Wisconsin State Journal:

A team of Madison students from Hamilton Middle School has won the junior division National African American History Challenge in Atlanta.
Hamilton students Jada Dayne, Nanceny Fanny and Avion Silas competed against 17 other teams from around the country.
Awards include savings bonds and scholarships. The Madison team won the junior championship twice before in 1996 and 2008.

Congratulations!

Alex Griswold:

Middlebury College has canceled a campus speech by conservative Polish Catholic philosopher Ryszard Legutko in response to planned protests by liberal activists.

A professor of philosophy at Jagiellonian University and a member of the European Parliament, Legutko was scheduled to speak Wednesday at the Vermont college’s Alexander Hamilton Forum, delivering a lecture entitled “The Demon in Democracy: Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies.” A member of the anti-Communist Polish resistance during the Cold War, Legutko warns that western democracy is also susceptible to creep towards totalitarianism.

But in the days leading up to the speech, some Middlebury students and professors wrote an open letter demanding the university rescind its sponsorship. The liberal activists took issue with Legutko’s pointed critiques of multiculturalism, feminism, and homosexuality, calling them “homophobic, racist, xenophobic, [and] misogynistic.”

“Inquiry, equity, and agency cannot be fostered in the same space that accepts and even elevates homophobic, xenophobic, misogynistic discourse,” they demand. “Bigotry of any kind should not be considered a form of inquiry.”

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

Project Description: MMSD has provided funding to support coursework in the content and teaching knowledge of middle school teachers of math. Toward that goal, a partnership was formed back in 2010 between the District, the UW-Madison School of Education, the UW- Madison Department of Mathematics, and the University of Wisconsin Extension – Office of Education Outreach and Partnerships. MMSD will continue this for the 2016-17 school year and continue to offer math coursework for teachers to participate. The courses consists of a five course sequence (Number, Ratio, Geometry, Algebra, and Experimentation, Conjecture & Reasoning) with two courses being offered each semester. MMSD will continue to provide some financial support for teachers in each class with priority determined by; 1) middle school teacher working with an existing condition of employment, 2) middle school math teachers, and 3) teachers who began the program in previous years.

NOTE: There is a significant reduction in the estimate of this program from the 2015-2016 school year to the 2016-2017 school year. As a reminder, the change for this program and financial support moving forward was shared with the Board April 2016. The model continues the five course MSMS Program using non-credit courses for teachers currently enrolled in the program. This reduces the annual operating budget to $27,000. In addition, the full-time Math teacher leader’s responsibilities have been repositioned to provide support and professional development for middle school math teachers and for algebra teachers.

Talent management has been working with principals to select best candidates for current and future hiring. Middle school math teachers are now provided with standards aligned curricular resources and job embedded coaching.

Related: Singapore Math, Math Forum, Connected Math, Discovery Math.

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

The University of Wisconsin System is exempt from complying with the requirements of the District’s Contract Compliance Plan.

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

“Inconsistency in grading and academic expectations between the middle schools may contribute to difficulty in transitioning to high school. The differences between the feeder middle schools are significant.”

– MMSD Coursework Review, 2014

A recent tax increase referendum funded the expansion of Madison’s least diverse middle school: Hamilton.

We’ve long spent more than most, now about $18,000 per student annually, despite long term, disastrous reading results.

Worth a deep drive: Madison measures of academic progress (MAP) results….

“I want to live in the Hamilton/Van Hise attendance area.” I’ve heard that statement many times over the years. I wondered how that desire might be reflected in real estate activity.

Tap for a larger view. xlsx version.

Happily, it’s easy to keep up with the market using the Bunbury, First Weber, Restaino or Shorewest apps. For the middle schools, I’ll use the First Weber app iOS Android. Next week, I plan to take a look at elementary schools using the Restaino app. I also hope to dive into property tax variation.

Tap the search link on your iPhone, iPad or Android with the First Weber app installed. You can then interact with the data and properties.

Black Hawk Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.

Cherokee Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.

Hamilton Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.

Jefferson Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.

O’Keeffe Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.

Sennett Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.

Sherman Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.

Toki Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.

Whitehorse Middle School Attendance Area Search. Stats.

Madison’s median household income is $53,933 ($31,659 per capita).

Finally, Madison, via a 2015 referendum, is expanding Hamilton, its least diverse middle school.

** As always, much of the property information beneath these statistics is entered by humans. There may be an occasional mistake… 🙂

Somewhat ironically, Madison has unused capacity in a number of schools, yet a successful Spring, 2015 referendum will spend another $41M+ to expand certain schools, including some of the least diverse such as Hamilton Middle School.

Madison School District (PDF):

Key Findings
1. Most MMSD schools are not over capacity. Six of the 32 elementary schools and one of the 12 middle schools had Third Friday enrollment numbers above their calculated capacities.
2. Thirteen of the 32 elementary schools, two of the 12 middle schools, and one of the five high schools had Third Friday enrollment numbers above the ideal 90% of capacity.

Tap to view a larger version.

Madison School District 4MB PDF:.

Tap to view a larger version.

Related: Madison has long tolerated a very wide range in school diversity:

Tap to view a larger version.

Notes and links on wide variation in school diversity.

Walter Hamilton:

Debbie Rohr lives with her husband and twin teenage sons in a well-tended three-bedroom home in Salinas.

The ranch-style house has a spacious kitchen that looks out on a yard filled with rosebushes. It’s a modest but comfortable house, the type that Rohr, 52, pictured for herself at this stage of life.

She just never imagined that it would be her childhood home, a return to a bedroom where she once hung posters of Olivia Newton-John and curled up with her beloved Mrs. Beasley doll.

Driven by economic necessity — Rohr has been chronically unemployed and her husband lost his job last year — she moved her family back home with her 77-year-old mother.

At a time when the still sluggish economy has sent a flood of jobless young adults back home, older people are quietly moving in with their parents at twice the rate of their younger counterparts.

Wisconsin State Journal

In the fourth year of a program recognizing student achievement, 78 middle schools in the state — including 2 in Madison — earned Exemplary Middle School honors, the DPI announced Wednesday.
Hamilton Middle School and Spring Harbor Middle School in Madison were recognized in the program, sponsored by the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators and the Department of Public Instruction. The Exemplary Middle School program reviewed academic achievement records for 334 eligible schools based on grade-level configuration. Schools earn recognition for high three-year growth in reading or math scores, reading or math scores in the top 10 percent in the past year or high growth in reading or math scores for schools with a high poverty population.

Bill Novak:

ine Madison area middle and high school students have made it to the national finals of a history competition.
The nine are among 60 Wisconsin students to earn their way to the National History Day finals June 9-13 at College Park, Md., according to a news release from the Wisconsin Historical Society.
The students include Ameya Sanyal, Sanjaya Kumar, Anna Stoneman, Kristin Kiley and Lucas Voichick from the EAGLE School in Fitchburg; Manlu Liu, Madeline Brighouse-Glueck and Sara Triggs from West High School; and Eliza Scholl from Hamilton Middle School.

The Madison School District:

The team from West High School won at the Wisconsin Science Olympiad State Tournament on Saturday April 13th at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The team competed against high school teams from across the state. West High performed at a high level, winning many individual medals (8 first place medals) and the overall team championship. West followed up last year’s win with back to back titles. They also won the honor to represent the state of Wisconsin at the national tournament where the top Math and Science high schools will compete for national honors. Hamilton Middle School will also attend the national tournament.

Congratulations.

Madison Superintendent Jane Belmore

Unlike other assessments, MAP measures both student performance and growth through administering the test in both fall and spring. No matter where a student starts, MAP allows us to measure how effective that student’s school environment was in moving that student forward academically.
This fall’s administration serves as a baseline for that fall to spring growth measure. It also serves as an indicator for teachers. As we continue professional development around MAP, we will work to equip schools to use this data at the classroom and individual student level. In other words, at its fullest use, a teacher could look at MAP data and make adjustments for the classroom or individual students based on where that year’s class is in the fall, according to these results.
Meeting growth targets on the fall administration indicates that a student met or exceeded typical growth from Fall 2011 to Fall 2012. Typical growth is based on a student’s grade and prior score; students whose scores are lower relative to their grade level are expected to grow more than students whose scores are higher relative to their grade level.
In Reading, more than 50% of students in every grade met their growth targets from Fall 2011 to Fall 2012. In Mathematics, between 41% and 63% of students at each grade level met their growth targets. The highest growth in Mathematics occurred from fourth to fifth grade (63%) and the lowest growth occurred from fifth to sixth grade (41%).
It is important to note that across student groups, the percent of students making expected growth is relatively consistent. Each student’s growth target is based on his or her performance on previous administrations of MAP. The fact that percent of students making expected growth is consistent across student subgroups indicates that if that trend continues, gaps would close over time. In some cases, a higher percentage of minority students reached their growth targets relative to white students. For example, at the middle school level, 49% of white students met growth targets, but 50% of African American students and 53% of Hispanic students met their growth targets. In addition, English Language Learners, special education students, and students receiving free and reduced lunch grew at similar rates to their peers.
MAP also provides status benchmarks that reflect the new, more rigorous NAEP standards. Meeting status benchmarks indicates that a student would be expected to score “Proficient” or “Advanced” on the next administration of the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE).
That means that even though overall scores haven’t changed dramatically from last year, the percent of students identified as proficient or advanced will look different with these benchmarks. That is not unique for MMSD – schools around the state and nation are seeing this as they also work toward the common core.
While these scores are different than what we have been used to, it is important to remember that higher standards are a good thing for our students, our districts and our community. It means holding ourselves to the standards of an increasingly challenging, fast-paced world and economy. States all around the country, including Wisconsin, are adopting these standards and aligning their work to them.
As we align our work to the common core standards, student achievement will be measured using new, national standards. These are very high standards that will truly prepare our students to be competitive in a fast-paced global economy.
At each grade level, between 32% and 37% of students met status benchmarks in Reading and between 36% and 44% met status benchmarks in Mathematics. Scores were highest for white students, followed by Asian students, students identified as two or more races, Hispanic students, and African-American students. These patterns are consistent across grades and subjects.
Attachment #1 shows the percentage of students meeting status benchmarks and growth targets by grade, subgroup, and grade and subgroup. School- and student-level reports are produced by NWEA and used for internal planning purposes.

Related: 2011-2012 Madison School District MAP Reports (PDF Documents):

• District Summary
• District Growth Summary
• Growth by Ethnicity
• Allis Elementary
• Black hawk Middle School
• Chavez Elementary School
• Cherokee Middle School
• Crestwood Elementary School
• Elvehjem Elementary School
• Emerson Elementary School
• Falk Elementary School
• Glendale Elementary School
• Gompers Elementary School
• Hamilton Middle School
• Hawthorne Elementary School
• Huegel Elementary School
• Jefferson Middle School
• Kennedy Elementary School
• Lake View Elementary School
• Leopold Elementary School
• Mendota Elementary School
• Nuestro Mundo Elementary School
• O’Keeffe Middle School
• Olson Elementary School
• Orchard Ridge Elementary School
• Randall Elementary School
• Sandburg Elementary School
• Schenck Elementary School
• Sennett Middle School
• Sherman Middle School
• Shorewood Elementary School
• Spring Harbor Middle School
• Stephens Elementary School
• Thoreau Elementary School
• Toki Elementary School
• Van Hise Elementary School
• White Horse Middle School
• Wright Middle School

I requested MAP results from suburban Madison Districts and have received Waunakee’s Student Assessment Results (4MB PDF) thus far.

A. David Dahmer:

It’s not just the students who are getting report cards during the 2012-13 school year.
On Monday, Oct. 22, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) issued a School Report Card for every public school in Wisconsin. The new school year has brought new measures on how the MMSD and other districts throughout the state evaluate its progress and makes improvements. Madison superintendent Jane Belmore said the ratings reflect data the district is already using to improve schools.
“There were no really surprises for us because we’ve been working with this data for over a year now,” Belmore tells The Madison Times. “It’s a complex picture – and maybe a better picture than we’ve had before — but we still believe we are on track with the strategies that we’ve developed and have started to put in place with this first year of the achievement gap plan.”
The school report cards, she adds, confirm MMSD’s knowledge about how the schools are doing on increasing student achievement, closing gaps, and preparing students for college or career.
Seven Madison schools — Van Hise, Randall, Shorewood Hills, Marquette, Franklin and Lapham elementary schools and Hamilton Middle School — “significantly exceed expectations” according to the report cards. That’s a designation only 3 percent of schools in the state received.

Matthew DeFour:

Update: One in eight public schools in Wisconsin aren’t meeting expectations set out by the state’s new accountability system, the Department of Public Instruction announced Monday.
Three in four schools are either meeting expectations or exceeding expectations, while about 10 percent of the state’s 2,118 public schools did not receive a rating.
No Madison schools failed to meet expectations, though 10 Madison schools received ratings in the second-lowest “meets few expectations” category. The Madison school with the lowest rating was East High School with a score of 55.6 on a scale of 0 to 100.
Seven Madison schools “significantly exceed expectations,” a designation assigned to only 3 percent of schools in the state. They were Van Hise, Randall, Shorewood Hills, Marquette, Franklin and Lapham elementaries and Hamilton Middle School.
The Department of Public Instruction on Monday released report cards for more than 2,000 public schools in Wisconsin. They can be accessed here.

Matthew DeFour:

That means the district’s property tax levy would increase 3.47 percent, down from the 4.95 percent increase the board approved in June. The tax rate would be $11.71 per $1,000 of assessed value, down from $11.88. For an average $232,024 home, the difference is about $40.
The board could use the remaining $8.1 million on property tax relief, but Belmore is recommending it be used in other ways, including:
$3.7 million held in reserves, in case the state overestimated additional aid.
$1.6 million to buy iPads for use in the classroom, $650,000 to upgrade wireless bandwidth in all schools and $75,000 for an iPad coach.
$1.2 million to account for a projected increase in the district’s contribution to the Wisconsin Retirement System.
About $800,000 geared toward closing achievement gaps including: three security assistants at Black Hawk, O’Keeffe and Hamilton middle schools; an assistant principal at Stephens Elementary, where the district’s Work and Learn alternative program caused parent concerns last year; two teacher leaders to assist with the district’s literacy program; a high school math interventionist; increasing the number of unassigned positions from 13.45 to 18.45 to align with past years; and a new student agricultural program.
$100,000 to fund the chief of staff position for one year.

104K PDF Memo to the Madison School Board regarding redistribution of state tax dollars.
Madison plans to spend $376,200,000 during the 2012-2013 school year or $15,132 for each of its 24,861 students.

Scott Girard:

In addition to accepting donations at the school through the drive, McGuire said the kindergarten classes went around the Van Hise neighborhood and collected donations from homes on Wednesday. They first put up posters on Dec. 1 alerting residents to their planned collection event, filling up 10 wagons between the three classes.

“We’re just so proud of them,” McGuire said. “And we’re just so proud of our community, too, for being so supportive.”

Madison taxpayers recently funded the expansion of our least diverse schools, including Van Hise and nearby Hamilton middle schools. This, despite space in nearby facilities.

Logan Wroge:

As the Madison School District prepares for an overhaul of its high schools, some parents are questioning how fair it is — and whether it’s a violation of district policy — to let the two more-affluent high schools raise potentially tens of millions in donations to bolster referendum-funded renovations.

Parents, alumni, staff and students at Memorial and West high schools have formed capital campaign committees to raise money for extra projects not included in renovation plans being funded by the $317 million facilities referendum voters approved last fall.

But at a board meeting last week, La Follette parents of former, current and future students urged the board to consider what approving donor-funded projects at Memorial and West will mean for the more economically disadvantaged La Follette and East high schools.

Madison recently expanded Hamilton Middle and Van Hise elementary school, our two least diverse organizations.

2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results

Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results

“An emphasis on adult employment”

Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]

Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.

Darrel Burnette II:

Several Massachusetts superintendents are spending more money on schools that enroll mostly wealthy students than they are on schools that educate mostly poor students, even though the state designed its funding formula to do the exact opposite. And some schools are outperforming other schools even though they’re receiving significantly less money.

That’s according to a new report by the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education, which analyzed school-spending data now provided by the state’s department of education under a new ESSA provision.

The data dump comes amid a tense debate at the state capital over how to overhaul the state’s funding formula. Three bills under consideration in the state legislature could provide significantly more money to districts. But the distribution methods and amounts vary widely. All are tangled up in a politically contentious process that’s spurred protests and a lawsuit.

MBAE found that under the current system, districts such as Brockton, Chelmsford and New Bedford, distribute their money between schools in an inconsistent way that often is not targeted toward the state’s neediest students.

“Money isn’t always getting to the students who need it the most,” Edward Lambert Jr., the group’s executive director said in a press release.

Madison recently expanded Hamilton Middle and Van Hise elementary school, our two least diverse organizations.

Chris Rickert:

Some Madison schools will participate next year in a Black Lives Matter event that features a call to “fund counselors, not cops” — despite the School Board’s decision this week to keep police officers in the Madison School District’s four main high schools.

Hamilton Middle School said in an email to community members Thursday that it would participate in Black Lives Matter at School week Feb. 4-8. “Other schools in Madison” are also participating in the event, according to the email.

The BLM at School movement began in 2016, according to the group’s website, and its first “week of action” was in February of this year. In addition to cutting funding for school-based police officers — commonly known as educational, or school, resource officers — the movement’s other three goals are to:

End “zero tolerance” discipline and implement more restorative justice programs.

Hire more black teachers.
Mandate black history and ethnic studies in K-12 curriculum.
Andrew Waity, president of the Madison teachers union, Madison Teachers Inc., said in a Friday email that “MTI members have been interested in participating in this event for a while and first brought it forward last year.”

But that “does not change our existing position of support for Educational Resource Officers in (Madison School District) high schools,” he said. “We believe that it is the responsibility of the district and (the Madison Police Department) to develop a contract that defines the roles and responsibilities of these officers.”

Hamilton is Madison’s least diverse (Madison K-12 statistics) middle school, yet, we recently expanded it.

“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

Henry Grabar:

“Large swaths of our city are exclusively zoned for single-family homes, so unless you have the ability to build a very large home on a very large lot, you can’t live in the neighborhood,” Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey told me this week. Single-family home zoning was devised as a legal way to keep black Americans and other minorities from moving into certain neighborhoods, and it still functions as an effective barrier today. Abolishing restrictive zoning, the mayor said, was part of a general consensus that the city ought to begin to mend the damage wrought in pursuit of segregation. Human diversity—which nearly everyone in this staunchly liberal city would say is a good thing—only goes as far as the housing stock.

It may be as long as a year before Minneapolis zoning regulations and building codes reflect what’s outlined in the 481-page plan, which was crafted by city planners. Still, its passage makes the 422,000-person city, part of the Twin Cities region, one of the rare U.S. metropolises to publicly confront the racist roots of single-family zoning—and try to address the issue.

“A lot of research has been done on the history that’s led us to this point,” said Cam Gordon, a city councilman who represents the Second Ward, which includes the University of Minnesota’s flagship campus. “That history helped people realize that the way the city is set up right now is based on this government-endorsed and sanctioned racist system.” Easing the plan’s path to approval, he said, was the fact that modest single-family homes in appreciating neighborhoods were already making way for McMansions. Why not allow someone to build three units in the same-size building? (Requirements on height, yard space, and permeable surface remain unchanged in those areas.)

Shorewood Hills rejects low income apartments (2010).

Shorewood Hills is part of the Madison School District.

We have long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending far more than most taxpayer supported K-12 School Districts.

Finally, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, one of which supports Shorewood Hills (Hamilton Middle School). 18.8% of Hamilton’s student population are classified as low income, according to the Madison School District – far below the organization’s average.

Ding Jie, Li Rongde, Su Xin and Zhou Simin:

A group of 30 parents staged a protest at the education department of Beijing’s Dongcheng district earlier in May to voice their opposition to a sweeping change to the “school district” policy now being tested by the local government.

Under the change, a school district, usually comprised of several neighborhoods, is no longer tied to one specific school. Instead, students in one school district can choose from a list of schools close to their homes depending on the availability of spaces at each of the schools.

Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools: Hamilton Middle and Van Hise Elementary.

Chris Rickert:

Allis Elementary currently has no active PTO and its fundraising when it did have one last year was “very, very little,” according to interim principal Sara Cutler. Allis’ percentage of economically disadvantaged students last year was 67.9, according to state Department of Public Instruction data, or higher than the district percentage of 46.1. Allis’ non-white population is 77 percent, higher than the district’s 57.1 percent.

The PTO for Huegel Elementary, with an economically disadvantaged population of 41.4 percent, has an annual budget of around $22,000 a year, according to PTO co-treasurer Tony Parisi. The PTO for Schenk Elementary, whose percentage of poor students is 63.5, has an annual budget of about $6,000, according to president Heather Daniels.

The Lowell Community Organization, the PTO-like group for Lowell Elementary, where I’ve had at least one child enrolled since 2009, has a proposed budget this year of about $14,500. Budgets over the past five years have been in the $8,000 to $14,000 range, according to LCO treasurer Kerry Martin. Lowell’s rate of economically disadvantaged students is 37.3 percent.

Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools (Van Hise Elementary and Hamilton Middle), while tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.

Mareesia Nicosia:

They’ve waited every morning since, Gunter told The 74 in a recent interview, until the doors open and staff welcomes them warmly inside, trading handshakes and high-fives as music courses through the halls.

Not long ago, though, there was little enthusiasm from students, their families — and staff, for that matter. The pre-K–5 school is located in North Omaha’s Highlander neighborhood, for decades one of the poorest, most segregated and most violent areas in the city of 440,000.

Roughly 97 percent of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch; about 22 percent are English-language learners, and 29 percent are refugees, higher than the district average in each case, according to 2015–16 data. While students have made gains on state test scores in recent years, the school had long been one of the worst-performing in Omaha, which serves about 52,000 students, and one of the lowest-ranked in Nebraska.

Madison voters recently approved additional tax and spending to expand our least divers schools: Hamilton middle and Van Hise elementary.

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

1. Most MMSD schools are not over capacity. One elementary school and no middle or high schools had a Third Friday enrollment above their calculated capacity as currently configured.

2. Eighteen of the 32 elementary schools, three of the 12 middle schools, and one of the five high schools had a Third Friday enrollment above the ideal 90% of capacity.

A recent tax and spending increase referendum funded the expansion of our least diverse schools: Van His elementary and Hamilton Middle Schools.

Enrollment projections (PDF).

Dave Baskerville (7 April 2016)

Mr. Ed Hughes, Member, MMSD Board 4/7/16

Ed, I finally got around to reading your “Eight Lessons Learned” article in the 3/9/16 edition of CT. Interesting/thanks. As you know from our previous discussions, we have similar thinking on some of the MMSD challenges, not on others. For the sake of further dialogue and to continue your tutorial style (‘learned’, ‘not learned’) without my trying to be either facetious or presumptious., let me comment as follows:

LESSON ONE. “It’s Complicated”. Certainly agree, but not an excuse for catching up with the rest of the First World. Did you learn that? Challenges which you rightly say are ’multiyear and multipronged’ become far more complicated when there is not a clearcut, long term direction for a company or system. It seems that every responsible board of private/public or NGO institutions has that responsibility to the CEO (read Superintendant).

You talk of improvement (kaizen), but “better” for the status quo alone is not enough when we have been falling behind for several generations. What you apparently did not learn is that with our global rankings and radical changes in technology and the future world of work, serious transformation of our system is needed?

LESSON TWO. “No Silver Bullet”. There can be 1~3 long term goals, but agree, 426 WI school districts need to figure out in their own ways how to get there. (And where things are measured, they are more often done. Dare you provide, as 300 HSs around the country and 14 in WI have done, the PISA tests for all of our MSN 15 years olds. $15,000 per HS, and indeed, does that ever prod Supt’s, and citizens to set their goals long term and higher! And execute!)

LESSON THREE. “Schools Are Systems”. Agree with Gawande that “a system-wide approach with new skills, data-based, and the ability to implement at scale” is needed. Look at Mayo Clinic where my wife and I spend too much of our time! As you say, a significant cultural shift is required. But what you did not learn is what he said later: “Transformation must be led at the top”. That means clearly articulating for the CEO, staff and public the long term destination point for rigorous achievement and the quantitative means to measure. You did not learn that it does not mean getting involved in the vast HOW of ‘defining the efforts of everyone’, innovation, implementation and details. A good CEO and her team will handle all of that.

LESSON FOUR. “Progress Requires Broad Buy-in”. True. Yet, are you not as a Board getting way into the nitty gritty issues, while at the same time not having a clear long term goal with a Scorecard that not only educators can comprehend but all of us citizens? You did not learn that much of strategy and most all of tactics is not a Board’s prerogative to dwell in/muck around in. But the responsibility to articulate a few goals and a scorecard to vigorously monitor for the broader public is a critical constituency responsibility for the MMSD and the broader buy-in.

LESSON FIVE. “Buy-in can’t be bought”. Agree, many business values are not relevant in education.. But to me , what was not learned from the Zukerberg:Newark disaster was rather that you cannot transform a poorly performing system by simply pouring many more resources and monies into it and enabling/enhancing the status quo. (Believe now in San Francisco, Zuckerberg has learned that as well.)

LESSON SIX. “No substitute for Leadership”. Certainly. That’s why I give you folks a rough time! But your reference to a balance of ‘the best system’ and’ teacher /staff commitment’ is valid. Very much mutually needed for global achievement. And you certainly should be discussing those with Jen, as she sees fit.. But it’s not primarily your Board responsibilities. Again to repeat, by mucking around too much in those Supt. Management, and tactical areas and completely missing the long term, measurable goals/ direction, you have not learned the most critical Board role as I outlined in Lesson One above. In addition where management meets political or union road blocks to substantial progress towards those goals, boards must often step in.

And I would add in most institutions, charisma does not transfer. Milt McPike was a great leader that I’m sure considerably improved the achievement levels at East HS. But is not the Purgolders back to mediocre? If the MMSD Board would have had a transformed system with very clear long term goals for East with a PISA Scorecard that involved the public, I’m betting Milt’s accomplishments would be being built on. If we lose Jen in the next few years, I fear likewise. (Or better, you really challenge her with some 20 year global targets, get out of the way, and maybe she’ll stay with us that long.)

LESSON SEVEN. “Improvement Takes Time”. Of course. But you have simply not learned a sense of urgency. Finland, South Korea, Japan, Shanghai-China, etc….are not going to just watch and wait for 20 years our MMSD kids to catch up. They are all forthrightly after further improvement. Those countries unlike you MMSD Board Members really believe/expect their kids can be trained with the best in the world. Very high expectations! You look at where investment in the world is made…where in the USA millions of jobs lack needed skilled people….why over 65% of the UW-MSN doctoral/ post doc students in almost all of the critical science, engineering and math courses are non-Americans. You have not learned, ED, that a long term direction AND urgency must go together!

LESSON EIGHT. “Incremental progress is good progress”. Agree, lurching about in goals/system approach is not good. A “sustainable school…and coherent approach guided by a system-wide vision…” is good. But as said above, you’ve not learned that your ‘incremental progress’ is not enough! The MMSD approach essentially does not recognize the global job market our kids will walk into. Does not recognize that 20 years hence 65% of the careers now do not exist. ( So only major achievement/competency in the basics {MATH, Science, Reading} will provide some assurance of good work/salaries/further trainability during their lifetime.) That with todays transformation of technology, STEM and blue collar jobs as well as universties will definitely require those kinds of skills for social mobility and self-sufficiency.

That’s it for now. See you at the Club, give me a call if you wish to discuss further,
And either way, best regards,

Dave Baskerville (608-259-1233) www.stretchtargets.org.

Much more on Ed Hughes, here.

Unfortunately, Madison’s monolithic, $17K+ per student system has long resisted improvement. We, as a community have tolerated disastrous reading results for decades, rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter school and astonishingly, are paying to expand our least diverse schools (Hamilton middle and Van Hise elementary) via a 2015 referendum….

Further reading, from 2005! When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before.

2006! “THEY’RE ALL RICH, WHITE KIDS AND THEY’LL DO JUST FINE” — NOT!

Two of the most popular — and most insidious — myths about academically gifted kids is that “they’re all rich, white kids” and that, no matter what they experience in school, “they’ll do just fine.” Even in our own district, however, the hard data do not support those assertions.
When the District analyzed dropout data for the five-year period between 1995 and 1999, they identified four student profiles. Of interest for the present purpose is the group identified as high achieving. Here are the data from the MMSD Research and Evaluation Report from May, 2000:

Group 1: High Achiever, Short Tenure, Behaved
This group comprises 27% of all dropouts during this five-year period.
Characteristics of this group:

Finally, a few of these topics arose during a recent school board member/candidate (all three ran unopposed this spring) forum. MP3 audio.

Change is hard and our children are paying a price, as Mr. Baskerville notes.

Tap for a larger version (view the complete pdf slide presentation).

I am astonished that the Madison School District’s administration published this chart. Why not publish the change in redistributed state (and federal) tax dollars over time as a percentage of total spending, along with academic outcomes?

This chart displays Madison’s redistributed state tax dollar receipts from 1995 to 2011-2012 (more here and here):

Further, this (PDF) enrollment document is a surprise after the community (small percentage voting) passed a rather large facility expansion referendum in early 2015. These funds include the expansion of Madison’s least diverse school: Hamilton Middle School.

Laua Frazier:

Twenty out of 29 of the district’s K-8s have too few students in the middle grades, making it challenging to offer the same level of programming middle schools can, the district found. The district also has 11 schools that are over-crowded and nine that are under-enrolled.

The district developed performance indicators to show the impact of each proposal. Both would drop the number of over-crowded and under-enrolled schools to one. The percentage of students attending over-crowded schools would decline from 20 percent to 1 percent.

Madison is currently expanding one of its least diverse schools – Hamilton Middle School.

Maggie Ginsberg interviews Brandi Grayson:

Can you give an example of what you’ve described as “intent versus impact?”

The Behavior Education Plan that the [Madison Metropolitan] school district came up with. The impact is effed up, in so many words, and that’s because the voices that are most affected weren’t considered. It’s like standing outside of a situation and then coming in and telling people what they ought to do and should be doing, according to your experience and perspective, which is totally disconnected from the people you’re talking to and talking at. In order to come up with solutions that are effective, they have to come from the people who are living in it. When I first heard about this Behavior Education Plan, I immediately knew that it was going to affect our kids negatively. But people sitting on that board thought it was an amazing idea; we’ll stop suspensions, we’ll stop expulsions, we’ll fix the school-to-prison pipeline, which is all bullcrap, because now what’s happening is the impact; the school is putting all these children with emotional and behavioral issues in the same classroom. And because of the lawsuit with all the parents suing for advanced placement classes and resources not being added, they’ve taken all the introduction classes away. They can’t afford it. So then our students who may need general science or pre-algebra no longer have that. So then they take all these students who aren’t prepared for these classes and throw them in algebra, throw them in biology and all together in the same class. And you know it’s very intentional because if you have a population of two percent Blacks at a school of two thousand and all the Black kids are in the same class, that is not something that happens by random. And then you have kids like my daughter, who is prepared for school and can do well in algebra, but she’s distracted because she’s placed in a class with all these kids with IEP issues who, based on the Behavior Education Plan, cannot be removed from the classroom. So what does that do? It adds to the gap.

Speaking of education, you’ve mentioned the critical need to educate young Black kids on their own history.

Our children don’t know what’s happening to them in school, when they are interacting in these systems. Whether it’s the system of education, the justice system, the human services system, the system within their own families—that’s programming them to think they’re inferior. We have to educate our kids so they know what they’re dealing with. In Western history, we’re only taught that our relevance and our being started with slavery, but we know as we look back that that’s a lie. That we are filled with greatness and magnificence and if our children can connect the link between who they are and where they’ve come, then they can discover where they’re going. But with that disconnection, they feel hopeless. They feel despair. They feel like this is all life has to offer them and it’s their fault and there’s no way out. We have to begin to reprogram that narrative at kindergarten on up. We have to teach our children the importance of reading and knowledge and educating yourself and not depending on the education of the system because it’s already biased, based on the very nature of our culture.

Related: Brandi Grayson.

Talented and gifted lawsuit

English 10

High School Redesign

Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results. This is the core issue, one that has simmered for decades despite Madison spending double the national average per student.

Ironically, the April, 2015 Madison schools tax increase referendum includes a plan to expand two of the least economically diverse schools:

Van Hise Elementary / Hamilton Middle

Problem: With enrollment numbers on the rise, this combination elementary/middle school exceeded capacity in 2013 and 2014. Because the building is designed for a smaller student enrollment, simply adding classroom space is not a solution.

Proposed Solution: Relocating the library to the center of the building and dividing it into elementary and middle school spaces will free up seven classroom-sized spaces currently used for library activities. Est. Cost: $3,151,730 – View Plan Details.

The Madison School District recently published a brief K-12 enrollment history (2010- PDF) along with a look at school capacities (PDF).

Happily, a similar 2009 document is available here (PDF). This document includes 18 years of history, to 1990.

Yet, the District and community have long tolerated wide variation in demographics across the schools.

Tap for a larger version.

I found it interesting that a number of schools are well below capacity. Cherokee middle school is at 74% of capacity while nearby Hamilton is at 106%. Hamilton’s free and reduced lunch population is just 18% while Cherokee’s is 60% (!) Details.

The District is planning to raise property taxes via a spring, 2015 referendum. Said referendum, if passed would expand Hamilton Middle School (“four additional classrooms”), among others. This is quite remarkable with available capacity at nearby Cherokee.

Matthew DeFour

The average score for all districts statewide was 72.1, up from 71.5 last year. That translates to a rating near the top of the “meets expectations” scale.

Madison also improved its overall score, from 68.5 to to 69.8. Its score remained among the bottom third of districts statewide, but moved up, from 11th to eighth, among 15 school districts located in cities. It also moved up one spot among Dane County districts from lowest score to second-lowest, ahead of Belleville.

Waunakee scored highest in Dane County and had the 12th-highest score in the state.

Milwaukee Public Schools once again was the only district that received a “fails to meet expectations” rating.

No schools in Madison received the lowest rating, but eight received the second-lowest . That’s an improvement from 11 last year. Four Madison schools received the highest rating: Franklin, Shorewood Hills and Van Hise elementary schools and Hamilton Middle School. Van Hise had the highest score in Dane County and 13th-highest in the state.

Madison Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham said she was pleased with the results, including that the district’s growth score was above the state average. Growth scores tend to correlate less with student poverty levels than the overall scores.

Related: the oft criticized WKCE.

Molly Beck:

Even though expanding eight schools is only part of the plan, “if there’s any one (school) that looks particularly challenging to explain,” Hughes said, “we know that will be what the opponents of the referendum will latch onto. … We are going to have to be able to work through that and decide whether each of these is separately defensible.”

Hughes added that attendance area boundary changes are tough, but the board might find out that could be a solution for one or two of the schools.

Board vice president Arlene Silveira and board member T.J. Mertz also said that the controversial idea needed to be thoroughly vetted.

“We have to have the discussion about boundaries — we have to show that we looked at it, and what that showed,” said Silveira, who also added that internal transfers at popular schools like Van Hise Elementary and Hamilton Middle School needed to also be examined as a way to relieve crowding.

Board member Mary Burke said making the proposed investment in the eight schools could ultimately save the district the cost of having to build schools, especially if the district sees enrollment gains in the future as schools improve.

Related: Might low income student distribution be addressed? and Effective school maintenance spending?

Logan Wroge:

Zirbel-Donisch said the plan is to have the condoms paid for by outside-partner organizations.

While most four-year University of Wisconsin System colleges offer free condoms, doing so in Wisconsin high schools remains relatively rare.

The state Department of Public Instruction estimated in 2016 that 6.9% of high schools in the state provided free condoms, based on a weighted survey of high school principals.

The decision for the pilot comes after an increase in sexually transmitted infections among youths nationwide, statewide and at West High School.

Rates of sexually transmitted infections in Wisconsin for people between ages 15 and 19 peaked in 2011 and then tapered off before rising each year between 2014 and 2017, according to data from the state Department of Health Services. Nationwide, rates of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis infections among that age group also climbed during the same time frame.

According to information Public Health Madison & Dane County provided the school district, the number of instances of sexually transmitted infections at West High School increased from about 40 in 2015 to more than 90 in 2017.

The district said 60% of West High respondents to the 2018 Dane County Youth Assessment survey — which tracks middle school and high school student behaviors and risks every few years — reported having voluntary sexual intercourse at least once compared with 35% of students from all Dane County high schools.

Out of 305 sexually active West High students who responded to the survey, 21% reported never using a condom as a way to prevent a sexually transmitted infection and 28% said they sometimes use one.

Countywide, 15% of high school students who are sexually active said they never use a condom to prevent a sexually transmitted infection and 29% sometimes use one.

March, 2019 Madison West’s ESSA Accountability Report.

Transcript (via a machine learning app – apologies for errors):

I am currently the reading interventionist teacher at (Madison) West High School.

I’ve been there for 4 years. Previous to that I’ve been in the school district as a regular ed teacher for about 20 years. I started in the early 90s.

I have (a) question I want to ask you guys. What district-wide systems are in place as we use our map data to monitor the reading student achievement?

Student by student, not school by school but also school by school and provide support for the school the teachers and the students that need it.

And especially to help students who score in the bottom percentiles who will need an intervention which is significantly different than differentiation.

I was (a) TAG coordinator (talent and gifted coordinator) for 4 years at Hamilton and I have extensive background with the talent and gifted and differentiation training.

( and teaching of teachers). Now I’m in interventionist and they are significantly different we need interventions to serve the lowest scoring kids that we have.

Here’s my data from this year and this is why I’m here:

Of the 65 students plus or minus it kind of changes this year 24 of them are regular ed students.

Another way to say they don’t have an IEP so there is no excuse for that reading intervention in (that group).

12 of those 24 have been enrolled in Madison School since Pre-K kindergarten or kindergarden. 12 students have been in Madison Schools.

They have High attendance. They have been in the same (you know) feeder school they have not had high mobility. There is no excuse for 12 of my students to be reading at the first second or third grade level and that’s where they’re at and I’m angry and I’m not the only one that’s angry.

The teachers are angry because we are being held accountable for things that we didn’t do at the high school level. Of those 24 students, 21 of them have been enrolled in Madison for four or more years.

Of those 24 students one is Caucasian the rest of them identify as some other ethnic group.

I am tired of the district playing what I called whack-a-mole, (in) another words a problem happens at Cherokee boom we bop it down and we we fix it temporarily and then something at Sherman or something at Toki or something at Faulk and we bop it down and its quiet for awhile but it has not been fixed on a system-wide level and that’s what has to change.

Thank you very much.

– Via a kind reader.

Despite spending much more than most, now nearly $20,000 per student, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Dylan Brogan:

But the transfrmation has been a rocky one and disparities persist. Isthmus collected over 30 hours of interviews with dozens of Madison educators over the past two months. Teachers from three elementary schools, five middle schools and three high schools shared their experiences in the classroom. Most requested anonymity because of fears of retribution and were given pseudonyms.

Some teachers are frustrated by the changes they see: few consequences for disruptive and disrespectful behavior; a lack of trust from administrators; and concern that recent reforms aren’t actually helping kids of color. Others believe their colleagues need to embrace the cultural shift brought by Cheatham’s time as superintendent. They say that white teachers might need to feel uncomfortable in order to purge the schools of systemic racism.

Adding to the tension are several highly publicized incidents centering around race that have sparked renewed outrage over the achievement gap. The cumulative result is that many teachers feel stressed, unsupported and disrespected.

Jim Lister, a science teacher at Hamilton, has taught in the district for 29 years and is retiring in June. He didn’t witness the April 5 incident but says that navigating both the school bureaucracy and the sensitive issue of race can become a quagmire for many teachers.

“What’s new this year is that there’s a feeling of walking around on pins and needles for many teachers. You don’t know how an interaction with a kid is going to go or that the district will support you after the fact. What ends up happening is teachers do nothing,” says Lister. “If a kid says, ‘Fuck you’ to you six or seven times and there are no repercussions — it becomes pretty clear who is in charge.”

“She is more interested in seeming woke than supporting teachers. Downtown [administrators] just want to look a certain way and when they don’t, teachers get blamed,” Leah says. “There’s no recognition that the daily grind is just unmanageable. I suspect we will see another exodus of teachers at the end of this year. That’s at least what I’m hearing.

“Everything is being dumbed down to make the numbers look better. We’re being told that a kid that hasn’t shown up for a majority of classes needs to be given the opportunity to make up work and it’s my fault for not engaging that kid the right way,” says Rebecca, the longtime high school teacher. “So forget that that is asking a lot of teachers, we want to do the work to get students to achieve at a high level. But too often it’s a Band-Aid. We are giving kids Ds who are doing 30 percent of the work.”

Opps, from La Follette, says the scrutiny from administration is making it harder to be an effective teacher. When one of his students is found wandering the hallway he’s asked, “Why aren’t you engaging this kid?”

Related: “The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”.

Related: Superintendent Cheatham’s 2013 Madison Rotary Club speech and, again in 2019.

2013: “Plenty of resources”. Indeed, Madison taxpayers spend far more than most K-12 school Districts, now between $18k – 20k per student.

Jeff Sypeck:

But when you look at the manuscripts, the classroom texts, and the teaching methods of the early Middle Ages, you find habits and practices that I think would warm the hearts of pretty much everybody in this room. You find, for example, an obsessive attention to what today we would refer to as “literacy” and “critical thinking skills.” We find a true love of learning—even more admirably, a love of language, the nuts and bolts of language: how language works, how you put words together, how you put sentences together, how you communicate with other educated people. And you find that underlying all of this is an incredible sense of purpose, a real sense of mission. Thanks to the efforts of the monks of this era, within a generation or two, literacy was spreading, old books were being copied and preserved at unprecedented rates, and new books were being written for educational use.

So there are really a few things to discuss here this morning: What was this educational curriculum and where did it come from? And also, what made it so successful in such an uncertain and illiterate era?

The answers to those questions contain real lessons for those of us who teach writing, composition, and literature, and in the end I think they leave us with further interesting questions to ponder as well.

Hamilton is Madison’s least diverse (Madison K-12 statistics) middle school, yet, we recently expanded it.

“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”

Ni Dandan:

It’s been an exhausting summer for Yu Xi and her son, Fengfeng, but ultimately a successful one. The 6-year-old will start his first year at one of Shanghai’s best public primary schools this month — to the relief of his parents, for whom securing Fengfeng’s seat in the classroom has cost them sleepless nights and millions of yuan. “It’s been driving me crazy,” says Yu.

Like many middle-class parents in China’s big cities, Yu and her husband prepared for this summer years in advance. In 2015, they paid 2.6 million yuan (then around $400,000) for a 30-square-meter apartment in Lujiazui, an area of Shanghai better known for its glitzy waterfront skyscrapers than for its decades-old housing. It was an extortionate fee for a small, dilapidated property; a few streets away, more comfortable apartments sold for much less money. But Yu’s flat boasted one crucial advantage: It was located in the school district where the family hoped to enroll Fengfeng.

China’s middle class is expected to rise from 430 million people today to 780 million people by the mid-2020s. A substantial proportion of them are young, urban families anxious to guarantee a bright future for their children. A good education is key to realizing that dream, but the quality of public education in even the most developed Chinese cities remains highly variable. Consequently, reasonably wealthy parents are spending huge sums of money on xuequfang — school-district homes — in urban areas renowned for educational prowess. Children registered as residents of such homes are more likely to be placed in nearby schools.

Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, which happen to reside among the more expensive real estate in the city.

Alan Borsuk:

The roots of Hood’s story lie in the mountains of Puerto Rico, where, in the 1970s, Hood’s mother, Lydia Torres, saw an ad for bilingual teaching jobs in Milwaukee that paid considerably more than what her family was living on. The family moved to Milwaukee and Hood’s mother taught for MPS for three decades. Roberto Torres, Hood’s father, worked in a factory in Milwaukee and was a member of the 440th Airlift Wing of the Air Force Reserve, then based at Mitchell Field.

Hood was born in Milwaukee in 1980. She excelled in school, learning to read early and skipping first grade. She entered Morse Middle School’s gifted and talented program as a 10-year-old sixth-grader. Her family had high expectations and she saw herself as “an achiever personality.”

But she hit a roadblock. Her grades fell sharply. “I remember feeling very frustrated,” she said. She was insecure, depressed. “I was thinking, man, I thought I was smart. . . . It was super excruciating.”

She made it through middle school and ninth grade at Hamilton High. In the summer after ninth grade, she read a magazine story about a woman with attention deficit disorder who struggled in school. It sounded a lot like her own story. The result: Hood went on medication for ADD and her academic performance rose.

She entered Marquette University at 16. She struggled in college early on, and later saw that she was depressed. But she graduated in 4½ years.

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

Build a new neighborhood elementary school in or near the South Allis attendance area, south of the Beltline, to serve all of the South Allis area and a portion of the Leopold area.

Invite Verona, Oregon, and McFarland to join with MMSD to rationalize the south border to better serve all communities.

—-

Build a new neighborhood elementary school on MMSD’s Sprecher Road site, located east of I-90, for enrollment growth in Kennedy and Elvehjem.

Relocate Nuestro Mundo (314 w/ waiting list) to Allis, a larger, better, district- owned school building. End the lease agreement.

Most Allis Main and Allis East students are closer to Elvehjem, could attend a new south school, or Elvehjem and/or options for Schenk, Glendale, or a possible new Sprecher Road school.

Invite McFarland to work with MMSD to rationalize the border near Yahara Hills to better serve all communities.

—-

Build a new elementary in the Allied Drive area (on the Allied side of Verona Road) with a broader attendance area (or magnet area). Invite Verona to join MMSD in a study of the southern border to better serve all communities.

For new developments on the far west side, plan ahead – purchase land suitable for an elementary school, plan to build a new elementary in 7-10 years depending on actual enrollment growth. MMSD might, depending on actual enrollment growth, require a new middle school in the far west area in 10-15 years.

There was a brief, failed attempt to close Lapham Elementary school in 2007.

Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools, despite nearby underutilized school space.

Madison has long spent more than most taxpayer funded school districts, yet we have tolerated disastrous reading results for decades.

Kate Taylor:

A look at the history of District 3, which stretches along the West Side of Manhattan from 59th to 122nd Street, shows how administrators’ decisions, combined with the choices of parents and the forces of gentrification, have shaped the current state of its schools, which, in one of the most politically liberal parts of a liberal city, remain sharply divided by race and income, and just as sharply divergent in their levels of academic achievement.

In 1984, two years before Ms. Shneyer started kindergarten, less than 8 percent of the district’s 12,321 elementary and middle school students were white. Not a single school was majority white, and the only school where white students made up the biggest group was P.S. 87 on West 78th Street. At the time, many white parents would not even consider their zoned schools. James Mazza, who served as deputy superintendent, and then superintendent of the district, from 1988 to 1997, recalled in an interview that parents would sometimes come into his office carrying a newspaper with the test scores of every school in the district and explain that they didn’t want to go to their zoned school because of its place on the list. Though scores are often used as a shorthand for quality, they correlate closely with the socioeconomic level of the children in a school.

Ms. Ortiz didn’t think having more white or upper-middle-class parents in the school would necessarily improve it, since she thought that they would mostly push for programs that benefited their own children. She said it seemed that Ms. Castellano-Folk already gave parents in the gifted program preferential treatment.

Others expressed positive feelings about the school.

Curiously, Madison recently expanded its least diverse schools (Van Hise/Hamilton)…..

Madison School District Administration (PDF):

At the elementary school level, the percentage of students living in each attendance area who transfer out of their attendance area ranges from a low of less than 1%, at Shorewood, to a high of 25.8%, at Mendota. Elementary schools with the most negative net transfers (net loss of students to internal transfer) are Mendota (-61), Schenk (-59), and Falk (-59). Schools with the highest net transfers (net gain of students to internal transfer) are Glendale (87), Shorewood (52), and Stephens (36). Mendota and Falk had less negative net transfers this year for the second year in a row (Fall 2014-15: Mendota (-106) and Fall 2015-16: Mendota (-88)). Glendale and Stephens had higher net transfers then last year (Fall 2015-16: Glendale (58) and Stephens (31)), while Shorewood had lower net internal transfer (Fall 2015-16: Shorewood (67)).

At the middle school level, the percentage of students living in each attendance area transferring to a different school ranges from a low of 3.4%, at Hamilton, to a high of 19.4%, at Sherman. The middle school with the most negative net transfers is Sherman (-35), Black Hawk (-32), and Cherokee (-31) and the schools with the highest are O’Keeffe (57) and Hamilton (31). The number of net leavers at Cherokee decreased from -56, the most negative during the 2015-16 school year and Hamilton decreased for the second year in a row, from 65 during the 2014-15 school year and 52 during the 2015-16 school year.

At the high school level, the percentage of students living in each attendance area who transfer out of their attendance area ranges from 5.6%, at West, to 8.5%, at Memorial, if we exclude students attending alternative programs. If we include students attending alternative programs as transfer students, then the percentage ranges from 8.6%, at West, to 16.1%, at East. The high school with the most net entering transfers was West (322) and the school with the most net leaving transfers was East (-128). This was similar to the previous school year with West increasing from 293 net incoming transfers and East decreasing from 129 net leaving transfers.

Max Ehrenfreund:

“Race trumps class, at least when it comes to incarceration,” said Darrick Hamilton of the New School, one of the researchers who produced the study.

He and his colleagues, Khaing Zaw and William Darity of Duke University, examined data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, a national study that began in 1979 and followed a group of young people into adulthood and middle age. The participants were asked about their assets and debts, and interviewers also noted their type of residence, including whether they were in a jail or prison.

The researchers grouped participants in the survey by their race and their household wealth as of 1985 and then looked back through the data to see how many people in each group ultimately went to prison. Participants who were briefly locked up between interviews might not be included in their calculations of the share who were eventually incarcerated.

Molly Bloom:

Atlanta school Superintendent Meria Carstarphen’s plan to turn around the struggling school system calls for closing schools that, by Atlanta standards, are succeeding and merge those students with now-failing schools.

The closures will allow her to replace hundreds of teachers, bring in new leaders and save money by closing half-empty schools. District officials says the goal is to improve education for thousands of Atlanta children.

In addition to closing three schools, Carstarphen has also proposed hiring charter school groups to run five low-performing schools.

But her plan doesn’t make sense to some parents.

“Why would you close a school that’s improving?” asked Antonia Mickens, whose daughter attends one of the schools up for closure.

Meanwhile Madison is expanding its least diverse middle school: Hamilton.

Hamilton Nolan:

The 1%-vs-99% inequality dynamic that plagues America’s economy as a whole extends to the world of higher education. And the richest universities in America had a great year last year.

This is not all that surprising, considering the fact that prestigious universities play a key role in the creation and perpetuation of America’s ever-more-entrenched class system. It is only right that those catapulted to great wealth and power by elite universities would give something back, so that their own children might also be able to achieve outsize wealth and power one day. Last year was a record one for donations to colleges: a total of $37.5 billion, up nearly 11% from the year before. Of course, most of that was not going to your local community college. Inside Higher Ed notes that “The top 20 colleges in fund-raising brought in more than $10 billion. That means that 28.6 percent of the total was given to fewer than 2 percent” of schools.

The biggest recipient of all: Harvard, with $1.16 billion in donations. Stanford was second, with about $930 million, followed by USC, Northwestern, and Johns Hopkins. “Meanwhile,” the Wall Street Journal says, “schools in the middle of the pack are getting a smaller slice of the philanthropic pie, as they may not have such active, wealthy or well-connected alums.”

Madison School District 600K PDF:

July 1 Equalization Aid estimate was $4.8 million less than budget. Before any cost cutting, the November 2014 tax levy estimate would change from a 1.99% increase to a 3.86% increase.

However, the November 2014 tax base estimate has also changed from a 0.0% increase to a 3.5% increase. This was based on the City of Madison assessed data released in April 2014

The tax rate, which estimates the tax impact on the average value home, was presented in the Budget Proposal as increasing from $11.86 (per $1,000) to $12.11 (per $1,000) or an estimated $57.88 increase on the property tax bill of an average value home.

The tax rate estimate has been revised to $11.91 (per $1,000), or an estimated $11.55 increase on the property tax bill of an average value home.

Tap for a larger version.

Might Low income student distribution be addressed?

Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage low income population.

Much more on Madison’s 2014-2015 402M budget, here.

Nikole Hannah-Jones:

Though James Dent could watch Central High School’s homecoming parade from the porch of his faded white bungalow, it had been years since he’d bothered. But last fall, Dent’s oldest granddaughter, D’Leisha, was vying for homecoming queen, and he knew she’d be poking up through the sunroof of her mother’s car, hand cupped in a beauty-pageant wave, looking for him.

So, at about 4:30 in the afternoon on October 18, Dent, age 64, made his way off the porch and to the curb along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in the West End of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Soon he could hear the first rumblings of the band.

There was a time, little more than a decade ago, when the Central High School homecoming parade brought out the city. The parade started in the former state capital’s lively downtown and seemed to go on for miles. The horns of one of the state’s largest marching bands, some 150 members strong, would bounce off the antebellum mansions along the streets. Revelers—young and old, black and white, old money and no money—crowded the sidewalks to watch the elaborate floats and cheer a football team feared across the region.

Central was not just a renowned local high school. It was one of the South’s signature integration success stories. In 1979, a federal judge had ordered the merger of the city’s two largely segregated high schools into one. The move was clumsy and unpopular, but its consequences were profound. Within a few years, Central emerged as a powerhouse that snatched up National Merit Scholarships and math-competition victories just as readily as it won trophies in football, track, golf. James Dent’s daughter Melissa graduated from Central in 1988, during its heyday, and went on to become the first in her family to graduate from college.

But on that sunlit day last October, as Dent searched for Melissa’s daughter in the procession coming into view, he saw little to remind him of that era. More caravan than parade, Central’s homecoming pageant consisted of a wobbly group of about 30 band members, some marching children from the nearby black elementary schools, and a dozen or so cars with handwritten signs attached to their sides. The route began in the predominantly black West End and ended a few blocks later, just short of the railroad tracks that divide that community from the rest of the city.

More: Share Six Words on Race & Education.

Related: Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage (18.3%) low income population. Nearby Cherokee Middle School’s low income population exceeds 60%!

Chris Rickert:

One advantage to redrawing the lines is that it could delay the financial hit of having to build a new school. Some school officials are already talking referendum. Plus, with space available in the district, is there really any good reason any student should be forced to attend class in what was formerly a closet, as some at Sandburg Elementary do?
More troubling is the effect crowding could have on low-income students who, statistically at least, struggle academically and might benefit from better learning environments.
According to data collected by the Department of Public Instruction, 48.9 percent of Madison elementary students were considered “economically disadvantaged” last school year. For the five schools over capacity now, that percentage was 48.4.
But two of those schools are more affluent and are expected to see their enrollments drop below 100 percent capacity by 2018-19. Most of the seven schools expected to be over capacity in 2018-19 serve less affluent areas of Madison, and collectively, the seven had a student population that was 57.8 percent economically disadvantaged last year.

Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage low income population.

Molly Beck:

Board member T.J. Mertz said that sometime in the next six or seven months the board will begin a process of seriously looking at facilities issues, including whether to embark upon the contentious fix of changing any of the district’s school boundaries, among other solutions.
“In multiple areas we’re either at or will be very, very soon at or over capacity, and we continue to have schools that are fairly well under capacity,” Mertz said. “There’s going to have to be something done … and I’m of the get-started-with-this-sooner-rather-than-later school.”

Related: We have seen this movie before. 10 Reasons to Combine Lapham & Marquette.
The Myth of Public Schools

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Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage low income population.

Matthew Yglesias:

This disturbing article about a rich neighborhood of Baton Rouge, La., that wants to secede so it won’t have to share school funding with poorer neighborhoods reminds me of one of my great frustrations with the K-12 education policy debate–the terminology of “public schools.”
The way the word is used a school is “public” if it is owned by a government entity and thus part of the public sector. But a public school is by no means a school that’s open to the public in the sense that anyone can go there. Here in the District of Columbia anyone who wants to wander into a public park is free to do so (that’s what makes it public) but to send your kid to a good “public” elementary school in Ward 3 you have to live there. And thanks to exclusionary zoning, in practice if you want to live in Ward 3 you have to be rich. It wouldn’t be legal to respond to the very high price of land in the area by building homes on small lots, or building tall buildings full of small affordable apartments.
Since D.C. doesn’t have Louisiana’s political culture, Ward 3 generally doesn’t have a problem with its tax dollars subsidizing the schools in Wards 5, 7, and 8, but if you proposed randomly assigning students to schools to produce integrated instructional environments, you’d have an epic battle on your hands.

Madison has long supported a wide variation in school demographics. The chart above, created from 2013-2014 Madison School District middle school demographic data, illustrates the present reality, with the largest middle school – near west side Hamilton – also featuring the smallest percentage low income population.

The 3/2/05 CapTimes includes an excellent op ed piece by Ruth Robarts detailing her concerns about creating a large K-5 elementary school. http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/opinion//index.php?ntid=30501

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