Friends of Dave.org:

Put your hand on your wallet! Check out this North County Times article. State Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O’Connell and EdVoice are working to get a measure on the ballot called the “Classroom Learning and Accountability Act”. This measure would add a $50/parcel tax on every piece of property in California. The only parcels exempted would be those owned by the disabled or senior citizens.

The measure would create about a pot of over $500M for a variety of uses. The money would allocated as follows:

• $225M for additional class size reduction
• $100M for textbook purchases
• $100M for school safety
• $90M for school modernization
• $20M for the CALPADS student longitudinal data system

I’m quite surprised that liberals like O’Connell would even support this regressive tax which would have a greater impact on low-income homeowners who would pay a larger portion of their income than wealthy homeowners. That seems to go against their usual “tax the wealthy” strategy. I guess he feels that $50 is such as small amount that even the low-income families would be OK with paying it. Of course, the real problem is that this $50 wouldn’t be the end of it. In the article, it even says that O’Connell plans to add another $50 every 4 years, so this tax would just keep increasing. Also, if this tactic works, rest assured that other special interests will be running to the ballot with their own $50 parcel tax measures.

Vincent P. O’Hern:

or the past few years, at least, part of our mission at Isthmus has been to cover education in Madison. Sometimes it’s a cover story, other times it’s an ongoing monitoring of the process. This week, for instance, we print excerpts from “Take-Home Test,” a feature that appears on The Daily Page, consisting of questions posed to school board candidates prior to next month’s election.
But most of our coverage has focused on the institutional operation of the school system, including the political games adults sometimes play. If you really want to know the state of public education, you have to go beyond the system and inside the school’s four walls to experience how students and staff bring Madison education to life. I had the opportunity to do just that this week under the aegis of Principal for a Day, a program of the private Foundation for Madison’s Public Schools.

Patrick Welsh:

Failure in the classroom is often tied to lack of funding, poor teachers or other ills. Here’s a thought: Maybe it’s the failed work ethic of todays kids. That’s what I’m seeing in my school. Until reformers see this reality, little will change.
Last month, as I averaged the second-quarter grades for my senior English classes at T.C. Williams High School in Alexandria, Va., the same familiar pattern leapt out at me.
Kids who had emigrated from foreign countries – such as Shewit Giovanni from Ethiopia, Farah Ali from Guyana and Edgar Awumey from Ghana – often aced every test, while many of their U.S.-born classmates from upper-class homes with highly educated parents had a string of C’s and D’s.
As one would expect, the middle-class American kids usually had higher SAT verbal scores than did their immigrant classmates, many of whom had only been speaking English for a few years.
What many of the American kids I taught did not have was the motivation, self-discipline or work ethic of the foreign-born kids.

Neil Heinen:

When all is said and done, there may be no more important relationship in our system of public education than a principal and their school. The impact a principal has on students, teachers, staff, parents and learning is undeniable. And the good ones make their schools good.
Madison has many good ones. And understanding the role principals play is an important function of the “Principal for a Day” program, now in its third year as part of the Foundation for Madison’s Public Schools. The nearly 60 business and civic leaders who participated in this year’s event have a better understanding of both the role principals play and the current state of our schools.
Which leads us to Adopt-a-School. With the support of CUNA Mutual, businesses can now form a relationship with an individual school to help sustain and extend the excellence of our schools.

Tyler Cowen comments on this recent article:

Let us say your kid is smart but has a small chance of making it into a top school. At Yana’s high school (Woodson, in Fairfax) I’ve seen folders of students with 4.0 and 1600 SAT scores who did not get into Harvard or Yale. Getting into those places has elements of a crapshoot. You are gambling, with the odds against you, and a payoff varying only at some threshold level of success (i.e., getting in is what matters; if your kid doesn’t get in, it doesn’t matter how close he came.) Those are the classical conditions where the gambler prefers to take more risk. On the upside, your chance of getting in goes up and on the downside, the longer left-hand tail doesn’t hurt you.

You laugh, but the zeal to protect ourselves from our food has gotten the better of many well-intentioned people, and was challenging the ability of school groups to host potlucks. The original of this release is on-line at:
http://www.thewheelerreport.com/releases/Mar06/Mar3/0303gronemuspotluck.pdf

GRONEMUS “POTLUCK LIBERATION BILL” HEADS TO THE GOVERNOR
By unanimous vote the Wisconsin State Senate has concurred in Assembly Bill454, the “Potluck Liberation Bill”. The bill, authored by State Representative Barbara Gronemus, will exempt potluck events from the public health regulation of restaurants. The bill previously passed the State Assembly by a vote of 95-0.
According to Gronemus, “Assembly Bill 454 was introduced to correct a “state of confusion” between our law books and our state administrative codes on the subject of potlucks by creating an exception to the definition of “restaurant” for a potluck event in Wisconsin and defines the term “potluck event” events that meet the following criteria:
(1) attendees provide food and beverages to be shared and consumed at the event,
(2) no compensation is provided to any person who conducts or assists in providing the event or who provides food and beverages, and no compensation is paid by any person for consumption of food or beverages, and
(3) the event is sponsored is a church; religious, fraternal, youth, or patriotic organization of service club; civic organization; parent-teacher organization; senior citizen center or organization; or adult day care center.
In final comments on Senate passage of Assembly Bill 454, Gronemus stated, “To quote a major newspaper in our state, “Potlucks are as much a Wisconsin tradition as Packers tailgate parties and Friday Fish fries and are an old-old way for communities to come ogether, share food and trade hot dish recipes” and I am proud to have authored Assembly Bill 454 to being some common sense back to the area of potlucks and keep them alive and well as a means of social interaction between people and their recipes and their communities, and I am hopeful that Governor Doyle will sign it into law”.
In addition, Gronemus renewed her intent to sponsor a State Capitol Potluck in celebration of her efforts to protect and liberate them from over zealous government regulations.

Art Rainwater:

The health of cities, towns and villages is interdependent with their school districts. Great cities have great school districts. For 167 years the residents of the Madison Metropolitan School District have enjoyed that reality. I am honored and proud to work here. All of our citizens have every reason to feel that pride in what they have created and supported – a great place for kids to grow and learn.

Pam Belluck:

Poultney, a town of 3,600 bordering New York, is just one example of a situation that increasingly alarms many in Vermont. This state of beautiful mountains and popular ski resorts, once a magnet for back-to-the-landers, is losing young people at a precipitous clip.
Vermont, with a population of about 620,000, now has the lowest birth rate among states. Three-quarters of its public schools have lost children since 2000.
Vermont also has the highest rate of students attending college out of their home state — 57 percent, up from 36 percent 20 years ago. Many do not move back. The total number of 20- to 34-year-olds in Vermont has shrunk by 19 percent since 1990.

Most of my UW-Madison friends have long since left Wisconsin. We’re providing some help to states like California and Colorado.

Ruben Navarrette, Jr.:

YOU HAVE to hand it to critics of “No Child Left Behind.” In trying to preserve the status quo, they’re wrong. But at least they’re persistent. In fact, they’re persistently wrong.
Made up of teachers, administrators, school board members and anyone who turns a blind eye to the mediocrity of public schools, the critics are relentless in their attempts to discredit the education reform law.
They’ll get another chance to blast away over the next several months as a bipartisan commission holds public hearings across the country to get an earful on what works with the law, and what doesn’t. The commission will send recommendations to Congress, which is expected to renew the law in 2007.
It’s easy to see why those who prefer the status quo detest “No Child Left Behind.” Under the law, children in every racial and demographic group in every public school must improve their scores on standardized tests in math and science. No excuses. Schools that fall short of that goal can be shut down, and their students can transfer to another public school.
The critics hate requirements like that for one reason — because good tests not only tell you if kids are learning, but also if teachers and administrators are holding up their end. If the truth comes out, disgruntled parents might go from demanding accountability from schools to demanding it from the individuals who work in them.

Bill Livick:

The two-hour meeting was organized by Vandewalle & Associates and the UW Applied Population Lab. The organizations are doing research to determine potential future school sites and predict space needs. Their findings will be part of a long-range facilities and enrollment report. District officials believe the report will help guide decisions about where and when to build new schools, and will ultimately save taxpayers millions of dollars.
About 40 residents, as well as School Board members and district administrators, met at Country View Elementary School on Tuesday, Feb. 21. The goal was to better understand residents? values and priorities regarding schools and the district?s future.

Madison School Board Seat 1 Candidate Maya Cole:

Did you know that the No Child Left Behind legislation requires school districts that receive Title 1 funds to involve parents with their children’s schooling?
One goal I have for the school board is to encourage and model increased parental participation in the schools. We need to focus on building consensus on the board, with the parents and in the community.
I am hoping as a school board member to visit a different school every week for the academic year. I think it would also be helpful to volunteer in that same school for an hour during the visit as well.
As parents, many of us recognize the need to augment or encourage creative and social learning for our children outside of the classroom. What better way to share this with other kids than by involving parents?…..
We need more effective communication between the district and the community. We need to be open to new ideas, voices and perspectives of education in our community.

Maya’s opponent in the April 4, 2006 election is Arlene Silveira. Learn more about the candidates here.

WisPolitics video:

In a new TalkAboutLive@WisPolitics.com Web cast from the Madison offices of WHD Government Affairs, GOP Rep. Jeff Wood and Dem Sen. Bob Jauch debate TABOR and the new “Wisconsin Taxpayer Protection Amendment.”

Florida Department of Education:

A Comparison of Performance Pay Proposals: 2005; Denver, Houston, Florida and Minnesota.

Alan Eisner:

Nobody is quite sure exactly how many American children are being taught at home. The National Center for Education Statistics, in a 2003 survey, put the number that year at 1.1 million. The Home School Legal Defense Association, which represents some 80,000 member families, says the figure now is quite a bit higher — between 1.7 and 2.1 million.
But there is no disagreement about the explosive growth of the movement — 29 percent from 1999 to 2003 according to the NCES study, or 7 to 15 percent a year according to HSLDA.
This growth has spawned an estimated $750 million a year market supplying parents with teaching aids and lesson plans to fit every religious and political philosophy. Home-schooled children regularly show up in the finals of national spelling competitions, generating publicity for the movement.

Katherine Kersten:

Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools. Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools.
Black parents have good reasons to look elsewhere. Last year, only 28% of black eighth-graders in the Minneapolis public schools passed the state’s basic skills math test; 47% passed the reading test. The black graduation rate hovers around 50%, and the district’s racial achievement gap remains distressingly wide. Louis King, a black leader who served on the Minneapolis School Board from 1996 to 2000, puts it bluntly: “Today, I can’t recommend in good conscience that an African-American family send their children to the Minneapolis public schools. The facts are irrefutable: These schools are not preparing our children to compete in the world.” Mr. King’s advice? “The best way to get attention is not to protest, but to shop somewhere else.”
They can do so because of the state’s longstanding commitment to school choice. In 1990 Minnesota allowed students to cross district boundaries to enroll in any district with open seats. Two years later in St. Paul, the country’s first charter school opened its doors. (Charter schools are started by parents, teachers or community groups. They operate free from burdensome regulations, but are publicly funded and accountable.) Today, this tradition of choice is providing a ticket out for kids in the gritty, mostly black neighborhoods of north and south- central Minneapolis.

Brennan Nardi:

We also had the opportunity to interact with Jefferson students. We ate lunch with the eighth graders and poked our heads into afternoon classes. Four area educators then weighed in on what matters most in helping kids achieve. Jefferson principal John Burmaster told us that during middle school, “the best thing you can do is sit down with a kid and show that kid that you like them. It always goes back to relationships.”

[3.5MB PDF, Page 12]

Rodney Gedda:

If securely deploying 10,000 wireless access points across 1700 locations in five months to create what is said to be the world’s largest enterprise Wi-Fi network sounds like a challenge, Victoria’s Department of Education (DET) took it all in its stride – with the help of a little penguin.
With 540,000 students, 42,000 teachers, more than 200,000 computers, and 40,000 notebooks spread across the 1700 sites, the department last year allocated $6.5 million to implement a wireless network aimed at easing connectivity, but at first its technology options were limited.
During a presentation at this year’s wireless summit in Sydney today, the department’s head of ICT security, Loris Meadows spoke of how the Wireless Networks in Schools (WINS) project required a custom proxy and security services appliance dubbed “EduPass” to be engineered due to the WAN’s complexity.

Channel3000:

he Wisconsin Senate passed a bill on Tuesday that would monitor indoor air quality at schools around the state.
The measure, Senate bill 235, was championed by Jeanne and Dick Black, of Darlington, after their 9-year-old daughter Jade became ill from what they said that poor air quality at her school.
They said that Jade was diagnosed with severe mold-induced asthma and suffered headaches, migraines, blurred vision, rashes on her face, stomach aches and nausea while attending Darlington Elementary and Middle School. The symptoms subsided when she transferred to another school under doctor’s orders.
According to the Wisconsin Education Association Council, 80 schools in the state have air quality problems. They include Chavez and Midvale Elementary in Madison, Edgerton High School, Marshall Elementary School, Webb Middle School in Reedsburg, and Black Earth Elementary in the Wisconsin Heights District. Other districts cited without a specific school listed include Adams-Friendship, Boscobel, Columbus, Cuba City, Monticello, Palmyra-Eagle, Poynette, Rio and Wisconsin Dells, WISC-TV reported.

Jared Sandberg:

School ties are immensely powerful in the business world, providing preexisting networks of relationships and low search costs. But while relying on them often works out just fine, lost in the mix of well-meaning loyalty to educational institutions and nostalgia for the past is the possibility that the ties that bind can also blind, undermining corporate efforts to build meritocracies.
Everyone knows that the educational degrees you earned can affect your career. How else to explain the spate of exaggerated claims of academic prowess among top executives, some of whom have decades-long track records but nonetheless continue to inflate precareer educational achievements. Most recently, Radio Shack was stung by this problem. But it also happened to Bausch & Lomb, Veritas Software, A.T. Kearney and the U.S. Olympic Committee when they welcomed executives to their top echelons.

Greg Toppo:

The brushed aluminum box on the brick wall glows purple, a rim of light around an unblinking HAL-like eye.
You peek in and stare for a second, and the steel doors click open. A soothing female voice says: “Identification is completed.”
Welcome to Park Avenue Elementary School.
Freehold Borough School District installed the iris-scanning devices in its three schools last month. It and a district down the road in New Egypt are the first U.S. school systems to study what happens when adults are asked to eye-scan to get in the door each day.

Joanne Jacobs rounds up commentary, including those from Cal education and public policy professor Bruce Fuller:

Universal preschool would cost Californians $23 billion over the next 10 years, if Rob Reiner’s Proposition 82 passes. But it won’t close the learning gap for poor kids, warns Bruce Fuller, a Berkeley education and public policy professor. Currently, 64 percent of four-year-olds go to preschool; Reiner’s plan would boost that only to 70 percent. Instead of directing public money at needy families, most of the dollars would go to provide free preschool to middle-class and wealthy parents. Any gains by poor children are likely to be lost when they enter substandard schools.
We are learning empirically that gains experienced by poor children who attend preschool fade by third grade unless youngsters enter quality elementary schools, according to new studies by UC-Santa Barbara and University of Wisconsin economists.
Fuller also questions the requirement that all preschool teachers earn a bachelor’s degree. This would disqualify two-thirds of current preschool teachers.
. . . two decades of research show that children benefit when their teachers have a two-year degree and focused training in child development. After that, more years in college are spent on general education requirements, exerting no additional effects. Only the cost rises dramatically.

Kurt Gutknecht and Bill Livick pen an interesting article, published recently in the Fitchburg Star:

Several teachers at area schools did not return calls asking for their opinion on the act. Administrators were less reluctant to weigh in.
The principal of a Madison middle school, who did not want to be identified, gave a qualified endorsement to the act for focusing on essential skills and for including all students.
“They’re reasonable standards. A student can’t solve problems if she can’t read well,” the principal said.
Madison schools have a good foundation in addressing the needs of all students, which predated the act, according to the principal. Of greater concern was the act’s requirement that specialists teach every content area, which could force many qualified teachers from the profession. Although it’s not unreasonable to focus on formal teaching standards, “it seems ludicrous” because “many of our most effective teachers are generalists,” said the principal, particularly when there’s no funding for training.
The requirements of the act have “terrified” some teachers, who fear being labeled as ineffective and are concerned about teaching in a school that’s labeled as having failed, according to the principal.

(more…)

Cecilia Le:

Of every 100 high school freshmen in Delaware, 21 will graduate from college on time.
Sixty-four will graduate from high school in four years, 38 will enter college immediately after high school and just 30 are still enrolled by their sophomore year. [Wisconsin: 79 graduate from high school on time, 47 immediately enter college, 34 are still enrolled sophomore year and 25 graduate from college on time [pdf report])
The numbers are similarly sobering nationwide, where just 18 out of 100 high school freshmen graduate from college on time — within three years for an associate degree or six years for a bachelor’s degree.

View Wisconsin’s results via the achieve.org website.

Ned Crabb:

Two weeks ago, a six-year-old boy was suspended from first grade for three days for “sexual harassment” because he allegedly put “two fingers inside [a] girl’s waistband while she sat on the floor in front of him,” according to an AP story.
Sexual harassment at age six. Growing up kind of fast these days, aren’t they?
“He doesn’t know those things,” the boy’s mother told the local press. “He’s only six years old.” The woman said she “screamed” about the suspension.
Yeah, well, I’d scream too. The whole thing is stupid–children poking at one another and then being punished for it in terms of adult concepts, described with adult words.

I remember a fellow male first grade classmate walking up and kissing a female classmate many, many (!) years ago.

Channel3000:

The police data on the school shows a mixed record. In the past three and a half years, Madison West ranks first among the other city schools in bomb threats, property damage and fights.
However, it also has the fewest number of drug incidents and weapons violations.
Overall, West High School has the lowest crime rate.
School principal Ed Holmes, who is in his second year, said that he wants it even lower.
He said that it’s one reason that he’s completely reshaped the school day with a revolutionary overhaul of the lunch schedule.

Channel3000:

News 3 examined the data from Madison Memorial High School on Wednesday night. The school outpaces the three other city schools combined.
So far this year, Memorial has 68 arrests while West High School has 11, East High School has 18, and Robert M. LaFolette has 15.
At the current rate, Memorial would end the school year with an 88 percent increase in crime. West would be up 29 percent, but East and LaFollette would each see a 54 percent decrease
Memorial is a school at a real crossroads, and one frequently in the news because of reports of violence.
Video

WKOW-TV notes a recent pellet gun shooting at the school.
UPDATE: Lisa Schuetz reports that a 17 year old girl was charged in this shooting.

Michael Winerip:

But for all FairTest’s impact, its days may be numbered. Never before has standardized testing so dominated American public education, thanks to the 2002 federal No Child Left Behind Law. Every child from grade 3 to high school must now take state tests. And the Bush administration is considering extending those tests to colleges.
“With N.C.L.B., a lot of people feel the debate is over,” said Monty Neill, director of FairTest, officially the National Center for Fair and Open Testing. “The attitude seems to be, ‘Testing is so pervasive, what’s the point?’ ” Support from foundations has virtually dried up and individual donations have not made up the difference. “Our board has seriously discussed whether to fold the operation,” Mr. Neill said

Eduwonk has much more.

Channel3000:

News 3 examined the data from Robert M. LaFolette High School on Tuesday night. The school is the smallest of the four schools included in this series, boasting more than 1,700 students.
During a typical afternoon at LaFollette High School, principal Mike Meissen walks the halls.
If it’s going on at LaFollette, Meissen knows about it. He uses a new technology that all four Madison principals have this year — a palm pilot. Meissen can access a list of LaFollette’s 1,748 students along with their pictures and class schedules. They tell him where they should be at all times.
Assistant Principal Mikki Smith is in her first year as one of his top assistants and she said that he has a reputation for maintaining order at the school.
“Mike is known for running a pretty tight ship,” Smith said. “He has high expectations for students and he makes that known.”

video

Donna Winchester & Ron Matus:

The Board of Education is expected today to approve a proposal that would give some teachers a bonus equal to 5 percent of their salary. The extra pay would be based solely on their ability to show student learning gains on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
But the biggest impediment could be lack of teacher support. Unlike Denver officials, who worked closely with the teacher’s union, Florida education officials didn’t consult with the state teachers union until after they had a draft of their plan.
When performance pay is “forced on teachers, you have a war,” said Allan Odden, professor of educational administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And if you’re having a war, it’s unlikely to be an incentive to improving student learning.”

Jonathan Roos:

A commission would be created to design the new compensation program, which would likely include the measurement of student improvement over a year’s time as a yardstick of how well a teacher is performing.
Democrats reacted cautiously to the Senate Republicans’ merit pay initiative.
“I think the responsible course of action would be for us to first come to agreement on what such a program would entail,” said Vilsack.

Jonathan D. Glater:

One student skipped class and then sent the professor an e-mail message asking for copies of her teaching notes. Another did not like her grade, and wrote a petulant message to the professor. Another explained that she was late for a Monday class because she was recovering from drinking too much at a wild weekend party.
Jennifer Schultens, an associate professor of mathematics at the University of California, Davis, received this e-mail message last September from a student in her calculus course: “Should I buy a binder or a subject notebook? Since I’m a freshman, I’m not sure how to shop for school supplies. Would you let me know your recommendations? Thank you!”

Great Lakes Environmental News:

The EPA has just awarded 37 grants totaling $7.5 million as part of the Clean School Bus USA program, which is intended to reduce kid’s exposure to diesel exhaust. The program encourages policies and practices to eliminate unnecessary school bus idling, to install emission control systems on newer buses and to replace older buses with cleaner diesel or compressed natural gas powered buses. Grant recipients are contributing an additional $13 million in matching funds and in-kind services. The grants will help fund the cleanup of more than 500 tons of annual diesel emissions from 4000 school buses nationwide.

Via the Daily Page.

Channel3000:

How safe is your teen’s school?
WISC-TV wanted to know. Eric Franke and Terri Barr conducted a three-month investigation into all four Madison area high schools.
They analyzed the number of police calls and arrests made on school campuses.

Video

Channel3000:

School police liaison officers in the Janesville School District will now carry tasers for increased security at all school campuses.

Paul Soglin:

In parting, let me share with you the findings of a Northwestern University professor, James Rosenbaum.* He studied poorly performing high school students, virtually all Black, from the Chicago Public Schools who moved into areas served by suburban schools. His findings were that most of these failing students in Chicago were getting C’s in the suburbs. A tougher school district and improved grades!
The main point of his paper was to challenge the commonly accepted conclusion that once a student was doing poorly academically, there was not much hope for turn around after the 6th or 7th grade. His findings completely contradicted that conclusion.

These are thoughts authored by community member and MMSD parent, Beth Swedeen:
The issue of children being adequately served by special education services is a challenge playing out across the country. Certainly, as someone who works with families of children with disabilities and as a parent of a child with disabilities myself, I know the anguish and frustration of watching a child flounder when needs are not adequately met. I also know families who use public school choice and even move so their child receives adequate services. This is not a Madison-specific problem.
Single solutions, such as eliminating cross-categorical staffing or segregating children into ability-grouped learning situations, is simplistic and can lead to unintended consequences, such as lower expectations in those segregated settings, or rigid one-size fits all instruction by “learning disability” or “cognitive disability” teachers.
In its most heart-breaking forms, category-specific programming in smaller districts leads to children being pulled out of their home school and bussed 15 miles or more away to the “cognitive disability” or “emotional disability” program in a neighboring town. I am working with 2 families who are facing that right now. The fact that their child, who has made friends and connections at school, is being ripped away from the community because he or she has Down symdrome or cerebral palsy is truly tragic. Less than 15 years ago, Madison grouped students in this way, and children did not attend their neighborhood school, not based on parent choice, but based on their disability labels.
Madison Partners for Inclusive Education is working closely with MMSD and with the community as a whole to help support students, their families, and educational staff in improving outcomes for students with special needs.
MMSD has some real positives going for it:

• More than 97 percent of special needs students are either being served in their home school or in a school of the parent’s choice.
• The vast majority of students with disabilities at all ages are spending the majority of their day in regular education classrooms (I believe the highest rate of any urban school district in the country.)
• Leadership at the administrative and at most building levels is committed to inclusive practices.
• Ties to the University of Wisconsin and evidence-based best practices are strong.
• Commitment to adequate training and continuing education is present.

Madison Partners has also identified several key areas in which they want to continue to partner with the district to further strengthen the quality of services:

• Input into hiring at key leadership levels (building principals).
• Continued partnerships with resources in the community and with families to elevate services and get much-needed supports to classroom teachers, special educators, and related staff.
• Continued emphasis on total team teaching (using all resources present, including reg/special ed, speech, OT/PT therapists, classroom aides, and related staff to meet every need in classrooms. This also means sharing resources: for instance, reading specialists in schools working with special educators on specific strategies to meet student reading goals.)
• Continued resources for in-service and pre-service training on effective differentiation.
• Direct training for families and students on how students can take part in and play leadership roles in developing their own Individual Education Plans (IEPs).
• More leadership opportunities in schools for students with disabilities.
• Working with MMSD and community to strengthen state funding for schools.

We know that no single person, no matter how gifted, can meet diverse needs of 15-20 students in any given classroom. Instead of separating children out, though, we endorse strategies than engage the entire school team in the success of each student. Together, we believe we can elevate outcomes, not just for students with disabilities, but for all students in our district.

Nanette Asimov:

At Woodside High in San Mateo County, college-prep classes awaited a 15-year-old boy with learning disabilities and anxiety.
He would blend in with other college-bound students, but also receive daily help from a special education expert. He would get a laptop computer, extra time for tests — and an advocate to smooth any ripples with teachers. If an anxiety attack came on, he could step out of class.
But Woodside High wasn’t what his parents had in mind.
Instead, they enrolled him in a $30,000-a-year prep school in Maine — then sent the bill to their local public school district.

Alan Borsuk & Sarah Carr:

An agreement is likely to be announced Thursday and is expected to include a substantial increase in state funding of the class size reduction program known as SAGE.
Two sources told the Journal Sentinel that the agreement will likely allow an increase in the number of low-income students using publicly funded vouchers to attend private schools and religious schools in Milwaukee from roughly 15,000 to about 22,500. It also reportedly calls for all schools using vouchers – currently 124 schools – to obtain one of several forms of accreditation within several years. Many have such accreditation now, but some, including some of the weakest schools, do not.

Wisconsin Virtual Academy:

Learn More About WIVA at These Interactive Sessions
At these online sessions, we will review the K12 curriculum, demonstrate our lessons and materials, and answer your questions about the Wisconsin Virtual Academy. For more information on how to join an online virtual information session, please email info@wivcs.org.

Channel3000:

Madison police said that they found a realistic-looking gun in a Memorial High School locker on Tuesday morning.

Inside Higher Ed:

The longitudinal study, which its author calls a “data essay,” explores the high school class of 1992 as it moved from high school to higher education and compares its success, favorably, to the high school class of 1982 tracked in an earlier report, “Answers in the Tool Box.”
Both reports provide support for efforts to improve the quality of high school curriculums and the participation in those curriculums of larger (and more diverse) proportions of students. New data indicate that progress is occurring — the eight and a half year graduation rate for the 1992 cohort rose to 66 percent, from 60 percent for the 1982 cohort.

Ian Shapira:

It’s National School Board Recognition Month, when school officials across the country dutifully heap appreciation upon their board members, who appreciate the appreciation, even if some of them think it can be gratuitous.

Alan Borsuk:

Amid a barrage of television and radio ads, stories in the newspaper almost every day and conflicting claims about Milwaukee’s controversial and precedent-setting program by which almost 15,000 low-income students attend private schools using public money, the basics of what is going on can be lost easily.
Here is a primer on the current, heated episodes in the long running battle over school choice.

Randy Cohen:

The president of our local board of education sends her children to the public elementary schools, but when they get to high school, she moves them to private schools. Isn’t it her ethical obligation either to send her children to the schools she sets policy for and espouses as so wonderful or to step down from the board? JoAnne Manse, Rutherford, N.J.
It is not. It is the obligation of board members to strive mightily to make the public schools so good that even parents with the means to opt out choose to remain. If the public schools are not yet that good, the president may honorably send her kids elsewhere — indeed, her duty as a parent compels her to. Even where a public school is excellent, parents may seek programs it does not offer — religious instruction, for example.

Nick Anderson:

It has been eight years since Maryland told the Prince George’s County school to shape up, or else. It has been four years since the federal government raised the pressure with a law meant to force shake-ups through aid and sanctions.
Yet Charles Carroll Middle School has continued to fall short of state standards, even though the county has switched textbooks, changed principals three times and even assigned a “turnaround specialist.”

Channel3000:

Students at La Follette High School are making sure every student has a voice through the use of their school newspaper, WISC-TV reported.
With the first edition of La Follette Lance in 2006, the newspaper began targeting students who thought they had been forgotten.
For example, Andres Garcia enjoys the entire page of Spanish articles the Lance editors and writers produce for each issue.
Garcia is part of 10 percent of the school that is Latino.
“This is something that was actually overdue,” Garcia said. “That was something we should have had years ago.”
The newspaper staff is involved every step of the process, including getting the paper ready for mailing and distribution.

Mike Ivey:

The largest property owner on Allied Drive has fallen into receivership, further opening the door for the city of Madison to purchase nine buildings in the heart of the low-income neighborhood on the city’s southwest side.
Members of the Allied-Dunn’s Marsh Neighborhood Association have generally been supportive of city purchase of the properties, although there has been some concern that if the units are converted to condos it would price many out of the neighborhood.
Duane Steinhauer, a landlord who also owns rental property in the Allied neighborhood, said he is opposed to city purchase of the property. He said Hauk’s problems began when the city failed to get behind those initial plans for a private-sector redevelopment of the properties.

Pallavi Gogol:

“Clearly, townships are promoting the idea of preventing sprawl, in clear contrast to the past when developers had to battle city hall for zoning changes,” says Roy Higgs, chief executive of Development Design Group, an architecture firm in Baltimore. This comes at a time when developers are under a lot of pressure to maximize use of both land and construction, costs of which have spiraled in the past decade.
Furthermore, many counties and townships find that the sprawl has stretched their own finances. “Communities want to trim their budgets for new roads and schools,” says Terry W. McEwen, president of Memphis-based Poag & McEwen, a developer currently making six master-planned communities, one with condos over retail shops.

Kurt Gutknecht:

Frustrated by continued uncertainty over where their children will attend school, residents of Swan Creek are asking to be transferred to the Oregon School District.
The decision would reverse a 2003 decision that transferred Swan Creek to the Madison Metropolitan School District.
Residents obtained signatures from 188 households on a petition asking the respective school boards to consider the request. Three real estate developers also endorsed the move.
If the school boards refuse the request, residents can ask that an appeals board consider the transfer.
“We know it’s an uphill battle,” said resident Renee Hammond, referring to the previous unsuccessful attempt to reverse the decision of the two school boards.
Several residents said they had been misled about schools when they purchased their homes. Some had been told that they could choose which school district they wanted to attend or that the Madison district planned to construct a school in Swan Creek or elsewhere in Fitchburg.
More upsetting to residents, however, is the uncertainty over whether their children can continue to attend Leopold Elementary School. The Madison school board is weighing plans to alleviate overcrowding at Leopold that could send children from Swan Creek to several different schools.
Organizers of the petition drive said they could easily have obtained more signatures.
Romney Ludgate said there’s no assurance that making space for additional students at Leopold would be more than a short-term solution to overcrowding and that residents might have to continually address the issue.
“Until a school is built in Fitchburg, residents of the southern part of the district in Fitchburg will continue to face extreme instability” in where Swan Creek students would attend school, Hammond said.

(more…)

Interesting article on the leadership dynamics of the New York City Department of Education by David Herszenhorn:

“Parents and parent organizations feel less enfranchised now than they did four years ago, and that is a dangerous trend,” Mr. Sanders said. He added, “Ultimately you cannot have a successful education system if parents and communities of parents don’t feel invested.”
Stephen Morello, Mr. Klein’s communications director, issued a statement saying parent involvement “has been an important priority from the beginning of our reform efforts.”

Paul Soglin & Mary Kay Battaglia:

When I posted Teachers Strike in Madison: Thirty Years Later January 27, 2006, Mary commented:

While failing public schools are linked to the high number of low income students attending them, you may be interested in some MMSD data. If you go to the MMSD web site and look under their data you will find that in 1991 Madison’s elementary schools had a total %low income of 24.6%. In 2005 that number almost doubled to 42.4%. Our schools are in a crisis of becoming just another urban school in trouble. That’s almost double in 14 years.
Why is it that Madison city government is so UNinvolved with the schools? It seems to me for growth and economic stability the two should have a better working relationship. The district is clueless to the growth and the city does not seemed concerned with informing the district or working to help crisis areas of the city to help both the school and neighborhood. Allied is an example where they could work together. Mary Kay Battaglia

And this week Channel 3 WISC is running a series, Experts: New Street Gangs Rising In Dane County.

Mary Kay previously wrote about this here. Lucy Mathiak followed up on that post here.

Sandy Cullen:

The Madison School Board and the Oregon School Board both are scheduled to address the petition at their Feb. 27 meetings.
The land on which the subdivision is located was previously part of the Oregon School District. It was transferred effective July 1, 2003, to the Madison district in exchange for commercial property, said Clarence Sherrod, attorney for the Madison School District.
School boards in both districts also agreed not to allow the land to be transferred back, said Madison School Board President Carol Carstensen.
“I do not want them to leave,” Carstensen said, adding, “I certainly understand their concern over the uncertainty.”
Carstensen said some Swan Creek residents who want to remain in the Madison School District “are not happy at the timing” of the petition, which they thought would used as a “last-ditch” option.

The petition, statutes and more details can be found here.

Ben Feller:

In the poll, for example, less than half of parents say student discipline is a serious concern at school.
Teachers scoff at that. Two in three of them call children’s misbehavior a major problem.
Over 14 years of teaching, Carol-Sue Nix has watched discipline problems trickle down from the fifth grade to pre-kindergarten. A parent-teacher conference usually follows.

Lisa Hendrickson:

Virtual schools – also known as “schools without walls” and cyber-schools – are just one of the many educational options available for families today in Wisconsin. Virtual schools started appearing in the late 1990s and have quickly become a very real alternative for children who may do better – for any number of reasons – outside the traditional classroom.
As a former “bricks and mortar” schoolteacher, I am experiencing the benefits of virtual schooling firsthand in my role as a “virtual schoolteacher.” I am able to work with each of my students and a parent or other adult who serves as the child’s face-to-face “Learning Coach” to develop lesson plans that best meet their individual learning style and ability. Parents enjoy getting involved and the results have been very successful. In fact, WCA has doubled in size since its inception in 2002, dissolving the mystery of virtual learning and replacing it with well-educated young people.

Channel3000:

Concerns about the growth of street gangs in the Madison area are prompting authorities to create a new task force that will target Dane County’s top gang leaders and drug dealers, WISC-TV reported.
Federal, state, and local police will play a key role in the new gang unit.
There’s a great deal being planned on many fronts right now to combat the growing gang problem, and the new gang task force is one component, WISC-TV reported.

Rafael Gomez recently hosted a Forum on Gangs & School Violence: Audio / Video.

Valerie Strauss:

Social studies teacher Leirdre Galloway won’t accept late assignments, strictly enforces classroom rules and demands that her students think for themselves. “I’m going to teach you how to fish,” she likes to tell them. “I’m not going to give you fish.”

Katharine Goodloe:

When Brenda Peterson’s 17-year-old son, Matthew, comes home and asks for more lunch money, she’s able to log into an online system at Hartford Union High School that shows just how many cheese fries, Little Debbie snacks and cookies he’s downed lately.
Looking at that list has prompted Peterson to sit her son down and say, “Hey, you have to make better choices,” she said.
At West Bend’s Badger Middle School, teacher Jessica Gieryn e-mails about 75 parents each Monday, outlining forthcoming assignments and project due dates.
Although West Bend doesn’t expect to have a district-wide system for online grades until next year, Gieryn has been sending her informal list for four years, and the number of parents wanting the information grows steadily, she said.
Not only do the notes cut down on phone calls – most parents e-mail her instead – they also put students on alert. Some complain that parents know details of a big project the moment kids arrive home from school, or that parents have printed out study guides for them to memorize, she said.
“It definitely does change expectations,” Gieryn said.

Pam Belluck:

Attendance at Chelsea High School had hovered at a disappointing 90 percent for years, and school officials were determined to turn things around. So, last fall they decided to give students in this poverty-stung city just north of Boston a little extra motivation: students would get $25 for every quarter they had perfect attendance and another $25 if they managed perfect attendance all year.
“I was at first taken a little aback by the idea: we’re going to pay kids to come to school?” said the principal, Morton Orlov II. “But then I thought perfect attendance is not such a bad behavior to reward. We are sort of putting our money where our mouth is.”

Fitchburg’s Swan Creek subdivision petitioned recently to leave the Madison School District. [Map] A reader emails that Swan Creek currently has 21 students in the MMSD. Links:

• Where have all the Children Gone?
• East / West Attendance Area Task Force Discussions

5 pages from the petition [1.1mb pdf] Wisconsin Statutes: [106K PDF]
UPDATE: A reader wondered recently what the mileage differences might be between Swan Creek and schools in the MMSD or Oregon*.

• High Schools: Madison West 7 miles [map] or Oregon High School 7 miles [map]
• Middle Schools: Cherokee 7.2 miles [map], Oregon’s Rome Corner’s Intermediate 7.7 miles [map] or Oregon Middle School 8.3 miles [map]
• Elementary Schools: Leopold 3.5 miles [map], Lincoln 4 miles [map], Midvale 8.2 miles [map]. Oregon: Prairie View Elementary 6.7 miles [map] Netherwood Elementary 6.7 miles [map] Brooklyn Elementary School 13 miles [map]

* Obviously, the pickup route and traffic conditions determine the actual travel time, given similar distances.

National Center for Education Statistics:

Status and Trends in the Education of Blacks draws on the many statistics published by NCES in a variety of reports and synthesizes these data in one compact volume. In addition to indicators drawn from existing government reports, some indicators were developed specifically for this report. The objective of this report is to make statistical information about the educational status of Blacks easily accessible to a variety of audiences.

Amy Hetzner:

As state politicians and interest groups argue over whether to lift the enrollment cap in Milwaukee’s voucher school program, the cap in another school choice initiative is quietly slated to expire.
Under state law, the 2006-’07 school year will be the first time in Wisconsin’s open enrollment public school choice program in which school districts will be unable to control the number of students leaving their boundaries if they exceed a certain portion of their enrollment.
The provision, which had been in effect since open enrollment began in 1998, was used by at least 10 school districts to limit potential monetary losses in the current school year, according to figures from the state Department of Public Instruction. They include districts such as Florence, which faced possible dissolution this year before voters bailed out the financially ailing school system, and Palmyra-Eagle on the outskirts of the metropolitan Milwaukee area.

Randal Archibold:

Ladera Heights, an unincorporated community of about 8,000 people, has for decades belonged to the school district in adjacent Inglewood, a decidedly poorer, predominantly black and Latino city whose schools have struggled academically and financially.
A group of Ladera Heights residents, many of whom have pulled their children out of Inglewood schools in favor of private ones, want their neighborhood assigned to the school district in Culver City, a more racially mixed, more affluent community than Inglewood.