Madison School Superintendent Dan Nerad on Poverty and Enrollment: "For every one student that comes into the MMSD, three leave it"

Kristin Czubkowski, via Jackie Woodruff:

All of the speakers were good, but I will admit I really enjoyed listening to Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Dan Nerad talk on the issue of poverty in our schools.

"Oftentimes, the statement is used as follows: Our children are our future. In reality, we are theirs."

Nerad made one more point I found interesting, which was his explanation for why for every one student that comes into the MMSD, two to three students leave it. While MMSD has been well-recognized for having great schools and students, many of the schools have high concentrations of poverty (17 of 32 elementary schools have more than 50 percent of students on free or reduced lunch programs), which Nerad said can lead to perception issues about how MMSD uses its resources.

"From my perspective, it's a huge issue that we must face as a community -- for every one child coming in, two to three come out right now. I worry that a lot of it is based on this increasing poverty density that we have in our school district ... Oftentimes that's based on a perception of quality, and it's based on a perception based on that oftentimes that we have more kids in need, that we have more kids with more resource needs, and oftentimes people feel that their own children's needs may not be met in that equation."

Recent open enrollment data.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at March 18, 2009 3:20 PM
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