Teachers take hard look at issues

The Journal Sentinel staff

In their latest issue, the editors of Rethinking Schools take on school choice, desegregation and decentralization, just to mention a few topics in the homegrown education quarterly.

While it's a lot to tackle for an operation with a staff of four, its readers have come to expect the publication's tough, unapologetic tone that they don't get in the mainstream press or from TV sound bites.

Since its first edition in the fall of 1986, Rethinking Schools has grown from a struggling effort by a small group of teachers who couldn't afford to pay the printer in advance to a must- read for those who want an alternative spin on education issues.

"One of our goals is to continue to push and challenge teachers to teach in better, more effective ways," said Bob Peterson, a fifth-grade teacher at La Escuela Fratney, a Milwaukee Public Schools elementary school. "A big part of that is getting teachers and kids to challenge issues of equity and racism.

"Whether it's our critique of `The Bell Curve' or public school vouchers, those are some of the broader policy issues we deal with," Peterson said.

One of Rethinking Schools' most successful efforts was a magazine-style booklet called Rethinking Columbus, which took a hard look at Christopher Columbus' "discovery" of America and the way it was being taught in schools.

The 96-page booklet, written by Bill Bigelow, a high school teacher in Portland, Ore., explained how his students were taught to question textbook "facts" and become more analytical readers. It has sold more than 200,000 copies.

The booklet also caught the attention of conservatives like George Will, who criticized it in his syndicated Newsweek magazine column. Rethinking Schools editors responded to Will's comments in a letter printed in Newsweek last January.

But the editors of Rethinking Schools were tackling hot topics here at home long before the national press and pundits knew the spunky paper was alive and kicking.

At the time the publication was getting off the ground, Rita Tenorio, who was teaching kindergarten at Morgandale Elementary School, was becoming a regular speaker at local School Board meetings and hearings.

She was able to share some of her frustrations with like- minded teachers like Peterson, but she and a few others wanted to do more.

"As a kindergarten teacher, I was being asked to do by the school district was in direct contradiction to what I had learned as an early childhood educator," said Tenorio, now a program implementer at La Escuela Fratney.

In the first issue of Rethinking Schools, Tenorio wrote a critique of the district's reading curriculum. Like many teachers, Tenorio had grown frustrated with limitations that made it more difficult to experiment with more innovative teaching methods.

"We spent the next two years organizing on that issue," Peterson proudly recalled recently at the paper's offices on E. Keefe Ave. That organizing effort led to the district making drastic changes in its reading program.

While the paper didn't replace the need to take ideas and gripes directly to School Board meetings, Tenorio said Rethinking Schools has been an extension of that forum.

"The paper is a concrete forum," she said. "The word just didn't go away after the public hearings were over."

In addition to its impact on local board policy, a much greater impact can be seen in one of its founding editors, Cynthia Ellwood, now director of education for Milwaukee Public Schools.

When Rethinking Schools first got off the ground, Ellwood was teaching English and bilingual classes at South Division High School.

"It brought together the research policy perspective with the classroom teaching perspective," Ellwood said, reflecting on the impact the publication has had over the years.

"I don't know of anywhere else where that's done to this day."

The publication has never been a knee-jerk reactor to controversial topics in education, its editors say. Editorial meetings can get heated, with editors pushing their points of view until they blend into a consensus.

Just like in the days she was in those meetings, Ellwood said that she doesn't always agree with the position that's taken. But the fact that she and others in the central office regularly read the publication is a testament to its impact on education policy.

"They provide a very thoughtful analysis of education issues," said School Board President Mary Bills, who is often asked about the publication at conferences across the country.

"We should be very proud that this kind of quality exists in Milwaukee, but we shouldn't be surprised."

Copyright 1995
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