Many of us who are lifelong educators find clinging to our optimism a difficult challenge.

But two recent pieces may signal hope, a light at the long and dark tunnel of corporate education reform built on false claims and flawed solutions.

While I urge you to read and share widely the two works below, I do so with a caveat: The messages below have been the basis of the arguments voiced by educators for decades—with most of us being marginalized, ignored, or outright attacked.

Nonetheless, please read:

• What if Finland’s great teachers taught in U.S. schools?, Pasi Sahlberg:

In recent years the “no excuses”’ argument has been particularly persistent in the education debate. There are those who argue that poverty is only an excuse not to insist that all schools should reach higher standards. Solution: better teachers. Then there are those who claim that schools and teachers alone cannot overcome the negative impact that poverty causes in many children’s learning in school. Solution: Elevate children out of poverty by other public policies.

For me the latter is right. In the United States today, 23 percent of children live in poor homes. In Finland, the same way to calculate child poverty would show that figure to be almost five times smaller. The United States ranked in the bottom four in the recent United Nations review on child well-being.  Among 29 wealthy countries, the United States landed second from the last in child poverty and held a similarly poor position in “child life satisfaction.” Teachers alone, regardless of how effective they are, will not be able to overcome the challenges that poor children bring with them to schools everyday.

• Wisconsin Budget Policy and Poverty in Education: A study of the impact of school funding on educational opportunity, Scott Wittkopf

12. Policy Recommendations

1. Fair Funding– The Legislature should approve, and the Governor should sign, Dr. Tony Evers’ “Fair Funding” formula into law.91 This would be a first step toward addressing the increasing needs of rural and urban districts most affected by poverty.

2. Address Issues of Poverty and Education– The two greatest challenges to ensuring a prosperous and vibrant Wisconsin for future generations are poverty and education. The Governor should join with nonpartisan, bi-partisan, broad-based constituent groups to appoint a “Blue Ribbon Commission.” The commission would be charged with a one-year mission to develop a statewide plan bringing parents and communities (rural and urban) impacted by poverty together for the purpose of implementing an intervention plan to address poverty and education issues. There are already successful models that address the external poverty issues in communities that have negative effects on education. Achievement gaps are largely attributable to factors outside of school walls. If Wisconsin is to substantially narrow these gaps, education policy must incorporate health and nutrition supports and after-school enrichment to address barriers to learning that are driven by child poverty.

3. Voucher Program Sunset– The twenty-year Milwaukee and Racine private school voucher experiment should be sunsetted by the Legislature in 2024. The voucher experiment can show no positive voucher school effects on student outcomes and attainment, beyond what already can be attributed to the voucher schools’ select student demographic and parental factors. Taxpayers should not be forced to fund a second statewide school district, nor an expensive entitlement program, when the public schools are not failing. It is, in fact, the state of Wisconsin that is failing public schools and the children they serve. Dividing resources between two school districts exacerbates this growing problem in the face of increasing poverty rates.

4. Charter Schools– Charter schools eligible for state aid should be allowed only under the auspices and as an instrumentality of an existing public school district to ensure public accountability in fiscal, academic, staff, and student functions.

5. School Report Cards– School Report Cards issued by DPI should be used as part of the big picture to measure overall school and student performance along with other standards and measures, balancing “input” (educational access, quality, services, resources, etc.) and “output” (student results). It should be acknowledged that use of School Report Cards exclusively for reward, incentive, funding, penalty, or other fiscal consequence is improper and poor public policy.