Search Results for: Mary Burke
Comments On The Madison School District’s Third “Annual Report”
Doug Erickson: The annual report is a selective rather than exhaustive view of the district, with only some grades and some demographic groups highlighted in detail. The report cited proficiency rates in reading at grade 3 and reading and math in grades 5 and 8, as measured by the Measures of Academic Progress exam, which […]
Madison Schools Should Apply Act 10
Mitch Henck: This is Madison. I learned that phrase when I moved here from Green Bay in 1992. It means that the elites who drive the politics and the predominate culture are more liberal or “progressive” than backward places out state. I knew I was in Madison as a reporter when parents and activists were […]
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: No end in sight to Wisconsin’s politics of resentment
Paul Fanlund A nationwide exit poll on Election Day revealed that 70 percent viewed the economy as “not so good” or “poor.” Only 22 percent thought life for the next generation would be better than for this one. Second, because those with the most education are doing better (and Madison is jammed with academic elites) […]
Elections, Rhetoric & Madison’s Planned $454,000,000 2014-2015 Budget That Features a 4.2% Property Tax Increase
Molly Beck: Mary Burke faces a key vote on the Madison School Board on Monday a week before the gubernatorial election: whether or not to back a $454 million budget that raises taxes and delivers a 1 percent base pay raise to teachers. Burke, challenging incumbent Gov. Scott Walker in a tight race, declined Tuesday […]
Commentary on 0.0015% of Wisconsin K-12 spending over the past 10 years
Molly Beck: Over the past 10 years, Wisconsin taxpayers have paid about $139 million to private schools that were subsequently barred from the state’s voucher system for failing to meet requirements related to finances, accreditation, student safety and auditing, a State Journal review has found. More than two-thirds of the 50 schools terminated from the […]
Opponents to N.J.’s Urban Hope Act keep changing their arguments
Laura Waters Charter school opponents were in mourning this week after they failed to derail a set of amendments to a 2012 bill called the Urban Hope Act that permits the opening of hybrid district/charter schools in Camden, Trenton, and Newark. Save Our Schools-N.J., Education Law Center, and New Jersey Education Association had mounted a […]
Election Grist: Madison Teachers Inc. has been a bad corporate citizen for too long
David Blaska: Teachers are some of our most dedicated public servants. Many inspiring educators have changed lives for the better in Madison’s public schools. But their union is a horror. Madison Teachers Inc. has been a bad corporate citizen for decades. Selfish, arrogant, and bullying, it has fostered an angry, us-versus-them hostility toward parents, taxpayers, […]
Madison’s Lengthy K-12 Challenges Become Election Grist; Spends 22% more per student than Milwaukee
Madison 2005 (reflecting 1998): When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As […]
Commentary on the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Recent Act 10 Decision
Janesville Gazette: Is it good policy? Perhaps Act 10 was an overreach with its union-busting provisions, but it addressed a fiscal need in Wisconsin and the school districts and municipalities that receive state aid. Public employee benefits had become overly generous and burdensome on employers, and Act 10 addressed that by requiring employees to contribute […]
Madison Schools Propose a $24,000,000 Maintenance Referendum & Property Tax Increase; above $402M budget; 4%+ tax increase looms
The Madison School District (1.4MB PDF). “All elementary boundaries are due for a long term review”. Agreed. A look at the maps below along with the wide demographic variation across Madison public public schools indicates that addressing boundaries is job #2 – after dealing with the long term disastrous reading results. Going to referendum prior […]
Wisconsin Gubernatorial candidate Act 10 Commentary
Matthew DeFour: Mary Burke, who has already been endorsed by more than a dozen of the state’s largest private- and public-sector unions, said she supports making wages, hours, benefits and working conditions mandatory subjects of bargaining for public employees. She called the annual elections, the prohibition on requiring union dues of all employees, and a […]
Madison Teachers, Inc. Contract Ratification Meeting – Tuesday, June 3!
MTI Website: This meeting is scheduled to consider ratification of Contract terms for 2015-16 for all five MTI bargaining units. This is a membership meeting. 2013-14 membership cards are required for admission. Those who need assistance with membership issues, and those who are not members at this time and wish to join to enable participation […]
25.62% of Madison’s $402,464,374 2014/2015 budget to be spent on benefits; District’s Day of Teacher Union Collective Bargaining; WPS déjà vu
The Madison School Board Act 10 duckduckgo google wikipedia Madison Teachers, Inc. Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email:: School Board Decisions on Employee Health Insurance Contributions Could Further Reduce Wages Under MTI’s various Collective Bargaining Agreements, the District currently pays 100% of the health insurance premiums for both single […]
Commentary & Votes on The Madison School Board’s Collective Bargaining Plans
Pat Schnieder: Maybe the formal deliberations on strategy don’t start until a closed session of the Madison School Board on Thursday, May 15, but engagement over a proposed extension of the teachers contract already has begun. School board member Ed Hughes is stirring the pot with his remarks that the contract should not be extended […]
Local, National & Global School Voucher Perspectives
Matthew DeFour on Madison School Board Member and Gubernatorial Candidate Mary Burke: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke said Tuesday that if elected, she would eliminate the new statewide voucher program and private school tax deduction in the next budget. Burke, a Madison School Board member, previously said she didn’t support the statewide voucher program. In […]
A few links on the April, 2014 Madison School Board Election & Climate, 1 contested seat, 1 uncontested
Interview with MMSD School Board candidate Wayne Strong Safe schools and high academic achievement: High academic achievement, for Strong, means that all of our MMSD students are achieving to the fullest extent of their abilities. “Whether you are a TAG [Talented and Gifted] or a special-needs student or whether you are a middleof- the-road student, […]
Madison Schools’ Referendum & Possible Boundary Change Commentary
Molly Beck: Even though expanding eight schools is only part of the plan, “if there’s any one (school) that looks particularly challenging to explain,” Hughes said, “we know that will be what the opponents of the referendum will latch onto. … We are going to have to be able to work through that and decide […]
Kill the bill that would let politicians muck around with Common Core standards, says education dean
Pat Schneider Tim Slekar, the dean of education at Edgewood College and outspoken critic of corporate-driven education “reform,” couldn’t read another word about Wisconsin GOP legislators’ plan to rewrite the state’s educational standards without saying something about it. “Someone has to say it: Any bill that would allow politicians the ability to directly and/or indirectly […]
The Bigger Picture on MMSD School Board Conflicts of Interest
I found the recent Wisconsin State Journal article on the school board elections and Nichelle Nichols’ Urban League employment odd and at the same time interesting. When I was elected in 2006, there was a well established practice that board members would abstain from both discussion and voting if there was a conflict of interest […]
Madison school board candidates Arlene Silveira and Nichelle Nichols discuss tests, teacher evaluation, and No Child Left Behind
School board elections are usually sleepy affairs.
But the proposal this year for Madison Prep, a single-gender charter school, has sparked a lively, and sometimes controversial, conversation about one of the most pressing problems facing Madison schools: the achievement gap between students of color and their white peers. The debate has, in turn, sparked interest in the school board.
In the race for Seat 1, two-term incumbent Arlene Silveira is being challenged by Nichelle Nichols, who works at the Urban League of Greater Madison, the main sponsor of Madison Prep.
While there are an unprecedented number of candidate forums and listening sessions under way, we thought we’d pose our own questions to candidates. We focus on evaluation this week, of students, teachers, schools, and the district. What is the importance of student test scores, and how do they reflect upon teachers? What is the impact of No Child Left Behind on Madison schools?
A public hospital in Portland is using a robot to create artificial genitalia.
Christopher Rufo Following the French Revolution, the British philosopher Edmund Burke signaled a note of caution, warning that the desire for progress, uninhibited by convention, can lead to disaster. Revolutions in the name of lofty ideals—liberty, equality, science—can yield their opposites. A revolution in our time merits similar consideration: the transformation of human sexuality and, […]
“They advised schools to no longer send any notification of exposure, but rather advise parents to simply keep an eye out for symptoms”
Jill Tucker: On Friday, Marin County health officials, noting that 1 in 20 to 25 county residents is currently infected with COVID-19, announced a similar recommendation. They advised schools to no longer send any notification of exposure, but rather advise parents to simply keep an eye out for symptoms. The North Bay county also went […]
America’s Graduation rate malfeasance
Brandon Wright: Recent stories have cast doubt on the stratospheric graduation rates reported in myriad states, including accounts in Alabama, California, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, Texas—and of course Washington, D.C., where one-third of recently awarded diplomas are reportedly attributable to educators violating district policies related to pupil absences and credit recovery. These are […]
Healthcare Costs & The Madison School District
Pat Schneider: “I will consider contributions to health care, depending on what we see in terms of costs and the budget,” Burke said. “But we need to look at compensation in its entirety to make sure we remain competitive while we are accountable to the taxpayers.” The school district is in the process of preparing […]
Commentary on Status Quo K-12 Structures vs. Vouchers
Molly Beck: im Bender, president of voucher advocacy group School Choice Wisconsin, said Burke’s comments were misleading because funding for the voucher program comes from state general purpose revenue. “You can’t talk about taking money away from K-12, unless you believe that money belongs to K-12,” Bender said. “It’s not possessive of any one particular […]
Social Studies Standards: “Doing” Common Core Social Studies: Promoting Radical Activism under the Obama Department of Education
“Were the Common Core authors serious about ‘college-readiness,’ they would have taken their cue from publisher Will Fitzhugh, who for decades has been swimming against the tide of downgraded writing standards (blogging, journal-writing, video-producing). To this end, he has been publishing impressive student history papers in his scholarly journal, The Concord Review. The new (CC) […]
School Board Property Tax Increase Votes and State Politics
So I get why Burke was the only board member to vote against a tax-raising, 2013-2014 school district budget.
Still, just once I’d like to see a candidate throw caution to the wind and mount a data-based defense of good, if politically unwise, choices. If voters don’t buy it, well then they deserve what they get.
Burke explained her latest no vote on the budget last week by saying the district needs to consider whether salary increases for district residents are keeping up with school district tax increases.
To back up that concern, Burke provided me with a May 1 news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showing that in Dane County, residents saw a 3.9 percent drop in average weekly wages between the third quarter of 2011 and the third quarter of 2012.
I did a little more digging and found that wages also dropped by 0.1 percent between the second quarter of 2011 and the second quarter of 2012, and by 0.3 percent between the first quarters of 2012 and 2013.
Nevertheless, a broader view of the most recent available data suggests her concern is largely unfounded.
The BLS reported that wages were up 7.7 percent and 5.9 percent respectively, in the first and fourth quarters of last year – essentially wiping out, and then some, the wage decreases.
Plus, over the most recent 10 years for which data are available, personal income and per-capita income in Dane County rose, on an average annual basis, by 4.29 percent and 2.92 percent, respectively, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis.
By contrast, next year’s school district budget raises taxes on the average homeowner by 2.5 percent, and over the past 10 years, the average annual school district tax increase has been 1.75 percent.
If anything, district tax increases aren’t keeping up with district residents’ ability to pay them.
Despite the old tax-and-spend myth frequently pinned on liberal Dane County, the school district isn’t unique, either, at least when it comes to Madison and county government.
Mr. Rickert neglects to mention the changing composition of Wisconsin K-12 tax revenue sources. Redistributed state tax dollars grew substantially during the past few decades. That growth has now largely stopped. Absent a serious look at our agrarian era school organizations and practices, property tax & spending growth are going up annually.
Marin’s high school dropout rates among state’s lowest
Marin County continues to have one of the lowest high school dropout rates in California and that rate fell in the past year, even as the state’s overall dropout rate is on the rise.
The county’s rate of 1.4 percent for 2008-09 — the most recent year for which data are available — fell from the previous year’s rate of 1.8 percent, and is well below the state average of 4.5 percent, released Tuesday by the California Department of Education.
Marin school officials say they plan to continue working to eliminate the county’s dropout rate altogether.
“One student who drops out of school is one too many,” said Marin County Superintendent of Schools Mary Jane Burke. “The loss of any young person before their education is completed means a more difficult life for that student, and too often a loss of productivity and civic participation in our community.”
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 […]
