Start over with a clean sheet.
Blaska said it in 2019 when we ran for Madison school board. The district’s Behavior Education Plan — then in its fifth year — wasn’t working. Would they listen? No-OOOO!
Surprise surprise, as Gomer Pyle would say. The Behavior Education Plan (BEP) STILL isn’t working! Its failure is so obvious that even the Madison school board can’t ignore it. When superintendent Joe Gothard, in his second year on the job, says he hears “a lot of staff feedback about the BEP” you can bet that the feed he’s hearing is pretty salty.
The purpose of the BEP was always flawed— fatally flawed. Former superintendent Jennifer Cheatham devised the BEP to do one thing: to eradicate that all-purpose boogey man of the terminally Woke: racial disparity. Guess what! After 12 years, those racial disparities have not budged an inch!
The district’s own figures reveal that where 30.5% of students suspended in the 2021-22 school year were black, that percentage remained steady at 30.0% in 2024-25.
Earlier this year, Blaska Policy Werkes looked at total disciplinary procedures (as reported by the WI Dept. of Public Instruction) — not just suspensions. We found they were MORE prevalent. Either Madison schools are cracking down (👍) or schools are more unruly (👎). Either way, black students were more disproportionately disciplined than ever!
A study conducted by concerned West high school parent Ray Mendez suggests that school, at least, is more unruly. (Ray Mendez for school board!)
Not ‘user friendly’ indeed!
The Capital Times is performing some real journalism on our local schools. Quotes Supt. Gothard to say that Behavior Education Policy is “not very user-friendly” but is instead “heavy handed.”
Same thing teachers were telling candidate Blaska in 2019 on the sly, lest they incur the wrath of the vengeful Cheatham, who left the district to create more Cheathams at Harvard University.
The blueprints to the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona are more transparent than the welter of BEP flow charts and cascading checklists frog-marching the teacher through every disruption.
If discipline policies affect academics (as we believe) one must conclude that the BEP has done nothing for minority race students. English language proficiency (combining merely proficient with advanced) data from the WI Dept. Public Instruction shows no real improvement in black student scores after 10 years; Hispanic students regressed a little.
The definition of crazy
The school board is considering a study group (what else?) to address the failed policy. District bureaucrats propose an equal split between administrators and teachers. That has board member Ali Muldrow playing her over-extended race card. As quoted by the TCT:
“I’m going to be really frank with you all. It would be offensive for this to be a majority white group of people having this conversation.”
She is right to argue for including voices from the community. But we know what kind of community, don’t we? All the usual suspects, given that all seven members of the Board of Education are progressive.
Under-girding the BEP was the indictment of Madison teachers as closet racists. Central office bureaucrats wrested control of the classroom from teachers who had yet to “Do The Work.” Discipline itself came to be stigmatized as a white construct. While they were at it, school board progressives expelled school resource police officers! Never mind that all of them were minorities.
Blaska’s Bottom Line: Ms. Muldrow succumbs to same fallacy that undergirds BEP itself — that race is the denominator, not behavior. If boys account for 58% discipline while accounting for only 49% of enrollment (which they do), does that mean Madison public schools are biased against boys?
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