Allie Johnson, via a kind reader’s email:

Mayor Paul Soglin said it is important for school districts to address parental involvement because it is one of the essential ways to create successful education. He explained it is important to engage parents in school and make them feel they have significant say in the education of their child.
“It is not good enough to send a note home in a backpack,” Soglin said. “That is not engagement.”
Soglin also emphasized the importance of getting parents involved in their children’s education early. He cited efforts in other cities to engage parents started with talking to parents before their children are even born.
The community also needs to focus on specific needs of students, according to Soglin. It is a tremendous challenge to learn in schools today, he said. Many households do not have computers, and if that is not recognized, it can impede ability of students to succeed, he said.

Related: Madison’s achievement gap and disastrous reading scores.
Related: Madison school district in disarray by Marc Eisen:

Because he hasn’t, Caire is shunned. The latest instance is the upcoming ED Talks Wisconsin, a progressive-minded education-reform conference sponsored by the UW School of Education, the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, the mayor’s office and other groups. Discussion of “a community-wide K-12 agenda” to address the achievement gap is a featured event. A fine panel has been assembled, including Mayor Paul Soglin, but Caire is conspicuously absent.
How can progressives not bring the Urban League to the table? Agree or disagree with its failed plan for the single-sex Madison Prep charter school, the Urban League has worked the hardest of any community group to bridge the achievement gap. This includes launching a scholars academy, the South Madison Promise Zone, ACT test-taking classes and periodic events honoring young minority students.
But Caire is branded as an apostate because he worked with conservative school-choice funders in Washington, D.C. So in Madison he’s dismissed as a hapless black tool of powerful white plutocrats. Progressives can’t get their head around the idea that the black-empowerment agenda might coincide with a conservative agenda on education, but then clash on a dozen other issues.