Did Doyle cave on school choice? The deal seems to be a 50% cap increase, some requirement of some form of accreditation and no poison pill on funding (indeed, no change in funding at all). There will apparently be some increase in SAGE funding. The cap increase should be adequate for a while. I haven't got a huge problem regarding some form of accreditation as long as its reasonably flexible. The "fly-by-night" choice schools aren't really helping anyone and gave the opposition unnecessary ammunition.
I guess the increased funding for SAGE will be Doyle's sop to WEAC. Milwaukee taxpayers, I guess, can go and eat cake. I think some adjustment in the funding formula could have been justified (although one could also argue that defections to choice should sting), but its not hard to see who Doyle thinks his real friends are.
The devil is in the details, but I think this is an acceptable outcome.
3 comments:
Clever way of putting it: "the deal seems to be a 50% cap increase."
Using your math, Doyle's initial proposal was for an increase of 20%, while the Republican proposal essentially amounted to allowing for a 560% cap increase. Since the final tally came out to 50%, you tell me who seems to have caved.
Fraley tried to do the same thing by commenting that Doyle "blinked" the most in these negotiations. Why is it so important for conservatives to demonstrate they've won on this point, particularly when it's clear that's not the case...after all, I thought this whole issue was for the kids?
Because my view is that this was never about "accountability." Doyle was insisting on a poison pill and he blinked. Once the issue came down to acceditation, there was no issue.
The issue conservatives focuses on consistently through the course of this debate was ending the enrollment cap--just look at everything from the attack ads by Sykes to the little ribbons some conservative bloggers have pinned on their sites.
Now all of a sudden reducing the demand from 100% to 22.5% is not caving, while letting go of standardized testing demands is caving?
Listen, I don't want to sit here and quibble over who caved more. My whole point in commenting to you and Brian is that neither side should be trying to score political points from this compromise. After all, this type of compromise is how we want our government to work, right?
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