Nope, this isn’t
This is the world of Racine Unified, which makes it the rat hole.
The public policy arm of Racine Area Manufacturers and Commerce, Education Racine, released its 10 year evaluation of the school district, and the picture is as bleak as we have been portraying it.
You can read the report in its entirety here.
The report compares RUSD with
RUSD ranks first in high school dropouts, suspensions and expulsions. It’s last or next-to-last in all WKCE reading and math scores from 3rd through 8th grade. Its high school diploma rate is dead last at 71.3 percent; only
RUSD is in the middle of the pack with revenue per pupil at $10,300, which ranks the district sixth. Think about that. Over $10,000 per pupil and still the district’s 3rd through 8th graders are last or next-to-last in WKCE reading and math scores.
Teachers, you ask? RUSD has among the least experienced teachers in that group yet ranks near the top in terms of compensation. Teachers rank eighth in both experience in RUSD and overall experience but rank fifth in overall compensation, seventh in salary and a stunning third in fringe benefits.
The Racine Post weighs in here:
It is in the student achievement section that the report is most devastating: seven tables compare RUSD students’ reading and math scores to their peers in the nine other districts. In grades 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 10, in both reading and math, with just one exception, we score 10th. Dead last. The single exception: 3rd grade reading, where we come in 9th, ahead of
They quote RUSD’s interim superintendent, Jackson Parker, as saying:
To turn around an urban school district is a major societal effort. The school district is a major player, but we’re talking about social issues: poverty, lack of jobs, dysfunctional family systems and attitudes outside and within the minority population.
Sorry, but that is passing the buck. RUSD says: “Don’t blame us.”
You have poverty because you have a crappy education system. You have a lack of good-paying jobs because of a lack of skilled workers, which results from a crappy education system — in addition to the tax hell, which Unified helps to create. It’s a vicious cycle. Fix the education system and you can begin tackling the other problems.
With a crappy education system and crappy schools,
Parker is correct on the issue of dysfunctional and broken families, a problem which has been created by idealistic but sadly misguided liberal social policies, especially in the area of subsidizing the breakup of the traditional family, encouragement and embracing of alternative families, and the pervasive deterioration of the urban culture, which education simply isn’t considered a critical element to success in life.
Property tax revenue has increased 21.6 percent, while state aid to RUSD has increased 40.2 percent as well. The district isn’t lacking in money,
But when you look at some of the ways in which that money has been spent — promotion of referendum after referendum to exceed the state caps on spending, the endless parade of consultants (cronies of former Superintendent Tom Hicks), lavish conferences, and travel and entertainment expenses. Per pupil expenditures were $10,169 yet only about $6,800 were actually spent on teaching and learning in the classroom. That ranks
Yet the scores still stink. Additional proof that more money does not equal more learning. In other words, the Iceman and Whiz approach to education — “Mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money” — does little else but to make the educrats able to live high off the hog. Maybe it’s what’s actually being taught, or how it’s being taught that’s the problem? Nahhhhhhhhh. Too simplistic. We need more in-service days at Lake Lawn Resort. Party on, dude!
A poorly structured district in terms of administration. What else can explain three large public high schools which not only have a directing principal with his or her own set of assistant principals but also three color-coded sub-schools, each with its own principal and matching set of assistant principals. Not to mention the ubiquitous counselors and support staff. Each school has 12 — that’s 4 times 3, for those of you who graduated from Racine Unified — administrators that are completely unnecessary. Figure each of them is making at the low end $100,000 in straight salary — not even considering those Rolls Royce fringe benefits — and you have $1.2 million in waste minimum at each of the district’s large public high schools.
Of course, RUSD thinks it’s being shortchanged by the state funding formula. Of course, every school district thinks it’s being shortchanged by the formula. If RUSD is being shorted, then some district has to be getting too much, right? Find me a district — any district, anywhere — that says it has enough let along more than enough state aid. You’d sooner find the Rosie O’Donnell line of lingerie in
The Journal Times has follow up here to both the Public Policy Forum study as well as the report which hammered RUSD for its outdated special education program.
Fred at RDW comments here and here. Sarcasm goes a long way toward making a point, as Fred blames the lack of light rail for Unified’s problems.
I also blame the lack of the KRM choo-choo as well.
http://texasholdemblogger.wordpress.com/2007/11/17/down-the-rat-hole/#comment-87709
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