Second Semester at MPS Off to a Rough Start; For Each Step Forward, a Leap Back; Fumbles, Fouls Get in Way of Progress at High Schools

By ALAN J. BORSUK

Like a banged-up player starting the second half, the high schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system began a new semester Monday with a couple of fresh plays ready to go and, presumably, a bit of hope that things would go better than they did in a tough first half.

By Wednesday, however, the focus was right back on problems – this time, a fracas and a medical emergency at the end of a basketball game at Bradley Tech that brought police rushing from all over the city – and questions about the whole enterprise of high school in MPS were back in the spotlight:

Is the game plan sound? Or do we have bigger problems than we realized – problems with the plan, with the players, with the coaches, problems in the front office, problems in the whole arena?

The first half of the year was a period that seemed to always go like this:

When Superintendent William Andrekopoulos met with two reporters last week, he said that, sure, there had been problems at high schools, but there were good things, too. Some schools are doing well.

Name some, a reporter asked.

Hamilton was on his list. Just that morning, he had visited the southwest side high school, the largest in MPS, and he liked what he saw.

But literally as the interview was taking place, this happened at Hamilton: Two students finished a final exam and left. Just outside the school, they were attacked by several youths wielding at least one baseball bat, police and MPS officials said. One of the students was left hospitalized and unconscious.

It was hard to get a handle on what was going on with MPS high schools in the first semester. The scene seemed so unsettled and, frequently, unsettling. Even developments aimed at solving problems seemed to spotlight how fast the ground is shifting.

— Madison High School has low achievement and problems with violence? We’re going to phase out the existing program and replace it with a new one by next fall, MPS officials say.

— The future of the Milwaukee High School of the Arts seems uncertain amid financial woes for the school and unrest in the school community? There is productive work going on behind the scenes to deal with this, the response goes.

— Things haven’t gone well at Malcolm X Academy, a high school in the inner city? MPS will close the building and open a similar school with an African-American immersion program in the North Division building – where things haven’t been going very well, either.

— Speaking of North Division, one of the three small high schools there basically imploded. So officials closed it abruptly. The same went for another small high school on the northwest side, which had a total lifespan of less than a month.

— Violence is breaking out? Starting in the second semester, MPS is adding police officers to the daily routine in several schools. On Monday, the district began cracking down on cell phones. It has added a few more security aides. It’s spending more money on mental health interventions with kids.

It’s easy to lose track of the good news – and there is good news within every school. Large numbers of kids go to school every day, a lot of them are good kids and some of them are doing well in school. The system is under stresses of many kinds, but it is still functioning.

But the bumps on the road have been so frequent that you begin to wonder if we’re just driving through a bad patch or if the whole road is getting bumpier.

Violence was clearly one of the unwanted themes of the first semester. An assault on a teacher at Madison High during class; a student attack on the principal of Reagan High, leaving her injured and off duty for weeks; large fights at Bradley Tech and the North Division complex; smaller incidents almost daily across the system.

The problems of a city where there is so much violence and poverty and so many dysfunctional homes seemed to come into schools often and more urgently than ever in the first semester.

Will that be changed by two pairs of police officers working inside MPS schools, one pair at Bradley Tech and one pair in Custer High and nearby schools? Or by a get-tough approach to a ban on cell phones that has been violated flagrantly for years?

Beyond safety issues

The rocky realities for MPS high schools go beyond safety issues. To sit in a high school class and watch students give reports summing up a research project on an environmental issue is to see that the content of student work itself is a serious issue. The reports reflected little enterprise, little understanding and little work – and this was in a school with a better reputation than many.

Andrekopoulos has said in recent months that improvement, where it has come in MPS, has been incremental while what is needed is major gains.

In his 4 1/2 years as superintendent, he has been a determined optimist, and that remains true for his views of high schools. The big and small steps being taken will lead to better results for students, he says.

There have been “outrageous” incidents involving violence this school year, he says, but students remain generally safe and more will be done to improve safety.

“We still have a long way to go in improving teaching and learning at the high school level,” Andrekopoulos said, but there are good plans in place and being launched.

There have been major improvements in the last decade in some indicators for MPS, such as graduation rates – although some suggest graduating has become easier. But the overall ACT college admission test scores for MPS students have gone down in recent years, and the percentage of MPS graduates who need to take remedial classes upon enrolling in the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee is very high – over 70% in some subjects. In November 2005 – the most recent scores available – fewer than 40% of MPS 10th-graders were rated proficient in any of the five areas tested in statewide standardized tests. There has been no major improvement in 10th-grade test scores in recent years.

The 90,000-student MPS system remains the largest single venue for educating children in Wisconsin. It serves a far disproportionate share of Wisconsin’s struggling learners, the low- income and minority children who present such intractable challenges to the education system here, as they do elsewhere in America.

What will it say about the future of the Milwaukee area if things get worse when it comes to how these children are doing as they reach their adult years? What will it say if things get better? What do the contrasting prospects say for our economy a few years from now, for our neighborhoods and the fabric of the community, reaching beyond the city limits?

Those seemed like urgent questions in the first semester of this school year. And any sports fan can tell you that the crucial parts of a game almost always come in the second half.

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