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How They Really Get In



Scott Jaschik, via a kind reader’s email:

Most elite colleges and universities describe their admissions policies as “holistic,” suggesting that they look at the totality of an applicant — grades, test scores, essays, recommendations, activities and so forth.
But a new survey of admissions officials at the 75 most competitive colleges and universities (defined as those with the lowest admit rates) finds that there are distinct patterns, typically not known by applicants, that differentiate some holistic colleges from others. Most colleges focus entirely on academic qualifications first, and then consider other factors. But a minority of institutions focuses first on issues of “fit” between a college’s needs and an applicant’s needs.
This approach — most common among liberal arts colleges and some of the most competitive private universities — results in a focus on non-academic qualities of applicants, and tends to favor those who are members of minority groups underrepresented on campus and those who can afford to pay all costs of attending.

Further discussion, here.




Rely on Merit, Not Race



Steve Hsu:

In considering Fisher v. University of Texas, let’s acknowledge a key factual point about affirmative action: We have good tools for predicting college success, and those tools work about equally well across all ethnic groups and even for rich legacy candidates.
Race-based preference produces a population of students whose intellectual strength varies strongly according to race.
In comprehensive statistics compiled as part of Duke University’s Campus Life and Learning project, Asian-American students averaged 1457 out of 1600 on the math and reading portion of the SAT, compared to 1416 for whites, 1347 for Hispanics and 1275 for blacks. There is every reason to believe that a similar pattern holds at almost every elite university in America, with some notable exceptions like Caltech. Is this pattern justifiable, or even beneficial to the students with the lowest scores?
The data show that SAT score and high school grade point average are good predictors of success at Duke for all ethnic groups, as well as for wealthy legacy students. Those students admitted with weaker SAT scores and high school grades are more likely to drop out of challenging majors like science and engineering, and less likely to earn good grades in any major.




How Wide Are the Racial Opportunity Gaps in Your Metro?





Margery Turner:

In December, MetroTrends graded America’s 100 biggest metros on measures of economic security. Today we offer a new report card, with grades reflecting the opportunity gaps facing African Americans and Latinos.
We’re all well aware of the national story. Despite the huge achievements of the civil rights era, neither African Americans nor Latinos (on average) enjoy the same school quality, job opportunities, or homeownership access as whites. But the picture isn’t the same in every metro area. So our report card scores metros on five factors: residential segregation, neighborhood affluence (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white), public school quality (for the average black, Latino, and non-Hispanic white student), employment (among working-age adults), and homeownership.
Let’s start by looking at the grades for black-white equity.
Surprised? The top scorers are mostly small- to medium-sized metros in the south and west (Charleston, SC, and Riverside, CA, for example), while the worst performers are big metros in the midwest and northeast (including New York, Boston, and Chicago).
When I first saw these results, I thought perhaps that so few African Americans live in the high-scoring metros that their high performance is irrelevant. For some top scorers (like Albuquerque and San Jose), that’s definitely the case. But lots of other metros scoring As and Bs on this report card have substantial African American populations.

Madison was given a C on Racial Equity. Milwaukee is the worst while Albuquerque is the best.
Related:




Madison Prep and Teacher’s Union Collaborate: What’s it all about?



Kaleem Caire, via email:

October 3, 2011
Dear Friends & Colleagues.
As the Wisconsin State Journal and The Capital Times newspapers reported over the weekend, the Urban League of Greater Madison, the new Board of Madison Preparatory Academy and Madison Teachers, Inc., the local teachers’ union, achieved a major milestone last Friday in agreeing to collaborate on our proposed charter schools for young men and women.
After a two-hour meeting and four months of ongoing discussions, MTI agreed to work “aggressively and proactively” with Madison Prep, through the existing collective bargaining agreement (CBA) between MTI and the Madison Metropolitan School District, to ensure the school achieves its diversity hiring goals; educational mission and staff compensation priorities; and staff and student performance objectives.
Where we started.
In March 2011, we submitted a proposal to MMSD’s Board of Education to start an all-boys public charter school that would serve 120 boys beginning in the 2012-13 school year: 60 boys in sixth grade and 60 boys in seventh grade. We proposed that the school would operate as a “non-instrumentality” charter school, which meant that Madison Prep would not employ teachers and other relevant support staff that were members of MTI’s collective bargaining unit. We also proposed a budget of $14,471 per pupil, an amount informed by budgets numbers shared with us by MMSD’s administration. MMSD’s 2010-11 budget showed the projected to spend $14,800 per student.
Where we compromised.
A. Instrumentality: As part of the final proposal that the Urban League will submit to MMSD’s Board of Education for approval next month, the Urban League will propose that Madison Prep operate as an instrumentality of MMSD, but have Madison Preparatory Academy retain the autonomy of governance and management of both the girls and boys charter schools. MTI has stated that they have no issue with this arrangement.
What this means is that Madison Prep’s teachers, guidance counselor, clerical staff and nurse will be members of the MTI bargaining unit. As is required under the current CBA, each position will be appropriately compensated for working extra hours to accommodate Madison Prep’s longer school day and year. These costs have been built into our budget. All other staff will employed by Madison Preparatory Academy, Inc. and the organization will contract out for some services, as appropriate.
B. Girls School Now: When we began this journey to establish Madison Prep, we shared that it was our vision to establish a similar girls school within 12-24 months of the boys school starting. To satisfy the concerns of the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction about how Madison Prep complies with federal Title IX regulations, we offered to start the girls school at the same time. We have since accelerated the girls school in our planning and look forward to opening the girls and boys schools in August 2012 with 60 sixth grade boys and 60 sixth grade girls. We will add one grade per year in each school until we reach a full compliment of 6th – 12th grades and 840 students total.
C. Costs: Over the past six months, we have worked closely with MMSD’s administration to identify an appropriate budget request for Madison Prep. Through an internal analysis of their spending at the secondary level, MMSD recently reported to us that they project to spend $13,207 per pupil on the actual education of children in their middle and high schools. To address school board members’ concerns about the costs of Madison Prep, we worked hard to identify areas to trim spending without compromising our educational mission, student and staffing needs, and overall school effectiveness. We’ve since reduced our request to $11,478 per pupil in Madison Prep’s first year of operation, 2012-13. By year five, our request decreases to $11,029 per pupil. Based on what we have learned about school spending in MMSD and the outstanding educational needs of students that we plan to address, we believe this is a reasonable request.
Why we compromised.
We have more information. After months of deliberation, negotiation and discussion with Board of Education members, school district administration, the teacher’s union and community stakeholders, we’ve been able to identify what we believe is a clear path to getting Madison Prep approved; a path that we hope addresses the needs and interests of all involved without compromising the mission, objectives and needs of our future students.
We believe in innovation and systemic change. We are very serious about promoting change and opportunity within our public schools, and establishing innovative approaches – including new schools – to respond to the educational needs, interests and challenges of our children, schools and community. Today’s children are tomorrow’s workforce; tomorrow’s leaders; tomorrow’s innovators; and tomorrow’s peacekeepers. We should have schools that prepare them accordingly. We are committed to doing our part to achieve this reality, including finding creative ways to break down boundaries rather than reinforce them.
The needs and desires of our children supersede all others. Children are the reward of life, and our children are our first priority. Our commitment is first and foremost to them. To this end, we will continue to seek ways to expand opportunities for them, advocate on their behalf and find ways to work with those with whom we have differences, even if it means we have to compromise to get there. It is our hope that other organizations and individuals will actively seek ways to do to the same.
We see the bigger picture. It would not serve the best interests of our community, our children, our schools or the people we serve to see parents of color and their children’s teachers at odds with each other over how best to deliver a quality education to their children. That is not the image we want to portray of our city. We sincerely hope that our recent actions will serve as a example to areas businesses, labor unions, schools and other institutions who hold the keys to opportunity for the children and families we serve.
Outstanding Issues.
Even though we have made progress, we are not out of the woods yet. We hope that over the next several weeks, the Board of Education will respond to your advocacy and work with us to provide the resources and autonomy of governance and leadership that are exceedingly important to the success of Madison Prep.
We look forward to finding common ground on these important objectives and realizing our vision that Greater Madison truly becomes the best place in the Midwest for everyone to live, learn and work.
Thank you for your courage and continued support.
Madison Prep 2012!
Onward!
Kaleem Caire
President & CEO
Urban League of Greater Madison
Phone: 608-729-1200
Fax: 608-729-1205
www.ulgm.org




Rick Hess’s Critique of Achievement-Gap Mania



By Reihan Salam
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of the latest issue of National Affairs, which includes Rick Hess’s fascinating and at times provocative discussion, or perhaps I say “devastating takedown,” of “achievement-gap mania.” The following paragraph gives you a hint as to Hess’s conclusion:

In essence, NCLB was an effort to link “conservative” nostrums of accountability to Great Society notions of “social justice.” The result was a noble exercise hailed for its compassion. The sad truth, however, is that the whole achievement-gap enterprise has been bad for schooling, bad for most children, and bad for the nation.


I found his discussion of the neglect of advanced and gifted education particularly convincing, as well as his recounting of how the “delusion of rigor” has undermined quality control across many domains. Hess ends his essay with an accounting of where “achievement-gap mania” has left the politics of K-12.
(1) Reforming education has become someone else’s problem:

First, achievement-gap mania has signaled to the vast majority of American parents that school reform isn’t about their kids. They are now expected to support efforts to close the achievement gap simply because it’s “the right thing to do,” regardless of the implications for their own children’s education. In fact, given that only about one household in five even contains school-age children — and given that two-thirds of families with children do not live in underserved urban neighborhoods, or do not send their kids to public schools, or otherwise do not stand to benefit from the gap-closing agenda — the result is a tiny potential constituency for achievement-gap reform, made up of perhaps 6% or 7% of American households.
Because middle-class parents and suburbanites have no personal stake in the gap-closing enterprise, reforms are tolerated rather than embraced. The most recent annual Gallup poll on attitudes toward schooling reported that just 20% of respondents said “improving the nation’s lowest-performing schools” was the most important of the nation’s education challenges. Indeed, while just 18% of the public gave American schools overall an A or a B, a sizable majority thought their own elementary and middle schools deserved those high grades. The implication is that most Americans, even those with school-age children, currently see education reform as time and money spent on other people’s children.


(2) Reforming education for the majority of students who come non-poor families is seen as somehow unnecessary:

Second, achievement-gap mania has created a dangerous complacency, giving suburban and middle-class Americans the false sense that things are just fine in their own schools. Thus it’s no surprise that professionals and suburbanites tend to regard “reforms” — from merit pay to charter schooling — as measures that they’ll tolerate as long as they’re reserved for urban schools, but that they won’t stand for in their own communities. …
Gap-closing strategies can be downright unhelpful or counterproductive when it comes to serving most students and families, and so can turn them off to education reform altogether. Longer school years and longer school days can be terrific for disadvantaged students or low achievers, but may be a recipe for backlash if imposed on families who already offer their kids many summer opportunities and extracurricular activities. Policies that seek to shift the “best” teachers to schools and classrooms serving low-achieving children represent a frontal assault on middle-class and affluent families. And responding to such concerns by belittling them is a sure-fire strategy for ensuring that school reform never amounts to more than a self-righteous crusade at odds with the interests of most middle-class families.


This is one reason why Hess rightly bristled at the crusader mentality that informs films like the recent Waiting for ‘Superman.’

(more…)




Oregon education reform bills aim to create more flexible, individualized public schools with proficiency grouping



Bill Graves:

In the typical Oregon public school classroom, students of the same age work at achievement levels that often vary by two or three grades, sometimes more.
That didn’t make sense to Mary Folberg. When she launched Northwest Academy, a private college preparatory school for grades 6-12 in downtown Portland, she grouped students the way she did as a dance instructor at Jefferson High, by proficiency rather than age.
That’s the seismic shift Gov. John Kitzhaber wants to make in the state’s public school system through a package of education bills passed by the Legislature last month.
At the heart of the package is one bill pushed by Kitzhaber to create paths from pre-school through college on which students advance at their own paces. The bill creates a 15-member Oregon Education Investment Board, chaired by the governor, to control the purse strings on all levels of education from preschool through college — about $7.4 billion or half of the state general fund.




Why not honors courses for all?



Jay Matthews:

Parents in Fairfax County have proved themselves one of the largest and most powerful forces for innovation in American education. But they have taken a wrong turn in their effort to save the three-track system–basic, honors and AP/IB– in the county’s high schools.
Many Fairfax parents actively oppose the elimination of honors courses in upper high school grades. They don’t want to leave their children with the choice of just the basic course or the college level Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate version. “Let’s keep choices on the table,” West Potomac High School parent Kate Van Dyck told me.
They can win this fight and keep the honors courses, but it will take some courage and imagination. Instead of insisting on the old three tracks, tell the schools to keep the honors option and eliminate the basic course.




In World of Education Apps, Tech Owes Teachers Some Media Literacy



Jessica Prois:

As a former high school English teacher, I used to have a pretty constricted view when attending continuing education workshops. Like most teachers, I thought: How can this help my school and students? Now, as a HuffPost Education editor reporting at the recent Digital Media and Learning Conference in Los Angeles, I got to think big in terms of the newest education ideas and who they affect. And there was lots to take note of.
The conference was a mix of educators, reformers and software developers who spent three days bouncing around theories, policies and practices on the best ways to use technology in the classroom. Diligent teachers tuned in by taking notes on their iPads and updated grades on their smartphones — all while discussing how best to use these platforms in their curriculum.




Executive Order #22: Read to Lead Task Force



Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, via a kind reader’s email:

EXECUTIVE ORDER # 22
Relating to the Creation of the Governor’s
Read to Lead Task Force
WHEREAS, the number one priority for children in grades kindergarten through third grade is to learn to read; and
WHEREAS, one third of all Wisconsin students cannot read at a basic level and two thirds of all African American students in our state cannot read at a basic level, which is the lowest rate in the nation; and
WHEREAS, in approximately ten years, Florida, through state reading law reforms, has improved from one of the lowest ranked states in the nation to one of the highest and in doing so achieved a much smaller racial achievement gap than Wisconsin; and
WHEREAS, it is critical to have initiatives that will empower teachers, districts, and parents–not lawmakers–with the ability to decide how best to teach reading and explore ways to provide teachers and parents with better tools to identify young struggling students and address why they are struggling and how to overcome those challenges; and




St. John’s program helps athletes make transition to collegiate level



Rob Reischel:

Myles Henry had no idea what his future held. The former Nicolet standout was struggling with his ACT scores last summer and his collegiate choices were limited.
Russell Finco was equally confused. The former Arrowhead standout went to St. Cloud State in June to begin a football career. But Finco suffered the latest in a string of concussions, was told to quit football and was in limbo.
Neither player ever dreamed he’d wind up being part of the postgraduate basketball program at St. John’s Northwestern. Today, both are thrilled to be Lancers.
St. John’s began a basketball program this season for high school graduates who have the potential to play collegiately but need an extra year of preparation. The student-athletes retain all their collegiate eligibility and get an extra year to improve their games and their grades.




American Education, Curbing Excellence



Steve Chapman
America’s primary and secondary schools have many problems, but an excess of excellence is not one of them. Not only do our weak students fare poorly in international comparisons, so do our strong ones. Mediocrity is the national norm. The very best students are the ones most likely to do things of great benefit to the rest of us — cure malaria, devise revolutionary inventions, start the next Apple or plumb the secrets of the universe. But we don’t always put much importance on helping them realize their full potential.
A case in point is Evanston Township High School in Evanston, Ill., a racially and economically mixed suburb of Chicago that is home to Northwestern University. It recently decided to eliminate a high honors freshman English course aimed at challenging the top students. Henceforth, these youngsters will be grouped with everyone else in a regular “honors” class in humanities. Next year, the same may be done with biology. Your kid is an honor student at ETHS? Heck, everyone is an honors student at ETHS. It’s hardly the only school in America where grouping students according to their ability is in disrepute. There is a widespread impulse to treat all kids as equally able and willing to learn. But the results often fall dismally short of the hopes.
When the Chicago public schools scrapped remedial classes for ninth graders and put everyone in college-prep courses, “failure rates increased, grades declined slightly, test scores did not improve and students were no more likely to enter college,” according to a study by the Consortium on Chicago School Research at the University of Chicago. Among average and above-average students, absenteeism rose. The danger in putting the brightest kids in general classes is that they will be bored by instruction geared to the middle. But their troubles don’t elicit much sympathy. Brookings Institution scholar Tom Loveless told The Atlantic magazine, “The United States does not do a good job of educating kids at the top. There’s a long-standing attitude that, ‘Well, smart kids can make it on their own.'”
But can they? Only 6 percent of American kids achieve advanced proficiency in math — lower than in 30 other countries. In Taiwan, the figure is 28 percent.
School administrators in Evanston insist the change is aimed at making the curriculum more demanding, even as they make it less demanding for some students. Thanks to the abolition of this elite course, we are told, “high-achieving students” will profit from “experiencing multiple perspectives and diversity in their classes to gain cultural capital.”
In other words, racial balance will take priority over academic rigor. Blacks and Hispanics make up nearly half of all students but only 19 percent of those in advanced placement courses and 29 percent of those in honors courses. This is because minority students at Evanston, which has an enrollment of nearly 3,000, generally score lower on achievement tests. Putting all students together is supposed to give everyone an equal opportunity.
But if you have a fever, you don’t bring it down by breaking the thermometer. The low numbers of black and Hispanic students are a symptom of a deeper problem, namely the failure of elementary and middle schools to prepare them for the most challenging course work. Evanston has had a big racial gap in academic performance for decades, and there is nothing to gain from pretending it doesn’t exist. Schools that group (or “track”) kids by ability generally get better overall results. Chester Finn Jr., president of the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, notes in a recent report, “Middle schools with more tracks have significantly more math pupils performing at the advanced and proficient levels and fewer students at the needs improvement and failing levels.”
Why would that be? Teaching is not easy, and teaching kids with a wide range of aptitude and interest is even harder. Grouping students by ability allows the tailoring of lessons to match the needs of each group. Putting them all together is bound to fail one group or another. Shortchanging gifted teens creates the risk of another unwanted effect: inducing their parents to leave. Families in Evanston can always move to neighboring suburbs with good schools, or they can opt for several fine private and parochial alternatives. Average students don’t gain from being in the same classes as exceptional ones if the exceptional ones are not there.
We as a society have not been very successful at turning average students into high achievers. Maybe we’ll have better luck doing the opposite.




New No. 2 at New York City Schools Believes in More Testing



Fernando Santos

He stood out at Community High School in Ann Arbor, Mich., an experimental school light on structure that was mockingly called “Commie High,” and at Brown, the Ivy League university known for giving students free rein, and where one of his inspirations was an education dean who espoused flexibility in teaching.
Today, Shael Polakow-Suransky is the chief accountability officer of the New York City Department of Education, a job that is as institutional as they come. He traffics in hard numbers, overseeing a system that assigns grades to schools based on complex and fixed formulas, in which success depends largely on how students score on a single test.




Lying to HS Students



Junia Yearwood

Failure to educate
The Boston school system is churning out illiterate students whose only skills are to pass predictable standard tests
I DID not attend a graduation ceremony in 25 years as a Boston public high school teacher. This was my silent protest against a skillfully choreographed mockery of an authentic education – a charade by adults who, knowingly or unwittingly, played games with other people’s children.
I knew that most of my students who walked across the stage, amidst the cheers, whistles, camera flashes, and shout-outs from parents, family, and friends, were not functionally literate. They were unable to perform the minimum skills necessary to negotiate society: reading the local newspapers, filling out a job application, or following basic written instructions; even fewer had achieved empowering literacy enabling them to closely read, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate text.
However, they were all college bound – the ultimate goal of our school’s vision statement– clutching knapsacks stuffed with our symbols of academic success: multiple college acceptances, a high school diploma; an official transcript indicating they had passed the MCAS test and had met all graduation requirements; several glowing letters of recommendation from teachers and guidance counselors; and one compelling personal statement, their college essay.
They walked across the stage into a world that was unaware of the truth that scorched my soul –the truth that became clear the first day I entered West Roxbury High School in 1979 (my first assignment as a provisional 12th grade English teacher): the young men and women I was responsible for coaching the last leg of their academic journey could not write a complete sentence, a cohesive paragraph, or a well-developed essay on a given topic. I remember my pain and anger at this revelation and my struggle to reconcile the reality before me with my own high school experience, which had enabled me to negotiate the world of words–oral and written–independently, with relative ease and confidence.
For the ensuing 30-plus years, I witnessed how the system churned out academically unprepared students who lacked the skills needed to negotiate the rigors of serious scholarship, or those skills necessary to move in and up the corporate world.
We instituted tests and assessments, such as the MCAS, that required little exercise in critical thinking, for which most of the students were carefully coached to “pass.” Teachers, instructors, and administrators made the test the curriculum, taught to the test, drilled for the test, coached for the test, taught strategies to take the test, and gave generous rewards (pizza parties) for passing the test. Students practiced, studied for, and passed the test–but remained illiterate.
I also bear witness to my students’ ability to acquire a passing grade for mediocre work. A’s and B’s were given simply for passing in assignments (quality not a factor), for behaving well in class, for regular attendance, for completing homework assignments that were given a check mark but never read.
In addition, I have been a victim of the subtle and overt pressure exerted by students, parents, administrators, guidance counselors, coaches, and colleagues to give undeserving students passing grades, especially at graduation time, when the “walk across the stage” frenzy is at its peak.
When all else failed, there were strategies for churning out seemingly academically prepared students. These were the ways around the official requirements: loopholes such as MCAS waivers; returning or deftly transferring students to Special Needs Programs–a practice usually initiated by concerned parents who wanted to avoid meeting the regular education requirements or to gain access to “testing accommodations”; and, Credit Recovery, the computer program that enabled the stragglers, those who were left behind, to catch up to the frontrunners in the Race to the Stage. Students were allowed to take Credit Recovery as a substitute for the course they failed, and by passing with a C, recover their credits.
Nevertheless, this past June, in the final year of my teaching career, I chose to attend my first graduation at the urgings of my students–the ones whose desire to learn, to become better readers and writers, and whose unrelenting hard work earned them a spot on the graduation list–and the admonition of a close friend who warned that my refusal to attend was an act of selfishness, of not thinking about my students who deserved the honor and respect signified by my presence.
At the ceremony I chose to be happy, in spite of the gnawing realization that nothing had changed in 32 years. We had continued playing games with other people’s children.
Junia Yearwood, a guest columnist, is a retired Boston Public Schools teacher who taught at English High for 25 years.
© Copyright 2010 Globe Newspaper Company.




Give Florida schools flexibility to meet student needs



Candace Lankford

It seemed like a terrific idea in 2002, when the Classroom Size Reduction Amendment (CSR) was adopted by the voters mandating a specific number of students — caps — in every “core” classroom at every grade level: in grades pre-kindergarten through third, the cap was 18 students; in grades 4-8 22 students; and grades 9-12 25 students. Core classes included math, science, social studies, language arts and foreign languages. However, the unintended consequence of this inflexible constitutional amendment has wreaked havoc with many students’ schedules, frustrated families and drained much needed resources from our schools. At the end of the day, it is not in the best interest of our students’ education and more flexibility is needed — here’s why.
University High, a school of approximately 1,900 students, made more than 700 schedule changes in one week alone in order to maintain compliance. Spruce Creek High, three weeks before the CSR’s arbitrary compliance date, had 100 sections with only one or two students more than the cap. Not too bad for a high school with more than 2,800 students — until you hear that those 100 sections encompassed 32 different subject areas. Southwestern Middle School admitted a new student last week, and in order to maintain CSR compliance the school had to modify many other students’ schedules. This was done during the last week of the first nine-week grading period. Does the word “nuts” come to mind?




Serious ideas from State of Education speech. Seriously.



Susan Troller:

For instance, he’s the only state elected official to actually and seriously float a proposal to repair the broken state funding system for schools. He promises the proposal for his “Funding for Our Future” will be ready to introduce to lawmakers this fall and will include details on its impact on the state’s 424 school districts.
Evers also is interested in the potential of charter schools. Let’s be open and supportive about education alternatives, he says, but mindful of what’s already working well in public schools.
And he says qualified 11th and 12th graders should be allowed to move directly on to post-secondary education or training if they wish. Dual enrollment opportunites for high school age students attending college and technical schools will require a shift in thinking that shares turf and breaks down barriers, making seamless education — pre-K through post-secondary — a reality instead of some distant dream, according to Evers.
As to Evers’ comments on teacher testing, he joins a national conversation that has been sparked, in part, by the Obama administration as well as research that shows the single universal element in improved student performance is teacher quality. We recently featured a story about concerns over teacher evaluation based on student performance and test scores, and the issue has been a potent topic elsewhere, as well.

The proof, as always, is in the pudding, or substance.
Melissa Westbrook wrote a very useful and timely article on education reform:

I think many ed reformers rightly say, “Kids can’t wait.” I agree.
There is nothing more depressing than realizing that any change that might be good will likely come AFTER your child ages out of elementary, middle or high school. Not to say that we don’t do things for the greater good or the future greater good but as a parent, you want for your child now. Of course, we are told that change needs to happen now but the reality is what it might or might not produce in results is years off. (Which matters not to Bill Gates or President Obama because their children are in private schools.)
All this leads to wonder about our teachers and what this change will mean. A reader, Lendlees, passed on a link to a story that appeared in the LA Times about their teacher ratings. (You may recall that the LA Times got the classroom test scores for every single teacher in Los Angeles and published them in ranked order.)

Susan Troller notes that Wisconsin’s oft criticized WKCE (on which Madison’s value added assessment program is based) will be replaced – by 2014:

Evers also promised that the much maligned Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam, used to test student proficiency in 3rd through 6th, 8th and 10th grades, is on its way out. By 2014, there will be a much better assessment of student proficiency to take its place, Evers says, and he should know. He’s become a leading figure in the push for national core education standards, and for effective means for measuring student progress.




Urban League president proposes Madison International Baccalaureate charter school geared toward minority boys



Susan Troller:

“In Madison, I can point to a long history of failure when it comes to educating African-American boys,” says Caire, a Madison native and a graduate of West High School. He is blunt about the problems of many black students in Madison.
“We have one of the worst achievement gaps in the entire country. I’m not seeing a concrete plan to address that fact, even in a district that prides itself on innovative education. Well, here’s a plan that’s innovative, and that has elements that have been very successful elsewhere. I’d like to see it have a chance to change kids’ lives here,” says Caire, who is African-American and has extensive experience working on alternative educational models, particularly in Washington, D.C.
One of the most vexing problems in American education is the difference in how well minority students, especially African-American children, perform academically in comparison to their white peers. With standardized test scores for black children in Wisconsin trailing those from almost every other state in the nation, addressing the achievement gap is a top priority for educators in the Badger State. Although black students in Madison do slightly better academically than their counterparts in, say, Milwaukee, the comparison to their white peers locally creates a Madison achievement gap that is, as Caire points out, at the bottom of national rankings.
He’s become a fan of same-sex education because it “eliminates a lot of distractions” and he says a supportive environment of high expectations has proven to be especially helpful for improving the academic performance of African-American boys.
Caire intends to bring the proposal for the boys-only charter prep school before the Madison School Board in October or November, then will seek a planning grant for the school from the state Department of Public Instruction in April, and if all goes according to the ambitious business plan, Madison Prep would open its doors in 2012 with 80 boys in grades 6 and 7.
Forty more sixth-graders would be accepted at the school in each subsequent year until all grades through senior high school are filled, with a total proposed enrollment of 280 students. A similar, same-sex school for girls would promptly follow, Caire says, opening in 2013.
Five things would make Madison Prep unique, Caire says, and he believes these options will intrigue parents and motivate students.

Fabulous.
It will be interesting to see how independent (from a governance and staffing perspective) this proposal is from the current Madison charter models. The more the better.
Clusty Search: Madison Preparatory Academy.




Fighting the Dropout Crisis



Richard Lee Colvin:

In his first address to Congress in February 2009, when the nation teetered on the brink of economic collapse, President Obama declared that “dropping out of high school is no longer an option. It’s not just quitting on yourself, it’s quitting on your country–and this country needs and values the talents of every American.” Since then, the administration has made a major commitment to increasing America’s high school graduation rate, which was once the highest in the developed world and is now among the lowest. Leading researchers now agree that 25 to 30 percent of students who enroll in American high schools fail to graduate. In many of the country’s largest urban school districts, such as Detroit, Cleveland, and Indianapolis, the dropout rate is as high as 60 percent, and rates are similarly high in many rural areas. A generation ago, high school dropouts could still join the military, or get work on assembly lines, and had a fair chance of finding their way in the world. President Obama does not exaggerate when he implies that today’s America has little use for dropouts and cannot expect to flourish so long as their numbers remain so high.
The administration has proposed nearly $1 billion in its latest budget specifically for the dropout problem. And it has already put $7.4 billion on the table, including its famous Race to the Top grants, which states and districts can get only if they agree to overhaul their worst-performing high schools. These are the 2,000 or so high schools that Obama and Secretary of Education Arne Duncan refer to as “dropout factories”–schools that graduate fewer than 60 percent of their students and account for more than half the nation’s dropouts.
This level of financial commitment to fixing America’s underperforming high schools is unprecedented. The 1983 Nation at Risk report, which marked the start of the modern era of education reform, did not so much as mention the dropout problem even as it called for higher graduation requirements. Between 1988 and 1995, only eighty-nine school districts won federal grants for dropout prevention programs. The No Child Left Behind Act of 2002 applied mostly to grades three through eight. While it nominally required states to hold high schools accountable for dropout rates, it ended up allowing them to lowball the problem. Generally, the thought among educational reformers has been to concentrate on preschool and grade school education, and hope that success there would result in better student performance in high school.




29 students being evaluated after pepper spray incident at DC school



Paul Duggan:

wenty-nine students at the private Lab School in Northwest Washington were taken to hospitals Friday morning, most of them for precautionary reasons, after someone apparently discharged a canister of pepper spray in the campus’ high school building, the D.C. fire department and a school spokesman said.
The incident occurred about 9:30 a.m. in a building that houses 147 high school students and other students in the fifth through eighth grades, school spokesman Edison Lee said. He said a separate building for children in the first through fourth grades was not affected.
The Lab School, in the 4700 block of River Road NW, specializes in educating youngsters with moderate to severe learning disabilities.
Edison and fire department spokesman Pete Piringer said school officials called for help after someone apparently discharged the pepper spray in a classroom on the second floor, where high school students attend classes. All the youngsters who were taken to hospitals are high school students. The younger students in the high school building attend classes on lower floors.




At UW-Madison, unique short courses for students who farm



Deborah Ziff:

Unlike other undergrads on the UW-Madison campus, many of these students weren’t interested in taking AP chemistry or honors English in high school.
They may not have taken the ACT college entrance exam or cared much about grades. Their kingdom is the farm, not the classroom.
“I’ve never liked school that much,” said Brittney Muenster, 18, of Seymour, about 20 miles west of Green Bay. “I just never saw fit to go to school for four years.”
One of the university’s oldest programs, UW-Madison’s Farm and Industry Short Course has been offering Wisconsin’s future farmers like Muenster cutting-edge techniques during the non-growing season, November to March.




‘Algebra-for-All’ Push Found to Yield Poor Results



Debra Viadero:

Spurred by a succession of reports pointing to the importance of algebra as a gateway to college, educators and policymakers embraced “algebra for all” policies in the 1990s and began working to ensure that students take the subject by 9th grade or earlier.
A trickle of studies suggests that in practice, though, getting all students past the algebra hump has proved difficult and has failed, some of the time, to yield the kinds of payoffs educators seek.
Among the newer findings:
• An analysis using longitudinal statewide data on students in Arkansas and Texas found that, for the lowest-scoring 8th graders, even making it one course past Algebra 2 might not be enough to help them become “college and career ready” by the end of high school.
• An evaluation of the Chicago public schools’ efforts to boost algebra coursetaking found that, although more students completed the course by 9th grade as a result of the policy, failure rates increased, grades dropped slightly, test scores did not improve, and students were no more likely to attend college when they left the system.

Related: Madison School District Math Task Force and West High School Math Teachers letter to Isthmus.




Rigorous college-prep (AP) classes skyrocketing in Washington state



Katherine Long:

A decade ago, most Seattle-area high schools offered just a handful of rigorous classes that provided a way to earn college credit while supercharging a transcript. And only students with top grades were allowed to sign up.
But in 10 years, the intensive, fast-paced Advanced Placement (AP) classes have skyrocketed in this state.
In 2008, fully one-quarter of Washington public-school seniors took at least one AP test during their high-school years, compared with 10 percent in 1997. In some schools, almost every student takes an AP class in junior or senior year.
And other schools around the state are moving fast to add AP classes and expand participation, in part because college admissions officials say the demanding classes do a good job of preparing students for higher education.
Many schools are encouraging all students — not just the high achievers, but also average students and even those who struggle — to take AP classes or enroll in other rigorous programs such as the International Baccalaureate (IB).

Melissa Westbrook has more.




Wisconsin schools get above-average grade for Quality, Ranks near the Bottom for Standards & Accountability



Amy Hetzner:

Wisconsin received an above-average grade for overall educational quality, although it ranked toward the bottom of the nation in efforts to improve schools by establishing grade-level academic standards and holding schools accountable, according to a report released Thursday.
The annual “Quality Counts” report, by national trade publication Education Week, gave the Badger state a C-plus for the overall status of its schools and improvement efforts. That was slightly higher than the grade given to the nation – a C – and ranked the state 16th among all the states and the District of Columbia.
Wisconsin fared best in the annual report for its school finance system and in a category the publication calls “chance for success,” which measures factors from employment rates to kindergarten enrollment in states. The state was ranked ninth and 11th, respectively, in those areas, drawing B grades in each.
The state’s lowest ranking came in the area of standards, assessments and accountability, with a C grade placing it 42nd in a category where 20 other states received grades of A or A-minus.




60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags “National Average”: Administration seeks to continue its use



via a kind reader’s email: Sue Abplanalp, Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Education, Lisa Wachtel, Executive Director, Teaching & Learning, Mary Jo Ziegler, Language Arts/Reading Coordinator, Teaching & Learning, Jennie Allen, Title I, Ellie Schneider, Reading Recovery Teacher Leader [2.6MB PDF]:

Background The Board of Education requested a thorough and neutral review of the Madison Metropolitan School District’s (MMSD) Reading Recovery program, In response to the Board request, this packet contains a review of Reading Recovery and related research, Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Reading Recovery student data analysis, and a matrix summarizing three options for improving early literacy intervention. Below please find a summary of the comprehensive research contained in the Board of Education packet. It is our intent to provide the Board of Education with the research and data analysis in order to facilitate discussion and action toward improved effectiveness of early literacy instruction in MMSD.
Reading Recovery Program Description The Reading Recovery Program is an intensive literacy intervention program based on the work of Dr. Marie Clay in New Zealand in the 1970’s, Reading Recovery is a short-term, intensive literacy intervention for the lowest performing first grade students. Reading Recovery serves two purposes, First, it accelerates the literacy learning of our most at-risk first graders, thus narrowing the achievement gap. Second, it identifies children who may need a long-term intervention, offering systematic observation and analysis to support recommendations for further action.
The Reading Recovery program consists of an approximately 20-week intervention period of one-to-one support from a highly trained Reading Recovery teacher. This Reading Recovery instruction is in addition to classroom literacy instruction delivered by the classroom teacher during the 90-minute literacy block. The program goal is to provide the lowest performing first grade students with effective reading and writing strategies allowing the child to perform within the average range of a typical first grade classroom after a successful intervention period. A successful intervention period allows the child to be “discontinued” from the Reading Recovery program and to function proficiently in regular classroom literacy instruction.
Reading Recovery Program Improvement Efforts The national Reading Recovery data reports the discontinued rate for first grade students at 60%. In 2008-09, the discontinued rate for MMSD students was 42% of the students who received Reading Recovery. The Madison Metropolitan School District has conducted extensive reviews of Reading Recovery every three to four years. In an effort to increase the discontinued rate of Reading Recovery students, MMSD worked to improve the program’s success through three phases.

Reading recovery will be discussed at Monday evening’s Madison School Board meeting.
Related:

  • University of Wisconsin-Madison Psychology Professor Mark Seidenberg: Madison schools distort reading data:

    In her column, Belmore also emphasized the 80 percent of the children who are doing well, but she provided additional statistics indicating that test scores are improving at the five target schools. Thus she argued that the best thing is to stick with the current program rather than use the Reading First money.
    Belmore has provided a lesson in the selective use of statistics. It’s true that third grade reading scores improved at the schools between 1998 and 2004. However, at Hawthorne, scores have been flat (not improving) since 2000; at Glendale, flat since 2001; at Midvale/ Lincoln, flat since 2002; and at Orchard Ridge they have improved since 2002 – bringing them back to slightly higher than where they were in 2001.
    In short, these schools are not making steady upward progress, at least as measured by this test.
    Belmore’s attitude is that the current program is working at these schools and that the percentage of advanced/proficient readers will eventually reach the districtwide success level. But what happens to the children who have reading problems now? The school district seems to be writing them off.
    So why did the school district give the money back? Belmore provided a clue when she said that continuing to take part in the program would mean incrementally ceding control over how reading is taught in Madison’s schools (Capital Times, Oct 16). In other words, Reading First is a push down the slippery slope toward federal control over public education.

    also, Seidenberg on the Reading First controversy.

  • Jeff Henriques references a Seidenberg paper on the importance of phonics, published in Psychology Review.
  • Ruth Robarts letter to Isthmus on the Madison School District’s reading progress:

    Thanks to Jason Shepard for highlighting comments of UW Psychology Professor Mark Seidenberg at the Dec. 13 Madison School Board meeting in his article, Not all good news on reading. Dr. Seidenberg asked important questions following the administrations presentation on the reading program. One question was whether the district should measure the effectiveness of its reading program by the percentages of third-graders scoring at proficient or advanced on the Wisconsin Reading Comprehension Test (WRCT). He suggested that the scores may be improving because the tests arent that rigorous.
    I have reflected on his comment and decided that he is correct.
    Using success on the WRCT as our measurement of student achievement likely overstates the reading skills of our students. The WRCT—like the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) given in major subject areas in fourth, eighth and tenth grades— measures student performance against standards developed in Wisconsin. The more teaching in Wisconsin schools aims at success on the WRCT or WKCE, the more likely it is that student scores will improve. If the tests provide an accurate, objective assessment of reading skills, then rising percentages of students who score at the proficient and advanced levels would mean that more children are reaching desirable reading competence.

  • Madison teacher Barb Williams letter to Isthmus on Madison School District reading scores:

    I’m glad Jason Shepard questions MMSD’s public display of self-congratulation over third grade reading test scores. It isn’t that MMSD ought not be proud of progress made as measured by fewer African American students testing at the basic and minimal levels. But there is still a sigificant gap between white students and students of color–a fact easily lost in the headlines. Balanced Literacy, the district’s preferred approach to reading instruction, works well for most kids. Yet there are kids who would do a lot better in a program that emphasizes explicit phonics instruction, like the one offered at Lapham and in some special education classrooms. Kids (arguably too many) are referred to special education because they have not learned to read with balanced literacy and are not lucky enough to land in the extraordinarily expensive Reading Recovery program that serves a very small number of students in one-on-on instruction. (I have witnessed Reading Recovery teachers reject children from their program because they would not receive the necessary support from home.)
    Though the scripted lessons typical of most direct instruction programs are offensive to many teachers (and is one reason given that the district rejected the Reading First grant) the irony is that an elementary science program (Foss) that the district is now pushing is also scripted as is Reading Recovery and Everyday Math, all elementary curricula blessed by the district.
    I wonder if we might close the achievement gap further if teachers in the district were encouraged to use an approach to reading that emphasizes explicit and systematic phonics instruction for those kids who need it. Maybe we’d have fewer kids in special education and more children of color scoring in the proficient and advanced levels of the third grade reading test.




Let’s help teachers solve bullying problem at schools



Sue Klang and Fred Evert:

It was three years ago that 15-year-old Eric Hainstock entered Weston High School with a 22-caliber pistol and a 20-gauge shotgun.
Within a few short minutes, Principal John Klang confronted Hainstock, trying to protect his school’s students and staff.
After a brief struggle, Klang was shot three times. He died later that day.
Debate continues on exactly what Hainstock intended to do – get the school’s attention for the help he needed, or execute a fatalistic death wish for himself and his school.
What is clear is Hainstock had been bullied.
He was bullied by his father who, he says, treated him like a slave and refused to let him wash. At school and after school, he claimed he was bullied by as many as 30 of his fellow classmates. He says he snapped.

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Ohio School District Report Cards



Julie Carr Smyth:

A record 116 Ohio school districts have been rated excellent and overall student achievement returned to a 10-year high last year, but the statewide graduation rate fell to its lowest in five years, the state’s latest rankings show.
Data released Tuesday show that more schools and districts were rated effective or higher. However, test scores in the fifth and eighth grades — entry points to middle and high schools — failed to meet targets in reading, math, science and social studies. The statewide graduation rate for the previous year also fell to 84.6 percent.
And the Youngstown schools descended into academic emergency, the first district to receive the state’s lowest ranking since the 2004-05 school year. A special distress commission will be dispatched to the Steel Belt city to help administrators on the problem.
About 15 charter schools could be closed for failing to meet state academic performance standards, said state Superintendent Deborah Delisle.
The rankings will serve as a benchmark for judging the success of an overhaul of the state’s ailing public school system that Gov. Ted Strickland championed in his January State of the State address and during this spring’s state budget-writing process.




Can Charter-School Execs Help Failing Public Schools?



Gilbert Cruz:

In the late ’90s, software entrepreneur John Zitzner was pretty close to being bankrupt. Yet within six months — in one of those typical “holy crap” dotcom-era stories — Zitzner had sold his company and become “a very modest millionaire.” Fantastic. And in one of those typical “What do I do with all this money?” stories, he decided to help make the world a better place — specifically by co-founding a charter school in Cleveland. (Read TIME’s report: “How to Raise the Standard in America’s Schools.”)
That was three summers ago. Fast-forward to last Monday, when Zitzner was in the audience in Washington as Secretary of Education Arne Duncan appealed to a gathering of charter-school operators to “adapt your educational model to turning around our lowest-performing schools.” For months now, Duncan has talked about closing 5,000 — or about 5% — of the nation’s lowest-performing public schools. By throwing down the gauntlet to charter schools, Duncan is challenging an industry that has become very proficient at opening up brand-new schools, but has very little experience in going into a preexisting school and turning those kids from low performers into high-quality students. But Zitzner, whose Entrepreneurship Preparatory has about 200 students in grades 6 to 8, can’t wait to dive in. In the past three years his students have gone from fairly abysmal test results to scoring in the top quartile on the Ohio standardized test, and he doesn’t see why that model can’t be replicated among other underperforming students. “Charter-school people are entrepreneurs — we like challenges, and this industry needs people who can make order out of chaos.”




No Longer Letting Scores Separate Pupils (No More Tracking)



Winnie Hu via a kind reader’s email:

Sixth graders at Cloonan Middle School here are assigned numbers based on their previous year’s standardized test scores — zeros indicate the highest performers, ones the middle, twos the lowest — that determine their academic classes for the next three years.


But this longstanding system for tracking children by academic ability for more effective teaching evolved into an uncomfortable caste system in which students were largely segregated by race and socioeconomic background, both inside and outside classrooms. Black and Hispanic students, for example, make up 46 percent of this year’s sixth grade, but are 78 percent of the twos and 7 percent of the zeros.



So in an unusual experiment, Cloonan mixed up its sixth-grade science and social studies classes last month, combining zeros and ones with twos. These mixed-ability classes have reported fewer behavior problems and better grades for struggling students, but have also drawn complaints of boredom from some high-performing students who say they are not learning as much.



The results illustrate the challenge facing this 15,000-student district just outside New York City, which is among the last bastions of rigid educational tracking more than a decade after most school districts abandoned the practice. In the 1960s and early 1970s, Stamford sorted students into as many as 15 different levels; the current system of three to five levels at each of four middle schools will be replaced this fall by a two-tiered model, in which the top quarter of sixth graders will be enrolled in honors classes, the rest in college-prep classes. (A fifth middle school is a magnet school and has no tracking.)




WKCE Scores Document Decline in the Percentage of Madison’s Advanced Students



For many years now, parents and community members, including members of Madison United for Academic Excellence, have expressed concerns about the decline in rigor and the lack of adequate challenge in our district’s curriculum. The release this week of WKCE scores for the November 2008 testing led me to wonder about the performance of our district’s strongest students. While most analyses of WKCE scores focus on the percentages of students scoring at the Advanced and Proficient levels, these numbers do not tell us about changes in the percent of students at each particular level of performance. We can have large increases in the percent of students scoring at the Proficient and Advanced levels because we have improved the performance of students who were previously at the Basic level on the WKCE, but yet fail to have any effect on the performance of our district’s strongest students. This is the argument that we are improving the performance of our low ability students, but failing to increase the performance of our already successful students. An examination of the numbers of students who are performing at just the Advanced level on the WKCE provides us with some insight into the academic progress of our more successful students.
I decided to examine WKCE math scores for students across the district. While it is not possible to track the performance of individual students, it is possible to follow the performance of a cohort as they advance through the system. Thus students who are now in 10th grade, took the 8th grade WKCE in 2006 and the 4th grade test in 2002. Because there have been significant changes in the demographics of the district’s students, I split the data by socio-economic status to remove the possibility of declines in WKCE performance simply being the result of increased numbers of low income students. Although the WKCE has been criticized for not being a rigorous enough assessment tool, the data on our students’ math performance are not encouraging. The figures below indicate that the percent of students scoring at the Advanced level on the WKCE decreases as students progress through the system, and this decline is seen in both our low income students and in our Not Economically Disadvantaged students. The figures suggest that while there is some growth in the percent of Advanced performing students in elementary school, there is a significant decline in performance once students begin taking math in our middle schools and this decline continues through high school. I confess that I take no pleasure in sharing this data; in fact, it makes me sick.

Because it might be more useful to examine actual numbers, I have provided tables showing the data used in the figures above. Reading across a row shows the percent of students in a class cohort scoring at the Advanced level as they have taken the WKCE test as they progressed from grades 3 – 10.

Percent of Economically Disadvantaged Students Scoring at the Advanced Level on the WKCE Math Test Between 2002 and 2008

Graduation Year 3rd Grade 4th Grade 5th Grade 6th Grade 7th Grade 8th Grade 10th Grade
2005
8
2006
8.8
2007
11
7.7
2008
5.6
8.7
2009
8.5
6.7
2010
9.2
8.4
2011
12
12.5
11.1
8
2012
9.7
10.4
9.5
8.2
2013
15.3
14.7
15.1
11.7
10.8
2014
12
13.6
16.1
13.2
2015
20.1
15
18
11.7
2016
15.4
17.1
18.4
2017
12.9
17
2018
13.8

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Will Depth Replace Breadth in Schools?



Jay Matthews:

If our nation’s high school teachers had $20 for every time they had to endure the Depth vs. Breadth debate, they all would have retired to mansions in West Palm Beach.
The debate goes like this: Should they focus on a few topics so students have time to absorb and comprehend the inner workings of the subject? Or should they cover every topic so students get a sense of the whole and can later pursue those parts that interest them most?
The truth, of course, is that students need both. Teachers try to mix the two in ways that make sense to them and their students. But a surprising study — certain to be a hot topic in teacher lounges and education schools — is providing new data that suggest educators should spend much more time on a few issues and let some topics slide. Based on a sample of 8,310 undergraduates, the national study says that students who spend at least a month on just one topic in a high school science course get better grades in a freshman college course in that subject than students whose high school courses were more balanced.




The Accountability Illusion: No Child Standards Vary Widely From State To State



The Thomas Fordham Institute:

This study examines the No Child Left Behind Act system and Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) rules for 28 states. We selected 36 real schools (half elementary, half middle) that vary by size, achievement, diversity, etc. and determined which of them would or would not make AYP when evaluated under each state’s accountability rules. If a school that made AYP in Washington were relocated to Wisconsin or Ohio, would that same school make AYP there? Based on this analysis, we can see how AYP varies across the country and evaluate the effectiveness of NCLB.

Wisconsin report [259K PDF]:

More schools make AYP in 2008 under Wisconsin’s accountability system than in any other state in our sample. This is likely due to the fact that Wisconsin’s proficiency standards (or cut scores) are relatively easy compared to other states (all of them are below the 30th percentile). Second, Wisconsin’s minimum subgroup size for students with disabilities is 50, which is a bit larger than most other states (the size for their other subgroups is comparable to other states’). This means that Wisconsin schools must have more students with disabilities in order for that group to be held separately accountable. Third, Wisconsin’s 99 percent confidence interval provides schools with greater leniency than the more commonly used 95 percent confidence interval. Last, unlike most states, Wisconsin measures its student performance with a proficiency index, which gives partial credit for students achieving “partial proficiency.” All of these factors work together so that 17 out of 18 elementary schools make AYP in Wisconsin, more than any other state in the study.

AP:

Some schools deemed to be failing in one state would get passing grades in another under the No Child Left Behind law, a national study found.
The study underscores wide variation in academic standards from state to state. It was to be issued today by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, which conducted the study with the Kingsbury Center at the Northwest Evaluation Association.
The study comes as the Obama administration indicates it will encourage states to adopt common standards, an often controversial issue on which previous presidents have trod lightly.
“I know that talking about standards can make people nervous,” Education Secretary Arne Duncan said recently.
“But the notion that we have 50 different goal posts doesn’t make sense,” Duncan said. “A high school diploma needs to mean something, no matter where it’s from.”
Every state, he said, needs standards that make kids college- and career-ready and are benchmarked against international standards.
The Fordham study measured test scores of 36 elementary and middle schools against accountability rules in 28 states.




February 1994: Now They Call it 21st Century Skills



Charles J. Sykes:

“Dumbing Down Our Kids–What’s Really Wrong With Outcome Based Education”
Charles J. Sykes, Wisconsin Interest, reprinted in Network News & Views 2/94, pp. 9-18
Joan Wittig is not an expert, nor is she an activist. She just didn’t understand why her children weren’t learning to write, spell, or read very well. She didn’t understand why they kept coming home with sloppy papers filled with spelling mistakes and bad grammar and why teachers never corrected them or demanded better work. Nor could she fathom why her child’s fourth-grade teacher would write, “I love your story, especially the spelling,” on a story jammed with misspelled words. (It began: “Once a pona time I visited a tropical rian forist.”)
While Wittig did not have a degree in education, she did have some college-level credits in education and a “background of training others to perform accurately and competently in my numerous job positions, beginning in my high school years.” That experience was enough for her to sense something was wrong. She was not easily brushed off by assurances that her children were being taught “whole language skills.” For two years, she agonized before transferring her children from New Berlin’s public schools to private schools.
After only a semester at the private schools, her children were writing and reading at a markedly higher level. Their papers were neatly written, grammatical, and their spelling was systematically corrected.
Earlier this year, she decided to take her story to her local school board.

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Give All You Can: My New “Spread the Wealth” Grading Policy



Mike S. Adams, Townhall.com 26 January 2009:

Good afternoon students! I’m writing you this email to announce that I’m making some changes in the grading policies I announced two weeks ago when I sent an email with an attached course syllabus. As you know, we now have a new president and I thought it would be nice to align our class policies with some of the policies he will be implementing over the next four years. These will be changes you can believe in and, I hope, changes that will inspire hope, which is our most important American value.
Previously, I announced that I would use a ten-point grading scale, which means that 90% of 100 is an “A,” 80% is a “B,” 70% is a “C,” and 60% is enough for a passing grade of “D.” I also announced that I will refrain from using a “plus/minus” system – even though the faculty handbook gives me that option.
The new policy I am announcing today is that those who score above 90 on the first exam will have points deducted and given to students at the bottom of the grade distribution. For example, if a student gets a 99, I will then deduct nine points and give them to the person with the lowest grade. If a person scores 95 I will then deduct five points and give them to the person with the second lowest grade. If someone scores 93 I will then deduct three points and give them to the next lowest person. And so on.
My point, rather obviously, is that any points above 90 are really not needed since you have an “A” regardless of whether you score 90 or 99. Nor am I convinced that you need to “save” those points for a rainy day. Those who are failing, however, need the points–not unlike the failing banks and automakers that need money to avoid the danger of bankruptcy.
After our second examination, I intend to take a more complex approach to the practice of grade redistribution. I will not be looking at your second test scores but, instead, at the average of your first two test scores. In the process, I may well decide to start taking some points from students in the “B” range. For example, if someone has an average of 85 after two tests I may take a few points and give them away to someone who is failing or who is in danger of failing. I think this is fair because the person with an 85 average is probably unlikely to climb up to an “A” or fall down to a “C.” I may be wrong in some individual cases but, of course, my principal concern is not the individual.

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Madison School District seeks input on proposed math changes



Andy Hall:

A series of potentially controversial proposals will be outlined next week as residents are invited to help shape how math is taught in the Madison School District.
Among the recommendations from a task force that recently completed a one-year study:
• Switch to full-time math teachers for all students in grades five through eight.
• The math task force’s executive summary and full report
• Substantially boost the training of math teachers.
• Seriously consider selecting a single textbook for each grade level or course in the district, rather than having a variety of textbooks used in schools across the district.
The task force was created in 2006 by the Madison School Board to independently review the district’s math programs and seek ways to improve students’ performance.

Related links:




An Interview with Will Fitzhugh: About Academic Excellence and Writing



Michael F. Shaughnessy:

1) Will, you recently gave a talk in Madison, Wisconsin. What exactly did you speak about?
WF: A group of professors, teachers, business people, lawyers and community people invited me to speak at the University of Wisconsin in Madison about the work of The Concord Review since 1987, and about the problems of college readiness and academic writing for high school students.
The Boston Public Schools just reported that 67% of the graduating class of 2000 who had gone on to higher education had failed to earn a certificate, an associate’s degree or a bachelor’s degree by 2008. Also, the Strong American Schools program just reported that more than a million of our high school graduates are in remedial education in college each year.
I recommend their report: Diploma to Nowhere, which came out last summer. While many foundations, such as Gates, and others, have focused on getting our students into college, too little attention has been paid to how few are ready for college work and how many drop out without any degree.
2) “We believe that the pursuit of academic excellence in secondary schools should be given the same attention as the pursuit of excellence in sports and other extracurricular activities.” This is a quote from The Concord Review. Now, I am asking you to hypothesize here–why do you think high schools across America seem to be preoccupied with sports and not academics?
WF: In Madison I also had a chance to speak about the huge imbalance in our attention to scholars and athletes at the high school level. I had recently seen a nationally televised high school football game in which, at breaks in the action, an athlete would come to the sidelines, and announce, to the national audience, which college he had decided to “sign” with. This is a far cry from what happens for high school scholars. High school coaches get a lot of attention for their best athletes, but if the coach also happens to be a history teacher, he or she will hear nothing from a college in the way of interest in his or her most outstanding history student.
When Kareem Abdul Jabbar was a very tall high school senior at Power Memorial Academy in New York, he not only heard from the head coaches at 60 college basketball programs, he also got a personal letter from Jackie Robinson of baseball fame and from Ralph Bunche at the United Nations, urging him to go to UCLA, which he did. That same year, in the U.S., the top ten high school history students heard from no one, and it has been that way every year since.
The lobby of every public high school is full of trophies for sports, and there is usually nothing about academic achievement. For some odd reason, attention to exemplary work in academics is seen as elitist, while heaps of attention to athletic achievement is not seen in the same way. Strange…The Boston Globe has 150 pages on year on high school athletes and no pages on high school academic achievement. Do we somehow believe that our society needs good athletes far more than it needs good students, and that is why we are so reluctant to celebrate fine academic work?

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Madison School District Enrollment Data Analysis



The Madison Metropolitan School District [724K PDF]:

The following document explores enrollment trends based on four different factors: intemal transfers, private school enrollments, inter-district Open Enrollment, and home based enrollments. The most current data is provided in each case. Not all data are from the current school year. Certain data are based on DPI reports and there are lags in the dates upon which reports are published.
Summary
Most internal transfers within the MMSD are a function of two factors: programs not offered at each home school (e.g., ESL centers) and students moving between attendance areas and wishing to remain in the school they had been attending prior to the move. Notable schools in regard to transfers include Shorewood Elementary which has both a very high transfer in rate and a very low transfer out rate, Marquette which has a high transfer in rate, and Emerson which has a high transfer out rate.
Based on data reported to the Department of Public Instruction (DPI), private school enrollments within the MMSD attendance area have held fairly steady for the past several years, with a slight increase in the most recent two years. The District’s percentage of private school enrollment is roughly average among two separate benchmark cohort groups: the largest Wisconsin school districts and the Dane County school districts. Using data supplied annually to the MMSD by ten area private schools it appears that for the past three year period private school elementary enrollment is declining slightly, middle school enrollment is constant, and high school enrollment has been variable. Stephens, Midvale, Leopold, and Crestwood Elementary Schools, and Cherokee and Whitehorse Middle Schools have experienced declines in private school enrollment during this period. Hawthorne and Emerson Elementary Schools, Toki and (to a lesser extent) Sherman Middle Schools, and West and Memorial High Schools have experienced increases in private school enrollments. The East attendance area has very limited private school enrollment.
Home based education has remained very steady over the past six years based on data reported to the DPI. There is no discernible trend either upward or downward. Roughly 420 to 450 students residing within the MMSD area are reported as participating in home based instruction during this period. Like private school enrollment, the MMSD’s percentage of home based enrollment is roughly average among two separate benchmark cohort groups: the largest Wisconsin school districts and the Dane County school districts.
Open Enrollment, which allows for parents to apply to enroll their Children in districts other than their home district, is by far the largest contributor to enrollment shifts relative to this list of factors. In 2008-09, there are now over 450 students leaving the MMSD to attend other districts compared with just under 170 students entering the MMSD. Transition grades appear to be critical decision points for parents. Certain schools are particularly affected by Open Enrollment decisions and these tend to be schools near locations within close proximity to surrounding school districts. Virtual school options do not appear to be increasing in popularity relative to physical school altematives.




A look at Madison Memorial’s Small Learning Communities



Andy Hall:

In 2000, Memorial became the first Madison school to land one of the U.S. Department of Education grants. It was awarded $438,000 to create its neighborhood social structure. West High School became the second, winning a $500,000 grant in 2002 and reorganizing its ninth and 10th grades around core courses.
In August, district officials were thrilled to learn the district was awarded $5.5 million over five years for its four major high schools — Memorial, West, La Follette and East — to build stronger connections among students and faculty by creating so-called “small learning communities” that divide each high school population into smaller populations.
Officials cite research showing that schools with 500 to 900 students tend to be the most effective, and recent findings suggest that students at schools with small learning communities are more likely to complete ninth grade, less likely to become involved in violence and more likely to attend college after graduation. However, the latest federal study failed to find a clear link between small learning communities and higher academic achievement.
Each Madison high school will develop its own plan for how to spend the grant money. Their common goals: Make school feel like a smaller, friendlier place where all students feel included. Shrink the racial achievement gap, raise graduation rates, expand the courses available and improve planning for further education and careers.
The high schools, with enrollments ranging from 1,600 to 2,000 students, are being redesigned as their overall scores on state 10th grade reading and math tests are worrisome, having declined slightly the past two years.




Referendum Climate: Fiscal Policy Report on the Nation’s Governors



Chris Edwards:

evenue poured into state governments as the U.S. economy expanded between 2003 and 2007, prompting the nation’s governors to expand state budgets and offer the occasional tax cut. But now that the economy has slowed and revenue growth is down, governors are taking various actions to close rising budget deficits.
This ninth biennial fiscal report card examines the tax and spending decisions made by the governors since 2003. It uses statistical data to grade the governors on their taxing and spending records – governors who have cut taxes and spending the most receive the highest grades, while those who have increased taxes and spending the most receive the lowest grades.
Three governors were awarded an “A” in this report card – Charlie Crist of Florida, Mark Sanford of South Carolina, and Joe Manchin of West Virginia. Eight governors were awarded an “F” – Martin O’Malley of Maryland, Ted Kulongoski of Oregon, Rod Blagojevich of Illinois, Chet Culver of Iowa, Jon Corzine of New Jersey, Bob Riley of Alabama, Jodi Rell of Connecticut, and C. L. “Butch” Otter of Idaho.

Wisconsin’s Governor Doyle received a “D”:

When running for governor, James Doyle pledged not to raise taxes. He mostly kept that promise his first few years, and even provided a smattering of tax cuts. His fiscal policies then took a turn for the worse. In 2007 he proposed an array of large tax increases totaling about $900 million, including higher cigarette taxes, hospital taxes, oil company taxes, and increased real estate transfer taxes. Doyle has also refused to go along with the legislature in providing property tax relief, and he is fond of using increased debt to finance spending. But Doyle’s spending record is better than his tax record, and this year he is insisting on budget restraint to eliminate a deficit.

Much more on Madison’s November, 2008 referendum here.




Student Incentive Bank



Bill Turque:

Brian Betts, principal of Shaw at Garnet-Patterson Middle School, said he knew that the experimental program to pay cash for good grades and behavior, which began yesterday at 15 D.C. schools, had captured his students’ imaginations when they began asking about the economic crisis.
” ‘I heard about this banking stuff,’ ” Betts recalled one saying the other day. ” ‘Are we still going to have this money?’ ”
The answer is yes. The Northwest Washington school’s 307 students are among the roughly 3,000 middle-schoolers eligible to earn as much as $100 every two weeks — to a maximum of $1,500 for the academic year — for showing up on time, not disrupting class and getting high grades.
Students have been buzzing about the pilot program, called Capital Gains, since they learned in late August that their school had been selected. The school now includes students from Shaw, which closed in June.




On Being More Like Ted Widerski



I’ve been convinced that a comment I made on another thread about Ted Widerski deserves to be shared as a post. –LAF
“I’ll miss him” only begins to capture it for me. Ted was HUGELY important to the student advocacy work I do in the District. I think I/we won’t know — fully — what we’ve lost until the school year begins to unfold.
People have said that Ted was a tireless and “courageous” advocate for TAG students, and that he was. I couldn’t agree more. At the same time, I can’t help but think “why should it require boundless courage and limitless persistence simply to get smart kids’ educational needs met?” Sigh.
On a more positive note, it has occurred to me that there are two things each of us could do to honor Ted’s memory. The first is to donate to the “Ted Widerski Mathfest Fund.” There is no better way to honor Ted than to insure that the mathfests he worked so hard to create, implement and protect KEEP HAPPENING. Send your check — appropriately marked “Ted Widerski Mathfests” — to the Foundation for Madison’s Public Schools, 455 Science Drive, Madison, WI, 53711.
The second thing each of us could do to honor Ted’s memory is to approach the coming school year with the happy intention of becoming more like him. So much of what we are up against in our advocacy work is a matter of misunderstanding, misinformation and misguided attitude. With a change in all of that – and few, if any, more dollars – the situation for our students could be profoundly different.
Practically speaking, what might it mean to “become more like Ted?” Well, here are a few beginning thoughts about that. I’m sure some of you will have many more.

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More “Algebra” for Chicago Public Schools Eighth Graders



Alexander Russo:

What do you think about the CPS effort to bring more algebra into middle schools?
From Catalyst: “The June board meeting included a brief presentation on student achievement from the Office of Instructional Design and Assessment. A recap of statistics showed that while 40 percent of 8th-graders across the country take algebra, only 8 percent of CPS 8th-graders do.
“With this in mind, Chief Officer Xavier Botana noted how the district is revamping algebra instruction: 8th-grade algebra will now be called “High School Algebra in the Middle Grades,” a name change that Botana said will help parents and others understand that students are tackling high-school-level material.

A commenter nails the issue:

The exit exams have to be real. They can’t be given credit for high school algebra, then show up in high school unprepared to take second year algebra.
Of course, they would only be prepared to take algebra in 8th grade if they have had rigorous math instruction before that. I believe these suburban schools with 40% of 8th graders taking algebra also have pre-algebra programs for kids in the 7th grade.
I’m all for offering rigorous classes; but there has to be some support to help kids get there.

Related:

  • Madison West High School Math Teachers letter to Isthmus:

    Moreover, parents of future West High students should take notice: As you read this, our department is under pressure from the administration and the math coordinator’s office to phase out our “accelerated” course offerings beginning next year. Rather than addressing the problems of equity and closing the gap by identifying minority math talent earlier, and fostering minority participation in the accelerated programs, our administration wants to take the cheaper way out by forcing all kids into a one-size-fits-all curriculum.

  • Math Forum audio / video and links

It will be interesting to see the results of the Madison Math Task Force’s work.




Some of California’s most gifted students are being ignored, advocates say



Carla Rivera:

If you reviewed Dalton Sargent’s report cards, you’d know only half his story. The 15-year-old Altadena junior has lousy grades in many subjects. He has blown off assignments and been dissatisfied with many of his teachers. It would be accurate to call him a problematic student. But he is also gifted.
Dalton is among the sizable number of highly intelligent or talented children in the nation’s classrooms who find little in the standard curriculum to rouse their interest and who often fall by the wayside.
With schools under intense pressure from state and federal mandates such as No Child Left Behind to raise test scores of low-achieving pupils, the educational needs of gifted students — who usually perform well on standardized tests — too often are ignored, advocates say.
Nationally, about 3 million kindergarten through 12th-grade students are identified as gifted, but 80% of them do not receive specialized instruction, experts say. Studies have found that 5% to 20% of students who drop out are gifted.
There is no federal law mandating special programs for gifted children, though many educators argue that these students — whose curiosity and creativity often coexist with emotional and social problems — deserve the same status as those with special needs. Services for gifted students vary from state to state. In California, about 512,000 students are enrolled in the Gifted and Talented Education program, which aims to provide specialized and accelerated instruction.

Linda Scholl @ Wisconsin Center for Education Research: SCALE Case Study: Evolution of K-8 Science Instructional Guidance in Madison Metropolitan School District [PDF report]

In addition, by instituting a standards-based report card system K-8, the department has increased accountability for teaching to the standards.
The Department is struggling, however, to sharpen its efforts to reduce the achievement gap. While progress has been made in third grade reading, significant gaps are still evident in other subject areas, including math and science. Educational equity issues within the school district are the source of much public controversy, with a relatively small but vocal parent community that is advocating for directing greater resources toward meeting the needs of high achieving students. This has slowed efforts to implement strong academic equity initiatives, particularly at the middle and early high school levels. Nonetheless, T&L content areas specialists continue working with teachers to provide a rigorous curriculum and to differentiate instruction for all students. In that context, the new high school biology initiative represents a significant effort to raise the achievement of students of color and economic disadvantage.

WCER’s tight relationship with the Madison School District has been the source of some controversy.
Related:

Scholl’s error, in my view, is viewing the controversy as an issue of “advocating for directing greater resources toward meeting the needs of high achieving students”. The real issue is raising standards for all, rathing than reducing the curriculum quality (see West High School Math teachers letter to the Isthmus:

Moreover, parents of future West High students should take notice: As you read this, our department is under pressure from the administration and the math coordinator’s office to phase out our “accelerated” course offerings beginning next year. Rather than addressing the problems of equity and closing the gap by identifying minority math talent earlier, and fostering minority participation in the accelerated programs, our administration wants to take the cheaper way out by forcing all kids into a one-size-fits-all curriculum.
It seems the administration and our school board have re-defined “success” as merely producing “fewer failures.” Astonishingly, excellence in student achievement is visited by some school district administrators with apathy at best, and with contempt at worst. But, while raising low achievers is a laudable goal, it is woefully short-sighted and, ironically, racist in the most insidious way. Somehow, limiting opportunities for excellence has become the definition of providing equity! Could there be a greater insult to the minority community?

)
A friend mentioned a few years ago that the problems are in elementary and middle school. Rather than addressing those, the administration is trying to make high school changes.
Thanks to a reader for sending along these links.




Dane County Boasts 18 National Merit Scholars



National Merit Scholarship Corporation:

The National Merit® Scholarship Program is an academic competition for recognition and scholarships that began in 1955. High school students enter the National Merit Program by taking the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®)–a test which serves as an initial screen of approximately 1.4 million entrants each year–and by meeting published program entry/participation requirements.
Student Entry Requirements
To participate in the National Merit® Scholarship Program, a student must:

  1. take the PSAT/NMSQT® in the specified year of the high school program and no later than the third year in grades 9 through 12, regardless of grade classification or educational pattern;
  2. be enrolled full time as a high school student, progressing normally toward graduation or completion of high school, and planning to enroll full time in college no later than the fall following completion of high school; and
  3. be a citizen of the United States; or be a U.S. lawful permanent resident (or have applied for permanent residence, the application for which has not been denied) and intend to become a U.S. citizen at the earliest opportunity allowed by law.

Press Release PDF:

This year’s competition for National Merit Scholarships began in October 2006 when more than 1.4 million juniors in over 21,000 high schools took the Preliminary SAT/National Merit Scholarship Qualifying Test (PSAT/NMSQT®), which served as an initial screen of program entrants. Last fall, the highest-scoring participants in each state, representing less than one percent of the state’s seniors, were named Semifinalists on a state representational basis.
Only the 16,000 Semifinalists had an opportunity to continue in the competition. Approximately 15,000 Semifinalists met the very high academic standards and other requirements to advance to the Finalist level of the competition. By the conclusion of the 2008 program, about 8,200 Finalists will earn the “Merit Scholar” title and receive a total of more than $36 million in college scholarships. NMSC, a not-for-profit corporation that operates without government assistance, was founded in 1955 specifically to conduct the annual National Merit Scholarship Program. The majority of scholarships offered each year are underwritten by approximately 500 independent corporate and college sponsors that share NMSC’s goals of honoring scholastically talented youth and enhancing their educational opportunities.
CAUTION: Any attempt to compare high schools on the basis of numbers of Merit Scholarship winners will lead to erroneous and unsound conclusions. The National Merit Scholarship Program honors individual students who show exceptional academic ability and potential for success in rigorous college studies. The program does not measure the quality or effectiveness of education within a school, system, or state.

The Capital Times:

Local scholarship winners are:
Seth B. Mulhall, Deerfield High School, Deerfield; Meredith L. Kremer, DeForest Area High School, DeForest; Aaron L. Owen, DeForest Area High School, DeForest.
Joseph K. Carlsmith, West High School, Madison; Sara C. Crocker, West High School, Madison; Erika A. Egner, James Madison Memorial High School, Madison; Reuben F. Henriques, West High School, Madison; Kelsey E. Johnson, Memorial High School, Madison.
Lucas Manuelli, West High School, Madison; Daniel T. Neuser, East High School, Madison; Richard K. Pang, West High School, Madison; Eleanor Shoshany Anderson, La Follette High School, Madison; Alexandro E. Trevino, Memorial High School, Madison.
Benjamin H. Witkovsky, West High School, Madison; Eleanor M. Wroblewski, West High School, Madison; Mary Q. Zhang, West High School, Madison.
Aubrey E. Lauersdorf, Monona Grove High School, Monona; Michael Bethencourt, home school, Mount Horeb.

Congratulations to the students and their families.




Teaching Boys & Girls Separately



Elizabeth Weil:

On an unseasonably cold day last November in Foley, Ala., Colby Royster and Michael Peterson, two students in William Bender’s fourth-grade public-school class, informed me that the class corn snake could eat a rat faster than the class boa constrictor. Bender teaches 26 fourth graders, all boys. Down the hall and around the corner, Michelle Gay teaches 26 fourth-grade girls. The boys like being on their own, they say, because girls don’t appreciate their jokes and think boys are too messy, and are also scared of snakes. The walls of the boys’ classroom are painted blue, the light bulbs emit a cool white light and the thermostat is set to 69 degrees. In the girls’ room, by contrast, the walls are yellow, the light bulbs emit a warm yellow light and the temperature is kept six degrees warmer, as per the instructions of Leonard Sax, a family physician turned author and advocate who this May will quit his medical practice to devote himself full time to promoting single-sex public education.
Foley Intermediate School began offering separate classes for boys and girls a few years ago, after the school’s principal, Lee Mansell, read a book by Michael Gurian called “Boys and Girls Learn Differently!” After that, she read a magazine article by Sax and thought that his insights would help improve the test scores of Foley’s lowest-achieving cohort, minority boys. Sax went on to publish those ideas in “Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know About the Emerging Science of Sex Differences.” Both books feature conversion stories of children, particularly boys, failing and on Ritalin in coeducational settings and then pulling themselves together in single-sex schools. Sax’s book and lectures also include neurological diagrams and scores of citations of obscure scientific studies, like one by a Swedish researcher who found, in a study of 96 adults, that males and females have different emotional and cognitive responses to different kinds of light. Sax refers to a few other studies that he says show that girls and boys draw differently, including one from a group of Japanese researchers who found girls’ drawings typically depict still lifes of people, pets or flowers, using 10 or more crayons, favoring warm colors like red, green, beige and brown; boys, on the other hand, draw action, using 6 or fewer colors, mostly cool hues like gray, blue, silver and black. This apparent difference, which Sax argues is hard-wired, causes teachers to praise girls’ artwork and make boys feel that they’re drawing incorrectly. Under Sax’s leadership, teachers learn to say things like, “Damien, take your green crayon and draw some sparks and take your black crayon and draw some black lines coming out from the back of the vehicle, to make it look like it’s going faster.” “Now Damien feels encouraged,” Sax explained to me when I first met him last spring in San Francisco. “To say: ‘Why don’t you use more colors? Why don’t you put someone in the vehicle?’ is as discouraging as if you say to Emily, ‘Well, this is nice, but why don’t you have one of them kick the other one — give us some action.’ ”
During the fall of 2003, Principal Mansell asked her entire faculty to read “Boys and Girls Learn Differently!” and, in the spring of 2004, to attend a one-day seminar led by Sax at the school, explaining boys’ and girls’ innate differences and how to teach to them. She also invited all Foley Intermediate School parents to a meeting extolling the virtues of single-sex public education. Enough parents were impressed that when Foley Intermediate, a school of 322 fourth and fifth graders, reopened after summer recess, the school had four single-sex classrooms: a girls’ and a boys’ class in both the fourth and fifth grades. Four classrooms in each grade remained coed.
Separating schoolboys from schoolgirls has long been a staple of private and parochial education. But the idea is now gaining traction in American public schools, in response to both the desire of parents to have more choice in their children’s public education and the separate education crises girls and boys have been widely reported to experience. The girls’ crisis was cited in the 1990s, when the American Association of University Women published “Shortchanging Girls, Shortchanging America,” which described how girls’ self-esteem plummets during puberty and how girls are subtly discouraged from careers in math and science. More recently, in what Sara Mead, an education expert at the New America Foundation, calls a “man bites dog” sensation, public and parental concerns have shifted to boys. Boys are currently behind their sisters in high-school and college graduation rates. School, the boy-crisis argument goes, is shaped by females to match the abilities of girls (or, as Sax puts it, is taught “by soft-spoken women who bore” boys). In 2006, Doug Anglin, a 17-year-old in Milton, Mass., filed a civil rights complaint with the United States Department of Education, claiming that his high school — where there are twice as many girls on the honor roll as there are boys — discriminated against males. His case did not prevail in the courts, but his sentiment found support in the Legislature and the press. That same year, as part of No Child Left Behind, the federal law that authorizes programs aimed at improving accountability and test scores in public schools, the Department of Education passed new regulations making it easier for districts to create single-sex classrooms and schools.




AP Report to the Nation



College Board [1.5MB PDF]:

More than 15 percent of the public high school class of 2007 achieved at least one AP® Exam grade of 3 or higher1—the score that is predictive of college success. This achievement represents a significant and consistent improvement since the class of 2002 when less than 12 percent of public school graduates attained this goal.
Out of all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia, Vermont captured the largest increase in the percentage of high school graduates who scored a 3 or higher on an AP Exam.
In its fourth annual “AP Report to the Nation,” the College Board (the not-for-profit membership association that owns and administers the AP Program), focuses on educators’ quantifiable successes in helping a wider segment of the nation’s students gain access to and achieve success in college-level work. Of the estimated 2.8 million students who graduated from U.S. public schools in 2007, almost 426,000 (15.2 percent) earned an AP Exam grade of at least a 3 on one or more AP Exams during their high school tenure, the report documents. This is up from 14.7 percent in 2006 and 11.7 percent in 2002.
Earning a 3 or higher on an AP Exam is one of “the very best predictors of college performance,”2 with AP students earning higher college grades and graduating from college at higher rates than otherwise similar peers in control groups, according to recent reports from researchers at the University of California at Berkeley,3 the National Center for Educational Accountability,4 and the University of Texas at Austin.5,6
New York, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Massachusetts and Connecticut all saw more than 20 percent of their students graduate from high school having earned an AP Exam grade of 3 or higher. AP achievements for each state’s class of 2002, class of 2006 and class of 2007 are detailed in the report. (See “The 4th Annual AP Report to the Nation,” Table 1, page 5.)
“Educators and policymakers across the nation should be commended for their sustained commitment to helping students achieve access to and success in AP courses and exams” said College Board President Gaston Caperton. “More students from varied backgrounds are accomplishing their AP goals, but we can’t afford to believe equity has been achieved until the demographics of successful AP participation and performance are identical to the demographics of the overall student population.”
Though 75 percent of U.S. high school graduates enter college,7 dropout rates and the fact that about half of all college freshmen are taking at least one remedial course indicate that secondary schools must dedicate themselves to more than college admission,8 the report asserts.
“Remedial course work in college costs taxpayers an estimated $1 billion a year,”9 Caperton said. “To shrink the gap between those who enter college and those who complete a degree, we must target the divide between high school graduation standards and the skills that all students need to be prepared for the rigors of college. The critical reasoning, subject-matter expertise and study skills students must develop to succeed on the three-hour college-level AP Exams fortify high school graduates for a successful transition into their freshman year at college. This makes providing better readiness for—and access to—AP courses absolutely essential.”

Related: Dane County, WI High School AP Course Comparison. The Madison School District received a grant in 2005 to increase the number of AP classes available to students. Madison High School AP offerings, according to the College Board: East 11, Edgewood 11, LaFollette 10, Memorial 17 and West 5.
Mitchell Landsberg digs into the report here.




State of California’s Children



Children Now:

The new 2006-07 California Report Card: The State of the State’s Children identifies critical issues affecting children’s well-being and threatening to compromise public health and the economy. This nonpartisan report assigns letter grades to individual issues, such as a “C-” in early care and education, a “C-” in K-12 education, and a “B-” in health insurance. Recommendations are provided for how policymakers can better address children’s basic needs for growing into productive adults.
The report presents the most current data available on the status of California’s children, who represent 27% of all Californians and 13% of the nation’s kids:

  • 760,000 California children, ages 0-18, don’t have health insurance.
  • One in three of California’s 6- to 17-year-olds is obese or overweight.
  • About 58% of California’s 3- and 4-year-olds do not attend preschool.
  • About 60% of California’s 2nd- to 11th-graders did not meet state goals for math and reading proficiency in 2006.
  • As many as 30% of the state’s children live in an economically-struggling family, able to pay for only the most basic needs.

Jill Tucker:

California received its annual State of the State’s Children report card Thursday, bringing home grades few parents would view with pride.
The state posted a C average on the health and education of California’s 9.5 million children, according to the report’s authors at Children Now, an Oakland advocacy group.
But raising its marks will be a challenge with the state facing a budget deficit of $14 billion over the next 18 months. Across-the-board cuts are expected for all state services, including health care and education.
The annual Children Now assessment judged the state’s performance on a range of issues, including health insurance, asthma, child care, public education, infant and adolescent health and obesity.
The highest mark was for after school programs, which earned a B+. Obesity received the lowest mark, of D+.
Overall, the grades changed little this year from the past two report cards – and that’s not good enough, said Children Now President Ted Lempert, a former state legislator.
“Policymakers have to stop saying kids are their priority when we have a long, long way to go,” he said.




Revisiting the Canon Wars



Rachel Donadio:

Twenty years ago, when Reagan and Gorbachev were negotiating the end of the cold war and college cost far less than it does today, a book arrived like a shot across the bow of academia: “The Closing of the American Mind,” by Allan Bloom, a larger-than-life political philosophy professor at the University of Chicago. Subtitled “How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today’s Students,” it spent more than a year on the best-seller list, and today there are more than 1.2 million copies in print. Saul Bellow, who had urged his brilliant and highly idiosyncratic friend to write the book in the first place, wrote the introduction. (Bellow later cast Bloom as the main character in “Ravelstein.”)
Bloom’s book was full of bold claims: that abandoning the Western canon had dumbed down universities, while the “relativism” that had replaced it had “extinguished the real motive of education, the search for a good life”; that rock music “ruins the imagination of young people”; that America had produced no significant contributions to intellectual life since the 1950s; and that many earlier contributions were just watered-down versions of Heidegger, Nietzsche, Weber, Freud and other Continental thinkers. For Bloom, things had gone wrong in the ’60s, when universities took on “the imperative to promote equality, stamp out racism, sexism and elitism (the peculiar crimes of our democratic society), as well as war,” he wrote, because they thought such attempts at social change “possessed a moral truth superior to any the university could provide.”

Saigon South International School Recommended Reading List: Grades 6 to 12 [PDF.]




2006 MMSD WKCE Scores: A Closer Look



Test scores from the November 2006 Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (WKCE) and companion Wisconsin Alternate Assessment (WAA) were released by the state Department of Public Instruction this week. The MMSD press release on Madison students’ scores (“Despite changes and cuts, Madison students test well”) reports the following “notable achievements”:

  1. that reading scores have remained steady and math scores have gone up;
  2. that non-low income MMSD students score better than their non-low income peers statewide;
  3. that a higher percentage of MMSD African-American students perform at the highest proficiency level than do other African-American students across the state as a whole; and
  4. that a consistently higher percentage of MMSD students perform at the highest proficiency level than do students across the state as a whole.

Let’s take a closer look at the PR and the data:

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Spring 2007 Madison School Board Election Update: Vote April 3!



  • Christine & Trent Sveom kindly forwarded candidate responses to additional questions not contained within the previously posted Video from the March 5, 2007 West High Forum. The questions:
    • Please explain your views on additional charter schools given the success of Nuestro Mundo here in Madison and several offerings in Appleton just to name a few?
    • How can the school district provide for second languages to be taught to all students starting in Kindergarten and continuing through all grades?
    • The board will be hiring a new superintendent. Please discuss what you believe is
      the top 3 criteria for a superintendent. You are free to ignore my request to address communication between Board and Administration/Superintendent, Boards communication with public, Superintendent and Public.

    • What role should School Board, Parents and Educators play in changing state law,
      which adversely affect our schools?

    • What accountability mechanisms do you envision? (Directed to Rick & Maya)
    • What is your position on the health insurance issue for teachers, that is the WPS option versus HMO’s?

    Responses:




Schools Turn Down the Heat on Homework



Nancy Keates:

Some of the nation’s most competitive schools are changing their homework policies, limiting the amount of work assigned by teachers or eliminating it altogether in lower grades. There also is an effort by some schools to change the type of homework being assigned and curtail highly repetitive drudge work.
The moves are largely at elite schools in affluent areas, including the lower school at Westminster Schools in Atlanta, Gunn High School in Palo Alto, Calif., Harvard-Westlake in Los Angeles and Riverdale Country Day School in New York City. The effort is by no means universal, and in fact some national statistics show that the amount of homework is continuing to grow.
Still, the new policies at such schools are significant because moves by institutions of this caliber are closely watched by educators and often followed.
Seventeen-year-old Jacob Simon endorses the new approach. When he gets home from school, he usually watches sports on TV. But the senior at Gunn High School isn’t slacking off: He’s taking five Advanced Placement courses this year, including calculus and physics. What’s changed is his school’s efforts to — in the words of one of its teachers — “make the homework assignments worthy of our students’ time.” Mr. Simon says, “It’s nice to be able to relax a little.”




A few questions for MPIE members …



I have a few questions for Barb and the other members of MPIE. I hope one or more of them will take the time to answer.
As I look over the course catalogs for the four high schools, I see that each school has both a Special Education Department and an English as a Second Language Department (although they may not be called exactly that at each school). Each of these departments in each of the four high schools offers an extensive range of courses for students who qualify and need the specialized educational experiences offered within these departments. Many of the courses offered by these departments fulfill graduation requirements and so can be used as curriculum replacement for the “regular” courses.
Here are my questions:

  1. Does MPIE advocate having the District dismantle the Special Education and English as a Second Language Departments in our high schools? (I assume the answer is “no.”)
  2. Does MPIE advocate having the District deny high school graduation credit for any and all courses offered within these departments, so that truly ALL students will be required to take 9th (and — at West — 10th) grade core courses at our high schools? (Again, I assume the answer is “no.”)
  3. If MPIE advocates full inclusion, why aren’t the answers to the above two questions “yes — absolutely, yes”?
  4. Does MPIE advocate getting rid of all advanced, honors, accelerated, TAG and Advanced Placement classes at our four high schools? In 9th grade? In 10th grade? In all four grades? What is your vision with regard to advanced and accelerated classes?
  5. Please help me understand the logic that says it’s O.K. to have entire departments within each high school devoted to the specialized educational needs of some groups of students (not to mention adjustments to high school graduation requirements designed to meet those students’ needs), but it is not O.K. to have even a few sections of classes aimed at meeting the specialized educational needs of other students? (IMHO, this way of thinking is really best described as a belief in “selective inclusion.”)
  6. Can you see the inherent illogic, inequity and unfairness of that position?
  7. How do you decide which groups of students with specialized educational needs get to have their educational needs met and which groups of students do not?
  8. It seems to me that a big part of the answer to that question should come from the research done from the perspective of the group of students under consideration. Do you agree or disagree with that premise?
  9. Are you aware of the consistency (of findings, of conclusions, of recommendations) within the literature on how best to meet the needs of high performing students (a.k.a. “best practices”)?
  10. Why does MPIE prefer the policy of getting rid of advanced high school classes over the policy of working with all K-8 students (and their families) in such a way as to increase the diversity of the students in those classes?
  11. What do some middle and upper middle class parents of children with special education needs find so threatening about the thought of having their schools meet the educational needs of high ability, high performing, even academically talented students with the same thoughtfulness and commitment that they meet the needs of students with other special educational needs?
  12. Are you aware that MMSD and national data indicate that approximately 20-25% of high school dropouts are academically gifted and have a demonstrated history of high academic performance? (In our District, that number is significantly higher at West HS than at the other three high schools and a disproportionate number of the “high performing” dropouts throughout the District are poor and minority students.) How do you understand those data and what do you think should be done about the situation?
  13. Have you read this American Psychologist article on “the two tails of the normal curve,” co-authored by nationally recognized experts on the educational needs of students in each of the two “tails”? http://psych.wisc.edu/henriques/papers/two_tails.pdf If so, what do you think of it?

Would any of you would be willing to meet over coffee to talk about how we can work together on these issues and to see if we can find common ground?




Keep an eye on math, board tells Rainwater



The Madison School Board has given Superintendent Art Rainwater a set of specific orders to accomplish in the coming year, including several directives to take an in-depth look at the district’s entire math curriculum.
In the past several years, area math educators have expressed concern about the effectiveness of the Madison district’s reliance on a reform math curriculum, which emphasizes word-based problem-solving.
Another goal board members mandated for the superintendent for next year is that he collaborate with them and other advisers on a plan to tell community members why parents and guardians should send their children to Madison public schools.
In addition, the board will evaluate the administration on providing information in a clear, accurate, concise and timely manner.
By Susan Troller, The Capital Times, November 21, 2006

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Boundary changes for Lake View & Chavez?



A story by Susan Troller in the Cap Times reports:

Two elementary schools at opposite ends of the Madison Metropolitan School District are bursting at the seams and may face boundary changes next year to deal with crowding.
Lake View Elementary on the northeast side of the city and Chavez Elementary on the southwest side are both well over their intended capacities, with Lake View at 116 percent and Chavez at 108 percent.
Lake View has an enrollment of 309 students, but is designed for 266. Chavez, with an intended capacity of 602 students, has an enrollment this year of 652 students.

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The Politics of K-12 Math and Academic Rigor



The Economist:

Look around the business world and two things stand out: the modern economy places an enormous premium on brainpower; and there is not enough to go round.
But education inevitably matters most. How can India talk about its IT economy lifting the country out of poverty when 40% of its population cannot read? [MMSD’s 10th Grade Reading Data] As for the richer world, it is hard to say which throw more talent away—America’s dire public schools or Europe’s dire universities. Both suffer from too little competition and what George Bush has called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”.

Thursday’s meeting between Madison School Superintendent Art Rainwater, the MMSD’s Brian Sniff and the UW Math department included two interesting guests: UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley [useful math links via the Chancellor’s website] and the Dean of the UW-Madison Education School. Wiley and the Ed School Dean’s attendance reflects the political nature of K-12 curriculum, particularly math. I’m glad Chancellor Wiley took time from his busy schedule to attend and look forward to his support for substantial improvements in our local math program.

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Writing Off Reading



Michael Skube:

In our better private universities and flagship state schools today, it’s hard to find a student who graduated from high school with much lower than a 3.5 GPA, and not uncommon to find students whose GPAs were 4.0 or higher. They somehow got these suspect grades without having read much. Or if they did read, they’ve given it up. And it shows — in their writing and even in their conversation.
A few years ago, I began keeping a list of everyday words that may as well have been potholes in exchanges with college students. It began with a fellow who was two months away from graduating from a well-respected Midwestern university.
“And what was the impetus for that?” I asked as he finished a presentation.
At the word “impetus” his head snapped sideways, as if by reflex. “The what?” he asked.
“The impetus. What gave rise to it? What prompted it?”
I wouldn’t have guessed that impetus was a 25-cent word. But I also wouldn’t have guessed that “ramshackle” and “lucid” were exactly recondite, either. I’ve had to explain both. You can be dead certain that today’s college students carry a weekly planner. But they may or may not own a dictionary, and if they do own one, it doesn’t get much use. (“Why do you need a dictionary when you can just go online?” more than one student has asked me.)
As freshmen start showing up for classes this month, colleges will have a new influx of high school graduates with gilded GPAs, and it won’t be long before one professor whispers to another: Did no one teach these kids basic English? The unhappy truth is that many students are hard-pressed to string together coherent sentences, to tell a pronoun from a preposition, even to distinguish between “then” and “than.” Yet they got A’s.
Exit exams have become almost a necessity because the GPA is not to be trusted. In my experience, a high SAT score is far more reliable than a high GPA — more indicative of quickness and acuity, and more reflective of familiarity with language and ideas. College admissions specialists are of a different view and are apt to label the student with high SAT scores but mediocre grades unmotivated, even lazy.

Bill McCoy has more.




ACT scores are best in 20 years, with a catch, MMSD Curriculum & Upcoming Elections



The issue of curriculum quality and rigor continues to generate attention. P-I:

The good news is that the high school class of 2006 posted the biggest nationwide average score increase on the ACT college entrance exam in 20 years and recorded the highest scores of any class since 1991.
The bad news is that only 21 percent of the students got a passing grade in all four subject areas, including algebra and social science.
“The ACT findings clearly point to the need for high schools to require a rigorous, four-year core curriculum and to offer Advanced Placement classes so that our graduates are prepared to compete and succeed in both college and the work force,” Education Secretary Margaret Spellings said in Washington, D.C.

Alan Borsuk has more:

Wisconsin high school graduates are better prepared to succeed in college than students nationwide – but that means only that more than 70% of state students are at risk of having trouble in one or more freshman-level subjects while the national figure is almost 80%, according to ACT, the college testing company.
The message still isn’t getting across,” Ferguson said in a telephone news conference. If students want to go to college and do well, they have to take high school seriously and take challenging courses, he said.
ACT results showed that students who took at least four years of English and three years each of math, science and social studies in high school did substantially better on the tests (22.9 in Wisconsin, 22.0 nationwide) than those who took lighter loads in those core areas (21.0 and 19.7, respectively).
Elizabeth Burmaster, Wisconsin’s superintendent of public instruction, said she believes that if schools in Wisconsin stay focused on efforts such as early childhood education and small class sizes in the early grades, combined with strong academic programs in middle school and high school, achievement will go up and racial and ethnic gaps will close.

Individual state data is available here.
Burmaster’s statement, along with the ACT information will increase the attention paid to curriculum issues, such as the ongoing questions over the Madison School District’s math program (See UW Math professor Dick Askey’s statement on the MMSD’s interpration and reporting of math scores). Will we stick with the “same service” approach? This very important issue will be on voters minds in November (referendum) and again in April, 2007 when 3 board seats are up for election. See also the West High School Math Faculty letter and a recent open letter to the Madison School District Board and Administration from 35 of the 37 UW Math Department faculty members. Vaishali Honawar has more.
The Madison School District issued a press release on the recent ACT scores (68% of Wisconsin high school graduates took the ACT – I don’t know what the MMSD’s percentage is):

Madison students who took the 2006 ACT college entrance exam continued to outperform their state and national peers by a wide margin, and the scores of Madison’s African-American test takers increased significantly. Madison students’ composite score of 24.2 (scale of 1 to 36) was higher for the 12th straight year than the composite scores of Wisconsin students and those across the nation (see table below). District students outscored their state peers by 9% (24.2 vs. 22.2,) and their national peers by 15% (24.2 vs. 21.1).
Compared to the previous year, the average ACT composite score among the district’s African-American students increased 6% — 18.8 vs. 17.7 last year. The gap between district African-American and white student ACT scores decreased this year. The relative difference this year was 24% (18.8 vs. 24.8) compared to 30% last year.
Scores also increased this year for the district’s Asian students (22.1 to 23.0) and Hispanic students (21.5 to 21.8).

The Madison School District recently published this summary of student performance vs other similar sized and nearby districts (AP, ACT and WKCE) here. Madison’s individual high schools scored as follows: East 22.9, LaFollette 22.1, Memorial 25.1 and West 25.5. I don’t have the % of students who took the ACT.

I checked with Edgewood High School and they have the following information: “almost all students take the ACT” and their composite score is “24.4”. Lakeside in Lake Mills averaged 24.6. Middleton High School’s was 25 in 2005. Verona High School’s numbers:

222 students took the ACT in 2005-2006.
Our composite score was 23.6 compared to the state at 22.2
87% of test takers proved college ready in English Composition (vs. 77%)
66% of test takers proved college ready in College Algebra (vs. 52%)
77% of test takers proved college ready in Social Science (vs. 61%)
45% of test takers proved college ready in Biology (vs. 35%)
37% of test takers proved college ready in all four areas (vs. 28%)
(#) as compared to the state %

Waunakee High School:

Score HS Mean (Core/Non-Core)
Composite 23.3 (24.3/21.5)
English 22.5 (23.9/19.5)
Mathematics 23.2 (24.2/21.8)
Reading 23.3 (24.1/21.5)
Science 23.7 (24.4/22.7)

McFarland High School’s 2006 Composite average was 23.7. 110 students were tested.
UPDATE: A few emails regarding these results:

  • On the Waunakee information:

    In the Waunakee information I sent to Jim Z, our mean for the Class of 2006 comes first, followed by the core/non-core in parentheses. So, our mean composite score for our 157 seniors who sat for the ACT was 23.3, the mean composite for those completing the ACT suggested core was 24.3, the mean composite for those who did not complete the core was 21.5.
    With ACT profile reports, the student information is self-reported. It’s reasonably accurate, but some students don’t fill in information about course patterns and demographics if it is not required.
    Please let me know if there are any other questions.

  • McFarland data:

    It appears that Jim Z’s chart comparing scores uses Waunakee’s “Core score” as opposed to the average composite that the other schools (at
    least McFaland) gave to Jim Z.. If Jim Z. wishes to report average “Core” for McFarland it is 24.5. Our non-core is 22.2 with our average composite 23.7.

  • More on the meaning of “Core”:

    Probably everyone is familiar with the ACT definition of core, but it’s 4 years of English, and three years each of math, science, and social studies. ACT is refining their position on what course patterns best position a student for undergraduate success, however.

Additional comments, data and links here




Brave New World: Are our kids ready to compete in the new global economy? Maybe not



Marc Eisen:

Most of us have had those eerie moments when the distant winds of globalization suddenly blow across our desks here in comfortable Madison. For parents, it can lead to an unsettling question: Will my kids have the skills, temperament and knowledge to prosper in an exceedingly competitive world?
I’m not so sure.
I’m a fan of Madison’s public schools, but I have my doubts if such preparation is high on the list of school district priorities. (I have no reason to think things are any better in the suburban schools.) Like a lot of parents, I want my kids pushed, prodded, inspired and challenged in school. Too often — in the name of equity, or progressive education, or union protectionism, or just plain cheapness — that isn’t happening.

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Work on education gap lauded



From the Wisconsin State Journal, May 2, 2006
ANDY HALL ahall@madison.com
Madison made more progress than any urban area in the country in shrinking the racial achievement gap and managed to raise the performance levels of all racial groups over the past decade, two UW- Madison education experts said Monday in urging local leaders to continue current strategies despite tight budgets.
“I’ve seen districts around the United States, and it really is remarkable that the Madison School District is raising the achievement levels for all students, and at the same time they’re closing the gaps,” Julie Underwood, dean of the UW- Madison School of Education, said in an interview.
Underwood said she’s heard of no other urban district that reduced the gap so significantly without letting the test scores of white students stagnate or slide closer to the levels of lower-achieving black, Hispanic or Southeast Asian students.
“The way that it’s happened in Madison,” she said, “is truly the best scenario. . . . We haven’t done it at the expense of white students.”
Among the most striking trends:
Disparities between the portions of white and minority students attaining the lowest ranking on the state Third Grade Reading Test have essentially been eliminated.
Increasing shares of students of all racial groups are scoring at the top levels – proficient and advanced – on the Third Grade Reading Test.
Graduation rates have improved significantly for students in every racial group.
Underwood commented after one of her colleagues, Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, presented a review of efforts to attack the racial achievement gap to the Schools of Hope Leadership Team meeting at United Way of Dane County.
Gamoran told the 25- member team, comprised of community leaders from the school system, higher education, nonprofit agencies, business and government, that Madison’s strategy parallels national research documenting the most effective approaches – one-to-one tutoring, particularly from certified teachers; smaller class sizes; and improved training of teachers.
“My conclusion is that the strategies the Madison school system has put in place to reduce the racial achievement gap have paid off very well and my hope is that the strategies will continue,” said Gamoran, who as director of the education-research center oversees 60 research projects, most of which are federally funded. A sociologist who’s worked at UW-Madison since 1984, Gamoran’s research focuses on inequality in education and school reform.
In an interview, Gamoran said that Madison “bucked the national trend” by beginning to shrink the racial achievement during the late 1990s, while it was growing in most of America’s urban school districts.
But he warned that those gains are in jeopardy as Wisconsin school districts, including Madison, increasingly resort to cuts and referendums to balance their budgets.
Art Rainwater, Madison schools superintendent, said Gamoran’s analysis affirmed that the district and Schools of Hope, a civic journalism project of the Wisconsin State Journal and WISC-TV (Ch. 3) that grew into a community campaign to combat the racial achievement gap, are using the best known tactics – approaches that need to be preserved as the district makes future cuts.
“The things that we’ve done, which were the right things to do, positively affect not just our educationally neediest students,” Rainwater said. “They help everybody.”
John Matthews, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., the teachers union, and Rainwater agree that the progress is fragile.
“The future of it is threatened if we don’t have it adequately funded,” Matthews said.
Leslie Ann Howard, United Way president, whose agency coordinates Schools of Hope, said Gamoran’s analysis will help focus the community’s efforts, which include about 1,000 trained volunteer tutors a year working with 2,000 struggling students on reading and math in grades kindergarten through eight.
The project’s leaders have vowed to continue working until at least 2011 to fight gaps that persist at other grade levels despite the gains among third- graders.
“I think it’s critical for the community to know that all kids benefited from the strategies that have been put in place the last 10 years – the highest achievers, the lowest achievers and everybody in between,” Howard said.
“To be able to say it’s helping everyone, I think is really astonishing.”




Similar Students, Different Results



From the latest Teacher’s College Record.
It looks like a solid study, but I have one caveat. One of the findings is that successful schools are aligned with the State Standards and success is then measured by these standards. This does raise questions about the content of these standards. The creation of these standards has been highly political and in some cases the resulting standards leave much to be desired. For an earlier California story, see Gary Nash, Charlotte Crabtree and Ross Dunn’s History on Trial.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679767509/002-1214435-6720800?v=glance&n=283155
TJM
http://www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentID=12299

Similar Students, Different Results
by Trish Williams & Michael W. Kirst — January 25, 2006
Why do some California elementary schools serving largely low-income students score as much as 250 points higher on the state’s academic performance index (API) than other schools with very similar students?
That’s the research question asked by a new, large-scale EdSource-led study that surveyed principals and teachers in 257 such schools across the state. What we learned is that the higher performing schools tend to have four interrelated practices at the core of their operation—prioritizing student achievement; implementing a coherent, standards-based curriculum and instructional program; analyzing student-assessment data from multiple sources; and ensuring availability of instructional resources.
Many studies have examined successful schools as a group, in an effort to understand their methods or best practices. This study—conducted by EdSource and researchers from Stanford University, the University of California, Berkeley, and the American Institutes for Research—took a different tack. Rather than looking at a specific performance zone, we examined elementary schools within a specific, fairly narrow socioeconomic and demographic band but across the full range of school performance.

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Classmates Count



I was looking for more information about the combined grades at Elvejhem (my grade school was all combined grades with team teaching and it worked very well) and I found an interesting study that I don’t think has been previously noted on SIS. It is by noted Urbanist David Rusk and looks at the effects of economic segregation and integration on academic performance in Madison schools. I hope the East and West task forces were aware of this study.
TJM
The conclusion states:

“Summing Up Part V: A school’s socioeconomic context does matter far more for low-income pupils than for their middle class counterparts. The statistical analysis did show a slight decline of middle class pupils’ test scores as the percentage of low income classmates increased. The rate of decline for middle class pupils was less than half the rate of improvement for low income pupils.
However, that apparent decline in middle class pupils’ performance most probably reflected the changing composition of the “middle class” in schools with increasingly higher percentages of low income classmates. “Middle class” schools with very few low income pupils had higher percentages of children from the highest income, largely professional households. In “middle class” schools with much larger numbers of lowincome pupils, children from more modest “blue collar” households predominated.
That was most likely the primary contributing factor to the apparent slow decline in middle class test scores and not any directly adverse effect of having more low income classmates. From a larger perspective, middle class pupils’ performance levels never dropped below 70-75% achieving advanced and proficient levels under any socioeconomic circumstances in Madison-Dane County (which had no very high-poverty schools).”

Here is a link to the pdf file: Final Report




The fate of the schools



Will the Madison district sink or swim?
April 4th elections could prove pivotal

At the end of an especially divisive Madison school board meeting, Annette Montegomery took to the microphone and laid bare her frustrations with the seven elected citizens who govern Madison schools.
“I don’t understand why it takes so long to get anything accomplished with this board!” yelled Montgomery, a Fitchburg parent with two children in Madison’s Leopold Elementary School. She pegged board members as clueless about how they’ve compromised the trust of the district’s residents.
“You don’t think we’re already angry? What do we have to do to show you, to convince you, how angry we are? If I could, I’d impeach every single one of you and start over!”
Impeachment isn’t being seriously considered as solution to the Madison Metropolitan School District’s problems. But infighting and seemingly insurmountable budget problems have increasingly undercut the board’s ability to chart a positive course for Madison schools.

And that’s not good, given the challenges on the horizon for a district of 24,490 kids with a $319 million budget. These include declining enrollment of upper- and middle-class families; continuing increases in low-income families and racial minorities; an overall stagnant enrollment which limits state funding increases; and prolonged battles with parent groups over everything from boundary changes to curriculum choices.
By Jason Shepard, Isthmus, March 23, 2006

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Standards, Accountability, and School Reform



This is very long, and the link may require a password so I’ve posted the entire article on the continued page.
TJM
http://www.tcrecord.org/PrintContent.asp?ContentID=11566
Standards, Accountability, and School Reform
by Linda Darling-Hammond — 2004
The standards-based reform movement has led to increased emphasis on tests, coupled with rewards and sanctions, as the basis for “accountability” systems. These strategies have often had unintended consequences that undermine access to education for low-achieving students rather than enhancing it. This article argues that testing is information for an accountability system; it is not the system itself. More successful outcomes have been secured in states and districts, described here, that have focused on broader notions of accountability, including investments in teacher knowledge and skill, organization of schools to support teacher and student learning, and systems of assessment that drive curriculum reform and teaching improvements.

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Leveling the Playing Field: Creating Funding Equity Through Student-Based Budgeting



When the Cincinnati Public Schools devised a reform strategy for improving student performance, it became clear that the district’s traditional budgeting system was inadequate. The authors trace the district’s process of moving to a system of student-based budgeting: funding children rather than staff members and weighting the funding according to schools’ and students’ needs.
By Karen Hawley Miles, Kathleen Ware, and Marguerite Roza, from Phi Delta Kappan magazine, October 2003.

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Math Forum Audio / Video and Links



Video and audio from Wednesday’s Math Forum are now available [watch the 80 minute video] [mp3 audio file 1, file 2]. This rare event included the following participants:

The conversation, including audience questions was lively.

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Making One Size Fit All: Rainwater seeks board input as schools cut ability-based classes



Jason Shephard, writing in this week’s Isthmus:

Kerry Berns, a resource teacher for talented and gifted students in Madison schools, is worried about the push to group students of all abilities in the same classrooms.
“I hope we can slow down, make a comprehensive plan, [and] start training all teachers in a systematic way” in the teaching methods known as “differentiation,” Berns told the Madison school board earlier this month. These are critical, she says, if students of mixed abilities are expected to learn in “heterogeneous” classrooms.
“Some teachers come about it very naturally,” Berns noted. “For some teachers, it’s a very long haul.”
Following the backlash over West High School replacing more than a dozen electives with a single core curriculum for tenth grade English, a school board committee has met twice to hear about the district’s efforts to expand heterogeneous classes.
The school board’s role in the matter is unclear, even to its members. Bill Keys told colleagues it’s “wholly inappropriate” for them to be “choosing or investigating curriculum issues.”
Superintendent Art Rainwater told board members that as “more and more” departments make changes to eliminate “dead-end” classes through increased use of heterogeneous classes, his staff needs guidance in form of “a policy decision” from the board. If the board doesn’t change course, such efforts, Rainwater said, will likely be a “major direction” of the district’s future.

Links and articles on Madison West High School’s English 10, one class for all program. Dr. Helen has a related post: ” I’m Not Really Talented and Gifted, I Just Play One for the PC Crowd”

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Kids, Schools & Cities, Part II



Paul Soglin:

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




“Why We May Have to Move …”



I received a copy of this personal essay — a letter to the Administration and BOE — last night. The author said it was fine for me to post it, if I thought it was worth it. I most definitely think it’s worth it because it so poignantly describes a family’s real life experience and frustration in our schools … not to mention their agony over whether or not to move elsewhere.

Our kids are in 5th, 4th and 1st grades. I am really very concerned about our son going into sixth grade next year. He has some special education needs related to Asperger Syndrome, such as sensory defensiveness and skills to do with what some have called “theory of mind” (self-control, recognizing and assessing others’ points-of-view and feelings, anger management). I love the idea that Spring Harbor is smaller because of his sensitivities to light, personal space issues, noise levels and the like. I do not like that they are relatively inflexible in meeting special needs otherwise because they are small and missing some services – or severely limited – due to space and spending constraints. I also do not like that we would have NO options as to who his special ed case manager/teacher would be, because there is essentially one person to cover it all for each grade, whether or not they display and apply the kind of flexibility that being a “cross-categorical” special ed teacher demands.

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As Children Go to School, Parents Tag Along on the Web



Katharine Goodloe:

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




Task Force Insight



Dear Board,
While serving as a member on the Long Range Planning Committee for the West/Memorial Task Force I came to a few insights I would like to share.
Our charge was to seek solutions for the over-crowded schools in Memorial and Leopold attendance area as well as address the low income disparity throughout the area.

  • Overcrowding in Memorial – with current data and projected growth to be over 100% capacity in 5 of the elementary schools I believe the only solution to this problem is a new school. With the purchase of the far west land the board must believe this as well. This should be the number one priority of the growth solution for MMSD. There is space at Toki/Orchard Ridge and a few seats at Muir for this attendance area and additions could be made to Falk, or an update and expansion of Orchard Ridge/Toki could be made, but otherwise there is no room without changing programmatically.
  • Leopold overcrowding is much more complicated, as you know. This huge expansive slice of Madison and the entire city of Fitchburg attendance area has somehow become one elementary school. I do not support an addition to this school for many of the same reasons I did not like two schools on the same land. It is lots of seats in one part of town and you create problems for the future. If Shorewood or Crestwood had 1000 seats we would be busing kids from Fitchburg to that school because that’s where the space is. An addition without a new school means a principal, staff and others at this school are functioning like the other 4 – 5 hundred space schools but with double the students, is that fair to the staff of that school? Would you want to be the principal of 800 – 900 students? I would rather have a school in Fitchburg or south of the Beltline off of 14 to help Leopold and the Allis attendance area that currently is sent to the other side of Monona.
    There is space at Midvale/Lincoln, Randall, Shorewood,and there is 110 seats at Hamilton, 94 seats at Wright, and 118 seats at Cherokee. And of course the strange building of Hoyt that must have ghost or something since no one wants to touch it. There is space in West. The move of Leopold to Chavez is wrong minded since it shifts the West area problem to the overcrowded Memorial area.
    The Elephant in the Room throughout the entire Task Force was Midvale/Lincoln and the perceived lack of quality at that school. There is 75 seats at Lincoln and 62 seats at Midvale this year and each time the suggestion was made to shift students from Leopold to M/L it was met with distaste, (except for two apartment buildings of 30 students) as the memo from the Swan Creek neighborhood (see attachment) was an example. That memo, while it outraged me, is a glaring example why we can’t solve Leopold overcrowding (see memo [pdf] from Midvale Parent Jerry Eykholt to the Swan Creek Parents). On the task force Leopold was sent to Chavez, Randall/Franklin, Thoreau over and under M/L, but somehow those 137 seats at M/L seemed too far away. I think the district is failing Midvale/Lincoln.

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Thoreau Boundary Change Grassroots Work



Erin Weiss and Gina Hodgson (Thoreau PTO) engage in some impressive grassroots work:

November 28, 2005
Dear Thoreau Families, Staff, Teachers and Friends,
Now is the time for you to get involved in the MMSD redistricting process! This Thursday, December 1 at 6:30pm, a Public Forum will be held at Cherokee Middle School. This forum is being sponsored by the Board of Education in conjunction with the District’s Long Range Planning Committee and Redistricting Task Force. Please come to this forum to hear about the progress of the Redistricting Task Force, but more importantly, to share your opinions and ideas.
On the following pages is a brief description of the current Task Force ideas (as of November 28). Please bear with us if all the information presented below is not completely accurate. These ideas are changing rapidly and we are doing our best to summarize them for you with the information that is currently available. Please know that Al Parker, our Thoreau Task Force Representative, has been working hard for Thoreau school at Task Force meetings. He is a strong supporter of our school as it exists today.

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Carol Carstensen’s Email Message to Parent Groups



Carol Carstensen:

Parent Group Presidents:
N.B. The Board’s discussion regarding animals in the classroom has been postponed until January.
BUDGET FACTOID:
Why does the Madison district spend more than the state average per pupil? One part of the answer is that our student enrollment differs significantly from the state average in areas which require more services (and therefore greater costs):

  • Poverty Madison’s rate is 30% greater than the state’s average
  • English Language Learners (ELL): our percentage is more than 300% greater than the state’s
    Special Education the district has a higher percentage (16.8% vs. 12.6%) of students with special education needs – and a significantly higher percentage of high needs students. Of 389 students in the state identified with costs over $30,000 Madison has 109 (nearly 30%).

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Thursday’s Middle School Curriculum Parent Forum



I believe a relevant and challenging curriculum is the #1 priority for any educational organization. There have been a number of questions raised over the years regarding the Madison School District’s curriculum, including Math, English and Fine Arts and the recent controversial changes at Sherman Middle School (more details in Kathy Esposito’s recent Isthmus article).

The District is currently conducting a Middle School Curriculum Review, lead by Assistant Superintendent Pam Nash (Formerly Principal of Memorial High School). Pam lead a Parent Forum Thursday evening, which I attended (one of about 28 participants). (7MB video clip of Pam kicking off the Forum). The goal of this event was to collect feedback from parents regarding these five questions (pdf version):

  1. The school district is continually working to build more rigor into the learning experiences that students have. Rigor is defined as commitment to a core subject matter knowledge, a high demand for thinking, and an active use of knowledge. When you think of a rigorous academic curriculum in the middle school, what would it look like?
  2. What experiences do you want your child to have in middle school to enhance his or her social and emotional growth?
  3. What are your hopes and dreams for your child in middle school?
  4. What are your greatest concerns for your child in middle school?
  5. If you could design Madison middle schools in any way you wanted, what would they be like?

Pam mentioned that the parent comments would be posted on the district’s website, hopefully next week. She also said that the district would post these questions online, in an interactive way so that parents who were unable to attend Thursday’s event might add their comments.

My notes follow:

  • Superintendent Art Rainwater wants the middle school curriculum task force to report back to him by mid December (2005).
  • The task force “design teams” recently broke up into “work teams”.
  • Recommendations will affect middle school allocations.
  • I asked Pam when this process began. She said it started one month ago.
  • Pam mentioned that they hope to pull the parent group together one more time, in December.

I was initially displeased that the group of 28 participants was broken up (I was interested in hearing all of the conversations). However, I thought that the format was rather effective in obtaining comments from all participants (at least those in my group). Kudos to Pam for collecting a good deal of information.

I spoke briefly with Pam when the event concluded. I mentioned that it appears to me, a layman, that it would be challenging to implement major changes via a two month task force. However, incremental changes occuring via the allocations are certainly possible (for better or worse).

I heard many useful suggestions on these questions and will point to them when available on the District’s website.

Learn more about the “Middle Grades Design Team” via this Board presentation (800K PDF file) Email your comments on this initiative to the Madison School Board: comments@madison.k12.wi.us




Hamilton Middle School – Two Years of Foreign Language Taught Daily, 7th Grade Algebra I Accelerated and 8th Grade Geometry, Children Select Music Option (Not a Pull out Curriculum)



Hamilton Middle School offers five academic classes per day in 7th and 8th grades. Hamilton offers its students choices in math, foreign language and music. What do other MMSD and Dane County middle schools offer children? I’d be interested in seeing posts with this information.
Hamilton MS Foreign Language:
In 7th and 8th grade, children choose either French or Spanish. Classes meet every day all year for two years.
Hamilton Middle School Math
Connected math is taught at this school. However, there are accelerated math class choices for students. Algebra 1 accelerated is offered to 8th grade students (based upon teacher recommendation, student interest). There are a number of classes of 8th grade Algebra 1 accelerated. Children completing this course in 8th grade successfully are ready for Geometry or Algebra II in 9th grade at West High School.
There is also one 7th grade class of Algebra I accelerated and one 8th grade class of geometry.
Hamilton Music
All children in grades 6, 7, 8 are required to take a music class – options offered are general music, chorus, band and orchestra. Also, in 8th grade music theater is offered. The schedule for all three years is an A/B schedule with physical education. Children have music three times one week and two times in the next week for an average of 125 minutes per week. The MMSD School Board approved music education curriculum calls for 200 minutes of music education per week (50 minutes per day).




PEOPLE Program: The Debate continues



(With apologies to readers – it is not possible to respond using the comments feature on the blog.)
Response to Lucy’s Post on PEOPLE program
JOAN: Tempting though it is to rebut your arguments tit for tat I am not sure it will necessarily be productive.
RESPONSE: I would be interested in a “tit for tat” response to my comments on the reasons why the PEOPLE program is needed.
JOAN: Let’s back up and look at the assumptions underlying this program. The first is that minority students are not getting adequate preparation in their home schools. You assert that this is true in the well-staffed, well-funded Madison school district because of institutional racism. You believe your visual review of a school proves your point. That’s not particularily strong evidence.
RESPONSE: I think you need to go back and read what I wrote. I said,

“All of the above examples are conditions that I have witnessed first hand or, in one or two cases, have heard of from other parents – including parents of white students. When the above conditions disappear and/or white students experience these same conditions, we can talk about equity.”

Nowhere did I say or imply that my comments were “based on a visual review of a school.” It is true that there is no systematic, methodologically defensible, study of how students of color and their parents fare in Madison’s schools. I would welcome a well-crafted study of this nature.

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A RESPONSE TO JOAN’S POST ON THE PEOPLE PROGRAM



I was saddened and disappointed by the tone, content, and assumptions underlying Joan’s recent post on UW-Madison’s PEOPLE program and feel a need to respond as a parent who is engaged in trying to address cultures of racism in Madison schools and as a graduate and staff member of UW-Madison. I’ve interspersed the responses with Joan’s original wording:

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UW’s Long-term College Prep Program Puts Prospects In The Pipeline



The Wisconsin State Journal discusses the college prep program UW sponsors for middle (Madison students only) and high school minority students.
Glaringly absent from the reporting is what are the criteria for getting accepted into this program. It sounds like a program open only to minority students, or is it for low-income students of color?
While it has barely been in existence long enough to produce college graduates, I would hope someone is studying PEOPLE’s effectiveness. For instance, I’d like to see a control group who can’t attend these summer sessions but who are given the same break on admission, (2.75 GPA is all that’s required), and if accepted at UW, the students also get a full five-year tuition scholarship. Then I’d like to see the numbers on those who graduate and in what time period and at what cost.
Many years ago while I was a UW zoology grad student, I was a paid tutor through a university program aimed at assisting minority students. All my students were from Milwaukee. None was prepared, either for the intro zoo course or for college in general. Thus, I am sympathetic to the idea of helping these students before they enroll at the university. However, I have to question the lowered admission requirements. If you can’t cut a 2.75 in high school, you’re not likely to successfully complete a degree at UW-Madison.
In addition, I noticed that two of the students interviewed in the article were from Madison West. Is MMSD so deficient in preparing its (low income) minority students that they can only hope to succeed with this special program? I can understand how students coming from poorly funded and troubled disticts like Milwaukee might need extra attention, but Madison West?
Moreover, I know students at West who did not get in to UW despite GPAs of 3.6 and higher. This is the best education many can afford for their children. To learn that their students cannot get admitted while some are allowed in with significantly lower requirments and paid summer college prep courses might be a bitter pill to swallow. (For the record, both our children were accepted at UW.)
So I have two questions: are there checks in place to determine whether this is an effective program, and cost-effective at that, given the 5+ million dollars expended on about 1200 individuals; and how does the UW legitimately justify employing markedly different admission criteria, especially if PEOPLE isn’t open to all students who wish to participate.

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Goodbye, Class See You in the Fall: Looping in Ardsley NY Public Elementary School



The New York Times
July 11, 2005
Goodbye, Class. See You in the Fall.
By ALAN FINDER
ARDSLEY, N.Y. – Even though it was his last day of kindergarten, Zachary Gold, a bright, enthusiastic 6-year-old, said he wasn’t scared about moving up to the rigors of first grade. Unlike most kindergartners at the Concord Road Elementary School in this Westchester County village, he already knew who his first-grade teacher would be.

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K-12 Math Curriculum: A Visit With UW Math Professor Dick Askey



UW Math Professor Dick Askey kindly took the time to visit with a group of schoolinfosystem.org writers and friends recently. Dick discussed a variety of test results, books, articles and links with respect to K-12 math curriculum. Here are a few of them:

  • Test Results:

    Wisconsin is slipping relative to other states in every two year NAP (sp?) Math test (4th and 8th grade). In 1992, Wisconsin 4th graders were 10 points above the national average while in 2003 they were 4 points above. Wisconsin students are slipping between 4th and eighth grades. In fact, white and hispanic children are now performing equivalent to Texas students while Wisconsin black students are performing above Washington, DC and Arkansas (the two lowest performers). He mentioned that there is no serious concern about the slippage.

    30 years ago, the United States had the highest % of people graduating from High School of any OECD country. Today, we’re among the lowest. We also have a higher drop out rate than most OECD countries.

    Said that he has asked Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater twice in the past five years if our District asked for and received corrections for the current connected Math textbooks.

    Mentioned that CorePlus is evidently being used at West High but not Memorial

    Asked why these math performance declines are happening, he mentioned several reasons; “tame mathemeticians”, declining teacher content knowledge (he mentioned the rigor of an 1870’s California Teacher exam) and those who are true believers in the rhetoric.

  • Books:

    Knowing and Teaching Elementary Mathematics: Teachers’ Understanding of Fundamental Mathematics in China and the United States

    The Schools by Martin Mayer

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It’s About the Kids



Ed,
My vote re the proposal to fund two West High JV soccer teams was about the kids and was for the kids. MMSD’s athletic budget for next year will fund 8 teams in each high school for soccer, but at West the demand from kids is for 10 teams, so the parent proposal was to fundraise for the two teams that school would be short under next year’s team allocation matrix.
I appreciated the parents’ efforts to be proactive on behalf of 50 high school kids who want to play soccer. I appreciated that the parents from West High expanded the name of their group to Madison, recognizing the possible future need to help kids across the city who want to play soccer. I hope we can harness these parents’ positive efforts for future discussions about what we need to do to keep athletics and other educational opportunities strong for our kids.
Further, in my opinion the long-term issue regarding extra-curricular sports is not about the number of teams (by the way, it’s up to 66 teams for all grades per high school in several sports, not just soccer), but a) what high school athletic program do we want for Madison’s children, b) how much does that athletic program cost, c) how much can the District afford to pay, and d) how will we pay for the amount not covered in the budget. The School Board has not had this discussion and needs to have this discussion ASAP.
In the meantime, as a community member on the Partnership Committee I supported this proposal and will continue to be open to new ideas from the community in all educational areas for different ways to build community linkages that will support a strong, complete educational environment for all our kids.




NYT: School Reform: How Fast, How Far?



Several interesting letters to the editor in Sunday’s NYT in response to this article: The Schools Under Bloomberg: Much Tumult, Mixed Results, including this comment:

Too many have held low expectations for Harlem’s children. We have a mayor who not only seems to care about reforming the schools, but also is holding himself accountable for raising the expectations of our children. While I do not agree with every single one of his reforms, I believe they should be given more time before they are dismissed.

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Madison Area String Festivals – Saturday, April 2, 2005



Saturday, April 2nd is the annual Madison Area String Festivals – a much-loved, special event for all Madison public school children who play in MMSD’s string orchestras from Grades 4-12. More than 2,000 children will be performing 12 songs.
Each of the 4 area high schools will host a string performance on Saturday. Your elementary or middle school child, who is playing in a string orchestra, will be performing at the high school their school feeds into. For example, Randall Elementary feeds into West High School, so the elementary string children from Randall Elementary will be performing Saturday at that high school.
The performances last about one hour, and the schedule for the day is:
Memorial Area String Festival – 10 a.m. at Memorial High School
East Area String Festival – 12 noon at East High School
LaFollette Area String Festival – 2 p.m. at Lafollette High School
West Area String Festival – 4 p.m. at West High School
Dress rehearsals will be held Friday – performers need to check with their orchestra teacher for times.
These are wonderful performances – 600+ children playing together in each of Madison’s four area high schools; a special site to behold and wonderful music to hear!
Parents and relatives – bring your still and video cameras! This is truly a unique Madison experience.




The Leopold Expansion



The 3/2/05 CapTimes includes an excellent op ed piece by Ruth Robarts detailing her concerns about creating a large K-5 elementary school. http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/opinion//index.php?ntid=30501

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My Views of the Proposed Leopold Expansion



On March 28, the Madison School Board will cast the final vote on the proposed referendum for $14.5M to build a second school on the Leopold Elementary School site. The proposed “paired” school will open its doors to students in September of 2007 and will house up to 550 Kindergarten through second grade students and another 550 third through fifth grade students. If the Leopold community’s current population mix holds, a school of 1100 or more will include 275 (25%) students for whom English is a second language and 121 (11%) who have Special Educational needs. Over half of the students will come from low income homes. Unlike other Madison paired schools that are on different sites, Leopold’s buildings will be on the same grounds and will be physically linked in an L-shape. Students from both schools will share lunch rooms and playground facilities. Students will have separate entrances, but will share buses to and from school.
My duty as a board member is to weigh the pros and cons of this recommendation from the administration. Although I see why current Leopold parents expect great positives from the new building, I believe that these are short-term gains for the school and community and that the negatives of creating an extremely large elementary school may outweigh the short-term advantages. I am particularly concerned that the short-term relief for overcrowding will be undermined when the building reaches full capacity and houses two schools, each of which is far bigger than any K-2 or 3-5 school today. It is my responsibility to ask whether we have the experience to make such a joint school work and what additional resources will be required to assure student success under such conditions.

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The Yin & Yang of Curriculum



Interesting timing, given Jeff’s post below about West’s intention to drop advanced biology.
Doug Erickson on Madison Country Day School’s expansion announcement:

Madison Country Day School broke ground Thursday on a $4.8 million expansion that will add a gymnasium, a performing arts stage and 13 classrooms.
The addition, which will house the private school’s middle and high school, is expected to be done in August.
Opened in 1997 with 22 students in five lower grades, the school has grown to 252 students in grades pre- kindergarten through 10th. It reached capacity two years ago and is now using two portable buildings, said Adam de Pencier, head of school. “We’re absolutely jammed.”
The school at 5606 River Road is in the town of Westport near Waunakee. It is a non- religious, independent school that was designed to incorporate the best curriculum from around the world. The school wants to be seen as a research facility whose teaching practices can be used as a model for other public and private schools, de Pencier said.
The school was founded by Christopher Frautschi, nephew of philanthropist Jerry Frautschi, whose $205 million donation is paying for construction of the Overture Center for the Arts in Madison.

As always, there are options for people willing to spend the money. A challenging and proven curriculum is vital to our community.
I recently emailed a bit with Bill Keys, Madison School Board President, thanking him for the BOE’s support of Lapham’s English program and two school’s exploration of Singapore Math. Here’s the email message.

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Madison Superintendent Declines $2M in Federal Funds Without Consulting the Board



On Friday, October 15, Madison School Board members received an e-mail from Superintendent Art Rainwater announcing that the district will withdraw from a federal program known as Reading First.
In subsequent interviews with local newspapers, Rainwater estimated that the decision means forgoing approximately $2M in funds for materials to help students in the primary grades learn to read. The Cap Times
Wisconsin State Journal
Whenever the district qualifies for such federal grants, the Board votes to increase the budget to reflect the new revenues. To the best of my knowledge, the superintendent has not discussed this decision with the Performance & Achievement Committee. He has certainly not included the full Board in the decision to withdraw from Reading First.
The memo follows (click on the link below to view it or click here to view a 200K PDF):

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Incomplete



Paul Burka takes an interesting look at the way the Texas Education Agency manages and calculates the dropout rate:

WHEN MY DAUGHTER FINISHED HER FRESHMAN year at Johnston High School, in Austin, where she was a student in a liberal-arts magnet program, I paid a visit to the college adviser to find out her class ranking. “She’s thirty-seventh in a class of 750,” he told me. “That’s good,” I said. “Top five percent. Good enough to get into the University of Texas.”
“Not really,” the adviser said. “We know from experience that only 250 freshmen, at most, will graduate. So think of her as thirty-seventh out of 250. That’s not in the top ten percent.”
That was bad news�both for my daughter and for the state of education in Texas. I did some quick calculations. There were around 100 freshmen in the magnet program. Presumably, almost all of them would graduate. This meant that of the remaining 650 or so students in her class�those who lived within Johnston’s regular boundaries, almost all of them Hispanic or black�fewer than 150 would graduate with their peers. If his prediction was accurate, the dropout rate at Johnston would be 67 percent. In fact, the rate was even worse: Only 223 of the original 750 graduated.

Nancy and I lived in Dallas some years ago and very much enjoyed reading the excellent Texas Monthly Magazine, where Paul Burka is the senior executive editor.

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B Sharp Not Flat



In an effort to find funding for custodians and maintenance work, a Madison Board member proposed an unprecedented $460 fee for elementary strings, which is an academic curriculum subject in the Madison School District. No other fee, not even for extracurricular sports is as high.
He noted as part of his explanation for the fee that he starts high in a negotiation so as not to bargain away his position. Other Board member recommendations for changes to the MMSD 04-05 budget tried to minimize the impact on children’s instruction and opportunity to participate in activities beneficial to their education.
If the MMSD School Board wants the City of Madison’s support, I hope they take better care than to make extreme recommendations on a targeted group of students. The following Letter to the Editor, which has been sent in to the papers but not yet published asks for fairness and responsible decisionmaking when it comes to all academic curriculum.

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Reading Instruction Workshop



2004 DIRECT INSTRUCTION TRAINING AND CONFERENCE
August 9-10, 2004
Edgewood College Campus
Madison, Wisconsin

  • Direct Instruction Training for both Beginning and Advanced
  • Sessions Specially Designed for Deaf/Hard of Hearing Teachers
  • College Credit Available
  • Great New Location

KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Sara Tarver, Ph.D., Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Issues and Debates about Direct Instruction
FEATURED PRESENTER
Terry Dodds, Author of the new High-Performance Writing Program
OTHER PRESENTERS
Tonja Gallagher, M.S., Doctoral Student and Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Jane Jung , Ph.D., Second Grade Teacher, Lapham School, Madison,WI
Dolores Mishelow, former principal in Milwaukee, WI
Norm Mishelow, principal of Barton School in Milwaukee, U.S. Dept. of Ed. Blue Ribbon Award Winner
Beverly Trezek, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison
Chris Uelmen, M.S., Curriculum Coordinator, Core Knowledge Charter School, Verona, WI

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