Schools and community: Inseparable



Schools in metro Milwaukee must adapt to a knowledge-based economy, which is demanding that they perform better than they ever have. Their mission requires hard work, creativity and fiscal reforms.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

At one time, men and women could get ahead in life without much by way of a formal education. Now, a high school diploma, and the learning it implies, is a prerequisite for success.
Schools must better adapt to their more demanding mission. They must continue to change their orientation from adults to children and to search for new ways to reach the kids they are not now reaching. They must also engage the community.
The state must help solve the fiscal crisis that grips many school districts. The community must recognize that all schools – public and private, secular and religious – serve an important public purpose. And other institutions must do their duty with respect to children; for instance, families must raise children right, and businesses must give them hope by spreading around jobs.




Reports On School Crimes Are Rare



Daniel de Vise:

The recent announcement that Montgomery County school officials were starting work on an annual report of crimes committed by students and other disciplinary incidents underscored a surprising fact: In this era of heightened concern about school safety, few Washington area school systems regularly report such offenses to the public.
The annual School Safety Report, slated for publication in Montgomery starting in the 2008-09 academic year, will place the county almost alone among Maryland and Northern Virginia school systems in reporting detailed school crime statistics to the public, according to education leaders and lawmakers. In much of this region, as in much of the nation, comprehensive reports on weapons, drugs and sex in individual public schools simply don’t exist.
Among the area’s largest school systems, only Fairfax County reports school crime data online, as part of its searchable database of school report cards. One other county, Anne Arundel, publishes a hard-copy student discipline report with annual crime data for individual schools. School systems in Montgomery, Prince George’s, Howard, Loudoun and Prince William counties publish no such document.
“It’s all theoretically available to the public but rather difficult to obtain,” said Montgomery County Council member Phil Andrews (D-Gaithersburg-Rockville), who has pushed for annual school crime reporting.




Madison Country Day’s Upper School Adds International Baccalaureate Program (IB) Beginning in Fall, 2008



Madison Country Day School Letter to local parents: [550K PDF]. MCDS web site, more on their IB program. Their letter to parents begins:

Dear Parents,
Open up the newspaper and it’s hard to miss what is happening in our local schools. In the effort to leave no one behind, many of our most talented students are finding themselves ignored. It used to be a simple decision where to send your talented son or daughter to school. Not any more .
Madison County Day School proposes a unique alternative for the greater Dane County community. Upon our accreditation to become an International Baccalaureate (IB) World School, we will offer in the fall of 2008 the IB Diploma Programme to our Upper School junior and senior classes.




Vang Pao Elementary: Rewriting the Past



Marc Eisen:

In the 1970s, Dmitri Yurasov was a precocious Moscow schoolboy obsessed with Russian history. He began reading the imposing 16-volume Soviet Historical Encyclopedia, which put the official Communist Party stamp to the glorious advances of the Lenin and Stalin years.
Only when Yurasov came across the odd description of a dead scholar as “illegally repressed and rehabilitated after his death” did he get his first inkling that Stalin had jailed and murdered millions in the Great Terror of the 1930s.
As a budding scholar, Yurasov later secured a job working in the Soviet archives and surreptiously burrowed deep into the secret records to begin recapturing the Soviet Union’s suppressed history.

Vikki Kratz:

Ying Vang was just a small boy when Gen. Vang Pao sent a helicopter to rescue his family from the jungles of Laos. He remembers his parents putting their fingers to their lips and saying “Shhh” because North Vietnamese soldiers were nearby. The women and children ran to the helicopter, which airlifted them to safety. Ying Vang’s father stayed behind with the rest of the men to fight.
A couple of years later, Vang Pao came to visit Ying Vang’s school. Despite the chaos, the Hmong general had ordered schools to be built in remote locations of the Laotian jungle. Now he was coming to personally deliver supplies. Ying Vang was in second grade and remembers Vang Pao handing each student a case of paper, pencils and textbooks.




A Comparison of Two Ohio School District’s Spending: Urban Dayton and Suburban Lakota



Lakota is about the same size, but spends $23.5 million less on special ed than Dayton, where 1 in 5 receive aid.

Scott Elliott:

For one private duty nurse at Gorman Elementary School, the school day begins not at the schoolhouse door but at her student’s home, where she dresses and feeds a severely handicapped child. Then she rides the bus with him to school.
The student’s class has a teacher and two teaching aides for six students, in addition to the private nurse and two school nurses on duty. All of this, by law, is paid by Dayton Public Schools. For more several severely handicapped students, Dayton spends more than $50,000 a year.
Half an hour down the Interstate 75 toward Cincinnati, Lakota is a sprawling school district in a fast-growing suburb that last year passed Dayton to become the seventh-largest school district in Ohio. But although Lakota is similar in size to Dayton, its students — and the district’s responsibilities because of them — are completely different.
Where Dayton has 20 percent of kids in special education, Lakota has 9 percent. And by one Ohio Department of Education poverty measure, 65 percent of Dayton’s students qualify as poor, while just 8 percent do in Lakota.

Elliott also compared administrative spending.




MMSD / MTI Contract Negotiations Begin: Health Care Changes Proposed



Susan Troller:

The district and Madison Teachers Inc. exchanged initial proposals Wednesday to begin negotiations on a new two-year contract that will run through June 30, 2009. The current one expires June 30.
“Frankly, I was shocked and appalled by the school district’s initial proposal because it was replete with take-backs in teachers’ rights as well as the economic offer,” John Matthews, executive director of MTI, said in an interview Thursday.
But Bob Butler, a staff attorney with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards who is part of the district’s bargaining team, said he believed the district’s proposal was fair and flexible.
He said the administration’s proposal on health care provides two new HMO plans that could bring savings to the district and new options to employees, while still providing an option for the more expensive Wisconsin Physicians Service plan for employees who want it.
The district is proposing that teachers accept language that would allow two new HMO insurance plans, provided by Dean Care and Physicians Plus, to be added to the two plans currently offered.
Slightly more than 53 percent of the employees represented by the teachers’ bargaining unit use the less expensive Group Health Cooperative plan, which is a health maintenance organization, or HMO. The district’s costs for the GHC plan for next year are $364.82 per month for singles and $974.08 for families. Employees who opt for the GHC do not pay a percentage of the premium themselves but are responsible for co-pays for drugs that range from $6 to $30.
If about the same number of district employees — 1,224 — use the GHC plan next year, it would cost the district about $11.6 million.
The other option currently available to teachers is provided by Wisconsin Physicians Service. A preferred provider organization plan, it provides health insurance to just under 47 percent of the district’s teacher unit.
A more flexible plan that allows participants to go to different doctors for different medical specialties, the WPS plan next year will cost the district $747.78 per month for singles and $1,961.13 for families. Under the current contract, employees pay 10 percent of the cost of the WPS plan, which this year is $65.65 per month for singles, and $172.18 per month for families.
The cost estimate for the school district’s share of the WPS plan under the current contract would be about $19 million. Employees, who pick up 10 percent of the cost as their share of the premium, would pay another $2 million under the current structure.

It’s important to remember that a majority of the Madison School Board voted several months ago to not arbitrate with MTI over health care costs. Andy Hall has more:

But with the Madison School Board facing a $10.5 million budget shortfall, is the board giving away too much with its promises to retain teachers’ increasingly pricey health insurance and to discard its legal mechanism for limiting teachers’ total compensation increase to 3.8 percent?
Yes, School Board Vice President Lawrie Kobza said Saturday, “I feel very strongly that this was a mistake,” said Kobza, who acknowledged that most board members endorse the agreement with Madison Teachers Inc., the teachers union.
State law allows districts to avoid arbitration by making a so-called qualified economic offer, or QEO, by boosting salaries and benefits a combined 3.8 percenter a year.
“To agree before a negotiation starts that we’re not going to impose the QEO and negotiate health care weakens the district’s position,” Kobza said. She contended the district’s rising health-care costs are harming its ability to raise starting teachers’ salaries enough to remain competitive.
The “voluntary impasse resolution” agreements, which are public records, are used in only a handful of Wisconsin’s 425 school districts, according to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission.

Carol Carstensen posted an alt view on Concessions before negotiations. Related: What a sham(e), Sun Prairie Cuts Health Care Costs & Raises Teacher Salaries – using the same Dean Healthcare Plan and “Going to the Mat for WPS“. TJ Mertz says Susan neglected to mention the QEO (note that the a majority of the MMSD school board agreed not to arbitrate over the QEO or health care casts in “Concessions before negotiations”.




Janesville School Board Looking for State Help



Frank Schultz:

Cullen has proposed a plan of attack he hopes will lead to more money from the state. Several school board members expressed support for the idea.
Members hope to start their push for change May 7, when they meet with the state Sen. Judy Robson, D-Beloit, and Assembly Rep. Mike Sheridan, D-Janesville.
If anything can be done, it must be done soon. The Legislature is working on a two-year budget for the state, with a deadline to pass it by June 30.
Cullen proposes districts like Janesville’s could get relief from the state under a “50-25-25” formula:

Interesting, including former State Senator Tim Cullen’s presence on the Janesville school board. Health care costs are also an issue in Janesville.




Chicago Public School Leaders Seek Governance Changes



Tracy Dell’Angela:

For the second time in a decade, Chicago Public Schools leaders are making a push in Springfield to restrict the power of local school councils to hire and fire principals.
Board President Rufus Williams and other district leaders met with key legislators last week to discuss possible changes to the 1995 School Reform Act, which gave these elected councils of parents and community members broad authority to approve school budgets and select principals. The district wants councils to get approval from the central administration before firing a principal—a movecouncil advocates denounced as a power grab.
Valencia Rias, a director with the reform advocacy group Designs for Change, decried the legislative maneuver during the public comment segment of the Board of Education meeting Wednesday.
“You are trying to gut the power of 575 [local school councils] . . .because of what happened with one LSC,” said Rias, referring to the recent controversy over the council firing of the popular principal at Curie Metropolitan High School. “No one wants to have $110,000 contracts handed out by this board, by the mayor of this city.”




Michigan Reduces State Per Student Spending



Mark Hornbeck:

Gov. Jennifer Granholm announced this morning she will order a $125-per-pupil cut for public school students to deal with the state’s growing fiscal problem.
Letters to school superintendents informing them of the cuts will go out on Monday, the governor said.
The Legislature would then have 30 days to react. Lawmakers could accept or reject the cuts, or come up with the money to avoid the reductions.
“I’m angry at the Senate Republicans for having an extremist ideology. No matter what happens to Michigan, they won’t consider revenues,” Granholm told reporters this morning.

Michigan has lost many auto industry jobs over the past few years.




Gates Foundation Hires Portland Superintendent Vicki Phillips



Gates Foundation:

Today, more than one million students fail to finish high school, including half of African American and Hispanic students. Of those who do graduate, only half have the knowledge and skills they need to succeed. Over the last seven years, the foundation has made significant investments to reverse these startling statistics.
In her new position, (Vicki) Phillips will join the U.S. Program team and direct the foundation’s education portfolio. The portfolio also includes scholarship programs to remove the financial barriers to college for promising students and an initiative to improve early learning in Washington state. Dr. Phillips will complete the school year in Portland and begin work at the foundation August 1, overseeing and expanding upon more than $3.4 billion in strategic education investments and partnerships.

Related Links:




Class Dismissed: NYC’s Rubber Rooms



Mara Altman:

Imagine that your boss wants you to sign a document accusing you of something you don’t believe you did—a fireable offense like assaulting someone at work, for example—and your response is not only to refuse to sign, but to let loose a damning accusation that your boss was making up the allegation.
And, for good measure, you call your boss “fat.”
Now, in just about any industry you can think of, this would not bode well for your continued employment. But in this case, we’re not talking about just any kind of workplace, but perhaps the most dysfunctional employee-employer interface in the history of paychecks.
In other words, the New York City public school system.




Milwaukee Public Schools’ Draft Strategic Plan



Alan Borsuk:

Much higher test scores and graduation rates, greatly improved attendance, reduced discipline problems and stronger parent involvement – the draft version of a grand plan for Milwaukee Public Schools sets specific, ambitious goals for major improvements over the next several years.
The strategic plan is the product of extensive work by administrators, School Board members and teachers union members. The process of creating the plan, which included more than 40 meetings across the city in recent months, is being paid for by the Greater Milwaukee Committee, a private group of civic leaders.
“We cannot achieve different results without doing things differently,” an opening message signed by MPS and union leaders says. “We are at a crucial turning point.”
The plan is short on specifics for how to achieve many of its goals, but it does give a detailed version of what the characteristics of a higher-functioning school system would be, including what to expect of a successful principal, how a school community should function and what the role of the central office should be. It calls for continuing the current MPS strategy of focusing on improving the teaching and curriculum in a specific list of low-performing schools and reducing the size of that list year by year.




Deficit Spending: Declining Madison School District Equity Fund Balance



Fund Balance as Percent of General Fund Expenditures
FY 2000 Thru FY 2006
Source: Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance
FY 00 FY 01 FY 02 FY 03* FY 04 FY 05 FY 06*
K-8 AVERAGE 22.4% 15.7% 20.3% 18.0% 20.2% 20.0% 18.6%
UHS AVERAGE 24.1% 22.3% 23.6% 21.2% 25.8% 25.4% 22.6%
K-12 AVERAGE 15.2% 23.9% 15.1% 13.8% 14.5% 14.7% 13.4%
MMSD ACTUAL 18.9% 16.4% 12.1% 12.2% 7.7% 7.1% 7.1%
MMSD Budget $252M $333M
Equity Fund (M) $48M $24M



Related:

The Administration used a “salary savings” account to “balance” the budget. When such savings did not materialize, the MMSD’s equity (the difference between an organization’s assets and liabilities) declined.



Interestingly, Madison School Board members Beth Moss, Carol Carstensen and Maya Cole have advocated the continued reduction in the District’s equity as a means to help balance the 2007 / 2008 $339M+ budget. Beth proposed budgeting an additional $2.133M in “salary savings” above the planned $1M while Carol sought $2M and Maya asked for an additional $500K. [Board member proposed 2007/2008 budget amendments 540K PDF]



Finally, several years ago, I received an email from a person very concerned about the “dramatic” decline in the MMSD’s “reserves”, which according to this person were, at one time over $50M. I asked for additional data on this matter, but never heard from that person again.

The equity fund’s decline gives the MMSD less wiggle room over time, and means that we, as a community face decisions related to facilities, staffing and services. Hopefully, the MMSD board and administration can start to consider and implement new approaches, including virtual learning tools and expanded collaboration with community assets like the UW, MATC and others. I hope that we can move beyond the annual “same service approach” and begin to think differently. Peter Gascoyne’s 5 year approach to budgeting is a good place to start

“[Ask] what is the best quality of education that can be purchased for our district for $280 million a year. Start with a completely clean slate. Identify your primary goals and values and priorities. Determine how best to achieve those goals to the highest possible level, given a budget that happens to be $40 million smaller than today’s. Consider everything – school-based budgeting, class sizes, after-school sports, everything.”

A definition of “equity”. 2007 / 2008 $339M+ MMSD Citizen’s Budget




Ed in 08



edin08.jpg

Billionares to start $60M Education Issue Presidential Campaign PR Effort.


David Herszenhorn:

Eli Broad and Bill Gates, two of the most important philanthropists in American public education, have pumped more than $2 billion into improving schools. But now, dissatisfied with the pace of change, they are joining forces for a $60 million foray into politics in an effort to vault education high onto the agenda of the 2008 presidential race.
Experts on campaign spending said the project would rank as one of the most expensive single-issue initiatives ever in a presidential race, dwarfing, for example, the $22.4 million that the Swift Vets and P.O.W.s for Truth group spent against Senator John Kerry in 2004, and the $7.8 million spent on advocacy that year by AARP, the lobby for older Americans.
Under the slogan “Ed in ’08,” the project, called Strong American Schools, will include television and radio advertising in battleground states, an Internet-driven appeal for volunteers and a national network of operatives in both parties.
“I have reached the conclusion as has the Gates foundation, which has done good things also, that all we’re doing is incremental,” said Mr. Broad, the billionaire who founded SunAmerica Inc. and KB Home and who has long been a prodigious donor to Democrats. “If we really want to get the job done, we have got to wake up the American people that we have got a real problem and we need real reform.”

I’m glad they are doing this. However, top down rarely works, particularly with an issue this broad.
www.edin08.com. Former LA Superintendent and Colorado Governor Roy Romer is Chair. [118K PDF]
Ed Policy 08 is a “A non-partisan blog focused on Educational Policy in the 2008 election for President of the United States.” The site is written anonymously by a classroom teacher. RSS feed.




MMSD’s Proposed Private School Busing Reductions



Susan Troller:

Catholic school parents and administrators are upset by proposed Madison school district budget cuts that would eliminate the bus service they receive to get their kids to school.
But the school district is hoping to trim nearly $230,000 from its budget by offering more than $162,000 directly to parents to transport their children instead of providing yellow school bus service to five Catholic schools in the Madison district. Busing those students is projected to cost about $392,000 in 2007-08.
State statutes require public school districts to provide transportation for students in private schools as well as public schools, but Madison district officials say it costs them more than 50 percent more per pupil to bus the Catholic school students. Underlying the proposal is the need for the Madison School Board and administrators to find nearly $8 million to cut from next year’s budget to comply with state-imposed revenue caps.
There are 358 students who attend St. Dennis, St. James, Edgewood Campus School, St. Maria Goretti and Queen of Peace schools who would be affected by the policy change.

2006/2007 and 2007/2008 MMSD Citizen’s Budget.
Fascinating issue.




Looking at KIPP, Coolly and Carefully



Jay Matthews:

Some critics decry the way the Knowledge Is Power Program presents itself as the savior of inner city education. My answer: KIPP doesn’t do that. We sloppy journalists do.
Let me present Exhibit A: The latest annual report card from the KIPP Foundation in San Francisco. It has 93 pages of remarkable data. (See, there I go again, making KIPP the miracle cure. Let me change that to “interesting” data.) The report card tells how well each of the KIPP schools is doing, but it does not claim to be saving our cities.
I understand why we education reporters try to make KIPP sound like more than it is. We are starved for good news about low-income schools. KIPP is an encouraging story, so we are tempted to gush rather than report. We don’t ask all the questions we should. We don’t quote critics as often as we ought to. We don’t emphasize how new and incomplete the KIPP data is. But none of that is KIPP’s fault. Data costs money, and KIPP tries to use most of its funds to educate kids.
One of the best things about KIPP, a network of 52 independent public schools in 16 states and the District, is that it tries very hard to make the statistics it has available to everyone. Focusing on results is one of the organization’s basic principles. Anyone can order a free copy of the new report card by going to www.kipp.org. And on page 57 you will find numbers that help explain why KIPP is firing its middle school in Buffalo, N.Y., the sixth time a KIPP school has left the network.

2006 KIPP Report Card.




NYC Schools New Deal with their Principals



David Herszenhorn:

The deal would increase base pay by 23 percent, compounded over nearly seven years, and add 15 minutes to principals’ and assistant principals’ workdays. The contract would also revamp how principals are rated on their performance each year, discarding the blunt thumbs-up or thumbs-down system under which they are labeled either satisfactory or unsatisfactory.
It would be replaced by a more nuanced review, aligned to the Education Department’s new accountability system, which grades schools from A to F based on students’ progress.
Starting salaries for assistant principals who work all year rather than just the 10 months that schools are in session would rise to $108,869 from $88,398, and their maximum salary would be $130,100, up from $108,869.
City officials expressed particular pleasure that the contract agreement included incentive provisions that are often opposed by unions. “In the private sector, financial incentives encourage actions that are good for the company,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “And there is no reason we shouldn’t also use financial incentives in the public sector to encourage actions that are good for our schools.”
As part of the deal to end the seniority rights of assistant principals, the city would help find a position for anyone who is left without an assignment. Should an assistant principal still not get an offer from any principal, the city, for the first time, would be able to extend a buyout of up to one year’s pay.
Assistant principals who declined a buyout would be placed in schools where they could be required to teach three periods a day and perform other duties.




Vang Pao Elementary School and The American Experience



vnschool407.jpg

Some years ago, while reading a book on Sherman’s March to the sea, a distant relative (who lives in the south) pointed out that the book was “one perspective”. Madison has a middle school named “Sherman“. Which sort of proves the point. A reader pointed out that Sherman middle school was named for “Roger Sherman”, signer of the Declaration of Independence.
Indeed, it was one perspective.
Vang Pao elementary school offers us an opportunity to discuss the American experience in Southeast Asia with our children:

(more…)




More Alabama Schools Implement International Baccalaureate (IB) Curriculum



Rena Havner & Josh Bean:

Also for the first time, some Alabama elementary and middle schools, including Mobile’s Council Traditional, that can feed into IB high schools will within the next few years begin offering IB programs for younger students.
“This is a great thing for the whole area,” said Mobile County Public School System Superintendent Harold Dodge. “It sort of ratchets up our expectations one more level.”
The three local high schools are on track to allow their current ninth-graders to take IB classes beginning their junior year in fall 2008, officials said.
By taking IB’s rigorous courses, students will be able to earn up to a year’s worth of college credit before they graduate from high school. They’ll also be more attractive candidates for scholarship money.
The three schools are in the application process and still must meet some requirements before receiving official approval from the Geneva, Switzerland-based agency that oversees International Baccalaureate.




Teachers Must be Up for Count



Via a reader’s email; Solomon Friedberg:

Mathematics is crucial in the modern world. It is the foundation of modern science and engineering, and the prerequisite to any number of careers. Children’s formal learning of mathematics occurs throughout elementary school, and their success or failure at this level will have an impact on the entire rest of their lives.
Thus it is vital that elementary teachers be well-prepared to teach mathematics.
You would think that all elementary teachers know elementary math. After all, they are college graduates. Unfortunately, you’d be wrong. For example, mathematics educator Liping Ma, a senior scholar at the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, reports that only 43 percent of a group of “above average” U.S. elementary teachers chosen for their interest in math could carry out a simple calculation involving division of fractions.
Moreover, teaching elementary school math requires more than simply knowing how to do elementary school math. Teachers must be able to present mathematics as a coherent body of knowledge rather than a bunch of arbitrary rules, to recognize and address a range of misconceptions, to encourage mathematical thinking and develop student self-confidence. They need to know elementary math well enough to teach it in all its subtlety.
In Ma’s study, only 4 percent of U.S. teachers were able to write a story problem that corresponded to the division of fractions problem. If that’s the case, how can they teach this subject well?

(more…)




Schools out: Detroit closures complicate education, economics



Sandra Svoboda:

No one talked about — unless asked, and then only in hushed tones so the 238 children who attend school there couldn’t hear — the Detroit school board’s recent vote to close the building at the end of this academic year and to relocate students and staff.
“It’s always in the back of our minds that this school is going to be closed,” says secondgrade teacher Thomas DiLuigi, a 28-year veteran of the east side school. “But if we were to dwell on that, the children would be affected and they’re our main priority.”
As one of the 34 recently announced Detroit public schools to be closed during the next two academic years — to cut operating costs and help close a multimillion-dollar hole in the district’s roughly $1.2 billion budget — Berry’s history as a place of learning is about to grudgingly end. Those schools will be joining the 25 other vacant schools owned by the district that are waiting to be rented or sitting, sometimes decaying, in neighborhoods throughout the city.
Watching enrollment fall from 175,168 students in 1997 to 115,047 this year, district officials had to come up with criteria to use to determine which schools would be shuttered, says Darrell Rodgers, the district’s chief of facilities maintenance and auxiliary services and chair of the facilities realignment committee. They settled on enrollment trends, student capacity in each building, how each school was progressing academically and the condition of the buildings. About 40 of the district’s 232 schools are operating at less than half of their student capacity.




Open Source K-12 Curricula



Curriki:

Curriki is more than your average Website; we’re a community of educators, learners and committed education experts who are working together to create quality materials that will benefit teachers and students around the world.
Curriki is an online environment created to support the development and free distribution of world-class educational materials to anyone who needs them. Our name is a play on the combination of ‘curriculum’ and ‘wiki’ which is the technology we’re using to make education universally accessible.

Thinkfinity:


Verizon Thinkfinity offers the highest quality, standards-based, K-12 lesson plans, student materials, interactive tools and Web sites in seven academic disciplines. A companion professional development program prepares educators to effectively utilize these exceptional resources to support student learning and achievement. Follow the links below to learn about Thinkfinity resources for K-12 Education.




2007 / 2008 $339M+ MMSD Budget: “School Shuffle is Losing”



Andy Hall:

A controversial plan to close and consolidate schools on Madison’s North and East sides appears dead a week before the Madison School Board’s self- imposed deadline for determining $7.9 million in spending reductions.
Four of the board’s seven members plan to vote against Superintendent Art Rainwater’s proposal to save $1 million by closing tiny Lindbergh Elementary and reshuffling hundreds of other students in elementary and middle schools, according to interviews with all board members.
The plan could be revived, however, if board members fail to find a comparable amount of cost savings elsewhere in the district’s 2007-08 budget.

Related 2007-2008 MMSD Budget (07/08 budget is either $339M or $345M (- I’ve seen both numbers used); up from $333M in 06/07) Posts:




A Comparison of Madison Elementary, Middle & High Schools to other Wisconsin Districts



Madtown Chris:

  • This blog will contain my personal analysis of Dane County schools primarily based on the state testing data. The posts are really intended to be read sequentially, more or less. So far it’s not really a stream-of-consciousness like a normal blog; rather it’s more of a straightforward analysis.
    Why bother with this?
    Our friends recently mentioned that they were concerned with the Madison schools among other things and were thinking about moving to a small town like Lodi. Other people we know are putting their kids in private school. I thought that Madison schools might not be in the dismal situation that seems to be the conventional wisdom today but I couldn’t say for sure.
    I stumbled upon the State of Wisconsin web site that provides test scores for various grades for every school in Wisconsin and decided to conduct an analysis to see what I could discover about the various schools in the area. Should we move? Should they move? Should you be concerned about the schools? I attempt to answer these questions given numerous assumptions.
    Summary of Results
    Madison has the best schools in Dane county and among the best in all of Wisconsin.
    But, and it’s a big BUT, you have to make sure you’re in the right one. Choose poorly and you get a relatively bad school.

  • High Schools
  • Middle Schools
  • Elementary Schools



Los Angeles School District Review



Joel Rubin and Howard Blume:

The 115-page report — based on previously conducted audits and analyses as well as interviews with more than 100 district employees — describes an operation beset by an almost complete lack of accountability or consequences for poor performance, running from the most senior staff to school principals. Job descriptions are often unclear and evaluations rarely pegged to improved district performance, while communication among various corners of the organization is muddled or nonexistent, the report found.
“The most apparent and inhibiting deficit standing in the way of instructional coherence in LAUSD today is a lack of accountability,” said the report by Florida-based Evergreen Solutions. “Currently, directives are given but few, if any, consequences are enforced for noncompliance.”
Perhaps the overriding message in the report is that past recommendations, made in one study after another, have rarely moved from paper to reality. In an interview, Brewer promised that things would be different this time.




Audit of SAGE program defeated



Amy Hetzner:

A joint legislative committee deadlocked Wednesday on whether to study Wisconsin’s class-size reduction program, ultimately defeating the measure in what Republicans called a partisan maneuver and Democrats hailed as supporting a popular initiative.
In proposing an audit of the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education program, or SAGE, Republican lawmakers characterized it as a routine request for a decade-old program that the governor has recommended spending $109 million on in the next school year.
State Rep. Kitty Rhoades (R-Hudson) also raised concerns about the state Department of Public Instruction’s practice of granting waivers that allow school districts to exceed the 15-student class limit called for in the law.
“The waiver process was not established by statute, nor was it established by the Legislature, nor do we even know what it is,” she said during a hearing Wednesday.




Milwaukee School Panel Approves Handcuff Use



Sarah Carr:

After hours of emotional debate, a Milwaukee School Board panel approved a measure Tuesday night that would allow safety aides to use flexible handcuffs to restrain students who demonstrate threatening behavior.
“We’ve been in situations where we’ve had to restrain students for 30 minutes, 40 minutes, an hour,” said Shawn Buford, a safety aide at Custer High School. Buford said he has been out of school three times this school year after being assaulted by students.
But Raphiel Cole called use of handcuffs “a form of pre-institution that you are doing for our kids.”
Cole, who has nieces and nephews in Milwaukee Public Schools, added: “Anything but these handcuffs. You are going to have holding cells for the children, what’s next?”




Report Cards: Waukesha group suggests changes in grading



Amy Hetzner:

After more than two years of study, a group of Waukesha educators has drafted a set of guidelines that challenge some traditional notions of grading.
Among the recommendations:

  • Removing evaluations of student participation, effort, attendance and behavior from academic results.
  • Ending the use of zeros for late or unfinished work, a “potentially damaging practice in a 100 point scale,” in favor of other methods that motivate students to complete their assignments.
  • Allowing homework used for practice or preparation to account for no more than 10% of a grade, with project work getting more weight.
  • Replacing averages, which allow single grades to skew final class assessments, with medians, which more accurately reflect a student’s overall class performance, in final grades.

School District officials stress that the guidelines, which are in the midst of being distributed to principals and teachers and go before a School Board committee today, are just that – guidelines. They insist the district is not interested in mandating universal changes to how teachers assign grades, often considered among a teacher’s most personal tasks.

I’ve heard from local parents again concerned about the lack of data in some Madison elementary school report cards. Several 2006 posts addressed this issue: Can We Talk 3: 3rd Quarter Report Cards; Mary Kay Battaglia, an Elvejhem Parent via Ruth Robarts and Thoreau parents.




NYC Restructures School Governance



David Herszenhorn:

The reorganization is a sort of inversion of the city school administration. Instead of the traditional model in which principals work directly for a superintendent, each of the city’s more than 1,400 principals will choose a “school support organization” to work with their schools, and will pay these groups out of the school’s budget.
“Until now many educational decisions were made outside of the schools and classrooms,” Mr. Klein said during a news conference at Education Department headquarters.
Principals will have a menu of choices, at various prices, Mr. Klein said. At the low end, principals will pay $29,500 to join the so-called “empowerment network,” in which they are largely freed from oversight in exchange for agreeing to meet performance targets that include higher test scores.
At the high end, schools can choose to contract with the Success for All Foundation, a private nonprofit company based in Baltimore that offers a “whole school reform” model at a cost of up to $145,215, depending on enrollment. Smaller schools will be able to contract with the Success for All for as little as $44,694.




Seven Ways Not to Pick a Study Abroad Program



Jay Matthews:

I did not give much thought to my college daughter’s plans to spend her spring semester last year in Chile. I did not study the brochures. I did not ask the study abroad office any questions. Neither my wife nor I had ever studied overseas. We had no stories to tell and no expertise to share. We figured this was one area where we would not be our usual overbearing, interfering selves, and let Katie take care of everything.
She did a fine job. But then she was robbed in Santiago. It was at a Starbucks where she liked to study. A young man approached and asked her what was in an espresso coffee. She thought this was an odd question, but he was good-looking and wasn’t until she finished her answer that she realized he had gotten a hand on the strap of her book bag — with wallet, passport, laptop and lots of other good stuff. In another second he was out the door. She never saw him, or her belongings, again.
I got the call that afternoon sitting where I am sitting now, at my computer at work. Katie was upset, but had already contacted the Santiago office of her study abroad program. They were helping her deal with the police and start the frustrating process of replacing everything she had lost.




Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold



Cornelia Dean:

For decades, undergraduate women have been moving in ever greater numbers into science and engineering departments at American universities. Yet even as they approach or exceed enrollment parity in mathematics, biology and other fields, there is one area in which their presence relative to men is static or even shrinking: computer science.




MMSD Math Review Task Force Introduction and Discussion



The Madison School District’s Math Task Force was introduced to the School Board last night. Watch the video or listen to the mp3 audio.
Background Links:


6th Grade Textbooks: Connected (left) and Singapore Math.
UPDATE: A reader emailed this:

I noticed that there were 10 student books in the 6th grade pile for CMP. That was surprising since there are only 8 in publication. Then I looked at the teacher editions and noticed there were 10 as well. There are two copies of both How Likely is It? and Covering and Surrounding.
The statement, “A quick look at the size of the Connected Math textbooks compared to the equivalent Singapore Math course materials illustrates the publisher and author interests in selling these large volumes irrespective of curriculum quality and rigor (not to mention the much larger potential for errors or the lost trees….)” is following the picture in one of the discussions. Taking a look at the Singapore Math website It appears that in addition to the 2 textbooks pictured and student workbooks pictured, there are Intensive Practice books, Extra Practice Books, and Challenging Word Problems books, as well as other resources. Also, the white book on the bottom of the pile appears to be an answer key. There are also teacher guides for 6A and 6B that are not in the picture.
I’m not suggesting the statement above is false, I would just like to point out that the picture being used is not an accurate comparison. I hope you find this information valuable.




Americans Believe Writing Skills Are More Important Than Ever



National Writing Project:

While 98 percent of Americans believe that good writing skills are very important to succeed in today’s economy, roughly half believe the quality of students’ writing skills has declined over the past 20 years, a report released by the Berkeley, Calif.-based National Writing Project says.
Two-thirds of the people surveyed wanted more resources earmarked for writing instruction, and almost three-fourths thought writing should be taught to students in every subject at every grade level. Seventy-four percent of respondents thought good writing skills were important regardless of what career students pursue. The study surveyed a representative sample of 1,501 adults in the United States.

Via EdWeek.




“Milwaukee Offers a Wide Array of Specialized High Schools”



Alan Borsuk:

Where there once were 15 large high schools in the Milwaukee Public Schools system, there will be about 50 high schools of all different sizes under the MPS umbrella this fall, and many have untraditional names.
The options outside MPS used to be primarily a handful of large Catholic and Lutheran high schools. Many of those schools still are thriving, but the array of non-MPS options is growing, thanks to the private school voucher program for low-income families and to charter schools authorized by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and Milwaukee’s City Hall. New schools in those ranks are also set to open in the fall.
A fresh wave of MPS charter high schools is almost certain to get approval from the School Board on Thursday night. Each of the proposals was approved by a board committee last week and was given preliminary approval by the board months ago.
Here’s a snapshot of new schools coming before the board this week:




Author’s Poverty Views Disputed Yet Utilized



Ian Shapira:

The Texas-based author says in her book “A Framework for Understanding Poverty”: Parents in poverty typically discipline children by beating or verbally chastising them; poor mothers may turn to sex for money and favors; poor students laugh when they get in trouble at school; and low-income parents tend to “beat around the bush” during parent-teacher conferences, instead of getting to the point.
But many academics say her works are riddled with unverifiable assertions. At the American Educational Research Association’s annual conference in Chicago last week, professors from the University of Texas at Austin delivered a report on Payne that argued that more than 600 of her descriptions of poverty in “Framework” cannot be proved true.
“She claims there is a single culture of poverty that people live in. It’s an idea that’s been discredited since at least the 1960s,” said report co-author Randy Bomer.




Montgomery County School Budget Battles



Miranda S. Spivack and Daniel de Vise:

Some council members said they resent the pressure.
“The suggestion,” Duchy Trachtenberg (D-At Large) said, “is that unless I support 100 percent” of Weast and the school board’s budget plan, “I’m not a friend to education.”
Weast’s budget proposal this year included an increase of more than 7 percent from last year’s budget and totals nearly half of the county’s $4 billion spending plan. Leggett proposed a 6.3 percent increase for the schools. The school system’s budget has increased 31 percent over the past four years, according to a county report.
“I am hard-pressed to believe that in a budget of $2 billion . . . [Weast] cannot find ways to absorb” $20 million, Leggett said recently.
Leggett also has taken a different approach from Duncan to drafting the county budget. Duncan left behind a budget gap that ballooned to nearly $200 million this year, Leggett said, leaving it to him to ask government agencies across the board to scale back their wish lists. The school system, whose annual spending of more than $13,000 per student leads the state, would not be immune, he told Weast in one of their few private meetings.




Madison Area School Student Population Numbers



Susan Troller’s recent article on possible school closings mentioned that some Madison Schools have smaller populations than others in the District. I’ve posted a simple table that summarizes MMSD elementary, middle and high school student population numbers with those from nearby suburban communities: Middleton-Cross Plains, Monona Grove, Stoughton, Sun Prairie, Verona and Waunakee. MMSD facility map.
I’d like to add more districts to this table along with links to performance data, then plot it all on a map. Let me know if you have some time to help compile the data.
Karyn Saemann’s article on Monona’s search for new young families adds another twist to the discussion.




Unhealthy Competition: Young kids are training like professionals, and have the injuries to prove it



Regan McMahon:

In March 2005, The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine published my article exploring how the over-the-top youth sports culture was affecting kids and families. Titled “How Much Is Too Much?” it generated tremendous reader response, and two months later I signed a deal with Gotham Books to investigate the issue on a national scale. The results of that research, conducted in the academic year 2005-2006, appear in my book, “Revolution in the Bleachers: How Parents Can Take Back Family Life in a World Gone Crazy Over Youth Sports.”
In the book, I look at the way youth sports have changed in the past 20 years and how those changes have altered the nature of childhood in America and patterns of family life. Many households are putting demanding sports schedules above bonding rituals such as eating dinner together, taking family vacations, spending holidays with relatives and relaxing at home on weekends. Lots of kids are stressed out, and some are getting burned out. I wondered if, for this generation, success at sports was coming at too high a cost. And I came up with suggestions of how parents can bring balance back into their children’s lives.




Finding the Best High Schools



Jay Matthews:

  • Part Four: Rationing AP:

    William Lichten, the distinguished Yale professor emeritus of physics, is at it again, trying to keep U.S. high schools from giving so many Advanced Placement courses and tests to racial minorities and low income students. Too many of those people fail the tests, he says. They should be given something easier to do.
    Most of the AP teachers I know think Lichten is out of his depth on this issue. I agree with them. He is a brilliant man who knows the dynamics of the forces of nature, but he does not understand the dynamics of American public high schools. What he sees as harmful failure on AP college-level tests is actually beneficial exercise of flabby academic muscles. Interviews with many students, and some major studies, indicate that struggling with hard courses in high school helps prepare students for the academic demands they will face in college.

  • Part Five: Grade Grubbing in Scarsdale:

    High school teachers often try not to think about the true sources of irritation in their lives. The perfidy of principals and the selfishness of parents can sometimes be too much to bear and are best ignored. Such denial has its virtues. But maybe the faculty of Scarsdale High School has taken it too far. They have decided that the best way to recover the love of learning at their famously competitive campus is to get rid of the Advanced Placement program.
    The Scarsdale faculty make their case in their “Proposal for Advanced Topics Implementation,” a plan to create a set of courses deeper, more challenging and less prone to grade grubbing than AP. Their proposal is worth considering. It will appeal to teachers across the country. It also will help destroy the myth that Advanced Placement and International Baccalaureate courses and tests are the major cause of student anxiety in our most affluent neighborhoods because anyone who knows Scarsdale can see that AP is not their biggest problem.




Advice for students: How to unstuff a sentence



Michael Leddy:

Student-writers often believe that the secret of good writing is a reliance upon bigger and “better” words. Thus the haphazard thesaurus use that I wrote about last month. Another danger for student-writers involves the assumption that good writing is a matter of stuffy, ponderous sentences. Stuffy sentences might be explained by the need to make a required word-count, but I see such sentences even in writing assignments of only modest length. Most often, I think, these sentences originate in the mistaken idea that stuffiness is the mark of serious, mature writing.
A writer can begin to unstuff a sentence by looking closely at each of its elements and asking if it is needed. Here is an extreme example:

To begin, it is important to note that the theme of regret is an important theme in “The Road Not Taken,” which was written by Robert Frost, and that evidence for it can be found throughout the entire poem.

“To begin”: Like “to conclude,” this phrase is an unnecessary, empty transition. If a point is coming early (or late) in an essay, trust that a reader can see that. Removing “To begin” involves no loss of meaning.




MMSD School Closing Discussion



Susan Troller:

At the heart of the issue is the fact that the East High School attendance area has more elementary schools and schools with smaller populations than the other attendance areas in the district. Of the 10 elementary schools in the East High attendance area, only Hawthorne has more than 300 students.
By contrast, La Follette and Memorial high schools’ attendance areas have seven elementary schools, and the West High School attendance area has eight elementary schools. The populations of these schools average over 400 students.
But hundreds of staunch fans of the East area elementary schools are rallying to the defense of their schools, saying that they are successful hubs of their communities, and that their small size and close-knit students and staff help engage families across all demographics while improving student achievement.
“People living on the east and northeast sides of the city shouldn’t be punished because the schools in this area were built to be small,” parent and longtime school volunteer Jill Jokela said at a gathering last week.




In Obesity Wars, A New Backlash
A Western town pushed school kids to eat right and exercise more. Did it go too far? ‘Mr. Coca, do you think I’m fat?’



Anne Marie Chaker:

Brittany Burns, 12 years old, has always been on the heavy side. Last year in fifth grade, neighborhood kids started picking on her at the bus stop, calling her “fatty” and “chubby wubby.” Then someone else piled on: Brittany’s school.
In a letter dated Oct. 2, 2006, the Campbell County School District No. 1 invited “select students” to take part in a fitness and nutrition program set up for some of the district’s most overweight kids. At 5 feet 2 inches tall and 179 pounds, Brittany qualified.
Receiving the letter was “embarrassing,” Brittany says. Her mother, Mindi Story, a clerk at an Albertsons supermarket, says she seethed “pure anger” because, she argues, her daughter’s weight shouldn’t be the school’s concern: “I send her to school to learn math and reading.”
Spurred by a local doctor and an enthusiastic school board, Gillette has banned soda and second helpings on hot meals. This year, it included students’ body-mass index — a number that measures weight adjusted for height — on report cards, and started recommending students like Brittany for after-school fitness programs. It even offers teachers the chance to earn bonuses based on their fitness.




College Freshman Not Ready



Sherry Saavedra:

What students learn in high school doesn’t match with what they need to know as college freshmen, according to a national study released yesterday.
Professors believe high school teachers should cover fewer topics with more depth to prepare students for college. That is one of the findings of the survey by ACT, a nonprofit educational and testing organization.
“A really common complaint from (college) faculty is students not being able to put together a complete sentence properly,” said Erin Goldin, director of the Writing Center, which provides tutoring at Cal State San Marcos.
“When students come in here, . . . I try to explain the rules, but they don’t seem to have learned the structure of a sentence.”

ACT Report.
More here and here




“Time for National Standards”



Denis Doyle:

The case for national standards is so self-evidently powerful that I am always surprised that it has to be made. Indeed, for years I have expected national standards to emerge spontaneously, with state after state seeing the wisdom of pooling resources rather than re-inventing standards 50 times over. After all, America is rich and powerful because we are a democratic, continental common market with a shared language and civic and popular culture. With these traits aligned could national standards be far behind?
Oddly enough, the answer is “yes,” they have been and continue to be far behind. But perhaps not forever. The Council of the Great City Schools – an association of 66 of the nation’s urban districts – has endorsed the idea as have selected think tanks like the Fordham Foundation. Equally important, some of the nation’s premier superintendents are calling for national standards (see Ed Week, vol. 26, no. 26, March 7, 2007, The Case for National Standards in American Education, Rudy Crew, Paul Vallas and Michael Casserly). Times they are a changin’.
The principle reason – and the principled reason — opponents have rejected the idea of national standards is to preserve local control. Such a slender reed on which to lean, reminding me of nothing so much as Janis Joplin’s Saturday Night Swindle: “freedom’s just another name for nothing left to lose…”




How Safe Is Your Child’s School Bus?
Despite Recent Accidents, It’s the Safest Way to Go



Jonathan Welsh:

Yesterday, a school bus collided with a truck in Brampton, Ontario, critically injuring a 10-year-old boy and seriously harming another child. It was the latest in a series of dramatic crashes that have heightened many parents’ fears about the safety of the yellow buses their kids ride on every day.
In Atlanta last month, an accident involving a motor coach killed six college-baseball-team members, and in Huntsville, Ala., in November, a school-bus crash killed four teenage girls.
Some parents, such as Gwen MacMillan, a Leawood, Kan., mother of three, opt to drive their kids themselves rather than entrust them to a school bus. “I really don’t understand why the buses don’t have seat belts, because it seems like they would make them safer,” says Ms. MacMillan, echoing many parents’ concerns.
Yet accident data and interviews with transportation experts suggest school buses are actually far safer than other forms of school transport, including the family car. Indeed, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, school buses are by far the safest passenger vehicles on the road.
School-bus makers have made several upgrades in the past few years to address everything from driver visibility to handing, maneuverability and comfort. Space-age adhesives replace spot welds and rivets in certain body and chassis parts, and some new buses have Global Positioning Systems and computerized controls that function like the “black box” recorders found in aircraft. Many of the new models represent the first significant changes to school-bus design since the most recent federal safety standard for school buses took effect in 1977.




The American Freshman – Forty Year Trends



UCLA – Graduation School of Education:

The nation’s college freshmen are more financially advantaged today than they have been at any point in the last 35 years and come from families with a median income 60 percent higher than the national average, according to a new UCLA report that examined 40 years of data from UCLA’s national survey of entering undergraduates at four-year colleges and universities.
The report, “American Freshmen: Forty-Year Trends 1966–2006,”documents the values and characteristics of college freshmen nationwide and is part of the Cooperative Institutional Research Program administered by the Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies.
“As colleges and universities continue their financial policies of increasing tuition and fees, we are seeing direct effects on students that come from poorer families,” said José Luis Santos, UCLA assistant professor of education and an author of the report. “Poorer students alter their choices of whether or not to go to college at all, or choose a college based on financial costs and packages. Students from wealthier families can endure greater fluctuations in ‘sticker price’ than poorer students, and as a result, more students entering college come from homes that are increasingly wealthier than the national median income.”
In 2005, entering freshmen came from households with a parental median income of $74,000, 60 percent higher than the national average of $46,326. This represents a 14 percent increase from 1971, whenstudents’ median family income was $13,200, 46 percent higher than the national average of $9,028.




Waukesha School District Budget Notes and Links



The Waukesha School District’s 2006-2007 Budget ($165,388,112 for 13,063 students = $12,660 – similar per student spending to the Madison Schools. Wisconsin’s average per student spending is just under $10,000.) [1.1MB PDF]
Amy Hetzner:

Only a month after voting to eliminate the equivalent of 62 full-time staff positions to avoid a budget shortfall in the coming school year, the School Board began discussions Wednesday about ways to broach nearly $3.7 million in reductions for 2008-’09.

Waukesha Taxpayer League’s Teacher Salary Study
Mark Belling:

In no school district in Wisconsin is the school tax situation more disgusting than Waukesha. In that community, a demagogic school board and superintendent are threatening draconian cuts including the elimination of all high school sports. Their tactic is anything but subtle. They’re laying the groundwork for a tax increase proposal.
In fact, the Waukesha School District is awash in cash. It has been raising school taxes for decades and is spending thousands more per student than it did only a few years ago. I can solve its budget “crisis” now.




It’s Vang Pao Elementary School



MMSD Today:

The Board of Education at its April 9 meeting unanimously voted to name the new elementary school on the far West side for General Vang Pao, a prominent, national Hmong leader.
His name was selected from a list of 39 names that were nominated earlier this year by community members.
Vang led the Hmong in the Secret War against the communists in Laos and Southeast Asia. After he arrived in the U.S. in 1975, he worked to help resettle the Hmong in this country and has been an advocate here for the rights of Hmong people.
The naming process defined by a previously established Board of Education policy also involved holding a public hearing at which dozens of persons spoke to the Board about the various names for the new school. There was also the opportunity for citizens to provide feedback by e-mail and via the Internet.




Lindbergh Parents Vow To Fight For Their School



Channel3000.com:

The largest cuts in the superintendent’s budget are through the consolidation of some schools.
Lindbergh parents were surprised on Monday night to hear the superintendent is backing a plan that would close their school.
They had anticipated their school being taken off the district’s chopping block.
Many of the parents have been fighting to keep up with the information coming from the board, and now they’re hoping the board will listen to their concerns.
Parent Jeffrey Lewis has had three children go to Lindbergh Elementary, but with a budget plan calling for the close of the school, he’s worried about how it would affect all of the students there.
“The district has looked at this from a monetary standpoint, but never have they addressed how this is going to impact equity,” said Lewis. “How will they maintain the opportunity that kids currently have in small schools?




Public Schools Lack a Competitive Spirit



35 Year Michigan Teacher Ken Feneley:

Brendan Miniter’s description of “how school choice was defeated in South Carolina” (“Cross Country: A Day Late,” op-ed, March 31) perfectly describes the power created by a combination of teacher unions and politicians they help elect to office. What gets lost is what’s best for the kids. In this case, it seems, the paranoid worries about the impact of losing students to schools of choice has outweighed possible benefits that might, just might, happen for 200,000 kids in South Carolina.
There is no apparent competitive spirit among the public school establishment types that is leading them to say what I would have: “Go ahead with school choice and I’ll prove you wrong. Just tell me what I need to do and watch what happens. I’ll change, if needed, and soon you will wish you had had left your kids in my school.”
I would not worry about some lean times while my public school made adjustments. I’d tighten my belt, suck up my pride, take two deep breaths and get to work. I, while teaching for 35 years, fully recognized that the union, the Michigan Education Association, could not have cared less about whether I was a good teacher or not. Its only concern was that I not have more than one prep period per day, did not exceed more than the contracted student numbers per class, that I did not do anything the contract prohibited, that I was paid the same as the teacher down the hall regardless of merit, that teaching and other positions were guaranteed regardless, that as many grievances be filed as possible, and, oh boy, that dues were such that the upper level union employees could be paid better than any contracted teacher in a local school.
Instead, we have this perpetual paranoid promotion of the idea that public schools will decline because of competition. And unionists and unions really do have something to fear, I guess, because if that paranoia dissipates, the teachers union loses its reason for existence: the endless promotion of teacher jobs at union pay rates that support the South Carolina Education Association and the National Education Association infrastructure through union dues. They can’t get along without them.
Notice that student education concerns through my subject matter delivery skills was not mentioned once. Unions don’t care. Obviously, neither do South Carolina politicians.




No Child Left Behind Renewal Discussion



Sam Dillon:

Now, as the president and the same Democrats push to renew the landmark law, which has reshaped the face of American education with its mandates for annual testing, discontent with it in many states is threatening to undermine the effort in both parties.
Arizona and Virginia are battling the federal government over rules for testing children with limited English. Utah is fighting over whether rural teachers there pass muster under the law. And Connecticut is two years into a lawsuit arguing that No Child Left Behind has failed to provide states federal financing to meet its requirements.
Reacting to such disputes in state after state, dozens of Republicans in Congress are sponsoring legislation that would water down the law by allowing states to opt out of its testing requirements yet still receive federal money.
On the other side of the political spectrum, 10 Democratic senators signed a letter last month saying that based on feedback from constituents, they consider the law’s testing mandates to be “unsustainable” and want an overhaul.
“It’s going to be a brawl,” said Jack Jennings, a Democrat who as president of the Center on Education Policy has studied how the law has been set up in the 50 states. “The law is drawing opposition from the right because they are opposed to federal interference and from the left because of too much testing.”




More Post Election Notes and Links



  • Dave Diamond:

    What do Madison progressives and Wal-Mart have in common?
    We’re both inveterate union-busters, according to Nate.

    The AMPS organization, originally established to promote school referenda, and MTI are spinning Marj Passman’s school board defeat as a conspiracy by Isthmus and “anti-teacher” special interests. What made Passman a superior choice, in their minds, is that she’s a retired MTI member teacher who supports developing a statewide lobbying organization (presumably a WEAC-friendly version of WASB) to address the state funding system.

  • TJ Mertz:

    There has been some talk among the AMPS participants about doing retrospective analyses of the recent election and the press coverage of that election. Watch for those in the coming weeks. Retrospective analyses have their place, but there is something to be said for striking while the iron is hot. The Isthmus retrospective published Thursday is certainly hot, as in “liar, liar pants on fire.” This is long, but I think worth doing.
    Titled “Mandate for New Thinking,” Jason Shepard’s latest stretches the truth well past the breaking point.
    Let’s start at the top. The title refers to a mandate but even the Isthmus editors can’t bring themselves to identify what the supposed mandate was for and instead fall back on the meaningless phrase “new thinking.” The only candidate pictured or quoted is Maya Cole; this implies a connection between Ms Cole and the titular “mandate” (a connection made explicit in the final paragraph). Ms Cole deserves congratulations for her victory, however that victory can hardly be called a mandate. Among the victors, Ms Cole garnered 8,268 fewer votes than Johnny Winston Jr. and 8,257 fewer than Beth Moss. Ms Cole was not the big winner on Tuesday.




Kindness crosses county line: Plight of cash-strapped team sparks Messmer to action



Amy Hetzner:

Messmer High School is a central-city Catholic school with about 85% of its student body qualifying for federally subsidized meals. Waukesha West High School is a suburban public school where only about 6% of the students live in low-income households.
But when students in Messmer’s National Honor Society heard about the nearly $10,000 fund-raising challenge facing West’s Academic Decathlon team, they saw only fellow students in need.
“Ten thousand dollars to these kids – National Honor Society kids from Messmer, inner-city kids – it just blew them away,” said Bob Monday, a volunteer business teacher at the Milwaukee school.




Tax Foundation: State & Local Tax Burden Hits All-Time High



Curtis Dubay [430K PDF]:

State and local taxes will consume a record-
setting 11 percent of the nation’s income in 2007. Since 1986, the state-local tax burden had never fallen below 10 percent or risen
above 10.9 percent. Figure 1 charts the course of the nation’s state-local tax burden since 1982.
This estimate of state-local tax burdens at an all-time high comes at a time when personal and corporate incomes have risen for almost
four consecutive years, sometimes at a remarkable pace. Along with low unemployment, these rising incomes have boosted tax collections substantially and helped most states meet their revenue expectations with ease since 2004.

Wisconsin ranked 6th: Tax Burder as a % of Income = 12.3%; 4,736 / 38,639. Via TaxProf.




Learning About the Past: Where history isn’t bunk



The Economist:

Across the world, approaches to teaching children about their nation’s past are hotly contested—especially at times of wider debate on national identity.
IF THE past is a foreign country, the version that used to be taught in Irish schools had a simple landscape. For 750 years after the first invasion by an English king, Ireland suffered oppression. Then at Easter 1916, her brave sons rose against the tyrant; their leaders were shot but their cause prevailed, and Ireland (or 26 of her 32 counties) lived happily ever after.
Awkward episodes, like the conflict between rival Irish nationalist groups in 1922-23, were airbrushed away. “The civil war was just an embarrassment, it was hardly mentioned,” says Jimmy Joyce, who went to school in Dublin in the 1950s.




Software’s Benefits On Tests In Doubt



Amit Paley:

Educational software, a $2 billion-a-year industry that has become the darling of school systems across the country, has no significant impact on student performance, according to a study by the U.S. Department of Education.
The long-awaited report amounts to a rebuke of educational technology, a business whose growth has been spurred by schools desperate for ways to meet the testing mandates of President Bush’s No Child Left Behind law.
The technology — ranging from snazzy video-game-like programs played on Sony PlayStations to more rigorous drilling exercises used on computers — has been embraced by low-performing schools as an easy way to boost student test scores.




No Child Left Behind testing eased for more students



AP & Amy Hetzner:

The Bush administration is letting more children with disabilities take simplified tests under the No Child Left Behind education law.
The change, outlined in final regulations Wednesday, would triple the number of children who can take tests that are easier than those given to most students under the 2002 law.
Roughly 10% of special education students – those with the most serious cognitive disabilities – currently can take simplified, alternative tests and have the results count toward a school’s annual progress goals.
Under the new rules, about an additional 20% of children with disabilities could take alternative tests and have those count toward a school’s progress goals.




“Let’s put the kids first”



Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Editorial:

The new board must not chase away Andrekopoulos. He has worked indefatigably and creatively to transform MPS into an effective system of schools.
We have referred to one board faction as the reform wing and the other as the union wing. Those labels best describe what unites them but not necessarily what divides them. The reform side is not necessarily anti-union, and the union side is not necessarily anti-reform.
Bonds, an education professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, may find board support for his call for a more rigorous curriculum. We backed Bonds but hope he doesn’t take the board down the policy cul-de-sac of renewed busing. It won’t lead to more integration, his stated goal, for lack of white students to go around.




Why the Union Vote?



via a reader email:

I believe that people can do much more as a group coming together around common causes than is possible to do individually – from unions to religions. But problems arise when people start identifying with the group itself. We give away our individual control in lieu of having someone or something that we think is greater than ourselves make decisions for us. It becomes tribalism.
I’ve really worked at researching the views of the candidates for the school board race. But I have to admit I have not had time to become informed about some of the other races in the April 3 election. Similarly, many people in Madison who don’t have kids in school (that’s most of Madison) aren’t up on the School Board race.
For these reasons I think voters turn to groups such as the teachers union (MTI) or politicians’ endorsements of candidates.
My husband and I are dissatisfied with the current situation for students in MMSD. There are long standing problems with finances, and growing problems with school behavior and education. Probably all of us know at least one family that’s left the public schools or even Madison because of this. We think it’s time for change.

(more…)




Teacher accused of failing to report gun in school



Alan Borsuk:

Police and Milwaukee Public Schools officials on Monday were investigating allegations that a teacher at Pulaski High School, 2500 W. Oklahoma Ave., saw a gun in the possession of a student in school and did not notify authorities in a timely manner.
An unloaded gun was found Thursday in the 18-year-old student’s locker after a second teacher notified security aides at the school, sources familiar with the incident said.
Following a second incident on the same day the gun was found, MPS administrators said they were investigating a teacher who appeared to be out of her classroom while a fight occurred between two students, with many others watching. A student videotaped the fight, apparently on a cell phone, and the video was posted on the YouTube site on the Internet.




Milwaukee Public Schools / Milwaukee Symphony Arts Program



Alan Borsuk:

The Progressions program of the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra, which gives kids mostly from Milwaukee Public Schools a start on classical instruments, is one of many arts programs in the city that are benefiting from a new $1 million fund created by the Milwaukee School Board.
That amount is being matched by private donations or contributed services from each of the organizations receiving the MPS grants.
Many in the arts community are viewing the new support as a strong boost for efforts to give city kids some of the arts education that has been shrinking in recent years under budget pressures.




Fooling the College Board



Scott Jaschik:

In the 1930’s, American businesses were locked in a fierce economic competition with Russian merchants for fear that their communist philosophies would dominate American markets. As a result, American competition drove the country into an economic depression and the only way to pull them out of it was through civil cooperation. American president Franklin Delenor Roosevelt advocated for civil unity despite the communist threat of success by quoting “the only thing we need to fear is itself,” which desdained competition as an alternative to cooperation for success. In the end, the American economy pulled out of the depression and succeeded communism.
Does that paragraph read like an excerpt of an essay with “reasonably consistent mastery” and that “effectively develops a point of view” and “demonstrates strong critical thinking, generally using appropriate examples”? Those are the College Board’s descriptions of the kinds of qualities that earn an essay a score of 5 (the second highest possible) on the essay portion of the SAT, a new and controversial part of the exam. And that is the score an essay with that paragraph (all punctuation, spelling, FDR’s new middle name and other “facts” verbatim) received from two readers when a student submitted it in October, having been coached on how to do so by a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.




A Longer School Day?



Diana Jean Schemo:

States and school districts nationwide are moving to lengthen the day at struggling schools, spurred by grim test results suggesting that more than 10,000 schools are likely to be declared failing under federal law next year.
In Massachusetts, in the forefront of the movement, Gov. Deval L. Patrick is allocating $6.5 million this year for longer days and can barely keep pace with demand: 84 schools have expressed interest.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York has proposed an extended day as one of five options for his state’s troubled schools, part of a $7 billion increase in spending on education over the next four years — apart from the 37 minutes of extra tutoring that children in some city schools already receive four times a week.
And Gov. M. Jodi Rell of Connecticut is proposing to lengthen the day at persistently failing schools as part of a push to raise state spending on education by $1 billion.
“In 15 years, I’d be very surprised if the old school calendar still dominates in urban settings,” said Mark Roosevelt, superintendent of schools in Pittsburgh, which has added 45 minutes a day at eight of its lowest-performing schools and 10 more days to their academic year.




April 3, 2007 Madison School Board Election Update



Much more on the election here.




After a Suicide, Privacy on Trial



Elizabeth Bernstein:

As Charles and Debi Mahoney watched six men and six women file into the jury box of a Pennsylvania courtroom one evening last August, they clutched hands and tried to remind themselves why they were in court. “Parents sending their kids off to college need to know that their kids aren’t safe when they think they are,” Mr. Mahoney recalls thinking at the time.
More than four years earlier, their 20-year-old son, Chuck, had hanged himself with his dog’s leash in his fraternity house at Allegheny College, in Meadville, Pa. At their son’s funeral, the Mahoneys learned that his friends and ex-girlfriend had repeatedly warned college administrators and counselors during his last days that Chuck was a danger to himself. The officials and his college therapist had discussed his crisis — but no one had alerted the family.
His parents sued for wrongful death in 2003, alleging that Allegheny should have taken more action at the end — such as breaking their son’s confidentiality to get them involved. One of Chuck’s fraternity brothers who tried to alert school officials, Michael Fischer, testified that seeing his friend’s last days “was like watching a car accident …. We knew something was going to happen. We had to try to stop it.”




The Hobart Shakespeareans



PBS:

Imagine the sight and sound of American nine- and eleven-year-old children performing Shakespeare’s Hamlet or Henry V — and understanding every word they recite. Imagine them performing well enough to elicit praise from such accomplished Shakespearean actors as Ian McKellen and Michael York, and to be invited to perform with the Royal Shakespeare Company in England. Such a spectacle would be highly impressive in the toniest of America’s private schools. But what if the kids were the children of recent Latino and Asian immigrants attending a large Los Angeles inner-city public school in one of America’s toughest neighborhoods?
That is the astonishing story told by the new documentary “The Hobart Shakespeareans,” which discovers how one man’s uncommon commitment and resourcefulness have opened up worlds of opportunity for his “disadvantaged” students — and perhaps have demonstrated a way forward for America’s beleaguered public education system.
The Latino- and Asian-American children crowding Los Angeles’ sprawling Hobart Boulevard Elementary face daunting odds. Their neighborhood in the heart of Central Los Angeles is better known for crime than for opportunity. They grow up in low-income households. Their school, typically for public education in poor districts, is under-funded and overcrowded. Most of their parents do not speak English. No one is giving these kids educational perks, like class trips and intensive tutoring. And no one is expecting any but the smartest and luckiest to rise beyond the limitations of their environment. No one, that is, except Rafe Esquith.




Safe Blogs Becoming Part of School



Erin Richards:

When sixth-grade teacher Rachel Yurk created a blog for her classroom this year, she began the online learning experiment with a simple, engaging question: “What’s your favorite book and why?”
By that night, Yurk’s e-mail had exploded with about 200 messages – each one notifying her that another comment had been posted to the online discussion.
Safely nested in Virtual Office, a secure system that New Berlin Public Schools is piloting and plans to take districtwide by next year, Yurk’s classroom blog engages students in a common discussion tool without exposing them to uncensored activity in the real-world blogosphere.
“The students are more willing to talk about things, and they can type so fast,” Yurk said. “Pencil and paper is boring to them. The first day we opened up Virtual Office, one student’s sister – a high school kid – thought it was cool and put up a post about what book she thought the younger students should read.”
Blogs, or online discussions that usually host time-stamped entries in order of newest to oldest, have struggled to gain acceptance in mainstream K-12 education.

This is a very useful example of why it’s important for us not to continue to be caught up in the Frederick Taylor style education process as the world changes around us.




“Cooking the Numbers” – Madison’s Reading Program



Joanne Jacobs:

From the Fayetteville, NC Observer:

Superintendent Art Rainwater loves to discuss the Madison Metropolitan School District’s success in eliminating the racial achievement gap.
But he won’t consult with educators from other communities until they are ready to confront the issue head on.
“I’m willing to talk,” Rainwater tells people seeking his advice, “when you are willing to stand up and admit the problem, to say our minority children do not perform as well as our white students.”

Only then will Rainwater reveal the methods Madison used to level the academic playing field for minority students.
This is an odd statement. The racial achievement gap is accepted as an uncomfortable fact everywhere; it is much discussed. No superintendent in the U.S. — except for Rainwater — claims to have eliminated the gap.

Today, Rainwater said, no statistical achievement gap exists between the 25,000 white and minority students in Madison’s schools.
Impressive, but untrue, writes Right Wing Prof, who looked at Madison reading scores across all grades.

I found a graph comparing Madison to five similar districts in Wisconsin, all of which do much better than Madison on fourth-grade reading.

Joanne was in Milwaukee and Madison recently to discuss her book, “Our School“.
Related Links:




Tax credits and deductions for parents



Marshall Loeb:

Children can bring you a lot of joy … and a lot of bills. The good news is that at tax time, they can also save you some money. Mark Steber, vice president of tax resources at Jackson Hewitt Tax Service, reminds parents that children of all ages can bring a range of credits and deductions on parents’ 2006 income tax returns:




Seattle Superintendent’s Mid Year Report



Seattle Public Schools Superintendent Raj Manhas [777K PDF]:

A detailed document on the progress of the priority projects from the 2006‐07 Workplan is attached. Through the project tracking system that is under development as well as additional discussions with project managers, we have captured information on:

  1. What have we accomplished through February 2007?
  2. Are we on‐track to complete the project by August 2007?

The table below reports on the status of our priority projects with respect to completion by August 2007. 16 projects (or almost 60% of the total) are expected to be completed on‐time and another 10 projects are expected to be at least partially completed by August 2007.




School Board Candidate Forum: Madison United for Academic Excellence



Thanks to Laurie Frost & Jeff Henriques for organizing Thursday’s MAUE forum: Video / 30MB MP3 Audio. This event included some interesting questions:

  • 14 minutes: On the Superintendent’s proposed reductions in the budget increase and their affect on the MMSD’s 6 TAG members. Do you believe TAG services still have a role?
  • 20:40 What strategies do you have to raise academic standards for all students and avoid pitting one group of parents against another?
  • 27:50 What are the most positive and negative traits you would bring to the (school) board?
  • 34:28 Please state your position on the educational approach of offering core courses, delivered in completely heterogeneous groupings, with no opportunity for self selected ability grouping? (see West’s English 10)
  • 41:29 How do we do a better job of identifying academically gifted students?
  • 48:42 Would you support a referendum to deal with the (2007/2008) budget shortfall?
  • 54:26 Would you support African centered pedagogy classes for Madison High Schools?
  • 1:00 Where do you see MTI’s advocacy for teachers coming into the greatest conflict with the District’s students?
  • 1:07 What position or talent most distinguishes you from your opponent?

Download the 105MB video here.
Madison United for Academic Excellence.




MMSD Teacher on REACH



Spring Harbor Teacher Nan Yungerman:

At the MUAE forum to discuss education for gifted and talented students, it was disturbing to hear one candidate, Maya Cole for Seat #5, talk about eliminating REACH as a way to trade money to keep Eastside schools open. I was bothered on many levels.
One; REACH was developed to provide one additional and desperately needed hour of planning time for elementary teachers. It is in this hour that teachers might differentiate curriculum or do hundreds of other necessary tasks to keep their classrooms going. This precious hour, one of about a total of five permitted during the work week, is a negotiated term or part of the Teacher Bargaining Agreement. Maya Cole is suggesting it be eliminated. If this were possible, simply by saying it —- is not a friendly gesture to teachers. This will not save money. A different method of providing for children during the negotiated hour of planning time would need to be developed. Claiming to know what would help teachers and then suggesting to take away their planning time is down right nasty. Elementary planning time is beyond necessary for teacher sanity and is is the very basic component of being a thoughtful and reflective teacher!

I’ve heard some alt views on this from other teachers (and parents).




Balance of power could shift with school board election



Jason Shephard:

On April 3, voters will elect three members to the Madison Board of Education. At least two will be newcomers, replacing retiring Ruth Robarts and Shwaw Vang, while board president Johnny Winston Jr. is runing for a second term. Victories by Beth Moss and Marj Passman could give Madison Teachers Inc., the teachers union, greater control of the board’s majority. A victory by Maya Cole, meanwhile, could provide a continued 4-3 split between MTI-endorsed politicians and more reform-minded officials. Here’s a look at the three races.




Cap Times Editorial: “Give Winston Another Term”



The Capital Times:

Under Johnny Winston Jr.’s leadership, the often contentious Madison School Board has become a model of cooperative, respectful and efficient governance. No, the board’s not perfectly harmonious, but with Winston at the helm, it’s far more functional than it has been for a long time. Indeed, Winston’s proven to be exactly the right president at exactly the right time, ably balancing the concerns of the board’s two factions and running meetings with appropriate focus and authority.




The key to good schools? Housing policy



David Rusk & Marc Eisen:

Jason Shepard’s story this week, “How Can We Help Poor Students Achieve More?,” points out the strong correlation between schools with high levels of low-income students and substandard academic performance. As Shepard reports, that same point was made about the Madison schools by urban researcher David Rusk in 2001.
Rusk was a headliner at the “Nolen In The New Century” conference sponsored by Isthmus and several community and media groups. His speech was subsequently adopted for publication in Isthmus and became the first salvo in the campaign for inclusionary zoning. It’s reprinted below.(Readers are welcome to form their own conclusions on whether or not IZ has played out in Madison as Rusk outlined here.)
Rusk is the former mayor of Albuquerque. His Cities Without Suburbs, in the words of the Congressional Quarterly, “has virtually become the Bible of the regionalism movement.” Rusk’s study of census data linked failing cities to their political separation from the suburbs and, conversely, successful cities to their ability to annex or be part of a regional government. His more recent book, Inside Game/Outside Game, argues that regional land-use and tax-revenue policies are more critical to turning around failing neighborhoods than anti-poverty programs.




Cap Times Editorial: “Beth Moss for School Board”



The Capital Times:

Moss is an experienced educator who has taught diverse students in classrooms overseas and in urban districts in the U.S.
Moss is an incredibly active parent, who has been a classroom volunteer at Glenn Stephens Elementary School, a Schools of Hope tutor, a Madison School & Community Recreation program club coordinator, and a Parent Teacher Organization volunteer and fundraising chair. She’s worked with the Foundation for Madison’s Public Schools to obtain grants for student programs. And she served as co-chair of Community and Schools Together (CAST), the grass-roots group that secured passage of the last school funding referendum.

Beth Moss faces Rick Thomas April 3 for Seat 3, Madison School Board. Much more on the election here.




The Co-op Model’s Relevance Today



Nancy L Zimpher:

Cooperative education is now more than 100 years old. The co-op approach, in which students alternate time in the classroom with professionally paid work directly related to their majors, was founded at the University of Cincinnati by Dean Herman Schneider in 1906. There are co-op programs today at 500 institutions in the United States.
The centennial marks a good time to take stock. How effective is co-op? What has been its impact on its three fundamental partners — students, employers, and institutions of higher education? Is co-op still relevant? Still viable? What role should co-op play in 21st century education?
I see empirical evidence of co-op’s value every day at the University of Cincinnati. We have 3,800 students in 44 disciplines participating in co-op opportunities at more than 1,500 employers in 34 states and 9 foreign countries. At graduation, UC co-op students have an enviable head-start in their careers by virtue of their on-the-job work experience (an average of one-and-a-half years for UC students), marketable skills, impressive credentials, and networking connections. Many are hired immediately by the companies where they completed their co-ops.




On Vouchers



Tyler Cowen:

1. The federal government will pay for vouchers, to some extent, and thus extend its control over schooling. Admittedly this is happening anyway.
2. No politically feasible vouchers program will apply immediate depth charges to current public schools or even reduce their initial budgets (“oh, you aren’t letting public schools compete…). That means the new money must come from somewhere. That means our taxes will go up.
Vouchers would create a new middle class entitlement, ostensibly aimed at education but often simply capitalized in the form of cash. In the meantime public schools would require additional subsidies to stay open. How pretty a picture is this?




Spring 2007 Madison School Board Election Update: Vote April 3!



  • Christine & Trent Sveom kindly forwarded candidate responses to additional questions not contained within the previously posted Video from the March 5, 2007 West High Forum. The questions:
    • Please explain your views on additional charter schools given the success of Nuestro Mundo here in Madison and several offerings in Appleton just to name a few?
    • How can the school district provide for second languages to be taught to all students starting in Kindergarten and continuing through all grades?
    • The board will be hiring a new superintendent. Please discuss what you believe is
      the top 3 criteria for a superintendent. You are free to ignore my request to address communication between Board and Administration/Superintendent, Boards communication with public, Superintendent and Public.

    • What role should School Board, Parents and Educators play in changing state law,
      which adversely affect our schools?

    • What accountability mechanisms do you envision? (Directed to Rick & Maya)
    • What is your position on the health insurance issue for teachers, that is the WPS option versus HMO’s?

    Responses:




Despite ‘Mommy Guilt,’ Time With Kids Increasing



Donna St. George:

Cynthie Bush pulled on her coat and started to say goodbye. She and a friend were taking a night out — three hours in all, for a quick dinner and a PTA event. It was not the kind of thing she did often, with two small children and a full-time job.
But before she could leave her Herndon home, her 4-year-old daughter began to cry for her. For a moment, Bush recalled, she wondered if she should cancel. Her days were already so full. She needed more hours with her children, not fewer.




$65M for 42 Houston Charter Schools



Jay Matthews:

The charter school movement, begun 16 years ago as an alternative to struggling public schools, will today make its strongest claim on mainstream American education when a national group announces the most successful fundraising campaign in the movement’s history — $65 million to create 42 schools in Houston.
The money, which comes from some of the nation’s foremost donors, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, would make the Knowledge Is Power Program the largest charter school organization in the country. KIPP, which runs three schools in Washington, has produced some of the highest test scores among publicly funded schools in the District and has made significant gains in the math and reading achievement of low-income students in most of its 52 schools across the country.

Meanwhile, Madison’s proposed Studio School will apparently open this fall as a private organization. I hope we learn more about the Studio School’s interactions with the Madison School District and how the process might improve in the future.




Pay Schools for Better Results



Jane Galt:

But it is not true that these kids are simply genetic train wrecks who we should be prepared to write off. Disadvantaged kids can be taught to read, write, and perform basic mathematical operations, and they can be taught to behave if their parents have neglected that task. In our system, however, any school that manages to do so achieves this feat only through heroic efforts to overcome the institutional barriers put in the way. For various reasons, this is not happening. I have a novel approach to solving this problem: I propose we . . . pay schools on the basis of their ability to educate these children. I plan to call this system something nifty and new-economy, like . . . a market. That has an edgy, new-millenial kind of feel, doesn’t it? I think it’s the juxtaposition of the hard-edged k and t sounds with the soft, sensuous labials of the first syllable.
Can the school system overcome all the handicaps that disadvantaged kids are born with? I doubt it. But it could certainly do better . . . and it could hardly do worse than many urban school districts.

Galt has more on schools here.




Business Tools for Better Schools



Business Tools for Better Schools:

The "Business Tools for Better Schools" toolkit is designed to engage, energize and focus company and business organization efforts in education reform. The toolkit is geared towards both policy and practical involvement, primarily at the state and local level, in three key K-12 education reform business priorities:

  • Ensuring that graduates are ready for work and college;
  • Strengthening the science, technology, education and math (STEM) pipeline;
  • Maximizing data-driven decisions in education.

The goal is to create a "one-stop" Web site where business can get the background information, facts, research and practical tools they need to effectively engage in education in their communities and states.

The toolkit was created and is maintained by Achieve, Inc. with generous support from the GE Foundation. Additional support was provided by the Business Roundtable. The content of the site was developed in consultation with national, state and local business organizations and companies. In particular, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Business Roundtable and their state affiliates were instrumental in the conception and development of the website.

Wisconsin’s page & Data.
Wisconsin Data Fact Sheet.




Madison’s Fund 80 & Elections



TJ Mertz:

In this morning’s Wisconsin State Journal there is a story that again misrepresents the place of Madison School Community Recreation and Fund 80 in the district and the community.
The chart comparing Fund 80 levies in Madison to those in other districts ignores the fact that most or all of those locales have municipal recreation programs paid for by municipal taxes. Due to a historical quirk, Madison has very little in the way of a municipal recreation department and programs and services that other locales fund via municipal or county taxes are funded and governed by the school district via Fund 80. In order to get a realistic comparison of Madison’s spending on recreational and community education programming one must look at total levies devoted to this. The last time I did this (early 2006) I found that the combined spending on MSCR and the Madison Parks Department was about $20 million. De Moines, IA (about the same size) has a parks and recreation budget of about $20 million. Ann Arbor, MI is about half the size of Madison and has a Parks and Recreation budget of $12 million. Green Bay, also about half the size has a Parks and Recreation Budget of $8 million. In other words, the spending in these areas is very much in line with what others spend.

There’s been no shortage of discussion on Fund 80 here. 2006 / 2007 Madison School District $333M+ Citizen’s Budget.
Related:

  • Amy Hetzner: Community Service Levies Climbed Since Revenue Caps Lifted:

    But once the Legislature removed the caps on the community service levies for the 2000-’01 school year and gave school districts an opportunity to keep their recreational activities from conflicting with educational programs, more took advantage of it.
    “I think – when you look at districts across the state – that’s really what caused the jump,” said Art Rainwater, superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District, which in 2005-’06 had the largest community service levy in the state.
    Like some of the bigger community service funds, Madison’s supports a full recreation department with adult and youth programming. But it also helps pay for television production activities, after-school activities, a gay and lesbian community program coordinator and part of a social worker’s time to work with low-income families, Rainwater said.
    The School District’s community service levy is expected to grow to $10.5 million in the coming school year. In contrast, the same levy for Milwaukee Public Schools – which serves nearly four times as many children in its educational programs – is expected to reach $9.3 million, said Michelle Nate, the district’s director of finance.
    Although the state Department of Public Instruction has issued guidelines to school districts on how they should use their community service levies, it leaves it up to local residents to decide whether their school boards do so wisely and legally.

  • Carol Carstensen: Fund 80 is Worth our Support.
  • Lucy Mathiak: Community Service Fund 80, Can We talk?
  • Ruth Robarts: A Tale of Two Budgets: the Operating Budget for Madison Schools versus its Budget for Community Programs and Services
  • A look at the City of Madison’s parcel count growth.

The charts are from Lucy Mathiak’s post:






Reality Check: Taxpayers Pay For Lobbying



Colin Benedict on Channel3000:

Wisconsin taxpayers are paying millions to lobby state lawmakers, in many cases, for more money.
Dane County does it too — it spent nearly $175,000 last session, WISC-TV reported. Part of it was for more money from the state to pay for county nursing home patients, and Dane County argued against the taxpayer bill of rights.
Rock County spent about $6,400 on similar issues, WISC-TV reported.
Schools do this as well. The Madison Metropolitan School District spent $133,000 on lobbying, with some of the tax money spent trying to get more tax money into the classrooms.
The district is on record fighting against revenue limits and against limits to local control, WISC-TV reported.




Fixing Dixie’s tricksy schools



The Economist:

The hard lessons of segregation
WAYNE CLOUGH, the president of the Georgia Institute of Technology, has just moved into a new office. The workmen are still in the corridors outside, generating noise and dust. A few years ago the site, in Atlanta, was full of drug addicts and prostitutes. The hotel across the street was boarded up and inhabited by vagrants. Now Georgia Tech is building a “sustainable, energy-efficient campus” with white roofs, recycled building materials and a system for catching and using rainwater. It is a bit more expensive, says Mr Clough, but “if you plan to be around for a while, you’ll recapture the costs eventually.”
Georgia Tech has a global reputation. Its 16,000 students will mostly go on to careers in engineering, medicine or some other tough and lucrative field. But Mr Clough does have some worries. Southern universities got into the research game later than their northern rivals, so the region is behind the curve in attracting high-tech industries, he says. From time to time, fundamentalists try to teach creationism as science in southern public schools, which “reinforces the backward image”. But his biggest worry is that not enough young southerners are mastering science and maths.
“Brother Dave” Gardner, a stand-up comic from Tennessee, greeted the 1954 Supreme Court order to end segregated schools with the quip: “Let ’em go to school, beloved. We went, and we didn’t learn nothin’.” That was harsh, but partly grounded in fact. The point of school segregation was to keep blacks down and whites separate. When it ended, many white parents moved their children from newly integrated public schools to private schools whose chief selling point was whiteness, not academic rigour.

(more…)




Finding the Best High Schools, Part Two: Low-Income Stigma



Jay Matthews:

Consider this high-minded conclusion in their report: A successful high school should show high levels of student achievement, graduate almost all of its students and not let any demographic subgroup suffer at the expense of others. In a perfect world, I would not dispute that. But in the real world that means C. Leon King High School in Tampa does not belong on the best schools list because of its high dropout rate and low average test scores, even though Newsweek ranked it 73rd in the country in AP and IB test participation last year.
Asked to comment on the notion that her school ought to be taken off the list, Susie L. Johnson, assistant principal for the school’s IB magnet curriculum, said: “Honestly, that is ridiculous.”
Whoops. Did I say she runs the magnet curriculum? The Education Sector report dismissed magnets, special programs that draw students from outside school boundaries, as a sneaky way for schools like King to look good on the Newsweek list. In fact, it said, a school with a small number of students taking many tests will receive a high Challenge Index score even if it is providing a lousy education to the rest of it students.

More from Sara.




Little Consistency in Bus Safety Standards



Debra Nussbaum:

DR. ALAN ROSS did not develop a passion for school bus safety until 10 years ago, when his son asked why there were no safety belts on the bus he rode to school in Litchfield County, Conn.
“I was your typical parent, and I just assumed we had this covered in a school bus,” said Dr. Ross, who is now the president of the National Coalition for School Bus Safety, a volunteer group. “That started my quest to improve things. The state of school bus transportation is a very sad one.”
School buses remain the safest form of transportation to and from school, according to various federal statistics, but regulation of the buses is uneven. No federal laws govern whether safety belts are required on school buses, how often the buses must be inspected or how many years they can be on the road. On a state level, there are significant differences in such laws — New York and New Jersey require seat belts on buses, for example, but Connecticut does not. Districts can have their own rules, too.




For Teachers, Middle School Is Test of Wills



Elissa Gootman:

When a student at Seth Low Intermediate School loudly pronounced Corinne Kaufman a “fat lady” during a fire drill one recent day, Mrs. Kaufman, a 45-year-old math teacher, calmly turned around.
“Voluptuous,” she retorted, then proceeded to define the unfamiliar term, cutting off the laughter and offering a memorable vocabulary lesson in the process.
Such are the survival skills Mrs. Kaufman has acquired over 17 years at Seth Low, a large middle school in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn: How to snuff out brewing fistfights before the first punch is thrown, how to coax adolescents crippled by low self-esteem into raising their hands, how to turn every curveball, even the biting insult, into a teachable moment.
But not all middle school teachers can do it.




School Crime Data in Madison



Madison Parent:

How safe are our schools? This question can’t be answered without consistent collection and analysis of information about violent and disruptive incidents in our schools. While the Madison Police Department has just released its Uniform Crime Report for 2006 (the summary of crime statistics that is reported annually to the FBI), there’s no equivalent report for Madison schools. Our state’s Department of Public Instruction collects data for expulsions and suspension, but not for incidents. The Madison Metropolitan School District’s web site simply links to the DPI site. At the individual school level, there may be no system for proactively communicating with parents about incidents affecting safety, or, worse yet, a parent’s school safety questions may languish unanswered.

The post includes a list of recent school crime events. Gangs and School Violence Forum.




Milwaukee School Board Candidate Notes



Alan Borsuk:

Dannecker, 45, said people in the district are concerned about behavior in schools. In general, he said, “high school is a big issue to parents,” and many are not happy with most MPS high schools, particularly Bay View High School.
Dannecker played a central role in the decision in recent months to place police officers on a full-time basis in Bradley Tech High School and in a cluster of schools centered on Custer High School. He said he favors creating “almost an internal reform school” within MPS for students with major behavior issues.
Another trait: He says he pays attention to the way decisions are made. He often finds the decision-making of the current School Board and MPS administration lacking.
The recent MPS campaign against cell phones in school is an example. Falk said that with the way the ban works now, only some children don’t bring cell phones to school and enforcement efforts are weak.
The crackdown was not well thought out, he said, given the way students actually respond.




Madison Spelling Champ Does it Again



Ron Seely:

Forget basketball.
The real action in Madison on Saturday was on a brightly lit stage at Monona Grove High School where 47 gutsy young people stared down the vagaries of the English language and slugged it out verbally in the Badger State Spelling Bee.
The ending matched the thrill of a double-overtime NCAA tournament basketball game. Madison’s own Isabel Jacobson, of O’Keeffe Middle School, repeated as champion in a poised and confident performance. She won against a stalwart competitor, Andrew Grose, of Lake Country Academy in Sheboygan, in a nail-biting duel over the word “ineluctable.”
With just the two spellers standing on a stage amid empty chairs late in the afternoon, Andrew, who had calmly vanquished such words as “narcissistic” and “glockenspiel” during the afternoon, mistakenly put the letter “i” where the “a” belongs in “ineluctable.”
Isabel, with hardly a blink, spelled the word correctly and then awaited the final word that, if spelled correctly, would give her a memorable second straight state championship.
“Tutelary,” said pronouncer Brad Williams.