Posted: Mar. 24, 2009

Despite their stark differences on many educational issues, the two candidates for state superintendent of public instruction agreed Tuesday that not enough has been done in recent years to improve Milwaukee Public Schools.

Tony Evers said he regretted that the state Department of Public Instruction, where he has been deputy superintendent, had not been "aggressive enough" in holding the district more accountable.

"All of us understand there has been underperformance in this district and it's gone on for too long," he said.

But his opponent in the race, Rose Fernandez, accused him of not taking responsibility for what has gone wrong in MPS.

"If you recognize there are things that need to be done, what is taking so long?" she said in a candidates forum held before the Milwaukee Rotary Club.

Evers and Fernandez face off in the race for the state's top education official in the April 7 general election.

While they agree more needs to be done with MPS, the two candidates diverged about what they would do if elected.

Evers touted a corrective action plan being undertaken by the district because of the No Child Left Behind Act and proposed appointing someone to oversee about $130 million in federal stimulus money expected to go to MPS in each of the next two years.

Fernandez has called for a three-year turnaround team to be appointed by the Milwaukee mayor, Milwaukee County executive and state schools superintendent that would oversee hiring and firing in the district and revamp the curriculum.

Choice program

The candidates also sparred over the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program, which spends about $120 million annually to educate low-income students in private schools.

Fernandez charged that the DPI was "unduly influenced" by the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the state's largest teachers union, in its approach to voucher schools.

"These schools are constantly subjected to a death-by-a-thousand-cuts approach," she said.

Evers, on the other hand, said voucher schools had not proven to be a better alternative to public schools in the city and that the program should be held more accountable.

"We have to think twice about whether the program is working," he said.

Perhaps the sharpest questions in the event came from the candidates themselves.

Fernandez asked Evers what the department's two biggest mistakes had been with MPS and to name three school reforms he had favored over WEAC's opposition.

Evers responded that the DPI should have withheld funds from MPS if it didn't start providing a mentor teacher for every new teacher and that it should have acted quicker to address inconsistencies between schools caused by district decentralization. As for school reforms, he said WEAC opposed his support for bringing Teach for America and independent charter schools to MPS as well as a compromise brokered over the state's virtual charter schools.

Evers, in turn, questioned whether parents with children in traditional schools could trust that Fernandez wouldn't pursue a home-schooling agenda in office and asked her to justify her tepid responses on whether to take federal stimulus dollars for education.

Fernandez, a pediatric trauma nurse who home-schooled her children prior to enrolling them in virtual charter schools and a Catholic high school, accused Evers of disparaging home-schoolers with his question. She also said her reservations on whether local districts should take stimulus money were based on whether it would have an impact down the road.

"We don't know how the stimulus funds will work," she said. "The judgments that need to be made about that money are not easy."