A Dairyland Sentinel perspectives column by George Mitchell
Kudos to Journal Sentinel education reporter Kayla Huynh. Her February 2 story (Milwaukee Public Schools switches literacy curriculum midyear, costing $7.9M) pulls back the curtain on an issue with adverse consequences on a par with the decades-long forced busing desegregation plan.
For background, here is former MPS board member Terry Falk, in a November 2025 post at Urban Milwaukee (emphasis added): “Frustration boiled over at an MPS school board committee meeting on November 13 [when] Superintendent Brenda Cassellius acknowledged that the district has only one individual fully trained in the science of reading: Academic Superintendent Gabriela Bell Jiménez, recruited from Madison schools.”
Let that sink in: “…[O]nly one individual trained in the science of reading.”
Huynh’s reporting explores the extent of the problem. It helps explain low literacy rates that have plagued MPS for decades. She wrote: “Officials at [MPS] are overhauling the district’s literacy curriculum midyear in an effort to better align with state requirements. District leaders have scrambled…In December, the [MPS] board approved spending more than $7.9 million to purchase the updated literacy materials, according to board documents.
“It’s rare for school districts to switch their curriculums in the middle of the school year, said Karen Vaites, a literacy advocate who reviews curriculums nationally. But Gabriela Bell Jiménez, the district’s academic superintendent for literacy, said the change was necessary to ensure literacy instruction is fully tailored to the ‘science of reading,’ a collection of research on how children best learn to read and write.”
Got that? The only MPS official “fully trained in the science of reading” says it’s time to “to ensure literacy instruction is fully tailored to…how children best learn to read and write.” That is, it’s time to do what arguably is the district’s most important job.
Huynh reports, emphasis again added, that the $7.9 million expenditure comes only five years after MPS “entered an eight-year, $12 million contract with publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to adopt literacy curriculum…[D]istrict leaders this fall learned the materials…were incompatible with the state’s standards for science of reading instruction…”
There’s more. Per Huynh: “Prior to purchasing new [curricular] resources, [MPS] had attempted to create its own materials and reconstruct the existing curriculum to more accurately reflect the science of reading. The process frustrated some teachers who said they received frequent changes in guidance throughout the year, with little time to adapt.
“…[F]ourth grade teacher Amanda McIlhone said the literacy plan seemed ‘disjointed, incoherent and frankly insulting…’ In one week, she said, the district changed its guidance on the lessons 27 times.
“‘It [felt] less like a plan and more like a collection of ideas taped together the night before,” [McIlhone] said. ‘This is not thoughtful implementation. This is building the airplane while we are already flying, and it’s on fire.’”
In a time-tested MPS approach, the district seeks to somehow put a positive spin on addressing what amounts to a decades-long failure. Boasts Bell Jiménez: ”We are excited about the ways in which we are supporting classroom teachers in service of our students.”
All this matters, of course, because as teacher McIlhone states: “The people paying the price are our students.” She uses the present tense, but of course this has affected generations of students dissolved by progressive, “whole language” reading curricula.
Huynh details the numbers: “Nearly 75% of MPS students in third through eighth grade failed to reach proficiency in English language arts on last school year’s Forward Exam. About the same percentage scored below expectations on the reading portion of the statewide standardized test.
“Among the district’s youngest students, over 51% of 4-year-old kindergarten through third graders tested below the 25th percentile nationally on early literacy assessments last school year, according to the Department of Public Instruction…”
The Milwaukee Public Schools is a failed system that nevertheless is treated as too big to fail. Its bloated budget is approaching $2 billion. Despite a massive boost from a referendum deceitfully presented to voters, the new superintendent suggests it’s not enough.
What to do? Top-down “fixes” from Madison and the Department of Public Instruction are futile. Accountability to parents is what matters. More than half of MPS students already use non-MPS options created in the 1990s. What’s needed is to give more parents more ability to find better options:
- All parents should be eligible for the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (as they already are for charters and public Open Enrollment schools).
- Barriers in the Open Enrollment program need to be removed.
- Operational funding of choice and charter schools should be increased.
- Choice and charter schools should have access to capital finance tools now available only to MPS
Previously, by George Mitchell
