Alan Borsuk continues his excellent, deep look at Milwaukee’s high schools:

Some students get lost in their first weeks of high school. But in Bryan Edwards’ case, Marshall High School lost him.
The school put Edwards in special education courses – even though he never had been diagnosed with a learning disability. When he went out for football, he said, school officials told him his grade point average was not high enough – even though he had not been enrolled at Marshall long enough to have any grades. And some days he would arrive at school only to be told he was suspended – even when he had done nothing wrong.
About two months into the school year, when Edwards brought home a new ID card, his mother was startled.
“I’m like, ‘Bryan, this is not you – this isn’t how you spell your name and we don’t live at this address,’ ” Brigette Edwards said.

Previous articles.

Joel Garreau:

Her friend’s attention is laserlike, totally focused on her texts, even after an evening of study. “We were so bored,” Lessing says. But the friend was still “really into it. It’s annoying.”
The reason for the difference: Her pal is fueled with “smart pills” that increase her concentration, focus, wakefulness and short-term memory.
As university students all over the country emerge from final exam hell this month, the number of healthy people using bootleg pharmaceuticals of this sort seems to be soaring.
Such brand-name prescription drugs “were around in high school, but they really exploded in my third and fourth years” of college, says Katie Garrett, a 2005 University of Virginia graduate.

Heather G. Peske and Kati Haycock for Edtrust [PDF Report]:

Next month, for the first time, leaders in every state must deliver to the Secretary of Education their plans for ensuring that low-income and minority students in their states are not taught disproportionately by inexperienced, out-of-field, or uncertified teachers.
For many, this process will be the first step in helping the citizens of their states to understand a fundamental, but painful truth: Poor and minority children don’t underachieve in school just because they often enter behind; but, also because the schools that are supposed to serve them actually shortchange them in the one resource they most need to reach their potential – high-quality teachers. Research has shown that when it comes to the distribution of the best teachers, poor and minority students do not get their fair share.
The report also offers some key findings of soon-to-be released research in three states – Ohio, Illinois and Wisconsin – and major school systems within them. Funded by The Joyce Foundation and conducted with policymakers and researchers on the ground, the research project reveals that schools in these states and districts with high percentages of low-income and minority students are more likely to have teachers who are inexperienced, have lower basic academic skills or are not highly qualified — reflecting troublesome national teacher distribution patterns.

Edspresso has more

Joel Rubin:

Never one to be accused of being soft-spoken or timid, the newest member of the Los Angeles Board of Education wasted little time getting to work Wednesday.
At 11 a.m., Monica Garcia walked briskly into the school district’s Friedman Occupational Center. Doing away quickly with pleasantries, she peppered officials with questions about campus programs and its expansion plans.
Garcia also said she would call for school leaders to be given greater autonomy from the district’s behemoth central administration to make budget and instruction decisions.

Susan Troller:

The parents at Midvale Elementary School have heard it all:
It’s a school no ambitious parent wants. The bus rides are long and unpleasant as children are sent far from their homes along the hazardous Beltline. After more than 20 years, the pairing of Midvale and Lincoln elementary schools, developed as part of an effort to desegregate two south side Madison schools, is a failed experiment.
“The misperceptions about our school are so frustrating, and so wrong,” sighed Dave Verban, who is part of a group of Midvale-Lincoln parents that has joined forces to try to tell what they say is the real story of their school community.

The Midvale Lincoln pair was much discussed earlier this year as the Madison School Board and the Memorial/West Area Attendance Task Force contemplated options for Leopold Elementary school. One of the options discussed was changing boundaries and moving some children from Leopold to Lincoln Elementary. Some of Fitchburg’s Swan Creek residents objected and petitioned to leave the Madison School District. More here. Task force insight.
Maps: Midvale | Lincoln | Distance between the two paired schools (roughly 5 miles).
UPDATE: Susan continues her article with a visit to Lincoln Elementary.

Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater:

This fall we will welcome over 2,000 kindergarten children to their first day of school. What an exciting and scary day for them. They will come from many cultures, they will be many colors and they will each begin their thirteen year journey with different skills, attitudes and backgrounds.
Our community must ensure, through our schools, that despite their different starting points they leave in 2019 with two important things in common. They must have the knowledge and skills to have a family supporting career and actively participate in our society. Therein lays the challenge.
Those eager five year olds will still be in the workforce 53 years from now. Who knows what skills, both academic and personal, will be needed then. There are jobs today that we never dreamed of 40 years ago and there are jobs that we thought were forever that have been lost to time. The pace of that change seems to speed up.

Katharine Goodloe:

When Wisconsin educators wanted to measure the progress of 10,000 of the state’s public school students last fall, they didn’t sit them down for the standardized tests that most schoolchildren spent hours poring over.
They just asked teachers to pencil in a score.
That’s because those students are among the most severely disabled in the state, or they speak just isolated words and phrases of English. So on the back of the state’s thick testing booklets, teachers marked a score for each child – saying whether a child with disabilities could comprehend text, for example, or whether one struggling to learn English knew any vocabulary words used by their classmates.
If they scored high enough, some of those children could be counted toward requirements under the federal No Child Left Behind law – just like those kids who spent hours digging through multiple-choice questions.
It’s a little-known process, but one that faces heightened scrutiny this year as the federal government reviews the ways states assess such students. And the stakes for school districts are growing, as consequences for failing schools continue to increase under federal law.

Tom Still:

A report issued last week by a Washington think tank shows Wisconsin No. 1 in yet another public education index – only this time, being first among the 50 states wasn’t the preferred spot.
In a study of how states are carrying out the federal No Child Left Behind education law, a group called Education Sector rated the states on how well they’re outsmarting the law. Wisconsin was the leading circumventer, according to the analysts, who refused to buy state numbers that indicate virtually every school district and virtually every school is meeting federal improvement standards.
“(The study) ranks Wisconsin as the most optimistic state in the nation,” reports Education Sector on its web site, www.educationsector.org. “Wisconsin scores well on some educational measures, like the SAT, but lags behind in others, such as achievement gaps for minority students. But according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, the state is a modern-day educational utopia where a large majority of students meet academic standards, high school graduation rates are high, every school is safe and nearly all teachers are highly qualified.”
The report goes on to note that school districts around the nation are struggling to make “Adequate Yearly Progress,” the primary standard of school and district success under No Child Left Behind. In Wisconsin, however, hitting the standard is a piece of cake. All but one of Wisconsin’s 426 school districts made Adequate Yearly Progress in 2004–05.
“How is that possible?” the Education Sector report asked. “The answer lies with the way Wisconsin has chosen to define the Adequate Yearly Progress standard.”

David Reinhard:

Fuller, for his part, now believes school choice is the most important civil rights issue for African Americans today. That’s no small claim, considering he started as a “Black Power” advocate in the 1960s. But he didn’t get there by applying a market-oriented philosophy to the problem of underperforming inner-city schools. He got there from the ground up. He witnessed firsthand the failure of earlier school reforms, with all their good intentions, bursts of civic concern and, in the end, unmet promises. “At a certain point in time,” he says, “you have to say that you have to try something radically different.”
Some African Americans in the Jefferson cluster are ready to try. Smith Williams is the father of five and a Black Alliance for Educational Options member here. His kids have attended both public and private schools and even been home-schooled. As Williams told The Oregonian editorial board, “We know there are desperate parents out there.”

Dr. Howard Fuller is the former superintendent of the Milwaukee Public Schools and founder of the Black Alliance for Educational Options. Howard Fuller Clusty Search.

Katherine Goodloe:

When Matt Nord, 11, wrote a letter asking to stay in an all-boys program at his public middle school, he listed all the most important reasons: Girls talk a lot, they can get in the way on group projects, and he gets nervous helping out girls.
The sixth-grader doesn’t worry about those things for two classes each day, though, because he’s part of an all-boys program at Germantown’s Kennedy Middle School.

Susan Saulny:

In what is an elite tweak on home schooling — and a throwback to the gilded days of education by governess or tutor — growing numbers of families are choosing the ultimate in private school: hiring teachers to educate their children in their own homes.
Unlike the more familiar home-schoolers of recent years, these families are not trying to get more religion into their children’s lives, or escape what some consider the tyranny of the government’s hand in schools. In fact, many say they have no argument with ordinary education — it just does not fit their lifestyles.

Wisconsin Charter School NEWS
 
Sheboygan Considering 6 New Charter Schools
 
Twelve Charter Schools in Appleton
 
Wisconsin Embraces Charter Schools
 
Proposed Charter School of Architecture & Urban Design
 
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New Horizons for Learning Charter School
 
WCSA’s Strategic Growth Plans
 
Charter Schools BLOG

(more…)

Michael Leahy:

While much of the rule-breaking at Oakton occurs out of sight from faculty and staff members, insubordination at D.C. schools is more often on public display. “I think our biggest problem here is lack of respect by kids for teachers and adults and for other kids,” says Michael Ilwain, a school resource officer at Eastern High School in Northeast Washington. “It leads to disrespect and bad behavior in classrooms, and it leads to fights, too. Almost all our problems start from there . . . But I also think that, in these times, we have some of the same things to face as other schools.”
Those things include the spectacularly dire. At Oakton, as at any other 21st-century high school, Baranyk must ponder scenarios that once would have been unthinkable. He has had to devise meticulous plans for how Oakton staff members and students would respond in an emergency or a catastrophic event, including a terrorist’s biological or chemical strike, or the spread of a potentially lethal virus. “Security at a school means something different now than 20 years ago . . .” he says. “You can try preparing for problems, but it’s hard to know what they all will look like . . . I guess you’re trying to imagine the unimaginable.”

Rafel Gomez hosted a forum last fall on Gangs & School violence. Audio and video here.

The Economist:

FOR all the glories of its ancient civilisation, India has “a despicable history of inequity”. So says Pratap Bhanu Mehta, a leading political scientist and, until this week, a member of the National Knowledge Commission, appointed by India’s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, to advise his government. The phrase featured in Mr Mehta’s eloquent letter of resignation, protesting at the government’s determination to “reserve” 27% of the places in its colleges for the Other Backward Classes (OBCs)—lower castes, but not the very lowest, who already benefit. This policy, complained Mr Mehta in the letter, would ensure that India remained “entrapped in the caste paradigm.”

(more…)

Caroline Mayer:

BusRadio, a start-up company in Massachusetts, wants to pipe into school buses around the country a private radio network that plays music, public-service announcements, contests and, of course, ads, aimed at kids as they travel to and from school.
As BusRadio’s Web site ( http://www.busradio.net/ ) explains: “Every morning and every afternoon on their way to and from school, kids across the country will be listening to the dynamic programming of BusRadio providing advertiser’s [sic] with a unique and effective way to reach the highly sought after teen and tween market.”

Amazing.

Alan Borsuk takes a look at and speaks with DPI’s Tony Evers on Kevin Carey’s report, emailed to this site on 5/20/2006 by a reader involved in these issues:

In an interview, Carey said he agrees that Wisconsin generally is a high-performing state in educating students, “but I do not believe its performance is as good as it says it is.” He said the way school officials have dealt with the federal law shows “a clear pattern where Wisconsin consistently refuses to challenge itself.”
He compared Wisconsin with Massachusetts, which he said also has high performing students. That state was ranked 39th in the “Pangloss Index,” because it has taken a much tougher line on such things as defining “highly qualified” teachers to require demonstrated knowledge in the subject area being taught. Wisconsin has generally defined such teachers by whether they have state licenses.
In a separate analysis, two researchers connected to an education magazine called Education Next analyzed the differences between the percentage of students in each state listed as proficient or better in reading and math on the state’s own tests and the percentage in the same categories in the nationwide testing program called the National Assessment of Education Progress. In many states, there is a wide disparity between the two, leading some to argue that states are setting proficiency standards too low.
The two researchers, Paul E. Peterson and Frederick M. Hess, both generally described as conservatives, then gave each state a grade based on how big a difference there was between the state scores and the national scores. The two gave Wisconsin a grade of C-, based on 2005 results. That was better than the D they gave the state for results in 2003.

Sandy Cullen wrote recently ” new statewide assessment used to test the knowledge of Wisconsin students forced a lowering of the curve, a Madison school official said.
The results showed little change in the percentages of students scoring at proficient and advanced levels”

Sharon Begley:

Some kids do bloom late, intellectually. Others start out fine but then, inexplicably, fall behind. But according to new studies, for the most part people’s mental abilities relative to others change very little from childhood through adulthood. Relative intelligence seems as resistant to change as relative nose sizes.
One of the more striking findings comes from the longest follow-up study ever conducted in this field. On June 1, 1932, Scotland had all children born in 1921 and attending school — 87,498 11-year-olds — take a 75-question test on analogies, reading, arithmetic and the like. The goal was to determine the distribution of intellectual ability. In 1998, scientists at the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen tracked down 101 of those students, then 77 years old, and administered the same test.
The correlation between scores 66 years apart was a striking .73. (A correlation of 1 would mean no change in rankings; a correlation of .73 is very high.) There is “remarkable stability in individual differences in human intelligence” from childhood to old age, the scientists concluded in a 2000 paper.

Andrew Rotherham’s recent post on the school day follows Mary Battaglia’s recent comment on the Madison School District’s short lunch and recess period.

State tightening class-size initiative
Schools receiving funding must get formal waiver to exceed 15-1 ratio
By AMY HETZNER, Milwaukee Journal- Sentinel
ahetzner@journalsentinel.com
Posted: May 31, 2006
In an effort to get a better handle on state money schools use to reduce class sizes, the state Department of Public Instruction plans to tighten its control over schools that seek to escape from standards set by a state class-size reduction program.
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The state agency has imposed a new requirement that schools seek formal waivers before exceeding a 15-to-1 student-teacher ratio guideline set by the Student Achievement Guarantee in Education program.
DPI Deputy Superintendent Tony Evers acknowledged that requiring schools to get a waiver could end some practices the DPI had not known were in effect. Yet the requirement isn’t designed to limit flexibility schools have had, he said.

(more…)

Milwaukee Journal – Sentinel Editorial:

As a matter of editorial policy, we don’t accept poverty as an excuse for poor school performance. We expect that rather than wishing they had a different class of students, schools take students wherever they are and develop their talents so that they can cope and thrive in later life. At the same time, we recognize that poverty poses stiff challenges for educators.

There’s been an increase in discussion recently regarding Milwaukee’s Voucher Program largely around Amanda Poulson’s recent article in the Christian Science Monitor:

Hers is the sort of story Milwaukee’s school-choice advocates cite when touting the oldest and largest voucher program in the country. Now it’s expanding, but 16 years after it began, the policy is still controversial and has shown few documented benefits.
Proponents say it gives options to low-income kids who might otherwise be stuck in failing schools, and that the competition for students is good for all Milwaukee’s schools, both public and private. Critics, meanwhile, cite the money the program drains from public schools and the highly uneven quality of the private ones, which aren’t held to the same standards.

• Edspresso and Jenny D
• Ryan Boots
• Technorati blog discussion summary
• Paul Soglin

One of those cryptic messages in the current MMSD budget document says:

One of the major challenges for the 2006-07 school year is implementing a change in the philosophy and approach to creating positive student behavior. We are moving from a punitive system of student behavior management to a distict wide positive approach to changing student behavior thorugh education, dialogue and resotrative justice.

In plain language, the district will implement a variation of a program created by Corwin Kronenberg. The program won’t be the complete version of Kronenberg’s plan because he and the district had a falling out, similar to the parting of ways between the MMSD and Glen Singleton with his “courageous conversations” on race.
Kronenberg doesn’t seem to have a Web site that lays out his behavioral management plan, but it’s posted below as it appears on the Web site of the Sheboygan school district.

(more…)

Jesse Scaccia:

YOU’RE a teacher in the New York City public school system. It’s September, and you’re lecturing the class on the structure of an essay. Your students need to know this information to pass your class and the Regents exam, and you, of course, hope that one day your talented students will dazzle and amaze English professors all over the country.
You turn your back to write the definition of “thesis” on the chalk board. It takes about 15 seconds. You turn around to the class expecting to see 25 students scribbling the concept in their notebook. Instead, you see a group of students who have sprung appendages of technology.
Jose has grown an earphone. Maria’s thumbs have sprouted a two-way. Man Keung, recently arrived from China, is texting away on a cellphone connected to his wrist. And Christina appears to be playing Mine Sweeper on a Pocket PC on her lap.

Jay Matthews:

A collision of those two views by prominent scholars was inevitable, and in the past several weeks it has hit the education policy world in an explosion of articles, e-mails and public debates, some quite heated. Experts disagree over who is right, and some say the truth may be somewhere in between. But the argument has aggravated a widespread feeling that information on how many children are disappearing from public schools is not nearly as accurate as it should be.

Sandy Cullen:

School used to be a struggle for seventh-grader Justin Fobes, who said he was getting “straight F’s” before enrolling at the River Crossing Environmental Charter School in Portage last fall.
“I just couldn’t sit still,” said Justin, 13.
At River Crossing, Justin is now getting A’s and B’s. And he no longer has trouble sitting still, Justin said, adding, “They actually tire you out.”
Every Friday, the middle school’s 18 students literally have a field day – doing everything from a controlled prairie burn to restoring wetlands. Such hands-on approaches to learning are fueling the rapid increase in public charter schools in Wisconsin and other states as teachers, parents and others seek to help students not succeeding in regular classrooms.

Amit Paley:

In an hour-long session that cost just $18, the Indian tutor, who said his name was Mike, spent an hour walking Del Monte through such esoteric concepts as confidence intervals and alpha divisions, Del Monte recalled. He got an A on the final exam. “Mike helped me unscramble everything in my mind,” the 20-year-old said.
Thousands of U.S. students such as Del Monte are increasingly relying on overseas tutors to boost their grades and SAT scores. The tutors, who communicate with students over the Internet, are inexpensive and available around the clock, making education the newest industry to be outsourced to other countries.

Kevin Kosar:

Over the past six months, the need for national education standards has been talked up. The idea, in short, is that the U.S. should have brief written statements of the skills and knowledge children should attain at each grade level for each subject area. The federal government would either encourage or require states to base their schools’ curricula on these standards. Education colleges, in turn, would train would-be teachers in the standards.

Jean Merl:

So when a new principal arrived at the imposing red brick campus in a tough, high-poverty neighborhood, this is how she greeted him:
“Hi, I’m Patty Kamper, and this is my last year here.”
That was in 1996, but Kamper is still there, teaching art at a transformed Wyandotte. Today the halls are orderly, and students work industriously in small “communities” with the same teachers throughout their high school years. Attendance, achievement test scores and the graduation rate have climbed steadily.
Kamper and most city leaders credit a school reform program called First Things First.

Kansas City Schools went through a substantial court ordered spending increase during the 1990’s.

Christine Maddox Ellerbee:

I am committed to my home here in Camden. But that commitment is seriously being tested by the state of Camden’s public schools.
As a parent, I have done all I can do. Many of us find ourselves in the same boat. We have agitated for change, made phone calls and visited anyone who would listen. We have formed organizations, started scholarship funds, even taken to the streets. All this in an attempt to get those with position and influence to do something to improve the public school product and public school experience of our children.
We have been patient even as our schools floundered in academic rankings, failing to graduate our children and terrified us daily with horrific conditions no one should have to endure. We have begged for access to alternatives to these schools so our children will at least feel safe. But no matter what we do, we are unable to change the fundamental politics that hold our children as prisoners in a failing system.

BBC:

Children with special needs are far more likely to be excluded
Including children with special educational needs in mainstream classrooms can be “a form of abuse”, a professor of education has said. John MacBeath of Cambridge University was commenting on a report he co-wrote for the National Union of Teachers.
NUT general secretary Steve Sinnott called for an audit of provision around England as a step towards addressing “major areas of policy failure”.
But ministers said children were taught successfully in a range of settings.
Schools Minister Andrew Adonis said: “We put the needs of the child first.”
The Cambridge report, The Costs of Inclusion, said teachers and teaching assistants were often going “beyond the call of duty” to help children with special educational needs (SEN).

National Union of Teacher’s press release.

The complete report is evidently not online. However, Gregor Sutherland mentioned that the report is available for £7. His email: gs280 at cam.ac.uk

Channel3000:

When it comes to educating children, parents play a crucial role outside of school. But Rose Helms, whose child, Michael, has autism, wants to take her influence inside the classroom.
This is why there was a special guest in Michael Helms’ special education class on Wednesday. The guest was Art Phillips, an Evansville school board member and a police officer.
“My interest is to learn about what the needs are, and if our district and our employees are meeting those needs to help the children out,” said Phillips. “That’s the biggest thing that I want to find out.”

Jonathan Glater:

At the University of California at Los Angeles, a student loaded his class notes into a handheld e-mail device and tried to read them during an exam; a classmate turned him in. At the journalism school at San Jose State University, students were caught using spell check on their laptops when part of the exam was designed to test their ability to spell.

I had a very nice day today chaperoning the Randall Safety Patrol at the Wisconsin Dells. First, Susan Smith and Phil Watters who have worked with the Safety Patrol all year deserve much thanks. The AAA, who sponsor the Safety Patrol and made the trip possible also deserve praise.
But mostly it was the students who made it such a good day. They were great; polite, well behaved, interesting and fun. There were many other Safety Patrol groups from around the state there and I can say without reservation that none were better behaved and none seemed to enjoy themselves as much as our group. What a great combination. It is easy to lose track of some of the little things like this that are part of our school system, but we shouldn’t. They made me both happy and proud.
I’d like to keep this upbeat, but am compelled to close on a down note. Susan Smith is the School Nurse at Franklin and Randall. Next year, due to financial considerations she will also serve a third school and almost assuredly will not be able to continue as a Safety Patrol mentor. This may seem like a small loss for the district as a whole, but after today it seems like a big one to me.
TJM

EdSource:

This second annual analysis of charter school performance in California compared how well charter schools did versus noncharters, as measured by the percentage of schools that met their 2005 Academic Performance Index (API) growth targets. The 20-page report also looks at charter school performance by grade level (elementary, middle, and high schools) and by charter type—start-ups versus conversions; classroom-based versus nonclassroom-based. Moreover, using data from a spring 2005 EdSource survey, it compares the performance of charters by the amount of student instructional time and degree of school autonomy.

Alex Johnson:

President Bush’s No Child Left Behind initiative put almost every imaginable part of the U.S. education system under a microscope, establishing national standards for teacher training, student testing and basic funding. But glaring in its omission from the program is any significant examination of that most basic of classroom tools, the textbook.
As younger, inexperienced teachers are thrown into classrooms to meet new federal standards, as much as 90 percent of the burden of instruction rests on textbooks, said Frank Wang, a former textbook publisher who left the field to teach mathematics at the University of Oklahoma.
And yet, few if any textbooks are ever subjected to independent field testing of whether they actually help students learn.
“This is where people miss the boat. They don’t realize how important the textbooks are,” Wang said. “We talk about vouchers and more teachers, but education is about the books. That’s where the content is.”

Nicholas Kristof:

Why are Asian-Americans so good at school? Or, to put it another way, why is Xuan-Trang Ho so perfect?
Trang came to the United States in 1994 as an 11-year-old Vietnamese girl who spoke no English. Her parents, neither having more than a high school education, settled in Nebraska and found jobs as manual laborers.
The youngest of eight children, Trang learned English well enough that when she graduated from high school, she was valedictorian. Now she is a senior at Nebraska Wesleyan with a 3.99 average, a member of the USA Today All-USA College Academic Team and a new Rhodes Scholar.

(more…)

Alex Tabarrok:

The United State’s has one of the most admired university systems in the world and one of the most deplored k-12 systems. Could the difference have something to do with the fact that universities operate in a competitive market with lots of private suppliers while k-12 is dominated by monopolistic, government provided schools?
What would our university system look like if it operated like the k-12 system?
Look to France for the answer. The riots of 1968 forced the government to offer a virtually free university education to any student who passes an exam but as a result the universities are woefully underfunded especially for the masses. Amazingly, with just a few exceptions for the elites, students are required to attend the universities closest to their high schools. Sound familiar?

Ben Feller:

Not a single state will have a highly qualified teacher in every core class this school year as promised by President Bush’s education law. Nine states along with the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico face penalties.
The Education Department on Friday ordered every state to explain how it will have 100 percent of its core teachers qualified – belatedly – in the 2006-07 school year.

Sandy Cullen:

Forty-five percent of children in the United States under the age of 5 are minorities, according to Census Bureau numbers released Wednesday.
“In Madison, those numbers are higher,” said Karen Dischler, intergenerational program coordinator for RSVP of Dane County and co-director of the United Way’s Preschools of Hope project. This year, just under 50 percent of kindergarten students in the Madison School District are minorities.
The growing number of minority students is largely the result of higher birth rates among minorities coupled with a rise in immigration.

Karen Rouse:

In a move some say could shake up traditional teacher-hiring practices, the Douglas County School District on Wednesday asked the state to let it create its own licensing program to more quickly bring nontraditional teachers into the classroom.
The district – which is already eyeing a pipe-fitter, Naval officer and instructors from China as potential teachers – said current state licensing regulations cut some of the most talented workers out of the teaching pool.
“It’s saying, ‘Here is somebody in the community who has real-world experience, but we can’t hire them because they’re not licensed,”‘ said Kristine Sherman, vice president of Douglas County’s school board.

WKOW-TV:

Madison’s Sandburg Elementary School is in the midst of an asbestos clean-up…but no one notified the parents. A parent with children at the school contacted 27 News after discovering the project.
We spoke with to Madison district officials about the asbestos removal guidelines they follow. They say it’s not standard procedure to notify parents, nor are they required by law to notify them. Doug Pearson, director of Madison’s district building services, says the project does not pose a health concern.

Cheri Lucas:

Can an automated grading system score human articulation and reason? The tool Paris uses compares student work to “training” essays, or models of the class assignment, at each scoring level. SAGrader, software developed by Ed Brent, a sociology professor at the University of Missouri at Columbia, works similarly. His students type a sociology essay about community, for example, into an input field on the assignment’s Web site. Moments after students click on the Submit button, SAGrader assesses whether they have identified concepts such as urban renewal or gentrification and have used appropriate examples.

NY Times Editorial:

The charter school movement began with the tantalizing promise that independently operated schools would outperform their traditional counterparts — if they could only be exempted from state regulations while receiving public money. It hasn’t quite worked out that way. With charter laws now on the books in about 40 states and thousands of schools up and running, the problem has turned out to be too little state oversight, not too much.

Joanne has more.

A reader emailed this article: Verona High School Student Kristen Zubke visits Madison West High School for a day [April 2006: full student newspaper 25MB]:

On Monday, March 27th, I took it upon myself to shed a little light on our neighboring rivals, the Madison West Regents. I was shadowing a friend, but I guess you could say I did a little undercover investigating just to see if I really felt the Wildcat shame as I previously professed. My day was in one word, shocking. Overall I witnessed a school that strongly resembled an outrageous metropolitan school such as that seen on the television show, Boston Public. Despite its many obvious downfalls, there are indeed perks to being a Regent, yet in the end, my appreciation of Verona went up after seeing the chaos at West. I may not openly be proud of Verona’s reputation, but our education morphed my shame into pride.

(more…)

Minnesota Public Radio:

Jonathan Kozol, the former teacher who has written about race, poverty and education for nearly four decades, spoke about what he calls the “restoration of apartheid schooling in America” Friday at Carleton College in Northfield.

audio

NY Times Editorial:

This was supposed to be a landmark year for the No Child Left Behind Act, which requires the states to close the achievement gap between white and minority students in exchange for federal education dollars. By this year, states were to have put a highly qualified teacher in every classroom and created rigorous annual math and reading tests in grades three through eight.
The state tests and standards are still wildly uneven, and mediocre in many places. The teacher quality measures are also in jeopardy, with many states defining the problem away by simply labeling their teacher corps “highly qualified.”

Andrew Rotherham:

It’s official, the National Education Association is on record opposed to the NAACP in the CT anti-NCLB lawsuit (pdf). The NAACP response here(pdf). I think this is what they call a harbinger…but remember, no political problem here for Democrats to worry about…as you were!

Katharine Goodloe:

he Grafton School board will consider a proposal Monday to create a largely self-contained all-boys class, with 28 students led by a single teacher.
If the board approves the one-year proposal, the district would become one of just a handful of public middle schools across the nation to offer a single-sex classroom.
“Some kids get lost in the shuffle of every 45 minutes, heading to a new teacher,” Engel said. “There are a number of boys who could benefit from a structure that’s a bit different from the norm.”
Across the country, single-sex classrooms have become more popular in recent years.

A longtime reader emailed David Brooks most recent column:

Around 1970, Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn’t ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows.
In videos of the experiment, you can see the children squirming, kicking, hiding their eyes — desperately trying to exercise self-control so they can wait and get two marshmallows. Their performance varied widely. Some broke down and rang the bell within a minute. Others lasted 15 minutes.
The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores. They got into better colleges and had, on average, better adult outcomes. The children who rang the bell quickest were more likely to become bullies. They received worse teacher and parental evaluations 10 years on and were more likely to have drug problems at age 32.

Lots of Mischel test links here. Sara has more on this at the Quick and the Ed.

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Nefertiti Denise Jones:

My 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Virginia, now attends a private school that teaches foreign language and arts and offers after-school music and dance classes. But tuition is forcing me to look at Atlanta Public Schools next year for kindergarten.
When I first started researching where to send Elizabeth next year, I was looking for private schools that offered tuition assistance. I also sent an e-mail, however, to my Atlanta Board of Education representative asking him to sell me on taking my child out of private school and placing her into public school. His energetic reply made me look at Atlanta schools.

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Tyler Cowen:

The economics of plagiarism are changing:
1. Plagiarism is now easier to catch and publicize, mostly because of the Web, Google, and computer search programs.
2. We are exposed to more influences, whether consciously or not, than before.
3. “Cut and paste,” and other technologies, make cheating and plagiarism easier.

American Legislative Exchange Council:

LEC has released its newest edition of The Report Card on American Education: A State by State Analysis 1983-1984 to 2003-2004. The Report Card contains over 50 tables and figures that display in various ways more than 100 measures of educational resources and achievement. It strengthens the growing consensus that simply spending more taxpayer dollars on education is not enough to improve student achievement. In addition, the report includes analysis on numerous factors that affect the public education system, including demographics, school choice and charter school initiatives.

full report[pdf]

All Things Considered:

These days, more than 100,000 students are taking the SAT while they’re still in middle school. Some are under increasing pressure to get ready for college, no matter how early. And some want to qualify for prestigious academic summer programs such as the one at Johns Hopkins University.

Alan Borsuk:

Andrekopoulos described in general terms to the principals – and to School Board members on Tuesday night – that the way schools are treated by his administration will differ, based on the academic success of students.
Schools where test scores are comparatively high and where the amount of progress students make from year to year is above average for MPS will be given more operating freedom. Andrekopoulos praised the number of schools showing improvements.

Michael Winerip:

RAMSES SANTELISES was supposed to graduate from John F. Kennedy High in the Bronx in June 2005, but, he said, he goofed off his senior year. He failed senior English in the second semester and two gym classes. “I got senioritis,” he said.
He was planning to make up the courses at summer school, but said that he got sick and was hospitalized, and that by the time he reported to summer school, he had missed too many days. They told him to sign up for night school in the fall. “I was upset,” he said. “I was hoping to start college.”
In late August he went to Kennedy to register for the night program, discussed the three courses he needed and, he said, got a big surprise. “They said, ‘No questions asked, we’re going to let you graduate,’ ” he recalled. “I never had to take the two gym classes and English class I should have taken.”

WEAC President Stan Johnson:

The Wisconsin Education Association Council has always believed that virtual education can benefit students in Wisconsin. Advocates of an Assembly bill that WEAC opposed have criticized us, in newspapers and elsewhere, as opponents of virtual education.
However, as they criticize WEAC for opposing Assembly Bill 1060 they never inform readers that other providers of virtual education also opposed this bill and they avoid details about the actual content of the bill.

More on Stan Johnson & WEAC.

Angela Bettis:

A community is in shock after losing two high school students to suicide in recent weeks.
Students and parents in McFarland are trying to make sense of the suicides and they will soon get some help.
A huge community-wide effort is underway to help teens grieve and begin to heal.

Valerie Strauss:

One in an occasional series looking at learning in the middle and high school years
High school senior Risa Masuda has no time to let “senioritis” get in her way.
She takes Advanced Placement courses, participates in a senior project on low-cost housing, works in student government and helps teachers during class — an experience, she said, that made her rethink her childhood dream of being an educator.
The 18-year-old credits her school, New Trier Township High School in Winnetka, Ill., with keeping her engaged during a year commonly perceived as the time when students snooze during lectures on Hamlet’s angst, take requirements they should have completed in ninth grade, do less homework than in the killer junior year and bide time before the rest of their lives begin.

Bob Reber:

Governor Doyle recently vetoed Assembly Bill 1060 which would have reaffirmed and clarified the state’s commitment to virtual public schools in Wisconsin. Prior to his decision to veto the bill, WEAC (the teacher’s union) was making noise about the “outsourcing of education” to people who would not be qualified teachers, instructors or presenters to our children. In other words, parents! Governor Doyle reiterated the concerns of WEAC after vetoing the bill by stating, “Actual pupil instruction could be delivered by persons without a state-issued license or permit.”
Both WEAC and Governor Doyle misstate the intent of the bill to suit their own political agenda.
Interestingly enough, their take also ignores the reality of what goes on in public schools today. Currently in our public school system there are teacher aides, substitute teachers and guest presenters that instruct pupils on a daily basis. These individuals are not required to hold state-issued licenses or permits. In fact, state statutes and DPI administrative rules allow for the local school boards to determine the requirements for these persons.

West Bend Parent Owen Robinson calls the recent court decison on virtual schools “A Victory for Children“. Kristof’s recent article addresses this isue as well.

Sarah Carr:

Each of these cases are at the core of a federal class-action lawsuit alleging that the Milwaukee Public Schools district systemically failed to identify kids needing special education services in a timely fashion.
The parents of all three children testified in a three-week-long trial that wrapped up last week and now will be decided by U.S. Magistrate Judge Aaron Goodstein, probably this summer. At issue in the decision are the fates of thousands of children eligible for special education in the city and millions of dollars spent on special education each year.

A good teacher friend emailed this article: Nicholas Kristof:

Suppose Colin Powell tires of giving $100,000-a-pop speeches and wants to teach high school social studies. Suppose Meryl Streep has a hankering to teach drama.
Alas, they would be “unqualified” for a public school. Elite private schools would snap them up, of course, but public schools that are begging for teachers would have to turn them away because they don’t have teacher certification.
That’s an absurd snarl in our education bureaucracy. Let’s relax the barriers so people can enter teaching more easily, either right out of college or later as a midcareer switch.

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Channel3000:

A 17-year-old DeForest High School student was arrested on Thursday for allegedly keeping two loaded guns in his car in the school parking lot.
Authorities said that a loaded 9 mm and a loaded .25 caliber automatic pistol were in the student’s car.
The student was booked into the Dane County Jail on charges of possession of a concealed weapon on school grounds, WISC-TV reported.

and Dodgeville

The Economist:

“WE CAN’T be a great global city,” says Antonio Villaraigosa, “if we lose half of our workforce before they graduate from high school.” The hyper-energetic mayor of sprawling Los Angeles is stating the obvious. A low graduation rate from the giant Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) feeds through into fewer skilled workers, more criminals and every social ill in America’s second-biggest city, from drug abuse to broken families.
And the rate is low indeed. According to a study last year by Harvard’s Civil Rights Project, only 45.3% of LAUSD students who started ninth grade (ie, senior high school, at the age of 14 or so) graduated four years later from 12th grade; for Latino students, who make up three-quarters of the student body, the rate was a mere 39%. School-district officials dispute the figures, saying they include as dropouts students who have simply moved away, but even their estimate—a dropout rate of around 33%—is unacceptable.

Ledyard King:

Public school teachers in the nation’s wealthiest communities continue to be more qualified than those in the poorest despite a federal law designed to provide all children equal educational opportunity.
Preliminary data released by the Department of Education show that in 39 states, the chance of finding teachers who know their subjects are better in elementary schools where parents’ incomes are highest. The data show that’s also the case among middle and high schools in 43 states.
“Obviously, we have a long way to go,” says Rene Islas, who monitors teacher quality for the Department of Education. “Even if you have high numbers (of certified instructors) in the aggregate, there are pockets where students are being taught by teachers that are not highly qualified.”
Under the No Child Left Behind law President Bush signed in 2002, states are supposed to have “highly qualified teachers” for all core academic courses, such as math, English and science, by the end of this school year. States that don’t face a loss of federal funding.

Mitchell Landsberg:

Almost two-thirds in the state say education quality is a major problem, but most oppose tax hikes to fix it—except on the rich.

Channel3000:

School uniforms were proposed at the Janesville School Board meeting Tuesday night, even thought the topic wasn’t on the agenda.
Board member Todd Bailey suggested a pilot program, taking place as early as next January, with uniforms consisting of trousers and polo shirts.
Bailey said it would end arguments between parents and children over school attire, cut family clothing costs, and eliminate distractions inside the classroom.
Bailey declined WISC-TV’s request for an interview.
Many students at Janesville Craig High School said the idea of uniforms hinders their ability to express themselves.

WTDY is running a poll on whether new board member Lucy Mathiak should knit during meetings. Watch Monday’s meeting, where the Board discussed the just released 2006/2007 budget. Monday’s agenda can be found here. I’m glad WTDY is having a look at the school board. Perhaps they might include some additional topics. The meeting included the award (8C) of a 856K electrical upgrade for Sennett Middle School (referendum – estimated at 459,300).

Thomas B. Fordham Foundation:

The Foundation awards two prizes annually:

• The Thomas B. Fordham Prize for Distinguished Scholarship is awarded to a scholar who has made major contributions to education reform via research, analysis, and successful engagement in the war of ideas.
• The Thomas B. Fordham Prize for Valor is awarded to a leader who has made major contributions to education reform via noteworthy accomplishments at the national, state, local, and/or school levels.

Eligibility
Anyone can be nominated whose work has had a profound impact on education in the United States. Candidates may be nominated either for cumulative lifetime achievement or for extraordinary one-time accomplishments. Employees and trustees of the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation are not eligible, nor are members of the prize committee.

Nancy Salvato:

Reminding the audience that public education is charged with educating our citizenry to participate in self government, he quoted Jefferson, “If you want a nation that is both ignorant and free, that is something that never was and never will be.” Because a good education should afford each person an opportunity to participate in the American Dream, education taxes are levied so that generations may acquire the skills necessary to earn a living, knowledge required to sustain a Democratic-Republic, and civility essential to a free society.
A plethora of studies implicate the public schools for failing to provide a good education. The American Institute for Research found U.S. math students at all grade levels were consistently behind their peers around the world. A survey, conducted by the National Center for Education Statistics, found only 31% of college students tested as proficient in reading and extracting information from complex material, such as legal documents. In an employer survey from The National Association of Manufacturers, 84% of respondents reported K-12 schools were not doing a good job of preparing students for the workplace; lacking basic employability skills, such as: attendance, timeliness, and work ethic, exhibiting deficiencies in math and science, and in reading and comprehension. Hoover Institution’s Koret Task Force found the performance of the U.S. public education system virtually unchanged in the twenty years since the publication of A Nation at Risk. The Knight Foundation found most U.S. high school students don’t understand the First Amendment. Finally, none of the eight education goals (Goals 2000) established by President Bush (41) and 49 state governors were achieved.

WisPolitics:

Landmark Legal Foundation today asked the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to investigate numerous activities by the National Education Association’s Wisconsin affiliate, the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) that may have violated federal tax law.
WEAC made a total of $430,000 in contributions to the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) that weren’t reported on WEAC’s tax returns. The DLCC is a political organization formed by the Democratic National Committee to provide funding and logistical assistance to state legislative campaigns around the country. The WEAC contributions, which were reported by the DLCC on its tax filings, were made in 2000 and 2002, and were apparently used by the DLCC to underwrite state legislative campaigns in California and elsewhere.
WEAC is a 501(c)(5) tax-exempt union under the Internal Revenue Code (IRC). As a 501(c)(5), WEAC is required to report and pay federal income tax on almost any general revenue funds used for political purposes, including contributions made by the union to political organizations like the DLCC (called 527s, for the section of the IRC under which they are formed.) WEAC’s own 527, the Wisconsin Education Association Council — Political Action Committee (WEAC-PAC), also did not report the DLCC contributions in question on their tax filings.