Parents voice their concerns on the current status of education for Black students at Blacks for Political and Social Action of Dane County’s (BPSADC) annual Parents Summit Nov. 1 at Madison College.
The annual summit brings parents and community members around Dane County to hear from experts in education on how education for Black students is faring. In Wisconsin, the state is continuously plagued with high achievement gaps in schools between its white, Black and other students of color. The summit looks to centralize discussions, hear what community members and parents think about the current state of Black education outcomes and explore potential solutions.
Issues addressed covered the overall Black student population in schools across Dane County, the poor retention rate and ratio of Black teachers to students, prevalent achievement gaps, the culture of Madison not being a place that keeps many Black professionals long term.
“We’re planning to leave with a better understanding of the district, the district’s inner workings. But this is also a call to action, a cry for help,” said Rev. David Hart, president of BPSADC.
Framework for change in schools
The summit proposed an overall framework dubbed F.A.C.E.S. The acronym stands for financial, academic, communication, expectations and study success.
In financial, BPSADC requests that Dane County school districts establish a yearly budgetary line item for achievement support of Black students in proportion to the Black students population of a school and or district.
Richard McGregory, BPSADC education committee chair, likens budgets to what is truly valued.
“When you set your budget, you’re saying, ‘What do you value?’ If your budget underfunds certain groups, but you say value, you have what we call dissonance.,” McGregory said. “You either work to resolve the dissonance — because let’s be honest, we don’t have enough money to do all the things we want to do.”
For academic and study success in the F.A.C.E.S. framework, McGregory went over data on test scores, Black enrollment, reading proficiency, math proficiency and enrollment at school districts in Dane County between 2023-2025.
Data congregated on Black enrollment by McGregory for Dane County school districts compared to Wisconsin as a whole shows declines and increases. Wisconsin’s overall Black enrollment remained stagnant between both years at 8.7%.
At Madison Metropolitan School District, Black enrollment fell from 18.4% in 2023-24 to 18; Middleton increased from 4.6% to 4.9%; Sun Prairie 12.6% to 13.4%; Verona 6.4% to 5.8%; Monona Grove 4.1% to 4.5%; and McFarland 10.1 to 10.5% as Dane County’s largest districts.
One City Schools, the only charter school spoken about at the summit, increased from 60.1% to 67.7%.
For test scores on the Forward Exam, Wisconsin’s standardized test, large gains and losses in reading and math proficiencies have seen shifts over the past two years. McGregory credits shifts towards Act 20’s change to phonics-based reading instruction — but the two have a larger corollary connection.
“Years ago, when I was working in Robinsville, I was working with our data person who reported to me at the time… what she said was very transformational,” McGregory said. “She said, ’Our seventh grade reading is a better predictor of our students’ eighth grade math proficiency than their seventh grade math.’”
In communication for the F.A.C.E.S. framework, BPSADC requests that school districts attend events like its annual Parents Summit and attend quarterly meetings to discuss progress.
Expectations request that Dane County schools should make commitments towards continuous improvement towards working with Black students and families, reducing in-school segregation, increasing the ratio of Black student teachers and improving Climate Study scores of Black students, staff and families.
For Study Success, BPSADC requests that schools should convene with stakeholders interested in studying the success of Black students on standardized exams, in advanced coursework and in co-curricular activities.
(Photo by Omar Waheed)
“The Madison Factor”
Retention of Black professionals, especially in fields like education, is a struggle in Wisconsin. Its inability to keep long-term Black teachers has a direct impact on the success of students.
A study from the Brookings Institution showed that having at least one Black teacher by third grade will make the student 7% more likely to graduate from high school and 13% more likely to enroll in college.
Ratios of Black teachers in Dane County were not fully known, but Dr. Joe Gothard, superintendent at MMSD and panelist at the summit, stated that 4% of MMSD teachers — 111 out of 2254 — are Black.
The issue Dr. Gothard and fellow panelists see is the barriers in Wisconsin to finding a career in education.
“As a kid who grew up right here myself, three times I was denied at UW-Madison as a teacher out of high school. When I kind of failed out of college and came back to Madison to try to get back in, they said no again, and they did not enroll me in help when I tried to apply to get my principal’s license,” Dr. Gothard said.
The issue lies in what One City Schools’ founder Kaleem Caire calls a “cultural issue” and what associate professor at UW-Madison’s school of education Erika Bullock dubbed “The Madison Factor.”
The two, who served as panelists at the summit, said the culture of Madison needs to be addressed to solve the issue with the retention of Black professionals.
“Miss Rogers, our director of instruction, I hear from her all the time, ‘Madison’s got to be a place people want to live,’ and the progressive community here is very good at keeping us out,” Caire said. “Why would they come here and stay in an environment where they can’t be who they are?”
For Bullock, who is educating future educators, she notes a stark lack of diversity within the program at UW-Madison.
“When I’m working with teacher candidates, I’m dealing with people who are from where Madison is the most diverse place they’ve ever seen in their lives,” Bullock said. “They don’t even know that they have a culture. That’s the place where I’m starting from… How do we help them to not only understand their culture, but how their culture affects them in the classroom?”
The panelists, which also included La Tasha Fields, instructor of adult basic education at Madison College, look towards more homegrown solutions.
The group of educators would like to see better pathways through the technical college system for preparatory programs and attract youth to want to go into education and stay in Wisconsin.
Fields said to look at what’s been working to churn out more teachers and capitalize on it. Noted in the discussion was UW-Whitewater.
The university produces the most teachers out of all schools in the UW System schools with a total of 123 degrees awarded in 2023. While the number is still more than all universities in Wisconsin, it strays far from its record total in 2016-17 of 663 teaching licenses awarded.
