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March 29, 2006
Performance and Achievement meeting of 27-Mar-2006
The March 6, 2006 Performance and Achievement Committee reported the status of the Elementary School Strings program.
The video of the meeting is 71.5MB and 49 minutes long. Click on the image at left to watch the video. The video contains chapter headings which allow quick navigation to each speaker's presentations.
There was a public appearance by Dr. Barbara Schrank, describing her interaction with Julie Palkowski, Coordinator of Fine Arts, and author of the Report that is the subject of this meeting. In her remarks, Dr. Schrank suggested the establishment of a Fine Arts Task Force, modeled after the recent task forces established in other areas.
Dr. Jeffrey Henriques also made a public appearance to reference a recent published study entitled Music and Cognitive Abilities, by E. Glen Schellenberg at the University of Toronto. The study concludes that there is small but statistically significant "long-lasting intellectual benefits that cannot be attributed to obvious confounding variables such as family income and parents’ education" of music lessons given to 6-year old children as measured by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-III IQ test; and for those kids placed in a drama class, there were "increases in adaptive social skills that were larger than those in the other three groups." For other E. Glen Schellenberg reports, link to his website.
The main agenda item for this meeting is a report by Julie Palkowski, Coordinator of Fine Arts for the MMSD, describing the status of the Elementary School Strings program for 4th and 5th graders. The report describes the current schedules, enrollments, fees, expenditures and revenues, the curriculum, and teacher, principal, and parent perceptions of the current program. A copy of this report will be made available on this site for review.
Board questions focused on involvement of low income kids, success benchmarks, and program vision.
Posted by Larry Winkler at 12:09 AM
March 8, 2006
Performance and Achievement Meeting of 06-Mar-2006
The March 6, 2006 Performance and Achievement Committee meeting concerns the funding and accomplishments of the MMSD Summer School program.
The video 
of the meeting is 61.5MB and 42 minutes long. Click on the image at left to watch the video. The video contains chapter headings which allow quick navigation to each speakers presentations.
There was one public presentation by La Follette student Christina Harper ("Cat") who argued for reconsideration of the MMSD "no hats" policy. She also brought petitions signed by approximately 200 other students in support of her position.
The formal presentation to the Board was conducted by Steve Hartley, Director of Alternative Programs, and coordinator of the Summer School programs.
A number of papers were made available: an Executive Summary, the 2005 Summer School Participation Report, English Language Summer School (ELSS) Identification Process paper, and Summer 2006 Summer School Sites, Programs, and Staffing document. These documents are included in this combined PDF file. Thanks to Barb Lehman for sending this document.
Posted by Larry Winkler at 9:31 PM | Comments (0)