Do you know the difference between an “alleged father” and a “presumed father?” Your child soon will.
The Texas attorney general’s office has created a new parenting curriculum that will be required in every public high school this fall. It will cover everything from the legalese of paternity to dealing with relationship violence.
State officials say the goal is twofold: They want to teach teenage parents their legal rights and they want to show other students the difficulties of being a parent in hopes that they’ll wait to have children.
The program, which has already drawn some skepticism, promises to bring personal and family values out of the home and into the classroom.
Reports on Schools Cite Student Discontent
The question to a focus group of Dunbar High students was: What did they like best about going to school there?
“Freedom,” said one who takes Advanced Placement classes at the school in Northwest Washington. “We can do whatever we want at this school. That’s the only good thing about this place.”
At Green Elementary School in Southeast, one child urged: “Give us harder work, not the busywork that we already know.”
“They let us struggle,” a student at Lincoln Middle School in Northwest said of the teachers. “They let you know you are failing, but then let you go on struggling and then send you to summer school.”
Madison schools need to get real on equity, New value-added approach is needed for improving schools
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes, writing in this week’s Isthmus:
A couple of weeks ago in these pages, Marc Eisen had some harsh words for the work of the Madison school district’s Equity Task Force (“When Policy Trumps Results,” 5/2/09). As a new school board member, I too have some doubts about the utility of the task force’s report. Perhaps it’s to be expected that while Eisen’s concerns touch on theory and rhetoric, mine are focused more on the nitty-gritty of decision making.
The smart and dedicated members of the Equity Task Force were assigned an impossible task: detailing an equity policy for me and other board members to follow. Equity is such a critical and nuanced consideration in school board decisions that, to be blunt, I’m not going to let any individual or group tell me what to do.
I am unwilling to delegate my responsibility to exercise my judgment on equity issues to a task force, no matter how impressive the group. Just as one school board cannot bind a future school board’s policymaking, I don’t think that the deliberations of a task force can restrict my exercise of independent judgment.
Admittedly, the task force faced a difficult challenge. It was obligated by the nature of its assignment to discuss equity issues in the abstract and offer up broad statements of principle.
Not surprisingly, most of the recommendations fall into the “of course” category. These include “Distribute resources based on student needs” and “Foster high academic expectations for all students.” I agree.
Related:
- Equity Task Force
- Value Added Assessment
- Ed Hughes
- Notes and link on the Madison School District’s 2008/2009 $367M budget.
Texas English Curriculum Controversy
Berlanga faults McLeroy for the way he has engineered the rewriting of the state’s English language arts and reading curriculum, which will go to the board for a final vote on Thursday.
She said McLeroy has ignored board instructions to Texas Education Agency staff by issuing separate dictates and deceived public school teachers, ignoring their recommendations in favor of out-of-state teachers in the development of new English language arts and reading standards.
Sun Prairie’s Classroom 2010 “Technology Standard”
Classroom 2010 is our technology standard model for classrooms at the new Sun Prairie High School, and for our remodeled upper middle school, which will both open in the year 2010.
To inspire 21st Century learning in these schools, we are providing the following equipment:
Interactive White Board
Teacher Computer
Video Projector
Integrated amplification system
Wireless Infrared Microphone
Computer with DVD Player
5-12 student computers
VOIP telephone
ceiling mounted electrical outlets
Upgraded networking
Wireless network access
Some of these items will be obsolete the moment they are purchased. This article generated some discussion on the topic of technology & schools. Much more on schools & technology here. Related: Online education cast as “distruptive innovation”.
DC Teacher Contract Would End Seniority
The Washington Teachers’ Union is discussing a proposed three-year contract from the school system that would eliminate seniority, giving Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee more control in filling vacancies, a union member familiar with the talks said yesterday.
Without seniority, Rhee could place teachers based on qualifications or performance rather than years of service, said the union member, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the talks are confidential. The union member said Rhee sought the provision as a recruiting tool so she could offer talented candidates the position of their choice. She would be able to fill positions with less experienced teachers.
Under the proposed contract, teachers would give up seniority in exchange for annual raises of about 6 percent, more personal-leave days and more money for supplies, the union member said. In the last contract, which expired in the fall, teachers received a 10 percent raise over two years.
Rhee “does want to infuse some new blood [into the schools]. She wants to make it attractive for young people coming in to advance,” said the union member, adding that the union’s negotiating team will meet with her tomorrow or Friday. “We’ve come to realize we’re going to have to give in to her.”
The International Baccalaureate, Another Approach to Education
The nearest alternative to the Higher School Certificate is the International Baccalaureate. Though it is expensive and considered exclusive, it proposes a wider programme.
LBIS is committed to offer its students an environment and a pedagogy that promotes interaction between pupils. They are not judged on comparison with others but on their own capacities.
Our secondary education system has been under continuous criticism as being too bookish, and not training young people to think out of the box and not preparing them both for university or working life. Out of the 189 secondary schools in Mauritius, only two – Northfields International High School and Le Bocage International School (LBIS) – offer an alternative programme for the last two years of secondary, which leads to the International Baccalaureate (IB). The only hitch is that it is very expensive and out of reach for many parents. The entry fee to LBIS is Rs 40 000 and the monthly school fees amount to Rs 10 000 while at Northfields, the fees are quite similar
Wisconsin Structural Deficit: $1,682,000,000
Bob Lang, Director: Legislative Fiscal Bureau [83K PDF], via WisPolitics. Wisconsin State tax receipts are expected to grow by about 2%, according to this article by Steven Walters. Madison’s 2008/2009 $367M budget notes and links. Perhaps somewhat related: Mary Williams Walsh takes a look at State’s pension accounting.
Madison’s Cherokee Middle School 6th Grade Concert
Listen:
- Band: 1MB On Wisconsin mp3 audio file.
- Choir: 2.66MB mp3 audio file.
- Orchestra: “Smoke on the Water” 3.2MB mp3 audio file
Remarkable.
Arizona School District Consolidation
School districts that unify this fall will have an extra year to combine their governing boards, administration and finances under a bill signed by Gov. Janet Napolitano.
New unification provisions would also phase out money that small school districts receive over four years, rather than taking it away all at once.
On Nov. 4, voters will decide whether to unify 76 elementary and high-school districts across the state into 27 new K-12 districts.
Put School Curricula over Buildings
The West Bend School Board, chastened by a two-to-one defeat of its $119 million referendum for improved facilities, is seeking input from the community on how to go forward.
To their credit, district leaders have done that all along. But they still missed the mark on gauging what the community wanted.
One thing is clear: just coming back at a slightly reduced total will probably not work. The margin of defeat was too large. So, some creative thinking is needed.
My own guess is that the referendum failed on two counts: its sheer size in dollars was too much for taxpayers to swallow and it lacked vision.
It’s hard to get excited about bricks, mortar and maintenance, necessary as they are.
It would be exciting, though, to come up with a program of study that would allow our young people to compete better in the globalizing world.
A stunning new book, “The Post-American World,” by Fareed Zakaria, a Newsweek columnist and perhaps the most insightful journalist in the country, outlines the challenges facing the United States and its next generations.
He calls it “The Rise of the Rest” and generally says the rise into prosperity of other countries can be a positive for America if we react in the right way.
Wineke: Teachers often inspiration for the successful
Over the years, I’ve had the opportunity to interview hundreds, perhaps thousands, of successful men and women.
I almost always ask the same question: What is it in your life that made the difference? What caused you to end up where you are now, rather than someplace else.
My favorite answer came from a very successful Madison businessman, who spent a few minutes extolling the virtues of hard work and can-do attitude and, then, asked “you do know that I married the owner’s daughter, don’t you?”
Most often, however, the answer I get is some variation of this: “Well, there was this teacher. . .”
There was this teacher who convinced me that mathematics could be fun. There was this teacher who took the time to help me repair my car. There was this teacher who dug into her own pocket when she observed that I couldn’t see the blackboard and bought me a pair of glasses.
Promoting Science Education – in India
Students these days are keen to pursue engineering rather than medicine. A few dream of becoming scientists at an early age, but by the time they grow up, they want to become engineers. “Interest in medicine is falling and students don’t want to pursue medicine and rather go for engineering, mainly due to socio-economic reasons,” observes Dilip Kumar Bedi, principal, Apeejay School, Pitampura.
Most educators feel that an interest in science education is gradually declining among students. To this end, the National Knowledge Commission (NKC) has recently proposed setting up of a mission, headed by the Prime Minister to transform the entire scenario of science education and research in the country. The commission has suggested that a science and mathematics mission be constituted with a team of 40-50 ‘brightest of the bright’ Indian scientists and mathematicians below the age of 45 years. Furthermore, the NKC said that such an initiative would be effective only if it is launched across the country covering every school, college, university and institution.
Leaving Too Many Boys Behind & The Facts About Gender Equity in Education
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
When the State Journal this week published the list of the top 4 percent of this year ‘s graduating seniors from Dane County high schools, girls outnumbered boys by nearly two to one.
That academic gender gap highlights a national problem with costly consequences: Boys are falling behind in the American educational system.
The dominance of girls among high school honors students is only the tip of the problem. The most alarming aspect is the scarcity of men earning college degrees.
Since 1970, the number of women enrolling in college has risen three times faster than the number of men.
Women now receive 60 percent of all associate, bachelor ‘s and master ‘s degrees.
American Association of University Women:
Where the Girls Are: The Facts About Gender Equity in Education presents a comprehensive look at girls’ educational achievement during the past 35 years, paying special attention to the relationship between girls’ and boys’ progress. Analyses of results from national standardized tests, such as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and the SAT and ACT college entrance examinations, as well as other measures of educational achievement, provide an overall picture of trends in gender equity from elementary school to college and beyond.
Valeria Strauss has more.
More on Madison’s Leopold Elementary School Overcrowding
Over the last six weeks, Assistant Superintendent Sue Abplanalp and Chief Information Officer Kurt Kiefer have created an array of options based on research and surveys of faculty and parents. The options include remodeling classrooms, increasing the size of fourth-grade classes, relocating the computer lab to the library, or incorporating music and art in one classroom, since each room currently is scheduled for use only 50 percent of the school day. The project to remodel and reconfigure the classrooms would cost $20,000.
The administration will decide on one of several available options, and Abplanalp anticipates that decision will be made in the next few weeks.
But teachers and parents have hopes for a much broader solution for the school, which serves a large number of students in nearby apartments.
Many notes and links on proposed Leopold changes.
Aiming to Coach Students to Excellence in Exams
LIKE a football coach before a big game, James Carlo, a vice principal at the Newton Street School, ticked off last-minute pointers to a group of 32 middle-school students hunkered silently around folding metal tables in the cafeteria.
Do not waste time. Do not get distracted. Do not get nervous.
“Please, please, please pull up what strength you have and what concentration you have and just attack that test,” Mr. Carlo told the students on a recent Wednesday morning. “It shouldn’t just be all the schools and districts around us that are scoring high on this test.”
As public schools everywhere gear up for the annual state assessments, few others have as much to prove — or as much at stake. Newton, with 500 students in prekindergarten through eighth grade, has come under escalating sanctions under the federal No Child Left Behind law because many of its students have scored below proficiency on the standardized test known as NJ ASK, which covers language arts, math and science. It is one of only 4 schools in this city — and among 38 schools in New Jersey, 57 in New York and 6 in Connecticut — that have missed testing benchmarks for seven consecutive years and now risk being shut down or overhauled if there is no sign of improvement.
‘Hands-on’ science teaching gains momentum in Wisconsin
In an approach based in Green Bay that has spread down the Lake Michigan shoreline, about 40 Wisconsin districts (though not Madison) belong to a consortium called the Einstein Project, a nonprofit group that buys the kits from publishers, leases them for a nominal fee to schools and arranges teacher training on their use.
Hailed as a national model by the National Science Teachers Association, the Einstein Project began on a shoestring and now has 10 employees, two kit warehouses and a $1 million annual budget supported by the rental fees, year-round fundraising and private and corporate backing.
But critics of the hands-on movement charge that without textbooks and the structured reading, teacher-driven learning and broad memorization of facts that traditionally define classroom science, kids are being short-changed on core knowledge.
A major fight over science curriculum in California got national attention in 2004, as the state weighed a proposal to allow no more than 25 percent of science classroom time for hands-on activities. But in an abrupt reversal after intense debate, the adopted standard reads that at least 25 percent of science classroom time has to be hands-on.
Stanley Metzenberg, an assistant biology professor from California State University-Northridge, said in congressional testimony that reading is critical for scientists and that children are best served through traditional textbooks and teacher-directed instruction.
Vietnam School Reform
Vietnam is developing the UNICEF ‘friendlier school’ model to boost primary education
Vietnam will expand UNICEF’s “Friendlier School” model across the nation. The concept, which has already been applied experimentally, has been found to improve educational quality and help students enjoy studying, said Nguyen Thien Nhan, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Education and Training.
The minister was speaking at a ceremony yesterday to launch a campaign to extend the model developed at Van Phuc secondary school in Ha Dong City in the northern province of Ha Tay.
The model’s purpose is to create a safer, fairer educational environment, attract students to study, ensure their rights and improve teaching quality. Creating an interesting educational environment is focused on keeping students from being bored so that they can enjoy their studies.
“Being friendlier is also a good way of preventing students from leaving schools,” said Associate Professor Tran Kieu, former director of the Institute of Educational Sciences.
Recently, the Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) released a report showing that by March, 2008, about 147,000 students had quit school.
One of the 10 reasons given was the rigid and uninspiring teaching environment that had limited students’ interest in studying.
School votes come amid economic woes, investigations
On Tuesday, voters will decide the fates of school budgets across Long Island. Most will be asked to support or reject spending increases that would inflate taxes during trying economic times of soaring gas and food prices.
“I think we are in a recession. In general, it’s impacting all of us,” said Donna Jones, superintendent of the Brentwood district, whose $295 million budget proposal is the largest on Long Island. “We know that these are challenging times.”
But she is hopeful voters will see the worth of new initiatives such as the implementation of a nine-period day for middle schools and the freshman center, and the creation of an online system where parents can track student records, such as report cards and attendance.
Compounding economic worries is the state attorney general’s subpoenas of all 124 Long Island districts over the issue of “double-dipping” – previously-retired administrators receiving salaries on top of hefty pensions after returning to work.
NJ Assembly OKs ending school budget votes, moving elections
Public votes on school budgets would be eliminated and April school board elections moved to November under a bill approved Monday by the state Assembly.
The bill, hailed as a vital election reform by backers and antidemocratic by critics, was pushed by Assembly Speaker Joseph Roberts Jr. was approved 45-31.
It comes after this year’s school election drew just 14 percent of voters. No school election in the past 25 years has topped 20 percent turnout.
“I know one thing for sure, and that is that our current system that elects school board members is a system that’s broken and needs to be fixed,” said Roberts, D-Camden.
New Jersey is the only state where voters in most districts can give direct approval to their entire school property tax bill. The average homeowner in the state pays about $6,800 per year in property taxes _ the highest in the nation _ and schools get the largest share.
The bill would eliminate budget votes, except on spending that exceeds a 4 percent cap on tax levy increases.
What’s in an education? It’s about how to think, not about how to do.
Esther Jantzen’s article, “Literacy begins at home” provides an excellent explanation of what parents can’t or won’t do by themselves.
However, I greatly fear that, unlike Alexander Pope’s warning that “a little learning is a dangerous thing,” our leadership prefers a little learning, but not too much. American consumerism supports the oligarchic wealth that rules this country. And a truly well-educated majority, well-versed in history, might threaten the “greed is good” axiom that has enslaved so many by seductive credit options.
California’s STaR Test
The high-stakes state exams measure campus’ achievement each year. Getting students to show up is a major concern; dull pencils and the wrong type of scratch paper can create havoc as well.
Five-foot-two Erica O’Brien pushes a tall stack of gray cartons across the floor, straining as if they were full of coal, not tests. The office on the top floor of Banning High School is stuffy, even though it’s only 6 a.m. But when the phone rings, O’Brien answers affably.
“Penthouse,” she says.
That’s what life is like these days for testing coordinators such as O’Brien. After weeks of preparing in the background, they suddenly become the most important person on campus. Students across the state last week took high-stakes standardized tests, which can bring a school glory through improved test scores, or, in the worst-case scenario, state sanctions. To make sure the tests go smoothly, O’Brien distributes tests, sharpens pencils and deals with the unexpected.
There’s a note next to her computer screen that reads “Vomit.”
“A kid threw up on his test, so we had to find him a new one. Poor guy,” O’Brien explained.
He Gets His Old Room but Not for Free, Not Forever
They’re coming home.
Many parents already know this, but after four, perhaps five or even six years of school, many college graduates — faced with a tight job market, higher gas and food costs, and mountainous debt — have no choice but to move home to get their financial bearings.
And you know what?
Despite assurances that they will stay for only a little while, this time next year many of those graduates will still be living at home. That’s what MonsterTrak found in its annual nationwide survey of college students, recent graduates and entry-level employers.
Continuing a three-year trend, just under half of prospective graduates, 48 percent, plan to boomerang — or move home — after graduation, according to the online career resource company.
Democrats for School Choice
Wall Street Journal Editorial:
When Florida passed a law in 2001 creating the Corporate Tax Credit Scholarship Program for underprivileged students, all but one Democrat in the state legislature voted against it. Earlier this month, lawmakers extended the program – this time with the help of a full third of Democrats in the Legislature, including 13 of 25 members of the state’s black caucus and every member of the Hispanic caucus. What changed?
Our guess is that low-income parents in Florida have gotten a taste of the same school choice privileges that middle- and upper-income families have always enjoyed. And they’ve found they like this new educational freedom. Under the scholarship program, which is means-tested, companies get a 100% tax credit for donations to state-approved nonprofits that provide private-school vouchers for low-income families
Words of Advice for the Class of ’08 and Beyond
We give them at the start of things and at the end of things. Toasts at weddings. Eulogies at funerals. A college graduation, both the end of one era and the start of another, gets the mother of all speeches: the commencement address. This is where a graduate summons his best prose to motivate peers, where a famous person drops in to provide last-minute dispatches from the real world, all in an effort to pack inspirational gunpowder into a cannon about to hurtle an entire class into its future.
Speech: You’ll do fine! Here’s your diploma. Boom.
This is happening all over the country this month, and we’re in the thick of commencement season here. Washington area colleges are catapulting armies of graduates into a tightening job market and a wintry economic climate. It’s a hostile world, and maybe it always has been. But it’s the commencement speakers’ duty to herald the light at the end of the tunnel, even if Social Security is gone by the time the audience gets there.
Chins up, though. For those of us already out in the real world, and for collegians hungry to soak up some more inspiration, we picked the brains of seven people who spoke or were scheduled to speak at area schools. Read on to hear from them.
Teacher questions Muslim practices at charter school
Recently, I wrote about Tarek ibn Ziyad Academy (TIZA), a K-8 charter school in Inver Grove Heights. Charter schools are public schools and by law must not endorse or promote religion.
Evidence suggests, however, that TIZA is an Islamic school, funded by Minnesota taxpayers.
TIZA has many characteristics that suggest a religious school. It shares the headquarters building of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, whose mission is “establishing Islam in Minnesota.” The building also houses a mosque. TIZA’s executive director, Asad Zaman, is a Muslim imam, or religious leader, and its sponsor is an organization called Islamic Relief.
Fuel costs sting Dallas-area school districts
Area school districts are finding ways to cut costs as fuel prices soar. Some are taking shorter field trips. Others prohibit bus drivers from idling. And some are raising prices in the lunch line.
“Fuel costs trickle on through everything,” said Tony Harkleroad, a Richardson ISD administrator. “We either have to cut other things within our budget to cover cost increases like this, or we have to find other ways to raise revenue.”
Perhaps increasing fuel costs are a benefit for expanded virtual learning opportunities.
Latin, prayers, chilly dorms at school in France
Learning Latin, attending Catechism and hurrying along draughty corridors to prayer, two dozen boys are experiencing old-fashioned British boarding school life — deep in the French countryside.
Boxing, folk-dancing and Gregorian chant also figure on the curriculum at Chavagnes International College, a traditional Catholic English boys’ boarding school in the Vendee wine-growing region on France’s Atlantic coast.
Housed in a 200-year-old former seminary in a region marked by France’s wars of religion in the mid-16th century, it says it attracts parents who are disillusioned by the British state school system or the values of modern life.
The fees are also significantly cheaper than in Britain, at 15,000 euros (11,800 pounds) for boarders per year compared with an average of about 22,000 sterling in Britain, according to figures from the Independent Schools Council.
The art of improving education
“It is forbidden to dance”; “it is forbidden to paint”; “it is forbidden to sing”; “it is forbidden to play an instrument.” These statements were printed on signs displayed in mainly Arab neighborhoods in Haifa. The signs were hung as armor in the battle mounted by the Non-profit Organization for the Advancement of Arab Public Education in Haifa, to open a school for the arts to serve the city’s Arab sector. The organization also collected parents’ signatures in a petition that urges the Haifa Municipality and Education Ministry to reverse their positions and support the school, which would be the first of its type in the Israeli-Arab sector.
In August last year, the organization filed an appeal to the High Court against the ministry and the municipality, demanding that the school be opened. Months later, while still waiting for the court’s ruling, the organization decided to launch the campaign. According to the organization, the school could staunch the flow of students to Haifa’s private schools and even boost the public education system in the city’s Arab sector. Organization members stress that a swift ruling by the court is vital, because the placement committee for the city’s special schools will soon complete its activities for the coming school year and the future of the school would rest in the hands of that committee.
Architecture opens eyes of Sun Prairie students
Some Horizon Elementary School students may be eyeing their surroundings differently now.
That’s the hope of architect Arlan Kay, who recently presented a program called an Afternoon of Architecture for some third and fifth graders in the Sun Prairie School District. He brought boxes of miniature bricks, blocks, bridge parts and other materials to teach the students about building design and city planning.
Kay told the students they were “architectives” because they were considering architecture as detectives — unlocking the mystery to why buildings are constructed a certain way and look the way they do.
“It’s a discovery. They’re investigating,” he said later. “It’s to try and make them look and discover the built world around them.”
In an interview afterward, it was clear that Kay succeeded with fifth-grader Annie Benzine.
San Diego Superintendent Goals
Superintendent Terry Grier’s contract with the San Diego Unified School District calls for him to receive up to $10,500 in annual performance bonuses if he meets three goals set by the school board.
But months after Grier was hired, trustees have yet to agree on what goals the superintendent and the district should meet.
The board went through goal-setting exercises in November before Grier was hired; it undertook similar exercises before and after hiring Grier’s predecessor, Carl Cohn.
On Monday, the school board talked about setting goals for two hours without reaching a consensus. Grier is pushing the board to lay down specific goals that can be used to evaluate the district’s progress and by extension, his performance.
Throughout the meeting, Grier relentlessly nudged trustees to develop a list of overarching goals for elementary, middle and high schools.
Notes and links on Madison’s Superintendent goals.
Graffiti, bomb threat found at Janesville school
A bomb threat found written on doors at Kennedy Elementary School this morning prompted a search inside the school and police combing the neighborhood, but school went on as normal, said Principal Niel Bender.
The threat included “racial inferences” in addition to a threat of an explosion today at the school, Deputy Police Chief Dave Moore said.
The graffiti was done in what appeared to be white crayon on the front doors and one other door, and it was removed, Bender said.
The school is located at 3901 Randolph Road on the city’s east side.
( Map )
Parents, kids pin their hopes on one white orb in boarding school lottery
The lucky ones heard their numbers called early.
Not only could those first-announced winners beam with pride about being one of the first 80 students who will attend the SEED School of Maryland, but they also did not have to agonize in their chairs any longer, watching the white lottery balls tumble in gilded cages – the numbered balls representing dreams for all and disappointment for many.
Yesterday morning, the founders of the nation’s first public boarding school, which opened 10 years ago in Washington, D.C., held the inaugural lottery to fill the slots for the Baltimore-based second location, which will open its doors in August to disadvantaged youths from all over the state.
More than 300 students applied from the city, the suburbs of Baltimore and Washington, the Eastern Shore, and Western and Southern Maryland. Families traveled to the College of Notre Dame of Maryland to see if their child’s number would be called.
High School Challenge Index, 2008
The Newsweek and Washington Post Challenge Index measures a public high school’s effort to challenge its students. The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or Cambridge tests a school gave by the number of seniors who graduated in May or June. Tests taken by all students, not just seniors, are counted. Magnet or charter schools with SAT combined verbal and math averages higher than 1300, or ACT average scores above 29, are not included, since they do not have enough average students who need a challenge.
The rating is not a measurement of the overall quality of the school but illuminates one factor that many educators consider important.
The list below includes all public schools with a rating of 1.000. There are nearly 1,400 — the top 5 percent of all 27,000 U.S. high schools in encouraging students to take AP, IB or Cambridge tests. Also listed are the name of the city or school district and the percentage of a school’s students whose family incomes are low enough to qualify for federally subsidized lunches and who also apply for that program. The portion of subsidized-lunch applicants is a rough indicator of a school’s poverty level. High-poverty schools are at a disadvantage in persuading students to take college-level courses, but some on this list have succeeded in doing so anyway.
The Equity and Excellence rate is the percentage of all seniors who have had at least one score on an AP, IB or Cambridge test that would qualify them for college credit. The average AP Equity and Excellence rate for all U.S. schools is about 15 percent.
Milwaukee Rufus King ranked highest among the 21 Wisconsin High Schools at #209. The only Madison area high school to make the list is Verona at #808.
Related: Dane County, WI AP High School Course offerings.
Jay Matthews has more:
This week, Newsweek magazine and its Web site Newsweek.com unveil this year’s Top High Schools list, based on a rating system I invented a decade ago called the Challenge Index. The index ranks schools based on college-level course participation, adding up the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate and other college-level tests in a given year for a given school, and dividing that total by its number of graduating seniors.
Several weeks ago I asked students, teachers and parents to tell me how this annual ranking affected their schools. Here is a sampling of several points of view, both critical and complimentary.
* * *
So, with regard to your Challenge Index — it really is a quick and dirty way of assessing schools. Very ambitious and probably very imperfect. However, there isn’t anything else out there like it. I think the reason our school systems are not very good compared to other countries is that we underestimate the abilities of our children. I think too the education field is fuzzy — not very good data or evidence to support the programs that are out there. . . . More and better research is needed. And of course there are the socioeconomic/family issues of some schools/districts that cannot/will not be fixed with just higher expectations.
— Terry Adirim Montgomery County
Previous SIS Challenge Index links and notes. Clusty search on the Challenge Index.
Great education debate: Reforming the grade system
When principal Debbie Brockett announced a policy last fall of not allowing teachers to issue any score less than 50 to failing students, she thought she was adopting a means of leveling out an unfair grading curve.
To many outraged teachers at Las Vegas High, however, Brockett’s plan amounted to fuzzy new math designed to offer unfair assistance to low-achieving students.
They protested, and she backed down. But in the process, both sides stepped into one of the hottest grading debates within academic circles today. Across the USA, education experts and school administrators are trying to determine how and whether to reform grading systems to give failing students a better chance to catch up.
“I made a bad call at the time, going with past experience, and I didn’t expect it to become controversial,” says Brockett, who had just been promoted from a middle school where her minimum-F policy was in place. “Now it’s an ongoing conversation we’re having.”
Proposed report cards changes have generated some controversy in Madison.
Urban-education scholar Charles Payne sets out to measure the University’s efforts at school improvement.
University of Chicago Magazine, via a kind reader’s email:
Charles M. Payne has been a scholar of urban education long enough to see many fashions of public-school reform come and go. The School of Social Service Administration’s Frank P. Hixon professor, Payne first developed an interest in education in 1969, while a Syracuse University undergraduate. Administrators there, Payne recalls, had brought an inner-city school to campus with a bold, if naive and unfocused, purpose: “to change this.” The program failed to establish a model for effective school reform, Payne says, because “none of us understood how hard this was going to be.”
With a sociology PhD from Northwestern University and 40 years of research and advocacy under his belt, Payne believes that the same core problem—a misunderstanding of the difficulties involved—continues to hinder school-reform efforts. His years as founding director of an education nonprofit in Orange, New Jersey, and studying schools in Chicago and around the world have taught him that the solution to school failure is deep and fundamental. Initiatives that focus on particular grade levels or types of students don’t work, Payne says. In a book out this May, So Much Reform, So Little Change: The Persistence of Failure in Urban Schools (Harvard Education Press, 2008), he argues that rather than searching for the silver-bullet program that will turn a school around, would-be reformers must strike at the “culture of failure” that perpetuates dismal school performance.
High School Ranks Have Been Infiltrated by Agents
The only real surprise, coaches and others said, was that Mayo had been accused of taking money from a person described as a “runner” for an agent. Mayo has denied the accusations.
“This has been happening over the past few years that agents and runners have been able to get into the high school ranks,” Illinois Coach Bruce Weber said.
In the report, ESPN described how Rodney Guillory, an event promoter with a history of breaking N.C.A.A. rules, started giving gifts to Mayo when he played for Huntington High School in West Virginia. The report said that Guillory did so with money from Bill Duffy Associates, the agency Mayo ultimately signed with in declaring for next month’s N.B.A. draft. Duffy has denied giving money to Guillory for Mayo.
Give Straight Answers on Wisconsin Drop Out Rate
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
Question: What is Wisconsin’s high school graduation rate?
Answer: About 91 percent, ranking among the top five states in the nation.
Or 86 percent, in the top 10.
Or 77 percent, ranking 11th.
It all depends on who is counting — the state government, the federal government or independent analysts.
Shouldn’t there be one straight answer?
Yes.
That’s why Congress ought to approve the Bush administration’s plan to require all states to calculate graduation rates by the same formula — one endorsed by the National Governors Association in 2005.
A standard graduation rate formula is central to evaluating and solving one of the nation’s biggest social problems — the high school dropout rate.
Germantown Referendum Climate Notes
The people who live in Germantown said on April 1 that they do not think they need a new elementary school, at least not one that costs as much as the Germantown School Board says.
By a margin of 55% to 45%, the residents of Germantown voted no, and probably thought it meant something.
It doesn’t. The school board now says that shouldn’t count.
The board has now directed staff to prepare another, identical referendum and put it on the ballot again this coming November.
Prodoehl, who is the president of the Germantown Citizens Action Coalition, a group that really wasn’t very active the first time around but just might be now, calls this a “slap in the face.”
High school graduate stands alone at the head of his class
Jeff Greenwood is in a class by himself: the Opheim High School senior was the only student to graduate. Greenwood said the school is the “hub of activity” in Opheim, a rural town in the US state of Montana.
He had a few classmates before high school, but his last remaining classmate moved to Utah during freshman year. He took some classes alone and enrolled in several with the juniors during his senior year. The school said six students graduated last year and 12 are on track for next year.
Opheim High School.
Public school, church plant seeds of learning
As part of nearby Trinity Presbyterian Church’s adopt-a-school partnership with Townsend Street School, about 50 fifth-grade students from the public school are growing flowers and vegetables in eight raised planting beds and learning about science and nature from church volunteers in the garden and in their classrooms. Last fall, the class “put the garden to bed” by pulling vegetation and laying straw.
“A lot of these kids don’t have experience in tending anything, in watching something grow,” said Trudy Holyst, a church member and research chemist at the Blood Center of Wisconsin who goes into the two fifth-grade classrooms about twice a month to teach basic botany and scientific observation. “They’ve done a really good job. Almost all the seeds we started in the classroom have germinated.”
Assessing our children can only improve their education
Last week MPs on the education select committee jumped on what might well now be an unstoppable bandwagon and demanded an urgent rethink of the national curriculum tests in primary schools. Terrified by the prospect of a poor league table position, too many schools were, its members argued, force-feeding their pupils. Joy, spontaneity and creativity have been driven from the classroom. Something must be done, and now.
The fact that the problem might lie not with the tests, but with teachers who cannot accept the principle of accountability does not seem to have occurred to the committee. Neither did its members explain how problems in failing schools can be solved if we do not know which schools are failing.
At the moment, children are assessed by teachers in English and maths at seven and sit more formal tests in English, maths and science at 11. Two periods of testing in four years of primary education. What’s wrong, moreover, with some preparation for tests if the tests assess worthwhile skill and knowledge?
Cleveland Clinic’s Medical School To Offer Tuition-Free Education
The medical school run by the Cleveland Clinic will offer a tuition-free education, in the hope that a substantial reduction of post-graduation debt will encourage top students to enter academic medicine.
The medical profession has worried for years about how the high cost of a medical education — newly minted doctors owe nearly $140,000 on average — influences students’ career choices. One-third of medical students surveyed by the nonprofit Association of American Medical Colleges say debt influences their choice of specialization.
Cleveland Clinic announced that the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University is providing all its students with full tuition scholarships, beginning with this July’s incoming class. The college, established nearly five years ago, is dedicated to the training of physician scientists so that they, in turn, can further medical research and bring the most advanced medical treatment to the patient bedside.
“The average debt for students graduating from private U.S. medical students, such as the Lerner College of Medicine, is more than $150,000, making many graduates less likely to pursue careers in academic medicine,” said Delos M. “Toby” Cosgrove, MD, CEO and President of Cleveland Clinic. “By providing full tuition support, we want to ensure that debt does not hinder the ability of our graduates to pursue academic careers as physician scientists.”
America’s High School
At a time when the nation is faced with tough economic challenges at home and ever-increasing competition from abroad, it’s incredible that more is not being done about the poor performance of so many American high schools.
We can’t even keep the kids in school. A third of them drop out. Half of those who remain go on to graduate without the skills for college or a decent job. Someone please tell me how this is a good thing.
Mr. Wise is president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a policy and advocacy group committed to improving the high schools. The following lamentable passage is from his book, “Raising the Grade: How High School Reform Can Save Our Youth and Our Nation“:
DC Chancellor Dismisses 24 Principals
D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee has fired 24 principals, including 13 who headed schools deemed to be failing under the federal “No Child Left Behind Act,” officials confirmed yesterday.
Principals work on year-to-year agreements. About 15 to 20 principals are let go annually, according to the Council of School Officers, the principal’s union.
This year’s reshuffling has drawn heightened interest because it provides another window into Rhee’s still-new leadership of the school system. The personnel changes also have added urgency because of the federal mandate to make major changes in 26 schools that have failed to show adequate progress under “No Child Left Behind.”
We’ve tipped over, fellas
Like many in Madison’s Black community, I waited anxiously last week to get my hands on the report titled, The State of Black Madison 2008: Before the Tipping Point. Admittedly, I was a bit skeptical even before reading the report, because I believe we’ve tipped over and are now fighting to get back on our feet.
The report, which had been kept secret until its release last week, documents a number of issues which have for decades contributed to the economic and social digression of Madison’s Black community. The major issues examined in the report were criminal justice, economic well-being, education, health care, housing, and political influence.
I had hoped that the report, produced by six noted Black male leaders in Madison, would offer some solutions to this crisis or trumpet a call to action. But all I found were recommendations. For me, recommendations are like ideas: If they are never acted on, they just fade away or are brought up in conversations beginning with, “Remember when?”
Well, I’ve got a great starting point, and it’s spelled JOBS. One of the major problems facing ex-offenders is the inability to find a JOB. The road to economic well-being begins with a JOB. Affordable housing requires a well-paying JOB just to enter the housing market. Having a JOB lessens or corrects many of the issues cited in the report.
A Surgeon’s Path From Migrant Fields to Operating Room
At the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Alfredo Quiñones-Hinojosa has four positions. He is a neurosurgeon who teaches oncology and neurosurgery, directs a neurosurgery clinic and heads a laboratory studying brain tumors. He also performs nearly 250 brain operations a year. Twenty years ago, Dr. Quiñones-Hinojosa, now 40, was an illegal immigrant working in the vegetable fields of the Central Valley in California. He became a citizen in 1997 while at Harvard.
Waukesha Schools May End Junior Kindergarden
Gov. Jim Doyle on Friday let stand a provision in the state budget-repair bill that would force school systems by 2013 to expand their limited 4-year-old kindergarten programs to all eligible students or – as could be the case in Waukesha – end the programs.
The budget amendment is seen as a reprieve from state school Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster’s stricter interpretation this year.
Burmaster had told school systems in January that junior-kindergarten programs that were not offered to all 4-year-olds in a district would not be funded in 2008-’09.
Spokesman Patrick Gasper said the Department of Public Instruction knew of five districts other than Waukesha with programs that the change would affect, including large systems such as Kenosha Unified and Beloit.
The other districts are Monona Grove, Beaver Dam and Two Rivers.
Kenosha has been thinking of expanding its 4-K program, which was started about seven years ago in a fourth of its elementary schools through a special state-financed program, said Kathleen Barca, the district’s executive director of school leadership.
But Waukesha Superintendent David Schmidt said that even with the five-year phase-in, the new requirement made it unlikely that his district would be able to maintain a decades-old kindergarten-readiness offering for students identified as needing extra help.
The district educates about 100 students a year in its 4-K program.
Waukesha’s Executive Director of Business Services, Erik Kass, will assume a similar position in Madison this summer.
The science teacher: Memorial’s Ben Senson goes the extra mile to challenge and engage his students
With a meter stick in his hand, Ben Senson instructs his ninth-grade science students on how to calculate formulas for force using levers and fulcrums.
He sketches out an equation on the whiteboard, turns around, adjusts the meter stick on a spring scale and calls for a reading.
“Where do I put the weight for a third-class lever?” the Memorial High school [Map] teacher quizzes.
No one answers.
“Come on, man,” Senson cajoles. “We have to pre-read our labs so we know what we’re going to do. If you’re running short of time, make sure you get the spring scale reading. Do the math later.”
Grabbing their lab sheets and purple pens, the freshmen split into groups to complete the assignment for an Integrated Science Program.
“The equations are hard to remember,” Shannon Behling, 14, tells a classroom visitor. “It gets confusing.” But she sees the value of the assignment: “We may not use this stuff, but it gets your brain to think in a different way.”
Brown vs. Board of Education
A Law case in which, on May 17, 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that racial segregation in public schools violated the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which declares that no state may deny equal protection of the laws to any person within its jurisdiction. The decision declared that separate educational facilities were inherently unequal. Based on a series of Supreme Court cases argued between 1938 and 1950, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka completed the reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), which had permitted “separate but equal” public facilities. Strictly speaking, the 1954 decision was limited to the public schools, but it implied that segregation was not permissible in other public facilities.
May 17, 1954.
District Puts All the World in Classrooms
For nearly a decade, the lesson that the world is interconnected — call it Globalization 101 — has been bandied about as much in education as in economics, spurring a cottage industry of internationally themed schools, feel-good cultural exchanges, model United Nations clubs and heritage festivals.
But the high-performing Herricks school district here in Nassau County, whose student body is more than half Asian, is taking globalization to the graduate level, integrating international studies into every aspect of its curriculum.
A partnership with the Foreign Policy Association has transformed a high-school basement into a place where students produce research papers on North Korea’s nuclear energy program or the Taliban’s role in the opium trade. English teachers have culled reading lists of what they call “dead white men” (think Hawthorne and Hemingway) to make space for Jhumpa Lahiri, Chang-rae Lee and Khaled Hosseini. Gifted fifth graders learn comparative economics by charting the multinational production of a pencil and representing countries in a mock G8 summit.
Cyber Bully Charges
Scott Glover & PJ Huffstutter:
Invoking a criminal statute more commonly used to go after computer hackers or crooked government employees, federal prosecutors in Los Angeles on Thursday charged a Missouri mother with fraudulently creating a MySpace account and using it to “cyber-bully” a 13-year-old girl who later committed suicide.
The girl, Megan Meier, hanged herself in her upstairs bedroom two years ago, shortly after being jilted by an Internet suitor she thought was a 16-year-old boy. The case caused a national furor when it was alleged that the “boy” was actually Lori Drew, the mother of one of Megan’s former friends.
Odyssey Project Celebrates its Latest Graduates
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Odyssey Project held its fifth annual graduation ceremony for its 2007-2008 graduates on May 7. Family, friends, and loved ones gathered at the UW Memorial Union to celebrate the students’ accomplishments and the exciting journey that lies ahead of them.
“This is the beginning of a journey: for some, a journey to college, while others are returning to college,” said Odyssey Project Director Professor Emily Auerbach.
The Odyssey Project offers members of the Madison community an opportunity to begin a college education through an intensive, two-semester course. The program’s goal is to provide wider access to college for nontraditional and low-income students by offering a challenging classroom experience, individual support in writing, and assistance in applying for admission to college and for financial aid.
Auerbach said that the Langston Hughes poem “Still Here” embodies this remarkable class’s collective sentiment, after they had spent a year engaged in rigorous study while handling financial and family responsibilities that had previously made a college education seem little more than a dream deferred. “Sometimes you can make a way out of no way. If you open the door to education, you can change lives,” Auerbach said.
An End to Classroom Surfing
University of Chicago Law School:
The University of Chicago Law School has removed Internet access in most classrooms in order to ensure the value of the classroom experience.
With the implementation of wireless Internet access in Law School classrooms came better opportunities for students, who typically carry laptop computers, to be online during class—a common practice at institutions across the country, said Saul Levmore, Dean of the Law School.
“As soon as we discovered that we had the capacity turn off Internet access during class time, we felt that we ought to move in that direction. Our goal is to provide the best legal educational experience in the country, with students and faculty focused on the exchange of ideas in a thorough, engaging manner,” said Levmore, who noted that many students have expressed support of the decision to remove wireless access in classrooms, including second-year Law School student Peter Rock Ternes.
“What makes our Law School is our faculty,” Ternes said. “I think it makes sense to encourage focusing on them and on the classroom discussions.”
More at Freakonomics.
Locally, the Madison School Board will discuss “Modifications to Board Policy and Procedure 4403 concerning Student Possession and Use of Cell Phones and Other Electronic Devices” Monday evening, May 19, 2008.
Letters on: Improvements to New Orleans Schools
Letters regarding “Changes at New Orleans Schools Bring Gains in Test Scores“:
Re “Changes at New Orleans Schools Bring Gains in Test Scores” (news article, May 7):
We’re pleased to see that New Orleans schoolchildren are making academic gains, such as improving their scores on the latest Louisiana Educational Assessment Program.
As your article points out, post-Katrina schools have invested in reforms like intensifying tutorial and after-school programs. These reforms have long been promoted by the United Teachers of New Orleans.
But one should not get the impression that the higher scores are a direct result of importing new teachers to the city. We applaud the efforts of every teacher who has come to work in New Orleans schools. But some of our most successful schools, like Bethune Elementary and Sophie B. Wright, are those that employ the highest percentages of veteran teachers who are familiar with their students’ communities
Dot McDonald – A Rising Star
The sky is the limit for the Madison area senior who will be graduating from Madison West in June. Dot has been involved in just about everything possible at her school, and people have noticed. She was recently recognized by the Madison Metropolitan Links Inc. at the annual Student Recognition Program as a 2008 Links Scholarship recipient. She won the Project Excel Award at West High and the Jewel of the Community Award from the Ladies of Distinction for making a difference in the community. She’s involved with the Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth where she received a leadership award and also recently won the Joe Thomas Community Service Award for her extensive community involvement. “I do like to stay active,” Dot laughs.
Educational Romanticism: On Requiring Every Child to Be Above Average
This is the story of educational romanticism in elementary and secondary schools — its rise, its etiology, and, we have reason to hope, its approaching demise.
Educational romanticism consists of the belief that just about all children who are not doing well in school have the potential to do much better. Correlatively, educational romantics believe that the academic achievement of children is determined mainly by the opportunities they receive; that innate intellectual limits (if they exist at all) play a minor role; and that the current K-12 schools have huge room for improvement. Educational romanticism characterizes reformers of both Left and Right, though in different ways.
Educational romantics of the Left focus on race, class, and gender. It is children of color, children of poor parents, and girls whose performance is artificially depressed, and their academic achievement will blossom as soon as they are liberated from the racism, classism, and sexism embedded in American education. Those of the Right see public education as an ineffectual monopoly, and think that educational achievement will blossom when school choice liberates children from politically correct curricula and obdurate teachers’ unions.
Clusty Search on Charles Murray.
School Funding’s Tragic Flaw
Public education costs a lot of money — over $500 billion per year. Over the last century, there have been huge changes in where that money comes from and how it’s spent. In 1930, only 17 percent of school funding came from state sources, and virtually none came from the federal government. Today, the state / local / federal split is roughly 50/40/10 (individual states vary). People still say all the time that “most” school funding comes from local property taxes, but that hasn’t actually been true since the mid-1970s.
On the whole, this change has been of tremendous benefit to disadvantaged students. As states have assumed the primary role in funding education, they’ve tended to distribute money in ways that are, on the whole, more equitable. The same is true for federal funding, most of which is spent on behalf of poor students and students with disabilities. (This works because taxpayers have a weird psychological relationship with their tax dollars. Rationally, people should view every dollar they pay in taxes and receive in services as equal, regardless of the basis of taxation or the source of the services. But they don’t. People feel very strongly that locally-generated property taxes should be spent locally, while they feel less ownership over state taxes and even less over federal dollars. As a result, they’ll tear their hair out if you propose transferring 10 percent of their local property tax dollars to a low-income district across the state, but they’re far more sanguine if you propose a state school funding formula with precisely the same net result in terms of the taxes they pay and the dollars their local school district receives. It doesn’t make sense, but that’s okay, because this irrational jurisdiction-dependent selflessness is what allows for the redistributionist school funding policies that poor students depend on to get a decent education.)
Madison’s revenue sources are a bit different than Carey’s example: 65.1% from local property taxes, 17.2% redistributed state taxes and the rest from grants, contributions and other sources.
Related links:
- K-12 Tax & Spending Climate
- The Wisconsin Department of Revenue noted recently that Wisconsin state tax collections are up 2.3% year to date [136K PDF].
- Madison’s general fund spending will increase about 4.53% for the 2008/2009 school year (this will change when the final budget is adopted in the fall).
- Wisconsin’s structural deficit = $1,700,000,000.
- Madison’s K-12 spending history, from 1995 ($217,110,831) to 2008 ($367,806,712) can be found here.
Finally, Patrick McIlheran notes that Wisconsin’s tax burden continues to rise:
Wisconsin’s entwined state and local governments taxed a sum equal to 12.3% of Wisconsinites’ income last year. That was up from 12.2% the year before and 12.1% the year before that. This biennium, the state is spending 10.5% more than last. Ever, the numbers rise.
They rise because the state’s costs do. But taxpayers, too, pay more for gasoline, food, power and practically everything else. Times are tough. You’d think the least government could do would be to avoid piling on.
Prince William Schools Join to Design Regional Science/Technology Magnet
Prince William County, after years of longing, may finally get a selective magnet school to serve as a mini-rival to Fairfax County’s prestigious Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology.
The Prince William, Manassas and Manassas Park school systems recently won a $100,000 state grant to design a regional “governor’s school” that would open by fall 2010 and specialize in math, science and technology.
The yet-unnamed school, which would have rigorous admissions requirements, would differ in key respects from Thomas Jefferson, a full-day governor’s school in the Alexandria section of Fairfax that draws students from across Northern Virginia. Students would still attend neighborhood schools, traveling to the new magnet campus only for high-level classes.
Pennsylvania Charter Schools Growth
More than a decade after charter schools became legal in Pennsylvania, it is safe to say the schools, once considered experimental and still sometimes controversial, are here to stay.
About 64,000 students are enrolled in 126 charter schools statewide, and about 20,000 are on charter school waiting lists, according to the Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools.
Nearly half of the schools are in Philadelphia. But parents of Western Pennsylvania students — including 2,355 children living in Pittsburgh — also have chosen charter schools, which can be bricks-and-mortar buildings or cyber schools.
Their staying power will be in evident this week as the Pennsylvania Coalition of Charter Schools, a statewide advocacy and support organization, conducts its state convention at the Pittsburgh Marriott City Center, Uptown. The meeting, which began yesterday, runs through tomorrow and is expected to attract more than 1,000 people.
Madison West Rocketry Club Travels to the Team America Rocketry Challenge
The scores are in, and all the hard work has paid off for the 100 finalists for the Team America Rocketry Challenge. Those teams will face one another during the exciting final fly-off on Saturday, May 17 in The Plains, Va. for the title of national TARC champion. After a full day of launches, held at the Great Meadows facility, the winners will be crowned and $60,000 in scholarships will be divided up among the top finishers.
11 Madison-area students win at National History Day
We are proud to announce the national finalists and alternates for the 2008 Wisconsin History Day State Event held on May 3, 2008. The national finalists represented Wisconsin at the national contest June 15-19, 2008 at the University of Maryland – College Park.
The first and second alternate in each category are offered the opportunity to attend the national contest in the event that the finalist entry is unable to attend.
Each finalist designs their entry to reflect the annual theme. The entries below reflect the annual theme for 2008: Conflict and Compromise in History.
This year’s local winners: Amanda Snodgrass (Mount Horeb High School), Joanna Weng (Velma Hamilton Middle School), and Alexandra Cohn and David Aeschlimann (Madison West High School). The following students from Eagle School were also winners: Hannah O’Dea, Carolyn Raihala, Sophie Gerdes, Sonia Urquidi, Nate Smith, Jeffrey Zhao and Eli Fessler.
Via the Capital Times.
Some Rich Students ‘Merit’ Financial Aid
Although college tuition prices are at an all-time high, colleges are, on average, issuing stingier financial aid packages this year, say counselors who’ve been helping families with their college finances.
Counselors who have examined awards from many colleges say that only a few dozen extremely generous schools are making sure that every student who needs financial help gets enough scholarships to attend. Meanwhile, a growing number of schools and states are awarding scholarships to students from wealthy families. Some of the wealthy students are receiving “merit” awards because of their top grades or test scores, but counselors say they are increasingly seeing run-of-the-mill but wealthy students receive “merit” awards, too. Meanwhile, the vast majority of low- and middle-income students are receiving far less aid than they need.
The Haskins Literacy Initiative
First of all, what exactly is this Haskins Literacy Initiative?
Haskins Literacy Initiative promotes the science of teaching reading in three main ways.First, we provide comprehensive professional development, coaching and classroom support to make teachers masters of effective literacy practices. Teachers, not programs, teach children to read.By becoming informed consumers about the myths and realities of teaching reading, teachers can become “method-proof,” knowing what to teach which child when.
Second, we conduct field research about how knowledge and practice impacts student reading achievement.
Our parent, Haskins Laboratories, has conducted more basic reading research for over 40 years.Finally, we engage in advocacy to inform public policy to improve reading achievement for every child.
Waukesha begins looking at an operating referendum
District officials blame the financial troubles on the discrepancy between what they can raise under revenue caps, which increase roughly 2% a year, and expenditures that grow about 4% a year.
A $4.9 million annual addition to the district’s operating revenue that was approved by voters in an April 2001 referendum gave the district only a few years free from cutting programs and services. Another referendum attempt in April 2005 that would have raised taxes to help avoid further staff reductions failed by a substantial margin.
Board member Patrick McCaffery warned that the board risked another referendum setback if it proceeds without searching for additional efficiencies, including closing a school and realigning attendance boundaries
Waukesha’s Executive Director of Business Services, Erik Kass will soon join the Madison School District in a similar capacity. K-12 Tax & Spending Climate.
YES, A New Approach for the Inner City
Nidya Baez, Douglas Cruickshank:
Reinventing our schools with a greater emphasis on student needs and community engagement is, I believe, one of the most broadly beneficial ways to apply the “think globally, act locally” philosophy. Indeed, many students, parents, teachers, administrators and education experts would probably agree that our education system must be radically retooled to increase its relevance and effectiveness in ways that enable all individuals to prosper in what’s already shaping up to be an extremely challenging century.
That was what I and some of my fellow high school students were thinking in 2002, even if we didn’t express it in quite those words. Nonetheless, by 2003 we’d helped develop an Oakland high school called YES (Youth Empowerment School), part of the city’s Small Schools Initiative. Last year, I graduated from UC Berkeley. I’m now working as a substitute teacher and language tutor, and I’ve recently interviewed for a fall 2008 faculty position at YES.
In 2002, and today, Oakland’s students and its schools were coping with problems endemic to education in big cities across the United States.
Psychiatric Help 5c
Will Fitzhugh
The Concord Review
15 May 2008
In Peanuts, when we see Lucy offering Psychiatric Help for a nickel, we know it is a joke: (“The Psychiatrist is IN”), but when English teachers in the schools insist that students write about the most intimate details of their private lives for school assignments, that is not a joke, it is an unwarranted intrusion.
There are a couple of major problems with the “personal writing” that has taken over so many of the writing assignments for the English classes in our schools.
First, the teachers are asking students to share information about their personal lives that is none of the teachers’ business. The vast majority of English teachers are not qualified as psychologists, much less as psychiatrists, and they should not pretend that they are.
Second, the time spent by students writing assignments for their teachers in their personal diaries is subtracted from time they need to spend learning how to do the academic expository writing they will need to be able to do when they leave school, for college and for work.
I will leave it to others to explain why English teachers have gone down this road in so many of our schools. I have written a number of articles about Creative Nonfiction and Contentless Writing, and the like, to try to encourage some attention to the retreat (or flight) from academic writing in our schools.
Foundation for Madison Public Schools Celebrates Carol Carstensen’s School Board Tenure
More than 100 friends, colleagues, family members and parents showed up at a farewell party Wednesday at Olbrich Gardens to say goodbye and thank you to Carol Carstensen, who served six terms on the Madison School Board and stepped down after the spring elections.
“There will never be another Carol Carstensen. I will predict that,” said School Board member Johnny Winston Jr. “There will never be another School Board member in this community that will serve 18 years. I miss her already.”
Winston called it a wonderful experience to work with Carstensen.
“She really not only knew the material and had a grasp of the issues going on, but she also had her pulse on the community as well,” he said.
Former board member Nan Brien, who served with Carstensen in the early 1990s, said that for 18 years Carstensen was the spokesperson on the board for all the kids in the district.
“She was particularly adamant that all kids, no matter their background, have an opportunity for the best education. That is the heart and soul of who Carol Carstensen is,” Brien said.
Carol reflects on her tenure, including three accomplishments she takes personal pride in: Wright Middle School, renaming 5 middle schools to reflect the diversity of our community and establishment of the Joe Thomas award.
Much more on Carol Carstensen here. Watch a brief video interview with Carol during her most recent campaign.
More on the Foundation for Madison Public Schools here. John Taylor’s 2003 challenge grants energized the formation of FMPS.
A One Page Reaction to “Check the Facts: Few States Set World-Class Standards”
In their scheme of things, Peterson and Hess1 used the NAEP scale to designate three states – Massachusetts, South Carolina and Missouri – as having “world class standards.” In the process, they classified my state – Idaho – among a group of 12 states that have pitched their expectation far below the other states. So what?
There is no reason to expect that setting a “world-class standard” will cause “world-class achievement.” Indeed, a recently released research study using the NAEP scale and state standards and achievement scores found little relationship between the rigor of a state’s standard and the overall achievement of its students.2
What happens when the overall reading and mathematics achievement in grades 4 and 8 on NAEP 2007 in the three Peterson and Hess “world-class standards” states is compared to the overall achievement in one of their “low expectation” states such as Idaho? Zero correlation! This is clearly illustrated in the following table: 
“Proficient” has several meanings. It is important to understand clearly that the [NAEP] Proficient achievement level does not refer to “at grade” performance. Nor is performance at the Proficient level synonymous with “proficiency” in the subject. That is, students who may be considered proficient in a subject, given the common usage of the term, might not satisfy the requirements for performance at the NAEP achievement level.3
1 Peterson, P.E., and Hess, F.M. (2008, Summer). Check the facts: Few states set world-class standards. Education Next, 8(3). Retrieved May 13, 2008, from http://www.hoover.org/publications/ednext/18845034.html
2 McLaughlin, D.H., Bandeira de Mello, V., Blankenship, C., Chaney, K., Esra, P., Hikawa, H., Rojas, D., William, P., and Wolman, M. (2008). Comparison Between NAEP and State Reading Assessment Results: 2003 (NCES 2008-474). National for Education Statistics, Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, DC. Retrieved May 13, 2008, from http://nces.ed.gov/pubsearch/pubsinfo.asp?pubid=2008474
3 Loomis, S.C., and Bourque, M.L. (Eds.) (2001). National Assessment of Educational Progress achievement levels 1992-1998 for reading. National Assessment Governing Board, U.S. Department of Education. Washington, D.C. Retrieved May 13, 2008, from http://www.nagb.org/pubs/readingbook.pdf
58K PDF
Teach For America’s Growth
Teach for America, the program that recruits top college graduates to teach for two years in public schools that are difficult to staff, has experienced a year of prodigious growth and will place 3,700 new teachers this fall, up from 2,900 last year, a 28 percent increase.
That growth was outpaced, however, by a surge in applications from college seniors. About 24,700 applied this spring to be teachers, up from 18,000 last year, a 37 percent increase, according to figures released by the organization on Wednesday.
The nonprofit program sent its first 500 recruits into American public school classrooms in 1990. It has a large recruiting staff that visits campuses, contacting top prospects and recruiting aggressively. Founded by a Princeton graduate, it has always carefully sifted through applicants’ grade-point averages and other data in recruiting. But with the numbers of applicants increasing faster than the number of teachers placed, it was even more selective this year than before, the organization said.
Wisconsin’s Structural Deficit: $1,700,000,000
State government faces a long-term imbalance between spending commitments and tax collections of almost $1.7 billion – even if the budget-repair bill that passed the Senate on Tuesday becomes law.
That figure is $800 million more than last fall, when the budget was adopted.
The Legislative Fiscal Bureau blamed the higher long-term deficit on the sluggish economy, because tax collections are expected to grow by only 2% – less than half the 5.5% annual growth in the past. Every 1% lag in tax collections means state government collects $130 million less in taxes.
Fiscal Bureau Director Bob Lang gave legislators the $1.7 billion estimate of the so-called “structural deficit,” which is the projected shortfall Gov. Jim Doyle and legislators face next year when they must pass the 2009-’11 budget.
Assistant LA Superintendent Sounds Off
Mitchell Landsberg interviews Ramon Cortines:
“I’ve tackled some of the sacred cows in my recommendations, such as the issues of contracts, how much money we could receive from that. Such as the issue of health benefits, and how much money we could receive by capping that. And increasing the co-pay.”
Cortines was at times unsparing of LAUSD’s failures, saying that the district is organized for the benefit of the adults who work there, not the children they are hired to serve. He said the school board passes too many resolutions that “aren’t worth the paper [they’re] printed on.” And he said the district had “abdicated our responsibility” for Locke High School, which is about to be turned over to Green Dot Public Schools, the big charter operator. Students didn’t get a pass, though: He said the district needs to enforce “a code of behavior” based on the idea that they don’t just have rights — they also have responsibilities.
Clusty Search: Ramon Cortines.
Hawaii lawmakers push keiki education
With milestone legislation poised for passage, Hawai’i is expected to join a growing list of states that have established some form of an early childhood education system.
State lawmakers said last week they are likely to pass the “Keiki First Steps” legislation — Senate Bill 2878 — which would set aside at least $250,000 to establish a state council on early learning. The council is intended to be the governing body of what is likely to become Hawai’i’s public-private early education system.
The system would be a private-public partnership, with services offered by existing and new childcare or preschool facilities.
The state eventually would make money available to the private schools to use for kids age 3 to 4. As a condition of taking the money, a school would have to agree to meet state standards.
Legal Advocacy and Education Reform: Litigating School Exclusion
School exclusion has existed as a dark side of public education since the creation of America’s public schools. Several cases in the United States Supreme Court memorably invalidated State and school system efforts to deny equal educational opportunities to marginalized school children and youth. In these cases, the over-riding multiple values of education were poignantly articulated in the majority decisions.
School exclusion has stubbornly persisted. It takes many forms. This article surveys the most prominent pathways to school exclusion, highlighting what has been called the “School-To-Prison-Pipeline.” Various legal challenges are also evaluated. The pros and cons of litigating school exclusion cases are also assessed.
Commentary on: Should Student Results Count in Grading Teachers?
Followup on Student Test and Teacher Grades:
I am a retired elementary school principal from Long Island, N.Y. I was also a teacher, counselor and school psychologist during my 39 years in public education.
It was, to say the least, appalling to learn in John Merrow’s “Student Tests — and Teacher Grades” (op-ed, May 9) that teachers’ unions prevailed, at least in New York state, in eliminating the quality of student performance in determining a teacher’s tenure. Besides violating common sense, it is counter to most other evaluations. For instance, aren’t coaches in any sport evaluated by the performance of their respective charges, be they teams or individuals?
In my estimation, the evaluation of a teacher’s performance for tenure consideration at K-12 level should be based primarily on that teacher’s students performance, i.e., results, just as we judge the quality of performance in many other activities, be it sports, sales, etc.
Leon W. Zelby
Norman, Okla.
Blame the teachers and the unions — how often do we have to hear the same old tired arguments as to why the American educational system is failing?
I taught music for 20 years in both public and private schools, and there have always been good students and bad students.
Sorry, parents — when your kids don’t do well in school, it is usually due to lack of discipline at home. Parents who acquiesce to the whims of a child, refuse to impose rules, and blame the teacher are begging for their child to fail. Through the years, I watched as good teachers left the profession in disgust. For all their hard work, the pay is still low, administrators and parents still lack respect, and when something goes wrong, well, we still blame the teacher.
Matching Newcomer to College, While Both Pay
When Xiaoxi Li, a 20-year-old from Beijing, decided she should go to college in the United States, she applied only to Ohio University — not that she knew much about it.
“I heard of Ohio, of course,” Ms. Li said. “I knew it was in the middle, and has agriculture.””
What brought her here was the recommendation of a Chinese recruiting agent, JJL Overseas Education Consulting and Service Company. For about $3,000, JJL helped Ms. Li choose a college, complete the application and prepare for the all-important visa interview.
“Everyone I know used an agent,”” she said. “They are professionals. They suggested Ohio University might be the best for me. They have a good relationship with Ohio University.”
Actually, JJL has more than a good relationship with Ohio University. Unknown to Ms. Li, it has a contract, under which the agent gets a $1,000 commission for each undergraduate it sends.
Who will teach our children?
I teach people who want to become public school teachers. Although the needs of our children and schools have never been greater, the number of people going into teaching has dropped by 23 percent between fiscal 2001-02 and 2004-05, according to the Center for the Future of Teaching and Learning. California has about 300,000 teachers, half of whom are over 45 years of age. We need approximately 10,000 new teachers each year. But as our teachers age and get closer to retirement, and younger teachers enter the profession in increasingly smaller numbers, who will teach our children?
I have been a teacher educator for 11 years, and I teach in a high-quality program, but there are at least four critical reasons why we are not attracting enough teachers to California’s public schools.
Football, Dartmouth and a Third Grade Teacher
Williams, 53, is not just any retired player. He has been a shining light of the N.F.L., his name even floated around when the commissionership was open a couple of years ago. And he won awards for citizenship and sportsmanship while playing in two Super Bowls.
Before the 1982 Super Bowl near Detroit, not far from his childhood home in Flint, Mich., he told reporters how he had been underachieving in the third grade until his teacher, Geraldine Chapel, sent him off for tests that proved he was quite smart but hard of hearing. The hearing improved, and so did his self-image and his schoolwork.
Williams majored in psychology at Dartmouth and was all-Ivy linebacker for three years as well as an Ivy heavyweight wrestling champion. Undersized at 6 feet and 228 pounds, Williams merged his intelligence and his outsider’s drive to make the Bengals.
Leapold Elementary’s Population Again Rises to the Top
Dozens of parents and staff members attended Monday night’s Madison Metropolitan School District’s Board of Education meeting to shed new light on an old problem: overcrowding at a local elementary school.
The issue of overcrowding at Aldo Leopold Elementary School is prompting some parents and teachers to tell the board solutions they’d like to see to relieve the problem.
Some said that the obvious solution would be to build a new Leopold Elementary or perhaps to adjust the school’s boundaries. The group presenting the board with the findings of a parent-teacher survey about the challenges at the school, WISC-TV reported.
The school is at 99 percent attendance with 718 students and can only handle eight more students, officials said.
Monday evening’s Board meeting included a brief discussion of a much larger Leapold School – perhaps similar to the failed 2005 referendum that would have created a building suitable for 1100+students.
American man jailed after daughter fails exam
A father who was ordered by a judge to keep a close eye on his daughter’s education has been jailed for six months after she failed a maths exam.
Brian Gegner, of Fairfield, Ohio, was sentenced to 180 days in prison for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor”.
His daughter, Brittany, now 18, had a history of school truancy and a judge warned her father to make sure she passed her General Educational Development tests.
Her family said that she passed four of the five parts, except for maths which she has failed several times
Immunization Rates Falling, CDC Says
Fewer children in the United States are getting the immunizations they need, putting themselves and others at much greater risk of contracting and spreading vaccine-preventable diseases, new research from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests.
Moms team up to battle influence of gangs: ‘We didn’t raise our kids this way’
It’s what everyone wants to know after a gang member terrorizes a neighborhood: Where are the parents?
For the last several months, at least some of them have been meeting in a South Side church basement to pray and cry and face a deep shame: They are mothers of the gang-bangers on the corners. Or they fear their child is about to join a gang.
Many are also single parents, struggling to pay bills. They work 16 hours a day, and every time they hear a gunshot, they worry their child has been shot or has shot someone else’s child. Some chase after their kids at 2 a.m.; others have stood in defiance when they won’t leave a corner.
And yes, they wonder what they did wrong.
Pair Break Barriers for Charter Schools
They won a legal battle to force Maryland to increase public funding for charter schools more than 60 percent. They opened two charter schools in Prince George’s County and befriended the superintendent there even though the county had a reputation as hostile to the charter movement. They run one of the largest charter school networks in the country.
Yet Dennis and Eileen Bakke remain relatively unknown in local education circles.
Dennis, 62, and Eileen, 55, live in Arlington County. He knows business; she is into education. Few people guess, and the Bakkes never volunteer, what an impact they have had on education in the region and beyond. Their Imagine Schools organization, based in Arlington, oversees 51 schools (four in the Washington area) with 25,000 students. By fall, it plans to have 75 schools with 38,000 students.
Jason Botel, who directs KIPP charter schools in Baltimore, is one educator who knows what the Bakkes have accomplished. “Their funding of advocacy efforts has helped make sure that . . . charter schools like ours can provide a great education for children in Maryland,” he said.
Imagine Schools’ report card.
Push Continues for the Wisconsin Covenant
Wisconsin’s Lieutenant Governor is traveling the state, urging eighth graders to sign up for the Wisconsin Covenant. The program seeks to get kids into higher education.
In Rhinelander, Lt. Governor Barbara Lawton told students education is necessary to have good job prospects. She says every student should have some form of post-high school education if they want to have a family supporting job.
Enrollment for current 8th graders is now open!
Students who want to sign the Wisconsin Covenant Pledge must do so by September 30th of their freshman year.
To join online, click here.
Start school early and we can help poor kids
In Milwaukee, one out of three school-aged children lives in poverty. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Milwaukee ranks sixth highest in the nation. Many of these children do not have access to quality education at an early age, which gives them a disadvantage when entering school. It also affects their academic achievement, odds of graduating and potential for earning a family-sustaining wage as adults.
In other words, early childhood literacy is crucial to breaking the cycle of poverty.
Research shows that successful programs don’t teach just children. Academic performance improves when parents are involved. This might seem obvious, or even easy. But, for the single mother of three working two jobs, it’s anything but easy. It’s much harder to help with homework when you’re focused on getting food on the table.
For the past four years, the Fleck Foundation has supported United Way’s early childhood education initiative because the programs it funds require parents to be involved. We know that this key component leads to success. As a result, each year we challenge the community to support the initiative by matching donations dollar-for-dollar that are designated to address early childhood literacy. Our hope is to stimulate growth in donations and increase attention to this important issue.
One program in particular, Home Instruction for Parents of Preschool Youngsters or HIPPY, conducted by COA Youth and Family Centers, sends “coaches” to the homes of low-income families. The coaches show parents how to teach their children through reading.
The results speak for themselves.
Gang Activity in Suburbs Acknowledged
Two weeks before the fatal shooting of a Franklin teenager in what appears to be a gang-related fight, Nashville police gave gang awareness training to Williamson County school faculty.
The school officials’ request in March for the training suggests a willingness to acknowledge, although not yet publicly, what they and local law enforcement had long been reluctant to admit:
Gangs exist in suburbia.
“Gangs have always been here, probably much longer than the Police Department was aware or recognized,” said Sgt. Charles Warner, a detective with the Franklin Police Department. “We’ve started to see a slow increase. By no means is there an epidemic.”
Several smaller communities outside of Nashville have seen an increase over the past few years in gang presence and gang-related crime. Local police departments attribute gangs’ migration to growth — and to Metro’s aggressive police crackdown on street gangs in Nashville, which pushes criminal activity to outlying cities.
Educating the Community on Gangs in Madison.
Check the Facts: Few States Set World-Class Standards
Summer 2008 (vol. 8, no. 3) Table of Contents CHECK THE FACTS: Few States Set World-Class Standards
In fact, most render the notion of proficiency meaningless
Paul E. Peterson and Frederick M. Hess:
As the debate over the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind (NCLB) makes its murky way through the political swamp, one thing has become crystal clear: Though NCLB requires that virtually all children become proficient by the year 2014, states disagree on the level of accomplishment in math and reading a proficient child should possess. A few states have been setting world-class standards, but most are well off that mark—in some cases to a laughable degree.
In this report, we use 2007 test-score information to evaluate the rigor of each state’s proficiency standards against the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), an achievement measure that is recognized nationally and has international credibility as well. The analysis extends previous work (see “Johnny Can Read…in Some States,” features, Summer 2005, and “Keeping an Eye on State Standards,” features, Summer 2006) that used 2003 and 2005 test-score data and finds in the new data a noticeable decline, especially at the 8th-grade level. In Figure 1, we rank the rigor of state proficiency standards using the same A to F scale teachers use to grade students. Those that receive an A have the toughest definitions of student proficiency, while those with an F have the least rigorous.
Measuring Standards
That states vary widely in their definitions of student proficiency seems little short of bizarre. Agreement on what constitutes “proficiency” would seem the essential starting point: if students are to know what is expected of them, teachers are to know what to teach, and parents are to have a measuring stick for their schools. In the absence of such agreement, it is impossible to determine how student achievement stacks up across states and countries.
One national metric for performance does exist, the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The NAEP is a series of tests administered under the auspices of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Known as the Nation’s Report Card, the NAEP tests measure proficiency in reading and math among 4th and 8th graders nationwide as well as in every state. The NAEP sets its proficiency standard through a well-established, if complex, technical process. Basically, it asks informed experts to judge the difficulty of each of the items in its test bank. The experts’ handiwork received a pat on the back recently when the American Institutes for Research (AIR) showed that NAEP’s definition of “proficiency” was very similar to the standard used by designers of international tests of student achievement. Proficiency has acquired roughly the same meaning in Europe and Asia, and in the United States—as long as the NAEP standard is employed.
No Child Left Behind Lacks Bite: Worst-Performing Schools Rarely Adopt Radical Remedies
Critics of the federal No Child Left Behind law, including Democratic presidential candidates vowing to overhaul or end it, have often accused it of being too harsh. It punishes weak schools instead of supporting them, as Sen. Barack Obama puts it.
But when it comes to the worst-performing schools, the 2001 law hasn’t shown much bite. The more-radical restructuring remedies put forth by the law have rarely been adopted by these schools, many of which aren’t doing much to address their problems, according to a federal study last year.
The troubles in the restructuring arena reflect broader questions about whether NCLB is a strong enough tool to bring about the overhaul of American education. In many ways, the law was an outgrowth of “A Nation at Risk,” a pivotal 1983 federal report that warned that a “rising tide of mediocrity” in education could undermine the nation’s competitiveness. That report ushered in the era of accountability and testing, which eventually spawned NCLB.
Supporters maintain the law is helping to fuel learning gains. In the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress tests, reading and math scores for fourth and eighth graders rose compared to 2005, albeit only by a few points.
But NCLB gave states — not the federal government — authority to set the academic standards for local schools. And so, while NCLB requires all students to be proficient in reading and math by 2014, states determine what proficiency is and how they will test for it. A 2007 federal study found states don’t exactly agree on proficiency.
Related: Commentary on Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction Standards. DPI Website.
Folks, We’ve Reached an Awkward Age
Things that are ” awk-ward,” according to a group of University of Maryland students hanging out on the campus quad:
1. Elevators.
2. That guy in the dorm who is so tall that he sees over shower stalls without even trying.
3. Having dinner with your new girlfriend when your ex-girlfriend and her new girlfriend show up at the same restaurant (you, in this instance, are a he).
4. Vegetarian chopped liver, which looks like the most “feces-like food ever,” and which what’s-his-name was eating in public for Passover.
5. Curry.
When any of these are encountered, the appropriate reaction is to say, loudly and in falsetto, awk-ward
Young Workers Flee Midwestern States
Upper Midwestern states are in danger of losing a precious economic commodity: young people. Many are leaving for other parts of the country after finishing school. Without young, educated workers, there’s little incentive for businesses to locate in economically hard-hit states.
audio.
No Small Plan: Public Boarding Schools for Chicago
Carlos Sadovi and Stephanie Banchero, via a kind reader’s email:
Public boarding schools where homeless children and those from troubled homes could find the safety and stability to learn are being pursued by Chicago Public Schools officials.
Under the plan, still in the nascent stages, the first pilot residential program could open as soon as fall 2009. District officials hope to launch as many as six such schools in the following years, including at least one that would operate as a year-round school.
The proposal puts Chicago at the forefront of urban school reform, as cities struggle to raise the academic achievement of students hampered by dysfunctional homes and other obstacles outside school.
Some districts, including Chicago, have looked for solutions from small schools to single-sex campuses. But residential schools are a bolder — and far more expensive — proposition. Long an option for the affluent, boarding schools are virtually unheard of for the disadvantaged.
Chicago Public Schools chief Arne Duncan said he does not want to be in the “parenting” business, but he worries that some homes and some neighborhoods are unsafe, making education an afterthought.
“Some children should not go home at night; some of them we need 24-7,” he told the Tribune. “We want to serve children who are really not getting enough structure at home. There’s a certain point where dad is in jail or has disappeared and mom is on crack … where there isn’t a stable grandmother, that child is being raised by the streets.”
Chicago school officials are still working through details of the plan, and it’s not clear whether the schools would be run by the district, outside agencies or some combination of the two.
It’s also not certain how the schools would be funded, who would shoulder the liability of keeping students overnight or how students would be selected.
In April, as part of its Renaissance 2010 new schools program, the district will put out a formal request for boarding school proposals. Officials have already met with interested groups in Chicago.
Officials have also visited several public and private boarding schools across the country and asked some to submit proposals.
Duncan said he has dreamed for years about opening boarding schools, but only last year, when he hired Josh Edelman, son of Children’s Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman, did the idea take off.
Take That AP Test or Flunk
J. David Goodman’s story in the New York Times last week about the new Advanced Placement policy at two high schools in New Jersey at first made me cringe.
His lead paragraph read: “Students enrolled in Advanced Placement classes at two schools in the Northern Valley Regional High School District in Bergen County are now required to take the AP exams this month — or receive a failing grade in the courses under a new school policy being questioned by some parents and students.”
Take the AP exam or you flunk the course? It seemed un-American. U.S. high schools are famously forgiving of students who don’t want to subject themselves to the three-hour college level exams at the end of AP courses. Most leave it up to the student. Some remove the AP designation on their transcript if they don’t take the exam. In a few areas, such as Northern Virginia, the schools require that all AP students take the AP exams in May, but if they decide at the last minute to spend those lovely days at the beach, the only penalty is they don’t get the extra grade-point credit for taking an advanced course. To a senior who has already been admitted to college by May, that has no more sting than a disappointed look from his mother.
A Look at LA’s Small Learning Communities
Like many large districts throughout the nation, L.A. Unified has been trying to increase the number of smaller learning communities, hoping that personalized instruction would boost student achievement and offer an alternative to charter schools, including the five Green Dot campuses near Jefferson.
The academy, one of four Los Angeles Unified campuses that opened almost two years ago, is partially funded through the New Tech Foundation, a Napa, Calif.-based nonprofit that supports 35 schools throughout the country. Two of the others, Arleta High School of Science, Math and Related Technologies and the Los Angeles High School for Global Studies, have increased their test scores dramatically. However, at Jordan New Tech High School, the API score was 25 points lower than that on the regular Jordan High campus.
Unlike charters, which are publicly funded but are not regulated by L.A. Unified, New Tech schools are run by district administrators. “We’re under a lot of pressure: pressure from parents, pressure from the public, to find results that work,” said Monica Garcia, president of the Los Angeles Board of Education, adding that New Tech “clearly works.”
Raikes to Take the Gates Foundation’s Reigns
AP:
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation says Microsoft Corp. executive Jeff Raikes will be its next CEO.
The world’s largest charitable foundation has been looking for a new leader since chief executive Patty Stonesifer announced in February that she would be stepping down.
Raikes has been the top executive in Microsoft’s business software division, responsible for such things as the Office software suite, Microsoft’s server software and applications that help businesses track customers and business processes.
Clusty Search: Jeff Raikes.
The Gates Foundation initially supported the Small Learning Community High School approach. Clusty on Small Learning Communities.
The Economist:
CONGRATULATIONS, Jeff Raikes, on your great new job as chief executive of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. And good luck: you will certainly need it.
Unlike most other foundation CEO jobs, this is unlikely to be a comfortable pre-retirement sinecure. The Gates Foundation is by far the biggest charitable organisation in the world, and growing quickly. Next year, it is expected give away at least $3 billion, up from barely $1 billion a couple of years ago. Some insiders expect that number to rise as high as $6 billion in the near future.
Philadelphia safe-schools advocate say the lack of discipline violates the law
Philadelphia public schools are unsafe places where students who commit violent crimes are rarely punished and rehabilitated and with a disciplinary system that is “dysfunctional and unjust,” according to a report by the district’s safe-schools advocate.
In a blistering 72-page document obtained by The Inquirer, Jack Stollsteimer describes a district where students who assault teachers or come to school with guns are not removed from classrooms, a violation of federal and state law.
School crime, he says, has been historically underreported, victims do not receive proper rights, and the increasing violence against teachers and employees is not taken seriously.
Prompted by questions from The Inquirer and two months after receiving Stollsteimer’s report – which he is required by law to complete – the state blasted the safe-schools advocate’s document and said it would release its own version next week.
“The draft report has serious problems – some of the data analysis is inaccurate, the legal analysis is flawed. We are releasing the official report on Monday,” said Sheila Ballen, a spokeswoman for the Pennsylvania Department of Education.
Some of California’s most gifted students are being ignored, advocates say
If you reviewed Dalton Sargent’s report cards, you’d know only half his story. The 15-year-old Altadena junior has lousy grades in many subjects. He has blown off assignments and been dissatisfied with many of his teachers. It would be accurate to call him a problematic student. But he is also gifted.
Dalton is among the sizable number of highly intelligent or talented children in the nation’s classrooms who find little in the standard curriculum to rouse their interest and who often fall by the wayside.
With schools under intense pressure from state and federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind to raise test scores of low-achieving pupils, the educational needs of gifted students — who usually perform well on standardized tests — too often are ignored, advocates say.
Nationally, about 3 million kindergarten through 12th-grade students are identified as gifted, but 80% of them do not receive specialized instruction, experts say. Studies have found that 5% to 20% of students who drop out are gifted.
There is no federal law mandating special programs for gifted children, though many educators argue that these students — whose curiosity and creativity often coexist with emotional and social problems — deserve the same status as those with special needs. Services for gifted students vary from state to state. In California, about 512,000 students are enrolled in the Gifted and Talented Education program, which aims to provide specialized and accelerated instruction.
Linda Scholl @ Wisconsin Center for Education Research: SCALE Case Study: Evolution of K-8 Science Instructional Guidance in Madison Metropolitan School District [PDF report]
In addition, by instituting a standards-based report card system K-8, the department has increased accountability for teaching to the standards.
The Department is struggling, however, to sharpen its efforts to reduce the achievement gap. While progress has been made in third grade reading, significant gaps are still evident in other subject areas, including math and science. Educational equity issues within the school district are the source of much public controversy, with a relatively small but vocal parent community that is advocating for directing greater resources toward meeting the needs of high achieving students. This has slowed efforts to implement strong academic equity initiatives, particularly at the middle and early high school levels. Nonetheless, T&L content areas specialists continue working with teachers to provide a rigorous curriculum and to differentiate instruction for all students. In that context, the new high school biology initiative represents a significant effort to raise the achievement of students of color and economic disadvantage.
WCER’s tight relationship with the Madison School District has been the source of some controversy.
Related:
- Value Added Assessment (Report Cards)
- Wisconsin DPI Academic Standards (DPI Website).
- Bruce King’s evaluation of West High School’s Small Learning Community initiative and pushback at East High over planned curriculum changes.
- Lucy Mathiak’s 2006 post on Madison dropouts who tested at the high end of the scale.
Scholl’s error, in my view, is viewing the controversy as an issue of “advocating for directing greater resources toward meeting the needs of high achieving students”. The real issue is raising standards for all, rathing than reducing the curriculum quality (see West High School Math teachers letter to the Isthmus:
Moreover, parents of future West High students should take notice: As you read this, our department is under pressure from the administration and the math coordinator’s office to phase out our “accelerated” course offerings beginning next year. Rather than addressing the problems of equity and closing the gap by identifying minority math talent earlier, and fostering minority participation in the accelerated programs, our administration wants to take the cheaper way out by forcing all kids into a one-size-fits-all curriculum.
It seems the administration and our school board have re-defined “success” as merely producing “fewer failures.” Astonishingly, excellence in student achievement is visited by some school district administrators with apathy at best, and with contempt at worst. But, while raising low achievers is a laudable goal, it is woefully short-sighted and, ironically, racist in the most insidious way. Somehow, limiting opportunities for excellence has become the definition of providing equity! Could there be a greater insult to the minority community?
)
A friend mentioned a few years ago that the problems are in elementary and middle school. Rather than addressing those, the administration is trying to make high school changes.
Thanks to a reader for sending along these links.
Proximity & Power
Why do the headquarters of state teachers’ unions tend to be so close to state capitol buildings?
Jay Greene & Jonathan Butcher:
If you stand on the steps of a state capitol building and throw a rock (with a really strong arm), the first building you can hit has a good chance of being the headquarters of the state teachers’ union. For interest groups, proximity to the capitol is a way of displaying power and influence. The teachers’ union strives to be the closest. It wants to remind everyone that it is the most powerful interest group of all.
To see who has the most powerful digs, we actually bothered to measure just how close interest group offices are to state capitol buildings. We started with a list of the 25 most influential interest groups, as compiled by Fortune magazine. We then used Google Maps to plot the location of the state offices of those 25 interest groups and measured the distance to the capitol building.
The results are illuminating. Of the 25 most influential interest groups, the teachers’ union is the closest in 14 of the 50 states. By comparison, the AFL-CIO is the closest in seven states. The American Association of Retired Persons (AARP) and the National Federation of Independent Business are the closest in five states, each. The American Association for Justice (AAJ)—the leading organization of U.S. trial lawyers, formerly known as the Association of Trial Lawyers of America, or ATLA—is the closest in four states.
Middle schools pitch college to low-income students early
AP:
Most students at Mildred Avenue Middle School come from low-income, minority families and have parents who didn’t go to college. Many don’t speak English at home and have no plans to attend college.
Which is exactly why officials decided to make it the only middle school in Boston with a full-time college counseling office. They want to convince the school’s 560 students that college is attainable.
Middle school offices specifically dedicated to college guidance are part of a growing trend at schools across the country as officials try to make sure students don’t begin planning too late.
“Middle school is when students are still open to all the opportunities and options they have, because by the time they get to high school they are often at the point where they say ‘Oh, I can’t do that,”‘ said Jill Cook, assistant director of the American School Counselor Association.
General Vang Pao’s Last War
Early in 2007, the Madison School Board decided to name a new far west side elementary school after Vang Pao. This decision became ingreasingly controversial after Pao was arrested as part of a plot to overthrow the Laos Government (the school has since been named Olson Elementary). 
Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes digs into this latest chapter in the Hmong / US Government relationship:
The case against Vang Pao grew out of a sting operation, a crime created in part by the government itself. What evidence there is rests largely on secretly recorded conversations led by an undercover federal agent, and while the transcripts implicating some of the co-defendants in the case seem damning, the agent barely met Vang Pao. The talk between them was brief; though Vang Pao may have dreamed aloud of a glorious revolution in Laos in years gone by, his role in the conspiracy charged by the government may be hard to prove. The government presents the case as a clear-cut gunrunning conspiracy in violation of the Neutrality Act, which outlaws military expeditions against nations with which the United States is at peace. But the old general’s defenders contend that the case against him is the consequence of a misguided post-9/11 zeal. If convicted in a trial, the former American ally could face the rest of his life in prison. And already his indictment has apparently emboldened Laotian and Thai authorities to crack down on the beleaguered Hmong who remain in refugee camps or in hiding in the jungles of Laos.
The government has a checkered record of late in its sting operations against people subsequently charged with planning acts of political terror. In 2006, to take one example, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that a joint terrorism task force had broken up a plot to “levy war” and to blow up the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago. In that case, as two trials have shown, an F.B.I. informant known to the defendants as Brother Mohammed created some of the key evidence — leading the group in an oath of loyalty to Al Qaeda, for instance. He provided them with plans and plots and gave them military gear like combat boots. The defendants never had contact with actual terrorists, never obtained weapons or explosives. Two juries have failed to see the logic of the case; a federal judge has had to declare two mistrials. (The government plans to try the case a third time.)
The sting operation against Vang Pao exhibits some similar traits. It has also dismayed a number of American intelligence officers who worked with the Hmong against the army of North Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s. “We taught him how to do these things — to fight political warfare, to try to defeat the enemy,” I was told by Larry Devlin, a former C.I.A. station chief who worked with the general in Laos. “We helped Vang Pao learn to do some of the things that he and his troops are now charged with.”
Britannica on the Hmong.
School turnaround projects are enormously difficult propositions. They must be guided by four basic realities.
Across the nation, educators are struggling to turn around troubled schools. In the District of Columbia, Chancellor Michelle Rhee has teams seeking to overhaul 27 schools targeted for “restructuring” by the federal No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB).
This is hardly uncharted territory. Reformers have spent decades proposing new remedies for low-performing schools. Magnet programs, schools without walls, block scheduling, site-based management, and a litany of other popular ideas have emerged, only to disappoint.
Today, NCLB’s mandated restructuring of schools that fail to make “adequate yearly progress” for five consecutive years has fueled extensive new efforts. NCLB spells out five options for such schools: reopening as a public charter school; replacing most staff; contracting out operations to a new organization; turning the keys over to the state; or adopting “any other major restructuring of the school’s governance.” Modest variations of the amorphous fifth option have proven the most popular, by far.
More than 2,000 schools across the United States are currently in the process of restructuring, which has given rise to a nascent “turnaround” industry. The Louisiana School Turnaround Specialist Program is recruiting and grooming a cadre of school leaders. In New York, the Rensselaerville Institute runs a school turnaround program. At the University of Virginia, the graduate schools of education and business have partnered to train “turnaround specialists.” In Chicago, the Chicago International Charter School has launched ChicagoRise to provide management expertise and support for turnaround projects.
