schoolinfosystem.org
Stephen Cohn: Parents at Verona High School and in the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District are planning separate protests Monday in favor of returning to in-person learning next semester. A peaceful protest to reopen schools for in-person learning has been scheduled by the Bring Kids Back Verona Area Schools Facebook page. Organizers said they plan […]
Don’t miss @NBFCorp, @HFSCWisconsin, @SchoolChoiceWI, @SchoolChoiceNow, @WILawLiberty‘s School Choice Talent Show! Help us celebrate 2021’s National School Choice Week by joining our talent show contest. Submit before the end of the year. Learn more here: https://t.co/KTyhbNodHr pic.twitter.com/WBlMRXBewq — No Better Friend Corp. (@NBFCorp) December 17, 2020 Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to […]
Kevin Donnelly: Teachers should be teachers, not facilitators, when it comes to educating schoolchildren. NOEL Pearson may not be an educationalist by training but when it comes to his advocacy of Direct Instruction and knowledge about what best works in the classroom, he outshines most academics in teacher training institutes and universities. Since the late […]
Mackenzie Mays: California teachers unions are demanding that the Legislature maintain pandemic restrictions on school reopenings and have begun mobilizing against a Democratic bill introduced last week that could force schools to reopen in March. In separate letters to legislative leaders, the California Teachers Association and the California Federation of Teachers urge lawmakers to avoid […]
Liv Finne: As reported in The Seattle Times, State Superintendent Reykdal said Washington’s children are receiving a “sh-tty” education right now. This highest education official in Washington state is openly acknowledging that kids are feeling “robbed” of the education we have promised them. The legislature needs to step in and help families with direct educational assistance. […]
Wall Street Journal: Teachers unions have pushed to shut down schools during the pandemic no matter the clear harm to children, just as they oppose charters and vouchers. Now comes a timely study suggesting school choice improves student mental health. Several studies have found that school choice reduces arrests and that private-school students experience less […]
Julie Reuben: In 1915, when the American Association of University Professors issued its seminal “Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure,” it identified three areas in which faculty members should enjoy the protection of academic freedom: their scholarship, their teaching, and their actions as citizens. In the century since, almost all analyses of […]
For a research project 1.Which belief, currently deemed true by scientific consensus, is most important for teachers & faculty at schools of ed to know? 2.Which belief, currently deemed false by scientific consensus, is nevertheless often believed by Ts & faculty at schls of ed? — Daniel Willingham (@DTWillingham) December 15, 2020 2010: When A […]
Scott Girard: “The problem was we could not get the teachers to commit to the coaching.” Since their small success, not much has changed in the district’s overall results for teaching young students how to read. Ladson-Billings called the ongoing struggles “frustrating,” citing an inability to distinguish between what’s important and what’s a priority in […]
Scott Girard: The biggest exception to the enrollment decline in the public school sector were districts with an established virtual charter school option, the study found. Those districts saw an enrollment increase of approximately 4.5%, the study found. “Districts that have these schools that have some experience with conducting virtual education was appealing to some […]
Nader Issa: Half of the jobs, which pay $15 an hour, include supervising students in classrooms where teachers are remote, monitoring social distancing and masking and conducting health screenings. Chicago Public Schools is looking to hire 2,000 new employees to take on pandemic-related duties and fill in gaps in staffing once schools return in-person in […]
.@MMSDschools and @UWMadEducation announce a 14-member early literacy task force focused on analyzing approaches to teaching reading “toward the goals of improving reading outcomes and reducing achievement gaps.” More details at a 1 p.m. press availability. Members: pic.twitter.com/mPDoVmDrTF — Scott Girard (@sgirard9) December 14, 2020 Yet, deja vu all around Madison’s long term, disastrous reading […]
Megan Brenan: • 34% say their mental health is excellent, down from 43% in 2019 • Democrats, frequent churchgoers show least mental health change • Reports of physical health stable, slightly more positive than mental health Americans’ latest assessment of their mental health is worse than it has been at any point in the last […]
Joanne Jacobs: Two boys were shot and killed at a mall in Sacramento, writes Darren Miller, a high school math teacher. One was a former student; the other is a current student of another teacher. He asked his colleague if the boy had been a “face” or a “rectangle.” His school uses Zoom for online […]
Bill Minser, Regis Miller and more: I found last Sunday’s State Journal editorial, “Fauci sends a message to schools,” disingenuous and dangerous. Schools should have opened in September. Commentary. Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and […]
Laura Moser: So begins this apology from Lily Eskelsen García—the president of the National Education Association—for remarks that outraged disabilities advocates and special-needs parents. In a lively speech at a Campaign for America’s Future gala in October, where she was accepting a Progressive Champion Award (just wait, because that detail is about to seem funny), Eskelsen García […]
Scott Girard: The Madison Metropolitan School District launched a website Wednesday to keep families updated on reopening plans as the COVID-19 pandemic continues, including metrics that will be used to determine if and when schools will open for in-person instruction. MMSD is expected to announce its plan for the third quarter, which begins Jan. 25, by Jan. […]
Joseph Da Costa: Madison school officials plan significant changes in reading and literacy instruction. District administrators presented the proposed changes to school board members at a recent Board of Education meeting and signaled a shift toward phonics and the science of reading. MMSD’s Chief of Elementary Schools, Carletta Stanford, acknowledged, “We know that what we’ve […]
Hannah Natanson: More evidence emerged this week that online school is taking its worst academic toll on Virginia’s most vulnerable students, as superintendents in the state — facing mounting pressure to reopen schools — took tentative steps toward in-person instruction. Loudoun County Public Schools went the furthest, welcoming back more than 7,300 elementary school students this […]
John Wisely: Three Catholic high schools are suing the state in federal court, saying Michigan’s most recent order banning in-person learning violates their First Amendment right to practice their faith. Michigan Department of Health and Human Services Director Robert Gordon on Monday extended by 12 days a previous order banning in-person learning at high schools, colleges […]
Benjamin Yount: The data as it is currently released makes comparisons between districts all but impossible because districts have discretion on creating exclusions from the school-level spending,” Flanders wrote. “DPI includes a list of recommended exclusions, but districts have the freedom to disregard this advice, either including some of the costs as school-level costs or […]
Hank Berrien: A group of Wisconsin parents, along with School Choice Wisconsin, is suing the city of Racine after the city closed its schools, defying a Wisconsin Supreme Court restraining order preventing the city from closing the schools. The sequence of events preceding the lawsuit included Dottie-Kay Bowersox, the City of Racine Public Health Administrator, […]
Heather MacDonald: The United States is being torn apart by an idea: that racism defines America. The death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in late May 2020 catapulted this claim into national prominence; riots and the desecration of national symbols followed. Now, activists and their media allies are marshaling […]
Wisconsin State Journal: The nation’s top infectious disease expert just urged schools to reopen. We hope school officials in Madison and across Wisconsin were listening — those who have kept most of their students at home for online learning during the pandemic. School officials should be ready to open for the second semester in late […]
Adam Garfinkle: Thoughtful Americans are realizing that the pervasive IT-revolution devices upon which we are increasingly dependent are affecting our society and culture in significant but as yet uncertain ways. We are noticing more in part because, as Maryanne Wolf has pointed out, this technology is changing what, how, and why we read, and in […]
Joel Kotkin: Yet the era of global kumbaya, ended by Trump, is not likely to return. It has become painfully obvious that ‘free trade’, as carried out by our own companies, benefited the already affluent at the expense of most people. As the liberal New Statesman has put it succinctly, ‘the era of peak globalisation […]
Scott Girard: Madison Teachers Inc. filed its second grievance against the Madison Metropolitan School District this year on Wednesday. The complaint filed with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) comes after the district sent out a Nov. 30 communication stating “the MMSD Board of Education, MTI and the trades have ratified the agreement to increase […]
Elizabeth Beyer: Under Freedom Inc.’s proposal the committee would have complete decision-making power over school safety and accountability policies within the district; oversee all district investigations of student, parent or family member complaints against school staff; and establish a process to protect students against retaliation after filing a complaint, among other measures. Freedom Inc. is […]
Walter Williams: Several years ago, Project Baltimore began an investigation of Baltimore’s school system. What it found was an utter disgrace. In 19 of Baltimore’s 39 high schools, out of 3,804 students, only 14 of them, or less than 1%, were proficient in math. In 13 of Baltimore’s high schools, not a single student scored proficient in math. In […]
Karol Markowicz: “Why is my school closed, Mommy?” asks the sweet fictional child who has stopped going to school for no apparent reason. “I haaaaaaaaate Zoom,” screams the real child rolling on the floor, while his teacher repeatedly asks little Sally to mute herself and little Billy to put his shirt back on. In-person school […]
Wall Street Journal: As with environmental and immigration policy, President-elect Joe Biden has vowed to bring sweeping changes to education and to reverse some of the civil rights-related moves made under President Trump. The current education secretary, Betsy DeVos, sought to bolster school-choice programs, proposed cuts to public-school funding and called for swift school reopenings […]
Jack Schneider and Jennifer C. Berkshire: Together, led by federal policy elites, Republicans and Democrats espoused the logic of markets in the public sphere, expanding school choice through publicly funded charter schools. Competition, both sides agreed, would strengthen schools. And the introduction of charters, this contingent believed, would empower parents as consumers by even further […]
Sarah Mitchell: Of all the debates in education, none are quite as absurd as the reading wars. On the one hand there are those who advocate for a phonics-based approach to reading instruction in the early years – making sure children understand sound-letter relationships so they can read words accurately without guessing from the context […]
Gloria Reyes: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE December 1, 2020 Madison School Board President Gloria Reyes Will Not Seek Re-election Statement by Gloria Reyes I am announcing today that I will not seek re-election to the Madison School Board. This has been a difficult decision. I’ve made it after much consideration, consultation with my family, and as […]
Will Flanders: Flying under the radar amidst the continuing pandemic is the news that the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) finally released school-level spending data for Wisconsin’s public schools. Required by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA), DPI appears to have dragged its feet as long as possible before providing this information to families […]
Adam Rogan: The City of Racine is still banning schools from having students and teachers in their buildings within city limits through Jan. 15, despite a Wisconsin Supreme Court decision last week that put the local order closing schools on pause. The legal reason the city is citing for continuing to enforce school closures is […]
Evita Duffy: Right now in China, 195 million students K-12 are learning in-person in Chinese public schools. Meanwhile, millions of American public school students are learning in a failed remote system that can’t even keep track of thousands of students who haven’t shown up for class all year. In 2018, 15-year-olds in dozens of countries […]
Tide has turned on schools. Seems to be fairly widespread agreement they should be open and that harms caused from keeping them shuttered are grave. And yet… schools in CA have never opened, never gotten close. And there is no proposal or possible date for opening on the table. https://t.co/lPLaBJad8J — Jennifer Sey (@JenniferSey) November […]
A 0.28% covid positive test rate in New York City schools during the last six weeks—a ????? of the 3% rate in the city in general. It would’ve been so reasonable and right (and politically painless!) for @NYCMayor to keep the schools open. Crazy. pic.twitter.com/MXGsvQzSCI — Kurt Andersen (@KBAndersen) November 29, 2020 Related: Catholic schools will […]
Dimitri A. Christakis, MD, MPH, Wil Van Cleve, MD, MPH2; Frederick J. Zimmerman, PhD3: Question Based on the current understanding of the associations between school disruption and decreased educational attainment and between decreased educational attainment and lower life expectancy, is it possible to estimate the association between school closure during the coronavirus disease 2019 pandemic and decreased life expectancy of publicly […]
Hannah Natanson, Laura Meckler: Sophia Sanchez, age 9 and stuck in perpetual Zoom school, is crying a lot lately. Her mother and sister rush in and ask what went wrong. Did the Internet go out again? Is her computer plugged in? Is the math too confusing? Sophia can’t really answer. She’s too upset, wondering whether she’ll […]
Politico: President Donald Trump hasn’t been leading on the coronavirus and governors are again in charge of the nation’s response. They’re reacting with a patchwork policy that’s unlikely to head off the long-warned “dark winter” in America. Governors are balancing rising case numbers and pressure to keep schools, restaurants and bars at least partially open. […]
James E. Causey: He read in the hallway. Over his lunch hour. After school. He did it first as assistant principal at John Early Magnet School and then in the same role at East Nashville Magnet High School. Curious, students would approach him. “What are you reading?” they’d ask. “Must be a good book.” Pratt […]
Hannah Natanson: A report on student grades from one of the nation’s largest school districts offers some of the first concrete evidence that online learning is forcing a striking drop in students’ academic performance, and that the most vulnerable students — children with disabilities and English-language learners — are suffering the most. Fairfax County Public […]
CDC.gov: What is already known about this topic? As of October 15, 216,025 deaths from COVID-19 have been reported in the United States; however, this might underestimate the total impact of the pandemic on mortality. What is added by this report? Overall, an estimated 299,028 excess deaths occurred from late January through October 3, 2020, […]
Joanne Jacobs: Several parents noted that many private schools are teaching in person. City-funded preschool programs are operating if they’re in private schools, but closed if they’re in district buildings. If the chaos and incompetence drives middle-class families out of the city or into private schools and students who remain have learned little but knock-knock […]
Racine Journal Times: It’s one thing when an individual school district, such as Racine or Kenosha Unified, decide that they are going to go virtual. It’s another thing for the Racine health department to step in and rule that all schools, including private schools, in its jurisdiction must also shut their doors. Yet that is […]
Administration slides: 1) Call to order 2) Approval of minutes dated Nov. 5, 2020 3) Review Charge Statement/Purpose & Timeline 4) Update of responses to questions & comments 5) What we heard from last meeting? a) Successful Implementation of RJ Practices & MMSD- Critical Response Teams 6) Partnering with Law Enforcement- Flow and Guidance 7) […]
“An emphasis on adult employment” Asked Biden if he will encourage teacher unions to cooperate to get kids back in school because the COVID task force said it is safe to be in the classroom. He didn’t answer. “Why are you the only guy that always shouts out questions?” he said. pic.twitter.com/x2DsG5Fmgo — Bo Erickson […]
The Economist: NEW YORK CITY’S schools may be closing, but the pupils at Success Academies, a network of charter schools which has placed all of its 20,000 pupils in remote learning, will still be wearing their uniform (vivid, pumpkin-orange shirts with navy trousers) every day of the week. Unlike traditional public schools in the city, […]
Sonja Brookins Santelises: Since March, when the COVID-19 pandemic shuttered schools across the country, district leaders and educators have worked to navigate the challenges of this “new normal” in education. And nowhere have the challenges been steeper than in districts like the one I lead in Baltimore. Like other districts already battling historic and systematic […]
Federica Cocco: When Mary Finnegan, 27, and her sister Meg, 22, left their Brooklyn apartment to return to their parents’ home in March, they took enough clothes to last two weeks. Their stay stretched into months. “It was like a return to homeschooling: no boys, no play dates, nowhere to go, except home and the […]
From Dr. Anthony Fauci today: “Try as best as possible to keep the schools open…” @GovInslee #waleg @lauriejinkins2 https://t.co/zUmp12Cww3 — Beth Sigall (@btsigall) November 17, 2020 Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and Madeline Heim: which […]
Aaron Carroll: Cases have definitely been more common in school-age children this fall. But when schools do the right things, those infections are not transmitted in the classroom. They’re occurring, for the most part, when children go to parties, when they have sleepovers and when they’re playing sports inside and unmasked…. The playbook for keeping […]
Megan Kuhfeld: As the COVID-19 pandemic upended the 2019–2020 school year, education systems scrambled to meet the needs of students and families with little available data on how school closures may impact learning. In this study, we produced a series of projections of COVID-19-related learning loss based on (a) estimates from absenteeism literature and (b) […]
Frederick Hess: Since March, millions of students have been out of school. Nearly half of the nation’s 50 largest school districts haven’t yet reopened or are only now planning to do so. Hybrid reopening plans have been a start-and-stop, hit-and-miss endeavor. Given the mounting evidence that the public health risks of reopening schools are modest […]
Caitlin Sievers: Some schools are considering fighting it. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, a conservative nonprofit law firm based in Milwaukee, says it’s illegal. But the City of Racine is standing by its Health Department’s most recent COVID-19 order that requires all private and public K-12 school buildings within the jurisdiction of its […]
https://www.reopenourschools.org. Scott Girard: Political affiliation and union representation were more strongly related to Wisconsin school district decisions to opt for virtual or in-person instruction this fall than COVID-19 positivity rate, according to a new report. The study from the conservative Wisconsin Institute For Law & Liberty (WILL) published Monday found that 14% of districts in the […]
https://www.reopenourschools.org. Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and Madeline Heim: which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests — a data point the public uses to determine how intense infection […]
Annysa Johnson: State Superintendent of Public Instruction Carolyn Stanford Taylor is seeking an additional $1.6 billion for education over the next two years, along with changes that would cushion districts as they weather the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. Stanford Taylor’s proposed 2021-23 budget, announced this week, reflects many of the same priorities as her predecessor, […]
Sally Weale: There has been a “shocking” decline in primary school pupils’ levels of attainment in England after lockdown, testing has revealed, with younger children and those from disadvantaged backgrounds worst affected. The results provide the first detailed insight into the impact of the pandemic on academic attainment among young children and show an average […]
Milken Institute: The State Technology and Science Index (STSI) provides a benchmark for evaluating the knowledge economies of all 50 US states. The index compares each state’s capacity for achieving prosperity through scientific discovery and technological innovation, using the latest available data from US federal government and private-sector sources to perform a cross-sectional analysis of […]
Joanne Jacobs: Remote learning isn’t working, especially for younger children, but “normal” schooling wasn’t working well either, writes Erika Christakis, an early childhood educator, in The Atlantic. She envisions an alternative — year-round “pandemic camp” — to focus on children’s needs for “exercise, outdoor time, conversation, play, even sleep.” Parents should demand “a broader and deeper curriculum with more […]
Cary Coglianese, Gabriel Scheffler & Daniel Walters: At the center of contemporary debates over public law lies administrative agencies’ discretion to impose rules. Yet, for every one of these rules, there are also unrules nearby. Often overlooked and sometimes barely visible, unrules are the decisions that agencies make to lift or limit the scope of […]
Christopher Campos and Caitlin Kearns: This paper evaluates the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program in Los Angeles, a school choice initiative that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left traditional attendance zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We leverage this introduction to study the impact of neighborhood school […]
Jay Elwes: But what if left and right are both wrong? What if the system isn’t corrupt, as Corbyn suggests, and yet still leads to rampant inequality? What if some people pedal as hard as they can, and despite what Johnson says, they still can’t get to the top, even though they are intelligent and […]
Charles Hilu: The Health Department of Washtenaw County, which governs the University of Michigan, recently put Michigan undergraduates under a “stay-in-place” order for two weeks. Once the order had expired, cases had slightly fallen in students, but they rose in older, more vulnerable populations, data show. The October 20 order said “all U-M undergraduate students enrolled in […]
Scott Girard: The largest measures were here in Madison, where voters approved a total $350 million investment in the district. That includes $33 million in operating funds phased in over four years and $317 million for capital projects, including renovations to the four comprehensive high schools and a new elementary school. Statewide, 30 of the […]
Scott Girard: With wide margins of success on recent ballot measures, the Madison Metropolitan School District’s $350 million questions were almost certain to pass ahead of Tuesday’s ballot count. Four years ago, the district’s operating question won by a 74.2% to 25.8% margin, while a capital referendum the year prior passed with 82.2% of voters […]
Amelia Nierenberg: In San Francisco, restaurants, movie theaters and museums are open at reduced capacity. The share of coronavirus tests that come back positive in the city has stayed low since a surge over the summer. But as some of San Francisco’s private and parochial schools have begun to reopen their doors, its public school […]
Alana Abramson: The litigation landscape To the extent that it can be simplified, this year’s election-related legal brawls can be distilled into two groups: a push to eliminate expanded mail-in voting policies on the basis that they would produce unprecedented fraud, and a push to ease the restrictions already in place. The first battle, waged […]
Scott Girard: Immediately, the operating referendum approval means district officials can implement the “passing referendum budget,” which includes $6 million in extra funds. That will go toward initiatives including early literacy, Black Excellence and a slight base wage increase for staff. The School Board passed two versions of the 2020-21 budget Oct. 30, one for […]
Jay Greene: There has been a flurry of research recently claiming to find compelling causal evidence that increasing school spending would significantly improve student outcomes and avoiding cuts in spending would prevent significant harm. This research has been embraced so quickly as settled fact that over 400 researchers and advocates signed a group letter citing […]
Samantha West: Jordan Meulemans’ weekday routine used to begin at 6:30 a.m., when she would wake up and get ready for school. But for the past month, the De Pere High School junior’s days have looked starkly different. Meulemans rolls out of bed around 7:30 a.m., puts on some sweats, wakes her little sister, eats breakfast and […]
Chris Rickert: “There’s no room for dialogue. There’s no room for compromise,” he said. “It’s happening across the country. It’s not just Madison.” Every single day I am proud that I refused an endorsement interview with this trash ass publication. Omg, they really just are unapologetic piece of shit excuse for journalism. And don’t come […]
Scott Girard: Better communication between 4-year-old kindergarten teachers and their 5-year-old kindergarten counterparts in the Madison Metropolitan School District could improve student outcomes in transitioning to kindergarten, a new report found. A Madison Education Partnership research brief released this month outlines some of the challenges facing teachers during student transitions from 4K to elementary school and offers […]
Vanessa Rancano: For as long as Connie LuVenia Williams can remember, letters have been giving her trouble. Sure, she learned the ABCs, but making sense of how these symbols we call letters combine to form the sounds that make up the English language – that part stumped her. And from what she remembers nobody taught […]
5.7MB PDF. 2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results. My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results “An emphasis on adult employment” Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison […]
The Economist: Ten years ago Peter Turchin, a scientist at the University of Connecticut, made a startling prediction in Nature. “The next decade is likely to be a period of growing instability in the United States and western Europe,” he asserted, pointing in part to the “overproduction of young graduates with advanced degrees”. The subsequent […]
Chris Stewart: This past Sunday my 8 Black Hands crew did a show on the missing importance of school boards, and then this article pops up saying the National School Boards Association (NSBA) has launched a campaign called “Public School Transformation Now!” The goal, flimsy as ever, is to “bring equity issues front and center.” […]
Will Flanders: The results for the 2019 administration of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) have just been released. The NAEP is given to samples of students around the country on a biannual basis and provides the best method for comparing performance among students in different states. Unfortunately for Wisconsin, the story is yet another riff […]
Eli Lehrer & Skip Stitt: America’s labor movement has become increasingly concentrated in the public sector. As a result, modern debates about formal labor relations often take for granted that many of the workers involved are government workers. For people holding public office in much of the country, building relationships with these public-sector unions has […]
Scott Girard: As the Madison School Board is set to consider a vote on two 2020-21 budgets next Monday, the final proposals do not include the maximum base wage increase Madison Teachers Inc. has pushed for. The board must approve two spending measures: a $495.7 million version in case the Nov. 3 operating referendum passes […]
Todd Richmond: new study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison suggests that the state’s high school sports have not caused an increase in COVID-19 infections among athletes. The UW School of Medicine and Public Health released the study Thursday. Researchers led by Dr. Andrew Watson surveyed 207 schools that restarted fall sports in September, representing more […]
Charles Blain, Wendell Cox and Joel Kotkin: Really? California, well known for its wealth, had the sixth highest median household income in the nation in 2019, yet has had the highest housing-cost-adjusted poverty rate among the states since data was first published in 2011.2 A net 2.4 million residents left California between 2000 and 2019, […]
Ola Lisowski: Voters will consider nearly $1.2 billion in property tax increases in the November election, thanks to school district referenda. Taxpayers in 41 school districts across the state will consider a total of 51 questions on their ballots for projects ranging from brand new buildings, upgrades to existing facilities and permission to spend beyond […]
The Economist: People were hungry during lockdown. So Francis Zaake, a Ugandan member of parliament, bought some rice and sugar and had it delivered to his neediest constituents. For this charitable act, he was arrested. Mr Zaake is a member of the opposition, and Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has ordered that only the government may […]
David Wahlberg: Suicides are up in Dane County this year compared to last year, especially among youth and young adults, with mental health providers seeing a link to COVID-19 and a related uptick in treatment for depression. The county had 57 suicides this year as of last week, more than the total of 54 for […]
Andres Fonseca: There’s a lot to unpack. Grade levels haven’t strictly decreased: 2008 saw a level of debate not seen in 20 years. The decline isn’t recent: there is a drastic difference between pre- and post- Reagan debates. Only 8 (of 33) debates saw a republican speak at a higher grade level than their opponent. […]
CBS2: Hundreds of teachers are taking a sick day for Monday, according to the West Ada School District, one day after the board voted in favor of a hybrid schedule. A spokeswoman for the district says out of 2,145 classroom teachers, 652 have taken a sick day for Monday. The sick calls leave approximately 500 […]
Howard Blume and Laura Newberry: As parents express widespread dissatisfaction with distance learning, two influential California teachers unions are pushing against growing momentum to reopen schools in many communities, saying that campuses are not yet safe enough amid the pandemic. Leaders with the California Teachers Assn., with 300,000 members, and United Teachers Los Angeles, representing […]
Emily Hanford: The author of one of the nation’s most influential and widely used curriculum for teaching reading is beginning to change her views. The group headed by Lucy Calkins, a leading figure in the long-running fight over how best to teach children to read, is admitting that its materials need to be changed to […]
Today I issued a statement on the need for our School District to focus on reopening our public schools, not renaming them. To address inequities, we need to get our kids back in the classroom. pic.twitter.com/nHnauVZzFe — London Breed (@LondonBreed) October 16, 2020 Related: Frustrated Middleton-Cross Plains parent group calls (school board) recall effort a […]
Elizabeth Beyer: She said the curriculum offered to students was not intended to be delivered digitally and her children now have online meetings with their teachers for five hours each week compared to 30 hours of live teaching prior to the pandemic. “We need to give parents options so those who feel safe sending their […]
Natalie Grover: People with poor numerical literacy are more likely to believe Covid-19 misinformation, according to a survey conducted in five countries. Researchers at Cambridge University said the findings suggested improving people’s analytical skills could help turn the tide against an epidemic of “fake news” surrounding the health crisis. Five national surveys – reflecting national […]
Charlotte Alter: A lifetime ago, on Sept. 14, Greg Vanlandeghem sat outside a café in Holly, Mich., and explained to me that he planned to vote for the President’s re-election because he saw the race as a contest between two bad options. “We’ve got a guy trying not to die,” he told me, “and we’ve […]
Zoe Kirsch: For Brooklyn parent Priscilla Santos, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s Tuesday announcement that he was releasing his own plan for temporary New York City COVID-related school closures dispelled any lingering remnants of faith she had in political leadership after a bleak, confusing summer. Santos is the special education representative for her district’s Community […]
Hi, I’m cap tines K-12 education reporter Scott Gerard. Today. Our cap times IDFs panel will discuss how will COVID-19 change K-12 education. I’m lucky to have three wonderful panelists with me to help answer that question. Marilee McKenzie is a teacher at Middleton’s Clark street community school, where she has worked since the school was in its planning stages.
She’s in her [00:03:00] 11th year of teaching. Dr. Gloria Ladson billings is a nationally recognized education expert who was a U w Madison faculty member for more than 26 years, including as a professor in the departments of curriculum and instruction, educational policy studies and educational leadership and policy analysis.
She is also the current president of the national Academy of education. Finally dr. Carlton Jenkins is the new superintendent of the Madison metropolitan school district. He started the districts top job in August, coming from the Robbinsdale school district in Minnesota, where he worked for the past five years, Jenkins began his career in the Madison area.
Having worked in Beloit and at Memorial high school in early 1990s before moving to various districts around the country. Thank you all so much for being here. Mary Lee, I’m going to start with you. You’ve been working with students directly throughout this pandemic. How has it gone? Both in the spring when changes were very sudden, and then this fall with a summer to reflect and [00:04:00] plan, it’s been interesting for sure.
Um, overall, I would say the it’s been hard. There has been nothing about this have been like, ah, It’s really, it makes my life easy. It’s been really challenging. And at the same time, the amount of growth and learning that we’ve been able to do as staff has been incredible. And I think about how teachers have moved from face-to-face to online to then planning for.
Emily Oster: In early August, the first kids in America went back to school during the pandemic. Many of these openings happened in areas where cases were high or growing: in Georgia, Indiana, Florida. Parents, teachers, and scientists feared what might happen next. The New York Times reported that, in parts of Georgia, a school […]
Alfred Ng: There are few things as revealing as a person’s search history, and police typically need a warrant on a known suspect to demand that sensitive information. But a recently unsealed court document found that investigators can request such data in reverse order by asking Google to disclose everyone who searched a keyword rather […]