had MPS graduation rates equaled those for MPCP students in the classes of 2003 through 2009, the number of MPS graduates would have been about 18 percent higher. That higher rate would have resulted in 3,939 …
As a result of last week’s election, 2011 could be a watershed year for education reform and school choice. Many conservative candidates in the states campaigned on returning to local control in education and expanding school choice options for parents. Several states in particular could see significant movement on the education reform front as new leadership takes the helm in the coming months. In Arizona, incoming superintendent John Huppenthal bested Penny Kotterman, whom the American Federation for Children notes would have worked to roll-back school choice options for Arizona families. …
Head Start, which provides child development services primarily to low-income families and their children, is one of the few popular programs that came out of President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society. But following up on hotline tips alleging fraud and abuse, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) began an undercover investigation of Head Start centers in California, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wisconsin. Heritage Senior Policy Analyst David Muhlhausen details what the GAO found: In eight of the 13 eligibility tests, the fictitious families were told by Head Start staff that …
The budget shortfalls, plunging revenue, and economic woes plaguing near-broke California could foretell the future of other cash-strapped states. A new study by The Pew Center on the States found that the economic pressures that pushed California to the brink of a total economic meltdown are also found in nine other states across the country, all of which could face a financial disaster just like the one in the Golden State. Those states with economic conditions most like California’s include Oregon, Nevada, Arizona, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Florida, New Jersey and …
As states begin to line up for their portion of the Pelosi-Reid-Obama debt plan, many of them aren’t even waiting for the legislation to be passed to prepare the ways they can spend your tax dollars. In Wisconsin, Gov. James E. Doyle went as far as creating an “Office of Recovery and Reinvestment” to “start laying the groundwork for quickly moving the federal stimulus money out the door, to maintain jobs, to create new jobs and to invest in economic growth in the state.” America’s Dairyland turned to livestock and created its …
