“And that’s what’s so exciting about the program for the kids,” said Luke Felker, Madison Country Day School, “is that through some solid work at the beginning, they begin to realize that they can do a lot of this in their heads.”
Felker says the program also focuses more on depth, than it does covering a variety of math lessons, making it easier for the kids to retain what they learn.
Retired UW professor Richard Askey says the Singapore program is highly successful, but it isn’t the only way to properly teach math.
“It’s possible to do it in other ways,” said Askey. “Japanese elementary schools are not exactly the same as the Singapore, and they’re done carefully.”
Askey says US schools haven’t been teaching math ‘carefully.’
Closing the Gap Forum
Kambwa, who served as emcee for the Closing the Gap conference, gave the younger students five guidelines for bridging the achievement gap:
- Ask younger students how they’re doing in school.
- Recommend a good book to a peer or younger student.
- Help younger students with their homework. Quiz them on their knowledge of academic subjects. Let them know you are there for questions.
- Raise your hand in class, or sit in front while you’re in class. Set a positive example for your peers.
- Adopt a new attitude. Don’t be afraid to say what you’re about: “I think it’s cool to get good grades. I plan to go to college.”
In Wisconsin, the gap is greatest between white and Hispanic students when comparing high school graduation rates. White students graduate at a rate of 90 percent, compared to only 63 percent for Hispanic students. For Asian students it’s 89 percent, Native Americans 73 percent and black students 72 percent.
Charles Peterson, 17, another Free Press editor, called the achievement gap “huge” and said it is only getting wider.
As a young black male, Peterson has done well at La Follette despite expectations to the contrary.
“I get a lot of negative attention from all colors for doing well in school and for not fitting stereotypes,” he said.
Basic Instincts
Chester Finn, Jr. and Diane Ravitch:
U.S. students lag behind their peers in other modern nations — and the gap widens dramatically as their grade levels rise. Our high school pupils (and graduates) are miles from where they need to be to assure them and our country a secure future in the highly competitive global economy. Hence, any serious effort at education reform hinges on our setting world-class standards, then candidly tracking performance in relation to those standards. Even when gains are slender and results disappointing, we need the plain truth. Which is why recent attempts by federal and state governments to sugarcoat the performance of students is so alarming.
NAEP vs. State test scores was discussed during the recent math forum.
Governors Urge Change in Eating Culture
Greasy food. Sugary drinks. And exercise? The tolls from today’s temptations, from sweet soft drinks popular with school kids to drive-through lunches eaten behind the wheel, are well-known: obesity, diabetes, heart attacks. Governors say states can guide people to healthier choices – and that they must to cut rising health care costs.
Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style
In Artful Sentences: Syntax as Style, Virginia Tufte presents and comments on – more than a thousand excellent sentences chosen from the works of authors in the 20th and 21st centuries. The sentences come from an extensive search to identify some of the ways professional writers use the generous resources of the English language.
Lost in Numbers
Ms. Cornelius (an anonymous AP History high school teacher):
All of my grades are based on percentages. I’m not one of these teachers who wants to convert someone’s scores in my head, so I just weight grades differently. But all grades are based on 100 possible points. I can tell at a glance how a student is doing this way.
But this habit often makes it interesting when students are trying to figure out their grades on quizzes. I usually have a rather simple number of questions in terms of being able to calculate grades easily: 5, 10, 12, 20, 25, or 33 items. As I watched several of my AP students struggle with figuring out their grades, I had to suppress a groan of frustration. It was a 20 item quiz– therefore each question would be worth 5 points, right? Young Frederick wanted to pull out his calculator to figure out what his score would be if he missed 7.
“No calculator. You can do this,” I urged.
He couldn’t begin to figure out how to determine his grade without a calculator. He is 16 years old and taking pre-calculus and other college-track classes (I never took a course beyond algebra 2, much to my chagrin). He doesn’t immediately know that 7×5=35, and then subtract 35 from 100, nor can he figure out that 13×5=65. As a matter of fact, he stumbled over the 100-35 part and insisted the answer was 75.
It is obvious that his only problem is NOT that he didn’t do his reading for my AP US history class carefully enough last night. His problem begins with a basic innumeracy. Of course, many would say that he is a victim of a larger educational trend which I pray to God is finally being placed on the pyre of idiotic educational theories: that rote memorization is bad, bad, baddety bad bad.
Math Forum Audio / Video and Links
Video and audio from Wednesday’s Math Forum are now available [watch the 80 minute video] [mp3 audio file 1, file 2]. This rare event included the following participants:
- Dick Askey (UW Math Professor)
- Faye Hilgart, Madison Metropolitan School District
- Steffen Lempp (MMSD Parent and UW Math Professor)
- Linda McQuillen, Madison Metropolitan School District
- Gabriele Meyer (MMSD Parent and a UW Math Department Lecturer)
- Dr. Terry Millar of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research
The conversation, including audience questions was lively.
Carol Carstensen on “No New Ideas”
A letter to the editor
Dear Editor: As soon as I saw my words quoted in boldface in the Feb. 21 Capital Times article about the school budget, I knew that someone would make the comments in the following day's Sound Off about the need for new School Board members.
I think new ideas and fresh perspectives are invaluable. However, there are a few qualifications: The ideas must not violate any laws or contractual agreements, they should actually save money, and they must be ones we can implement.
I can come up with a new idea of how to save money on transportation: outfit the buses with pedals for every seat and have the students provide some of the energy needed to move the bus, both reducing use of gasoline and providing kids with exercise. However, the plan is not very feasible, at least in the short term. I can also buy lottery tickets, but that approach is not very reliable.
A few additional facts:
The school district has been under revenue caps, and reducing expenditures, for the last 13 years.
• The city and county were faced with significant problems as they kept their budget increases to around 4 percent.
• The school district's budget increase was 2.5 percent (and the school district's tax levy actually decreased by $2 million).
One final qualification: Claiming the problem doesn't exist isn't a new idea.
Carol Carstensen
president
Madison School Board
Published: February 24, 2006
Taxes; Fed: Stagnant Net Worth for Typical Family
This site, along with many others includes discussion on public school finance. Public education money is currently generated from local property taxes, fees and redistributed state and federal funds (via income, energy and other taxes. Barry Ritholtz points to a recent Fed report [pdf] which quantifies that the average US family is not making much economic progress:
“After growing rapidly during the boom of the 1990s, the net worth of the typical American family rose only 1.5% after inflation between 2001 and 2004, the Federal Reserve said in an update of a survey it does once every three years.
The Fed said the net worth of the median American family — the one smack in the statistical middle — was $93,100 in 2004. Net worth, the difference between a family’s assets and liabilities, rose a robust 10.3% between 1998 and 2001 and 17.4% in the three-year interval before that.
A booming housing market boosted the typical American family’s wealth between 2001 and 2004, but stagnant stock prices and rising debt offset many of those gains.”
WISTAX notes that Wisconsin taxes set a record in 2005, with residential and business taxes up 10% over 2004 (meanwhile, the State continues to deal with a structural deficit). Clearly, we as a community need to have a discussion about our public spending priorities and allocate funds accordingly.
“Less May be More with Math Curriculum”
The books are distributed by an Oregon-based company known as SingaporeMath.com, which counts a private school in Madison as the first of its growing number of clients.
The biggest difference between math instruction in Singapore – a city-state with a population of about 4.4 million – and the United States is a simple premise: Less is more.
Students in Singapore are introduced to roughly half the number of new math topics a year as students in the United States are. Experts and policy analysts say Singapore’s emphasis on depth over breadth is a formula for success.
The thicker the textbooks and the greater the volume of math topics introduced a year, the less likely American students and teachers are to achieve similar results, says Alan Ginsburg, director of the policy and program studies service at the U.S. Department of Education.
More on the Connected Math / Singapore Math textbook photos.
Madison Country Day School was the first US school to purchase Singapore Math textbooks, in 1997, according to this article.
Carol Carstensen’s Weekly Update
Carol Carstensen:
Parent Group Presidents:
BUDGET FACTOID:
The Community Service Fund (known for its state accounting code, Fund 80) is not under the revenue cap; these services are funded by a combination of fees and a separate portion of the tax levy. Madison School Community Recreation (MSCR) represents more than 80% of these expenditures. Some of the MSCR programs are: adult exercise programs, youth swimming classes, summer day camp, adult sports leagues, and after school programming at the elementary and middle schools.
FEBRUARY 20th MEETINGS:
5 p.m. Special Board Meeting, executive session – expulsions
6 p.m. Finance and Operations Committee (Johnny Winston, Jr., chair):
5-year budget forecast shows that the district will need to make cuts of $8 million for next year, and by 2010-11 the 5 years of cuts will total $38 million. One caveat this is based on the assumption that current laws continue.
The Committee heard proposals from community agencies for after school activities that would be funded from unallocated money in the Community Service fund (Fund 80). The 4 community agencies are: WiCATY (WI Center for Academically Talented Youth), GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network), Kajsiab House, and the Youth Empowerment Academy. The Committee supported having these proposals go to the entire Board for funding.
7 p.m. Partnerships Committee (Lawrie Kobza, chair)
The Committee considered a policy governing gifts/donations to support activities during and/or after school; the policy will cover gifts of $10,000 or more and directs the Superintendent to review the impact of such a gift on the district to make a determination whether the district should accept it. This policy was approved by the Committee and will be on the Board’s agenda on March 6.
Future Meetings:
February 27:
5:00 p.m. Legislative Committee (Ruth Robarts, chair) legislation that would increase the number of administrators who could be designated “at-will” employees; requirements for school district reports; requiring developers to pay fees to support the building of new schools; newly proposed TABOR amendment.
5:45 p.m. Special Board Meeting: the Board will respond to the Swan Creek petition our original agreement with the Oregon School District requires both districts to reject any such petition; discussion of the East Area Task Force recommendations; the Task Force will have a chance to talk with the Board; discussion about future uses of the Doyle Building; administrator contracts.
March 6:
5 p.m. Performance & Achievement Committee (Shwaw Vang, chair) report on 2005 summer school and proposals for the 2006 summer school.
6 p.m. Special Board Meeting: report from the administration on possible land acquisition in Fitchburg and a look at long term use of space added to Leopold.
7:15 p.m. Regular Board Meeting
N.B. I spent most of Tuesday, Feb. 21 at the Capitol with Joe Quick (the district’s legislative liaison) lobbying our Dane County legislators to oppose the latest TABOR proposal. (Since the authors of TABOR seem only concerned about taxpayers, I have started referring to our students as “pre-taxpayers.”)
Carol
Carol Carstensen, President
Madison School Board
“Until lions have their own historians, the hunters will always be glorified.” – African Proverb
What a Sham(e)
Jason Shephard, writing in this week’s Isthmus:
Last week, Madison Teachers Inc. announced it would not reopen contract negotiations following a hollow attempt to study health insurance alternatives.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but anyone who suggests the Joint Committee on Health Insurance Issues conducted a fair or comprehensive review needs to get checked out by a doctor.
The task force’s inaction is a victory for John Matthews, MTI’s executive director and board member Wisconsin Physicians Service.
Losers include open government, school officials, taxpayers and young teachers in need of a raise.
From its start, the task force, comprised of three members each from MTI and the district, seemed to dodge not only its mission but scrutiny.
Hoping to meet secretly until Isthmus raised legal questions, the committee convened twice for a total of four hours – one hour each for insurance companies to pitch proposals.
No discussion to compare proposals. No discussion about potential cost savings. No discussion about problems with WPS, such as the high number of complaints filed by its subscribers.
Case closed. Never did the task force conduct a “study” and issue a “report” of its “findings,” as required by last year’s contract settlement.
Conspiracy theorists point to the power of Matthews – both in getting the district to play dead and in squelching any questions about conflicts of interest based on, as reported last week, his $13,000 income from WPS.
While the school board is often accused of dodging tough issues, this tops the list. A change in insurance could have resulted in higher pay for teachers and, some argue, could save the district millions in the long run.
Background links and articles here. Link to current school board members. Governance is another significant issue in the April 4, 2006 Madison School Board election.
Making One Size Fit All: Rainwater seeks board input as schools cut ability-based classes
Jason Shephard, writing in this week’s Isthmus:
Kerry Berns, a resource teacher for talented and gifted students in Madison schools, is worried about the push to group students of all abilities in the same classrooms.
“I hope we can slow down, make a comprehensive plan, [and] start training all teachers in a systematic way” in the teaching methods known as “differentiation,” Berns told the Madison school board earlier this month. These are critical, she says, if students of mixed abilities are expected to learn in “heterogeneous” classrooms.
“Some teachers come about it very naturally,” Berns noted. “For some teachers, it’s a very long haul.”
Following the backlash over West High School replacing more than a dozen electives with a single core curriculum for tenth grade English, a school board committee has met twice to hear about the district’s efforts to expand heterogeneous classes.
The school board’s role in the matter is unclear, even to its members. Bill Keys told colleagues it’s “wholly inappropriate” for them to be “choosing or investigating curriculum issues.”
Superintendent Art Rainwater told board members that as “more and more” departments make changes to eliminate “dead-end” classes through increased use of heterogeneous classes, his staff needs guidance in form of “a policy decision” from the board. If the board doesn’t change course, such efforts, Rainwater said, will likely be a “major direction” of the district’s future.
Links and articles on Madison West High School’s English 10, one class for all program. Dr. Helen has a related post: ” I’m Not Really Talented and Gifted, I Just Play One for the PC Crowd”
Aligning High School Policies with the Demands of College Work
Of every 100 high school freshmen in Delaware, 21 will graduate from college on time.
Sixty-four will graduate from high school in four years, 38 will enter college immediately after high school and just 30 are still enrolled by their sophomore year. [Wisconsin: 79 graduate from high school on time, 47 immediately enter college, 34 are still enrolled sophomore year and 25 graduate from college on time [pdf report])
The numbers are similarly sobering nationwide, where just 18 out of 100 high school freshmen graduate from college on time — within three years for an associate degree or six years for a bachelor’s degree.
View Wisconsin’s results via the achieve.org website.
WestEd: Bilingual vs. English Immersion in California
How should English learners be taught? What can state and local education leaders do to better support these students’ academic progress? Conclusions from a five-year evaluation have been released by a team of researchers from AIR and WestEd. The report, based on the study of 1.5 million California English learner and 3.5 million English-fluent and native-English speaking students, includes detailed findings and policy implications for education in California and nationwide. In 1998, California voters passed Proposition 227, mandating that California English learners be taught overwhelmingly in English through immersion programs not normally expected to exceed one year; bilingual instruction was to be permitted only through the granting of a special waiver. Has this been a good thing for students? The California legislature commissioned AIR and WestEd to conduct an exhaustive evaluation and provide some answers. Key findings include the following:
Via Jenny D, where there are some useful comments.
Lending a Brain
With scientific expertise sweeping the globe, the next generation of American scientists and engineers are going to face unprecedented competition, and college is too late to begin preparing them for it, according to the National Science Board.
The board released its “Science and Engineering Indicators, 2006″[pdf] report Thursday. The report, which focused on elementary and secondary education, cast a foreboding tone. According to the report, while the scores of American students on national math assessments have risen slightly in recent years, the same cannot be said for science. According to the 2003 Trends in International Mathematics Science Study , fourth and eighth graders in the United States performed better in math and science than the international average of industrial nations, but improvement since 1995 was modest for eighth graders, and fourth graders took a slight step backward.
Even a fourth grade student who is getting his or her first exposure to science might already be left in the starting blocks, according to Jo Ann Vasquez, a National Science Board member and the lead author of the report. “[Kids] have to get science by third grade,” she said, “or that wonderment disappears.”
Eating for Credit
IT’S shocking that because of the rise in Type 2 diabetes experts say that the children we’re raising now will probably die younger than their parents — the result of a disease that is largely preventable by diet and exercise. But in public schools these days, children all too often are neither learning to eat well nor to exercise.
Fifty years ago, we had a preview of today’s obesity crisis: a presidential council told us that America’s children weren’t fit — and we did something about it, at great expense. We built gymnasiums and tracks and playgrounds. We hired and trained teachers. We made physical education part of the curriculum from kindergarten through high school. Students were graded on their performance.
Schoolyard Cred: What Little Boys Were Made of Before Lawsuits
Two weeks ago, a six-year-old boy was suspended from first grade for three days for “sexual harassment” because he allegedly put “two fingers inside [a] girl’s waistband while she sat on the floor in front of him,” according to an AP story.
Sexual harassment at age six. Growing up kind of fast these days, aren’t they?
“He doesn’t know those things,” the boy’s mother told the local press. “He’s only six years old.” The woman said she “screamed” about the suspension.
Yeah, well, I’d scream too. The whole thing is stupid–children poking at one another and then being punished for it in terms of adult concepts, described with adult words.
I remember a fellow male first grade classmate walking up and kissing a female classmate many, many (!) years ago.
” I’m Not Really Talented and Gifted, I Just Play One for the PC Crowd”
Wouldn’t the proper way to answer the question of why Blacks and Hispanics are lagging behind Whites and Asians be to conduct research on the factors that may be causing the discrepancies and remedy those rather than setting up a phony group of gifted students whose only gift may be that they have a teacher who holds self-esteem and looking diverse in higher regard than children actually learning anything?
With such unscientific inquiry, it is no wonder more and more parents are homeschooling or turning to private schools to educate their children. I foresee that the more schools substitute “diversity” for education, the more parents will take flight from the public schools.
The link includes several interesting comments.
How Safe is Your High School? Madison West
The police data on the school shows a mixed record. In the past three and a half years, Madison West ranks first among the other city schools in bomb threats, property damage and fights.
However, it also has the fewest number of drug incidents and weapons violations.
Overall, West High School has the lowest crime rate.
School principal Ed Holmes, who is in his second year, said that he wants it even lower.
He said that it’s one reason that he’s completely reshaped the school day with a revolutionary overhaul of the lunch schedule.
School Boards Thinking Differently
Madison School Board Seat 1 Candidate Maya Cole:
In a report published by the Educational Research Service titled, Thinking Differently: Recommendations for 21st Century School Board/Superintendent Leadership, Governance, and Teamwork for High Student Achievement, recommended that school districts can effectively raise student achievement with strong leadership and teamwork from the school board and superintendent.
The study was supported by a Ford Foundation grant to the New England School Development Council.
The authors point to a new way of thinking:
Strong, collaborative leadership by local school boards and school superintendents is a key cornerstone of the foundation for high student achievement. That leadership is essential to forming a community vision for children, crafting long-range goals and plans for raising the achievement of every child, improving the professional development and status of teachers and other staff, and ensuring that the guidance, support, and resources needed for success are available.
If this country is serious about improving student achievement and maximizing the development of all of its children, then local educational leadership teams – superintendents and school board members – must work cooperatively and collaboratively to mobilize their communities to get the job done!
How does a board lead? With vision, structure, accountability, advocacy, and unity – to be used as criteria for continuous development and self-evaluation of a team’s leadership and governance.
Maya’s opponent in the April 4 election is Arlene Silveira.
Leopold’s Black History Night
Leopold teacher Troy Dassler emails:
Once again we had an incredible turnout at Leopold event. We had a Black History night of celebration. The gym was packed with children, parents, friends and staff members of the Leopold Community. Academic achievement awards were presented to students for their hard work and dedication. Johnny Winston Jr. was the special guest of honor. He also received an award. The Outstanding School Board Member Award (see picture)
I am starting to think that the overcrowding, the years of out-posting, the Ridgewood Apartment fires, a failed referendum, music and art on-a-cart, the classrooms carved out of the lunchroom, the corner of our library turned into a computer classroom, the various classrooms separated by bookcase walls in the hallways, the budget cuts, the various redistricting of our students, and the endless board meetings have made us a stronger community. During the last referendum our mantra was that our diversity makes us stronger. I think it may need to change for the next referendum, Adversity made us stronger.
In prosperity our friends know us; in adversity we know our friends.
John Churton Collins
Safety in Madison High Schools – Memorial
News 3 examined the data from Madison Memorial High School on Wednesday night. The school outpaces the three other city schools combined.
So far this year, Memorial has 68 arrests while West High School has 11, East High School has 18, and Robert M. LaFolette has 15.
At the current rate, Memorial would end the school year with an 88 percent increase in crime. West would be up 29 percent, but East and LaFollette would each see a 54 percent decrease
Memorial is a school at a real crossroads, and one frequently in the news because of reports of violence.
Video
WKOW-TV notes a recent pellet gun shooting at the school.
UPDATE: Lisa Schuetz reports that a 17 year old girl was charged in this shooting.
WISTAX on State Budget Spending & Structural Deficit
A Medicaid shortfall, recently estimated at $76.7 million, is also a problem. “Reporting a Medicaid Trust Fund deficit separate from the general-fund budget and then claiming the general fund is in balance is akin to a shell game,” WISTAX President Todd A. Berry noted. Medicaid is a joint state-federal program that provides health care to low-income individuals and families.
If any of these items were properly addressed in the budget enacted last summer, the WISTAX report concludes, the general fund would have a deficit. WISTAX is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to public-policy research and citizen education.
Another feature of the 2005-07 budget that gave WISTAX researchers pause was the transfer of monies from special-purpose funds to the general fund. Although the most publicized is a $430 million transfer—accomplished by executive veto—from the transportation fund to the general fund in order to pay increased school aids, the Legislative Fiscal Bureau identified a total of $647.9 million being “used for purposes other than those for which the fund was generally established.” The state is slated to spend, from all sources (excluding bond proceeds), $52.7 billion over the next two years, of which $26.1 billion (49.5%) is from general purpose revenues (GPR)mainly state taxes deposited in the general fund. Federal revenues account for another 25.6%.
Individual income taxes alone account for 51.7% of general fund revenues. Combined with corporate income and sales taxes, the "big three" represent 92.1% of GPR revenues.
Education dominates GPR spending during 2005-07, accounting for 50.4% of the total. Human services is second at 28.2%.
In terms of who benefits from the GPR budget, various local governments and school districts lead the list, the beneficiaries of 56.7% of biennial expenditures. Aids to various individuals and organizations is a distant second at 19.7%. Shares devoted to running state government (16.3%) and the University of Wisconsin (7.3%) trail. School aids and tax credits alone represent 43.3% of the GPR total.
“Enough Money for Good Teachers”
Joanne Jacobs rounds up recent articles about teacher compensation:
The “qualified teacher” shortage is a myth, writes Michael Podgursky in the spring Education Next. Most public schools have enough money to recruit and retain competent teachers — if they could raise pay for teachers with high-demand skills, such as physics and chemistry, without having to pay more for every teacher.
Podgursky compared teacher pay in low-poverty public schools with non-religious private schools. Private school teachers averaged 80 percent of the pay of public teachers with affluent students.
Paul Peterson observes that teacher pay systems reward the “credentialed careerist,” not necessarily the most talented teachers.
Another article looks at When Principals Rate Teachers, finding principals are good at judging effectiveness.
Great Expectations critiques the cost-effectiveness of national board certification of teachers, suggesting a better system would look at the value added by exceptional teachers.
Middle School Design Team: Final Report to the Superintendent
The Madison schools middle school curriculum design team’s final report is now available [1.7MB pdf]. Topics addressed include:
- Math
- Music
- Art
- World Languages
- Health/Family and Consumer Education
- Information and Technology Literacy
- Student Services
The report closed with a discussion of the Future Areas for Discussion:
The Design Team had a very specific charge. As the team met, it quickly became apparent that additional areas that pertain to middle level education are ripe for discussion. The final recommendation from the team includes a wish to continue this discussion over time. The areas that are of interest include:
- K-8 model
- Scheduling around part-time staff. Sharing staff.
- Distance Learning, i.e. district on-line course offerings
- Mental health and severe behavioral issues
- Alternative educational settings
- Bus safety
- Regular articulation meetings between middle and high school staff in all content areas
- Regular articulation meetings between middle and high schools among student
- services staff to increase communication and develop a set of agreed upon
- expectations and practices regarding 8th to 9th transition.
- Advisories
- Safety issues, i.e. bullying, climate
- City-wide projects and competitions
- Revisit the juxtaposition of the MMSD Educational Framework, the Equity Framework, the MMSD Middle School Common Expectations, and the current middle school models used in MMSD.
Life Without Algebra
Joanne Jacobs rounds up a number of links:
Mathphobe Richard Cohen advises a girl who’s flunked algebra six times that the subject is useless in later life since “most of math can now be done by a computer or a calculator,” while “no computer can write a column or even a thank-you note — or reason even a little bit.”
Gabriela, sooner or later someone’s going to tell you that algebra teaches reasoning. This is a lie propagated by, among others, algebra teachers. Writing is the highest form of reasoning. This is a fact. Algebra is not. The proof of this, Gabriela, is all the people in my high school who were whizzes at math but did not know a thing about history and could not write a readable English sentence. I can cite Shelly, whose last name will not be mentioned, who aced algebra but when called to the board in geography class, located the Sahara Desert right where the Gobi usually is. She was off by a whole continent.
if that’s the kind of reasoning taught by writing, I’ll take algebra.
Take Home Test: Week 5
6618 voters in the Madison Metropolitan School District have spoken: school board candidates Maya Cole and Arlene Silveira will move on the April 4 general election. Cole received 2338 votes (or 35.32%), Silveira received 3191 votes (or 48.21%), while third place candidate received 996 votes (or 15.04%).
With that, week five of the Take Home Test is condensed to four candidates: yesterday’s winners in the Seat One race, along with Seat Two candidates Juan Jose Lopez and Lucy Mathiak.
This week’s questions:
Extra credit question: ” Role playing exercise: Convince a family moving to the Madison metro area that Madison schools will provide as good as or better educational opportunities than they would receive in a suburban school district.”
“Moving Beyond Islands of Excellence”
Madison School Board Seat 1 Candidate Maya Cole:
The Madison Metropolitan School District is, in my opinion, at a tipping point. We need to adopt a new way of looking at education. Our community is growing and is beginning to look more and more like an urban school district. Debate in the public forum is healthy when it comes to addressing issues of equity and education.
The Learning First Alliance, a partnership of leading education organizations was founded in 1997, is looking at this type of leadership model in school districts. The goals of the Alliance are to: ensure that high academic expectations are held for all students; ensure a safe and supportive place of learning for all students; and, to engage parents and other community members in helping students achieve high academic expectations.
Cole’s opponent in the April 4, 2006 election is parent Arlene Silveira
“Gifted” Label Takes a Vacation in Diversity Quest
Middle school magnet programs in Montgomery County have traditionally operated as schools within schools, offering specialized curriculum to a few select students — who have been mostly Asian and white.
Florida & Iowa: Pay for Performance Teacher Bonus Proposals
The Board of Education is expected today to approve a proposal that would give some teachers a bonus equal to 5 percent of their salary. The extra pay would be based solely on their ability to show student learning gains on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
But the biggest impediment could be lack of teacher support. Unlike Denver officials, who worked closely with the teacher’s union, Florida education officials didn’t consult with the state teachers union until after they had a draft of their plan.
When performance pay is “forced on teachers, you have a war,” said Allan Odden, professor of educational administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And if you’re having a war, it’s unlikely to be an incentive to improving student learning.”
A commission would be created to design the new compensation program, which would likely include the measurement of student improvement over a year’s time as a yardstick of how well a teacher is performing.
Democrats reacted cautiously to the Senate Republicans’ merit pay initiative.
“I think the responsible course of action would be for us to first come to agreement on what such a program would entail,” said Vilsack.
Go with Your Gut
LAST week’s reports that low-fat diets may not reduce the risk of heart disease and cancer have left Americans more confused than ever about what to eat. I’d like to make a radical suggestion: instead of wringing our hands over fat grams and calories, let’s resolve to enjoy whatever food we eat.
Because, as it turns out, when you eat something you like, your body makes more efficient use of its nutrients. Which means that choking down a plateful of steamed cauliflower (if you hate steamed cauliflower) is not likely to do you as much good as you think.
In the 1970’s, researchers fed two groups of women, one Swedish and one Thai, a spicy Thai meal. The Thai women — who presumably liked the meal more than the Swedish women did — absorbed almost 50 percent more iron from it than the Swedish women. When the meal was served as a mushy paste, the Thai women absorbed 70 percent less iron than they had before — from the same food.
The researchers concluded that food that’s unfamiliar (Thai food to Swedish women) or unappetizing (mush rather than solid food) winds up being less nutritious than food that looks, smells and tastes good to you. The explanation can be found in the digestive process itself, in the relationship between the “second brain” — the gut — and the brain in your head.
Secrets of Graduating from College
The first Toolbox provided the most powerful argument by far for getting more high school students into challenging courses, my favorite reporting topic. Using data from a study of 8,700 young Americans, it showed that students whose high schools had given them an intense academic experience — such as a heavy load of English courses or advanced math or Advanced Placement — were more likely to graduate from college. It has been frequently cited by high school principals, college admissions directors and anyone else who cared about giving more choices in life to more students, particularly those from low-income and minority families.
The new Toolbox is 193 pages [pdf] of dense statistics, obscure footnotes and a number of insightful and surprising assessments of the intricacies of getting a college degree in America. It confirms the lessons of the old Toolbox using a study of 8,900 students who were in 12th grade in 1992, 10 years after the first group. But it goes much further, prying open the American higher education system and revealing the choices that are most likely to get the least promising students a bachelor’s degree.
Knowledge of Elders Stream Into Area Classrooms
“You don’t learn if you don’t listen,” Gundersen said, quieting the pair just a little.
“We have to respect each other,” Erin acknowledged, nodding his head.
Gundersen, a 30-year veteran of the State Department who comes to Birney one afternoon each week to talk with Erin about history or homework or life, is among a growing cadre of older adults and retirees who volunteer regularly in schools across the country, helping children learn to read, practice multiplication tables and learn geography.
To: Professor@University.edu Subject: Why It’s All About Me
One student skipped class and then sent the professor an e-mail message asking for copies of her teaching notes. Another did not like her grade, and wrote a petulant message to the professor. Another explained that she was late for a Monday class because she was recovering from drinking too much at a wild weekend party.
Jennifer Schultens, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis, received this e-mail message last September from a student in her calculus course: “Should I buy a binder or a subject notebook? Since I’m a freshman, I’m not sure how to shop for school supplies. Would you let me know your recommendations? Thank you!”
MMSD Wins EPA Clean Bus Grant
Great Lakes Environmental News:
The EPA has just awarded 37 grants totaling $7.5 million as part of the Clean School Bus USA program, which is intended to reduce kid’s exposure to diesel exhaust. The program encourages policies and practices to eliminate unnecessary school bus idling, to install emission control systems on newer buses and to replace older buses with cleaner diesel or compressed natural gas powered buses. Grant recipients are contributing an additional $13 million in matching funds and in-kind services. The grants will help fund the cleanup of more than 500 tons of annual diesel emissions from 4000 school buses nationwide.
Via the Daily Page.
How Safe is Your Madison High School – East?
How safe is your teen’s school?
WISC-TV wanted to know. Eric Franke and Terri Barr conducted a three-month investigation into all four Madison area high schools.
They analyzed the number of police calls and arrests made on school campuses.
Janesville School Officers to Carry Tasers
School police liaison officers in the Janesville School District will now carry tasers for increased security at all school campuses.
UW: Future Artists Showcase
The arts are not only a means of personal expression. Ideas also regularly travel the compelling highways that the arts of all kinds provide.
Case in point: The ideas embedded in the works that apprentice artists — students — are exploring and articulating in “The Chancellor Presents the Performing Artists of the Future: A World Class Evening of Music, Drama and Dance,” Saturday, Feb. 25, at the Overture Center.
Quite a deal at $15.00.
“Let’s Teach to the Test”
Let’s start by trying to clarify what I consider the most deceptive phrase in education today: “teaching to the test.”
Teaching to the test, you may have heard, is bad, very bad. I got 59.2 million hits when I did a Google search for the phrase, and most of what I read was unfriendly. Teaching to the test made children sick, one article said. Others said it rendered test scores meaningless or had a dumbing effect on instruction. All of that confused me, since in 23 years of visiting classrooms I have yet to see any teacher preparing kids for exams in ways that were not careful, sensible and likely to produce more learning.
Would You Take the Bird in the Hand, or a 75% Chance at the Two in the Bush?
Would you rather have $1,000 for sure or a 90 percent chance of $5,000? A guaranteed $1,000 or a 75 percent chance of $4,000?
In economic theory, questions like these have no right or wrong answers. Even if a gamble is mathematically more valuable — a 75 percent chance of $4,000 has an expected value of $3,000, for instance — someone may still prefer a sure thing.
People have different tastes for risk, just as they have different tastes for ice cream or paint colors. The same is true for waiting: Would you rather have $400 now or $100 every year for 10 years? How about $3,400 this month or $3,800 next month? Different people will answer differently.
Portage School Referendum
Pulfus cites the speedy payoff of the high school as one example of a way the District has worked to keep costs down for taxpayers. He also says the district attracts 140 students each year from surrounding districts under the school choice program, showing they have quality programs and education.
“If parents didn’t believe we had a good school here, they wouldn’t be coming here.” Pulsfus says. School districts get paid, in part, by the number of students enrolled.
Unlike districts facing increasing or declineing enrollm,ent problems, the nmber of student sin the Portage District remains about the same, with a projected decrease of 44 students in seven years. (From 2465 students in 2003-04 to 2419 students 2009-10.
Building the Prototypical School: Measuring What Works, and What Doesn’t
The report notes that Wisconsin’s education system needs to “double or triple current performance so that in the short term, 60 percent of students achieve at or above proficiency, and in the longer term 90 percent of students achieve at that level.”
Wisconsin suffers from what might be described as the “Lake Wobegone Syndrome.” Like the residents of Garrison Keillor’s mythical Minnesota burg, we believe our kids are all above average. Judged by some national standards, they are; judged by international standards; it’s not true at the K-12 level. Only after post-secondary education do American students begin to climb up the global proficiency scale.
If you’re looking for an ambitious mission statement, consider this pledge from the bipartisan Wisconsin School Finance Adequacy Initiative: “We will not simply propose adding new dollars on top of current dollars, but propose a complete new reuse of all dollars – first those currently in the (K-12 public school) system, and then any additional dollars if that is the finding of the adequacy analysis.”
In other words, this blue-ribbon panel won’t be satisfied with recommending more of the same when it comes to public education in Wisconsin, unless “more of the same” is producing tangible dividends for students, their communities and the overall economy.
Now halfway through its study of Wisconsin public schools, the 26-member task force led by UW-Madison Professor Allen Odden is trying to live up to its promise to scrutinize current spending levels and to adjust them up, down – or even out – based on empirical evidence of what works and what does not.
Links: via Google Allen Odden: Clusty | Google
Wisconsin School Adequacy Finance Initiative website.
Editorial on Tuesday’s Primary Election
Kelly has not made a credible case for his nomination. Both Silveira and Cole have.
We’ve been impressed with Cole’s ability to mix her deep and thoughtful analysis of education issues with a sense of humor that has been sorely lacking on the board. While she’s obviously a very smart and very engaged parent, Cole also has a very quick wit.
Silveira, meanwhile, brings her own impressive record of leadership in local school organizations and her savvy as a scientist who now works as a marketing director for Promega Corporation. She is intimately familiar with the complexities of school boundaries from her work on the West/Memorial boundary task force.
Cole and Silveira both have the capacity to engage this community in a spirited and respectful debate over the direction of Madison’s schools.
Links and candidate information available here.
Kids, Schools & Cities, Part II
In parting, let me share with you the findings of a Northwestern University professor, James Rosenbaum.* He studied poorly performing high school students, virtually all Black, from the Chicago Public Schools who moved into areas served by suburban schools. His findings were that most of these failing students in Chicago were getting C’s in the suburbs. A tougher school district and improved grades!
The main point of his paper was to challenge the commonly accepted conclusion that once a student was doing poorly academically, there was not much hope for turn around after the 6th or 7th grade. His findings completely contradicted that conclusion.
Carol Carstensen’s Weekly Message
Carol Carstensen:
Parent Group Presidents:
BUDGET FACTOID:
MTI has just informed the district that it will not agree to reopen negotiations to consider changes to health insurance. If the union had agreed to reopen negotiations on this point, the agreement was that any savings that resulted from a change in health insurance options would be used to increase salaries for staff.
FEBRUARY 13th MEETINGS:
5 p.m. Special Board Meeting Members of the Memorial/West Task Force spoke with the Board about their recommendations and how they arrived at them. They emphasized that they did not reach their recommendation (to build a new school and add on to Leopold) easily or quickly. It was only exhausting all other approaches that they came to agreement that the only truly long range solution involved building.
The Board then discussed the Memorial/West Task Force recommendation to build a new school on the far west side and to build an addition onto Leopold (known as the build-build approach). The Board decided not to put the issue on the April ballot but to provide more time for discussion and to look at the options if the community doesn’t support the build recommendation. The Board directed the administration to come back with information about the possibility of finding land in Fitchburg to build on and also to show how an addition to Leopold is necessary and would improve the current building.
FUTURE MEETINGS:
February 20:
5 p.m. Special Board Meeting, executive session – expulsions
6 p.m. Finance and Operations Committee (Johnny Winston, Jr., chair) 5-year budget forecast; proposals from community agencies for after school activities funded through the Community Service fund (Fund 80).
7 p.m. Partnerships Committee (Lawrie Kobza, chair) continued discussion about a policy governing gifts/funds to support activities during and/or after school.
February 27:
5:00 p.m. Legislative Committee (Ruth Robarts, chair) legislation that would increase the number of administrators who could be designated “at-will” employees; requirements for school district reports; requiring developers to pay fees to support the building of new schools; newly proposed TABOR-like amendment.
6 p.m. Special Board Meeting: discussion of the East Area Task Force recommendations; the Task Force will have a chance to talk with the Board at the start of the meeting; the Board will respond to the Swan Creek petition; discussion about future uses of the Doyle Building; administrator contracts.
Stay warm,
Carol
Carol Carstensen, President
Madison School Board
“Until lions have their own historians, the hunters will always be glorified.” – African Proverb
Teach Math Procedures as a First Step to Conceptual Understanding
Stanford’s Keith Devlin, via Joanne Jacobs:
. . . professional mathematicians, scientists and engineers, want the schools — the pipeline that keeps those professions supplied with new personnel — to ensure student mastery of numerical, algebraic and computational skills. “We don’t want to spend our time having to reteach the incoming students how to add fractions!” is a common refrain heard in university science and engineering departments.
Basic skills are not all they want, but they don’t want them left out or de-emphasized.
Ranged against them (again, broadly speaking) is the mathematics education community, which argues that a focus on procedural skills is misplaced, and that the primary aim of school mathematics education should be to produce conceptual understanding. “If students understand the concepts, they can pick up any skills they need easily enough, as and when they need them.”
As a professional mathematician, I often have to learn a new part of my subject. Every time I have to go through the same process: Start by learning the rules, then practice using the rules, and keep practicing until understanding develops. Practically every professional mathematician, scientist, or engineer I have spoken to has said more or less the same. Understanding follows experience.
Will Standards-Based Reform in Education Help Close the Poverty Gap
Reader Paul Baker emails:
February 23, 2006, 4:00-5:30 p.m.
Gale VandeBerg Auditorium, Pyle Center Room 121, 702 Langdon Street
Cosponsored by the Institute for Research on Poverty, WCER, and the School of Education. Presenter: Barbara Foorman, University of Texas-Houston. Respondent: William Clune, UW-Madison. More about this event is available here.
Math Forum: Wednesday 2.22.2006 7:00p.m.
There’s been no shortage of discusion regarding math curriculum. Rafael Gomez’s latest event, this Wednesday’s Math Forum should prove quite interesting. The event will be at the Doyle Administration Building (McDaniels Auditorium) [Map] from 7:00 to 8:00p.m. Participants include:
- Dick Askey (UW Math Professor)
- Faye Hilgart, Madison Metropolitan School District
- Steffen Lempp (MMSD Parent and UW Math Professor)
- Linda McQuillen, Madison Metropolitan School District
- Gabriele Meyer (MMSD Parent and a UW Math Department Lecturer)
- Dr. Terry Millar of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research
The general format follows:
- Each Speaker presents their passion and views about math as subject matter in the school setting
- views will be decoded into a scope and sequence of curr. in the middle school
- views about the math program at MMSD
- Discussion: Questions relative to a scope and sequence as well as developmental stages of a middle school student
- Audience Questions
The Forum’s goal is to provide an informative event for parents and other interested parties.
Madison Schools Board of Education Election Site Update
I’ve added several items to the Spring, 2006 Madison School Board election page:
- Arlene Silveira’s response to the Northside Planning Council’s Questions;
- Letters supporting candidates:
- Progressive Dane’s Nick Berigan: Silveira’s actions prove she belongs on School Board (Duplicate post with more comments from Joan Knoebel, Jerry Eykholt and Marisue Horton)
- Madison School Board Member Ruth Robarts: Cole has kids’ best interest at heart
- Parent Jim Zellmer: Cole is the best choice for Madison’s future generations.
Parent Marisue Horton posted words for Arlene in the comments below.
Change is on Candidates Minds
Two of the three candidates running in Tuesday’s Madison School Board primary election want to change how the board functions. But they are approaching it from different directions.
Much more on the school board elections here
7.96M Spending vs. Revenue Gap Projected for the Madison School District (2006 – 2007 Budget)
Madison School District administrators are projecting a $7.96 million gap between what it would cost to continue the same services next year and what it will be able to raise under state revenue limits.
A gap of $6 million to $10 million had been projected.
[ed: 2005-2006 budget is $321M+]
There are many factors that affect the district’s budget including enrollment (flat or slightly declining – every time a student leaves, the district loses spending authority), state and federal redistributions, state spending caps (district spending, which increases annually is limited by enrollment and a % growth), health care costs and program choices among many others. Details here.
The Poetry Foundation
Through the new Web site, the Poetry Foundation seeks to celebrate and share the best classical and contemporary poetry with a broad and diverse audience, from the devoted poetry reader to the casual one. At the core of the new site is an extensive archive of poetry, including poetry and essays from back issues of Poetry magazine (now in its 94th year of continuous publication). At launch the archive will include more than 3,000 poems by over 300 poets. All of the site’s content, including the poetry archive, is accessible free of charge.
The FruitGal
nstead of getting employees to eat junk food on breaks at work, the company buys them fruit. They put that in the break room and the employees snack on that instead of junk and they feel good and they work hard and they don’t call in sick.
On cost
It’s about $60 for a 40-serving box of seasonal fruit that’s guaranteed to please. If it’s not of the quality you want, we’ll replace it. There’s no contract.
“Extra Special Education at Public Expense”
At Woodside High in San Mateo County, college-prep classes awaited a 15-year-old boy with learning disabilities and anxiety.
He would blend in with other college-bound students, but also receive daily help from a special education expert. He would get a laptop computer, extra time for tests — and an advocate to smooth any ripples with teachers. If an anxiety attack came on, he could step out of class.
But Woodside High wasn’t what his parents had in mind.
Instead, they enrolled him in a $30,000-a-year prep school in Maine — then sent the bill to their local public school district.
Strategies to Raise SAT Scores
School officials said they are weighing several options, including encouraging more non-honors or non-AP students to enroll in Algebra II by sophomore year instead of participating in an easier, two-year Algebra I course; financing the PSAT for sophomores and perhaps freshmen; and, on a more basic level, adding more testing sites within the county so that students can take the exam in a comfortable setting without having to commute long distances.
“We Must Show Every Child The Light”
Reaction to Joel Rubin and Nancy Cleeland’s “The Vanishing Class“:
‘So Much Damage‘
Perhaps these fiascos could be avoided if public officials first tested proposed policy changes on a small scale (instead of blindly applying them to tens of millions of students with no insight on the potential impact). At this point, so much damage has been done to so many people, I’m uncertain how the situation can be rectified (except perhaps to save future generations of students).
— MARC
‘Learning … Is Work‘
Get rid of calculators … [and get rid of the] false belief that learning should be fun! Learning, the repeated cycles of drill and mastery, is WORK!
— KATHRYN
‘Squeaky Wheel‘
Parents need to be more involved, and this involvement has to originate from the schools. With the large numbers of students whose parents do not speak English, the schools must do a better job of bringing these parents into the school community and getting them involved in their child’s education. Many a night I sat frustrated and nearly on the verge of tears because I couldn’t help my son. My son was lucky, though, I was the proverbial squeaky wheel that ensured he was not passed over, but most students aren’t that lucky.
— PAUL ROBINSON
‘Individual Attention‘
As a member of a school board in Ventura County (not the rich part), I can say that I think there are two reasons that LAUSD is failing its students. First, the system is simply too large. How can a school of 4,000 do everything well? Our kids need individual attention, and I just don’t see how any massive organization like LAUSD can succeed. Second, I believe that because politics are involved in such an intimate way in these large districts, the kids get left in the dust. The unions are fighting for ever more of the financial pie (most districts spend 85% to 90% of their total [budget] on personnel and benefits); the administration is beholden to the myriad rules and regulations coming at them from both the state and federal level; and less and less control is at the local level. The politicians don’t want to pay for raises for employees or lower student-staff ratios, so the existing dollars must be stretched. That means more students per class, more students per counselor, more students per custodian, maintenance person, etc. And we wonder why the kids feel like no one cares about them?
— JOHN G.
These links include many more words and are well worth reading.
CT Poll: Most Back Soda Ban
Sixty-eight percent of Connecticut voters support the proposed ban on the sale of soda in public schools even though most do not think it will have an impact on childhood obesity, according to a Quinnipiac University poll.
New Schools Venture Fund
NewSchools Venture Fund™ is a venture philanthropy firm working to transform public education through powerful ideas and passionate entrepreneurs so that all children – especially those underserved – have the opportunity to succeed in the 21st century.
James Flanigan has more:
Recipients of the fund’s investments are not whiz kids eager to become the next Bill Gates. Mainly, they are public school teachers with a passion to improve the ways poor children are taught. The companies they form are nonprofit charter school management organizations, capable of running publicly financed elementary and secondary schools that are freed from some rules and regulations in exchange for producing educational results better than those of the large urban school district. Almost all their students are eligible for free or reduced-price breakfasts and lunches.
Financing from New Schools and charitable foundations helps them to build or buy school properties and to get elementary, middle and high schools up and running. But their operations are expected to quickly become self-sustaining on the stipends paid from local, state and federal taxes for educating each student.
Sex and the Single Bee
If parents really told their kids about the birds and the bees, sex would be less popular, Eugene Volokh writes. “Now, daughter, think of yourself as a bee. There’s a 99.99% chance that you’ll never get any, and instead of…
Maya Cole is best for School Board
Dear Editor: The election of Maya Cole to the Madison School Board is the best choice for Madison’s future generations.
Our public schools face a number of challenges, including flat or declining enrollment (despite a growing metropolitan area), providing our children with a world-class curriculum and significantly improving taxpayer confidence in the budget process so that referendums pass.
Maya’s advocacy for much stronger school district interactions with the city and local community groups, of which Madison has many, is a smart approach to increasing parent and public support (and therefore enrollment and resources) for the school district. The district has, under some current board members, declined community opportunities, such as Fitchburg biotech powerhouse Promega’s offer of free land for a school in the mid-1990s. That land became Eagle School.
Maya has extensively discussed improving the district’s curriculum by working closely with local world-class resources, such as the University of Wisconsin and adjacent higher education institutions. Maya’s words stand in stark contrast to the district’s current efforts to reduce curriculum choices and quality for our next generation.
Maya notes that many school districts provide taxpayers with a detailed school-by-school budget and a long-term forecast. Transparency and long-term budget information are critical to taxpayer support for future referendums.
I’m supporting Maya Cole, a Madison parent of three young children who attend our public schools, for Seat 1, and I hope you do as well.
Jim Zellmer
Madison
Published: February 17, 2006
Cole has kids’ best interest at heart
Dear Editor: Maya Cole gets my vote in Tuesday’s School Board primary because she believes that we can do better by our children, she’s actively looking for new solutions to old problems, and she’s committed to bringing parents and the community into policy-making.
She’s a mom on a mission to reform how the Madison schools do business at a time when we need change. Maya understands, for example, the important role that the community should play in evaluating the effectiveness of our curriculum.
We need her kind of leadership to keep all kinds of families in the public schools and serve all kids as well as we possibly can.
Ruth Robarts
member
Madison Board of Education
Students Form Video News Team
A class of sixteen high school juniors and seniors is meeting everyday in the Doyle building to learn video production and journalism skills. This district-wide High School Video News Production class is being offered for the first time thanks to the efforts of Mary Ramberg, Director of Teaching and Learning and Gabrielle Banick, Coordinator of Career and Technical Education and a grant from the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.
Cool.
Expecting High Quality Work from Students
Mary Ramberg, MMSD Teaching and Learning:
If nothing is expected of a man, he finds that expectation hard to contradict.
Frederick Douglas
The converse of what Frederick Douglas learned from his life experience has been tested and verified by educational researchers.
Research in Chicago schools looked at what happens when teachers expect more of students. In other words, if teachers expect much of students, are those expectations affirmed? The answer is “YES.”
When students are expected — and supported — to do high quality work and to learn important content, that’s exactly what they do.
The Gates Effect: High School Small Learning Communities
More to the point, others wonder: Is the Gates Foundation making the right calls? The early results of its high school reinvention efforts–with many foundation-backed schools now in their fourth year of existence–are mixed at best. Outside researchers hired by Gates have found “positive cultures” at the new and redesigned schools but raise serious questions about such issues as the teacher burnout, attendance, and the quality of math instruction.
Particularly troublesome has been the effort to transform existing high schools rather than start from scratch. “Improving struggling schools remains a challenge,” admits Vander Ark. Indeed, the foundation’s own studies show that these restructured schools are often bogged down in their early years with questions about facilities, schedules, and staff. In some cases, says Vander Ark, instead of beginning with structural change, “it may be better to start with curriculum–getting rid of dead-end classes and encouraging students to take more challenging courses–and improving the quality of instruction.”
Oregon School Board: Presentation on Accountability for Student Success
More on the CMP Math Curriculum
The problems with CMP go far beyond failing to reach parents. One big problem is that the edifice of mathematics is so huge. Think of how long it took mathematicians to discover all of it. When one tries to use the discovery paradigm as the sole model for math lessons, all of the time available is spent in discovery process of basic concepts. There isn’t time for more than a cursory look at any topic. There isn’t any work on hard problems related to basic concepts. There isn’t time to master computational aspects of basic concepts. Everyone learns 1/2 + 1/4, but no one learns how to find the least common denominator of 1/14 and 1/35. The people who promote a constructivist approach to math set up a false dichotomy between traditional math which teaches one to memorize formulas and tables of computations, and discovery math which teaches one to really understand how math works. I actually had a TAG resource teacher say this to me very patronizingly. “We don’t teach math anymore the way that YOU learned it. Now children really understand math when they learn it.” Excuse me, but traditional math was never like that. Tradtional math presents concepts AND teaches understanding of concepts. One learns formulas AND why they work. One also does large numbers of progressively more difficult computations to become skilled at them. The problem with traditional math is that large numbers of students don’t understand the concepts as presented and try to get by with memorizing and manipulating formulas which they don’t understand. They also don’t master the computational aspects and try to make up for this deficit by using calculators inappropriately.
Nick Berigan: Silveira Belongs on School Board
Dear Editor: I’m voting for Arlene Silveira for Madison School Board because she has, with words and actions, shown leadership about school resource policy. From the last year’s dialogue I’ve concluded that candidates need to be judged on how they respond to the complex issues. Does he or she problem-solve or position?
I think it’s useful when a candidate focuses on improving communications and helps devise ways to get wider circles involved in resource issues. If a candidate has actually organized people to address resource issues, then she has demonstrated credibility. Arlene has helped organize people toward solutions. I don’t think it is useful when candidates talk ambiguously about trust and perceptions without offering solutions.
I think it’s practical when, in response to state funding failures, a candidate supports interim solutions to minimize the damage. Arlene took a stand on the referendums. I think it’s disingenuous when candidates avoid taking such clear stands, preferring instead to criticize the real outcomes that result from those state failures.
Deluxe Grant Boosts Reading Recovery
Mention accelerated learning and you probably think of high school students taking Advanced Placement classes. But did you know that every year about 300 of the very lowest performing first graders participate in a special literacy intervention that provides opportunities for them to accelerate their literacy learning skills? After just 12-20 weeks in Reading Recovery the very lowest readers have the prospect of joining an average reading group!
Rapid changes in learning depend upon the teacher’s ability to individually design a series of lessons to match the unique learning characteristics of each child. So teachers are continually confronted with the need to expand their expertise.
Literacy Lumps into the Kill Zone
Sadly, this devalues the thoughtful essayist and the sheer linguistic joy of the exposition. And the language dies a little more each day.
Then there’s the havoc wrought on spelling and punctuation by all this casual communication. You can’t lay all that at the feet of technology, of course. Grammar skills have been eroding in this country for years and that has a lot more to do with lax instruction than it does with e-mail or instant messaging. (Math is a different matter. No student should be allowed to bring a calculator into a math class. Ever.)
But couple those deficient grammar skills with the shorthand that’s become prevalent in fast communication (not to mention all those irritating acronyms: LOL, WYSIWYG, IMHO, etc.) and you’ve just struck a match next to a can of gasoline. And people wonder why the tone of e-mail is so easily misunderstood.
School Voucher & SAGE Expansion?
An agreement is likely to be announced Thursday and is expected to include a substantial increase in state funding of the class size reduction program known as SAGE.
Two sources told the Journal Sentinel that the agreement will likely allow an increase in the number of low-income students using publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools and religious schools in Milwaukee from roughly 15,000 to about 22,500. It also reportedly calls for all schools using vouchers – currently 124 schools – to obtain one of several forms of accreditation within several years. Many have such accreditation now, but some, including some of the weakest schools, do not.
Wisconsin Virtual Academy Parent Information Sessions
Learn More About WIVA at These Interactive Sessions
At these online sessions, we will review the K12 curriculum, demonstrate our lessons and materials, and answer your questions about the Wisconsin Virtual Academy. For more information on how to join an online virtual information session, please email info@wivcs.org.
Thinning the Milk Does Not Mean Thinning the Child
It’s not that no one has tried. In the 1990’s, the National Institutes of Health sponsored two large, rigorous studies asking whether weight gain in children could be prevented by doing everything that obesity fighters say should be done in schools — greatly expand physical education, make cafeteria meals more nutritious and less fattening, teach students about proper nutrition and the need to exercise, and involve the parents. One study, an eight-year, $20 million project sponsored by the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, followed 1,704 third graders in 41 elementary schools in the Southwest, where students were mostly Native Americans, a group that is at high risk for obesity. The schools were randomly divided into two groups, one subject to intensive intervention, the other left alone. Researchers determined, beginning at grade five, if the children in the intervention schools were thinner than those in the schools that served as a control group.
Realistic “Pellet Gun” Found at Memorial High
Madison police said that they found a realistic-looking gun in a Memorial High School locker on Tuesday morning.
Mathiak on Memorandum to Local Media
Madison School Board Candidate (Seat 2) Candidate Lucy Mathiak, via Kristian Knutsen:
Although I understand your interest in exploring the political impact of on-line communication, I was dismayed to see a piece that went beyond questions of blog influence to focus on my campaign in a way that made it appear that the memo in question was a thinly-disguised campaign ploy.
Certainly your omission of the coverage and support given to Arlene Silveira’s campaign on the SIS blog makes it appear that this resource is the personal territory of Maya Cole and me. Similarly, you neglected to mention that Michael Kelly and Juan Jose Lopez are not a presence on the site because they have chosen to not use the blog to communicate with potential voters.
Kristian includes some useful links with his post, including incumbent School Board candidate Juan Jose Lopez’s statement on blogs.
I mentioned some of the many techniques used locally to (try to) influence the media here. Having said all that, I’m ecstatic that there’s a growing discussion, online, regarding these local school board races. Perhaps we might have a bit of coverage of the upcoming middle school math forum, next Wednesday (2.22.2006).
More Math Links
- Ben Feller:
Science and math have zoomed to the top of the nation’s education agenda. Yet Amanda Cook, a parent of two school-age girls, can’t quite see the urgency.
“In Maine, there aren’t many jobs that scream out ‘math and science,'” said Cook, who lives in Etna, in the central part of the state. Yes, both topics are important, but “most parents are saying you’re better off going to school for something there’s a big need for.”
Nationwide, a new poll shows, many parents are content with the science and math education their children get – a starkly different view than that held by national leaders. - Celia R. Baker:
Dissatisfaction with math curriculum in Alpine School District might seem like a local issue. It isn’t.
Alpine’s math wars made the area ground zero for the explosion of charter, home and private schools in Utah, and the discord continues to drive legislation regarding school choice.
Eagle Mountain resident Doug Cannon, father of seven, became concerned about Alpine’s math curriculum soon after the district adopted the “Investigations” math program in its elementary schools in 2001.
The textbook series is meant to improve students’ understanding of math through discovery of math concepts. As originally implemented, it downplayed rote learning and memorization of traditional algorithms such as times tables.
What to Do About Fitchburg?
They were asked to build a new school at Leopold to accommodate the growth in the area and they voted it down 837 to 813. They were asked to support exceeding the revenue cap to help run the new school and they voted in down 1017 to 632. Worst of all, they were asked to support additional funds for maintenance of Madison schools and they voted it down 849 to 799.
The Madison School Board and the candidates running for the two seats available this spring have a tough battle facing them. They really do need to work out a long-term solution soon both for the residents of Fitchburg and the residents of Madison. Both areas would be served well by a long-term solution, something the residents of Fitchburg say they want. But if the long-term solution has a large price tag, and how can building new schools and classrooms not, will the residents of Fitchburg even support it?
Via The Daily Page
Janesville School District’s Proposed New Food Policy
The proposal would require schools to offer healthier options, like flavored water instead of juices and soda high in sugar. It would also discourage using candy for classroom rewards or for school fundraising.
Steve Salerno, principal of Marshall Middle School said schools should show nutritional responsibility.
“When we see things about childhood obesity, as we do in the news, how are we as a school practicing what we preach?” said Salerno. “We educate good nutrition, we need to be able to put our backing behind that.”
Julie Ruef, the kitchen manager at Marshall, emphasized the importance of the family meal.
Isthmus Take Home Test, Week 4
So what do the Madison school board candidates think about teaching Creationism/Intelligent Design as science in the schools? Given the proposed Wisconsin state legislature bill to ban it, we thought we’d dedicate week four of the Take Home Test to the issue.
This is the final round of questions before the primary election on Tuesday, Feb. 21, for Seat One on the Madison Board of Education. The three-person field of Maya Cole, Michael Kelly and Arlene Silveira will be winnowed to two candidates on the April 4 general election ballot. There is no primary for the Seat Two candidates, Juan Jose Lopez and Lucy Mathiak.
Another Peek Inside the Toolbox
The longitudinal study, which its author calls a “data essay,” explores the high school class of 1992 as it moved from high school to higher education and compares its success, favorably, to the high school class of 1982 tracked in an earlier report, “Answers in the Tool Box.”
Both reports provide support for efforts to improve the quality of high school curriculums and the participation in those curriculums of larger (and more diverse) proportions of students. New data indicate that progress is occurring — the eight and a half year graduation rate for the 1992 cohort rose to 66 percent, from 60 percent for the 1982 cohort.
Teach Children Dollars & Sense
WiSJ:
Wisconsin students should learn to be financially savvy enough not to succumb to two huge national problems – low savings and high debt.
The state Department of Public Instruction, with help from educators, lawmakers, money managers and others, introduced voluntary state standards last week. Now it’s up to local school districts to adopt them.
For The Record: An Interview with Editors and Writers from the Simpson Street Press on the Achievement Gap
Neil Heinen hosted an interesting conversation Sunday morning with editors and writers (Andrea Gilmore, Ashley Crawford) from the Simpson Street Press on the achievement gap. Video and audio, available: (audio feed | video feed) or a popup window. Slick.
“Academic Rigor Not Just for A Select Few”
Mary Ramberg, executive director of Teaching & Learning:
Rigor means different things to different people. Some people think rigor and rigidity are the same. In this case, academic rigor might look like teacher inflexibility — an “it’s my way or the highway” kind of attitude. Some people think rigor and harshness are the same. In this case, academic rigor might mean that student work is an endurance test and only a predetermined number of students can receive high grades. Neither of these views of rigor matches the MMSD understanding of rigor in an academic setting.
The MMSD Educational Framework describes three characteristics of rigor in an academic setting:
Isthmus Op-Ed on Memorandum to Local Media
We are in a Carboniferous period of communications, with personal media pumping tremendous volumes of oxygen into the infosphere. Here’s one example:
Last Thursday, Jim Zellmer, an organizer of School Information System (SIS), sent a memo to editors and news directors at 13 local publications, including Isthmus. It is titled 2006 Madison School Board Elections: Memorandum to Local Media, and is posted at SIS, a well-trafficked group blog devoted to educational issues, particularly as they revolve around the Madison Metropolitan School District.
There are many local techniques used to influence the media. These include op-ed pieces, letters to the editor, phone calls, lunches, meetings, editors invited to be “superintendent, mayor or principal for a day”, press conferences, blogs and events.
School Board Candidate Forum Tonight @ Falk Elementary
The Falk Elementary School PTO [map] would like to extend an invitation for you and the members of your school and community to join us for our February PTO meeting. On Tuesday February 14 from 6:30-8:00pm the Falk PTO will be hosting a School Board Candidate Forum for the community to meet the candidates running for the two open seats and be able to ask them questions. Juan Lopez and Lucy Mathiak will be running for seat #2 and their will be a run-off on February 21 for seat #1 between Arlene Silveira, Maya Cole and Michael Kelly. Learn more about the candidates here.
“What? Me Worry?
“What? Me Worry? is the attitude of education researchers, writes Douglas Reeves, CEO of the Center for Performance Assessment, on Education Gadfly. Reeves cites a study by Peggy Hsieh and Joel R. Levin, which ran in the Journal of Educational Psychology on “ed researchers’ continued retreat from accepted research methodology. In this case, randomized experiments.”
Randomized experiments, aka field trials, whereby an experimental group that receives an intervention (say, Whole Language) is compared with a control group that receives no intervention, have been standard operating procedure since rats were first run through mazes. But who needs control groups in the age of feelings-based research?
. . . Hsieh and Levin report that “The percentage of total articles in these four journals [Cognition & Instruction, Contemporary Educational Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, Journal of Experimental Education, American Educational Research Journal] based on randomized experiments decreased over the 21-year period in both the educational psychology journals (from 40 percent in 1983 to 34 percent in 1995 to 26 percent in 2004) and the American Educational Research Journal (from 33 percent to 17 percent to 4 percent).”
Education policy makers are eager for the latest magic bullet and reluctant to think through fundamental changes, Reeves argues.
via Joanne
Clinton, Wood Johnson Foundation Announce Healthy Schools Effort
AP:
Former President Clinton and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announced an $8 million initiative Monday to fight childhood obesity by promoting healthier food and more exercise in schools.
Meanwhile, Idaho politicians are concerned with exploding soda consumption in their schools.
Notes from Monday’s Madison School Board Meeting
Two interesting notes, among many, I’m sure from Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting:
- Johnny Winston, Jr. introduced a motion for the Administration to look at acquiring land in Fitchburg for a new school. This motion passed 5-1, with Bill Keys voting no (and Juan Jose Lopez absent).
- Ruth Robarts advocated curriculum changes as a means to attract more families to certain schools. She mentioned the use of Singapore Math (Note that some Madison residents are paying a chunk of money to send their children to Madison Country Day School, which uses Singapore Math).
Speaking of Math, Rafael Gomez is organizing a middle school math forum on February 22, 2006, from 7 to 8:00p.m.
Local news commentary:
- Channel3000:
The Madison Metropolitan School Board met for hours Monday discussing overcrowding options for the looming referendum
- WKOW-TV:
After nearly five hours of discussion, the Madison School Board decided to put off asking tax payers for a new school in April and says voters may have to head to the polls this fall instead.
- Susan Troller:
That potential option was added to the mix regarding how the Madison School District could deal with growth and overcrowding on the west side following a special School Board meeting Monday night.
Board Vice President Johnny Winston, Jr. led a motion to ask district administrators to explore land sites and options for a possible new school in the rapidly developing areas south of the Beltline in Fitchburg, including land currently in the Verona and Oregon school districts.
Board member Lawrie Kobza supported Winston’s motion and said she may be willing to support a new elementary school in the south Fitchburg area as part of a long-range plan for the district. Kobza does not support an addition at Leopold, saying the school already has more than 650 students, which the district has deemed its maximum acceptable capacity. - Sandy Cullen:
The Madison School Board voted Monday to direct district administrators to investigate purchasing land for a future school in south Fitchburg as a long-term solution to crowding at Leopold Elementary School, while board members continue to explore a more immediate solution to the problem.
WisPolitics: Walker, Green Forum
WisPolitics hosted a recent Forum for GOP candidates for governor. Incumbent governor Jim Doyle has agreed to appear at a future forum, which I will link to when that occurs. Both GOP candidates addressed school funding, to some degree. Scott Walker said that he supported 2/3 state funding, but that it was not a “blank check”. Mark Green said that given the state’s structural deficit, he could not commit to maintain the 2/3’s state funding.
The New Reverse Class Struggle
The idea seems odd to many. But some scholars and administrators say raising class sizes and teacher pay might improve achievement
It was 9:45 a.m. on a Wednesday morning. Jane Reiser’s mathematics class in Room 18 was stuffed with sixth- and seventh-graders. There were 32 of them, way above the national class size average of 25. Every seat was filled — 17 girls, 15 boys, all races, all learning styles. A teacher’s nightmare.
And yet, despite having so many students, Reiser’s class was humming, with everybody paying attention. She held up a few stray socks to introduce a lesson on probabilities with one of those weird questions that interest 11- and 12-year-olds:
High Grades, No Skills
Honor students who can’t pass California’s graduation exam should be angry, writes Ken at It Comes in Pints? They should be angry at teachers who gave them A’s they didn’t deserve.
While the hardest questions on the graduation exam require 10th grade English skills and algebra (allegedly an 8th grade skill in California), students with basic skills who guess blindly on the harder multiple-choice questions should be able to get a minimum passing grade in their first, second, third, fourth or fifth try at the test. The minimum passing grade is 60 percent for English and only 55 percent for math.
In Tracy, a girl who claims a 3.6 grade point average says she’s failed the math exam five times because teachers didn’t teach her right. She doesn’t seem to question the validity of her A’s and B’s.
My great potential is being snuffed by this test.
College Goal Sunday
The goal of college goal Sunday is to help high school students fill out this the free application for federal student aid – or the FAFSA form. Students and their parents were taken through a step-by-step process of filling out the FAFSA something organizers say is the most important step in getting high school students to attend schools of higher education.
While 48 percent of Wisconsin High School students say they plan on attending college many don’t follow through because they don’t know where to look for financial aid. There were 14 families that attended the event in madison – and organizers hope they can expand that number next year. College goal sunday held in 12 different locations around the state. Wisconsin is one of 24 states that participated in the college goal sunday event.
Love Thy School Board
It’s National School Board Recognition Month, when school officials across the country dutifully heap appreciation upon their board members, who appreciate the appreciation, even if some of them think it can be gratuitous.
East High School Show Choir
Antonio Branch may have gotten off on the wrong foot at Madison East High School, but his tune changed once he started singing and dancing with the school’s Show Choir.
“I was with a bad crowd,” said Branch, 18, who saw many of his friends from eighth grade drop out of high school.
But Branch said the tightknit ensemble of student performers he joined last fall has helped give him the motivation to get his grades up and set his sights on attending Madison Area Technical College en route to a four-year college degree.
“They build you up, tell you you can do it,” said Branch, a senior who’s now thinking about becoming an elementary school teacher.
Borsuk on What You Need to Know on Vouchers
Amid a barrage of television and radio ads, stories in the newspaper almost every day and conflicting claims about Milwaukee’s controversial and precedent-setting program by which almost 15,000 low-income students attend private schools using public money, the basics of what is going on can be lost easily.
Here is a primer on the current, heated episodes in the long running battle over school choice.
Fall Referendum?
A resolution for a referendum will go before the Madison school board Monday night.
The West-Memorial Task Force has recommended an addition to Leopold and to build a new school on the far west side of the city.
The Long Range Planning Committee chairman said there’s not enough time to build a campaign for the April election, but a referendum is inevitable.
“I still believe Madison voters do not understand the need for those new schools,” said chairman Bill Keys. “The population has shifted dramatically from the East to West side in terms of raw numbers.”
Keys believes the board may push for a fall referendum.
Keys told WISC-TV he wouldn’t be around for the final decisions because he plans to retire by then.
Another Referendum?
The Madison Metropolitan School District is hoping to address issues of overcrowding and future growth. One school board memember says Monday the board will decide whether to once again bring their concerns to the public in a referendum. The issues on that potential refereundum could include a new elementary school on the Linden Park site, operating costs for the school, and an addition a the Leopold Elementary site.
Board member Ruth Robarts believes if the board moves forward with the current plan, voters will likely vote down the referendum.
“All parents want to know which schools are going to be where two, three, five years from now. That involves more than just getting the report from our task forces back and then suddenly going to referendum,” she says.
Decisions of this type usually come in two steps…first the vote of whether to hold a referendum, and then how it will be worded. But Robarts says the board has a deadline of February 17th to notify the city, and the public of their desire for a referedum.
The Ethicist: Schooling Parents
The president of our local board of education sends her children to the public elementary schools, but when they get to high school, she moves them to private schools. Isn’t it her ethical obligation either to send her children to the schools she sets policy for and espouses as so wonderful or to step down from the board? JoAnne Manse, Rutherford, N.J.
It is not. It is the obligation of board members to strive mightily to make the public schools so good that even parents with the means to opt out choose to remain. If the public schools are not yet that good, the president may honorably send her kids elsewhere — indeed, her duty as a parent compels her to. Even where a public school is excellent, parents may seek programs it does not offer — religious instruction, for example.
The Black Star Project
What Is The Black Star Project? The Black Star Project is a Chicago-based nonprofit that works around the country to help preschoolers to collegians succeed. The group focuses on low-income black, Hispanic and American Indian students in low-achieving schools.
Problems of school districts that teach Black children and the solutions
Via School Board Seat 1 Candidate Maya Cole [podcast]
Schools Await Final Grade
It has been eight years since Maryland told the Prince George’s County school to shape up, or else. It has been four years since the federal government raised the pressure with a law meant to force shake-ups through aid and sanctions.
Yet Charles Carroll Middle School has continued to fall short of state standards, even though the county has switched textbooks, changed principals three times and even assigned a “turnaround specialist.”
