I thought it fitting that my colleague Nick Anderson had his eye-opening piece on the Success For All reading program published in The Post on New Year’s Day. The night before, we were all singing “Should old acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind.” That could be the theme song for Success For All.
As Anderson reveals, the cleverly organized and well-tested program, brainchild of legendary Johns Hopkins University research couple Robert E. Slavin and Nancy A. Madden, spent the Bush Administration in a wilderness inhabited by other wrongly discarded educational ideas. It did not disappear, but it did not get much attention or growth. Now it is back in the forefront of school improvement, beneficiary of a $50 million grant from the Obama administration. Its risen-from-the-dead story would be hard to believe if Anderson hadn’t explained it so well in his story.
I know Madden and Slavin. A decade ago, I wrote a magazine piece about their unusual marriage and work, and what they had done to alter reading instruction throughout much of the country. [I would love to link to the piece, but I can’t find it.] They had come from well-to-do families — Madden from Edina, Minn., and Slavin from Montgomery County, Md. They met as undergraduates at Reed College, a Portland, Ore., institution that encourages social activists. They fell in love and decided to dedicate their lives to finding the best ways to teach children, particularly kids whose own upbringings weren’t as comfortable as theirs had been. (They later adopted three children from South America.)
Do Home Schoolers Deserve a Tax Break?
The new Republicans in Congress have vowed to challenge Washington’s role in American public education, and said they will seek to turn more power over to the states on many fronts. But one of their priorities is a new federal rule: to give parents in every state tax credits if their children are home-schooled.
Previous efforts in Congress to adopt a nationwide tax break have failed, and currently only three states — Illinois, Louisiana and Minnesota — allow some benefit for home schooling.
Will the idea succeed in the new Congress, given some conservatives’ longtime opposition, on the grounds that the credits might open the door to more government regulation of education? How would such a system work? Is it a threat to public education, as its critics claim?
The Mayor Wants You to Lose Some Weight
Frustrated with the high cost of health care, a number of communities around the country are taking new steps to push citizens to improve their health.
Some places have set 10-year goals to reach certain marks of good health. In San Francisco, for example, 79% of small children currently are fully immunized by the time they turn 2 years old; the county aims to increase that to 90% by 2020. Other places, like Kern County, Calif., which has one of the highest rates of obesity and heart disease in the state, are setting up farmers’ markets and constructing new trails and sidewalks to foster healthier lifestyles.
Proposed bill would overhaul Virginia textbook adoption process
In the wake of a state review that found dozens of errors in Virginia social studies textbooks, Del. David Englin will introduce a bill Monday that would overhaul the state’s textbook adoption process.
The legislation would shift the responsibility of vetting textbooks from panels consisting mostly of school teachers to the publishers. Companies would have to be certified with the Virginia Board of Education before their books are approved for use in public schools.
Last year, textbook review committees approved two books by Five Ponds Press – “Our Virginia, Past and Present” and “Our America to 1865” – that several state-appointed scholars found last month to have dozens of historical inaccuracies.
“As a legislator and a parent, I was shocked and appalled to learn that Virginia social studies textbooks had such egregious factual inaccuracies,” Englin (D-Alexandria) said. “As parents, the bare minimum we expect from textbooks is that the facts are correct.”
Getting Schooled in Law Loans
The American Bar Association has officially issued a warning on its website.
The ABA is now making the case to persuade college students not to go to law school.
According to the association, over the past 25 years law school tuition has consistently risen two times faster than inflation.
The average private law student borrows about $92,500 for law school, while law students who attend public schools take out loans for $71,400. These numbers do not include any debt law students may still have from their time as undergraduates.
Beloit part of voucher plan? “The Days of An Educational Monopoly Are Over”
The new Wisconsin governor is considering sweeping reforms in Madison, one of which could directly impact Beloit schools.
Gov. Scott Walker and the incoming Republican legislature assumed power in the state Monday and wasted no time in introducing the possibility of expanding the state’s school voucher program. The program, presently instituted in the Milwaukee area, allows students to receive taxpayer-financed vouchers to attend private schools, including religious schools. Just under 21,000 of the maximum 22,500 students enrolled in the program this year.
The governor has identified Beloit as one place where the vouchers could be phased in as part of a trial effort to spread the program statewide.
“I think school choice is successful,” Walker told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “I think it’s worth looking at expanding it. How do you do that? There’s really a multitude of options, not only those being discussed in other parts of the country. And we want to continue to be at the forefront of that.”
Beloit School District Superintendent Milt Thompson said he views the potential voucher introduction as yet another reason for the district to reassess its direction.
“My concern is that the district has to become conscious of today’s market. If you have a system that is attractive, people will send their kids here. If you don’t, the days of an educational monopoly are over,” he said.
Additional choices for our communities is a good thing. Thompson’s perspective is correct and useful.
Proposed Changes to Superintendent Prerequisites
The Record reports today that the NJ DOE has drawn up changes to credential requirements for superintendents of “struggling school districts.” Taking a page, perhaps, from Mike Bloomberg, some districts would have the ability to hire superintendents who lack specific educational certification or degrees from teaching colleges.
Richard Bozza, head of the New Jersey Association of School Administrators, says that the proposed change in employment requirements give some applicants a “free pass” and “our view is clear: you need to have an educational background to lead a district.”
(Of course,, such changes offer a solution to the problem of traditionally-credentialed superintendents fleeing the state for greener pastures because of the newly-imposed salary caps, but that’s another matter.)
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: When States Default: 2011, Meet 1841
Land values soared. States splurged on new programs. Then it all went bust, bringing down banks and state governments with them. This wasn’t America in 2011, it was America in 1841, when a now-forgotten depression pushed eight states and a desolate territory called Florida into the unthinkable: They defaulted on debts.
This was an incredible step, even then. Fledgling U.S. states like Indiana and Illinois were still building credibility on global debt markets. They rightly feared “a prejudice so deep and wide” that they could never sell bonds in Europe again, said one banker.
Their paranoia would be familiar to the shell-shocked California and Illinois of 2011. Each is beset by budget problems so great that some have begun debating default or bankruptcy. These worriers may draw comfort from the state crises that raged and retreated long ago. Most of the states eventually paid off their debts, and changed their laws to safeguard their finances, helping make U.S. states some of the world’s best credits.
More Schools Embracing iPad as Learning Tool
As students returned to class this week, some were carrying brand-new Apple iPads in their backpacks, given not by their parents but by their schools.
A growing number of schools across the nation are embracing the iPad as the latest tool to teach Kafka in multimedia, history through “Jeopardy”-like games and math with step-by-step animation of complex problems.
As part of a pilot program, Roslyn High School on Long Island handed out 47 iPads on Dec. 20 to the students and teachers in two humanities classes. The school district hopes to provide iPads eventually to all 1,100 of its students.
Minneapolis district investigates teacher license problems at Broadway High
Students at Broadway High School in Minneapolis are being told that some of the credits they’ve received for classwork might not be valid for graduation.
Minnesota Public Radio News has learned the Minneapolis school district is investigating whether some teachers at the school didn’t have the proper licenses for classes they were teaching.
Associate superintendent Mark Bonine says issues surfaced this fall as Broadway’s new site administrator, Sally Reynolds, took over the school.
“As Sally was assessing, she had some concerns around some credits,” Bonine said.
The issue is whether those credits were earned properly, but Bonine added that students “are not at fault here.”
Monona Grove science teacher to sail and study near Antarctica
Next month, Juan Botella will spend more than 60 days aboard a ship in the Southern Ocean to learn firsthand how scientific research is conducted – knowledge he will bring back to his classroom along with new information on how the southern polar region has changed.
The trip to the body of water surrounding Antarctica fulfills a lifelong dream for Botella, a science teacher at Monona Grove High School who’s always wanted to travel there, although he’s nervous about spending months on a boat.
“I would have liked to be on land,” Botella admits, but added he’s still excited for the trip. “I’m a very bad sailor. I am very easily seasick.”
Botella, 43, was chosen from among more than 150 applicants to accompany and help 32 researchers collect and study water samples from the Antarctic region.
A crucial lesson in education reform Money alone doesn’t help improve student achievement
Schools around the country have begun to show measurable progress in closing achievement gaps, according to evidence from a growing range of sources. That’s the good news.
The bad news is that in New Jersey this progress is much more limited, and it is young African-Americans who seem to be losing out the most.
Despite an influx of new funding to New Jersey’s poorest urban school districts following the state Supreme Court’s Abbott rulings, student achievement levels remain mostly flat at the lower end of the spectrum.
The percentage of black eighth-graders who scored above “basic” in reading actually declined, from 62 percent in 2005 to 60 percent in 2009 on the National Assessment of Educational Progress.
The AI Revolution Is On
Diapers.com warehouses are a bit of a jumble. Boxes of pacifiers sit above crates of onesies, which rest next to cartons of baby food. In a seeming abdication of logic, similar items are placed across the room from one another. A person trying to figure out how the products were shelved could well conclude that no form of intelligence–except maybe a random number generator–had a hand in determining what went where.
But the warehouses aren’t meant to be understood by humans; they were built for bots. Every day, hundreds of robots course nimbly through the aisles, instantly identifying items and delivering them to flesh-and-blood packers on the periphery. Instead of organizing the warehouse as a human might–by placing like products next to one another, for instance–Diapers.com’s robots stick the items in various aisles throughout the facility. Then, to fill an order, the first available robot simply finds the closest requested item. The storeroom is an ever-shifting mass that adjusts to constantly changing data, like the size and popularity of merchandise, the geography of the warehouse, and the location of each robot. Set up by Kiva Systems, which has outfitted similar facilities for Gap, Staples, and Office Depot, the system can deliver items to packers at the rate of one every six seconds.
So You Have a Liberal Arts Degree and Expect a Job?
low-up to a story we aired last month on the tough job market for recent college graduates.
NewsHour economics correspondent Paul Solman looks at job-hunters who’ve already been out of school for a few years.
RICHARD WHITE, Career Services, Rutgers University: The last couple of years have been a very, very tough time to be coming out of college.
PAUL SOLMAN: Rutgers University, where Richard White runs career services.
RICHARD WHITE: At the time of graduation, probably 50 percent of college grads have some kind of job. That’s during the good times. That probably was cut in half during these last two tough years.
A ‘Sputnik’ moment for education
Mike Petrilli & John Richard Schrock:
Education Secretary Arne Duncan said the results from the international education test scores (PISA) were “a massive wake-up call” for American educators. Midmorning discusses what kind of reform American schools need, and if there is room for the rote test-driven education that put Shanghai on top and the U.S. far behind.
Focusing on Languages (Mainly Mandarin)
During her visit to High School for Violin and Dance in the Bronx on Monday, one of the stops in five-borough tour that worked as her formal introduction to her new job, New York City’s schools chancellor, Cathleen P. Black, gathered around a table with students and alumni, discussing career paths, opportunities and plans.
One man told her he was studying architecture at State University of New York at Delhi. One woman said she was majoring in criminal justice at Hostos Community College. Another, who is graduating at the end of the month, described to Ms. Black how learning to play a musical instrument helped her learn new words.
Before she left the building, Ms. Black peppered the principal, Tanya John, with questions about college preparedness and the school’s curriculum. Then, she revealed what is starting to look like an obsession.
Flushing Out Lead, Metals With Chelation Therapy
Sherri Oliver lives in a small town on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. It’s a two-hour bus ride to get to the Mount Washington Pediatric Hospital in Baltimore — and she has brought her daughter, Katie Dail.
Katie has dangerously high levels of lead in her blood.
She’s a fast-moving first-grader with copper-colored hair. Katie has bright brown eyes but has trouble making eye contact. She also has autism — and she doesn’t really speak, but she makes a kind of whooping sound when she’s happy.
But Katie is not here for autism treatment. The treatment she has been getting — chelation therapy — is to get her lead levels down. Although hospitals offer the treatment, some desperate parents are turning to home-based chelation kits and over-the-counter pills, which doctors say can be more dangerous.
Detroit Public Schools: 40,000 kids to get laptops from stimulus funds Read more: Detroit Public Schools: 40,000 kids to get laptops from stimulus funds
Detroit Public Schools will spend $49 million in federal money to push technology in the district, including distributing 40,000 new laptop computers to students in grades 6-12 for use in class, as well as more than 5,000 new desktop computers.
Each DPS teacher also will get a laptop.
The computers are being funded by stimulus money under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. Details are to be announced this morning by DPS emergency financial manager Robert Bobb.
The district already has started distributing the computers and expects to deliver them all by the end of this school year, said Kisha Verdusco, a DPS spokeswoman.
WEAC leaders hoping to forge relationships with GOP leaders at Capitol
Like other union leaders, WEAC President Mary Bell can see some “labor unrest” among her members if they’re targeted by the incoming Walker administration.
But she can’t see them taking an extreme step like going on strike, something they’re prevented from doing under Wisconsin law.
“My members care so desperately about the work they do that it would be extremely difficult to envision them leaving their classrooms, leaving their kids,” Bell said in a new WisPolitics interview. “We have that history in Wisconsin, but it’s been 30 years since those things took place.”
With Scott Walker set to occupy the governor’s office next week and Republicans poised to take over both houses of the Legislature, Bell and WEAC executive director Dan Burkhalter said their members are feeling apprehensive and somewhat targeted. Still, Bell pointed out they’ve felt targeted since the early 1990s, when the state imposed the qualified economic offer.
In the last budget, Dems and Gov. Jim Doyle lifted the QEO, which allowed districts to avoid arbitration so long as they offered teachers a bump in pay and benefits of at least 3.8 percent.
Rules tie up Milwaukee Public Schools real estate
The former Garfield Elementary School building, stately and picturesque, looks as if it could be used for a movie set. That would be one way to fill the empty school with life.
For now, the century-old building at 2215 N. 4th St. sits empty.
Just down the road, construction is under way for a $7 million expansion to St. Marcus Lutheran School, one of the highest performing voucher schools in the city. But before St. Marcus raised millions of dollars, school leaders spent months in conversations with Milwaukee Public Schools about purchasing one of several nearby vacant buildings, including Garfield Elementary.
They were unsuccessful.
For MPS, one less building would mean revenue from the sale and a reduction in maintenance costs. So what happened?
“We were told we could buy them, but could not operate them as a school in competition with MPS,” said Henry Tyson, St. Marcus’ superintendent. “It became clear that the acquisition of one of those vacant MPS buildings was just not an option.”
No one files challenge in coming Madison School Board election
For the second time in the past four years, Madison won’t have any contested school board contests.
Just like when they ran for the first time in 2008, former middle school teacher Marj Passman and attorney Ed Hughes did not draw any opponents for the spring election. That means seven of the previous nine contests will have featured one candidate.
Passman said her first term was a learning curve. The next term will focus on implementing projects such as the district’s new strategic plan and an upcoming literacy evaluation.
Can we strengthen the parents’ voice in education?
On Oct. 28, Tom Frank, chair of Anne Arundel County’s Countywide Citizen Advisory Committee, resigned.
“I was under the impression that the role of the CAC was to meet with a representative of each school, other interested parents and citizens, and to bring their educational concerns to the school board and the superintendent,” he explained. ”I have been told that I essentially have this backwards and the CAC is supposed to only bring items to the parents that the school board determines are important.”
In a certified letter, board of education President Patricia Nalley had written to Frank that the CAC must restrict its agenda to board-approved issues and would not be allowed to convene any type of candidates’ forum. Frank also was told he’d have to cancel the CAC candidates forum, which was to include the four board members on the ballot for November’s election.
It became apparent the CAC regulations had become a fantasy document. The democratic vision contained in these regulations had been greatly diluted over the decades and many surviving democratic provisions had long since stopped being consistently enforced.
New Jersey Governor Christie wants to expand applicant pool for superintendent posts
The Christie Administration wants to bypass credential requirements for hiring leaders for the state’s struggling school districts and has proposed changes that could open the jobs to applicants without experience as educators.
The proposal could give the administration much wider latitude in choosing leaders for state-run districts like those in Paterson and Newark, where it was looking for a way to give Mayor Cory Booker a bigger role in running the schools.
The proposed changes also could affect more than 50 districts, including Clifton and Passaic, that have been deemed “in need of improvement,” and others where state test scores are lagging.
The administration proposes to amend certification requirements for superintendents in those districts so that the job could be open to those with a bachelor’s degree and managerial experience provided they have no criminal record.
Related: An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria.
Carlstedt: Time for Wisconsin to stop spending Dollarss on 4K and a Reference to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad
First, the Federal Government funds a program for youngsters that need help. It is called Headstart. The cry for help for such an age group should be addressed by this program, however the schools have found a cash cow in Wisconsin’s 4 K Budget and can make extra funds this way.
Second, rather than looking to Arkansas, (or Georgia, who admit that the 4K program is a failure), we can look right here in Wisconsin. Three years ago I challenged Dan Nerad, the Green Bay Superintendent at that time, when he said, “early education promotes advancement of learning .”“We do not need to look at studies from other communities, when we have the information right here in Green Bay! 8 years ago, we went from ½ day kindergarten to full day, and yet subsequent grade test scores failed to reflect the additional education time… in fact, scores are decreasing which is proof that extending hours does nothing.”
The charge went unanswered.
Third, I have to say that you left a very large arrow out of your quiver, as your financial equation is not correct for 4 K.
While I feel that $9,900 is closer, let’s use your $9,000 number, it is fine for expressing costs. To get funding for a student, he is counted as one FTE ( full time education) to get the 9K. 4K students however get a kicker. For 13 ¼ hours per week they are counted as .6 FTE ( .5 if less than 13 ¼). So 4 year olds are given a morning class, followed in the PM with another 4 year old. Those two half day students count as (2 x.6) 1.2 FTE or in cash terms, they bring in $10,800 to the district.
Much more on Madison’s planned 4K program, here.
The article’s comments are worth reading.
Glendale principal exonerated from 17 harassment allegations
The Madison School District on Monday released a 27-page investigative report (PDF) exonerating Glendale Elementary Principal Mickey Buhl of multiple accusations of “misconduct and harassment” levied by or on behalf of a dozen current and former staff members at the school, located at 1201 Tompkins Drive, on the south east side.
The complaints cover incidents or disagreements covering the five years Buhl has been principal. Many concern the way in which Buhl discussed work performance with employees or attempted to mediate disputes among staff members. The report indicates that staff climate issues and concerns predated Buhl’s tenure at the school.
Madison School District announces kindergarten registration dates
The Madison School District on Monday announced dates and times for next fall’s kindergarten registration.
Registration for Madison’s new 4-year-old kindergarten program is scheduled for Feb. 7 from 1 to 6 p.m. Registration for 5-year-old kindergarten is scheduled for March 7 from 1 to 6 p.m.
Parents or guardians of children who will turn 4 or 5 on or before Sept. 1 must register at their local elementary school with proof of their child’s age, residency and an immunization record. Children are welcome but not required to attend.
Redistributed state tax dollar funding for Wisconsin 4K programs may change due to budget problems, according to this recent article.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Wisconsin prepares for strain on systems as baby boomers retire
Nobody knew it at the time, but Peter Glenn Cartier’s arrival at Bellin Hospital on Jan. 1, 1946, marked Green Bay’s official entry into a revolution.
Born at 6:25 a.m. that Tuesday morning, the son of Glenn and Kay Cartier was the first from Green Bay in a new generation of Americans who would forever be known as baby boomers.
By 1964, they numbered 77 million nationwide — the largest generation ever — and they transformed the world with their ideas, talents and values.
Now that the first of them has reached retirement age, baby boomers are redefining the meaning of golden years with their can-do, forever-young attitude.
Teachers, parents set stage for Florida education war
Teachers and like-minded parents have struck first in an expected statewide battle over education changes being proposed by Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s transition team.
They have held meetings and conference calls, traded information via Facebook, planned an education summit and formed bill-writing committees to create alternative legislation.
And on Tuesday, they plan to wear red to send the new governor — and the Republican-dominated legislature — a message that they support public schools.
Glut of candidates for St. Paul school board as 41 apply
More than three dozen people have applied for an open seat on the St. Paul School Board.
The seat was left vacant in November when board member Vallay Varro stepped down to head an education non-profit. The St. Paul School Board now has to appoint someone to fill that seat for the year remaining in Varro’s term.
With the application period now closed, the district says 41 people applied. Familiar names include two former St. Paul School Board members, Al Oertwig and William Finney. Finney also used to be St. Paul’s police chief.
Video essays are a hot topic in college admissions as more schools allow them
To complete a half-dozen college applications, Morgan Malone lined up letters of recommendation, penned essays and – for George Mason University – carried around a video camera for several days.
The result was a nearly two-minute video essay that opens with Malone introducing herself from atop the sign outside Mountain View High School in Stafford County. There are clips of her walking the school’s hallways, participating in a quiz bowl and volunteering. At the end, her assistant principal jumps on a desk and shouts, “I approve this message.”
“Instead of having an application and words in an essay, they get to see me,” said Malone, 17. “Hopefully, when they are watching the video, they will get a picture of what I am like. The way I talk in the video is the same way I talk every day.”
Former Waukesha Mayor Nelson teaches English at Waukesha County’s juvenile center
Nine months after Waukesha voters gave Larry Nelson a swift kick out of the mayor’s office, denying him a second term, he’s back to teaching – if in a distinctively different place and position than the one he left four years earlier.
Nelson is the English teacher at the Waukesha County Juvenile Center, where he teaches 11- to 17-year-olds who either are in shelter care or have been court-ordered to secure detention.
“I’ve always loved teaching, and even when I was mayor I felt I was teaching on a bigger scale,” he said.
Since Nelson, 55, was granted a leave of absence from his Butler Middle School teaching job in Waukesha when he was elected mayor in 2006, the School Board allowed him to return this fall, his 31st year of teaching.
Nelson comes to work at 8 a.m. every day to find out how many students he has, and who they are, he said. He could have one, or 10. They may be around for a day, a week or a month. The longest has been two months. With much of his teaching one-on-one or in small groups, he can customize what he teaches, he said.
An Interview with Laurie H. Rogers; Author of “How the Education Establishment Has Betrayed America and What You Can Do About It”
1) Who is being “Betrayed” by the public school system in America?
The education establishment is betraying the following groups:
- The children, who aren’t getting the education they need;
- Parents, who struggle to manage bored and frustrated children, who must pay for several college remedial classes, and who sometimes wind up with students who have given up and dropped out;
- Teachers, who are micromanaged and disrespected in myriad ways by the bureaucracy and then blamed for the results;
- Taxpayers, who pay hundreds of billions of dollars each year for a largely failing K-12 education system;
- Businesses, which must recruit from other countries;
- Government agencies and military organizations that struggle to fill critical jobs with qualified Americans;
- The country, which teeters on the brink of economic and social disaster, crippled by a populace that is not acquiring sufficient skills or knowledge to properly run it or even to fully understand the challenges that face it.
The only people not being betrayed are those who feed off of our failing education system.
Unfortunately, that group gets larger every year.
Paying for learning, not system
It’s this: The money a school district gets depends on enrollment. In Milwaukee, the one place private-school choice is now offered, the Milwaukee Public Schools’ per-pupil funding is not hurt at all when kids go somewhere else (per-pupil, it increases annually). But when about 20,000 pupils go elsewhere, MPS has less money overall, since it’s teaching fewer children.
Every school district statewide is liable to this already: Wisconsin parents can enroll children in any other public school district. More than 28,000 kids do this switch annually. For every child who moves, one district loses about $6,800 and another gains it. Since some places are big losers and others big gainers, this affects districts’ budgets.
For instance, Milwaukee lost about $27 million in the latest year; other big losers were Racine, Green Bay and Madison. It made no difference to taxpayers overall, but the system moved money away from districts that parents shunned and toward ones they preferred.
The snag is transportation. Parents must take kids to their preferred district. This is tough for the poor, especially in places like Racine, where the local district includes all of suburbia as far as the edge of Oak Creek. It’s perverse when there are private alternatives in poor neighborhoods.
When Grigsby and others make their complaint, it isn’t to say that letting parents choose other schools will hurt weak districts’ budgets, else they’d be wailing about public school choice, which does just that. The complaint is that the government-run school system overall will have less money as children and their aid leave.
Area’s first dual-language immersion program under way
The first middle-school dual-language immersion program in the Madison area was started at Sennett Middle School this year and the benefits are far reaching, according to Principal Colleen Lodholz.
At Sennett, 50 percent of the students’ academic classes are taught in English and 50 percent are taught in Spanish.
“It really honors both languages,” Lodholz said. “The students are good little ambassadors in terms of modeling the importance of learning a second language and the importance of learning about another culture.”
Most of the 50 sixth grade students in the program come from Nuestro Mundo Community School — the area’s first elementary dual-language immersion program that started when they were kindergarteners — and a strong sense of community was established, Lodholz said. Lodholz sees the students looking out for each other and fewer discipline issues, she said.
Comparing K-12 Funding Adequacy Across 50 States
Wisconsin Center for Education Research, via email:
Until now, no one has tried to estimate the costs of educational adequacy across all 50 states using a common method applied in a consistent manner. UW-Madison education professor Allan Odden and colleagues have realized that goal.
In a recent report, Odden, Lawrence Picus, and Michael Goetz provide state-by-state estimates of the cost of the evidence-based model. The evidence-based model relies primarily on research evidence when making programmatic recommendations. The evidence-based approach starts with a set of recommendations based on a distillation of research and best practices. As implementation unfolds, teams of state policymakers, education leaders, and practitioners review, modify, and tailor those core recommendations to the context of their state’s situation. Odden’s report compares those estimates to each state’s current spending.
Allan Odden and colleagues have developed the first state-level analysis of education finance spending using a model with consistent assumptions across all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.
Odden and colleagues studied districts and schools that have made substantial gains in student performance. They identified the strategies used, then compared those strategies to the recommendations of the evidence-based model. The research found a strong alignment between the strategies and the resources in the evidence-based model and those strategies used by districts and schools that have seen dramatic increase in student learning.
The Evidence-Based Model and Adequacy
When experts discuss education finance, they sometimes use the term “adequacy.” Odden offers this definition: “Providing a level of resources to schools that will enable them to make substantial improvements in student performance over the next 4 to 6 years, as progress toward ensuring that all, or almost all, students meet their state’s performance standards in the longer term.”
“Substantial improvement in student performance” means that, where possible, the proportion of students meeting a proficiency goal will increase substantially in the short- to medium term. Specific targets might vary, depending on the state and a school’s current performance. Yet this goal could be interpreted as raising the percentage of students who meet a state’s student proficiency level from 35% to 70%, or from 70% to something approaching 90% and, in both examples, to increase the percentage of students meeting advanced proficiency standards. There are several approaches to estimating adequacy. They include cost functions, professional judgment, successful schools and districts, and the evidence-based approach.
…………
Using the national average compensation figures, the weighted per pupil estimated costs for adequacy using the evidence-based model is $9,641, an average increase of $566 per student on a national basis. In 30 of the 50 states, additional revenues are needed to reach the estimated cost level. In the remaining 20 states and Washington, D.C., current funding levels are more than enough.
If all states were to receive funding at the estimated level of the evidence-based model, the total cost would be $27.0 billion, or a 6.2% increase. However, the politically feasible approach would not allow using the “excess funds” from the states currently spending more than that level. Given that, the total cost rises to $47.2 billion (a 10.9% increase) to fully fund the model’s estimates.
Locally, the Madison School District spent $370, 287,471 during the 2009-2010 school year, according to the Citizen’s Budget. for 24,295 students ($15,241/student). I have not seen a Citizen’s Budget for the 2010-2011 period. Madison School District budget information.
More from the WCER article:
Nor does this research address how the funds should be allocated once they are sent to school districts. This is an important point, Odden says, because some states currently spend more than identified in this model, yet do not appear to show the gains in student performance the model suggests are possible.
Health care tops contract debates School districts focus negotiations on cost of retirees’ benefits
After years of watching escalating health insurance costs eat up and even surpass the savings provided by early retirements, some public school districts are getting tough in contract negotiations to reduce benefit levels.
The Hartland-Lakeside School Board and its teachers union went to arbitration in mid-December as district officials sought to cap insurance benefits and lower a stipend given to retiring teachers.
The Waukesha School Board has gone even further, denying almost all early retirement requests by teachers for the past two years as it advances toward arbitration in contract negotiations.
Health care cost growth has also been an issue locally.
Scottish teaching union to launch manifesto
The Educational Institute of Scotland (EIS) said it needed to ensure that education was at the top of the agenda for all political parties.
EIS general secretary Ronnie Smith warned that pupils would suffer most as a result of “damaging cutbacks”.
The so-called “Manifesto for Education” will be launched by union officials next month.
The union said it was keen to protect the country’s schools, colleges and universities.
Mr Smith said: “With the current financial crisis and the deep cuts to public spending, including reduced investment in education, it is vitally important that we make a stand to let the politicians know that continuing attacks on our education system cannot and will not be tolerated by the Scottish people.
Europe’s Young Grow Agitated Over Future Prospects
Francesca Esposito, 29 and exquisitely educated, helped win millions of euros in false disability and other lawsuits for her employer, a major Italian state agency. But one day last fall she quit, fed up with how surreal and ultimately sad it is to be young in Italy today.
It galled her that even with her competence and fluency in five languages, it was nearly impossible to land a paying job. Working as an unpaid trainee lawyer was bad enough, she thought, but doing it at Italy’s social security administration seemed too much. She not only worked for free on behalf of the nation’s elderly, who have generally crowded out the young for jobs, but her efforts there did not even apply to her own pension.
“It was absurd,” said Ms. Esposito, a strong-willed woman with a healthy sense of outrage.
The outrage of the young has erupted, sometimes violently, on the streets of Greece and Italy in recent weeks, as students and more radical anarchists protest not only specific austerity measures in flattened economies but a rising reality in Southern Europe: People like Ms. Esposito feel increasingly shut out of their own futures. Experts warn of volatility in state finances and the broader society as the most highly educated generation in the history of the Mediterranean hits one of its worst job markets.
A fascinating article, particularly the implications of top heavy compensation/benefit costs for older, long term workers. We see similar things in the States where dual compensation schemes significantly underpay new hires for a period of time.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Forget Pep Talks; Governors Warn of Tough Times
James Hagerty & Ben Casselman:
New governors in 26 U.S. states are starting to take office with somber warnings to constituents of more tough times amid revenue shortfalls and a weak job market.
With sagging economies, soaring budget deficits and the loss of federal stimulus money, incoming governors face the deepest fiscal crisis in decades and expectations that they will remain true to campaign pledges to slash spending and taxes.
“I don’t think a grand ceremony … would be appropriate,” Andrew M. Cuomo said Saturday after being sworn in as New York’s governor. The Democrat, whose father led New York two decades ago, promised to put a lid on property taxes and shrink the state’s government.
He said budget troubles were only part of the problem in a state that also faced a “trust deficit.” “Too often government responds to the whispers of lobbyists before the cries of the people,” Mr. Cuomo said.
Madison & Middleton-Cross Plains School District 4K Agreement
Matthew Bell:
Matthew W. Bell, Legal Counsel
Attached please find a proposed intergovernmental agreement with the Middleton/Cross Plains Area School District. The proposed agreement with Middleton/Cross Plains Area School District (MCPASD) allows the District to establish a 4k site in a nursery school (Orchard Ridge Nursery School) that lies within the MCPASD’s border. The rationale for the District’s desire to do so is the fact that Orchard Ridge is within 1/4 mile of MMSD’s boundary and it serves primarily (70-80%) Madison residents. The agreement would also allow the District to serve MCPASD 4k students who chose to enroll at Orchard Ridge in exchange for direct non-resident tuition reimbursement by MCPASD to Orchard Ridge. Conversely, MCPASD will be allowed to establish 4k sites at two centers (LaPetite and Middleton Preschool) that are within MMSD’s border. MCPASD’s rational for wanting to contract with those sites is identical to MMSD’s desire to contract with Orchard Ridge (i.e. proximity and demographics of children already at the center). MCPASD would also serve MMSD residents who chose to attend those sites in exchange for MMSD directly reimbursing LaPetite and Middleton Preschool. The agreement with MCPASD is attached for your review and action.
Much more on Madison’s planned 4K program here.
Presentation of “Value Added Assessment (Outcomes)” in the Madison School District, Including Individual School & Demographic Information
Complete Report: 1.5MB PDF File
Value added is the use of statistical technique to identify the effects of schooling on measured student performance. The value added model uses what data are available about students–past test scores and student demographics in particular–to control for prior student knowledge, home and community environment, and other relevant factors to better measure the effects of schools on student achievement. In practice, value added focuses on student improvement on an assessment from one year to the next.
This report presents value-added results for Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) for the two-year period between November 2007 to November 2009, measuring student improvement on the November test administrations of the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) in grades three through eight. Also presented are results for the two-year period between November 2005 to November 2007, as well as the two-year period between November 2006 to November 2008. This allows for some context from the past, presenting value added over time as a two-year moving average.
Changes to the Value Added Model
Some of the details of the value-added system have changed in 2010. The two most substantial changes are the the inclusion of differential-effects value-added results and the addition to the set of control variables of full-academic-year (FAY) attendance.
Differential Effects
In additional to overall school- and grade-level value-added measures, this year’s value-added results also include value-added measures for student subgroups within schools. The subgroups included in this year’s value-added results are students with disabilities, English language learners, black students, Hispanic students, and students who receive free or reduced-price lunches. The results measure the growth of students in these subgroups at a school. For example, if a school has a value added of +5 for students with disabilities, then students with disabilities at this school gained 5 more points on the WKCE relative to observationally similar students across MMSD.
The subgroup results are designed to measure differences across schools in the performance of students in that subgroup relative to the overall performance of students in that subgroup across MMSD. Any overall, district-wide effect of (for example) disability is controlled for in the value-added model and is not included in the subgroup results. The subgroup results reflect relative differences across schools in the growth of students in that subgroup.
Much more on “Value Added Assessment”, here.
A fatal failure long ago gives a new principal a mission
Jim Wilkinson took it personally when Juan Perez murdered two men.
Certainly he had sympathy for the victims, Joseph Rivera and Michael Ralston. But he didn’t know them.
The issue was Perez. Wilkinson felt he barely knew him – and that was the problem. Perez had been one of Wilkinson’s students the previous year when Perez was 15 and a freshman at Marquette University High School.
Almost everybody at Marquette High barely knew Perez. He never asked for help. He stayed to himself. He got mediocre grades, but he wasn’t failing. And he left the school after that freshman year. Instead, he got involved deeply with a gang.
A tense, angry confrontation between members of two gangs in a restaurant on Feb. 13, 1993. A slap. Insults. A couple guns. And, in short order, the teenager was receiving a 60-year sentence.
Almost 18 years later, both Perez and Wilkinson feel they have changed for the better.
Wilkes University Professors Examine Use of Text Messaging in the College Classroom
Teachers of the past had to be concerned about students passing notes in class. Today’s educators have a much greater challenge with the advent of cell phone technology, and its prevalence in the classroom. A study by two Wilkes University professors shows that texting is a greater problem than educators might believe. They also suggest that classroom management strategies can potentially minimize texting in class.
Wilkes University psychology professors, Drs. Deborah Tindell and Robert Bohlander, designed a 32-question survey to assess the text messaging habits of college students in the classroom. In total, 269 college students, representing 21 majors, and all class levels, responded anonymously to their survey.
The study showed that 95 percent of students bring their phones to class every day and 91 percent have used their phones to text message during class time. Almost half of all respondents indicated that it is easy to text in class without their instructor being aware. In fact, students frequently commented on the survey that their professors would be “shocked” if they knew how much texting went on in class.
Fat China: How Expanding Waistlines are Changing a Nation
Paul French and Matthew Crabbe:
An analysis of the growing problem of obesity in China and its relationship to the nation’s changing diet, lifestyle trends and healthcare system.
‘When Deng Xiaoping said ‘To get rich is glorious’, he probably didn’t realize that getting wealthy would make many Chinese fat… In an informative and entertaining style, French and Crabbe reveal the dark side of China’s growing middle-class: a fast increase in obesity-related illnesses such as diabetes. A great read on an important topic.’ Andy Rothman, China economist, CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets, Shanghai
‘In this remarkably well researched and thought-provoking book, French and Crabbe expose a darker side of globalisation in China… Western multinationalists have submerged the Chinese consumer in a sea of chocolate and ice cream. The consequences for public health are incalculable.’ –Tim Clissold, China investment specialist and author of ‘Mr China’
‘While some people around the world agonize about the rapid spread of China’s global influence, others within China are more worried about the spread of the country’s waistlines – or at least they should be, according to this fascinating and exhaustively researched study by Paul French and Matthew Crabbe. By turns colourful, witty and alarming, this book provides fascinating insights into China’s fast-changing society.’ –Duncan Hewitt, Shanghai correspondent for ‘Newsweek’ and author of ‘Getting Rich First: Life in a Changing China’
Harvard missed signs it was being hoodwinked
It turns out that fooling the gatekeepers of the nation’s most selective university wasn’t as hard as it looks.
Adam Butler Wheeler, portrayed upon his arrest for fraud as a con artist whose brilliant forgeries landed him a coveted spot at Harvard, won over the admissions committee with an application rife with inconsistencies and an inscrutable personal essay, despite fake faculty recommendations that repeatedly praised his lucid writing.
A close examination of Wheeler’s application materials, obtained by the Globe, reveals neither a meticulous feat of deceit nor a particularly elaborate charade. At times, he was just plain careless.
A gushing letter of recommendation, purportedly from the director of college counseling at Phillips Academy, said Wheeler enrolled in the prestigious Andover prep school as a junior. The accompanying transcript, though, indicated he attended for four years.
A new stage of higher education
Rosabeth Moss Kanter, a professor at Harvard Business School, explains how retired leaders can use their skills for social good
Surfeits of Certitude
‘Tis the season of paradox. In a widely noted op-ed in The New York Times, Judah Cohen, identified by the Times merely as “director of seasonal forecasting at an atmospheric and environmental research firm,” explained that the frigid temperatures and heavy snowfalls afflicting Europe and much of North America this year are, mirabile dictu, the result of “the overall warming of the atmosphere.” Quick-draw skeptics made the obvious retorts: (1) that advocates of the theory of global warming seem to have constructed a one-way street for interpreting data. No matter what happens in the actual atmosphere of our planet–whether temperatures rise, fall, or remain the same; ditto the level of precipitation; ditto the severity of storms–the theory of anthropocentric global warming (AGW) is vindicated. (2) the public is growing more and more jaundiced about this theoretical legerdemain; and (3) a fair amount of the skepticism now focuses on the capacity of climate scientists to be honest judges of the global warming evidence in view of the enormous amounts of money that flows their way and will continue to flow only if AGW retains its legitimacy.
How to Fail in Grant Writing
Elizabeth Jakob, Adam Porter, Jeffrey Podos, Barry Braun, Norman Johnson, and Stephen Vessey
Looking for the fast path to grant rejection?
We provide a list here of proven techniques. We gathered these in the course of serving on grant panels or as program officers, and, in some cases, through firsthand experimentation. We are biologists, but many of our suggestions will be useful to grant writers in all disciplines.
As salaries rise, Fresno State coach Pat Hill takes pay cut
Steve Wieberg, Steve Berkowitz and Jodi Upton
Pat Hill came cheap when he broke into college football coaching a little more than 3½ decades ago.
He worked his first job at a California community college without pay, making ends meet by moonlighting Tuesdays and Thursdays as a pinsetter at a bowling alley and Fridays and Saturdays, when football allowed, as a bouncer. He lived for a while in his Chevy van.
“I’ve never been a monetary guy,” he says.
The contract that will take him into his 15th season as head coach at Fresno State offers further testament.
Hill will take a more than $300,000 cut in guaranteed pay in 2011, an extraordinary concession to a school budget stretched thin by the troubled economy. His guaranteed take of $650,000 remains considerable, but he’ll have to cash in heavily on incentives to match, or even approach, his nearly seven-figure earnings in 2010.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: GAO Sees Problems in Government’s Financial Management
The U.S. Government Accountability Office said it could not render an opinion on the 2010 consolidated financial statements of the federal government, because of widespread material internal control weaknesses, significant uncertainties, and other limitations.
“Even though significant progress has been made since the enactment of key financial management reforms in the 1990s, our report on the U.S. government’s consolidated financial statement illustrates that much work remains to be done to improve federal financial management,” Acting Comptroller General Gene Dodaro said in a statement. “Shortcomings in three areas again prevented us from expressing an opinion on the accrual-based financial statements.”
The main obstacles to a GAO opinion were: (1) serious financial management problems at the Department of Defense that made its financial statements unauditable, (2) the federal government’s inability to adequately account for and reconcile intragovernmental activity and balances between federal agencies, and (3) the federal government’s ineffective process for preparing the consolidated financial statements.
How ‘Friend’ Became a Verb
In my 1985 sci-fi novel ‘Ender’s Game,’ a couple kids used something like the Internet to pass for experts and influence public opinion. It didn’t take long for reality to catch up.
My father-in-law is a historian, and about 20 years ago he mentioned his concern that cheap long-distance telephoning was going to make the work of future historians far harder.
“Letters are one of our best sources of information about the past, but these days nobody writes letters–they just call.”
“Yes, and I hate that,” I said. “Interrupting what I’m doing right now because this is the moment when it’s convenient for them to call.”
Little did we know that both of us were about to get our wish.
New Madison middle school (Badger Rock) will provide innovative outdoor education
Just before the holiday break, the Madison School District approved the Badger Rock Middle School. This is big and exciting news for Madison, and I hope it sounds a new tone for education in the city.
It is not new news that Madison’s school district has been struggling to maintain its national reputation for innovation and excellence. During the past two budget cycles, the district has suffered deep funding cuts and the loss of millions of dollars. And over the past five years, families have been migrating to surrounding school districts — and to private schools.
But visionary leadership and innovative charter schools such as Badger Rock may just be the answer.
The philosophy for Badger Rock is cutting edge and simultaneously a throwback to classical education. Students learn from their environment. It is a setting and style that would make Aldo Leopold proud, and that ties local curriculum to Wisconsin’s deep-seated environmental roots.
As far as I can tell, local school budgets have grown annually for decades. Ms. Joiner is referring to reductions in the increase. Spending growth slowed this year and will likely do so in the future. The Madison School District’s “Budget Amendments and Tax Levy Adoption for 2010-11” mentions 2010-2011 revenues (property taxes, redistributed state and federal taxes and grants) of $423,005,653, up from $412,219,577 in 2008-2009. The document’s 2009-2010 revenues are $489,487,261, which seems unusual. Enrollment has remained flat during the past few years (details here).
Lunchbox Mix-up Leads to Charges for Sanford, NC Teen
An athletic and academic standout in Lee County said a lunchbox mix-up has cut short her senior year of high school and might hurt her college opportunities.
Ashley Smithwick, 17, of Sanford, was suspended from Southern Lee High School in October after school personnel found a small paring knife in her lunchbox.
Smithwick said personnel found the knife while searching the belongings of several students, possibly looking for drugs.
“She got pulled into it. She doesn’t have to be a bad person to be searched,” Smithwick’s father, Joe Smithwick, said.
The lunchbox really belonged to Joe Smithwick, who packs a paring knife to slice his apple. He and his daughter have matching lunchboxes.
“It’s just an honest mistake. That was supposed to be my lunch because it was a whole apple,” he said.
Teen kicked off campus after lunch box mix-up
A 17-year-old honor student says she has been kicked off campus for the rest of the school year, because of a mix-up with her lunch box.
In October, senior Ashley Smithwick says she got in trouble at school for the first time in her life after she mistakenly took her father’s lunch container — that’s identical to hers — to Southern Lee High School.
Her dad’s container had a three-inch paring knife inside.
“And I had just grabbed my dad’s lunch box,” Smithwick said. “I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t. I just grabbed it and went out the door.”
School leaders say during that day a faculty member discovered a student with marijuana on campus and Smithwick’s paring knife was found during a random search.
According to a written statement received by ABC11 from Lee County Schools Superintendent Jeff Moss on Wednesday, the knife was found in Smithwick’s purse, not her lunchbox.
K-12 Spending Per Student in the OECD
This chart by Mercatus Center Senior Research Fellow Veronique de Rugy compares K-12 education expenditures per pupil in each of the world’s major industrial powers. As we can see, with the exception of Switzerland, the United States spends more than any other country on education, an average of $91,700 per student between the ages of six and fifteen.
That’s not only more than other countries spend but it is also more than better achieving countries spend – the United States spends a third more than Finland, a country that consistently ranks near the top in science, reading, and math testing.
Power to the People: Britains Big Experiment
For those wanting a less colloquial explanation, the Big Society is an attempt to transform the relationship between the state and its citizens. Using the weapons of devolution and transparency, it seeks to empower individuals, improve public services that fail the most disadvantaged and reconnect the civic institutions that lie between the people and the state.
So why is the Big Society such a radical idea? As one of its leading proponents in government admits, it is a massive social experiment – stripping power from the state in the expectation that individuals, communities and enterprises will pick up the reins. “As in most such experiments, it is based upon instincts and understanding rather than empirical data,” he says. “It will be two to three years before we begin to see if it is playing itself out properly. But the direction of change will be remorseless and I’m confident it will transform Britain.”
This tussle between the responsibilities of state and citizens is at the centre of political struggles across the west, from France’s battles over pensions to the backlash against Washington in the US. Unsurprisingly, the Big Society ideas – far removed from the rampant individualism of the Tea Party – are being watched with growing interest by moderate Republicans.
In Britain, they fit comfortably with a nation fed up with over-bearing statism and corporate irresponsibility. The latest British Social Attitudes survey revealed growing distrust of both state and big business, combined with a desire for smaller, more local institutions.
Showdown in the Offing
Three years ago, Congress stopped then-Education Secretary Margaret Spellings dead in her tracks. Cheered on by college leaders, Senator Lamar Alexander and other lawmakers — irked by the Education Department’s aggressive attempts to regulate higher education accreditation and by what they perceived to be the executive branch’s encroachment on their turf — took several legislative steps that effectively blocked the department from issuing new rules on student learning outcomes.
The players and the issues have changed, but signs are emerging that a similar showdown could unfold early next year over the Obama administration’s plan to require for-profit colleges and other vocational programs to prove that they prepare their graduates for “gainful employment.” Exactly how such a showdown would shake out is hard to predict, but the likelihood of it taking place grew significantly in recent days.
Chinese Students: Great Thinkers or Great Memorizers?
I had wanted to put this quote in from the governor of Pennsylvania, Ed Rendell, because it made me laugh. He made this remark after the NFL postponed the Sunday football game between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Minnesota Vikings (which was played last night and the Vikings won). The NFL called the game off because of the danger of fans getting safely to and from the stadium because of a huge snowstorm.
“We’ve become a nation of wusses. The Chinese are kicking our butt in everything,” Rendell added. “If this was in China do you think the Chinese would have called off the game? People would have been marching down to the stadium, they would have walked and they would have been doing calculus on the way down.”
The “doing calculus on the way down” made me laugh. But then there was this interesting piece on NPR today about Chinese education. Basically, the point is that they are great at learning and memorizing facts but not very good at analytic, problem-solving thinking. Even their principals admit this but like many bureaucratic issues, it’s recognized but no one knows what to do.
State Schools Rethink Fees
Public universities across the U.S. are arguing for freedom to reap more revenue and create more efficiencies to offset dwindling state dollars.
One way, they say, is to raise tuition. At California University of Pennsylvania, a 158-year-old state school serving 9,400 students, enrollment is rising for all but the poorest students, which, in part, has led to a novel idea: replace the “low tuition for all” policy with a market-rate policy.
University officials say students from wealthier families could afford to pay more than the average $5,804 annual tuition at the state’s 14 universities. Fresh revenue from the higher tuition, they say, could be used to offer more scholarships to help the neediest students.
Indiana Governor Daniels will offer private school voucher plan
Gov. Mitch Daniels said Wednesday he will ask lawmakers to approve an education voucher system that would let low-income students use state money to help pay for private school tuition.
aniels provided few details about his proposal – including income levels at which families would qualify or the amount they could receive – but said it will be part of his larger education agenda for the 2011 session.
The governor and Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett presented part of that agenda on Wednesday to the Indiana Education Roundtable, a group of education, business and labor leaders who advise the state on school issues.
But Daniels never mentioned the voucher program there. Instead, he and Bennett focused on only a few areas: Freeing schools of regulation, recognizing and rewarding high-quality teachers and limiting the issues for collective bargaining to teacher pay and benefits.
Advocating Dave Blaska for Madison School Board
Supporters of the proposal to develop charter schools in the Madison Metropolitan School District — including “academies” segregated along lines of gender — have made a lot of noise in recent weeks about how the School Board should radically rewrite rules, contracts and objectives.
Fair enough. Let’s have a debate.
Two School Board seats will be filled in the coming spring election — those of incumbents Marj Passman and Ed Hughes.
Hughes and Passman have both commented thoughtfully on the Urban League’s Madison Prep boys-only charter school proposal.
Hughes, in particular, has written extensively and relatively sympathetically about the plan on his blog.
Passman has also been sympathetic, while raising smart questions about the high costs of staffing the school as outlined.
But neither has offered the full embrace that advocates such as the Madison Urban League’s Kaleem Caire and former Dane County Board member Dave Blaska — now an enthusiastic conservative blogger — are looking for.
Our community is certainly better off with competitive school board races.
Some Va. history texts filled with errors, review finds
Kevin Sieff, via a James Dias email:
In the version of history being taught in some Virginia classrooms, New Orleans began the 1800s as a bustling U.S. harbor (instead of as a Spanish colonial one). The Confederacy included 12 states (instead of 11). And the United States entered World War I in 1916 (instead of in 1917).
These are among the dozens of errors historians have found since Virginia officials ordered a review of textbooks by Five Ponds Press, the publisher responsible for a controversial claim that African American soldiers fought for the South in large numbers during the Civil War.
“Our Virginia: Past and Present,” the textbook including that claim, has many other inaccuracies, according to historians who reviewed it. Similar problems, historians said, were found in another book by Five Ponds Press, “Our America: To 1865.” A reviewer has found errors in social studies textbooks by other publishers as well, underscoring the limits of a textbook-approval process once regarded as among the nation’s most stringent.
Delayed Child Rearing, More Stressful Lives
A new study finds that delayed marriage and childbearing are leading to increased stress for American men and women in balancing work and family obligations.
Noting that the median age for first marriage is 28 for men and 26 for women, the study, “Family Change and Time Allocation in American Families,” says, “Delayed marriage and childbearing heighten the likelihood that the greatest child rearing demands come at the same time that job and career demands are great – particularly among the well-educated.”
The study adds, “Delayed childbearing also increases the likelihood that one’s parents may begin to suffer ill health and need assistance before one’s children are fully launched.” In other words, many men and women feel hugely stretched and stressed trying to help out their not fully independent 20-something children at the same time the health of their octogenarian parents is failing.
Post-Union Disunion
Bowling Green State University trustees justified recent sweeping changes to a key governing document as a necessary response to faculty unionization, but some professors there say the board is engaged in a retaliatory power grab.
Faculty voted in October to grant collective bargaining powers to the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), and the board responded Dec. 10 with changes to the Academic Charter that eliminated numerous faculty committees and stripped professors of their existing roles in the evaluations of deans, directors and chairs.
“This set of changes is allegedly done in response to collective bargaining, but there are so many changes that go beyond that, that clearly something else is afoot,” said David Jackson, president of Bowling Green State University’s Faculty Association, the AAUP union. “It certainly appears, to us anyway, that the administration is using the collective bargaining election and the need to negotiate salaries and benefits to justify wholesale changes.”
Also of concern to Jackson and others is the elimination of the faculty’s role in determining financial exigency, which universities can invoke to dismiss tenured professors. Removing even the faculty’s advisory function in this area, as the trustees have done, constitutes “a clear taking of power,” Jackson said.
Blackboard creatives Teachers are the key to providing quality mainstream education in Hong Kong
While pointing to some school governance problems that certainly need addressing, the recent Audit Commission report on Direct Subsidy Scheme (DSS) schools has triggered public condemnation of these schools in the absence of proper examination of the quality of education they provide. This risks throwing the baby out with the bathwater.
DSS schools stand somewhere between the traditional public sector and the private sector, and were part of education reform to create a more diverse schools landscape. They are subject to less government regulation and free to set their curriculum, fees and entrance requirements. Many middle-class parents unhappy with local schools find DSS an affordable substitute. They regard it as part of their taxpayer’s right under the free education policy to attract some government subsidy for their children attending schools outside the government and aided sector.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The West and the Tyranny of Public Debt
The history of public debt is the very history of national power: how it has been won and how it has been lost. Dreams and impatience have always driven men in power to draw on the resources of others–be it slaves, the inhabitants of occupied lands, or their own children yet to be born–in order to carry out their schemes, to consolidate power, to grow their own fortunes. But never, outside periods of total war, has the debt of the world’s most powerful states grown so immense. Never has it so heavily threatened their political systems and standards of living. Public debt cannot keep growing without unleashing terrible catastrophes.
Anyone saying this today is accused of pessimism. The first signs of economic recovery, harbingers of a supposedly falling debt, are held up to contradict him. Yet we wouldn’t be the first to think ourselves uniquely able to escape the fate of other states felled by their debt, such as the Republic of Venice, Renaissance Genoa, or the Empire of Spain.
Taking a Gap Year Before College
Eighteen-year-old Monika Lutz had dreams of a career helping solve economic and social problems in poor nations. So after high school, she took a year off before college to work with a company, suggested by family friends, that is trying to bring solar power to a remote village in India.
A few weeks of living in a mud hut changed her mind. Exhausted by the obstacles, she says, she told herself, “I’m not ready. I can’t dedicate my life to this yet.”
When Ms. Lutz starts college in the fall, she plans to explore other careers. “If I hadn’t gone on a gap year, I might have spent four years and $200,000 on tuition to end up in that same country and find out the same thing,” says Ms. Lutz, of Boulder, Colo.
College-admission letters are starting to roll in, but a growing number of students will decide instead to take a year off to try out potential careers or broaden their horizons. Gap-year activities range from doing volunteer work or taking classes, to working for pay, traveling or tackling outdoor adventures.
Time for Big Cuts in Education Spending?
America spends far more on education than countries like Germany, Japan, Australia, Ireland, and Italy, both as a percentage of its economy, and in absolute terms. Yet despite this lavish government support for education, college tuition in the U.S. is skyrocketing, reaching levels of $50,000 or more a year at some colleges, and colleges are effectively rewarded for increasing tuition by mushrooming federal financial-aid spending. Americans can’t read or do math as well as the Japanese, even though America spends way more (half again more) on education than Japan does, as a percentage of income, according to the CIA World Fact Book.
In light of this, it is easy to see why some education experts like Neal McCluskey are floating the idea of “draconian education cuts” to shake up a rotten educational establishment.
These green thumbs sprout early
Children in an outdoor classroom at an East L.A. preschool use natural materials and the environment as a learning laboratory. It’s part of a national campaign to connect youngsters to the outdoors.
On a visit to a Home Depot one day, Cynthia Munoz was surprised when her 4-year-old son began clamoring to plant flowers, trees and a strawberry patch at their La Puente home. She was taken aback again when he knew exactly what tools to use in their backyard garden.
But he’d already had plenty of practice at his preschool, the Brooklyn Early Education Center in East Los Angeles. The school has an outdoor classroom, part of a growing trend in California and other states of using natural materials and the environment as a learning laboratory.
Refusing to Play ‘Whipping Boy’
The American Academy for Liberal Education has withdrawn its petition for renewal of recognition by the U.S. Education Department’s advisory panel on accreditation, which, after having been dismantled and reconfigured, held its first meeting in over two years Wednesday.
The accreditor’s decision came as a surprise to many in attendance at the first day of meetings held by the new-look National Advisory Committee on Institutional Quality and Integrity. Earlier this week, AALE officials had vowed to fight the Education Department staff’s recommendation that NACIQI urge Education Secretary Arne Duncan to deny recognition for their accreditation body because of its “continued noncompliance.”
Ralph A. Rossum, chairman of the AALE board and Salvatori Professor of American Constitutionalism at Claremont McKenna College, told Inside Higher Ed that the agency decided to withdraw from the process of seeking renewed recognition because of the lack of time his agency was given by the Education Department to defend itself. He noted that AALE received the final report of Education Department staff members — which contained 45 citations of noncompliance — the Wednesday before Thanksgiving.
Oklahoma’s new education chief says classes are too easy
When state schools Superintendent-elect Janet Barresi takes office, her first priority is going to be stepping up the difficulty and rigor in schools so that more kids are ready for college when they graduate.
Only 2.4 percent of students in Oklahoma’s graduating class of 2009 scored in the upper tiers of national math exams, a ratio that places the state among recently industrialized nations such as Bulgaria, Uruguay and Serbia, according to a study released this month.
State schools Superintendent-elect Janet Barresi said the study, which also ranks Oklahoma among the worst 10 states in producing top-achieving math students, should be a wake-up call against the status quo.
“Let’s quit making excuses,” she said. “Let’s accept it, and use it as a challenge, Oklahoma.”
2010 Saw A Children’s App Tsunami
Call it the chicken/egg effect, but Apple’s iPad, which has now sold over 1 million and is listed as this years most desired gift by kids (aka the chicken) has resulted in a dramatic demand for children’s apps (aka the eggs). While this new iTunes-based $.99 per app publishing model has been a shock to publishers, it’s great news for a curious child stuck in the back seat on a long trip. This year saw the release of zinc roe’s Tickle Tap Apps (like Sound Shaker), and several new titles from Duck Duck Moose, like Park Math, with adjustable age levels. If you’re interested in ebooks, have a look at two of our favorites: Bartleby’s Book of Buttons and Nash Smasher! And any doubts about the validity of the iPad in the classroom have evaporated thanks to apps like Symmetry Shuffle, Cut the Rope and Motion Math. For dessert, save some room for Smule’s Magic Piano.
Obese German children ‘should face’ classroom weigh-ins
Germany’s main school teaching body has called for classroom weigh-ins and the enforced removal of ultra-overweight pupils to combat rising obesity in society.
Josef Kraus, the DL teaching federation president, said: “When parents don’t make sure their children eat healthily and get enough exercise, then it can be the beginning of child abuse in extreme cases.” He said school doctors should take a more active role and conduct regular consultations and weight measurements of students. The should also report problem cases to authorities.
“When parental notices about overweight children are thrown to the wind, then youth services must be contacted and as a last resort there should be cuts to their parental benefits or welfare,” Mr Kraus said.
His remarks follow the release of official figures which showed that 51 per cent of Germans are considered overweight. Sixty per cent of men and 43 per cent of women have a Body Mass Index (BMI) – a measure calculated by body weight and height – of more than 25, up from 56 per cent and 40 per cent respectively in 1999.
Green Bay educators worry changes to political landscape could affect local school funding
Local educators say purse strings could tighten at both the state and federal levels when new Republican lawmakers take office in January.
And that has some school officials concerned about funding and revenue limits.
Mike Blecha, who sits on the Green Bay School Board and serves as its legislative liaison, noted that state rules limit school revenue increases to $200 per student, down from $275 in 2008-09. That means a school board’s ability to raise property taxes becomes limited.
Blecha said he’s heard the limit could be reduced to as little as $100 per student. Small, rural districts or districts with declining enrollment could be forced to shut down if levy limits fall that low, he said.
Brave new world: Teachers find benefits of digital technology
The sign on the classroom wall prohibits the use of handheld communication devices, yet on this December morning all 28 students in Lori Hunt’s algebra II class are texting on their cell phones. But these Middleton High School students are not a defiant bunch of teens.
With Hunt’s blessing, they’re using their cell phones to text answers to math problems. Every answer appears, anonymously, on a wall-mounted, interactive, electronic whiteboard all students can see.
For Hunt, it provides an instant way of knowing how many students understand the problem and can calculate the answer. For the students, it allows them to use a familiar technology to explore challenging new concepts.
Cheaters Find an Adversary in Technology
Mississippi had a problem born of the age of soaring student testing and digital technology. High school students taking the state’s end-of-year exams were using cellphones to text one another the answers.
With more than 100,000 students tested, proctors could not watch everyone — not when some teenagers can text with their phones in their pockets.
So the state called in a company that turns technology against the cheats: it analyzes answer sheets by computer and flags those with so many of the same questions wrong or right that the chances of random agreement are astronomical. Copying is the almost certain explanation.
Since the company, Caveon Test Security, began working for Mississippi in 2006, cheating has declined about 70 percent, said James Mason, director of the State Department of Education’s Office of Student Assessment. “People know that if you cheat there is an extremely high chance you’re going to get caught,” Mr. Mason said.
Some places’ integration seats vanish: Aid formula makes big players prefer open enrollment to 220
Some of the biggest players in the Chapter 220 program will not accept new minority students for the coming school year, a move likely to continue the trend of declining participation in the school integration program.
School boards for Elmbrook, Menomonee Falls and Wauwatosa, which collectively enrolled more than a quarter of all Chapter 220 students last school year, have voted to not open up any new seats to the program in the 2011-’12 school year.
The action comes as districts have increasingly favored the state’s open enrollment public school choice program as a way to attract out-of-district students – and increased state aid – to their schools.
“The reason is largely financially related,” Elmbrook School District Superintendent Matt Gibson said.
While the money that districts collect for open enrollment students comes on top of the revenue limits allowed by the state, Chapter 220 aid does not raise extra revenue for school districts. Instead, the state aid that districts receive through Chapter 220 goes toward lowering district property taxes.
Proposed bill: Make colleges’ spending public
Want to know how much the University of South Carolina spends to mow the grass on the Horseshoe? What about how much Clemson University doles out to clean the carpet in its board room?
If legislation expected to be prefiled in the state House of Representatives passes, the answer to those questions and many, many others will be a few mouse clicks away for South Carolinians. The legislation, which will be called The Higher Education Transparency Act of 2011 and which was backed by House Speaker Bobby Harrell at a press conference Wednesday, will require that public colleges and universities post every penny of their expenditures online.
Much of the schools’ spending is already posted on the Web, but Republican legislators have leaned on school officials to go further.
Wanted: Candidates for Madison school board
The spring election of 2011 is shaping up as one of the most exciting in years, with impressive fields of candidates for state Supreme Court, Dane County executive and mayor of Madison.
But that does not mean that there are enough candidates. Plenty of races for circuit judge, school board, city council and village and town government posts have attracted only incumbents. These positions form the fabric of local government. At a time when tough decisions have to be made about the scope and character of the operations these elected officials oversee, it’s important that the best and brightest contenders step forward.
Luckily, Wisconsin maintains a low bar for getting on the ballot in local races.
Tracking Students to 200 Percent of Normal Time: Effect on Institutional Graduation Rates
This Issue Brief examines institutional graduation rates reported at 200 percent of normal time, a time frame that corresponds to completing a bachelor’s degree in 8 years and an associate’s degree in 4 years. The report compares these rates with those reported at 150 percent and 100 percent of normal time for all nine institutional sectors. The purpose is to determine whether the longer time frame results in higher institutional graduation rates.
College Students on the Web
Summary:
Students are multitaskers who move through websites rapidly, often missing the item they come to find. They’re enraptured by social media but reserve it for private conversations and thus visit company sites from search engines.
College students are an important target audience for many websites. They’re young, they’re about town, they spend whatever money they have (often online), and they frequently look for many different types of information. For sure, they’re an online generation spending — or squandering — large amounts of time on the Web.
User Research
To learn how students use websites, we conducted observational research with 43 students in 4 countries (Australia, Germany, the UK, and the USA). Participants ranged in age from 18 to 24 years and included 18 men and 25 women. Our test participants attended the following educational institutions:
Charter Schools and Equal Opportunity
Remember Norman Rockwell’s stark painting of the little African-American girl being escorted into a New Orleans schoolhouse by two deputy U.S. marshals? Today that little girl, Ruby Bridges, is working to open a public charter school in that same school building, which will house a civil rights museum as well.
Wouldn’t it be strange for a civil rights figure like Bridges to join a movement that was “accelerating re-segregation by race,” as charter schools were characterized in a recent Miller-McCune.com article? Yet that’s what some critics would have us believe, though more than a million black and Latino parents have chosen charters as a way of opening doors for their own children.
What Are Taxes For? Should the primary purpose of taxation be to support the government or maximize economic growth?
Sarah, Mitt and several tea party groups say the tax compromise with Barack Obama is a bad idea, sells out the GOP’s anti-spending promises and, worst of all, helps you-know-who’s re-election chances. But Newt, Mike and Tim think it’s a decent deal. Far be it from me to interrupt the GOP’s holiday spirit. Let us stipulate, however, that the furtive, ragged tax bill being let out the back door of a lame duck Congress proves–officially and conclusively–that tax policy in the United States has hit the wall.
A compelling, even frightening article in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal about a tax system that is a morass of extenders, extrusions, loopholes, credits and bubble-gum fixes ended with the story of a grievously ill cancer patient balancing the benefits of taking an experimental drug against the estate-tax benefits to his family of an early death.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Taxes and the Top Percentile Myth A 2008 OECD study of leading economies found that ‘taxation is most progressively distributed in the United States.’ More so than Sweden or France.
When President Obama announced a two-year stay of execution for taxpayers on Dec. 7, he made it clear that he intends to spend those two years campaigning for higher marginal tax rates on dividends, capital gains and salaries for couples earning more than $250,000. “I don’t see how the Republicans win that argument,” said the president.
Despite the deficit commission’s call for tax reform with fewer tax credits and lower marginal tax rates, the left wing of the Democratic Party remains passionate about making the U.S. tax system more and more progressive. They claim this is all about payback–that raising the highest tax rates is the fair thing to do because top income groups supposedly received huge windfalls from the Bush tax cuts. As the headline of a Robert Creamer column in the Huffington Post put it: “The Crowd that Had the Party Should Pick up the Tab.”
Arguments for these retaliatory tax penalties invariably begin with estimates by economists Thomas Piketty of the Paris School of Economics and Emmanuel Saez of U.C. Berkeley that the wealthiest 1% of U.S. households now take home more than 20% of all household income.
‘Well-Educated’
From Examiner.com, courtesy of Hans Bader, counsel at the Competitive Enterprise Institute:
Much of college “education” is a waste of time. I learned more practical law in six weeks of studying for the bar exam and a couple summers of working for law firms than I did in three years of law school. I spent much of my time at Harvard Law School watching “Married With Children” or arguing with classmates about politics, rather than studying (much of what I did study was useless). Even students who were high on drugs had no difficulty graduating.
(Higher education is no guarantee of even basic literacy. When I worked at the Department of Education handling administrative appeals, I was dismayed by the poor writing skills of the graduate students who lodged complaints against their universities).
The Police and the Schools
School officials across the country are revisiting “zero-tolerance” disciplinary policies under which children are sometimes arrested for profanity, talking back to teachers or adolescent behavior that once would have been resolved in meetings with parents. The reappraisals are all to the good given that those who get suspended or arrested are more likely to drop out and become entangled in the criminal justice system permanently.
The New York City Council clearly had this link in mind when it passed a new law earlier this week that will bring long overdue transparency to the school disciplinary process. Under the Student Safety Act, which takes effect in 90 days, the New York Police Department’s school security division will be required to provide clear and comprehensive data that show how many students are arrested or issued summonses at school and why. School officials will also have to provide similarly detailed information on suspensions.
Readers, Writers, and the Digital Revolution
The world’s first technology for writing was invented not by poets or prophets or the chroniclers of kings; it came from bean counters. The Sumerian cuneiform script–made up of symbols incised on soft clay–grew out of a scheme for keeping accounts and inventories. Curiously, this story of borrowing arithmetical apparatus for literary purposes has been repeated in recent times. The prevailing modern instrument for writing–the computer–also began as (and remains) a device for number crunching.
Dennis Baron’s extended essay A Better Pencil looks back over the entire history of writing technologies (clay tablets, pens, pencils, typewriters), but the focus is on the recent transition to digital devices. His title implies a question. Is the computer really a better pencil? Will it lead to better writing? There is a faction that thinks otherwise:
What’s High School For?
We all want more young people to attend college. Who would argue with that? Politicians and educators at all levels extol the obvious virtues, from enhanced earning potential to a greater satisfaction in life. One increasingly popular way to encourage college attendance is through dual enrollment, in which students take courses in high school for both high school and college credit.
In theory, dual enrollment enables high school students to accrue college credits for very little cost and imbues them with a sense of confidence that they can complete college work. If students can succeed in college classes while still in high school, conventional wisdom holds, they will be more likely to matriculate at the postsecondary level.
In Indiana, dual enrollment is encouraged at the highest levels, with state Education Secretary Tony Bennett maintaining that at least 25 percent of high school graduates should pass at least one Advanced Placement exam or International Baccalaureate exam, or earn at least three semester hours of college credit during high school.
In reality, though, dual enrollment may do more harm than good.
Related: Credit for non-Madison School District Courses.
An Interview with Kaleem Caire
Caire believes the Madison community must first address its at-risk population in a radically different way to level the playing field before fundamental change can come.
“Madison schools don’t know how to educate African Americans,” says Caire. “It’s not that they can’t. Most of the teachers could, and some do, valiantly. But the system is not designed for that to happen.”
The system is also not designed for the 215 annual school days and 5 p.m. end times that Madison Prep proposes. That, and the fact that he wants the school to choose teachers based on their specific skill sets and cultural backgrounds, is why Caire is seeking to proceed without teachers union involvement.
“Ultimately,” he says, “the collective bargaining agreement dictates the operations of schools and teaching and learning in [the Madison school district]. Madison Prep will require much more autonomy.”
Many aspects of Caire’s proposed school seem rooted in his own life experience. Small class sizes, just like at St. James. Uniforms, just like the Navy. Majority African American and Latino kids, eliminating the isolation he grew up with. Meals at school and co-curricular activities rather than extracurricular, so that poor students are not singled out or left out.
Teachers the students can identify with. Boys only, in the hopes of fostering the sensitive, supportive male peer groups so critical to Caire’s evolving sense of self over the years.
Much more on Kaleem, here.
The Art of Childraising
John Medina, a developmental molecular biologist, has a lifelong fascination with how the mind reacts to and organizes information. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School–a provocative book that takes on the way our schools and work environments are designed. His latest book is a must-read for parents and early-childhood educators: Brain Rules for Baby: How to Raise a Smart and Happy Child From Zero to Five You might ask, “What does this topic have to do with small business? Well, if you’re having issues with your kids, you’re not going to be on top of your game at the office.
Q: What’s the gist of what one should do to foster emotionally health and intellectually successful kids?
What some call cheating can help learning
My daughter is with us for the holidays, having survived her first barrage of law school exams in California. The exams were longer and more difficult than anything I ever had as a graduate student in Chinese studies. But her professors allowed students to have notes with them. This got my attention because her boyfriend at a neighboring law school was forbidden to have notes in two of his exams.
At these two institutions dedicated to equality under the law, what my daughter did during exams at one could have been considered cheating if she attended the other. What are we to make of the uneven nature of such rules, just as unpredictable as those found in our public K-12 schools? Open-book exams are okay some places, not in others. Cooperating with friends on homework is encouraged by some teachers, denounced elsewhere as a sign of declining American moral fiber.
School in patriotic storm after principal allows students to opt out of the Pledge of Allegiance
A school was at the centre of a patriotism row after the principal sent home permission slips allowing students to opt out of saying the Pledge of Allegiance.
The letter home sparked an outcry in Brookline, Massachusetts. Parents were asked to tick off whether or not they wanted their children to participate when the principal started reciting the pledge weekly over the school’s public address system.
‘It’s PC ridiculousness,’ said parent Sean Bielat. ‘Remember when the presumption was that we were all good Americans and we all loved the country and we had no problem saying, “Yes, I pledge allegiance”?’
NC education board to require 2 US history classes
North Carolina high school students soon must take and pass two American history courses to graduate.
The State Board of Education approved Thursday a revised social studies curriculum for public schools that will expand study of U.S. history from one year to two to ensure more material is covered.
Wisconsin’s academic luster fading
They called it the “Canada effect” – the phenomenon in which students from a string of states along the country’s northern border regularly beat the rest of the nation on academic tests.
As recently as 1992, only three states – all from northern climates – had significantly higher average scores than Wisconsin in fourth-grade reading and eighth-grade math. No states scored significantly better than Wisconsin in fourth-grade math national assessments.
By 2009, this effect was wiped out for Wisconsin’s students. The state’s fourth grade reading scores placed statistically ahead of only 12 states and the District of Columbia. On the fourth- and eighth-grade math tests, the state’s students beat 26 states and the District of Columbia, results that could be considered slightly above average.
“We have lulled ourselves into thinking we’re really, really good,” said state Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), who will become chairman of the Senate Education Committee. “We’re OK, but we need to get better because other states are doing more at improving.”
With research showing the most important school factor in student performance is the effectiveness of classroom teachers, Wisconsin’s political and education leaders have called louder than ever for improving the quality of the state’s educators.
A few awards to mark the good and bad this year in education
The last Sunday of the year and time for our first, perhaps annual, awards for noteworthy things that hapened in education around here in 2010.
Unsung Hero of the Year Award: Robert Kattman, director of the Office of Charter Schools at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The soft spoken former North Shore superintendent has been both supportive and demanding in building a roster of a dozen charter schools authorized by the UW Board of Regents. The list includes some of the best schools in Milwaukee, such as Milwaukee College Prep, Bruce Guadalupe, Seeds of Health Elementary, Woodlands School, Veritas High School. If the charter movement was like this nationwide, there would be far less controversy about these independent, publicly funded schools. Kattman is retiring at the end of the school year. Thanks for all your efforts.
The High Standards Start Here Award: State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers. Evers quickly signed up Wisconsin to be part of the “core standards” effort to bring coherence to the mish mash of what different states want students to learn. If the follow-through is good, it will raise Wisconsin’s expectations and, one hopes, student performance in years to come.
Most Important Data of the Year Award: The urban school district results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). This was the first time MPS took part and its students could be compared directly to those in 17 other central city school systems. The results were generally pretty distressing. Do we want our local education motto to be: “Thank God for Detroit – at least someone is worse than us”? The data should remain chastening and motivating to everyone involved in local education.
iTunes is Taking the Education World by Storm
Is your library out of your favorite book? Would you like to take your book home for break? Want to read your favorite book on a plane ride or road trip? University of South Florida is making this very easy now. iTunes and USF have started Lit2Go:
a collaboration between the Florida Department of Education and the University of South Florida College of Education — supports literacy by providing access to recordings of historically and culturally significant literature. The extensive collection of hundreds of audiobooks, stories, and poems, including classics such as Alice in Wonderland, Aesop’s Fables, and A Tale of Two Cities — all for free on iTunes.
Now there is no reason for not finishing your book report! Schools are making it increasingly easy to access information from several sources. It is a more efficient, a green way of teaching and learning, not to mention for free. The iTunes U world instantly expands your reach to knowledge and information. There are options to research by subject, school, and company, all at the tip of your fingers!
Memphis suburbs consider creating independent school systems
Shelby County suburban mayors are exploring options to escape the prospect of Memphis City and Shelby County schools consolidation.
“People are very clearly concerned about the integrity of the public schools that their children attend in Germantown,” said Mayor Sharon Goldsworthy.
She and a few other mayors are considering creating independent school systems in their cities. Goldsworthy said they’d have to overcome a state prohibition on Tennessee municipalities starting school systems.
“Everything needs to be examined,” Goldsworthy said. “… There are an enormous number of questions and very few answers at the moment about any of this. Our responsibility as elected officials is to get those answers as quickly as possible so we can identify the best course of action for our community.”
Florida Governor Elect Scott’s schools vision: Power to the parents
Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s education team laid out reform ideas that would give parents state money to pick schools for their children and authority to remove them from a subpar teacher’s class.
That theme echoes throughout the 20 sprawling pages of reform ideas that Gov.-elect Rick Scott’s education team unveiled this week.
Parents should get state money to pick their own schools, public or private. Parents should decide what reform model is best to jump-start their children’s school. Parents should be able to remove their child from an underperforming teacher’s class.
“The parent is the ultimate accountability,” said Patricia Levesque, a close advisor to former Gov. Jeb Bush and a leader of Scott’s education transition team. “They know what’s best for their child. To substitute someone else’s judgment . . . is wrong.”
How many minorities rejected by most selective high school?
It has been exactly a month since Jeanie Meikle, a frequent reader of this blog, asked me this good question:
“In all the articles I have read about TJ [the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, the most selective secondary school in the country] and its failures of inclusiveness, I have never seen the statistics as to how many (and %) of applicants were African American or Hispanic or what the acceptance rate of those applicants was. … So do you by any chance know what the numbers are?”
I didn’t, but I asked Fairfax County schools spokesman Paul Regnier and he got them for me. The delay in posting them is entirely my fault. All of the sports teams in Washington have been collapsing into shapeless mediocrity, and worse. I needed time to reflect on that.
The admissions statistics for the Jefferson class of 2014, this year’s ninth-graders, show there were 3,119 applicants, of which 480, or 15.4 percent, were admitted. This included 272 boys (16.4 percent of those that applied) and 208 girls (14.2 percent of applicants.)
Ending deception in school safety reports
There was something strange in The Washington Post a week ago. A chart on page A16, using data provided by the D.C. public school system, showed that in late summer and fall 2009, Spingarn High School had by far the lowest number of assaults, thefts, threats and other crimes. There were just six incidents in four months compared with an average of 31 in the other eight high schools assessed.
At that time, teachers at this allegedly safest of all regular D.C. high schools were reporting a rash of crimes and classroom intrusions. The situation became so intolerable that by January they had persuaded D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle A. Rhee to replace the Spingarn principal.
How could the incidents being reported by security guards under school district rules be so different from what people at the school were experiencing? Why did Rhee ignore the data in changing the school’s leadership and yet her successor, Kaya Henderson, used data from similar security incident reports last week to replace the principal at Dunbar High?
