Members of the Wisconsin Legislature's Black and Latino Caucus wrote Gov. Scott Walker and legislative leaders recently expressing concern that "outside forces and ideology will dominate this discussion" over the proposed expansion of the Milwaukee voucher program. In particular, the members have called for maintaining the accountability standards governing the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program put in place two years ago as well as maintaining the income limits. Gov. Walker has called for eliminating the income threshold, which currently limits eligibility to those students who come from households at 175 percent of poverty. Not long before the Black and Latino Caucus sent the letter, longtime choice champion Howard Fuller told the Legislature's Joint Finance Committee that he would oppose any program that "essentially provides a subsidy for rich people."

Just as Fuller has done, the legislators recommended aligning the income threshold of the voucher program with the BadgerCare initiative in Wisconsin, which provides health care to state residents who earn less than 300 percent of poverty. "It is common sense that the level of poverty that qualifies a family for healthcare should be the same as that which qualifies a family for the choice program, always intended to be for low-income persons," the legislators wrote.

It's getting harder to find a nuanced conversation about the Midwestern struggle over collective bargaining, but a recent exchange between David Brooks and Gail Collins of The New York Times gets us closer to a more salient level of dialogue.

Brooks does his best to right-size his colleague, who admits she's wandered off "to the land of the insanely angry," but he offers a qualified defense to the Wisconsin governor who started the imbroglio.  "He’s right about the budget issues and the need to restrain pensions," Brooks said, "but he’s done it in such a way as to force everybody into polarized camps."

He then directs readers to the Atlantic's Clive Crook, who identifies a need to trim the supersized influence and power that public-sector unions have exercised over public affairs, but who's dismayed that the debate in Wisconsin has been cast only as a zero-sum game, a "winner-takes-all" affair:

The question for states and cities is not whether "collective bargaining" is a basic undeniable right, but how much union power in the public sector is too much. Progressives talk as though it can never be enough -- or at any rate, that no union privilege, once extended, should ever be withdrawn. Conservative supporters of Walker talk as though public-sector unions have no legitimate role at all. To me, the evidence says that the balance needs redressing.

Of course, our blog addressed perhaps a better way to provide a balance of power: by bringing more, not fewer, voices to the table, at least as it pertains to public education. Either way, Crook is right to address the balance in our discourse as well.

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's consternation over the political power of public-sector unions is certainly understandable, but in the arena of public education we should be careful before we disempower any group. The better option is to bring more, not fewer, voices to the table.

Madison might resurrect its progressive history by allowing parents into a decision-making process that does more than just decide a compensation package for teachers. The thousands of state workers who have descended on the Wisconsin Capitol argue that protecting their ability to bargain for their pay and benefits directly affects student achievement in the classroom. That may or may not be true, but giving parents a legitimate role is one way to make schools more responsive to the needs of families.

This is easier said than done, of course.

Among the more extreme approaches is the kind of parent-trigger law recently exercised in California. Families at McKinley Elementary School in Compton powered their way into a proceeding that has long been the province of school boards and teachers unions. In that case, the Parent Revolution serves as the other union at the table, petitioning for an overhaul so dramatic at the troubled school that a charter operator would take over.

The California Teachers Association is in revolt over the idea, as is the school district, which at one point ordered McKinley parents to take outlandish steps to verify their petitions and now wants to "clean up" the law that empowered them in the first place.

Recent comments from Ben Austin, the Parent Revolution's executive director, have lessons for Wisconsin:

Our theory of change is not to get rid of unions. We're progressive Democrats. But they don't see this as about change. They see it as about power. (more…)