Michigan Universities Offer More Remedial Math Courses



Lori Higgins:

What’s the price of leaving high school unprepared? Ask Chelsea Stephanoff, a Wayne State University student who is spending nearly $600 this semester for a class that won’t count toward graduation.
Why? Her math skills were poor enough that even after four years of high school math, she was placed in a remedial class.
“Math is not my strong point at all. I’m horrible at it. I have a hard time focusing on it,” said Stephanoff, a fourth-year student from Shelby Township who wants to be an elementary school teacher.

Via Joanne.




Mr. Mom’s Transport Service Press Conference



Mr. Mom’s Transport held a news conference Friday. Pat Schneider was there:

Peter Munoz, executive director of Centro Hispano, fought back tears as he recounted the company’s generous support of his nonprofit agency.
The Smiths’ predicament, he said, “embodies some of the most intransigent problems we face in economic disparity and injustice.
“This business cannot be allowed to fail. It is too important,” he said.
Richard Harris, executive director of the south side Genesis Enterprise Center where the news conference was held, said he doubted that state officials were giving other transportation providers “scrutiny as intent as Mr. Mom’s.”
“Ask yourself: Is the playing field equal?” he said.

More on the Madison School District’s transportion contracts.




Child Enticement Near Emerson



Channel3000:

Madison police are warning parents about another child enticement. This one happened near Emerson School on Johnson Street. Two sisters say a man in a 4-door dark sedan told them to get in his car last Thursday morning. The suspect was a white male with a gray beard. He took off when the girls ran away. Similar cases have been reported in the Madison-metro area since September.




Police and Madison Schools



Bill Lueders and Jason Shepherd:

In the 2004-05 school year, police were summoned to Madison schools more than 1,500 times and made nearly 400 arrests, mostly of students. Recently Isthmus writer Jason Shepard went through raw data of police reports to compile spreadsheets of police calls and arrests, arranged by school. One resulting finding — that students of color account for a sharply disproportionate percentage of arrests — has stirred particular concern, a topic explored in Shepard’s column for the Oct. 21 edition of Isthmus. Included here is that column and three spreadsheets that provide cumulative data




2005 NAEP Results



2005 National and State Mathematics and Reading Assessments for grades 4 and 8 are now available.
Robert Tomsho takes a look at the reading results:

Observers say boosting reading scores isn’t likely to get any easier, given the rapidly changing demographics in the nation’s schools where, for many students, English is a second language. Indeed, English was a second language for 10% of the fourth graders who took the NAEP reading test this year, up from 3% in 1992.
The lack of progress may also reflect divisions in the philosophy of how reading should be taught. Educators and political partisans have waged a long and sometimes bitter battle over how to handle the subject, as conservatives championing basic phonics-based teaching have clashed with liberal backers of “whole language,” which revolves around making English instruction exciting by reading stories.




Study Shows Few Gains Since NCLB



Lois Romano:

Despite a new federal educational testing law championed by the Bush administration, scores among fourth and eighth graders failed to show any improvements in reading, and showed only slow gains in math nationally during the past two years, according to a study released today.
Most troubling for educators are the sluggish reading skills among middle school students, which have remained flat for 13 years, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which has been testing students for three decades and bills itself as the “nation’s report card.”
“There is no rationale on eighth-grade reading other than we are not making progress,” said Darvin M. Winick, chairman of the National Assessment Governing Board, which oversees the testing. Yet, he added, “I think educators and parents of elementary schools students should feel pretty good about this report. There is progress.”

interesting quote NPR has more.




Wisconsin AB 618 and SB 305: Protect Child Passengers



Denny Lund emailed this information on two bills that address requirements for child passenger booster seats:

On Wednesday, October 19, the Joint Finance Committee of the Wisconsin State Legislature will be voting on both AB 618 and SB 305. Because there is no public hearing for this bill, it is imperative that these committee members hear from you.
Please call and/or email your representatives and urge them to support AB 618 and SB 305. If they are not on the Joint Finance Committee, urge them to contact committee members.
Find your legislator’s phone number here: www.legis.state.wi.us
List of Joint Finance Committee members

(more…)




Non-Traditional School Finance Discussion



Props to Johnny Winston, Jr. for organizing today’s Madison Board of Education Finance & Operations Subcommittee on Advertising meeting. I think a discussion of alternative funding sources is vital in light of Madison’s generally high property taxes, sluggish economic growth and the biennial state funding battles. A number of possibilities were discussed including:

  • The District leading the implementation of local fibre optic networks, via it’s many facilities (with, perhaps wifi servicing the last mile). I think this is quite interesting. Madison lags in true broadband service.
  • Naming Rights
  • Curriculum Program Underwriting
  • Sponsorships for district cable channels, website(s) and other parental communications

Participants included: Johnny, Roger Price, Barb Lehman, Ken Syke, Vince Sweeney (UW Athletic Department), Melanie Schmidt (President of the Timpano Group) Jodi Bender Sweeney, President of the Foundation for Madison Public Schools and the writer (me).

Finally, A representative of local cell providers discussed the type of fees they would pay for very small antennas placed on District facilities (no towers). The Capital Times’ Matt Pommer attended as well and will, I’m sure write about it.
UPDATE: Pommer’s article is here. I have some corrections:

  • I did not hear the word tower used in connection with the cell service discussions. I heard the word antenna used. Obviously, we’ll have to see what the actual plans include to make an aesthetic determination on this question.
  • I’m quoted as saying “Madison is way behind on this issue,” related to sponsorship and advertising. I said this when Roger Price was discussing the District’s fibre optic network options vis a vis community broadband.



Ridgewood Apartment Building Demolished



Channel 3000:

Demolishing the structure was the last step necessary for previous managers, CMS, to collect on the insurance claim.
New owners, EJ Plesko & Associates, are now in the early stags of conducting a market analysis.
“You want to look at surrounding areas,” said Plesko official Brandon Scholz. “You want to know what apartments are like, what condos are like, what businesses are like and be able to look at what you have and how much more development you want to put into it.”
EJ Plesko & Associates hopes to have a redevelopment plan to Fitchburg officials by early 2006.




Schoolhouse Blogs



Edward Moyer:

As blogging enters the classrooom and takes its place alongside reading, writing and ‘rithmetic, adult Web surfers have the chance to relive the trials and tribulations of the wonder years.




Book: Top of the Class



Soo Kim Abboud and Jane Y Kim:

Asians and Asian-Americans make up 4 percent of the U.S. Population, and 20 percent of the Ivy League. The authors contend that Asian-Americans are no more intelligent than any other race or ethnic group, but that their parents have instilled in them a love of learning.




A Few Notes on the Superintendent’s Evaluation & Curriculum



Several writers have mentioned the positive news that the Madison Board of Education has reviewed Superintendent Art Rainwater for the first time since 2002. I agree that it is a step in the right direction.
In my view, the first responsibility of the Board and Administration, including the Superintendent is curriculum: Is the Madison School District using the most effective methods to prepare our children for the future?
There seems to be some question about this:

  • Language: The District has strongly embraced whole language (Troy Dassler notes in the comments that he has been trained in balanced literacy). I would certainly be interested in more comments on this (and other) point(s). [Ed Blume mentions that “”Balanced literacy” became the popular new term for whole language when whole language crumbled theoretically and scientifically.”] UW Professor Mark Seidenberg provides background on whole language and raises many useful questions about it. Related: The District has invested heavily in Reading Recovery. Ed Blume summarized 8 years of District reading scores and notes that Madison 3rd graders rank below state wide average for children children in the advanced and proficient categories. (Madison spends about 30% more than the state average per student)
  • Math: The District embraces Connected Math. UW Math Professor Dick Askey has raised a number of questions about this curriculum, not the least of which is whether our textbooks include all of the corrections. A quick look at the size of the Connected Math textbooks demonstrates that reading skills are critical to student achievement.
  • Sherman Middle School’s curriculum changes
  • West High School’s curriculum changes and families leaving
  • “Same Service Budget Approach“: I think the District’s annual same service approach reflects a general stagnation.

(more…)




Thinking Different: Little Rock Principal and Teacher Incentives



Daniel Henninger:

She went to the Public Education Foundation of Little Rock. The Foundation had no money for her, and the Little Rock system’s budget was a non-starter. So the Foundation produced a private, anonymous donor, which made union approval unnecessary.
Together this small group worked out the program’s details. The Stanford test results would be the basis for the bonuses. For each student in a teacher’s charge whose Stanford score rose up to 4% over the year, the teacher got $100; 5% to 9% — $200; 10% to 14% — $300; and more than 15% — $400. This straight-line pay-for-performance formula awarded teachers objectively in a way that squares with popular notions of fairness and skirts fears of subjective judgment. In most merit-based lines of work, say baseball, it’s called getting paid for “putting numbers on the board.”
Still, it required a leap of faith. “I will tell you the truth,” said Karen Carter, “we thought one student would improve more than 15%.” The tests and financial incentives, however, turned out to be a powerful combination. The August test gave the teachers a detailed analysis of individual student strengths and weaknesses. From this, they tailored instruction for each student. It paid off on every level.

(more…)




A Profile of 2004 American High School Seniors



National Center for Education Statistics:

More than two-thirds of students who were high school seniors in 2004 expected to complete a bachelor’s degree, and 35 percent planned to get a graduate or professional degree. But nearly two-thirds of the students who expected to get a four-year degree had not mastered intermediate level mathematics concepts as 12th graders, and nearly a third could not consistently solve simple problems based on low-level mathematical concepts, according to a study released Friday by the U.S. Education Department.

Via Inside Higher Ed.




Tell Family Stories To Your Kids



Jennifer Harper:

Granddad’s first job, the old homestead, mom’s legendary cooking: Family stories make effective armor for children in an unsure world, according to a three-year study of 40 families by Emory University.
It found that children who share in those endearing and even heroic memories can grow strong and resilient for a simple reason: They have proof from mom and dad that family life goes on, despite negative outside events.

This is right on. I have direct experience with this, via my parents and grandparents.




Madison Schools Transport Update: Cullen and Pommer on Mr. Mom’s



Sandy Cullen:

The district is investigating how long the company was without insurance and also is looking into reports that some bus drivers did not have valid driver’s licenses, Rainwater said.
Also last month, the brakes failed on a bus returning students to Spring Harbor Middle School after a field trip, Rainwater said. No students were injured, and the bus did not crash.
Attorney Clarence Sherrod said the district is in the process of preparing a notice of default, which could lead to termination of Mr. Mom’s two contracts with the district.
Under the terms of its contracts, Mr. Mom’s will have 20 days to respond to the default notice.

Matt Pommer has more:

Price provided copies of the safety audits done on the five bus firms that serve the Madison district in response to questions raised Monday by School Board member Ruth Robarts.
The reports showed that other bus firms last year had far smaller percentages of buses needing repairs in inspections by the State Patrol. Two of 15 Badger buses needed work; one of 20 Rite-Way vehicles needed repairs; eight of 23 Durham buses failed; and five of 21 First Student buses inspected needed work.




Persistence



Vernice Jones:

I left the Dominican Republic to come to the United States in 7th grade. I was put in a special education class. I wasn’t slow, but I was quiet – you know different culture? I was very introverted. I’ll always remember that class. Other kids used to tease all of us. It’s interesting how people can get lost that way.
I befriended a teacher who took me under his wing. He encouraged me to participate in class. It was just a matter of confidence. If we were going to do something in science, he would encourage me to do a project and present it. He helped me come out of my shell.

Via Joanne.




3 of 4 Middleton-Cross Plains Referenda Fail



Barry Adams:

Voters in the Middleton-Cross Plains School District narrowly approved Tuesday more elementary space and upgrades to heating and air conditioning at two schools but overwhelmingly rejected three other questions in a $53 million referendum package.
Voters said no to a $36 million combined elementary and middle school, a $5.8 million transportation garage and increases in state-imposed revenue caps.
“I’m really not surprised because of the bottom-line price,” School Board member Ellen Lindgren said. “I think we’ll have to take quite a bit of time analyzing why they voted the way they did.”

Channel3000 has more.




School Board Governance Perspectives



Last night’s Madison Board of Education meeting provided an illuminating look at two rather different perspectives on governance. The Board voted 4 (Carstensen, Keys, Lopez and Winston) – 3 (Kobza, Robarts, Vang) to support the Administration’s approach to the growing problems with Mr. Mom’s Transport Service (I believe there were two votes on this question – the minutes are not available as of this writing).

Many points were discussed, including the District’s pre-contract vetting of Mr. Mom’s and whether, given recent experience, the Administration should be allowed to subcontract with Badger Bus via Mr. Mom’s (Badger Bus is replacing Mr. Mom’s service on many routes). The District recently signed a five year agreement with Mr. Mom’s Transport Service.

The motion passed 4-3 to allow the Administration to Subcontract Badger Bus service via Mr. Mom’s (again, I think there was a 2nd vote on this). Watch the debate here

For what it’s worth, I’m actually in favor of long term (5 year) contracts. They, hopefully allow vendors to optimize and perhaps manage costs more effectively. The subcontract to Badger Bus via Mr. Mom’s, given the issues, seems unusual.

UPDATE: The 4-3 vote was on a Kobza motion, seconded by Robarts to contract directly with Badger Bus, rather than using a subcontract via Mr. Mom’s. After this motion was defeated 4-3 (Kobza, Robarts, Vang), as noted above, the Board voted 5 – 2 (Kobza joined Carstensen, Keys, Lopez and Winston) to support the Administration’s proposed subcontract with Badger Bus via Mr. Moms.




Middleton-Cross Plains School Referenda



Channel 3000:

Some in the district are concerned that there would be too many kids of widely varying age groups on the same campus, but Supt. Bill Reis sees benefits in kids staying at one school for nine years.
“So we’ll get to know families, teachers, get to know kids,” said Reis. “There will be communication elementary to middle school so that transition, I think, will be more successful.”
But at least one Middleton resident opposes the idea.
“Mostly I’m looking at physical problems,” said Karl Schroeder. “You already have harassment in your own age group. Now, you’re just adding on to that.”
Enrollment figures released to News 3 show just a one-student increase in the school district from one year ago, but explosive future population growth seems imminent.




Schools Try Recess First, Lunch Later



Amy Hetzner:

Proponents of holding recess before lunch say it helps reduce food waste in the cafeteria, increases students’ caloric and calcium consumption and can provide a calming buffer between frenetic play and quiet classroom work.
Food service and school nutrition groups have been busily advocating for more schools to change their schedules to reap the benefits.




Wisconsin School Spending Increases 4.6%, largest since 2001-2002



Wistax:

Wisconsin public school spending rose 4.6% in 2004-05, the largest increase since 2001-02 (5.7%). Spending on instructional support for such items as staff training, library services and athletics rose 7.7%. Expenditures for instruction and for building and grounds were both up 4.8%.
Spending per student rose 4.8%, slightly faster than the total because enrollments in the state’s public schools fell 0.3% in 2004-05 to 869,961. In 2004-05, Wisconsin school districts budgeted to spend $10,367 per student, or $477 more than the year before (The Madison School District’s per student spending is about 30% higher than the state average). The majority of expenditures were for instructional costs, which climbed 5.0% to $6,068 per student. Expenditures for instructional salaries and benefits ($5,428) rose 4.6%, higher than the annual average of 3.9% during the previous five years. Per student expenditures for transportation ($408, +2.5%) and administration ($785, +3.8%) increased at below-average rates, WISTAX noted.




More on East / West Task Forces



Sandy Cullen:

Elementary schools considered most at risk are Emerson, Lapham and Lowell – which are at or below 67 percent of their capacity for students – as well as Lindbergh, Cohen said.
“We’re rallying around Lindbergh,” he said, adding that the school serves “probably the most fragile” population of low-income and minority families, including many from Kennedy Heights just across the street from the school.
Mary Gulbrandsen, director of student services and chief of staff to Superintendent Art Rainwater, said the Madison School District has no hidden agenda to close one or more East Side schools, as some parents fear.

Much more here.




The Social Logic of Ivy League Admissions



Malcolm Gladwell:

“As a hypothetical example, take the University of Pennsylvania and Penn State, which are two schools a lot of students choose between,” Krueger said. “One is Ivy, one is a state school. Penn is much more highly selective. If you compare the students who go to those two schools, the ones who go to Penn have higher incomes. But let’s look at those who got into both types of schools, some of whom chose Penn and some of whom chose Penn State. Within that set it doesn’t seem to matter whether you go to the more selective school. Now, you would think that the more ambitious student is the one who would choose to go to Penn, and the ones choosing to go to Penn State might be a little less confident in their abilities or have a little lower family income, and both of those factors would point to people doing worse later on. But they don’t.”
Krueger says that there is one exception to this. Students from the very lowest economic strata do seem to benefit from going to an Ivy.

More on Gladwell.




Teach for America is 15



Morning Edition:

Renee Montagne talks with Wendy Kopp, president and founder of Teach for America, about how far the organization has come in the last 15 years. Kopp came up with the idea for Teach for America as her senior project at Princeton and has since built it into a powerful nonprofit.




364 Day School Opening?



BBC:

A school is to consult teachers and parents on the idea of opening for lessons 364 days a year.
Teaching would take place throughout the year – even on weekends – but not everyone would be in at the same time.
Paul Mortimer, who is a government adviser and in charge of two Rochdale schools, says he wants to have a school of the 21st Century, not the 19th.




Town of Burke Aligns with DeForest



Bill Novak:

Madison’s Smart Growth (land use) plan was rolled out this summer, and it put a shiver into Burke residents.
“It showed Madison stretching north to Wisconsin 19, which is the southern border of DeForest,” Miller said. “When Burke officials came to us they said the residents of the town go to the DeForest schools so they wanted to be part of DeForest.”




Middle School Curriculum: Social Focus Yielding to Academics



Jay Matthews:

For two decades, policymakers have decreed that seventh grade should be a time when children have a chance to adjust to puberty and cliques and the other annoyances of turning 13. Lessons should be engaging and enriching, middle school advocates have said, but not put too much emphasis on mastering subject matter and passing difficult tests.
That attitude is changing, at Kenmore Middle School and in much of the rest of the country. Middle schools have “overemphasized emotional development at the expense of academic growth,” said Mike Riley, superintendent of Bellevue, Wash., schools




Plugged In, But Tuned Out: Getting Kids to Connect to the Non-Virtual World



Jeff Zaslow:

Children today have been labeled “the connected generation,” with iPods in their ears, text messages at their fingertips and laptop screens at eye level. But their technology-focused lifestyle can also leave them disconnected from the wider world, especially from their parents.
Many teens won’t give friends their home numbers, says Samantha Landau, 15, of West Hills, Calif. “They don’t want friends to talk to their parents, because they don’t want their parents to know about their lives.”




Can We Talk: Some Ideas to Follow



A reader forwarded another perspective on school-parent communication in the Madison School District:

Here are some examples of really positive communication:
Our child’s savvy, experienced 4th grade teacher sends home a ‘weekly work ticket’. The ticket summarizes test/quiz scores, unfinished work not turned in and includes a place for teacher comments. I think this format is exceptional. It is certainly a time intensive task for the teacher. During the elementary years both of our children often had to return weekly progress slips with our signature. The teacher both children had for 3rd grade sent home a weekly newsletter that was simply a joy to read. A synopsis was created of the week’s work and provocative questions were included to facilitate parent/child conversation. Example, “Tell me about the way mummies were preserved in Ancient Egypt?” The kids do have some responsibility for communication.

(more…)




One Secret to Better Test Scores: Make State Reading Tests Easier



Michael Winerip:

So? “The state test was easier,” she said. Ms. Rosenstein, who has been principal 13 years and began teaching in 1974, says the 2005 state English test was unusually easy and the 2004 test unusually hard. “I knew it the minute I opened the test booklets,” she said.
The first reading excerpt in the 2004 test was 451 words. It was about a family traveling west on the Oregon Trail. There were six characters to keep track of (Levi, Austin, Pa, Mr. Morrison, Miss Amelia, Mr. Ezra Zikes). The story was written in 1850’s western vernacular with phrases like “I reckon,” “cut out the oxen from the herd,” “check over the running gear” for the oxen, “set the stock to graze,” “Pa’s claim.”




School Swaps Books for Bytes



BBC:

A school in Arizona, US, has thrown out its paper-based text books and is relying solely on laptops and digital material to teach its pupils.
Empire High School is one of a band of schools which is taking computer technology out of the classroom and into students’ bags.
Calvin Baker, chief superintendent of the Vail School district, told BBC World Service programme Go Digital that it has not signalled the total demise of text books




East Meets West in the Classroom



ABC News:

Carol’s school in China is sharply focused on math and sciences. In one day she takes math, two physics classes and three chemistry classes. In Emily’s school in Maryland, interest in these subjects is dwindling.




An Embattled School Chief’s Parting Fight



Daniel de Vise:

It is perhaps the final chance for Smith to impose his vision, and his will, on a school system he set out to transform three years ago. He has built much of his reputation in Anne Arundel by importing or expanding rigorous programs such as IB, on the theory that an infusion of challenging coursework would benefit all.
Smith acknowledges that completing the trio of IB schools is “a very important piece” of his plan, and his legacy, in the county.




60 Madison Students Named National Merit Scholars



Madison Metropolitan School District:

The third most students in Madison history — 60 — have qualified as semifinalists in competition for the 2006 National Merit Scholarship Awards. Three Madison students earned National Merit Achievement semifinalist status. This is the sixth straight year that at least 56 Madison students have achieved semifinalist status, a number not reached by any of the previous classes. That’s quite remarkable because the National Merit Corporation says that about 1.3% of test-taking students become semifinalists. Based on that percentage, the Madison district should have about 10 semifinalists. Only last year and the year before did Madison have more semifinalists, 69 and 67 respectively.




City of the Big Gaps



Luis Alberto Urrea:

But few of the hundreds, if not thousands, of poor evacuees now staring at Chicago’s formidable towers are likely to enjoy the good fortunes of A. J. Liddell. And that’s the larger story of the local economy: that in this era of outsourcing, housing bubbles and budget deficit pay-downs, the traditional Chicago gap between haves and have-nots has eroded into a chasm.




Teach for America



Tamara Lewin:

For a surprisingly large number of bright young people, Teach for America – which sends recent college graduates into poor rural and urban schools for two years for the same pay and benefits as other beginning teachers at those schools – has become the next step after graduation. It is the postcollege do-good program with buzz, drawing those who want to contribute to improving society while keeping their options open, building an ever-more impressive résumé and delaying long-term career decisions.
This year, Teach for America drew applications from 12 percent of Yale’s graduates, 11 percent of Dartmouth’s and 8 percent of Harvard’s and Princeton’s. The group also recruits for diversity, and this year got applications from 12 percent of the graduates of Spelman College, a historically black women’s college in Atlanta




Study Faults High-Stakes Testing



Terrence Stutz:

High-stakes testing in Texas and across the nation has had
little impact on student achievement and is disproportionately targeting
minority students – as evidenced by increased retention and dropout
rates in many states – according to a study by researchers in Texas and Arizona.
The study, which examined the impact of high-stakes testing in Texas and 24 other states, found “no convincing evidence” that the pressure
associated with those tests – such as threatened sanctions for low
scores – produced better student achievement than would otherwise have
been expected.

Via Tom Maxwell.

(more…)




WestEd Book: How California’s Most Challenged High Schools are Sending More Kids to College



Jordan Horowitz’s Inside High School Reform, Making the Changes that Matter details the turnaround approaches that are preparing more students for college – disadvantaged students who wouldn’t get there otherwise.

TOP TEN TIPS FOR IMPROVING HIGH SCHOOLS

  1. Treat teachers as the trained education professionals they are.
  2. Hold students to high expectations.
  3. Continually use school, teacher, and student data to decide what changes to make next.
  4. Start with what you want students to know and achieve, then work backwards to create tests and lesson plans.
  5. Coordinate lesson plans and tests within departments and across grades and schools.
  6. Don’t take the “easy way out” when deciding how to help underachieving kids.
  7. Create an optimistic, college-going culture and help students understand how high school work affects their future college and career choices.
  8. Develop flexible school systems to maintain reforms that work.
  9. Find partners such as local colleges, businesses, other schools, and parent groups to provide help.
  10. Stay alert for new partners, activities, and funding streams while maintaining a focus on reform.




Frontline: A Class Divided



Frontline has just made one of the most requested shows of all time available online for your viewing pleasure: A Class Divided:

A Class Divided is an encore presentation of the classic documentary on third-grade teacher Jane Elliott’s “blue eyes/brown eyes” exercise, originally conducted in the days following the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968. This guide is designed to help you use the film to engage students in reflection and dialogue about the historical role of racism in the United States, as well as the role of prejudice and stereotyping in students’ lives today.

Via Dewayne Hendricks video Very nicely done with transcripts, links and a teacher’s guide.




Book: Education Myths: What Special Interest Groups Want You to Believe about Our Schools, and Why It Isn’t So



Jay P. Greene:

In Education Myths, Jay P. Greene takes on the conventional wisdom and closely examines twenty myths advanced by the special interest groups dominating public education. In addition to the money myth, the class size myth, and the teacher pay myth, Greene debunks the special education myth (special ed programs burden public schools), the certification myth (certified or more experienced teachers are more effective in the classroom), the graduation myth (nearly all students graduate from high school), the draining myth (choice harms public schools), the segregation myth (private schools are more racially segregated), and a dozen more.

Watch or listen to a recent Jay Green Speech here.




Parent – Teacher – Student Relationships



Sue Shellenbarger:

The large majority of teachers, of course, are well-qualified and dedicated. Parents should weigh a child’s complaints carefully: Is the problem really a bad teacher, or a misdirected kid? “Many times the parent only gets the child’s side of the story,” says John Mitchell, deputy director of the American Federation of Teachers union.
The rumor mill can be misleading. Matt Sabella of Armonk, N.Y., was warned by other elementary-school parents that his daughter’s teacher was “so-so.” He found the opposite to be true. The teacher “helped my daughter become a whiz in math,” Mr. Sabella says. Also, if you rescue a child too quickly, you risk producing what some administrators call “teacups” — carefully crafted but fragile kids who lack resiliency, says Patrick Bassett of the National Association of Independent Schools, Washington, D.C.




Suburban Dane County School District Growth



Gena Kittner posted a useful article on the growth, both in student population and facilities of suburban Dane County School Districts.

Eleven of 16 school districts in the county have shown increased enrollment between 2001 and 2004, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.Madison is grappling with growth in more than half of its district and declines elsewhere.

Madison’s enrollment has been flat for quite some time, though the population is moving around:

Two task forces, including parent representatives from each of the district’s schools [East] [West, are working to find ways to accommodate a projected increase of more than 500 elementary school students over the next five years in the West and Memorial high school attendance areas – where several housing developments are in the works.
The groups are also wrestling with high enrollment at some elementary schools and under-enrollment at others, in the East and La Follette high school attendance areas.
Based on last year’s figures, the district projects that by 2010, it will have 192 more students than it has seats for on the district’s west side, and 989 more seats than students on its east side.




Madison Schools: New Fund 80 Based Rec Sports Program



The Madison School Board approved (6-1) additional spending using Fund 80 (property taxes not subject to state revenue caps, in other words, local taxes that can go up as fast as the District approves) to create new rec sports programs:

  • Sandy Cullen:

    Ruth Robarts, the only board member to vote against the spending increase, expressed concern that using Fund 80 to restore programs that have been cut from the portion of the district’s budget subject to revenue cap feeds “the perception that Fund 80 is a slush fund.”
    Robarts asked that a public hearing be held before the board took action, but a motion to table the measure failed.
    Board President Carol Carstensen said board members agreed to cut the number of freshmen and junior varsity teams with the understanding that MSCR would try to create a recreational sports program to provide opportunities for more students to participate in athletics.

  • Cristina Daglas:

    Three board members voiced concerns before the funding was approved. Member Ruth Robarts, the sole dissenter, tried to table the proposal until after a public hearing could be held. The table motion failed 5-2. Member Shwaw Vang said he was wary many of the district’s neediest students still would not be reached and member Lawrie Kobza said she was concerned about costs of the sports-related aspect already in MSCR’s budget.
    But despite concerns, a majority of board members felt it necessary to push the program’s development ahead. Board President Carol Carstensen said the only reason she agreed to the elimination of no-cut freshman sports months ago was because of the possibility of this extramural program.




Mathews on Charter School Bias?



Jay Mathews:

But I have learned that both my newspaper and I have been, in at least one instance, treating them as if they did not exist — a bad habit shared by many across the country. Nobody likes to be ignored for no good reason, but that is what has been happening to charter schools, and it is not good for the 1 million students attending 3,500 such schools in 40 states plus the District.
In Greenville, S.C., the Sirrine scholarships of $200 to $2,000 have helped many public school graduates over the years, but Laura H. Getty of the Greenville Technical Charter High School said charter school students are not eligible. She has also noticed that the state of South Carolina does not allow charter school teachers to participate in the state retirement system unless they were in the system before they moved to a charter school.




Illinois Teacher Calls Art Rainwater’s Recent Message “Misquided”



Bruce Allardice, a public school teacher in Des Plains, ILL wrote a letter to the Capital Times in response to Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater’s recent article on the need for public education:

Dear Editor: If I was grading the Tuesday guest column of Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater titled “Free public education is cornerstone of country,” I’d give the superintendent a D. His rhetoric is nice, but the logic is horribly misguided.

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Wisconsin Virtual Schools



Sandy Cullen recently posted two very useful articles on local Virtual School activity:

  • Sun Prairie family enrolls in an Appleton Virtual School:

    Their mother spends four to five hours a day guiding her daughters through daily lesson plans, drawn primarily from curriculum developed over the past century at the Calvert School, a private “bricks-and-mortar” school in Baltimore, where tuition ranges from $14,000 to $17,000 a year for its 500 on-site students.
    Home-schoolers can buy Calvert’s curriculum and support services at prices ranging from $245 for pre-kindergarten to $760 for eighth-grade.
    But because her children are enrolled in Wisconsin Connections Academy, Leonard pays nothing. State taxpayers provide about $5,745 to the Appleton School District for each of her daughters. That’s the amount all school districts receive for students who live in another district and register through the state’s open-enrollment option.

  • 2 Virtual Schools Sued by WEAC:

    The state’s largest teachers union has filed lawsuits — one unsuccessful and another ongoing — against two of the state’s virtual charter schools, claiming they violate state laws.




Keeping an Eye on our Federal Representatives



I’ve long been a proponent of keeping tabs on our elected representatives. Kristian Knutsen, writing at Isthmus’s Daily Page is doing a fabulous job summarizing our federal representative’s weekly voting record. Knutsen’s latest: Here’s one example (I’d love to know which lobbyist was powerful enough to cause the Senate to vote on horse inspections:

Roll Call 237 – Sep. 20
Ensign Amdt. No. 1753, As Modified; To prohibit the use of appropriated funds to pay the salaries or expenses of personnel to inspect horses under certain authority or guidelines.
Feingold: Yea
Kohl: Yea

Keep reading for a look at our Federal representives priorities.




Kozol: Apartheid America



Reader Troy Dassler emails this article by Jonathan Kozol “It seems appropriate that we should all read it on the eve of a day where everyone in the district is in an in-service talking about race”:

“Segregation is not something that happens by chance, like weather conditions,” says Jonathan Kozol. “It is the work of men.” So it is not without irony that it has taken a hurricane — and the excruciating images of stranded black faces, beamed across cable airwaves — for Americans to confront the reality that vast numbers of their fellow citizens live in segregated ghettos and suffer from abject poverty. But for Kozol, who has built his career on exposing the race- and class-based injustices endemic to the United States’ educational system, the knowledge that we live in a deeply divided society has long been a foregone — if heartbreaking — conclusion.

Abigail Thernstrom says Kozol’s analysis is “worthy of a third grader“.




Harlem School Uses Regionally Grown Food




Reader Barb Williams forwarded this article by Kim Severson:

But perhaps no school is taking a more wide-ranging approach in a more hard-pressed area than the Promise Academy, a charter school at 125th Street and Madison Avenue where food is as important as homework. Last year, officials took control of the students’ diets, dictating a regimen of unprocessed, regionally grown food both at school and, as much as possible, at home.
Experts see the program as a Petri dish in which the effects of good food and exercise on students’ health and school performance can be measured and, perhaps, eventually replicated.




Men in Higher Education: Missing in Action?



USA Today:

Currently, 135 women receive bachelor’s degrees for every 100 men. That gender imbalance will widen in the coming years, according to a new report by the U.S. Department of Education.
This is ominous for every parent with a male child. The decline in college attendance means many will needlessly miss out on success in life. The loss of educated workers also means the country will be less able to compete economically. The social implications — women having a hard time finding equally educated mates — are already beginning to play out.




Secrets of Success: America’s system of higher education is the best in the world. That is because there is no system



The Economist via Tom Barnett:

Wooldridge says three reasons account for this: 1) the Fed plays a limited role, unlike in a France or Germany; 2) schools compete for everything, including students and teachers; and 3) our universities are anything but ivory towers, instead being quite focused on practical stuff (Great line: “Bertrand Russell once expressed astonishment at the worldly concerns he encountered at the University of Wisconsin: ‘When any farmer’s turnip go wrong, they send a professor to investigate the failure scientifically,'” So true, as anyone who’s grown up in Wisconsin farmland can attest.)
Two interesting data points: listing of top global universities features 1 from Japan, two from UK and 17 from U.S. Wisconsin, my alma mater is 18 (ahead of Michigan!) and Harvard is number 1.
Also interesting: Of the students who travel abroad, 30 percent come to America. Britain is next at 12%, then Germany, then Australia, then France and Japan. After Australia it’s all single digits.
I guess America isn’t exactly out of the source code business, at least in the most important software package known to man.

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Gangs and School Violence Forum Notes



This evening’s Gangs and School Violence Forum was quite interesting. Rafael organized an excellent panel. We’ll post a link to video and audio files when they are complete. Following are links to local articles and commentary on this event:

  • Cristina Daglas:

    Yudice said there has been a “huge development in the area of Latino gangs” in Madison specifically, and Blue noted an increase in girls in gangs.
    “We have seen a great surge in activity,” Yudice said.
    All of the panelists offered ideas to help reduce the problem in Madison’s high schools, including limiting off-campus privileges and continuing consistent enforcement against gang colors and clothing in schools.
    “It’s really easy to slip out a door,” said Madison Memorial High School Principal Bruce Dahmen. “It’s important that we have high expectations for all the children.”

  • Reader Jared Lewis emailed this:

    If you need any assistance regarding information about gangs in Madison or resources for schools to tackle the gang problem, feel free to contact me or visit my website at www.knowgangs.com.
    I am a former California police officer and a nationally recognized gang expert. I now reside in Jefferson County and continue to teach law enforcement officers, educators and social service workers about dealing with gang problems nationwide.

  • Natalie Swaby

    Students and parents listened during a Wednesday night meeting and took notes, a move in the right direction according to Officer Moore.
    “Last year they were telling me there was no gang issue in or around any of our schools, I was told that by the administration here,” he says. “So this is something that is really great for me that we are finally acknowledging that we do have gang issues.”
    There are resources for at risk youth in the Madison area, but many on the panel stressed that a unified strategic plan is needed.

    Officer Moore also strongly suggested that the High Schools eliminate their open campus policy.

  • Sandy Cullen:

    Blue and other panelists attributed the increase in gang activity to a growing number of students who feel a disconnection with their school and community, and with adults who care about them.
    “We’re getting a wake-up call that says certain parts of our community are not healthy,” Blue said.

Forum video and audio archive




Some Madison School District Buses Operated Without Insurance



Steven Elbow:

A bus service that contracts with the Madison Metropolitan School District is back in business after transporting students without having insurance.
One former employee said Mr. Mom’s Transport was operating without insurance for a month and a half.
“I think things are back to normal,” said school district spokesman Ken Syke.




Vernice Jones Blogs on Homeschooling Her Child



Vernice Jones, a New York Black Mother is writing a weblog on homeschooling her child:

I am a Woman of Color trying to homeschool my child of 4 1/2 even though he goes to preschool full-day every day. Call me a skeptic, but I don’t feel I can trust the school system to educate my child. So far as I’m concerned, I am a homeschooling mother of one. Here’s to a day in my life.

via Joanne.




Burmaster’s Education Priorities



WisPolitics [PDF]:

The two-day event at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Memorial Union will include sessions Wednesday on the future of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) at 10:30 a.m., high school redesign at 11:20a.m., and the “New 3 R’s for the UW-Madison School of Education” at 1:15 p.m. Sectionals that begin at 2:30 p.m. will include changes in special education law, open enrollment, rural schools and communities, NCLB in Wisconsin, and virtual education. Dennis Winters, vice president and director of research for NorthStar Economics Inc. of Madison, will present research on the economic impact of 4-year-old kindergarten (4K) at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday. (Media have been invited to this briefing.)




Wes Daily on the Gang Phenomenon



Wes Daily emailed a few comments on Gangs:

Gangs are not a new phenomenon in the United States and were originally formed as social clubs and a means of self-protection. Today, gangs have evolved into violent predators focused on obtaining money and power. According to the National Drug intelligence Center (NDIC), there are at least 21,500 gangs and more than 731,500 active gang members in the United States. NDIC defines a street gang as an ongoing group, club, organization, or association of five or more persons that has as one of its primary purposes the commission of one or more criminal offenses. Street gangs are no longer just an urban problem as they continue to seek new drug markets in suburban and rural areas. Gangs and their members can be identified by various methods including self admission, tattoos, possession of gang paraphernalia, information from other agencies, and photographs. Initiations vary from gang to gang and set to set. Most common inductions required for membership include the commission of a crime such as armed robbery, assault, rape, drive-by shootings, and murder. Other known initiations entail a “beat-in” or “jump-in,” in which the inductee must endure a severe beating by gang members, or a “sex-in” in which a female member must have sexual intercourse with multiple gang members.
CRIPS
The Crips originated in 1969 in Los Angeles, California from a youth gang known as the Baby Avenues, which then became known as the Avenue Cribs. In the early 1970s, the Avenue Cribs changed their name to the “Crips.” This gang was originally an African American male gang, but it now accepts Hispanic, Asian, and Caucasian males and females to bolster their membership. The Crips wear blue and gray or purple and orange clothing. Members wear British Knight or Adidas sneakers. This changes in different communities throughout the nation. To the Crips, Adidas stands for “All day I destroy a slob,” and BK stands for “Blood Killer,” which are derogatory slangs towards their rivals the Bloods. NDIC estimates national membership at 30,000 to 35,000. Theses figures are based on national reporting, which is consistently low due to denial.

Rafael Gomez is leading a Forum this Wednesday (9.21.2005) @ 7:00p.m. on Gangs and School Violence at the Doyle Administration Building. Learn more.




Growing Green, High Performance Charter Schools



Senn Brown forwarded these links and information:

Eco-charter schools with environment-focused and project-based programs are springing up throughout Wisconsin, Minnesota and other states. Environment and sustainability are the integrating qualities of learning in “green,” high-performance charter schools. See website links (below) to several “green” charter schools.
Earlier this summer, a group from Wisconsin and Minnesota’s green/environmental focused charter schools gathered at Beaver Creek Nature Reserve, site of the new Wildlands Charter School (see link below), for a day-long “Green” High-Performance Charter Schools Conference. The gathering provided an opportunity for charter school, higher education and state-level folks to share information on green/environmentally focused programs, practices, experiences and “green” school design principles. The group agreed to establish a steering committee to develop plans for fostering the creation of environmental-focused charter schools, sharing effective practices, networking and describing design principles for all environmentally friendly charter schools. The WCSA and Minnesota Association of Charter Schools are assisting the steering committee to coordinate the green/environmental charter schools initiative.




Parents Under Siege



Martha Foley:

What IS it about some kids? Why does ONE teenager run into trouble time after time, when his or her siblings don’t? Why do kids make bad choices, just when parents think they’re doing the best they can to love, support, and encourage them? From kindergarten to college, a new school year brings kids new challenges, renewed problems. From bullying to binge-drinking. Dr. James Garbarino is recognized as a leading authority on child development and youth violence. His books include “Lost Boys: Why Our Sons Turn Violent and How We Can Save Them”. And, “Parents Under Siege: Why You Are the Solution, Not the Problem in Your Chld’s Life”. He speaks to St. Lawrence University classes today, and in a public presentation in the Canton Central School auditorium tonight at 7.




The Gang Scene in Madison



Doug Erickson takes a useful look around Madison’s gang scene, including the recent events in Oregon. Erickson also mentions this Wednesday’s SIS supported event, lead by Rafael Gomez on Gangs and School Violence (9.21 @ 7:00p.m.):

“It sets a watershed mark for the number of individuals involved in one event,” said Stephen Blue, who has studied local gangs since 1986 and is delinquency services manager for the Dane County Department of Human Services.
Blue is among panelists scheduled to discuss gangs and school violence Wednesday at the Doyle Administration Building of the Madison School District. The event is sponsored by www.schoolinfosystem.org, a Web site devoted to school issues.
Rafael Gomez, a district parent who helped organize the forum and will be its moderator, said the topic was chosen before the Oregon shootings.
“One of the questions we will be asking the panel is how the whole issue of gangs in our schools has changed in the last 10 years,” he said. “I think that’s a good way to frame the situation in Oregon.”




Are E-Books the Future?



Joshua Fruhlinger:

I hate to break it to you, though, but it looks like e-books in their current form aren’t going to break out of their early adopter ghetto any time soon. Certainly books stored in electronic form have flourished in a number of niche markets — reference books, in particular, are becoming more and more prevalent as electronic form rather than paper (see Resources for more on this and other wacky links). But when it comes to the books that make up the bulk of our reading lives, the vast majority of us are still reading words printed with ink on paper bound with glue and string.

I think the future, (or is it present?) of online learning is something between blogs, heymath, edhelper and wikipedia with interesting tools like RSS thrown in.




Math Curriculum: Textbook Photos




A year’s worth of Connected Math textbooks and teacher guides are on the left while the equivalent Singapore Math texts are on the right.

Friedman’s latest ,where he demonstrates how other countries are “eating our kid’s lunch in math” is well worth reading, as are these www.schoolinfosystem.org math posts. UW Math Professor Dick Askey has much more to say on K-12 math curriculum.

A few observations from a layperson who couldn’t be farther from a math expert’s perspective on this (in other words, I’m not a math expert):

  • Children must be able to read effectively to use the voluminous Connected Math curriculum,
  • The Connected Math curriculum has very extensive teacher instructions, while the Singapore curriculum is rather thin in this area. Does it follow that teachers using Singapore Math have far more freedom with respect to their instruction methods, or is the intention to make sure that teachers teach Connected Math in a scripted way?
  • The Connected Math texts require more dead trees and I assume cost more than the Singapore texts directly and indirectly (transportation, packaging and the overhead of dealing with more pieces)
  • The voluminous Connected Math texts have far more opportunities for errors, simply based on the amount of text and illustrations included in the books.
  • Madison Country Day School uses Singapore Math.

There’s quite a bit of discussion on Connected Math and Singapore Math around the internet. Maybe it’s time to follow the www.heymath.net people (from India, China and Great Britain) and virtualize this while eliminating the textbooks?

Post your comments below.




The Changing Value of Shakespeare



Tyler Cowen takes a quick look at William St. Clair’s new book: The Reading Nation in the Romantic Period. This book, so interesting on many levels looks at:

During the four centuries when printed paper was the only means by which texts could be carried across time and distance, everyone engaged in politics, education, religion, and literature believed that reading helped to shape the minds, opinions, attitudes, and ultimately the actions, of readers. William St Clair investigates how the national culture can be understood through a quantitative study of the books that were actually read. Centred on the romantic period in the English-speaking world, but ranging across the whole print era, it reaches startling conclusions about the forces that determined how ideas were carried, through print, into wider society. St Clair provides an in-depth investigation of information, made available here for the first time, on prices, print runs, intellectual property, and readerships gathered from over fifty publishing and printing archives. He offers a picture of the past very different from those presented by traditional approaches. Indispensable to students, English literature, book history, and the history of ideas, the study’s conclusions and explanatory models are highly relevant to the issues we face in the age of the internet.

  • The first study of actual reading using quantification and economic analysis
  • Sheds new light on aspects of reading and its effect on the nation
  • An indispensable resource for scholars working on literature, reading, and the history of publishing and printing




Hey Math E-Learning



HeyMath! is

an E-learning system that supports the work of teachers in teaching and assessment, whilst helping students build a strong foundation in Math and become independent learners.




IBM To Encourage Employees to be Teachers



Brian Bergstein:

International Business Machines Corp., worried the United States is losing its competitive edge, will financially back employees who want to leave the company to become math and science teachers.
The new program, being announced Friday in concert with city and state education officials, reflects tech industry fears that U.S. students are falling behind peers from Bangalore to Beijing in the sciences.
Up to 100 IBM employees will be eligible for the program in its trial phase. Eventually, Big Blue hopes many more of its tech savvy employees – and those in other companies – will follow suit.




The Governance Divide: Improving College Readiness and Success



The Governance Divide: A Report on a Four-State Study on Improving College Readiness and Success authored by The Institute for Educational Leadership, The National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education, The Stanford Institute for Higher Education Research. Foreword, Executive Summary, Full Report (345K PDF):

The report also offers recommendations to help states transform ad hoc approaches into sustained action and institutionalized, long-term K-16 reforms. Every state needs to increase the percentage of students who complete high school and finish some form of postsecondary education; existing governance structures and policies cannot meet this overwhelming need. For most states, these structures and policies must be revised in significant ways.
Currently, K-12 and postsecondary education exist in separate worlds in the United States. Policies for each system of education are typically created in isolation from each other-even though, in contrast to the past, most students eventually move from one system to the other. Students in K-12 rarely know what to expect when they enter college, nor do they have a clear sense of how to prepare for that next step. Particularly now, in the 21st century, when more students must complete some postsecondary education to have an economically secure life, the need for improved transitions from high school to college is urgent. This need for some postsecondary education extends beyond individual aspirations. In this global economy, businesses and communities-and our nation as a whole-must have residents who have achieved educational success beyond high school.

Phoebe Randall has more, including comments from the Wisconsin DPI:

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction acknowledges there is a problem and said the department is working to improve the situation with new programs.
“In Wisconsin, there is a tremendous amount of coordination to ensure that students are prepared for college,” DPI Communications Officer Joe Donovan said.
This coordination comes in the form of a program called PK16, which stands for pre-kindergarten through grade 16. One of the program’s goals is to focus on keeping students motivated and challenged during the transition from their senior year of high school to college.




Maryland’s Education Reform Guidelines



Daniel de Vise:

Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele released his blueprint for education reform yesterday, a series of 30 recommendations that call for schools to be graded and teachers to be paid for performance.
Members of the 30-person Governor’s Commission on Quality Education in Maryland recommended efforts to promote charter schools but rejected school vouchers, a far more divisive topic

Full Report (PDF)




California Bans Junk Food in Schools



BBC:

“California is facing an obesity epidemic,” Mr Schwarzenegger said. “Today we are taking some first steps in creating a healthy future for California.”
Under the new rules, pizza, burritos, pasta and sandwiches must contain no more than four grams of fat for every 100 calories, with a total of no more than 400 calories.
From 2007, students will only be allowed to buy water, milk and some fruit and sports drinks that contain a controlled amount of sweeteners.
It is thought that the move could cost school districts hundreds of thousands of dollar in lost income, as they receive money from companies in return for allowing them to sell their products in schools.




Is the U.S. Losing out on Science and Math Education?



The OECD released their “Education at a Glance – 2005 Report” Daniel Drezner summarizes his take on the US Performance:

1) In science and math, the U.S. is ahead of only the really poor OECD countries — Turkey, Mexico, etc. So yes, there is reason to worry.
2) The poor performance is not because of a downward trend — in fact, if you look at chart A7.1 (“Differences in mean performance of eighth-grade students from 1995 to 2003”), you discover an interesting fact: the United States showed the greatest improvement in science and math scores of the sample — including Korea.
3) The poor performance isn’t because of a dearth of funds — table B1.1 shows that, Switzerland excepted, the United States spends the most amount of money per student in the OECD. You get a similar result if the metric is education spending as a percentage of GDP. Indeed, the OECD comments:

Lower expenditure cannot automatically be equated with a lower quality of educational services. Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands and New-Zealand, which have moderate expenditure on education per student at the primary and lower secondary levels, are among the OECD countries with the highest levels of performance by 15-year-old students in mathematics.




Family Dinner Linked to Better Grades



ABC News:

The survey suggests that family time may be more important to children than many parents realize.
It found teens having family dinners five or more times a week were 42 percent less likely to drink alcohol, 59 percent less likely to smoke cigarettes, and 66 percent less likely to try marijuana.
“At a time when kids are under a lot of stress for a lot of different reasons, having that regular meal time that they can count on, that their parents are there for support — that can be very helpful,” said David Elkind, a professor of child development at Tufts University in Massachusetts.




Is the Cluetrain Running Over Government?



Sophos writing at IT Toolbox:

Government is still in the old broadcast mode of press conferences and press releases and talking at you rather than with you. Government only seems to have time to converse with lobby groups, mass media reporters and interests that are going to make them or their friends money. Money from the government.
The conversations are growing – mass media is at a loss to understand how to deal with or contend with the number of blogs, cross-linking of blogs and the sheer volume of people getting involved in the conversation. It is no holds barred and far more interesting than the scripted Q&A being spouted from press conferences. Mass media is so flabbergasted, that they have resorted to reading blogs on their broadcasts! How crazy is that – broadcasting elements of the conversations from the blogosphere on TV. Media is stunned. The administration is stunned. It is only going to get worse for all of them.




McDonald’s Sponsors an Elementary Phy Ed Program in 31,000 Schools



Reuters:

“McDonald’s Passport to Play” will launch in 31,000 schools this fall, reaching an expected 7 million children in grades three through five, the company said.
The move is part of McDonald’s (Research) so-called “Balanced Lifestyles” initiative, an aggressive effort to promote physical activity and nutrition and deflect harmful claims that its food is unhealthy and fattening.




Teaching Math



Several AFT American Educator articles on Teaching Mathematics:

  • Ron Aharoni: Helping Children Learn Mathematics

    A professional mathematician shares his insights about effective instructional practice, how children learn, the importance of a coherent, systematic curriculum—and mathematics—after taking up the challenge of teaching in an Israeli elementary school.

  • Knowing Mathematics for Teaching:

    There is general agreement that teachers’ knowledge of the mathematical content to be taught is the cornerstone of effective mathematics instruction. But the actual extent and nature of the mathematical knowledge teachers need remains a matter of controversy. A new program of research into what it means to know mathematics for teaching—and how that knowledge relates to student achievement—may help provide some answers.




Superintendent’s Message



Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater is beginning to write a series of monthly articles which he will use as his Superintendent’s Report. Listen to this month’s report by watching this 5 minute video clip. I looked around the District’s site and did not immediately see a text version of this report. UPDATE: The message was circulated via email Tuesday morning, 9/13/2005. Click the link below to read a text version:

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UW Joins Regional Tuition Discount Program



GMToday:

Starting next fall, Wisconsin residents can apply for discount tuition at 130 colleges in six Midwestern states under a plan approved by University of Wisconsin System regents.
In exchange, residents from those states could pay reduced rates at several schools in the UW System – but not the flagship UW-Madison campus. The regents voted Friday to join the Midwestern Higher Education Compact, a coalition of regional colleges and universities.




Milwaukee Loses Big Under Open Enrollment



Tom Kertscher:

During the first six years of the program, the analysis found, 15 suburban districts each earned more than $1 million in extra state aid because they gained more students than they lost through open enrollment transfers.
MPS, meanwhile, lost more than $32 million.
Four other districts – Racine Unified, Waukesha, Oconomowoc and Kewaskum – each lost more than $1 million.




Durbin & Feingold: Ease NCLB Standards Due To Katrina



WisPolitics:

Washington, D.C. – In a letter to Department of Education Secretary Margaret Spellings, U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI) and Dick Durbin (D-IL), are calling on the administration to help schools across the nation that are taking in the thousands of students displaced by the devastating effects of Hurricane Katrina by increasing funding to those schools while relaxing the accountability standards mandated by the No Child Left Behind Act.

More money for less? More from Eduwonk.




More: It’s Not Too Early to Run for the Madison School Board



Kristian Knutsen nicely summarizes the upcoming spring 2006 Madison School Board election politics and mentions that the election will likely include a non-binding referendum to overturn the tavern smoking ban (Isthmus’ The Daily Page):

There is ongoing speculation as to whether either incumbent will run for another term. Whether or not they do, the “anti-status quo” group of school board activists that support Robarts, helped boost Kobza to victory in April, and were mostly in opposition to the defeated May referendum questions, is gearing up for the next round, an election that could advance them to a majority position.

More here.




PA Schools Mandate Body Mass Calculations



Martha Raffaele:

As they wait for their children’s first report card to come home this year, elementary-school parents across Pennsylvania also can expect to receive a separate report on a key indicator of their children’s health.
In an effort to combat childhood obesity, the state Health Department is requiring school nurses to compute students’ body-mass index – or height-to-weight ratio – during annual growth screenings, starting this year with children in kindergarten through fourth grade.
Parents will receive letters about the results that will encourage them to share the information with their family physician. The letters will explain whether the BMI is above, below, or within the normal range for the child’s age and gender.




Candy, Soda, Pizza, Other Junk Food Compete with Nutritious Meals in Most Schools



Libby Quaid:

Candy, soda, pizza and other snacks compete with nutritious meals in nine out of 10 schools, a government survey found.
Already plentiful in high schools, junk food has become more available in middle schools over the past five years, according to the Government Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress.
“Parents should know that our schools are now one of the largest sources of unhealthy food for their kids,” Sen. Tom Harkin, who asked for the study, said in an interview.




Lee Kuan Yew Interview on the Rise of China & India



Singapore’s first Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew speaks with Der Spiegel on Asia’s rise to economic power, China’s ambitions and the West’s chances of staying competitive:

Mr. Lee: Right. In 50 years I see China, Korea and Japan at the high-tech end of the value chain. Look at the numbers and quality of the engineers and scientists they produce and you know that this is where the R&D will be done. The Chinese have a space programme, they’re going to put a man on the Moon and nobody sold them that technology. We have to face that. But you should not be afraid of that. You are leading in many fields which they cannot catch up with for many years, many decades. In pharmaceuticals, I don’t see them catching up with the Germans for a long time.




Tim Berners-Lee: The Net Will Produce More Creative Children



CNN:

CNN: What will surprise us about the future evolution of the Internet?
BERNERS-LEE: The creativity of our children. In many ways, people growing up with the Web and now the Semantic Web take the power at their fingertips for granted. The people who designed the tools that make the Net run had their own ideas for the future. I look forward to seeing what the next generation does with these tools that we could not have foreseen. …




Liftoff



School has once again successfully lifted off, thanks to a great deal of hard work on the part of many people including teachers, staff and administrators. I thought it would be useful to pass along a few observations:

  • A Madison teacher spent quite a bit of personal time after school last year helping children who were behind in math catch up.
  • My aunt is a Minnesota teacher. During a recent visit to a prospective student’s home:”I got hit on my head with a folder, my camera got taken away, and my shirt got pulled up. The mom just calmly kept talking about school.“

Please add your anecdotes in the comments below!




Back to School, Thinking Globally



New York Times Editorial:

The great achievement of No Child Left Behind is that it has forced the states to focus at last on educational inequality, the nation’s most corrosive social problem. But it has been less successful at getting educators and politicians to see the education problem in a global context, and to understand that this country is rapidly losing ground to the nations we compete with for high-skilled jobs that require a strong basis in math and science.
American taxpayers have heard a fair amount about the fact that their children lag behind the children of Britain, France, Germany and Japan. But American students are also bested by nations like Poland, Ireland and the Czech Republic. Worst of all, they fall further and further behind their peers abroad the longer they stay in school.




Indianapolis School Superintendent: A Change Maker?



Matthew Tully:

“We have to turn things around right away,” he said. “They didn’t bring me in to be safe. They brought me in to be a change maker.”
So he has tossed out troublemaking students and offered ambitious plans for historic schools Crispus Attucks and Shortridge. He’s demanded more from all, from teachers to students to janitors.
White has been the city’s top newsmaker since becoming superintendent of the state’s largest school system July 1. He seems to have commandeered space on the front page.

More on Eugene G. White, Indianapolis’s new Superintendent. Via Eduwonk.




Madison Schools Announcement on Students Displaced by Hurricane Katrina



Madison Metropolitan School District:

Madison school officials on Friday said the district will make every effort to assist families and students displaced by hurricane Katrina by simplifying the enrollment process and getting students immediately into classes.
By Friday, the district had received several calls from individuals in Madison, who have family in the areas affected by the hurricane, inquiring about school possibilities for their relatives. Calls were also received from individuals in relief shelters in the South.
“They are welcome in Madison and we will ensure that families temporarily relocating to Madison will be able to get their children into school immediately,” said Superintendent Art Rainwater.




PowerPoint: Killer App?



Ruth Marcus:

The most disturbing development in the world of PowerPoint is its migration to the schools — like sex and drugs, at earlier and earlier ages. Now we have second-graders being tutored in PowerPoint. No matter that students who compose at the keyboard already spend more energy perfecting their fonts than polishing their sentences — PowerPoint dispenses with the need to write any sentences at all. Perhaps the politicians who are so worked up about the ill effects of violent video games should turn their attention to PowerPoint instead.
In the meantime, Tufte, who’s now doing consulting work for NASA, has a modest proposal for its new administrator: Ban the use of PowerPoint. Sounds good to me. After all, you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to see the perils of PowerPoint.




The Leopold Reality



Leopold Teacher Troy Dassler, via email:

As part of full disclosure, I must admit that one of the two classrooms that were carved out the lunchroom is where I teach our children. So, this story has special significance to me and my students.
Troy Dassler
NBC 15 News:
New School Year, Same Referendum Questions
Overcrowding on First Day
Updated: 6:29 PM Sep 1, 2005
Zac Schultz
Madison: The new third graders at Aldo Leopold Elementary probably did not pay much attention to the school referendum questions last spring.
They don’t know that the voters rejected a plan that would have given them a new school by the time they were in 5th grade. But some of them do understand overcrowding.
“I would say in terms of optimal learning environment Leopold is overcrowded now. We’re using every square inch of Leopold with kids,” says Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater.
“We try to organize to minimize the impact on children,” says Leopold Principal Mary Hyde.

(more…)




Art Smarts: Two New Books on the Meaning of Arts



The Economist on two new books, The Accidental Masterpiece: On the Art of Life and Vice Versa and What Good Are the Arts:

Mr Kimmelman, a gifted piano student as a boy, returned more seriously to the keyboard in 1999 when he entered, and went on to the final round, of an amateur piano competition in Fort Worth, Texas. Organised by the Van Cliburn Foundation, which since 1962 has presented the world’s leading piano competition for young professionals, the competition brought 90 people, who neither taught nor performed professionally, to Texas.
Mr Kimmelman’s article about his fellow pianists—a numismatist, two flight attendants, a hairstylist and a former crack addict who had been jailed for burglary and who found taking up music helped him recover—raised a sizeable correspondence from people who are not artists by profession, but for whom art adds an important other dimension to their lives. It was this idea, so emblematic of the author’s own life, that spawned the book.
Far better is the second half of the book in which Mr Carey seeks to persuade us that the greatest of all art forms is not painting or music but literature, and English literature specifically. Uninflected and without gendered nouns, English was uniquely placed to offer Shakespeare the linguistic pliancy and suppleness he needed to turn out the epidemic of metaphors and similes that so mark his work.

(more…)




More on Suspended Sennett Middle School Teacher



Sandy Cullen:

Police spokesman Mike Hanson said the report of an incident April 1, 2004, at Sennett Middle School “slipped through the cracks,” and was not reviewed by a detective or a representative of the Dane County district attorney’s office to determine if charges should be filed.
“It’s an unfortunate event,” Hanson said. “We need to backtrack and go back and investigate.”
Hanson said it is not known exactly how the mistake occurred, but the report had been mislabled in a way that could have erroneously indicated that it had already been referred to the district attorney.

More from Steve Elbow.




Milwaukee Schools Health Care Coverage Changes



Alan J. Borsuk and Sarah Carr:

Milwaukee Public Schools teachers will begin shouldering a larger share of the costs of their health care under an arbitrator’s ruling issued Tuesday.
The decision ended 2 1/2 years of work on a two-year contract for more than 6,000 teachers with a victory for the School Board and the administration of Superintendent William Andrekopoulos.
After management and the Milwaukee Teachers’ Education Association deadlocked – almost entirely over health insurance issues – the dispute went to the arbitrator, Marquette University Law School Professor Jay Grenig, who was required to pick between the final offers of each side without making any changes.
Under the MPS plan, teachers would begin paying portions of the cost of their health care, including deductibles and co-pays on many services. Administrators say the district pays more than 60 cents in fringe benefits for every dollar it pays in salaries.