Hard MMSD Budget Still Has Wiggle Room



Scott Milfred:

It’s a contentious fact that has run through so many Madison School Board races and referendums in recent years:
Madison schools spend a lot — $12,111 per student during the 2005-06 school year.
If the district is spending that much, how can it be in crisis?
The answer is complex and a bit murky. Yet a few things are clear.
Liberal Madison has long spent more than most K-12 districts in Wisconsin. This was true before the state adopted school revenue limits in the 1990s, and the caps only reinforced this today.
“When revenue caps went in, everyone was basically frozen in place,” Madison School Superintendent Art Rainwater said Friday. “We do spend more than the state average. But that has been the expectation of our community.”
So why does Madison spend more? Berry points to Madison’s higher number of staff who aren’t teachers. Madison hires a lot of social workers, psychologists, nurses and administrators.
Madison spends more per pupil than Racine, Green Bay and Kenosha — as well as the state average — on student and staff services, administration and building and grounds. And Madison’s non- instructional costs are rising as a percentage of its spending.
“Madison is actually de- emphasizing instruction,” Berry contends.
In addition, Berry suspects Madison is over-identifying students for learning disabilities.

Links: Madison spending, student and staffing history. 2006/2007 MMSD Citizen’s Budget. Carol Carstensen’s thoughts on a 2007 Referendum.




Spring Election Update – Vote April 3!



Much more on the election here.




Mayor Candidates Debate City Schools



Mary Yeater Rathbun:

Mayoral candidate Ray Allen told 250 Rotarians Wednesday that he would pull cops out of the schools, but later told The Capital Times that is not what he meant.
Allen said after the debate that what he meant to say, as he has said numerous times before, is that he would pull the cost of funding the police officers in the schools out of the school budget and transfer it to the city budget. This might, depending on the latest school financing laws, allow the schools to free up roughly $280,000 to apply to educational programs.
That is not, however, what members of Downtown Rotary heard at the Monona Terrace mayoral forum featuring both Allen and Mayor Dave Cieslewicz.
As Rotarian Amanda Todd said, “As a mom, I was surprised to learn Allen plans to remove the cops from the schools.”
Allen’s misstatement came in response to a question from forum moderator Regina Millner about community safety being critical to recruiting and retaining businesses in Madison. In her question, Millner said the other major factor was the quality of the schools and remarked that the mayor had no control over the quality of the schools.
Allen, who served nine years on the Madison School Board, took issue with this assumption. “The mayor can be the champion of the schools,” he said.

Gangs and School Violence Forum Audio / Video and notes.
Candidate Websites: Ray Allen | Dave Cieslewicz




More on Madison’s Reading First Rejection and Reading Recovery



Joanne Jacobs:

Reading War II is still raging as reading experts attack a New York Times story on Madison’s decision to reject federal Reading First funds in order to continue a reading program that the Times claims is effective. Education News prints as-yet unpublished letters to the Times from Reid Lyons, Robert Sweet, Louisa Moats, Linnea Ehri and Joanna Williams, Timothy Shanahan and Mark Seidenberg. Professor Moats, formerly co-investigator of the NICHD Early Interventions Project, a five-year, federally funded study of reading instruction in high-poverty schools, points out that the Office of Management and Budget “recently gave the Reading First program its highest (and unusual) rating of effectiveness.”

Joanne will be speaking in Milwaukee on March 23, 2007. More: Reading First and Reading Recovery.




“A Free and Appropriate Education”



Paula via Paul Soglin:

Federal law states that in the U.S. every child has a right to a free and appropriate education no matter if the child is gifted & talented, average, or below average. Some children will cost more to educate than others.
There is an illusion that kids come with their abilities and needs stamped on their foreheads. As you have stated, we educate students with a huge range of intellectual, emotional, physical, linguistic, and economic needs. In special education, these needs are defined by arbitrary cut-offs and definitions. The premise is that these categories can be used as predictors of education costs to be incurred by specific disability and need.




Schools Discover Automated Calling and Go Wild



Ellen Gameran:

All over the country, schools are putting in automated phone systems that can quickly place thousands of recorded calls. Originally intended to notify parents of emergencies, more and more automated messages are about routine matters, ranging from stern warnings about talking in class to how to dress for tomorrow’s pep rally.
One automated calling company, TeleParent Educational Systems, of Fullerton, Calif., lets teachers pick from a menu of 600 canned messages — including one that says a child is a “pleasure to have in class” and another saying he or she has “been late to class five or more times.”




Finding the Best High Schools: Part One



Jay Matthews:

While we are gathering this data, I want to use the next few columns to dig into the meaning of high school quality. This has become a controversial topic. Educators have a wide range of views. Some tell me the Newsweek list, which rates schools on the very narrow basis of participation in college-level tests, is a wonderful way to recognize schools with great staffs who are working hard to prepare average and sometimes below-average students for college. Others say the list distorts the images of many schools, particularly those in wealthier neighborhoods, by giving less emphasis to test scores and by ignoring special school qualities that cannot be reduced to a single number.
It is not just educators and journalists who are concerned about how we measure schools. Probably the most enthusiastic consumers of high school data are real estate agents, and their millions of clients. A recent study on how school statistics affect home prices dramatizes once again how powerful average test scores are in shaping public perceptions, even when many experts think there are better ways to assess schools.




WEAC, the EAW & the Waukesha School Board



Waukesha Taxpayer’s League:

alaries and benefits are by far the largest portion of the School District budget and the increases dictate what the School Board must do with programs and corresponding reductions in programs. During the ’90’s, negotiations used to begin with presentation of proposals of both sides, the EAW (Education Association of Waukesha) and the Waukesha School Board (the elected body that should be working on behalf of taxpayers to provide the best education possible). This was done so that negotiations was a give/take process (taxpayers usually gave more than they received in return). Recently, a couple of WTL members had a three way conversation with Bill Baumgart, President of the Waukesha School Board. In that conversation, the WTL verified that the School Board does not vote or have an acceptable QEO done prior to negotiations as a basis to work from. The School District also hasn’t filed with the appropriate Schedule D required by law at the close of negotiations for previous years. Following is the ‘proposal-less non-protection’ contract used by the School District of Waukesha (ie. Waukesha School Board) and the EAW. Is there a difference between the two groups??




A Child Left Behind



Terri Cullen:

My husband Gerry and I are at odds over a decision that could have a major impact on our son Gerald’s future: Should he repeat the second grade?
By repeating second grade, Gerald may greatly improve his grades — which, if it keeps up, will affect his ability to get into a good college, potentially leading one day to a higher-paying job. By going on to third grade, Gerald will keep pace with his friends and avoid the social stigma and self-doubt of having been left back — and a college education isn’t always the key to financial security and a happy life.




On Math Reform



Barry Garelick:

If one could make a case against the perpetrators of reform math—complete with arrests and jail time—showing that such programs are a form of child abuse, the math wars would cease in a matter of days. As it is, however, reasoned arguments from those who oppose the reform programs haven’t seemed to carry much weight, as the programs seem to proliferate in school after school across the U.S. And in a recent Education Week column, Mr. T.C. O’Brien seems quite content to skewer those who criticize the reform programs, resorting at times to borderline name-calling, and laying blame in large part on mathematicians. It seems that mathematicians’ call for math to be in math textbooks and that such math be is an artifact of purism and backwards thinking.
Ordinarily I would ignore such a diatribe. But I believe there have been too few rebuttals to this type of editorial which Education Week seems only too happy to publish. Take for example this statement: “The National Mathematics Advisory Panel, established by the Bush administration in April of last year, has been meeting to discuss the improvement of achievement in mathematics in the schools. A good portion of its members have no experience in mathematics, no experience teaching children, or both.”

More on Garelick




Examining California’s School Governance and Finance Systems



IREPP:

“Getting Down to Facts” is a research project of more than 20 studies designed to provide California’s citizens with comprehensive information about the status of the state’s school finance and governance systems. The overall hypothesis underlying this research project is that improvement to California’s school finance and governance structures could enable its schools to be more effective.
Over an 18 months period from September 2005 to March 2007, the Getting Down to Facts Project brought together an extraordinary array of scholars from 32 institutions with diverse expertise and policy orientations. It represents an unprecedented attempt to synthesize what we know as a basis for convening the necessary public conversations about what we should do. “Getting Down to Facts” was specifically requested by the Governor’s Committee on Education Excellence, former Secretary of Education Alan Bersin, the President pre Tem of the California Senate, the Speaker of the California Assembly, and the Superintendent of Public Instruction.

Nanette Asimov:

A yearlong, $3 million evaluation of California public schools by more than 30 education experts reveals a “deeply flawed” system that misdirects school money, emphasizes paperwork over progress, and fails to send the best teachers into the neediest schools.
“Getting Down to Facts” — a collection of 22 studies — begins with the sobering reminder that despite years of academic reform, California students of all ethnicities still score among the worst in the nation on tests of basic reading and math.
A year ago, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and a bipartisan group of state educators and lawmakers asked the researchers to find out what was wrong with the public school system. All agreed that once the report came out, they would together try to fix the problems.

Joel Rubin and Howard Blume have more.




Mark Seidenberg on the Reading First controversy



Via a reader email; Language Log:

Last Friday, the New York Times ran a story about how school administrators in Madison, Wisconsin, turned down $2M in federal Reading First funds rather than change their approach to the teaching of reading (Diana Jean Schemo, “In War Over Teaching Reading, a U.S.-Local Clash”). Considering the importance of the topic, it’s remarkable how poorly (or misleadingly) reported this article was. The story’s key claim:
Madison officials say that a year after Wisconsin joined Reading First, in 2004, contractors pressured them to drop their approach, which blends some phonics with whole language in a program called Balanced Literacy. Instead, they gave up the money — about $2 million, according to officials here, who say their program raised reading scores.
One set of problems with the article is discussed by Ken DeRosa here. Apparently the Madison program “raised reading scores” only because the test scoring system was changed. Once apples are compared to apples, the test results show that “Madison’s Balanced Literacy reading program […] failed to increase student performance in Madison and actually caused a relative decline in the schools that were supposed to get Reading First funding.”
Last night, Mark Seidenberg sent me a note in which he lays out some additional background, and identifies what he calls the “big lie” in Schemo’s story:




Strangling Wisconsin Education With Underfunded Special Ed



Paul Soglin:

I met with some special education teachers on Tuesday and wish to share my observations about the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD). These are my observations and conclusions, not theirs.

  • For the 1996-97 school year the State of Wisconsin paid 40.223% of the cost of special education. For 2006-2007 the state paid  28%. (Here is a MMSD memo on the subject from 2005)
  • The MMSD cannot lower the expenditures for special education and so the lost state revenues must be made up by cuts in general education.
  • The lost funding amounts to about $8 million dollars this year.
  • In the 2001-2002 school year the MMSD enrolled 197 children with a Primary Disability of Autism. That number rose to 303 for this school year. Twenty five years ago that number was less than five. If one out of every 166 children are autistic, there should be 150 autistic children in the MMSD.
  • A 2003 district study showed that 93 of the autistic children enrolled that year moved into the district from not just Wisconsin and the United States, but all over the world. That number does not include the children of families who moved to Madison prior to their child’s fifth birthday.

My conclusions: Special eduction is just one of several factors driving the cost of educating our children. More significant is the cost of educating so many children enrolled in the MMSD who’s families are below the poverty line.

There is no question that the original outstanding commitment to special education of the MMSD in the 1980’s combined with the high level of services (Waisman Center, etc) attracted a significant number of families to the MMSD.

More on state K-12 finance from Paul here:

he Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) struggles to make budget cuts. Some taxpayers are assuming that if they, as students, could get a quality education twenty or forty years ago, then, with a little fine tuning, it can be today’s students.
The world and Wisconsin education has changed. Here are some of the differences from thirty years ago:




Our School Author Joanne Jacobs Milwaukee visit 3/23/2007



via email:

Our School: The Inspiring Story of Two Teachers, One Big Idea and the Charter School That Beat the Odds (Palgrave Macmillan) brings readers inside a San Jose charter high school that prepares students who are “failing but not in jail” to succeed at four-year colleges.
The book just came out in paperback. I’ll be in Milwaukee Friday, March 23 to speak at Marquette’s Soup and Substance lunch at noon at Alumni Memorial Union, 1442 W. Wisconsin Ave., in room 163 [Map]. The lunch is open to the public. I’ll also do a reading at Schwartz Bookshop, 2262 S. Kinnickinnic Ave at 7 pm [Map].
Most Downtown College Prep students come from Mexican immigrant families and read at the fifth-grade level when they start ninth grade. DCP promotes the work-your-butt-off style of education. Teachers don’t tell students they’re wonderful. They tell them they’re capable of improving, which is true. The school now has one of the highest pass rates in San Jose on the state graduation exam. All graduates go to four-year colleges.
Our School has received good reviews in the Wall Street Journal, New York Post, Washington Post, Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Sacramento Bee, Teacher Magazine and elsewhere.
After 19 years as a Knight Ridder columnist, I quit in 2001 to write “Our School,” freelance and start an education blog, joannejacobs.com, which now draws more than 1,000 visitors a day.
With all the despair about educating “left behind” kids, I think people should hear about a school that’s making a difference.




Concerns Expressed on The Proposed Sherman School Closing



Channel3000:

Parents on Madison’s east side attended a meeting Tuesday to sound off on a plan that would close Sherman Middle School next year.
Parents and school staff packed a cafeteria Tuesday night to hear from the district and school board members about a plan that would consolidate Sherman with Blackhawk and O’Keefe middle schools.
The plan is estimated to save the district more than $750,000 in a budget that has a $10.5 million shortfall.
But parents said that the plan would not only uproot their children’s lives but close a school that has come a long way.




Waukesha West Wins 6th Wisconsin Academic Decathalon



Amy Hetzner:

For everyone who has lamented when athletic skills overshadow intellectual prowess, Waukesha West High School answered back Tuesday, winning a sixth consecutive state Academic Decathlon crown backed by a cheering section worthy of a hockey game.
The team dominated the two-day championships, beating its nearest competitor – Sun Prairie High School – by more than 7,000 points out of a possible 60,000. Waukesha West scrimmage partner Kettle Moraine High School came in third overall.
“It’s just like fine wine – it keeps getting better and better,” Waukesha coach Duane Stein said of his sixth state title.
Not only did the Waukesha West team take home the team prize in all 10 of the events in the decathlon – from essay writing to tests in academic subjects – two team members set state records in individual categories. The team also beat the previous state records in essay and social science.




Fund education where it’s needed



Steve Paske:

However, there was one thing I found alarming.
The column calling for school funding reforms wasn’t about MPS or inner-ring suburbs; it was about drastic service reductions in Waukesha.
If you ask me, to complain about Waukesha’s school funding while MPS and other area districts struggle to simply put a teacher in every regular classroom is akin to whining about a dripping faucet in your mansion’s eighth bathroom while your next-door neighbor is stuck going out back to a squatter’s pit.

More on Waukesha.




Sunshine Week: Open Records in Schools



Several articles on open records issues in schools:

  • Meg Jones: School District loses 2 suits over lack of transparency

    Barry Hoerz was kicked out of a meeting of the Weyauwega-Fremont School Board in July.
    What’s unusual is that Hoerz was a member of the School Board, and he was told to leave because he was writing notes during closed session.
    A Waupaca County circuit judge agreed with Hoerz after a four-hour trial in January and ordered the district to pay a $300 fine as well as attorney expenses and other fees totaling $9,133, according to court records.
    While squabbles among school board members and superintendents are not rare, it is unusual for a school board member to sue the board for violating the state’s open meetings law.

  • Madison Parents School Safety Site:

    This week is national “Sunshine Week” (Sunshine Week web site; Sunshine Week blog), promoting open government and the public’s right to know. For last year’s Sunshine Week, the Rochester (N.Y.) Democrat and Chronicle conducted a freedom of information audit to obtain copies of its school district’s reports of violent and disruptive incidents in school buildings.

  • How to Reforum your local School Board
  • Is it Possible to Have a Good School District with Less Money? Presentation to the Florence School District



Saving Literature from English Departments



Tom Lutz:

I am surprised that I am not a novelist. I am an inveterate liar, so I have at least one of the necessary skills. I love the novel as a form in as deep and devoted a way as any man loved any art, and writing novels is the only thing in the way of a life’s work that I’ve ever really wanted to undertake. Still, I remain novel-less.
I have Jack Kerouac and Hunter Thompson to blame for my early misdirected energies. They encouraged me to believe that the essence of writing was the wild life that preceded it, to believe that I was doing the better part, and the most important part, of novel-writing by imitating them not on the page, but in the bars and on the highways. I realize now this was an error in judgment.
So, too, was my decision to get a Ph.D. in literature as a step toward the nice cushy professorship that would allow me to lay back and watch myself write novel after novel, with perhaps a collection of stories here and there. The graduate work and academic gigs that followed meant that I had to teach and write a bunch of other things, those publish-or-perish scholarly books and the requisite pile of articles full of words like “overdetermination,” “supplementarity,” “hybridity,” “imbrication” and “polyvocality,” words that produced the squiggly red underlines of my spell-checker and earned me the enmity of the very novelists and poets I wanted to join.




Volunteer mentoring program teaches robotics



Maggie Rossiter Peterman:

In an abandoned insurance office, a handful of Madison engineers and scientists logged hundreds of volunteer hours to create a workshop so high school students could put their math and science lessons into practice.
It’s a drill two GE Healthcare engineers – Rob Washenko and Bob Schulz – have performed 20 hours a week for six weeks each of the last four years to assist Memorial High School science and aerospace engineering teacher Ben Senson in the development of a high school robotics program.
“We teach students how to think to solve problems,” said Washenko, 50, an engineering manager and inventor at GE Healthcare in Madison.




Reaction to Waukesha School Budget Cutbacks & State Financial Aid



Amy Hetzner:

About 500 parents, students and spectators packed a school auditorium Monday night, pleading for help from local legislators in dealing with a financial situation that some predicted would devastate the School District.
“If we can pay for a stadium for a bunch of overpaid baseball players, we can certainly pay for an education for all of our children,” Heyer Elementary School parent Cheryl Gimignani told the six legislators participating in the forum in North High School’s auditorium.
The event came just two days before the School Board is set to approve $3.4 million worth of program and service cuts to balance its 2007-’08 budget.
Administrators have recommended eliminating the equivalent of 62 full-time staff positions, which would raise class sizes, delay band and orchestra instruction and nearly eliminate elementary guidance, elementary library and gifted programs in the district.
They blame the school system’s financial woes on perennial discrepancies between what the state allows the district to raise under revenue caps and its actual expenses. A separate law, the qualified economic offer, virtually guarantees teachers annual compensation increases of 3.8% while revenue grows by about 2%.
But the legislators offered little hope that much will change, at least in the near future, and said the school system would be better off looking for cost savings than expecting more money from Madison. Any change to the state funding system for schools likely would not benefit residents in Waukesha County, who already pay more in taxes than they receive back in aid from the state, they said.
“I do not want to change the formula,” said state Sen. Mary Lazich (R-New Berlin), “because if we tamper and change the formula, the school districts that I represent will lose, not gain.”

Lazich’s comments illustrate the unlikely nature of significant state K-12 finance changes that would benefit property rich school districts like Madison and Waukesha.




Elementary School Foreign Languages



Jamaal Abdul-Alim:

That’s about all the time she has if you add up all the 15-minute Spanish lessons she gives twice a week to kindergartners at Stormonth Elementary School.
The other day, her instruction involved an animated session using stuffed toys for a lesson about the Spanish words for animals, as well as the movements and sounds they make.
“¿Cómo mueve la rana?” Harris asked the students, posing in Spanish the question: “How does the frog move?”




Parents Balk at Proposed Cuts



Andy Hall:

The Madison School District’s struggle to handle a $10.5 million budget shortfall moved into a new stage Monday night, as 17 people spoke out against proposed cuts and a School Board member urged her colleagues to turn to voters for more money.
The School Board began struggling with the budget cuts following Superintendent Art Rainwater’s announcement Friday of his plans for addressing the shortfall, including consolidation of schools on the city’s East Side, increases in kindergarten through third-grade class sizes at seven elementary schools and changes in how services are delivered to students with speech and language problems.
The district’s budget next year will rise 1.9 percent to $339.1 million. But cuts are needed because that increase, which is limited by state revenue caps, isn’t enough to allow the district to continue all current services.
At the School Board meeting, five parents of Crestwood Elementary students protested Rainwater’s proposal to remove the school next year from the state’s Student Achievement Guarantee in Education (SAGE) program, which limits class sizes in grades K-3 to 15 students in order to aid low-income students.




An Alt View on Concessions Before Negotiations



Carol Carstensen:

I thought it might be helpful to provide some facts and explanations about the topic of health insurance – hopefully this will clear up some of the misinformation and misconceptions present in the public discussions. It is important to remember that the focus must be on the total package settlement – because that is what has an impact on the budget. For example, Sun Prairie’s agreement to make changes in its health insurance (by using a joint committee to find a way to reduce health insurance costs) has been praised, as it should be. It should be noted, however, that Sun Prairie’s total package settlement was 4.75% – while Madison’s package, without switching health insurance carriers, was 3.98%. (A rough estimate is that a 4.75% settlement would have cost Madison about $1.5 Million more.)

Related:




A Note on Wellness & PE



Via a reader’s email message:

our school banned all vending machines 1 1/2 yrs. ago. Did it help? ABSOLUTELY NOT! The kids are now bringing sodas and candy in their back packs and eat it at lunch time. They do not eat in the lunchroom. Elementary students have snack time around 9:30 to 10:30 each day depending on what grade you are in. They have 30 min. What do they eat? They bring candy, chips, sweetened tea, sodas and kool aid bursts. The school lost money and yet the kids are still eating poorly.
What could be done?
Ban the sodas and snacks from home and take away the snack time and replace it with 30 min. of instruction time. or better yet, replace it with 30 more min. of PE time.




Limits of Law-Based School Reform



Mike Antonucci:

There’s an excellent book from 1997 called The Limits of Law-Based School Reform that I think everyone – especially lawmakers and public policy experts – should read. But the title alone should be enough for all of us who think passing a law to address a perceived education problem is sufficient to solve it.
It’s only human nature after winning a tough legislative battle to want to declare victory and go home. I’m sure the 186 Republicans and 197 Democrats in the U.S. House who voted for the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001 didn’t think they would still be debating it five years later. The pattern is repeating itself in Utah.




School Board Candidate Take Home Test, Week 8



Isthmus:

Isthmus’ cover story this week addressed the rise of “disconnected youth” in our community — kids who aren’t in school, who don’t have jobs and who don’t have supportive families to help them. These kids often get in trouble. Is there more that Madison schools can do to address their needs before they drop out?
Our schools, says former county executive Jonathan Barry, do well with motivated, college-bound students, but are increasingly failing students who don’t see college in their future. Do you agree or disagree with his assessment that the Madison schools should be doing more with vocational education, and why?

Responses:




Growing Trend Toward Eighth Grade Algebra



Jay Matthews:

Experts say the trend toward early algebra is driven by more rigorous teaching and a commitment to providing greater access to a course that provides a crucial foundation for further study in math and science. Algebra, they say, opens doors. That can be especially important at schools such as Gunston Middle, where about half of the students are economically disadvantaged.
“We work to identify and support students so that they can move ahead as they are successful, and we sometimes make moves mid-year,” Allen said. “Many kids move ahead in elementary school, but many of our students make the leap in sixth or seventh grade.”
Some skeptics worry that kids are being rushed and the math curriculum is being watered down.




Knowledge is Power Only if You Know How To Use It



Denise Caruso:

In the 17th century, they note that reading know-how was such a known quantity that the colony of Massachusetts had a law requiring it to be taught in the home. But a century later, when Cotton Mather championed a new and effective smallpox inoculation in Boston, most of the physicians in town rejected the treatment because it was not supported by the accepted know-how of the time.
Today the situation is reversed. “While almost every child vaccinated against measles is safe from the disease,” the professors write, “an alarming number of children who are ‘taught’ to read in school never really learn to read at a level necessary to perform well in today’s society.”




Middle schools giving way to K-8 programs



Sarah Carr:

But in choosing to send her children to a middle school, Allen is part of a declining breed of parents in the city.
Next year, Milwaukee Public Schools officials expect about 8,750 middle school students, down about 10% from this school year and nearly 35% from four years ago.
The School District has long planned to put more children of middle school age in kindergarten-through-eighth-grade schools. Over the last few years, the number of K-8 schools has grown from about a dozen to about 60. But recent developments raise the question of whether your run-of-the-mill middle school will survive, particularly in some urban areas.
Milwaukee, Boston, Baltimore, Cleveland and Cincinnati are only a few of the cities that have shifted heavily to K-8s in recent years. In Philadelphia, district leaders have said they plan to phase out middle schools entirely, replacing them with K-8s. Many parents and school officials consider that grade configuration to be safer and more nurturing, particularly in city schools. The trend is more of an urban than a suburban one, and nationally there are still more middle schools than K-8s.




Why Fund Raising Isn’t Child’s Play



Jeff Opdyke:

A couple of times a year, my son comes home with an assignment that is supposed to warm our hearts: fund raising. But to be honest, it always leaves me cold.
It’s always the same old, painful drill. My son carries a clutch of papers that, for all he cares, could be written in Sanskrit. The only thing he sees is the catalog filled with pictures of the prizes he can win if he raises a ton of money for some cause he can’t even identify.
And it gets worse.
My son has no interest in peddling products door-to-door. I have no interest in letting him — in part because we don’t know every neighbor, and in part because I’m opposed to letting my son donate free labor to for-profit companies that run many of these nonprofit fund-raising efforts and keep a percentage of the money raised. Ultimately, the only thing my son cares about is winning some overpriced award. Since he hasn’t the time to sell this stuff to begin with, he wants me and his mom to find buyers or to pony up our own cash. And when we won’t, he wants to spend all of his money to buy ever more boxes of whatever the fund-raiser of the day is pitching.




Modern-Day 3 R’s: Rules, Rules, Rules



Ian Shapira:

A culture of control has Washington area campuses in an ever-tightening grip, many students say, extending beyond the long-standing restrictions on provocative clothing, cellphone use and class-time bathroom visits. Akin to the omnipresent “helicopter parents,” these students say, are helicopter administrators who home in on their smallest moves, no matter how guileless or mundane.
Some administrators acknowledge that the list of rules meant to ban, limit or deter potentially inappropriate or dangerous actions is steadily growing.
“Where to start? It’s getting huge,” said Linda Wanner, a Blair assistant principal. “The word of the day is prevention. We’re on high alert all the time.” It’s a result, experts say, of the many pressures on those who lead a modern campus with anywhere from 1,000 to 3,000 teenagers and the potential for violence or a lawsuit around every hallway corner.




“Bitter Medicine for Madison Schools”:
07/08 budget grows 3.6% from 333M (06/07) to $345M with Reductions in the Increase



Doug Erickson on the 2007/2008 $345M budget (up from $333M in 2006/2007) for 24,342 students):

As feared by some parents, the recommendations also included a plan to consolidate schools on the city’s East Side. Marquette Elementary students would move to Lapham Elementary and Sherman Middle School students would be split between O’Keeffe and Black Hawk middle schools.
No school buildings would actually close – O’Keeffe would expand into the space it currently shares with Marquette, and the district’s alternative programs would move to Sherman Middle School from leased space.
District officials sought to convince people Friday that the consolidation plan would have some educational benefits, but those officials saw no silver lining in having to increase class sizes at several elementary schools.
Friday’s announcement has become part of an annual ritual in which Madison – and most other state districts – must reduce programs and services because overhead is rising faster than state-allowed revenue increases. A state law caps property-tax income for districts based on enrollment and other factors.
The Madison School District will have more money to spend next year – about $345 million, up from $332 million – but not enough to keep doing everything it does this year.
School Board members ultimately will decide which cuts to make by late May or June, but typically they stick closely to the administration’s recommendations. Last year, out of $6.8 million in reductions, board members altered less than $500,000 of Rainwater’s proposal.
Board President Johnny Winston Jr. called the cuts “draconian” but said the district has little choice. Asked if the School Board will consider a referendum to head off the cuts, he said members “will discuss everything.”
But board Vice President Lawrie Kobza said she thinks it’s too early to ask the community for more money. Voters approved a $23 million referendum last November that included money for a new elementary school on the city’s Far West Side.
“I don’t see a referendum passing,” she said.

Links: Wisconsin K-12 spending. The 10.5M reductions in the increase plus the planned budget growth of $12M yields a “desired” increase of 7.5%. In other words, current Administration spending growth requires a 7.5% increase in tax receipts from property, sales, income, fees and other taxes (maybe less – see Susan Troller’s article below). The proposed 07/08 budget grows 3.6% from 333M+ (06/07) to $345M (07/08). Madison’s per student spending has grown an average of 5.25% since 1987 – details here.
UPDATE: A reader emails:

The spectre of central city school closings was what prompted some of us to resist the far-west side school referendum. Given the looming energy crisis, we should be encouraging folks to live in town, not at the fringes, strengthen our city neighborhoods. Plus, along with the need to overhaul the way we fund schools, we need a law requiring developers to provide a school or at least the land as a condition to development.

UPDATE 2: Susan Troller pegs the reduction in the increase at $7.2M:

Proposed reductions totaled almost $7.2 million and include increases in elementary school class sizes, changes in special education allocations and school consolidations on the near east side.
Other recommendations include increased hockey fees, the elimination of the elementary strings program and increased student-to-staff ratios at the high school and middle school levels.

UPDATE 3: Roger Price kindly emailed the total planned 07/08 budget: $339,139,282




$1.74B Tax and Fee Increases in Governor Doyle’s Proposed Wisconsin 07-09 Budget



Bob Lang, Director: Legislative Fiscal Bureau, 92K PDF:

A number of legislators have requested information concerning state tax and fee changes included in the 2007-09 budget recommendations of the Governor. This memorandum responds to those inquiries.
The attached table provides a brief description of each state tax and fee modification proposed in the Governor’s bill. The table consists of three parts: (1) tax increases and decreases; (2) fee increases and decreases; and (3) measures which would enhance the collection of current taxes or fees. Each entry in the table includes the agency name, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau’s budget summary document item that describes the change in more detail, a summary of the proposed modification, and an estimate of the revenue change due to the tax or fee modification.
In the table, GPR represents general fund revenue. Revenue to a program revenue account is signified by PR and SEG signifies revenue to a segregated fund. “Unknown” means that no estimate of the revenue impact is available at this time. The fiscal effects shown in the table reflect estimates made by the administration; estimates prepared by this office during budget deliberations may be different.

Steven Walters:

Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle’s proposed two-year budget includes $1.74 billion in higher taxes and fees, according to a report by the Legislative Fiscal Bureau released Friday.
To put that number in perspective, it amounts to about $630 for each of the 2.76 million Wisconsin income tax filers for 2005.
The budget Doyle presented two years ago, before he won a second term in November, included $304 million in tax and fee increases, according to the non-partisan Fiscal Bureau.
The report says taxes would go up by a total of $1.37 billion by mid-2009, and listed the largest increases as:

Wisconsin residents paid 33.4% of income in taxes during 2006. More on Doyle’s proposed budget here.




Senator Mike Ellis on Governor Doyle’s Proposed Budget



Jo Egelhoff:

While Senator Ellis can turn complex policy into a sentence or two, he claims Governor Doyle has magically turned tax hikes into tax cuts! About that Ellis quips “No wonder the governor is proposing a third year of math and science for high school students. Talk about new math…”
Ellis and his staff have poured over the Fiscal Bureau’s budget analysis “finding one time bomb after another.” The roarin’ and raspy Senator points out that Doyle’s sleight of hand creates new segregated funds out of whole cloth. An example shows up on page 238 of the Fiscal Bureau’s review – the newly created “Health Care Quality Fund” (HCQF). Here’s where all those new taxes (“hospital tax”, “cigarette tax”) show up as Revenues.




Initiative Will Pay Students to Pass AP Tests



Percentage of admissions officials citing criteria as
John Hechinger & Susan Warren:

Jessica Stark, a 17-year-old from Abilene, Texas, earned $600 for some hard work last year. It wasn’t flipping burgers or waiting tables. She made the money for passing six of the toughest examinations in high school at $100 apiece.
Ms. Stark is part of a movement that is going national: paying kids to take Advanced Placement tests. Success on these exams, administered by the nonprofit College Board, often gives students college credit and sometimes encourages them to pursue study and careers in the field. Ms. Stark plans to become an engineer and has already been admitted to the Colorado School of Mines. “I do homework all the time,” she says. “I don’t have too much of a social life. … Study parties — we’re pretty good at those.”
A new initiative, aimed at encouraging careers in math and science, plans to replicate these AP bonuses across the country. Teachers get them, too — at times, $5,000 annually or more — for helping their kids pass AP classes in math, science and English. The money is provided by a network of private donors. Along with cash, students in Texas sometimes get gifts, such as iPods, as door prizes for attending weekend prep classes.
The program’s proponents say AP incentives have succeeded at getting more students to pass the tests in Texas, and they expect the broader initiative to encourage more students to go on to careers in math and science. But some critics question whether cash bonuses are an appropriate and effective way to engage students in the subjects. Robert Schaeffer, public education director for the National Center for Fair and Open Testing, a critic of standardized tests, calls the approach “basing education reform on a series of bribes to kids and bounties to teachers” and says the money would be better spent on broader efforts to improve instruction.




Madison Superintendent’s 2007-2008 Proposed Budget Changes



Art Rainwater on the reductions in increases to the proposed 2007-2008 MMSD Budget [1.4MB PDF]:

Dear Board of Education,
The attached is my recommendation for the service reductions required to balance the budget for 2007-2008. They are provided to you for review in advance of my Recommended Balanced Budget for 2007-2008 which will be available on April 12, 2007. You requested that the service reductions be presented to you in advance to provide sufficient time for your study and analysis.
After 14 years of continuous reductions in our services for children there are no good choices. While these service reductions are not good for children or the health of the school district they represent our best professional judgment of the least harmful alternatives.
The process that we used to study, analyze, consider and finally recommend the items presented was done over a period of weeks. We first reviewed each department and division of the district and listed anything that could be reduced or eliminated legally or contractually. We narrowed that list to those items which we believed would do the least harm to:

  • Our academic programs,
  • The health and safety of our schools,
  • The opportunities for student involvement,
  • Our ability to complete our legal and fiscal requirements

The document presented to you today is the result of those discussions. The items are broken into four categories:

  1. Reductions to balance the budget ( Impact Statements provided)
  2. Reductions analyzed, discussed and not included (Impact statements provided)
  3. Reductions reviewed and not advanced
  4. Possible revenues dependent on legislative action

The administration is prepared to provide you further analysis and respond to questions as we continue to work to approve a final working budget in May.

2006/2007 Citizen’s Budget ($333M+) for 24,342 students. I did not quickly notice a total proposed 2007/2008 spending number in this document.
UPDATE: Overall spending will grow about 3.4% from $333M to $345M per Doug Erickson’s article.
Links: NBC15 | Channel3000




The Future of Our Schools: The Funding Crisis



The League of Women Voters of Dane County, Dane County PTO’s, Principals and School Boards
Panel Presentation featuring:

Questions to follow presentations
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
7:00 ? 9:30 p.m.
Meriter Main Gate Grand Hall
333 W. Main Street, Madison[map]
(free parking across the street)
All Welcome! Come and Bring a friend!
For more information:
The League of Women Voters of Dane County 232-9447




School District Annual Reductions in Budget Increases



Doug Erickson:

Madison School District administrators are scheduled to announce today their recommendations for millions of dollars in program and staff cuts, a grim step in a budget process that typically consumes the School Board’s attention each spring.
Larger class sizes at the elementary level and bigger caseloads for special education teachers likely will be among the proposals.
Consolidating schools on the city’s East Side also is a strong possibility – parents there already are mobilizing to beat back the idea – although district officials would not confirm that such a proposal will be part of today’s announcement.
The district’s most recent budget forecast in January put next year’s shortfall at $10.5 million. That number was being refined Thursday but is in the ballpark, district officials said.

Related:

The MMSD’s budget increases annually. A variety of perspectives on enrollment, spending and staff history can be found here.
Those interested in school finance might check out Monday’s brown bag lunch meeting “Financing Quality Education“.




Homeschooling and Socialization



Richard Medlin:

Shyers (1992a, 1992b), in the most thorough study of home-schooled children’s social behavior to date, tested 70 children who had been entirely home-schooled and 70 children who had always attended traditional schools. The two groups were matched in age (all were 8-10 years old), race, gender, family size, socioeconomic status, and number and frequency of extracurricular activities. Shyers measured self-concept and assertiveness and found no significant differences between the two groups.
The observers used the Direct Observation Form of the Child Behavior Checklist . . . , a checklist of 97 problem behaviors such as argues, brags or boasts, doesn’t pay attention long, cries, disturbs other children, isolates self from others, shy or timimd, and shows off. The results were striking — the mean problem behavior score for children attending conventional schools was more than eight times higher than that of the home-schooled group.

via Joanne.




Why this year is different for state public school funding



Beth Swedeen:

Many people in Madison continue to say that the district and its leadership (including the Board of Education) are helpless in changing the revenue caps and the way public education is funded in Wisconsin. They point out that the revenue caps have been in place for 14 years and at least during in the last three budget cycles (since 2000), districts have been screaming for help. I’m not a political insider, but here’s at least some reasons that this year (and definitely the budget cycle in 2009) is significantly different:

Steven Walters and Stacy Forster along with numerous notes & links:

Despite Gov. Jim Doyle’s public – and repeated – promises that his budget proposal would pay for two-thirds of public education costs, an analysis released today showed that it falls short of that goal.
In a 624-page summary of the budget that Doyle gave legislators last month, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau said the state would pay 65.3% of public school costs in the year that begins July 1, and 65.5% of those costs in the following year.




Madison’s Reading Battle Makes the NYT: In War Over Teaching Reading, a U.S.-Local Clash



Diana Jean Schemo has been at this article for awhile:

The program, which gives $1 billion a year in grants to states, was supposed to end the so-called reading wars — the battle over the best method of teaching reading — but has instead opened a new and bitter front in the fight.
According to interviews with school officials and a string of federal audits and e-mail messages made public in recent months, federal officials and contractors used the program to pressure schools to adopt approaches that emphasize phonics, focusing on the mechanics of sounding out syllables, and to discard methods drawn from whole language that play down these mechanics and use cues like pictures or context to teach.
Federal officials who ran Reading First maintain that only curriculums including regular, systematic phonics lessons had the backing of “scientifically based reading research” required by the program.
Madison officials say that a year after Wisconsin joined Reading First, in 2004, contractors pressured them to drop their approach, which blends some phonics with whole language in a program called Balanced Literacy. Instead, they gave up the money — about $2 million, according to officials here, who say their program raised reading scores.
“We had data demonstrating that our children were learning at the rate that Reading First was aiming for, and they could not produce a single ounce of data to show the success rates of the program they were proposing,” said Art Rainwater, Madison’s superintendent of schools.

Much more on Reading First and Madison, here.
Notes & Links:

UPDATE: Joanne Jacobs:

In part one of his response, Ken DeRosa of D-Ed Reckoning provides a reading passage altered to force readers to guess the meaning from context. Struggling this way does not inspire love of reading.
In part two, DeRosa analyzes the statistics to argue Madison students aren’t doing better in reading compared to other Wisconsin students; if anything, they’ve slipped a bit. Because the state reading test was made easier and the cut score for proficiency was lowered, all Wisconsin students look better. However, there was no progress in fourth-grade reading on the federal NAEP test.
With help from Rory of Parentalcation, who’s great at finding data, Ken shows that claims of fantastic progress by black students are illusory. Their scores improved on the easier test at a slightly slower rate than white students. It looks like to me as though blacks nearly caught up in basic skills but remain far behind at the proficient and advanced level. Perhaps someone who knows more statistics than I do — lots of you do — can find flaws in Ken’s analysis.

NYT Letters to the editor. Finally, others have raised questions about the MMSD’s analysis and publication of test score data.
Andrew Rotherham:

Diana Schemo’s NYT story on Reading First is not surprisingly sparking a lot of pushback and outraged emails, especially from the phonicshajeen. But, they have a point. There are problems with Reading First, but this may not be the best example of them at all…but, while you’re there, don’t miss the buried lede in graf eight…it’s almost like Schemo got snowed by all sides at once on this one…




Intel Competition Is Where Science Rules and Research Is the Key



Joseph Berger:

The Intel is more than a gimmicky contest that garners publicity for its chipmaker sponsor. It genuinely prompts hundreds of students to plunge into vanguard research. This year, 1,705 students from 487 schools in 44 states entered, said Katherine Silkin, the contest’s program manager. High school seniors in the United States and its territories enter the Intel, though their research often begins years earlier.
Six winners of the Westinghouse, as Intel was known until 1998, have gone on to win Nobel Prizes. Its springboard power is particularly important when Americans fret that colleges are no longer producing as many graduates willing to make the financial sacrifices of lives in science.
“Not only do we have to have equity and close the famous achievement gap,” said Leon M. Lederman, a Nobel-winning physicist who is co-chairman of the Commission on 21st Century Education in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. “We also have to have innovation if we’re going to survive, so you have to nurture the gifted kids.”




Collaborate on 4 Year Old Kindergarten



Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

Recognizing that the earlier you start teaching a child, the more and better that child will learn, Wisconsin (actually, Margarethe Schurz) brought kindergarten to America in 1856. Today, recognizing the value of that principle and the importance of collaboration, school districts in Wisconsin are starting to work with private day care centers to give 4-year-olds an even bigger boost to their education.
The Menomonee Falls School District is planning to join several other area school districts this fall in offering such a program. It’s an idea that more districts should consider.
“The goal to all of this is to provide quality 4-year-old services for each and every child who resides in the school district so when they come to 5-K, they’ve got the same kindergarten basis,” Marlene Gross-Ackeret, director of pupil services for the Menomonee Falls district, told Journal Sentinel reporter Amy Hetzner.




Why Illinois Test Scores Went Up?: Changing the Test or Academic Improvements?



Via a reader looking at this issue: Stephanie Banchero, Darnell Little and Diane Rado:

Illinois elementary school pupils passed the newly revamped state achievement exams at record rates last year, but critics suggest it was more the result of changes to the tests than real progress by pupils.
State and local educators attribute the improvement to smarter pupils and teachers’ laser-like focus on the state learning standards—the detailed list of what pupils should know at each grade level. They also say that the more child-friendly exams, which included color and better graphics, helped pupils.
But testing experts and critics suggest that the unprecedented growth is more likely the result of changes to the exams.
Most notably, the state dramatically lowered the passing bar on the 8th-grade math test. As a result—after hovering at about 50 percent for five years—the pass rate shot up to 78 percent last year.
While the number of test questions remained generally the same, the number that counted on pupil scores dropped significantly.

Kevin Carey criticized Wisconsin’s “Statistical Manipulation of No Child Left Behind Standards“. The Fordham Foundation and Amy Hetzner have also taken a look at this issue.




Governor Doyle’s Proposed Budget Does Not Save the Madison School District:
Proposed Budget provides 65% of public school costs via redistributed sales, income, corporate taxes and fees, rather than 67%.



I’ve received some emails on this story. It seems there are two approaches to “fixing” the Madison School District’s $333M+ budget for our 24,342 students. Blame the state/federal government, or work locally to build support for our public schools in terms of volunteer hours, partnerships and money.
I believe that latter approach is far more likely to succeed because we have more control all around and we have a vested interest in our community’s future. That’s also why I support Maya Cole (vs. Marj Passman) and Rick Thomas (vs. Beth Moss) for school board. Ruth Robarts, Lucy Mathiak and Lawrie Kobza have proven that the board and individual members can be effective. An insider friend mentioned that Doyle’s budget is “thinly balanced”, which likely explains the reality. The Madison School Board’s majority decision (4-3) with respect to concessions before negotiations magnifies the governance issue. Watch the candidates discuss this issue, among others recently.
Those interested in this issue should check out Monday’s (3/12 from 12 to 1:00p.m.) brown bag lunch on Financing Quality Education. [map]
Steve Walters and Stacy Forster:

Despite Gov. Jim Doyle’s public – and repeated – promises that his budget proposal would pay for two-thirds of public education costs, an analysis released today showed that it falls short of that goal.
In a 624-page summary of the budget that Doyle gave legislators last month, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau said the state would pay 65.3% of public school costs in the year that begins July 1, and 65.5% of those costs in the following year.
Because public schools cost about $9 billion every year, each 1% equals about $90 million – money that is tight as legislators begin the process of reviewing Doyle’s budget and drafting changes to it. Legislators will act on their version of the budget over the next three or four months.

Legislative Fiscal Bureau Summary. Via WisPolitics. More on Wisconsin’s school finance climate here. The Associated Press has also posted an article here:

The nonpartisan Legislative Fiscal Bureau said Tuesday in a summary of the budget the governor gave to legislators in January that the state would pay 65.3 percent of public school costs in the year that begins July 1 and 65.5 percent during the next year.

The AP article references some special and school choice funding changes that may help some districts:

David Schmiedicke, the governor’s budget director, said the budget proposal is just short of the 66 percent goal next year because it includes more money for specific programs such as aid to students with disabilities, subsidies for small class sizes and free breakfasts, and $21 million more to pay for Milwaukee’s school choice program.




How the Open Source Movement Has Changed Education: 10 Success Stories



Online Education Database:

How would you like to study at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for free? It has been nearly six years since MIT first announced their MIT OpenCourseWare (OCW) program. More recently, MIT announced that the OCW program, a free and open educational resource (OER) for educators, students, and self-learners around the world, is online and will be completed by 2008. The OCW provides open access to course materials for up to 1,550 MIT courses, representing 34 departments and all five MIT schools. The goal is to include materials from all MIT courses by next year.
MIT provides just one of the 10 open source educational success stories detailed below. Open source and open access resources have changed how colleges, organizations, instructors, and prospective students use software, operating systems and online documents for educational purposes. And, in most cases, each success story also has served as a springboard to create more open source projects.




Education, Education, Education



Bob Herbert:

It’s an article of faith that the key to success in real estate is location, location, location.
For young black boys looking ahead to a difficult walk in life, the mantra should be education, education, education.
We’ve watched for decades — watched in horror, actually — as the lives of so many young blacks, men and boys especially, have been consumed by drugs, crime, poverty, ignorance, racial prejudice, misguided social pressures, and so on.
At the same time, millions of blacks have thrived, building strong families and successful careers at rates previously unseen. By far, the most important difference between these two very large groups has been educational attainment.
If anything, the role that education plays in the life prospects of black Americans is even more dramatic than in the population as a whole. It’s the closest thing to a magic potion for black people that I can think of. For boys and men, it is very often the antidote to prison or an early grave.

(more…)




18 Year Old Madison Resident Wins National Vocabulary Championship



James Barron:

Rich Cronin, the president and chief executive of GSN, said he was not just thrilled to watch the competition, he was euphoric. “One person will be the ‘American Idol’ of vocabulary,” he said. (In the end, after an afternoon with its share of technical difficulties and dashed hopes, the winner was Robert Marsland, 18, of Madison, Wis. He will receive $40,000 toward college tuition. The winners in the finals and in the earlier citywide competitions held nationwide divided more than $80,000 in tuition money. The Princeton Review, a tutoring and test preparation service, came up with the questions. )
Off camera, it took Joel Chiodi, GSN’s vice president for marketing, a moment to remember a word he had learned from listening to contestants around the country.

Susan Troller:

Madison’s Robert Marsland, 18, took first place at the inaugural National Vocabulary Championship Monday in New York City, nabbing a trophy and a $40,000 scholarship prize. Last year, he nailed a perfect 36 on his ACT college entrance exam, and in 2003 he represented Wisconsin in the National Spelling Bee.
He is a student at the tiny St. Ambrose Academy on Madison’s west side, where he studies both Greek and Latin.




3/5/2007 Madison School Board Candidate Forum: West High School



The Madison West High School PTSO held a school board candidate forum Monday night. Topics included:

  • Madison High School Comparison
  • A candidate’s ability to listen, interact and work successfully with other board members
  • Past and future referenda support
  • Candidate views on the $333M+ budget for our 24,000 students
  • Extensive conversations on the part of Marj and Johnny to lobby the state and federal governments for more money. Maya wondered how successful that strategy might be given that our own State Senator Fred Risser failed to sign on to the Pope-Roberts/Breske resolution and that there are many school districts much poorer than Madison who will likely obtain benefits first, if new state tax funds are available. Maya also mentioned her experience at the state level via the concealed carry battles.
  • The challenge of supporting all students, including those with special needs. Several candidates noted that there is white flight from the MMSD (enrollment has been flat for years, while local population continues to grow)
  • Mandatory classroom grouping (heterogeneous) was also discussed

I applaud the West PTSO for holding this event. I also liked the way that they handled questions: all were moderated, which prevents a candidate supporter from sandbagging the opposition. I attended a forum last year where supporters posed questions before local parents had the opportunity.
Video and mp3 audio clips are available below. Make sure you have the latest version of Quicktime as the video clips use a new, more efficient compression technique.

(more…)




Notes from UW-Madison and Madison West High on AP Standards



Danielle Repshas:

“Still, there is not an absolute guarantee that a course [called] one thing someplace has the same rigor somewhere else,” Reason said.
Part of the challenge is judging the standards of one AP class from another at different high schools, and Reason said the level of trust colleges and secondary schools have with one another is one way colleges try to establish relationships with high schools. But Reason said he is concerned about the competition level at high schools in terms of coursework because schools in some areas do not have the same rigor in their coursework with respect to others.

The article includes a comment regarding Madison West High School’s limited approach:

In fact, there are only a handful of AP classes at Madison West, and most students aren’t interested in them. They’d rather take more stimulating and challenging classes.

Marcia Gevelinger Bastian touched on the issue of West’s limited number of AP classes here.




Home Schoolers and College Applications



Ana Beatriz Cholo:

“For home-schoolers, it was basically a shut door for us because of the restrictions,” Sample said.
Last fall, however, UC Riverside joined a growing number of colleges around the country that are revamping application policies to accommodate home-schooled students.
The change came just in time for the 18-year-old Sample to apply and get accepted with a substantial scholarship.
Under UC Riverside’s new policy, home-schoolers can apply by submitting a lengthy portfolio detailing their studies and other educational experiences.
Sample’s package showed he had studied chemistry, U.S. history and geometry, rewired a house and helped rebuild a medical clinic in Nicaragua.




Milwaukee School Board Reviews Their Superintendent



Alan Borsuk:

Less than a month before an election that is likely to leave School Superintendent William Andrekopoulos with a board that is not as favorably disposed toward him, the current School Board will hold a session Thursday to consider changing provisions in his contract.
School Board President Joe Dannecker said Monday that he wants the session to focus on how the board will conduct its annual review of Andrekopoulos’ job performance. The current contract says the way of conducting those reviews needs to be settled by the end of April. Dannecker also said he hopes the Thursday session will be conducted mostly in public.




Life-Long Computer Skills Rather Than PowerPoint or Windows



Jakob Nielsen:

Schools should teach deep, strategic computer insights that can’t be learned from reading a manual.
I recently saw a textbook used to teach computers in the third grade. One of the chapters (“The Big Calculator”) featured detailed instructions on how to format tables of numbers in Excel. All very good, except that the new Excel version features a complete user interface overhaul, in which the traditional command menus are replaced by a ribbon with a results-oriented UI.
Sadly, I had to tell the proud parents that their daughter’s education would be obsolete before she graduated from the third grade.
The problem, of course, is in tying education too tightly to specific software applications. Even if Microsoft hadn’t turned Excel inside out this year, they would surely have done so eventually. Updating instructional materials to teach Office 2007 isn’t the answer, because there will surely be another UI change before today’s third graders enter the workforce in 10 or 15 years — and even more before they retire in 2065.




Kentucky: Teacher and School Grants for Math, Chemistry, Physics and Expanded AP Classes



Tom O’Neill:

SB1 would provide $10,000 grants to help schools start advanced-placement courses. Students scoring highly on the AP exams and who receive free or reduced-price lunches would be eligible for $200 to $300 in state scholarships.
Under SB2, teachers could get salary bumps if they perform well on the teacher-certification tests in math, chemistry and physics.
The two-year cost of the bills is estimated at $4.7 million and $9.2 million, respectively. The savings to students from exam costs and tuition assistance is estimated at $7.9 million for the two years.
By comparison, giving every teacher in Kentucky a 1 percent raise would cost the state $23 million a year, Kelly said.
The Senate has passed both bills, and they are now awaiting assignments to House committees.
Supporters of the measures include University of Kentucky President Lee Todd and the influential Lexington-based Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence.
The primary opponent is the KEA, which represents 38,000 public school teachers in Kentucky.




Course-Title Inflation



Amit Paley:

In 2005, Asian/Pacific Islander graduates took a tougher course load than white and black graduates, with 63 percent completing at least a mid-level curriculum. The rate was 44 percent for Hispanic graduates.
The study did not include transcripts of high school dropouts, an important caveat because dropout rates vary widely among racial and ethnic groups.
Experts also point out that the study based its definition of course rigor on titles and descriptions, not necessarily on the delivered content. Known as course-title inflation, that means a class might be called calculus but really teach only algebra. Experts say minority students are often disproportionately affected by such inflation.
“You see all the time that courses are being dumbed down even if they have tough-sounding titles,” said Erich Martel, a history teacher at Woodrow Wilson Senior High School in the District.




Menomonee Falls School District Works with Community on 4 Year Old Kindergarten



Amy Hetzner:

When the Menomonee Falls School District opens its doors to a new 4-year-old kindergarten program this fall, private day cares in the village will open theirs to it, too.
Using an idea that’s catching on throughout the state, the district plans to partner with local preschool and child care centers to give 4-year-olds a half-day program that proponents say will give them an educational boost for years to come.
“The goal to all of this is to provide quality 4-year-old services for each and every child who resides in the school district, so when they come to 5-K they’ve got the same kindergarten basis,” said Marlene Gross-Ackeret, Menomonee Falls’ director of pupil services, and one of the key players in its 4-K initiative.
Almost every Wisconsin school district looking to add a new 4-year-old kindergarten program is considering such a collaborative approach, said Jill Haglund, an early-childhood education consultant for the state Department of Public Instruction who estimated that the partnerships exist in about 50 school systems. Even Milwaukee Public Schools collaborates with some community partners, placing its teachers at off-campus sites, despite having its own extensive 4-K programs.

Quite a contrast to the general Madison School District approach with respect to After School and classes taken outside our public school district. More here.




Wisconsin’s K-12 Spending Climate



Avrum Lank:

Per capita income will continue to grow in Wisconsin through 2009, but at a slower rate than in the nation as a whole, according to an economic outlook released Friday by the state Department of Revenue.
Employment also will grow, but manufacturing jobs will decline, the report said.
Even so, corporate income tax collections are growing about four times faster than all state tax revenue, reflecting robust business profits.
“The U.S. economy is expected to slow this year,” the report said. The state’s economy also will slow “before returning to stronger growth in 2008.”
Jobs in the state will grow 0.8% this year to 2,892,800 – less than the 1% growth last year. Growth rates of 1.3% in 2008 and 1.2% in 2009 will bring the job total to slightly fewer than 3 million, the report said.
However, manufacturing jobs will fall from 507,300 last year to 502,900 by 2009.
Per capita personal income will rise about 8%, to $33,174 in 2009 from $30,706 last year, using constant 2000 dollars.
That is a decline to 96.2% of the national average in 2009, from 96.7% last year.

Wisconsin Department of Revenue Economic Outlook 292K PDF
Changing state K-12 funding to benefit Madison (perceived as a rich district based on property values and spending growth) will be difficult given our higher than state average per student spending and some of the issues noted above. The politics of this issue can be seen in those who have supported (and those who have not, including our own Senator Fred Risser) the Pope-Roberts/Breske resolution. Senator Risser’s bills.




Project Girl Program helps middle schoolers sort through barrage of media messages



Susan Troller:

What if parents could vaccinate their adolescent daughters against the siren song of the mall? Is there any way to get them to just say no to the power of brand name clothing, accessories and cosmetics?
And what should be done about the barrage of marketing messages telling them they can never be too rich, or too thin, and that they must be hot, hot, hot as they shop, shop, shop, even if they’re only 10 years old?




Statewide Study of Arts Education in California



An Unfinished Canvas, Arts Education in California: Taking Stock of Policies and Practices by Katrina Woodworth, Roneeta Guha, Alix Gallagher, Ashley Campbell, June Park, and Debbie Kim:

Policies recently enacted at both the state and federal levels demonstrate a commitment to arts education. In 2001, the California State Board of Education adopted content standards for the visual and performing arts. In 2002, the federal No Child Left Behind law, with provisions recognizing the arts as a core subject, was signed into law. Beginning in 2005-06, students seeking admission to the University of California and California State University systems are required to take one full year of arts education coursework during high school.
Despite expectations and enthusiasm for instruction in the arts, little information about California students’ access to and performance in the arts is available, and statewide information about the delivery of arts education is lacking. Several recent studies suggest that arts education is in jeopardy—and perhaps in decline—and that schools are struggling to incorporate arts in their curriculum. Recent studies also point to disparities in access by school demographic characteristics, as well as differences in offerings by discipline. None of these studies, however, systematically examine the status of arts education in all four arts disciplines across all of California’s schools.

Sharon Noguchi has more.

Once derided as non-essential fluff and an expensive luxury, the arts have languished in California schools for nearly three decades.
Now, a Menlo Park think tank has recommended that California students spend more time in school to learn music, drama, theater and visual arts.
In a statewide survey of 1,123 California schools, researchers at SRI International found that 89 percent of schools fail to meet state standards for arts education.
Nearly one-third of the schools surveyed offered no art courses that met the standards, and K-12 enrollment in music courses dropped by 37 percent over the five years ending last June.




The Kid Spending Spectrum



Eileen Daspin and Ellen Gameran:

With the debate about the country’s wealth gap heating up again, pampered kids provide some of the most dramatic examples, from toddlers in $800 strollers to 10-year-olds with cellphones. But for many families, drawing the line between attentive parenting and extravagance is a tough call; even parents who are relatively strapped will go to great lengths for their children. And though millions can’t afford the government’s child-cost estimate, there is no question that many others are spending far more without viewing it as extreme.
To assess how relatively routine expenses, as well as more excessive ones, can contribute to the total cost of raising a child, The Wall Street Journal deconstructed the government’s approach and recalculated it using a different range of costs.
Escalating kid spending is more rampant among wealthier households, so we used the government’s top-third income bracket as a starting point. We also added some costs that aren’t included in that government calculation, such as college-savings plans, which a growing number of households are setting up for their kids.




No Child Left Behind’s Effect on the States



The Economist:

FOR as long as there have been maths tests, there have been cheats. But whereas a schoolboy caught furtively copying his neighbour’s answers can expect a zero and an angry letter home, states that rig exam results are showered with federal cash. This is one reason why the No Child Left Behind Act, a noble attempt to impose discipline on American schools, needs revision before it merits an A grade.
The premise behind the law was sensible enough. Before it was passed in 2002, state education bureaucrats were reluctant to collect and publish the kind of data that would have allowed parents to make comparisons between schools, or to tell if a school was improving over time. Good schools received few rewards; bad ones had little incentive to improve. President George Bush sought to change that.
Under No Child Left Behind, students must be tested on maths and reading every year between the ages of eight and 13, and once in high school. Test results must be published and broken down by race. Schools that fail to show “adequate yearly progress” face penalties. Parents of children at consistently failing schools must be allowed to move them to better ones.
All good stuff. But there are catches. Federal subsidies to the states depend on students meeting standards that the states themselves set. States thus have a multi-billion-dollar incentive to game the system. In Arizona, for example, only one-fifth of eighth-graders were rated “proficient” at maths after taking the state test in 2003. Two years later, that proportion had magically tripled. Does this mean that the test got easier to pass? “Yes,” says Janet Napolitano, Arizona’s plain-talking governor.

Wisconsin’s academic standards have been criticized by the Fordham Foundation:

The report being released today by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Washington uses harsh terms in critiquing the standards that are intended to guide instruction in Wisconsin schools. “Depth is nowhere to be found,” it said of the science standards. “This document has no structure or method,” it said of the world history standards. “Skimpy content and vague wording,” it said in describing the math standards.
In June, a different group ranked Wisconsin No. 1 in the country in frustrating the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Also in June, a third organization focused on Milwaukee and Wisconsin as examples of places where more inexperienced – and therefore, less proficient – teachers are disproportionately assigned to high-needs schools. And two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education rejected as inadequate Wisconsin’s plans for dealing with federal requirements that every student have a “highly qualified” teacher.

along with Kevin Carey: “Hot Air: How States Inflate Their Educational Progress Under NCLB “

Critics on both the Left and the Right have charged that the No Child Left Behind Act tramples states’ rights by imposing a federally mandated, one-size-fits-all accountability system on the nation’s diverse states and schools.
In truth, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) gives states wide discretion to define what students must learn, how that knowledge should be tested, and what test scores constitute “proficiency”—the key elements of any educational accountability system. States also set standards for high school graduation rates, teacher qualifications, school safety and many other aspects of school performance. As a result, states are largely free to define the terms of their own educational success.
The Pangloss Index ranks Wisconsin as the most optimistic state in the nation. Wisconsin scores well on some educational measures, like the SAT, but lags behind in others, such as achievement gaps for minority students. But according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, the state is a modern-day educational utopia where a large majority of students meet academic standards, high school graduation rates are high, every school is safe and nearly all teachers are highly qualified. School districts around the nation are struggling to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP), the primary standard of school and district success under NCLB. Yet 99.8 percent of Wisconsin districts—425 out of 426—made AYP in 2004–05.
How is that possible? As Table 2 shows, some states have identified the large majority of districts as not making AYP. The answer lies with the way Wisconsin has chosen to define the AYP standard.




The Birth of Stochastic Science



Nassim Nicholas Taleb:

It fosters entrepreneurs and creators, not exam takers, bureaucrats or, worse, deluded economists. So the perceived weakness of the American pupil in conventional and theoretical studies is where it very strength lies — it produces “doers”, Black Swan hunting, dream-chasing entrepreneurs, or others with a tolerance for risk-taking which attracts aggressive tinkering foreigners. And globalization allowed the U.S. to specialize in the creative aspect of things, the risk-taking production of concepts and ideas, that is, the scalable and fat-tailed part of the products, and, increasingly, by exporting jobs, separate the less scalable and more linear components and assign them to someone in more mathematical and “cultural” states happy to be paid by the hour and work on other people’s ideas. (I hold, against the current Adam Smith-style discourse in economics, that the American undirected free-enterprise works because it aggressively allows to capture the randomness of the environment — “cheap options”— not much because of competition and certainly less because of material incentives. Neither the followers of Adam Smith, nor to some extent, those of Karl Marx, seem to be conscious about the role of wild randomness. They are too bathed in enlightenment-style causation and cannot separate skills and payoffs.)

Taleb’s excellent “Fooled By Randomness” is a must read.




Gifted? Autistic? Or Just Quirky?



Maia Szalavitz:

“Paradoxically liberating” is how Phil Schwarz has described his Asperger’s syndrome diagnosis. He was in his late 30s at the time, and he had number of things on his mind: A software developer in Framingham, Mass., Schwarz had been labeled “gifted” as a child and had graduated third in his high school class. For years he had struggled with depression and a feeling that he was not living up to the promise of his past.
What’s more, he had begun to worry about his toddler’s delayed language development and repetitive play style. But he had no idea how the diagnosis that his son Jeremy would receive might affect his own identity.




Civics Failure in Public Education



Paul Soglin:

While everyone is weighing in on the best way to teach our kids, I cannot get over the failure to educate youngsters about American institutions.
The more inclusive and more truthful curriculum about our nation’s history that is taught today is a vast step forward. However, when I graduated from high school I could discuss the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the the Declaration of Independence and their inherent contradictions. I knew the three branches of government and their powers.

There are some teachers who emphasize civics. A great teacher friend recently mentioned “if we’re doing such a good job with the students, why are so few people asking questions of our government?”




Education Report Card



US Chamber of Commerce:

The United States in the 21st century faces unprecedented economic and social challenges, ranging from the forces of global competition to the impending retirement of 77 million baby boomers. Succeeding in this new era will require our children to be prepared for the intellectual demands of the modern workplace and a far more complex society. Yet the evidence indicates that our country is not ready. Despite decades of reform efforts and many trillions of dollars in public investment, U.S. schools are not equipping our children with the skills and knowledge they-and the nation-so badly need.
It has been nearly a quarter century since the seminal report A Nation at Risk was issued in 1983. Since that time, a knowledge-based economy has emerged, the Internet has reshaped commerce and communication, exemplars of creative commerce like Microsoft, eBay, and Southwest Airlines have revolutionized the way we live, and the global economy has undergone wrenching change. Throughout that period, education spending has steadily increased and rafts of well-intentioned school reforms have come and gone. But student achievement has remained stagnant, and our K-12 schools have stayed remarkably unchanged-preserving, as if in amber, the routines, culture, and operations of an obsolete 1930s manufacturing plant.




A Bad Report Card



NY Times Editorial:

Congress, which is preparing to reauthorize both the No Child Left Behind Act and the Higher Education Act, needs to take a hard look at these scores and move forcefully to demand far-reaching structural changes.
It should start by getting the board that oversees the National Assessment of Educational Progress testing to create rigorous national standards for crucial subjects. It should also require the states to raise the bar for teacher qualifications and end the odious practice of supplying the neediest students with the least qualified teachers. This process would also include requiring teachers colleges, which get federal aid, to turn out higher quality graduates and to supply many more teachers in vital areas like math and science. If there’s any doubt about why these reforms are needed, all Congress has to do is read the latest national report card.




Two Educators Discuss “My Life & Times with the Madison Public Schools”



Audrey Soglin & Char Gearing respond to Marc Eisen’s recent words:

I think we have learned and the research supports that kids need a balanced literacy approach. The “whole language vs. phonics” wars should really be put to rest. It is an old fight. Kids don’t learn the same way so a variety of instructional methods should be available. It is not unusual for districts to offer both direct instruction to identified students and reading recovery to others. The problems that kids have are different so the instructional interventions should be different as well. In terms of kids in heterogeneous classrooms receiving instruction – all kids need to be taught at their level. The challenge for teachers in diverse reading and math classrooms is to figure out how to meet those very different needs. It is difficult but not impossible.
The author seems to be saying that we should be segregating our classrooms and our schools. If you look at the scores of low-income students in low income schools-where the demographics are 90% low income, 90% African American or Hispanic – the scores are generally low. It is not like segregating the kids will automatically raise the scores.




Sparks Fly as the Madison Studio Charter School is Voted Down



The Madison School Board voted down the proposed Studio Charter School Monday night in a 4-2 vote (Against: Carstensen, Kobza, Silveira and Winston; For Mathiak and Robarts with Vang away).
Sparks flew when Lucy Mathiak asked Nancy Donahue about their interaction with the attempts to talk with principals and teachers about the proposed charter school [12 minute video.] Watch the complete discussion here.
Susan Troller has more:

There is disagreement among Madison School Board members over what put the nails in the coffin of a proposal to create a new fine arts and technology-focused charter school.
The Studio School suffered from being the wrong proposal at the wrong time, said board President Johnny Winston Jr., who joined board members Carol Carstensen, Arlene Silveira and Lawrie Kobza in voting against the plan at Monday night’s School Board meeting.
But board member Lucy Mathiak says that the vote was wrapped up in School Board and labor politics, and that the Studio School suffered from disapproval from Madison Teachers Inc., the district’s union.
But Mathiak, who along with board member Ruth Robarts voted in favor of what would have been Madison’s third charter school, said she felt the proposal was primarily doomed by disapproval from MTI.
She noted that the MTI’s School Board candidate questionnaire asks whether candidates support charter schools, and added that there was a MTI representative at Monday night’s meeting.
“There is definitely the feeling that the union does not look favorably on charter schools, although they are public schools, staffed by district teachers,” Mathiak said.
“I find it ironic that the same people who voted for a voluntary impasse resolution agreement regarding teachers’ contract negotiations are now saying that developing a charter school is something we can’t afford. We should keep all of our options open in the bargaining process … the potential for cost savings are very significant,” she said.
Mathiak is referring to a vote taken by School Board members in preparation for negotiations with the teachers’ union next month that included concessions from the district on bargaining over health care insurance.

Much more on the Studio School here along with some discussion at The Daily Page.




More than a Horse Race: A Guide to International Tests of Student Achievement



The Center for Public Education:

Few education stories get as much attention as the periodic ranking of U.S. students on international tests. The headlines are by now familiar: “U.S. Kids Mediocre in Math and Science”1; “4th and 8th Graders in U.S. Still Lag Many Peers”2. Surely, the media fascination with these stories is partly driven by our national desire to be number one. But according to many policymakers, business leaders, and analysts, more is at stake than American boasting rights. These individuals argue that the nation’s economic future depends directly on our ability to raise our present academic standing, particularly in math and science (Business Roundtable 2005; National Research Council 2005; White House 2006).
Others aren’t so sure. These observers assert that the reported failure of American students is exaggerated, claiming that the differences among countries aren’t so large. Besides, they say, our top students do just fine compared with their top-scoring peers in other countries (Bracey 1998).
Still others point to inherent difficulties in trying to make apples-to-apples comparisons across countries and argue that international rankings are not meaningful (Rotberg 1995).

Jay Matthews:

The report, “More Than a Horse Race,” was written by Jim Hull, policy analyst at the center, which is affiliated with the National School Boards Association. I sent a copy to a top U.S. expert on international educational comparisons, author and columnist Gerald W. Bracey. There were parts of the report Bracey did not like.
But I have found several points on which Hull and Bracey seem to agree. The Hull report at www.centerforpubliceducation.org, released on Jan. 17, should be read in its entirety because it is the best summary yet of the four major studies that compare our achievement rates to those abroad. (You can also get Bracey’s response if you e-mail him at gbracey1@verizon.net.)
5. Those who say our economy is doomed unless our schools get better appear to be ignoring recent history.
Hull introduced this topic in his report by noting that none of the international comparative studies include data from China or India. “Given the rapidly rising position these nations are taking in the global economy,” he said, he hoped they would be included in the future. Bracey interpreted this as a reflection of “the common, but perhaps erroneous assumption that how well 13-year-olds bubble in answer sheets has something to do with the economic health of a nation.”




Making Safety a Piece of the Pie



Teacher Voices:

In Philadelphia last week a teacher named Frank Burd, wound up in the hospital after two students assaulted him, apparently because he had confiscated an iPod during class. After class, according to a report on NBC news, the two students were waiting for Burd. One punched him and the other pushed him. As of Friday night (February 23), he was still in intensive care with two broken bones in his neck.
Mr. Burd’s experience may seem like an aberration, but actually, it is only a slightly more extreme example of the kind of violence, crime, and general incivility that teachers and students confront in schools all over the nation. Here in NY, for example, Mayor Bloomberg’s Preliminary Management Report showed a 21-percent increase in felony crimes committed in the city’s schools between July and October 2006 compared with the same period the previous year. And according a February 23 article in The Chief, “Major crimes rose from 287 to 348, other criminal reports increased from 820 to 983, and additional safety incidents climbed from 1,614 to 1,926, according to the Mayor’s report.




Wisconsin’s School Finance Climate



Andy Hall on local referendums:

Layoffs and pay cuts are looming in a western Dane County school district, and officials in the Adams-Friendship area are contemplating closing two elementary schools after voters rejected two school referendums last week.
Voters also approved referendums Tuesday for a $14.68 million elementary school in Sun Prairie and $2.48 million to avert school cuts in Pardeeville 30 miles north of Madison.
But ballot measures were narrowly defeated in the Wisconsin Heights School District, which includes Mazomanie and Black Earth, and Adams-Friendship, 75 miles north of Madison.

Student population, expense and tax revenue growth all affect local school district budgets.
Andy also posted an article on a survey conducted by the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators:

Twenty-seven percent of superintendents said their school boards have held discussions during the past few years about the possibility of dissolving or consolidating their school districts. Among those districts, more than 90 percent said the talks were prompted by financial problems.
Increasing portions of districts report changes that could reduce the quality of educational services. Since the 1998-99 school year, for example, the percentage of districts increasing class sizes grew from 48 to 74 percent. The percentage laying off teachers during that period rose from 36 to 62 percent.

Wistax reported recently that Wisconsin residents paid 33.4% of income in taxes, up from 30.7% in 2003. Decisions like this do not help pass referendums, much less build confidence in our $331M+ local school district.




More on Homework



Jay Matthews:

But more important, let’s say that for the sake of argument that only 10 percent of America’s children suffer from homework overload (although we believe it’s much more). Isn’t it still a problem for that 10 percent, for all the reasons listed by the many psychologists, educators and health experts whom we interviewed? If “only” 10 percent of America’s children suffered from depression or diabetes, wouldn’t it still be worth addressing? We found many such children and they are definitely suffering and losing their love of school and learning. Just because homework overload might not affect every child doesn’t make it any less serious.




Online Mathematics Textbooks



George Cain:

The writing of textbooks and making them freely available on the web is an idea whose time has arrived. Most college mathematics textbooks attempt to be all things to all people and, as a result, are much too big and expensive. This perhaps made some sense when these books were rather expensive to produce and distribute–but this time has passed.
A few years ago when I first posted a list of mathematics textbooks freely available on line, there existed only a handful of such books. Now there are many. The list here has grown and grown and is perhaps in serious need of some kind of organization into topics. There are also now many other sites at which there are links to on-line mathematics books and lecture notes. This site is far from comprehensive and I have considered abandoning it. Many people, however, still seem to find it useful, and so I shall continue to maintain it for a while.




AP Classes Face Audit



Amy Hetzner:

What’s bad, according to Roby Blust, Marquette’s dean of undergraduate admissions, is that some of those courses labeled as AP aren’t really Advanced Placement courses, as trademarked by the College Board.
“They’re not going through what we know is the AP curriculum for English, but they’re listing it as an AP course,” Blust said. “So they’re mislabeling, I guess.”
That could be about to change.
Pressured by colleges and universities with similar stories, the College Board is launching its first major oversight effort of the popular courses this year. By fall, the organization responsible for the AP program and its associated tests expects to have reviewed detailed descriptions of what’s being taught in about 120,000 courses throughout the world bearing the AP label.




Kids, the Internet and the End of Privacy: The Greatest Generation Gap since the Rock & Roll



Emily Nussbaum:

As younger people reveal their private lives on the Internet, the older generation looks on with alarm and misapprehension not seen since the early days of rock and roll. The future belongs to the uninhibited.
After a few minutes of this, I turn to Gasaway and ask if he has a Web page. He seems baffled by the question. “I don’t know why I would,” he says, speaking slowly. “I like my privacy.” He’s never seen Hannah’s Facebook profile. “I haven’t gone on it. I don’t know how to get into it!” I ask him if he takes pictures when he attends parties, and he looks at me like I have three heads. “There are a lot of weirdos out there,” he emphasizes. “There are a lot of strangers out there.”
There is plenty of variation among this younger cohort, including a set of Luddite dissenters: “If I want to contact someone, I’ll write them a letter!” grouses Katherine Gillespie, a student at Hunter College. (Although when I look her up online, I find that she too has a profile.) But these variations blur when you widen your view. One 2006 government study—framed, as such studies are, around the stranger-danger issue—showed that 61 percent of 13-to-17-year-olds have a profile online, half with photos. A recent pew Internet Project study put it at 55 percent of 12-to-17-year-olds. These numbers are rising rapidly.

Virginia Postrel has more, including Greg Lukianoff and Will Creeley’s “Facing off over Facebook“:

tudents, be warned: the college of your choice may be watching you, and will more than likely be keeping an eye on you once you enter the hallowed campus gates. America’s institutions of higher education are increasingly monitoring students’ activity online and scrutinizing profiles, not only for illegal behavior, but also for what they deem to be inappropriate speech.
Contrary to popular misconceptions, the speech codes, censorship, and double standards of the culture-wars heyday of the ’80s and ’90s are alive and kicking, and they are now colliding with the latest explosion of communication technology. Sites like Facebook and MySpace are becoming the largest battleground yet for student free speech. Whatever campus administrators’ intentions (and they are often mixed), students need to know that online jokes, photos, and comments can get them in hot water, no matter how effusively their schools claim to respect free speech. The long arm of campus officialdom is reaching far beyond the bounds of its buildings and grounds and into the shadowy realm of cyberspace.




Notes from a New Teacher



RedKudo:

I feel perfectly fine being a teacher. I don’t get angry, I just document, and etc. (Learned that from the airline job, actually.)
What I don’t feel good about is kids coming to me that have somehow slipped through the system without the most rudimentary skills. Minimum skills tests be damned – we’re talking about kids who don’t know how language influences the decisions they make every day, from politics to credit cards. Students who do not know how to question “information” they’re receiving, who don’t know how to express themselves intelligibly verbally or in writing. I’ll have to go on record as saying I do not believe it’s as simple as apathy or disinterest, and here’s why: I think I know what they’re going through.

As in many professions, there are some truly extraordinary teachers, those who go out of their way to grow student achievement (staying after school to provide students with extra math instruction), buck the system and constantly improve their craft. Deming often mentioned “delighting your customers“. I have two recent examples to pass along: A teacher organized an overnight trip to Upham Woods for the entire class. Another calls students at home with test results when they perform well.




“The School Did Nothing and They Gave Me “A’s”



Joanne Jacobs:

. . . last year i reported some of my teachers who didn’t teach me to the state, all we did was watch “R”movies and my other teacher fight and drew chairs, but the school did nothing and they gave me “A’s.
(The principal) is doing nothing about it he tells my mom that the SCHOOL has more rights and power than me and the parent.




PTA’s Go Way Beyond Cookies



Winnie Hu:

With many members who stepped out of high-profile careers to become stay-at-home parents, traditional parent-teacher associations (and the similar parent-teacher organizations, or PTOs) have evolved into sophisticated multitiered organizations bearing little resemblance to the mom-and-pop groups that ran bake sales a generation ago.
Last month, the Scarsdale Middle School PTA in Westchester County began posting podcasts of meetings on the Internet as a way to reach more parents, while the PTO at Squadron Line Elementary School in Simsbury, Conn., now has its own reserved parking space at the school. (To raise money for the school playground, parents bid each month for the right to use it.)
And in the Washington suburbs, the Arlington Traditional School PTA developed training manuals with past meeting minutes, treasurer reports, and program evaluations for its six vice presidents last year.




Going to the Mat for WPS



Jason Shephard:

Suzanne Fatupaito, a nurse’s assistant in Madison schools, is fed up with Wisconsin Physicians Service, the preferred health insurance provider of Madison Teachers Inc.
“MTI uses scare tactics” to maintain teacher support for WPS, Fatupaito recently wrote to the school board. “If members knew that another insurance [plan] would offer similar services to WPS and was less expensive — it would be a no-brainer.”
WPS, with a monthly price tag of $1,720 for family coverage, is one of two health coverage options available to the district’s teachers. The other is Group Health Cooperative, costing $920 monthly for a family plan.
During the past year, the Madison school board has reached agreements with other employee groups to switch from WPS to HMO plans, with most of the savings going to boost pay.
In December, the board held a secret vote in closed session to give up its right to seek health insurance changes should negotiations on the 2007-09 teachers contract go into binding arbitration. (The board can seek voluntary insurance changes during negotations.)
“What we’ve done is taken away a huge bargaining chip,” says board member Lucy Mathiak. “Every other major industry and public sector has had to deal with health-insurance changes, and we’ve got a very real $10 million deficit.”
MTI Executive Director John Matthews says other employee unions “made a big mistake” in switching to HMO plans. Matthews has long maintained that WPS provides superior coverage, despite its higher costs and disproportionate number of complaints. And he defends the paycheck he collects from WPS as a member of its board, saying he’s better able to lobby for his teachers.

Much more on this issue, including links, audio and a transcript, here.




2005 NAEP Grade 12 Reading and Math Scores Released



The Nation’s Report Card via Ed Week:

The proportion of high school students completing a solid core curriculum has nearly doubled since 1990, and students are doing better in their classes than their predecessors did.
But that good news is tempered by other findings in two federal reports released here today. The performance of the nation’s high school seniors on national tests has declined in reading over the past decade, and students are lackluster in mathematics. A third of high school graduates in 2005 did not complete a standard curriculum, which includes four credits of English and three credits each of social studies, math, and science.
The 12th grade reading and math results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress are based on a nationally representative sample of 21,000 seniors at 900 public and private schools who took the tests between January and March of 2005. The report on their performance was accompanied by the latest NAEP transcript study, which analyzes the coursetaking patterns and achievement of high school graduates.
Two-thirds of the 26,000 graduates who were followed for the transcript study also participated in the 2005 NAEP math and science assessments.
No Improvement in Reading
On the reading test, 12th graders’ average score has declined significantly since the first time the test was given in 1992. The test-takers averaged 286 points on a 500-point scale, a 6-point decline over 13 years, but statistically the same score as in 2002. Achievement levels in reading have also declined since 1992; 80 percent of the students tested that year scored at the “basic” level or better, but only 73 percent did so on the 2005 test, the same proportion as in 2002. In addition, the gap in scores between members of minority groups and higher-scoring white students has not narrowed significantly.
In math, the scores are not comparable with those from previous tests since the 2005 test was based on a new framework. Students scored, on average, 150 points on a 300-point scale. Just 61 percent of the 12th graders demonstrated at least basic command of the subject, with 23 percent considered “proficient” and 2 percent “advanced.”
Among 2005 high school graduates, 68 percent completed at least a standard curriculum, while 41 percent took a more challenging course load, and 10 percent took more-rigorous classes. In 1990, just 40 percent of graduates completed at least a standard curriculum, and 36 percent took additional courses, while 5 percent took what was deemed a rigorous course load.




Cutbacks in Class, Upgrades on the Field



Amy Hetzner:

If successful, Kettle Moraine High School would be the latest school in the state to perform a pricey upgrade to its athletic facilities at a time when many school districts complain they have to reduce services or are holding referendums to raise tax dollars to keep existing programs.
“I don’t think the two efforts are directly in conflict,” said Larry Laux, a member of the field project committee and parent of a football player. “It is a little bit awkward, I’ll grant you that.”
Already, Arrowhead and Brookfield Central high schools have replaced grass football fields with the synthetic stuff. Both were funded by donations from private groups, although the Elmbrook School District has pledged to match half of the $830,000 upgrade of Brookfield Central’s stadium.




Moving For Schools



Suein Hwang:

“No place is perfect, but I wanted the place that was the most perfect for us and them,” says Ms. O’Gorman, 44. “To me, it’s better than leaving them a house or my 401k.”
Across the country, a small but growing number of parents like the O’Gormans are dramatically altering their families’ lives to pursue the perfect private school for their children. While past generations of parents might have shifted addresses within a town to be near a particular school, or shipped junior off to boarding school, these parents are choosing school first, location second. “I hear about it all the time,” says Patrick Bassett, president of the National Association of Independent Schools, or NAIS, in Washington, D.C.
Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia says four families have moved to the area in the past two years so their children can attend the school. Hathaway Brown School, an all-girls school in Shaker Heights, Ohio, reports five such families, four of which moved in the past few years. “It’s been a little more frequent in the last two or three years,” says Sally Jeanne McKenna, admissions director at Polytechnic School of Pasadena, Calif.

Locally, the well known Waisman Center has brought families to the Madison area.




Closing the Math Gap



Milwakee Journal-Sentinel Editorial:

Too many grads of the Milwaukee Public Schools wind up in remedial classes in math when they pursue college. Key educational leaders in the city have come up with a proven plan to reverse this alarming trend – a plan Gov. Jim Doyle has proposed to finance with $15 million in state money as part of his $80 million financial package to help Milwaukee over two years.
Raising math achievement in the state’s sole big city is all the more reason to support that package. Math proficiency among workers can attract good jobs to Milwaukee. And the better the city does economically, the better the state does.

The “Math Coach” model mentioned by the J-S is also under discussion in Madison.




Wed March 7th Town Hall Meeting about Underage Drinking



Dane County Human Services [PDF]: via a West High Freshman parent who mentions that while West is a good school, it is important that parents are ready for an eye opening year of “scary challenges” in terms of alcohol, sex, drugs and violent crime. (Not to mention schoolwork!). Alliant Energy Center 6:45 to 8:45p.m.




Goodbye to Girlhood



Stacy Weiner:

Ten-year-old girls can slide their low-cut jeans over “eye-candy” panties. French maid costumes, garter belt included, are available in preteen sizes. Barbie now comes in a “bling-bling” style, replete with halter top and go-go boots. And it’s not unusual for girls under 12 to sing, “Don’t cha wish your girlfriend was hot like me?”
American girls, say experts, are increasingly being fed a cultural catnip of products and images that promote looking and acting sexy.
“Throughout U.S. culture, and particularly in mainstream media, women and girls are depicted in a sexualizing manner,” declares the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, in a report issued Monday. The report authors, who reviewed dozens of studies, say such images are found in virtually every medium, from TV shows to magazines and from music videos to the Internet.