Divide Milwaukee Public Schools?

"WEAC's third  proposed reform involves breaking up the Milwaukee Public Schools  (MPS) district into smaller, more manageable components."
Wisconsin Education Association Council website, posted Feb. 9, 2011

WEAC, the state's major  teachers' union,  claims that  "This bold action is designed to drive greater accountability....make the system easier to manage, give students more opportunities and choices....deepen the engagement of parents,....since it will be easier for them to navigate through a smaller district."   Although some of these points are certainly valid  (a smaller entity is easier to manage than a larger one, and  parents would have more input  in a small district),   I  conclude that the  drawbacks of  dividing up MPS  far outweigh these advantages.   Here is why:

Cost:  The WEAC  position paper does not  specify a number of  new districts, but  let us analyse  the plan on the basis of  four districts.   Each would need a superintendent, and of course  every superintendent needs a secretary, maybe  even one or more assistants or deputy superintendents.  Various  educational specialists would be needed, as well as elected school directors.   All of these people must be paid, and   decent office space  would be needed for them.  Even if not one more teacher is hired,  the cost of  running four districts would be  larger than running one, which now costs  $1.3 billion per year. 

Transfers:  Milwaukee families move around a lot within the city, and their children usually change schools when they move.  Even within the current single  MPS  system,  changing schools means adjusting to new teachers.  But  if  a pupil's  move means changing districts,  these adjustments will be more difficult, as each  district may vary in   curriculum, textbooks ,  and rules.

Teachers:  New York City experimented with a similar plan  by establishing three  decentralized  districts in early 1968, each with a local board empowered to hire and  remove  (1) teachers and  principals.  The  mostly-black  board in the Ocean Hill-Brownsville  district of Brooklyn promptly  removed 13 teachers and six administrators, all white, mostly Jewish,  in May of that year.   The dismissed teachers appealed to the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which  struck  NY public schools for a total of  36 days in the Fall of  1968, after which the aggrieved teachers were reinstated.   The entire city became embroiled in  a  bitter racial and religious feud,  which persisted for years.(2)

Although I favor experimenting with new ideas in education,  I also contend that we can learn from the bitter experience of  New York City, and not  repeated a failed experiment here.   The Milwaukee Teachers Education Association, an affiliate of  WEAC,  is also against  this proposal. 

On this question, I say  MTEA is right, and  WEAC is wrong.
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(1)  Teachers  "removed" from  a district school by the local board  were not fired,  but  were told to report to  NYC  Board of Education headquarters in Manhattan for re-assignment.   Even though they were paid while awaiting re-assignment,  the  forced  removal still violated the UFT contract.

(2) Wikipedia.

Taking Carter to Court

A class action suit on behalf of  buyers of  former President Jimmy Carter's  book  Palestine:Peace, Not Apartheid   (hereinafter "The Book")  claims that Carter and his publisher, Simon and Schuster,  deliberately  defrauded the buyers by  including numerous false statements in the book. (1)  The plaintiffs, who  seek  both compensatory and punitive damages,  are represented by the Israel Law Center of Tel Aviv and  Atty.  David Schoen of Montgomery, Alabama.

Since I read The Book at the Chicago Public Library, and would not have paid a nickel for it, I am not eligible to  join the class of  cheated buyers.   I have not been able to get  list of  alleged lies in the book, but  there may be plenty.  Most of the controversial statements in the Book are opinions and conclusions by the author, who contends that Israel wants to "colonize" the West Bank and has not been negotiating in good faith.  However, there may also be provable  false claims  in The Book  as well.   But even so, can the plaintiffs  win this case?  Should they?

First.  does the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which guarantees "freedom of the press"  preclude this type of suit?   The publisher has the unquestioned right to print anything  the firm sees fit to publish, and  this suit does not infringe on that right.  If  The Book were given away free, as  propaganda pamphlets often are,  there would be no basis for the suit at all.  But when a book is offered for sale,  it becomes a  product, like a TV or  box of cereal, and is subject  to consumer protection laws, such as  New York General Business Law 349,  which prohibits deceptive  acts in marketing products. This may be the first time such a law has been invoked against a book or any other form of expression.

For example,  when the publisher of a book about Howard Hughes by Clifford Irving learned that the book falsely claimed to be based on personal  interviews with the subject,  the book was withdrawn and all printed copies were trashed.   Had that book been sold, the publisher could have been sued for false advertising and forced to refund all proceeds of sale received.  (Even in this outrageous case of false advertising, I doubt that punitive damages were warranted, let alone in the Carter case.)

But is Carter's book in the same category?  Unless the plaintiffs' attorneys can convince a jury that Carter and the publisher set out to deceive the buyers, a very steep hill to climb, I  do not believe that  any damages will  be awarded.   First,  the buyers could have easily learned that Jimmy Carter was not an objective scholar on Middle East matters, but an advocate of the Palestinian cause for decades.  Any book by him on this question  would likely be  strongly biased in favor of the Arab side.  Moreover, the   incendiary   word "apartheid" in  the title, which recalls the  "Zionism is Racism" UN resolution of  1975, was a clear signal that the book  would castigate Israel.   I say that the buyers were not cheated;  they got exactly what they paid for.

A verdict in favor of the plaintiffs would have a  "chilling effect"  on the  freedom of the press in this country.   Major corporate publishers would  hesitate to publish any controversial  non-fiction for fear of a lawsuit.   Courts would be placed in the untenable position of determining the truth of   controversial claims about all kinds of  issues such as evolution,  global warming, abortion and so on.   Accordingly, I  contend that even if  the plaintiffs win  in the US District Court,  the verdict will be overturned on appeal.

I was in the position of the plaintiffs myself recently, but reacted differently.  I paid $ .25  for a copy of Betrayal by Robert Morrow at the Menomonee Falls Library used book sale last year.  The cover claimed the book  presented new facts about the JFK  assassination, but when I read it, I  concluded  the book was mainly fiction.  So did I return Betrayal to  the Falls Library and demand my quarter back,  or threaten to sue for  fraud?  No way!  I brought the book to the January 31 book swap at Marquette University and  eschanged it  for a collection  of  old columns by Chicago journalist Mike Royko.   "Let freedom reign!"

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(1) Unterberg et al vs Jimmy Carter et al., (11 ev  0720), filed in the Southern District of New York.