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Old, crumbling schools are, sadly, a Wisconsin tradition
Last week I walked into West High School for the first time since our daughter, Kate, graduated in 2001.
I’d been warned I might be taken aback by how much the place had changed in a decade. But in fact, I had the opposite reaction. Based on my few hours there, it doesn’t seem to have changed much at all.
It had the same delightful, eclectic, intellectual vibe and ethnic diversity one would expect at the public high school located nearest the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus.
Its student body of 2,100 — largest of the city’s four high schools — hails from 55 countries. It routinely has more semifinalists for National Merit Scholarships, 26 last year, than any school in Wisconsin.
Related: Madison School District maintenance referendums.
Teachers touch students’ lives
“I touch the future. I teach.”
Those were the words of Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher in space. Her life would ultimately end 73 seconds into flight, when the space shuttle Challenger broke apart after takeoff in 1986. Her words honored every teacher.
Two Wisconsin teachers were taken from us Oct. 9 in a tragic traffic accident: David Novaez, who taught German at Westosha Central High School in Salem, and his wife, Kristin, who taught chorus at Union Grove High School. Their deaths prompted outpourings of grief, gratitude and heart-felt memories from hundreds of their students.
The devotion to these two teachers is in sharp contrast to how their peers were treated this spring in Madison. Educators were subjected to degrading comments from politicians, pundits and the people. From insults as to their worth (“they are paid far too much”) to the demeaning of their profession, teachers had to endure the wrath of the public in the name of budget-cutting.
The Global Report: Compare US School Districts to the World
The Global Report Card, via a kind Chan Stroman-Roll email:
The Global Report Card was developed by Jay P. Greene and Josh B. McGee as part of the George W. Bush Institute’s Education Reform Initiative. The Bush Institute works to increase dramatically the number of American students who graduate high school ready for college or prepared for a good career by:
- cultivating a new generation of principals
- implementing cutting edge research
- advancing accountability
Driven by accountability and data, these initiatives challenge the status quo and lead a wide range of partners to share goals and use clear metrics tied to student achievement.
Summary of Methodology
The calculations begin by evaluating the distributions of student achievement at the state, national, and international level. To allow for direct comparisons across state and national borders, and thus testing instruments, we map all testing data to the standard normal curve using the appropriate student level mean and standard deviation. We then calculate at the lowest level of aggregation by estimating average district quality within each state. Each state’s average quality is evaluated then using national testing data. And finally, the average national quality is determined using international testing data. Essentially, this re-centers our distribution of district quality based upon the relative performance of the individual state when compared to the nation as a whole as well as the relative performance of the nation when compared to our economic competitors.
For example, the average student in Scarsdale School District in Westchester County, New York scored nearly one standard deviation above the mean for New York on the state’s math exam. The average student in New York scored six hundredths of a standard deviation above the national average of the NAEP exam given in the same year, and the average student in the United States scored about as far in the negative direction (-.055) from the international average on PISA. Our final index score for Scarsdale in 2007 is equal to the sum of the district, state, and national estimates (1+.06+ -.055 = 1.055). Since the final index score is expired in standard deviation units, it can easily be converted to a percentile for easy interpretation. In our example, Scarsdale would rank at the seventy seventh percentile internationally in math.
The Best United States School Districts (2007 Math data) [PDF].
Related: www.wisconsin2.org and 1990-2010 US High School & College Graduation Comparison.
Video games go viral at UW educational research lab
Upstairs in the Wisconsin Institutes for Discovery, scientists toil away in their labs researching everything from stem cells to viruses.
Downstairs, you’ll find a very different kind of laboratory. In cubicles and makeshift computer labs, a number of people sit behind their screens — playing games. They’re not nerds, they’re researchers.
OK, they are a bit nerdy and seem as glued to their screens as any game-crazed teenager. But there is science being done here, too. This is Susan Millar’s computer lab, the Educational Research Integration Area in the Morgridge Institute for Research, where researchers design and build games that help teach and communicate science — everything from the formation and perils of blue-green algae to the workings of viruses.
On a recent afternoon, in a darkened conference area, several programmers, designers and artists worked in the reflected blue light from their machines, racing to finish the newest version of one of the lab’s most successful and popular efforts, a game called Virulent that can be found in the iTunes store and boasts 2,000 downloads.
And it’s a game that doesn’t involve guns or race cars or football players. It’s about viruses.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The Geography of Jobs
Map Highlights
This animated map provides a striking visual of employment trends over the last business cycle using net change in jobs from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics on a rolling 12-month basis. We used this approach to provide the smoothest possible visual depiction of ongoing employment dynamics at the MSA level. By animating the data, the map highlights a number of concurrent trends leading up to the nation’s present economic crisis. The graphic highlights the 100 largest metropolitan areas so that regional trends can be more easily identified.
The timeline begins in 2004 as the country starts its recovery from the 2001 recession, following the bursting of the dot-com bubble. At first, broad economic growth was apparent across most of the country. Two notable exceptions are the Bay Area — the hub of the tech boom that drove job growth during the prior decade — and several metropolitan areas within the Midwest. The map reveals that much of the industrial Midwest never fully recovered from the previous recession, as manufacturers continue to shed jobs while other parts of the country were adding them in large number.
A rather spirited discussion of Madison school finances and spending priorities occurred during the recent last minute Board Meeting on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter school.
Superintendent Comments on Wisconsin School Budgets
In his rural district, which serves 249 students, the 2011-13 state budget has been nothing to celebrate. In fact, it has accelerated a difficult process of belt-tightening that’s been going on for almost 20 years due to revenue controls that have limited the amount districts can increase taxes to keep up with rising costs. The revenue controls hit some schools especially hard, especially those with declining enrollment, high-needs students or high property values. The new state budget’s huge reduction in overall aid for schools — $793 million over the biennium — accompanied by new limits on how much money districts can raise in property taxes to offset those losses — has, for many school districts, made a bad situation worse.
According to Quinton, Pepin parents are supportive of education, and he credits his School Board and staff for helping run “a tight financial ship.” Nonetheless, many of the district’s programs and services have been trimmed once again, from transportation to teaching staff, athletics to academic assistance for at-risk students. Paring back has been a way of life in Pepin for many years, Quinton says, but the newest round of losses caused by this budget cut to the bone.
Related: 
Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding and K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Wisconsin State and Local Debt Rose Faster Than Federal Debt During 1990-2009 Average Annual Increase in State Debt, 7.8%; Local Debt, 7.3%
Wisconsin’s essential challenge is to grow the economy. We’ve been falling behind Minnesota for decades.
Siobhan Hughes:
The U.S. economy will have another big budget deficit in fiscal 2011 and faces at least a couple more years of sluggish growth, as the effects of the recent recession persist, government forecasters said Wednesday.
The Congressional Budget Office projected a deficit of almost $1.3 trillion for fiscal 2011. Though that will mark the third straight year of deficits above $1 trillion, the deficit forecast was a slight improvement from the almost $1.4 trillion estimated in an April analysis and reflected higher-than-anticipated revenue from individual income taxes.
The outlook for the U.S. economy also remains challenging, with growth expected to remain too slow this year and next year to make a big dent in the unemployment rate. The jobless rate will fall to 8.9% by the end of calendar 2011 and 8.5% by the end of 2012, the forecast said, as the economy grows by 2.3% this year and 2.7% next year, measured from fourth quarter to fourth quarter.
Ranking America’s High Schools; Challenging All Students
Since 1998, The Post’s Jay Mathews has ranked Washington-area public high schools using the Challenge Index, his measure of how effectively a school prepares its students for college. In 2011, the Post expanded its research to high schools across the United States.
The formula is simple: Divide the number of Advanced Placement, International Baccalaureate or other college-level tests a school gave in 2010 by the number of graduating seniors. While not a measure of the overall quality of the school, the rating can reveal the level of a high school’s commitment to preparing average students for college.
Jay Matthews: Behold the power of challenging all high school students — not just the A team
West Potomac High School in Fairfax County and Oakland Mills High School in Howard County are as close as schools come to being twins. Both are in affluent counties and serve ethnically and economically diverse populations. Forty-seven percent of West Potomac students and 52 percent of Oakland Mills students are black or Hispanic. Thirty-eight percent at West Potomac and 31 percent at Oakland Mills are from low-income families.
But when I indulge in my obsessive comparison of schools by their college-level course programs, significant differences emerge. Oakland Mills often bars students from taking Advanced Placement classes if they don’t have B’s in previous courses. West Potomac lets in everyone who signs up and pays the test fees. The AP test participation rate at West Potomac is three times what it is at Oakland Mills, but the passing rate on tests at the Fairfax school is lower: 61 percent, compared with 78 percent at Oakland Mills.
Middleton is the only Madison area high school to make the list.
In Kansas City, tackling education’s status quo “We’re not an Employment Agency, We’re a School District”
John Covington hesitated before becoming this city’s 26th school superintendent in 40 years. A blunt-talking African American from Alabama, he attended the Broad Superintendents Academy in Los Angeles, which prepares leaders for urban school districts, and when he asked people there if he should come here, their response, he says, was: “Not ‘no,’ but ‘Hell, no!’ ” He says they suggested that when flying across the country he should take a flight that does not pass through this city’s airspace.
How did this pleasant place become so problematic? Remember the destination of the road paved with good intentions.
This city is just 65 miles down the road from Topeka, Kan., from whence came Brown v. Board of Education , the fuse that lit many ongoing struggles over schools and race. Kansas City has had its share of those struggles, one of which occurred last year when Covington took office with a big bang: He closed 26 of the district’s 61 schools. Kansas City had fewer students but twice as many schools as Pueblo, Colo., where Covington had been superintendent.
Thirty-five years ago, Kansas City’s district had 54,000 students. Today it has fewer than 17,000. Between then and now there was a spectacular confirmation of the axiom that education cannot be improved by simply throwing money at it.
In the 1980s, after a court held that the city was operating a segregated school system, judicial Caesarism appeared. A judge vowed to improve the district’s racial balance by luring white students to lavish “magnet schools” offering “suburban comparability” and “desegregative attractiveness.” And he ordered tax increases to pay the almost $2 billion bill for, among other things, an Olympic-size swimming pool, a planetarium, vivariums, greenhouses, a model United Nations wired for language translation, radio and television studios, an animation and editing lab, movie editing and screening rooms, a temperature-controlled art gallery, a 25-acre farm, a 25-acre wildlife area, instruction in cosmetology and robotics, field trips to Mexico and Senegal, and more.
Related: Money And School Performance:
Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment:
For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, “You can’t solve educational problems by throwing money at them.” The education establishment and its supporters have replied, “No one’s ever tried.” In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.
Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil–more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers’ salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.
The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.
The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can’t be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.
Former Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater served in Kansas City prior to taking a position with the local schools.
Sick leave disciplinary records reveal Oshkosh teachers’ split opinions over union law fight
A split in teachers’ opinions over appropriate responses to an explosive state collective bargaining law resonates through disciplinary records released by the Oshkosh school district last week.
The records obtained by The Northwestern include forms signed by 86 employees who admitted they called in sick on Feb. 17 and 18 to join protests in Madison as well as a discipline settlement with teachers’ union president Len Herricks, who incorrectly told staff members that district administration would condone calling in sick to attend the protests.
Comments hand-written by educators on many of the records show a range of regret, defiance and confusion felt by rank-and-file employees caught in a whirlwind of political rhetoric and polarization.
Real horsepower comes to Boys & Girls Club
The six-horse rig Jason Goodman drove through south Madison late Wednesday stopped traffic, but few drivers seemed to mind, instead waving, grinning, giving thumbs up and taking pictures on cell phones.
Mammoth black Percheron draft horses, each weighing over a ton, provided the horsepower for a heavy-duty wagon that rumbled out of the Alliant Energy Center grounds, up West Badger Road, right on Park Street, right on Buick and then into Penn Park. For the next couple of hours, about 100 kids from the Boys and Girls Club got a chance to see the powerful horses — Bud, Barney, Hank, Titan, Shaq and Rock — up close and personal.
The horses, wagon, driver and handlers are part of the Texas Thunder traveling equine show, scheduled to perform several times a day at the Midwest Horse Fair, which began Friday and continues through Sunday at the Alliant Energy Center.
The College Board Honors 4 Districts with Advanced Placement District of the Year Awards:
Districts in Chicago; Tampa, Fla.; Hudson County, N.J.; and San Bernadino, Calif. to Be Recognized at the AP® Annual Conference in July
AP Achievement List of 388 school districts that have had similar successes.
“These districts are defying expectations by expanding access while improving scores,” said College Board President Gaston Caperton. “They are experimenting with initiatives and strategies that have driven increases in average exam scores when making AP available to a much broader and more diverse student population. Over the next two months we will work closely with each of the AP District of the Year winners to document what they are doing so we can share their best practices with all members of the AP community.”
Wisconsin Districts that achieved recognition:
Appleton Area School District
Columbus School District
D C Everest Area School District
Diocese of Madison Education Office
Germantown School District
Green Bay Area Public Schools
Kimberly Area School District
Marshfield School District
Menomonie Area School District
Middleton-Cross Plains Schools
Monroe School District
Mt Horeb Area School District
Mukwonago Area School District
School District of Hudson
School District of Rhinelander
Stevens Point Area Public School District
Trevor-Wilmot Consolidated School District
Watertown Unified School District
Wauwatosa School District
West Bend School District
Study finds funding gap between D.C. specialty and neighborhood schools
The two public high schools, 21/2 miles apart in Northwest Washington, serve vastly different student populations. And they do it with vastly different levels of financial support, according to an analysis of school spending by a District advocacy group.
School Without Walls accepts only the city’s most accomplished students after a competitive application process that requires interviews with prospective parents as well. More than 700 students are vying for 120 spots in next year’s ninth-grade class. Those who are admitted will attend classes in a freshly renovated vintage building on the George Washington University campus. District funds per student: $10,257.
Cardozo, near 13th Street and Florida Avenue, is a neighborhood high school that takes all comers in an attendance area that includes about a dozen group homes and homeless shelters. Parole officers and social workers are sometimes the only adults who appear at the school on students’ behalf. The wiring in the cavernous 1916 building was so bad a couple of years ago that when all of the computers were turned on, power in half of the school would go out, said Principal Gwendolyn Grant.
District funds per student: $7,453.
Locally, the Madison School District’s 2010-2011 budget, according to the “State of the Madison School District Report” is $379,058,945. Enrollment is 24,471 which yields per student spending of $15,490.12.
Educating the Mayor
I learned Mayor is having an informational briefing tomorrow morning about charter schools. It will be done by two staff from the Center for Reinventing Public Education from UW. Now this is fine but I will say that the CRPE is not exactly neutral on charters (the majority of their research is around it with them being in the pro column). Of course, it is a little odd use of time in a state that has no charter law and has turned it down three times.
When I saw the e-mail yesterday, I called and asked if I could come and listen. The staffer was very nice, said no and then said he would check. I was told today, sorry but no.
The issue isn’t so much that I can’t go. I’m sure there won’t be any other media there but I operate on the “it doesn’t hurt to ask” policy.
Speaking of Mayors, I’ve invited the four candidates for Madison Mayor to chat about education topics. Should they respond affirmatively, I will post the video conversations here.
‘Embedded honors’ program has issues
The controversy at West High School continues about the Madison School District’s new talented and gifted program. Students, parents and teachers decry the plan, pointing to the likelihood of a “tracking” system and increasingly segregated classes.
While I am in agreement with them here, I must differ when they mistakenly point to the current “embedded honors” system as a preferable method for dealing with TAG students.
The idea itself should immediately raise red flags. Teaching two classes at the same time is impossible to do well, if at all. Forcing teachers to create twice the amount of curriculum and attempt to teach both within a single context is unrealistic and stressful for the educators.
The system creates problems for students as well. There is very little regulation in the execution of these “embedded honors” classes, creating widely varying experiences among students. By trying to teach to two different levels within one classroom, “embedded honors” divides teachers’ attention and ultimately impairs the educational experiences of both groups of students.
While the concerns raised about Superintendent Dan Nerad’s plan are legitimate, “embedded honors” as a solution is not.
Lots of related links:
- “Stand Up Against the MMSD High School Reform”
- Madison school district to consider alternatives to traditional public schools
- Advanced Placement, Gifted Education & A Hometown Debate
- On the Gifted & Talented Complaint Against the Madison School District
- Madison School District 2010-2011 Enrollment Report, Including Outbound Open Enrollment (3.11%)
- Complaint Filed Against Madison Schools
- English 10
- District Small Learning Community Grant – Examining the Data From Earlier Grants, pt. 2
- The Mess at West (updated)
- Laurie Frost and Lorie Raihala: Issues at West High are long-standing
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Many Dane County property owners face higher tax bills
Many Dane County residents are facing higher property tax bills this month as the growth of new property hasn’t kept up with higher government spending.
“We’re in a falling value market,” said David Worzala, Dane County treasurer. Taxpayers experienced similar conditions last year, but in this tax cycle “it’s more pronounced,” he said.
Before 2009, new construction and a growing tax base helped reduce the tax hit resulting from spending by schools, local governments and other taxing authorities.
The deadline for residents to pay at least half of their property taxes is Jan. 31.
In Dane County, bills cover municipal and county government, K-12 schools and Madison Area Technical College. Some municipalities add special charges for trash collection or recycling, improvements to streets or sidewalks, or unpaid bills.
School districts across the Green Bay and Appleton areas raised property taxes an average of 3.8 percent compared with last year, slightly higher than the 3.4 percent statewide average.
In Brown County school districts, increases range from 2.9 percent in De Pere and Pulaski to 12.3 percent in West De Pere, according to the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance, a government watchdog group that crunched the tax numbers and released them this week. Only the Ashwaubenon district didn’t increase its tax levy.
Each of the six districts based in Brown County is taxing to the limit allowed by the state this year.
Wisconsin Education Superintendent Seeks 2-4% annual increases in redistributed state tax dollars, introduction of a poverty formula and a shift in Property Tax Credits
Many links as the school finance jockeying begins, prior to Governor Scott Walker’s January, 2011 inauguration. Wisconsin’s $3,000,000,000 deficit (and top 10 debt position) makes it unlikely that the K-12 world will see any funding growth.
Matthew DeFour
Evers plan relies on a 2 percent increase in school aid funding next year and a 4 percent increase the following year, a tough sell given the state’s $3 billion deficit and the takeover of state government by Republicans, who have pledged budget cuts.
One major change calls for the transfer of about $900 million in property tax credits to general aid, which Evers said would make the system more transparent while having a negligible impact on property taxes. That’s because the state imposes a limit on how much a district can raise its total revenue. An increase in state aid revenue would in most cases be offset by a decrease in the other primary revenue — property taxes.
Thus the switch would mean school districts wouldn’t have such large annual property tax increases compared to counties, cities and other municipalities, even though tax bills would remain virtually the same, said Todd Berry, executive director of the Wisconsin Taxpayers Alliance.
“Distributing the money through the school aid formula, from a pure policy sense, is probably more equitable than distributing it in its current tax credit form,” Berry said. “The money will tend to help districts that tend to be poorer or middle-of-the-road.”
Inequities in the current system tend to punish public schools in areas like Madison and Wisconsin’s northern lake districts because they have high property values combined with high poverty and special needs in their school populations. The current system doesn’t account for differences in kids’ needs when it doles out state aid.
Education policy makers as well as politicians on both sides of the aisle have talked school funding reform for over a dozen years but it’s been a tough sell because most plans have created a system of winners and losers, pitting legislator against legislator, district against district.
Evers’ plan, which calls for a 2 percent increase in school aid funding next year and a 4 percent increase the following year, as well as a transfer of about $900 million in property tax credits to general aid, addresses that issue of winners and losers. Over 90 percent of districts are receiving more funding under his proposal. But there aren’t any district losers in Evers’ plan, either, thanks to a provision that requests a tenth of a percent of the total state K-12 schools budget — $7 million — to apply to districts facing a revenue decline.
Wisconsin State and Local Debt Rose Faster Than Federal Debt During 1990-2009 Average Annual Increase in State Debt, 7.8%; Local Debt, 7.3%
Rewrite of Wisconsin school aid formula has cost
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction:
The following printout provides school district level information related to the impact of State Superintendent Evers’ Fair Funding proposal.
Specifically, the attachment to this document shows what each school district is receiving from the state for the following programs: (1) 2010-11 Certified General Aid; (2) 2009-10 School Levy Tax Credit; and (3) 2010-11 High Poverty Aid.
This information is compared to the potential impact of the State Superintendent’s Fair Funding proposal, which is proposed to be effective in 2012-13, as if it had applied to 2010-11.
Specifically, the Fair Funding Proposal contains the following provisions:
But the plan also asks for $420 million more over the next two years – a 2% increase in funding from the state for the 2011-’12 school year and 4% more for the following year – making it a tough sell in the Legislature.
State Sen. Alberta Darling (R-River Hills), who will co-chair the powerful Joint Finance Committee, said she considered the proposal pretty much dead on arrival in the state Legislature, which will be under Republican control next year, without further changes.
“I think those goals are very admirable,” said Darling, who has been briefed on the plan. “But, you know, it’s a $6 billion budget just for education alone and we don’t have the new money. I think we have to do better with less. That’s just where we are.”
On Friday, Governor-elect Scott Walker said his office had only recently received the proposal from the DPI and he had not had time to delve into its details or to speak with Evers. He said he hoped to use his budget to introduce proposals that would help school districts to control their costs, such as freeing them from state mandates and allowing school boards to switch their employees to the state health plan.
The Six Major Components of the MMSD High School Plan
Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes
In an earlier post, I provided my understanding of the background of the protest at West High about the proposal for changes in the District’s high school curriculum. I explained how the proposal was an outgrowth of the work that has gone on at the high schools for the last few years under the auspices of a federal grant, known as the REaL grant (for Relationships, Engagement and Learning).
That proposal, which will affect all four of the District’s comprehensive high schools and is now known as the High School Career and College Readiness Plan, has since evolved somewhat, partially in response to the feedback that has been received and partially as a consequence of thinking the proposals through a bit more.
Here is where things currently stand.
The high school proposal should start a conversation that could last for a few years regarding a long-term, systematic review of our curriculum and the way it is delivered to serve the interests of all learners. What’s currently on the table is more limited in scope, though it is intended to serve as the foundation for later work.
The principal problem the proposal is meant to address is that we currently don’t have any district-defined academic standards at the high school level. There is no established set of expectations for what skills students should be learning in each subject area each year. Since we don’t have any basic expectations, we also don’t have any specific and consistent goals for accelerated learning. A corollary of this is that we really don’t have many ways to hold a teacher accountable for the level of learning that goes on in his or her classroom. Also, we lack a system of assessments that would let us know how our students are progressing through high school.
Lots of related links:
- “Stand Up Against the MMSD High School Reform”
- Madison school district to consider alternatives to traditional public schools
- Advanced Placement, Gifted Education & A Hometown Debate
- On the Gifted & Talented Complaint Against the Madison School District
- Madison School District 2010-2011 Enrollment Report, Including Outbound Open Enrollment (3.11%)
- Complaint Filed Against Madison Schools
- English 10
- District Small Learning Community Grant – Examining the Data From Earlier Grants, pt. 2
- Watch, listen or read an interview with UW-Madison Education Professor Adam Gamoran.
Response to WSJ Article: More Background, Additional Information, Long History of Advocacy
On Sunday, November 7, the Wisconsin State Journal featured a front-page article about the Madison School District’s Talented and Gifted education services: “TAG, they’re it.” The story describes parents’ frustration with the pace of reform since the Board of Education approved the new TAG Plan in August, 2009. It paints the TAG Plan as very ambitious and the parents as impatient-perhaps unreasonable-to expect such quick implementation.
The article includes a “Complaint Timeline” that starts with the approval of the TAG Plan, skips to the filing of the complaint on September 20, and proceeds from there to list the steps of the DPI audit.
Unfortunately, neither this timeline nor the WSJ article conveys the long history leading up to the parents’ complaint. This story did not start with the 2009 TAG Plan. Rather, the 2009 TAG Plan came after almost two decades of the District violating State law for gifted education.
To provide better background, we would like to add more information and several key dates to the “Complaint Timeline.”
November 2005: West High School administrators roll out their plan for English 10 at a PTSO meeting. Most of the 70 parents in attendance object to the school eliminating English electives and imposing a one-size-for-all curriculum on all students. Parents ask administrators to provide honors sections of English 10. They refuse. Parents ask administrators to evaluate and fix the problems with English 9 before implementing the same approach in 10th grade. They refuse. Parents appeal to the BOE to intervene; they remain silent. Meanwhile, parents have already been advocating for years to save the lone section of Accelerated Biology at West.
Well Worth Reading: Wisconsin needs two big goals
Having worked some 40 years in the business world, mostly abroad, with many leaders in business, politics and religion, I believe the most important ingredient for success is setting one or two ambitious, long-term goals that are routinely and publicly measured against the best in the world.
For Wisconsin, we only need two:
Raise our state’s per capita income to 10 percent above Minnesota’s by 2030.
In job and business creation over the next decade, Wisconsin is often predicted to be among the lowest 10 states. When I was a kid growing up in Madison, income in Wisconsin was some 10 percent higher than in Minnesota. Minnesota caught up to us in 1967, and now the average Minnesotan makes $4,500 more than the average Wisconsinite.
Lift the math, science and reading scores of all K-12, non-special education students in Wisconsin above world-class standards by 2030. (emphasis added)
Wisconsinites often believe we lose jobs because of lower wages elsewhere. In fact, it is often the abundance of skills (and subsidies and effort) that bring huge Intel research and development labs to Bangalore, Microsoft research centers to Beijing, and Advanced Micro Devices chip factories to Dresden.
Our educational standards are based relative to the United States. So even if we “successfully” accomplish all of our state educational goals, our kids would still be in the global minor leagues. How about targeting Finland and Singapore in math, South Korea and Japan in science, Canada in reading?
As the saying goes: “When one does not know where one is going, any road will do” (or not do).
Without clear scorecards, we citizens will have little ability to coerce and evaluate politicians and their excuses, rhetoric and laws from the right and left. If JFK had not set a “man on the moon” stretch target, would we have landed there? Do the Green Bay Packers have a chance at winning another Super Bowl if they never tack that goal to the locker room walls?
Clusty Search: Dave Baskerville.
On Wisconsin: Mount Horeb school referendums aim to preserve history, serve current students
A glimpse of how students were educated here in the late 1800s is located under the downtown water tower, just a half block off Main Street.
But there is another historic school in this village of 6,500 people that’s getting more attention than the cream-colored brick District 1 School built between 1884 and 1889.
On Nov. 2, Mount Horeb School District voters will decide whether to spend $9.9 million to remodel the Primary Center, a three-level school building opened in 1918 with a maze of steps and two gigantic boilers. A second referendum question asks for $600,000 for a geothermal heating system.
The building has served generations of students and all grade levels. It was the high school before the current one was built in the 1960s and where Kurt Nowka, a 1977 Mount Horeb High School graduate, went to middle school. The brick building, which looks similar to West and East high schools in Madison, now is used by second- and third-grade students.
More on honors classes and racism
Posted on 10/18 to the East High Community list serv, in response to a description of the MMSD high school reform proposal. Posted here with the author’s permission.
Dear East Community:
I contribute to this discussion group only once in a blue moon, but this issue is near and dear to my heart and I am compelled to comment. I cannot think of a more important issue than that of race and racism in our educational institutions.
I speak as a lifelong political progressive who has been active in community issues relating to racism and economic and social disparities for thirty years, from Cleveland to Chicago’s south side to Madison. More important, I speak as an adult basic instructor in mathematics at MATC who teaches many of the students that have been failed by their experience in the Madison schools, most of them students of color or students mired in the low margins of the socioeconomic system.
With that said, it frustrates and saddens me see how many well-meaning people have this issue exactly backward. It is not racist school policy to offer multiple tracks, specifically honors or AP TAG classes. Rather, racist school policy – of the most insidious nature imaginable – is failing to offer those classes because students of color aren’t in them. That argument implicitly says that students of color cannot achieve, and that message speaks volumes about the difference between looking fair in some lowest-common-denominator way versus fighting for the hard and true and noble path in student achievement.
Simply put, we should have TAG classes and they should be filled with students of every class, race and color. That they have historically not been filled with students of every class, race and color is the real issue. It tells us that our methods for evaluating students are abysmal, even abusive (how many of you have enjoyed watching your 4th grader take class time to learn to use a squeeze ball to reduce stress on standardized tests?). It tells us that we are not successfully seeking out students of tremendous potential because we don’t understand them or don’t know how to relate to them or reach them. It also says that we fail to properly appreciate what a culture of demanding expectations of achievement can do for every student in a classroom, especially when we demand of ourselves to understand and embrace each of our students as strikingly unique individuals and not achievers based upon highly overrated and dubious “educational standards,” standardized test scores or other unhelpful common denominators.
The progress of my classes at MATC this semester is typical and no surprise to me. I have two algebra classes. One, downtown, is mostly white and/or middle class. The other, in South Madison, is almost entirely students of color, most with difficult personal circumstances, most of whom have always failed at math. One class is achieving well enough. The other class is over-achieving, pushed hard, pushing me back, engaged, holding an average grade of AB. Any guesses which is which?
As educators and supporters of our schools we can do so much better than we do. But we cannot do better by pretending that differentiation in a classroom can accomplish the same thing as a motivated rainbow of a class with a class-wide ethic to achieve deep understanding and a drive to overcome commonplace expectations.
I say that we need both TAG classes and the recruiting methods and policies to make sure that they reflect every kind of brilliance in our community.
Sincerely,
Pete Nelson
As they say, “Friend speaks my mind.”
What I Might Hope To See in High School Reform
Right now I am struggling to get my head around what the proposed high school reforms are or are not, what problems they are intended to address (TAG? achievement gap? readiness for life after high school? other?), the many interpretations of what is proposed, and whether the proposed reforms would be effective in achieving any of the stated purposes.
In an interesting twist, this process has brought me back to my own personal wish list of what I would like to see in comprehensive high school reform. I believe that any one of the items on the list would make a real difference and in ways that are compatible with DPI requirements and national standards.
My thinking is informed by sources that are predictable and others that may not be obvious but are equally important: personal observation, years of listening at parent meetings and testimony to the school board, numerous national studies and commentaries, and what I have learned from my highly skilled colleagues who work with undergraduate programs at UW-Madison.
In some ways, the debates over the proposed two-strand system, the fate of electives (which I want to keep), consistency across the four high schools, college preparation, national standards, etc., are less important to me than the basic expectations and requirements for the students who enter and graduate from our schools. Without changing those things, I believe that we will be confined to tinkering around the edges without touching some of the fundamental expectations that students will confront after graduation.
I believe that we could make a serious dent in the achievement gap, address long standing dissatisfaction with academic opportunities and challenges, and move toward rebuilding Madison’s reputation for schools that draw people to invest in homes in our metro area and neighborhoods by truly making the changes – vs. planning to study and eventually implement changes – to address the items that are on this list:
1. Increase opportunities for advanced study at all grade levels, whether it is part of an AP curriculum or other courses developed and taught at a higher level with or without special labels. Then remove the unmovable obstacles that keep students from participating.
2. Restore West’s 9th and 10th grade honors courses.
3. Conform MMSD policy and practice to meet or exceed DPI standards at all grade levels, and particularly in regard to graduation requirements.
4. Guaranty that ALL middle school math teachers are proficient in algebraic reasoning and other skills necessary to prepare students to master the high school math and science curriculum.
5. Teach students to write using complete sentences, correct spelling and standard grammatical conventions.
6. Make a compelling case for consistency and then truly implement consistency across the board if that is going to be a rationale for homogenizing the curriculum in our high schools.
For the entire post, go to: http://lucymathiak.blogspot.com/
AP component of MMSD high school plan is about access and equity, not “TAG”
One of the many pieces of the MMSD administration’s just-introduced high school proposal that has not been made clear is where the prominent AP component comes from. The answer is that it comes largely from a three-year federal grant, a $2.2 Advanced Placement Incentive Program grant that was awarded to the DPI in 2009.
As some of you surely know, there is currently a national trend (supported by significant grant dollars) to increase access to AP courses. The DPI’s “Blended Learning Innovations: Building a Pipeline for Equity and Access” is part of that trend.
The purpose of the grant is to close the race and SES based achievement gaps by increasing the number of AP courses in schools with high levels of poverty and by increasing the participation and success of poor and minority students in AP courses and testing. The MMSD is a partner in the grant.
Please note that both nationally (NAGC) and locally, AP has never been a focus of the “TAG” community. (On the contrary, those of us who worked on the MMSD TAG Plan advocated for consideration of an IB curriculum … which is what’s been proposed for the Madison Preparatory Academy.)
I imagine I am not the only one who would appreciate it if the District (and the press) would be clearer with the community about these points:
1) This high school proposal has been in the works for a long time. (Importantly, it has been in the works since well before the West DPI petition and complaint. The complaint may have sped up the rolling out of the plan, for better and worse, but it did not impact the content of the plan. As evidence, consider the second paragraph of the October 14 letter sent out to the West community: there is no mention whatsoever of 9th and 10th grade honors classes, which is the sole focus and request of the DPI complaint.)
2) The extent to which the DPI’s “equity and access” AP grant is driving the content of the MMSD’s high school proposal.
Serious ideas from State of Education speech. Seriously.
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.
Asian-American Students Show Gains on SAT
High-school students’ performance last year on the SAT college-entrance exam remained generally unchanged from the previous year, except for Asian-American students who continue to post notable gains and outperform all other students.
Overall, the average scores for the class of 2010 in critical reading remained at 501, in math it climbed from 515 to 516, in writing it dropped from 493 to 492. The combined scores match last year’s tally, which was the lowest total since the writing exam was added to the SAT in 2006.
The only bright spot was the performance of the nation’s Asian-American students. They posted a three-point gain in reading, four-point jump in math and six-point gain in writing over their 2009 scores.
The SAT news comes a few weeks after the results of the other college entrance exam, the ACT, revealed that only one-quarter of the nation’s high-school students possessed the academic skills necessary to pass entry-level college courses. Taken together, the test scores suggest a continued stagnation of high-school performance and highlight the challenge the Obama administration faces in its efforts to boost the nation’s college-graduation total.
La Follette student charged in gang-related gun incident
A La Follette High School student who police say was involved in a gang-related, armed altercation Friday outside West High School was charged Wednesday with felony possession of a firearm in a school zone.
Uriel Duran-Martinez, 18, also was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct and cited for possession of marijuana, according to online Dane County Circuit Court records.
Court Commissioner W. Scott McAndrew ordered Duran-Martinez released from Dane County Jail on a signature bond.
According to Madison police:
Much more, here.
Black parents must advocate for their children
Fabu:
All through the community, I have been hearing families express varying emotions about the beginning of a new school year this week. Some are glad for the relief from costly summer programs. Others are anxious about changes for their children who are moving from elementary to middle or middle to high school. One parent even shared how her daughter wakes up in the middle of the night asking questions about kindergarten.
At a recent United Way Days of Caring event in Middleton for more than 100 students from Madison-area Urban Ministry, Packers and Northport, lots of children expressed excitement over starting school again and appreciated the fun as well as the backpacks filled with school supplies that Middleton partners provided.
The schools where we send our children to learn and the people we ask to respect and teach them stir up a lot of emotions, just like an article about Wisconsin ACT scores stirred up a lot of emotions in me. ACT stands for American College Testing and the scores test are used to gain entrance into college, which translates for most Americans into an ability to live well economically or to become the institutionalized poor. Certainly the good news is that Wisconsin scored third in the nation and that Madison schools’ scores went up slightly.
The bad news is when your look at the scores based on racial groups, once again in Madison, in Wisconsin and in the U.S., the scores of African-American students are the lowest.
DFER Milwaukee Reception for Wisconsin Legislative Candidates 8/30/2010
JOE WILLIAMS
Executive Director
Invites you to a reception honoring three emerging education reform leaders:
State Senator Lena Taylor
4th Senate District
Angel Sanchez
Candidate for the 8th Assembly District
Stephanie Findley
Candidate for the 10th Assembly District
These candidates have committed to support all children in all Milwaukee schools. Please help us show them that education reform supporters in Milwaukee recognize their efforts. With your help we can elect and re-elect committed leaders who will fight for real reform and support more quality options for children and their parents.
Please join us whether you can give $5, $50 or $500 to each candidate!
When: Monday August 30th, 2010
Where: The Capital Grille
310 West Wisconsin Avenue
Time: 5:00 pm-7:00 pm
Refreshments will be served.
Free Valet Parking Provided.
RSVP: Ptosha Davis, DFER WI, 414-630-6637 or dferwisconsin@gmail.com
Related: John Nichols notes that Madison Teachers, Inc. endorsed Ben Manski in the 77th District Wisconsin Assembly primary (via a reader’s comment) election (Nichols is President of the foundation that employs Ben Manski, via David Blaska). 77th candidates Brett Hulsey and Doug Zwank kindly spent a bit of time talking about education recently.
A Look at Wisconsin Teacher Compensation Increases
Statewide increases in teacher compensation contracts are on track to be the lowest in more than a decade following last year’s changes in state school district financing.
Based on 160 settled contracts out of 425 school districts, the average increase in compensation packages — including salary and benefits — is 3.75 percent, according to the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
Annual increases last dipped below 4 percent in 1999 and have averaged 4.13 percent since 1993, when the state first imposed revenue limits and introduced the so-called qualified economic offer (QEO) provision, which allowed districts to offer a 3.8 percent package increase instead of going to arbitration. The QEO was repealed in the state biennial budget approved last year, though revenue limits remain in place to keep property tax increases in check.
By another measure, the Wisconsin Educators Association Council, the state’s largest teachers union, reported teacher salaries are on pace to increase about 2 percent. That doesn’t include benefits and certain assumptions about longevity raises. The increase is slightly less than the 2.3 percent annual average since 1993 and would be the lowest since 2003.
Related: Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will “Review the content and frequency of report cards”. A searchable database of Wisconsin Teacher Salaries is available here.
Tension grows over Seattle teacher evaluations
Seattle Public Schools wants teacher evaluations and student performance joined at the hip, but the teachers’ union is taking issue with how the district plans to fuse those two factors.
A proposal that would tie teacher evaluations to student growth prompted a 2,000-word refutation e-mail from the Seattle Education Association earlier this week, a sign of friction in ongoing contract negotiations.
“Their mechanized system is one of minimal rewards and automated punishments,” union leaders wrote to members Wednesday.
That statement was sent in response to an e-mail teachers received this week from public schools Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. She detailed how the school plans to roll out parts of its bargaining proposal — specifically factors related to how teachers’ performances are evaluated.
The district is proposing an four-tier evaluation system that would roll out over two years. Teachers who chose to be evaluated base on to “student growth outcomes and peer and student feedback” would be eligible for perks, including an immediate 1 percent pay increase, eligibility for stipends and other forms of “targeted support.”
I was impressed with Susan Troller’s recent article on Teacher Accountability and the Madison School District, particularly her inquiry to Lisa Wachtel:
The district’s recent decision to provide professional development time for middle and high school teachers through an early release time for students on Wednesdays is part of this focus, according to Wachtel. The district has sponsored an early release time for elementary school teachers since 1976.
She admits there isn’t any data yet to prove whether coaching is a good use of resources when it comes to improving student achievement.
“Anecdotally we’re hearing good things from a number of our schools, but it’s still pretty early to see many specific changes,” she says. “It takes consistency, and practice, to change the way you teach. It’s not easy for anyone; I think it has to be an ongoing effort.”
This is certainly not the only example of such spending initiatives. Jeff Henriques has thoughtfully posted a number of very useful articles over the years, including: Where does MMSD get its numbers from? and District SLC Grant – Examining the Data From Earlier Grants, pt. 3. It appears that these spending items simply reflect growing adult to adult programs within the K-12 world, or a way to channel more funds into the system.
I believe it is inevitable that we will see more “teacher evaluation” programs. What they actually do and whether they are used is of course, another question.
Ideally, every school’s website should include a teacher’s profile page, with their CV, blog and social network links, course syllabus and curriculum notes. Active use of a student information system such as PowerSchool, or Infinite Campus, among others, including all assignments, feedback, periodic communication, syllabus, tests and notes would further provide useful information to parents and students.
Video Message for You – Community Engagement & Public Service Opportunities
Kaleem Caire, via email:
Greetings Home Team,
Before you read any further, please view our video message to you by clicking here (or cutting and pasting this into your web browser: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFpEFFWljR4). Also, join the Urban League of Greater Madison on Facebook, show your support, and stay up-to-date on our activities by clicking here.
Our Community Engagement Initiative is well underway! We began training volunteers and canvassing the Burr Oaks and Bram’s Addition Neighborhoods last week. We will soon visit the Capital View and Leopold Neighborhoods, and then make our way to the Village of Shorewood, Glenn Oaks, and Hill Farms Neighborhoods. We are continuing to recruit volunteers and organizational partners to get out on the streets with us and talk with residents and business owners about their vision for the future of our city and region.
If you want to know what the community thinks first hand and want to develop connections with members of our extended family of 500,000+ who reside in greater Madison, come join us. Our next Community Outreach training will be held Tuesday, August 3, 2010 from 5:30pm – 7:00pm at our new Urban League Center for Economic Development and Workforce Training headquarters located at 2222 South Park Street, Madison, 53713. Participation in a training session is required in order to participate in our campaign, so if at all possible, please plan on joining us for this session. If you can’t make it, there will be additional sessions held in the future.
We will conclude our campaign on October 15, 2010, and soon thereafter will share the outcomes of our 3-month community engagement effort with all organizations and individuals who get involved. Please contact Andrew Schilcher at aschilcher@ulgm.org or (608) 729-1225. We’re already learning a lot about the dynamics and make-up of our neighborhoods that can only be learned by putting boots on the ground!
In August 2010, the CEOs of the Boys & Girls Club and YMCA of Dane County will join me on a community walk with Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz through South Madison to talk with residents and business owners, and discuss community development needs and interests. We will also host a public hearing on the City Budget at the Urban League and a seminar for individuals interested in serving on City of Madison Commissions and Boards. We are particularly interested in increasing diversity on these Boards and Commissions and look forward to working with County leaders to accomplish the same.
All events listed below are located at our Urban League headquarters in Madison at 2222 South Park Street, 53713 in our first floor Evjue Conference Room. To RSVP for either of the activities below, please contact Ms. Isheena Murphy at imurphy@ulgm.org or 608-729-1200.
We are working with the Dane County leadership to provide similar forums as well.
Last night, we completed the first of two Leadership Summits with young professionals ages 25 – 45 that we are hosting aboard the Betty Lou Cruises on Madison’s local treasurer, Lake Monona. What a great group of professionals we had join us – 32 leaders who are making a positive difference in our community and who have committed themselves to do more to establish greater Madison as the BEST place to live in the Midwest for EVERYONE. We would like to give special thanks to our Corporate Sponsor for tonight’s Cruise, Edgewood College. We also want to thank Wisconsin State Senator Lena Taylor for giving an inspiring and motivational talk, and for challenging us to get more deeply involved with local and state affairs. We sincerely thank everyone who participated and look forward to our 2nd cruise next week, August 3rd!
Stay tuned for information regarding our plans for a 46 and older “Mentors and Coaches” event, which we are planning for early 2011.
A book recommended to me by
Neil Heinen, Editorial Director, Channel 3000 (Madison, WI)
Caught in the Middle: America’s Heartland in the Age of Globalization
By Richard C. Longworth
Book Description: The Midwest has always been the heart of America – both its economic bellwether and the repository of its national identity. Now, in a new, globalized age, the Midwest faces dire challenges to its economic vitality, having suffered greatly before and as a result of the recent market collapse. In Caught in the Middle, veteran journalist Richard C. Longworth explores how globalization has battered the region and how some communities are confronting new realities. From vanished manufacturing jobs to the biofuels revolution, and from the school districts struggling with new immigrants to the Iowa meatpacking town that can’t survive without them, Longworth surveys what’s right and wrong in the heartland, and offers a tough prescription for survival.
W.Va. education spending audit may prove daunting
A proposed audit of West Virginia’s education spending enjoys widespread support, but that may not make its undertaking any less tricky.
Officials have yet to decide who would conduct the in-depth review, or even how to authorize it. Then there’s the scope. An estimated 14 cents of every dollar spent by the state goes to public education, from pre-kindergarten through 12th grade.
The American Federation of Teachers-West Virginia included an audit in its wish list for next month’s special legislative session focused on education.
“We are not aware of any recent or ongoing investigation regarding the spending practices by governmental departments, agencies and boards of education funded with public education dollars and whether the funds are being used for the intended purpose,” the group said in its outline of the proposal, one of eight it wants lawmakers to consider.
Related: Madison School Board member may seek audit of how 2005 maintenance referendum dollars were spent.
Moody’s downgrades Waukesha School District credit rating
For the second time in two years, Moody’s Investors Service has downgraded the credit rating of the Waukesha School District, the latest time after the School Board voted to not allocate any money toward a $47.5 million debt owed to a European bank.
According to a Moody’s report, the amount owed represents about 35% of the district’s annual operating budget.
As a rule, lower credit ratings translate into higher interest rates for borrowing. However, Waukesha School Board President Daniel Warren said Monday that the credit rating drop should not have an immediate effect.
“When Moody’s does a downgrade, it primarily affects long-term borrowing, and we don’t have any long-term borrowing on our horizon,” he said.
The A1 rating given to the district, which has a substantial tax base and relatively wealthy residents, is the lowest rating given by the service to school districts in the state, according to information from Moody’s Investors Service.
Warren said his board decided not to allocate any money toward resolving the debt to DEPFA Bank because “the school district was not in a position to afford an additional $48 million in next year’s budget.”
Madison’s current Assistant Superintendent for Business Services, Erik Kass, previously worked for the Waukesha School District.
Houston School District Wants Input on Strategic Direction for the District’s Future
Houston Independent School District:
The Houston Independent School District is in the midst of developing a long-term strategic plan that will provide a road map for the future as the district strives to become the best public school system in the nation. To ensure that all key stakeholders are engaged and involved in this process, HISD is inviting any member of the Houston community to give their input at an open discussion on Monday, May 24, from 6:00-7:30 p.m. at the Hattie Mae White Educational Support Center’s board auditorium (4440 West 18th Street).
To develop a long-term Strategic Direction, HISD is working with the Apollo Consulting Group in a six-month effort that started in February 2010 and will culminate in August with the release of a final plan. The goal is to create a set of core initiatives and key strategies that will allow HISD to build upon the beliefs and visions established by the HISD Board of Education and to provide the children of Houston with the highest quality of primary and secondary education.
Over the past two months, HISD has been gathering input from members of Team HISD, as well as from parents and members of the Houston community, including faith-based groups, non-profit agencies, businesses, and local and state leaders. After analyzing feedback and conducting diagnostic research, a number of core initiatives have emerged. They include placing an effective teacher in every classroom, supporting the principal as the CEO, developing rigorous instructional standards and support, ensuring data driven accountability, and cultivating a culture of trust through action.
“True transformation cannot happen overnight and it cannot happen without the input from everyone at Team HISD and those in our community who hold a stake in the education of Houston’s children,” says Superintendent of Schools Terry B. Grier. “In order for it to be meaningful, we need everyone to lend their voice to the process and help us shape the future direction of HISD.”
Related: Madison School District Strategic Planning Process.
Yet another reason for school reform
Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:
Worst in the nation?
What an embarrassment.
More importantly, what a loss of young talent for our state.
Wisconsin must do better when it comes to teaching students – especially black students – to read.
Black fourth-graders in Wisconsin just posted the lowest reading scores among the 50 states and the District of Columbia, according to the 2009 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
Only 9 percent of black fourth-graders in Wisconsin performed at or above the proficient level. That compares to 38 percent of white fourth-graders, itself a discouraging number.
Those percentages increase to 38 percent for blacks and 75 percent for whites when fourth-graders who can read at a “basic” level are included.
Hysteria Around School Turnarounds
The NYTimes ran a story with this misleading headline and byline:
A Vote to Fire All Teachers at a Failing High School
CENTRAL FALLS, R.I. — A plan to dismiss the entire faculty and staff of the only public high school in this small city just west of the Massachusetts border was approved Tuesday night at an emotional public meeting of the school board.When the teachers failed to adopt a ‘transformation’ plan that included a modest lengthening of the day, the superintendent shifted to Plan B, what federal School Improvement Grants (SIG) call Turnaround, which requires that at least 50% of the staff be replaced. Under Rhode Island law, teachers must be notified of the potential for nonrenewal by March 20, hence the board vote and notices. All the teachers will have the opportunity to reapply, up to half will be rehired.
The hysteria is now reverberating on CNN and papers around the country. Central Falls may be an early example but there are thousands to come. As I began reporting in October, SIG will cause widespread urban disruption. But we’ll all need to be cautious to use language carefully and differentiate between ‘firing all the teachers’ and notifying them of the requirement to reapply for their positions.
Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s speech to the Madison Rotary:
Last Wednesday, Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman spoke to the Madison Rotary Club on “What Wisconsin’s Public Education Model Needs to Learn from General Motors Before it is too late.” 7MB mp3 audio (the audio quality is not great, but you can hear the talk if you turn up the volume!).
Zimman’s talk ranged far and wide. He discussed Wisconsin’s K-12 funding formula (it is important to remember that school spending increases annually (from 1987 to 2005, spending grew by 5.10% annually in Wisconsin and 5.25% in the Madison School District), though perhaps not in areas some would prefer.
“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).
16 Wisconsin high schools have students with perfect ACT scores
Sixteen Wisconsin high schools had at least one senior in the Class of 2009 who received the top score on the ACT, ACT Inc. announced this week.
The schools with students who received 36s were:
Arrowhead High School in the Town of Merton
Bay City Baptist School in Green Bay
Central Wisconsin Christian High School in Waupun
Edgewood High School in Madison
Fort Atkinson High School
Heritage Christian School in West Allis
Homestead High School in Mequon
Marquette University High School in Milwaukee
Middleton High School
Monona Grove High School in Monona
Neenah High School
Onalaska High School
Oshkosh North High School
Oshkosh West High School
Wauwatosa East High School
West High School in Madison
Covington’s bold Kansas City school-closing plan
Congratulations to Kansas City School District Superintendent John Covington.
He’s just take the courageous and correct step of saying the district needs to shutter more than two dozen schools in the ever-shrinking district.
From 74,000 students about 40 years ago to 17,000 now, the district has no reason to continue to operate so many buildings at less than 50 percent capacity.
Covington, however, also must get rid of a proportionate number of administrators at the downtown office building, which has been bloated with staff for many years.
If more than 200 teachers are going to receive pink slips in closed buildings, the downtown administrators should share in the pain.
Read The Star story, which includes other aspects of Covington’s proposal.
Related: Money And School Performance:
Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment:
or decades critics of the public schools have been saying, “You can’t solve educational problems by throwing money at them.” The education establishment and its supporters have replied, “No one’s ever tried.” In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.
Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil–more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers’ salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.
The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.
The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can’t be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.
Former Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater served in Kansas City prior to his time in Madison.
This is rather astonishing, given the amount of money spent in Kansas City.
Covington calls for closing up to 31 schools
Kansas City Superintendent John Covington this afternoon unveiled his sweeping plan to close half of the district’s schools, redistribute grade levels and sell the downtown central office.
Covington presented his proposal to the school board in advance of a series of forums next week where the community will get to weigh in on what would be the largest swath of closures in district history, as well as a major reorganization.
“Folks, it’s going to hurt,” Covington told an overflow audience. “It’s going to be painful, but if we work together, we’re going to get through it.”
Covington wants to be able to complete the public debate and present a final plan for a vote by the board at its Feb. 24 meeting.
The board and the community have a lot to digest over the next 10 days.
The proposal calls for:
•29 to 31 of the district’s 60 schools would close, including Westport High and Central Middle.
Related: Money And School Performance: Lessons from the Kansas City Desegregation Experiment:
For decades critics of the public schools have been saying, “You can’t solve educational problems by throwing money at them.” The education establishment and its supporters have replied, “No one’s ever tried.” In Kansas City they did try. To improve the education of black students and encourage desegregation, a federal judge invited the Kansas City, Missouri, School District to come up with a cost-is-no-object educational plan and ordered local and state taxpayers to find the money to pay for it.
Kansas City spent as much as $11,700 per pupil–more money per pupil, on a cost of living adjusted basis, than any other of the 280 largest districts in the country. The money bought higher teachers’ salaries, 15 new schools, and such amenities as an Olympic-sized swimming pool with an underwater viewing room, television and animation studios, a robotics lab, a 25-acre wildlife sanctuary, a zoo, a model United Nations with simultaneous translation capability, and field trips to Mexico and Senegal. The student-teacher ratio was 12 or 13 to 1, the lowest of any major school district in the country.
The results were dismal. Test scores did not rise; the black-white gap did not diminish; and there was less, not greater, integration.
The Kansas City experiment suggests that, indeed, educational problems can’t be solved by throwing money at them, that the structural problems of our current educational system are far more important than a lack of material resources, and that the focus on desegregation diverted attention from the real problem, low achievement.
Former Madison School District Superintendent Art Rainwater served in Kansas City prior to his time in Madison.
This is rather astonishing, given the amount of money spent in Kansas City.
‘Algebra-for-All’ Push Found to Yield Poor Results
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.
Districts turn to arbitration to settle teacher contracts
In an action that’s likely to be repeated across the state, the West Bend School District is preparing to take contract negotiations with its teachers to arbitration, potentially among the first districts to do so since the Legislature removed teacher salary controls that held sway in Wisconsin for 16 years.
District negotiators and representatives for the West Bend Education Association have their first mediation session scheduled for next week, the first step they need to take before they can proceed to binding arbitration.
Administrators say they would prefer being able to resolve their issues with the teachers union by settling a contract through the mediation process. But they also say they are willing to go to arbitration if needed.
“We’re not afraid of it,” said Bill Bracken, labor relations coordinator for Davis & Kuelthau, which is representing the school district.
Other districts apparently aren’t afraid either. At least a couple of school districts outside southeastern Wisconsin are getting ready to certify their final offers after already going through the mediation process, indicating binding arbitration is probable, said Scott Mikesh, a staff attorney with the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
On Friday, the Elmbrook School District and its teachers union announced they were filing for mediation help in their contract negotiations, although Assistant Superintendent Christine Hedstrom said the two sides were not filing for help with the state and won’t automatically go to arbitration if they reach deadlock.
Related: Madison School District & Madison Teachers Union Reach Tentative Agreement: 3.93% Increase Year 1, 3.99% Year 2; Base Rate $33,242 Year 1, $33,575 Year 2: Requires 50% MTI 4K Members and will “Review the content and frequency of report cards”.
It would be interesting to compare contracts/proposals among similarly sized Districts.
Former Dem lawmaker, DPI superintendent Grover advocates smaller districts within the Milwaukee Public Schools
Grover is not real sanguine with current education policy ideas, such as Mayor Tom Barrett’s bid for a takeover of Milwaukee public schools. Fundamentally, smaller school districts (500 kids) should be the goal, and structural changes will never trump upbringing and parental involvement in their children’s education, he said.
“The difference between the kid headed to a Milwaukee school and one in Whitefish Bay is what they bring to the school house door,” he said. “The aspiration level of the parents is key. They want the best for their kids.”
As for the contest to succeed Jim Doyle as governor in 2010, Grover isn’t sure Barrett can be tough enough but suggests he’d be an improvement.
“Jim Doyle started out life at third base and thought he hit a triple,” Grover said, using an aphorism to denote “an elitist west side (Madison) upbringing.”
“Barrett is absolutely a decent human being. I have the feeling he won’t be as aggressive as he will need to be. He’s almost like Barack (Obama) …’Let us reason together.'”
Smaller districts certainly make sense, including places like Madison.
As complex investments plunge, 5 Wisconsin school districts pressured over loans
As five Wisconsin school districts face increased pressure to return millions of dollars in loans, the $200 million in investments they undertook with money from that debt are almost entirely without value and unlikely to pay back when they mature in 2013, according to representatives for the districts.
The districts said in a statement to the Journal Sentinel that one of the investments had stopped paying interest two months ago after a dramatic decline in value. The statement did not indicate which investment had ceased paying interest, but one of the schools’ attorneys, Stephen Kravit, had earlier identified it as an investment devised by the Royal Bank of Canada known as Sentinel Limited Series 2.
The five districts involved – Kenosha, Kimberly, Waukesha, West Allis-West Milwaukee and Whitefish Bay – invested $115 million in Sentinel 2 through trusts, using a combination of existing assets or borrowed money.
The $10 million invested by Whitefish Bay and $5 million by Kimberly were the entire amounts they invested in complicated transactions undertaken in 2006 on the advice of bankers from Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. Inc. The West Allis-West Milwaukee and Waukesha districts invested $40 million each in Sentinel 2 and Kenosha invested $20 million.
Madison’s Assistant Superintendent for Business Services, Erik Kass, formerly worked for the Waukesha School District.
Reading Recovery: Effectiveness & Program Description
US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, via a kind reader’s email:
No studies of Reading Recovery® that fall within the scope of the English Language Learners (ELL) review protocol meet What Works Clearinghouse (WWC) evidence standards. The lack of studies meeting WWC evidence standards means that, at this time, the WWC is unable to draw any conclusions based on research about the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of Reading Recovery® on ELL.
Reading Recovery® is a short-term tutoring intervention designed to serve the lowest-achieving (bottom 20%) first-grade students. The goals of Reading Recovery® include: promoting literacy skills; reducing the number of first-grade students who are struggling to read; and preventing long-term reading difficulties. Reading Recovery® supplements classroom teaching with one-to-one tutoring sessions, generally conducted as pull-out sessions during the school day. The tutoring, which is conducted by trained Reading Recovery® teachers, takes place for 30 minutes a day over a period of 12 to 20 weeks.
‘Coastie’ song, video spark debate at UW
o, what’s a coastie?
Chances are until this fall, most folks, even in Madison where the term appears to have originated, would have told you it’s one of two things:
Anyone not from around here.
Or, a privileged East or West Coast transplant, often a woman of a certain look: black tights, Ugg boots, oversize sunglasses and sporting a Starbucks cup.
Now a song and music video out of Madison suggest she’s all of that, and Jewish, provoking debates in and out of the classroom over stereotyping, anti-Semitism and the boundaries of humor.
Most of the Jewish students interviewed for this story said they find the tune and video “What’s a Coastie” by UW-Madison undergrads Cliff Grefe and Quincy Harrison – who are not Jewish – harmless and funny.
But some are offended.
“The song went too far,” said Nicole Halpern, a 19-year-old sophomore from New Jersey who describes herself as “technically a coastie.”
Comments on Obama & Race to the Top
The Department of Education will be accepting proposals for projects aimed at four reform areas:
To reverse the pervasive dumbing-down of academic standards and assessments by states, Race to the Top winners need to work toward adopting common, internationally bench marked K-12 standards that prepare students for success in college and careers.
To close the data gap — which now handcuffs districts from tracking growth in student learning and improving classroom instruction — states will need to monitor advances in student achievement and identify effective instructional practices. To boost the quality of teachers and principals, especially in high-poverty schools and hard-to-staff subjects, states and districts should be able to identify effective teachers and principals — and have strategies for rewarding and retaining more top-notch teachers and improving or replacing ones who aren’t up to the job. Finally, to turn around the lowest-performing schools, states and districts must be ready to institute far-reaching reforms, from replacing staff and leadership to changing the school culture There is one issue standing in the way for Wisconsin: a state law that prevents standardized test results from being used to evaluate teachers, which makes WI ineligible for “Race to the Top” funds. A bill in the legislature aims to repeal that law.
New Global Academy to offer specialized courses to students in eight Dane County school districts
The initial program in biomedicine would include courses in the principles of biomedical sciences; human body systems; medical interventions; and science research. The classes likely would be taught by high school teachers, but would incorporate business and academic experts to help teach, offer apprenticeships and career placement.
The academy’s location won’t be decided until leaders know how many students are interested in the program. However, one possibility is holding classes at MATC’s West campus in the former Famous Footwear building, Reis said.
Students – organizers hope about 150 – would travel from their respective high schools to Madison’s Far West Side every day for the courses, which would be part of the academy’s two-year programs. Depending on the interest in the biomedical class, three sections would be taught during the day and possibly one in the evening, Reis said.
Offering a night class would maximize the use of the facility and offer some flexibility to students who live farther outside of Madison, he said.
Verona, Middleton Cross-Plains, Belleville, McFarland, Mount Horeb, Oregon, Wisconsin Heights and Madison school districts have agreed to participate in the academy.
Related: Credit for non Madison School District Courses.
School spotlight: Program provides taste of medical research
West High School student Tulika Singh spent part of her summer studying epilepsy in rodents — an experience that made her feel like a contributor to research being conducted at the UW School of Medicine and Public Health.
Singh, who will be a senior this year, was one of 15 students in a Research Apprentice Program based at the school.
“Tulika (was) basically doing the work that college undergrads do for research experience and credits during the year,” said Dr. Thomas Sutula, neurology department chairman. He said apprentices are part of the team for the summer.
Singh, who wrote a research paper and presented it, was involved in a study of how genes influence epilepsy. Her mentor was Craig Levenick, senior research specialist.
“It’s just absolutely cool,” Singh said of the experience.
In its 29th year, the seven-week Research Apprentice Program is designed to help increase diversity in science and health professions. The program is geared toward incoming juniors and seniors from Dane County high schools. It’s based on academic performance and an interest in medicine.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Dane County Expects Higher Property Tax Growth
For only the second time in 13 years, Dane County Executive Kathleen Falk said she won’t be able to hold property tax growth to her self-imposed index.
Coupled with the value of existing Dane County residential property this year dropping $700 million, or 2 percent, that means homeowners may see a higher county property tax increase than usual.
County property tax increases have been relatively low in recent years because of the county’s tremendous growth and Falk’s practice of increasing the property tax levy by the rate of population growth plus inflation. But the index for next year would be based on inflation of 0.75 percent and population growth of 0.44 percent, or 1.19 percent — “the lowest in recent memory,” Falk wrote to the County Board.
If she stuck to the limit, the total tax levy would increase $1.4 million. But next year, Human Services faces $2 million in state cuts and the Sheriff’s Office costs $1 million more just to maintain services.
Sparks fly over Wisconsin budget’s labor-related provisions
Steven Walters & Stacy Forster:
As the dust settles around the new state budget, partisan disagreement continues over the boost that unions – particularly education unions – got by making it easier for them to sign up thousands of new members and by repealing the 3.8% annual limit on teachers’ pay raises.
The provisions passed because Democrats, who got control of the Legislature for the first time in 14 years, partnered with Democratic Gov. Jim Doyle to advance changes the governor and unions had been pushing for years.
Unions traditionally help elect Democratic politicians. The largest teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, spent about $2.1 million before last November’s elections, with much of that backing Democrats.
Most of the labor-related provisions in the budget were added to provide people with “good, family-supporting jobs,” said Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Madison), co-chairman of the Legislature’s Finance Committee.
“The idea that we’re shifting back to the worker, rather than just big business and management, that’s part of what Democrats are about,” Pocan said.
It also helped that the two top Democratic legislators, Assembly Speaker Mike Sheridan of Janesville and Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker of Weston, are veteran labor leaders.
Sheridan is the former president of a Janesville union for General Motors; Decker was a union bricklayer when he was elected president of the Central Wisconsin Building Trades.
In a statement, Sheridan said Assembly Democrats focused on giving workers struggling through the recession “an opportunity to negotiate for better working circumstances or wages.” They also made sure the budget included tax breaks to help businesses create and protect jobs, he said.
Republican leaders say taxpayers will be the ultimate losers, when they must pay public employees higher wages and better benefits.
Republicans also say Doyle and Democratic legislative leaders approved the changes to thank unions for their campaign cash and endorsements before last November’s elections. The Democrats also are laying groundwork to win support heading into the 2010 elections, GOP lawmakers say.
One striking example of lobbying effectiveness during challenging economic times: the budget includes a change to arbitration rules between school districts and teacher unions:
To make matters more dire, the long-term legislative proposal specifically exempts school district arbitrations from the requirement that arbitrators consider and give the greatest weight to
revenue limits and local economic conditions. While arbitrators would continue to give these two factors paramount consideration when deciding cases for all other local governments, the importance of fiscal limits and local economic conditions would be specifically diminished for school district arbitration.
This is obviously the kind of thing frequently seen in Washington…. It would be interesting to see the players (and money) behind this legislation. In related local news, the Madison School District and the local teacher union have yet to agree to a new contract. Perhaps this arbitration change plays a role in the process?
Wisconsin K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Democrat State Senator Mark Miller on the recent Budget
Over the weekend, Democrat State Senator Mark Miller took to the airwaves to explain what happened. Here is Miller’s (albeit clumsy) explanation of why Madison area districts are taking a big hit in this budget, from the “Here and Now” show:
Now, the pages of this blog have not been very friendly to Miller and his cohorts during the budget process. But on this one, I think he’s getting a bad rap – and explaining why helps illustrate the constant struggle the state has with the school finance formula.
(CAUTION: What follows is an attempt at explaining school aids, and may be dreadfully boring. If it gets too bad, feel free to go over and read the Dogs With Mustaches blog and come back in 15 minutes.)
Let’s look at the purpose of the school aid equalization formula. As its name suggests, it exists to “equalize” the relative wealth of districts. The theory behind the formula is that kids in property poor districts should have access to the same resources as kids in property rich districts (like Madison), even if the local district doesn’t have the same property values on which to draw. Thus (and this is a substantial generalization), the state grants more money to property poor districts and less money to property rich districts.
(For a full explanation of the complexities of the school aid formula, take about four caffeine pills and read this.)
For example, take a school district like Peshtigo, with per pupil property values of $275,466. Peshtigo receives about 81.6% of their budget from the state. On the other end of the scale, the Madison Metropolitan School District boasts property values of $844,000 per student, and thus receive about 41.25% of their budget in state aid. (Since you were wondering, the Geneva J4 school district, with per pupil property values of $3.3 million, receive the lowest in state aid, at 16.9%. Beloit gets 85.1% of their budget paid for by the state, since apparently nobody there has discovered indoor plumbing.)
Related by Lucy Mathiak: Mark Miller “explains” how State budget isn’t all that bad
47 Wisconsin Students are National Merit Scholarship Winners
The Madison-area winners include: Kori Bertun, East High School (recipient of a National Merit Scholarship from Rice University); Mary Kate Wall, Edgewood High School (Indiana University, Bloomington); Nicholas Klawes, La Follette High School (Grinnell College); Elisabeth Meier, Madison Country Day School, Waunakee (University of Chicago); Emma Cornwell, Memorial High School (St. Olaf College); Bennett Naden, Middleton High School (Harvey Mudd College); Adam Schneider, Middleton High School (UW-Eau Claire); and Dianna Amasino (Macalester College) and Zachary Pekarsky (Oberlin College), both of West High School. Colleen Ziegler of Joseph A. Craig High School in Janesville won a National Merit Scholarship from Arizona State University. Joshua Campbell of Sauk Prairie High School, Prairie du Sac, won a National Merit Carleton College Scholarship, and Connor Mulcahy of Whitewater High School, Whitewater, won a National Merit University of Minnesota Scholarship.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: The Wisconsin Budget, with an Earmark Appearance by David Obey
After working for the federal government in Washington, DC for two years, I was excited to move back to the Midwest. Returning to study public policy and law, I specifically came to learn more about state’s rights from the practical, decent state of Wisconsin. This past year I kept a close eye on state news, even more so as the biennial budget process began. How does Wisconsin make the biennial budget? What does the final budget look like?
The Legislative Reference Bureau seems like a better place to start than the federal level Schoolhouse Rock tutorial. The process of creating the Wisconsin budget is fairly simple – it follows the general legislative process, except in this case the process begins with the Governor. As the chief executive for the state, the Governor collects agencies’ estimates on their expenses. Once the Governor matches budget priorities to the expected revenues, the Joint Finance Committee takes the proposal to amend, review, and debate in a small committee. Once voted on by members of the joint committee, each chamber gets a chance to amend, review, and vote on the budget.
So the process itself doesn’t sound too complicated – what about the length of the timeline? Perhaps showing my age, this is the first state budget I’ve followed. The process is clearly not meant to proceed quickly. The purpose of going slowly no doubt comes from the size of the task, compiling all state agencies’ budgets and crafting budget priorities. Why force deliberation? I would imagine (and hope) slowing the process would limit rash decisions and promote a rational and well-justified budget. The biennial budget has long-ranging impacts, so the proposal usually is given plenty of time.
Our political class at work in Washington, fighting of an earmark for a LA public school training center, named, of course, for a congresswoman.
Waters and Obey have had an ongoing dispute about an earmark for a public school employment training center in Los Angeles that was named after Waters when she was a state representative.
Obey rejected that earmark as violating policies against so-called “monuments to me.” Waters revised her request to go to the school district’s whole adult employment training program, so the district could decide whether the money would go to the school named after Waters.
Thursday was the committee markup of the spending bill that would include the earmark, and Obey let it be known that the earmark would be denied. She approached him and complained.
A Waters aide said that Obey had pushed her.
Locally, Lynn Welch takes a look at the Madison School District and the State budget.
Leopold Elementary does it bilingually
In a classroom with walls lined with bright pictures, Erin Conway’s third- and fourth-grade students are working on mathematical word problems. For the first time in their relatively short educational careers, the problems are in English.
“I think I know the answer,” a student tells Conway. But then he gives her the wrong answer.
“It’s not that hard,” Conway says, repeating the question to him in Spanish. The second time the student tells Conway the right answer.
The classroom looks the same as other third-grade classrooms. The top of the black chalkboard is bordered with the alphabet in cursive. Each number on the clock has its handwritten digital equivalent next to it. The student desks with attached chairs open up to reveal school supplies.
But the population of Conway’s classroom makes it different. All of her 16 students are native Spanish speakers, in what’s called a transitional education program.
As kindergartners at Leopold Elementary, on Madison’s west side, the students were placed in classrooms where 90% of their academic instruction was given in Spanish and 10% in English. In second grade, 80% of their instruction was in Spanish and 20% in English.
‘Object’ of my affection
My father’s StB file reveals as much about the secret police as it does about him
Those who don’t know their past are bound to repeat it,” reads the billboard in the entry hall of the Institute for the Study of Totalitarian Regimes. When I first came here, it was for an interview with two institute researchers who co-authored the book Victims of the Occupation about the 1968 Warsaw Pact invasion.
After the interview, I asked one of the researchers, Milan Bárta, to find my parents’ old communist secret police (StB) file. I wanted to see if there were any pictures of their wedding Jan. 13, 1979, just days before they emigrated to West Germany. My family has no pictures of that day, but my father had always joked that the StB had taken some.
A month later, I was invited to the institute to take a look at my parents’ documents.
Note: Email Newsletter visitors: This article was incorrectly link to a headline on outbound open enrollment from the Madison School Districts.
Green School News
Learn at National Conference How to Create a Green Charter School
Developing Environmentally Literate Kids
Energy Fair Sparks Charter School Students (UT)
Environmental Extravaganza at Four Rivers Charter School (MA)
Education with Aloha at Kua O Ka La Charter School (HI)
Environmental and Place-Based Education at Proposed Discovery Charter School (IN) Learn Green. Live Green
Easy Being Green at Westlake Academy (TX)
Green Thinking at New Roots Charter School (NY)
US House Approves $6.4 Billion for Green Schools
Building students’ skills in complex scientific reasoning with BioKids program at Academy of the Americas (MI)
Stars Aligned for Charter Schools
Proposed Green School (AZ) Focused on Green Jobs
It’s Easy Being Green at Environmental Charter High School (CA)
The Urban Environment and Common Ground High School (CT — NY Times Story)
Relying on Nature to Teach Lessons at Green Woods Charter School (PA)
Eco-Education Links
Children and Nature Network
Earth Day Network’s Green Schools Campaign
BioKids
NAAEE ( Environmental Education )
NEXT – Art+Design+Environment
Center for Ecoliteracy
Join the Green Charter Schools Network in supporting the development of schools with environment-focused educational programs and practices. “The Real Wealth of the Nation” by Tia Nelson, daughter of Earth Day founder Gaylord Nelson, describes the Network’s beginnings and mission. Please complete and return the GCSNet membership form.
Thank You !
Senn Brown, Executive Director *
Green Charter Schools Network
5426 Greening Lane, Madison, WI 53705
Tel: 608-238-7491 Email: senn@greencharterschools.org
Web: www.greencharterschools.org
* Founding Executive Secretary (2000 – 2007), Wisconsin Charter Schools Association
Tracking and Inequality: New Directions for Research and Practice Presentation by UW School of Education Professor Adam Gamoran
via a kind reader’s email:
Good afternoon. We’d like to invite you to Memorial High tomorrow afternoon for a discussion hosted by our Equity Team. Professor Adam Gamoran, Interim Dean of the UW School of Education, will be presenting paper titled Tracking and Inequality: New Directions for Research and Practice. His article is attached. We will begin at 4:15pm and should end around:15pm, and we’ll meet in the Wisconsin Neighborhood Center, which is in the Southwest corner of the building. Please park on the Mineral Point Rd. side of the building, and enter through the doors closest to Gammon Rd. There will signs to direct you from there. Have a good week, and we hope to see you tomorrow afternoon…Jay
Jay Affeldt
James Madison Memorial High School
Professional Development School Coordinator
Project REAL SLC Grant Coordinator
201 South Gammon Road
Madison, WI 53717
jaffeldt@madison.k12.wi.us
608-442-2203 fax
608-663-6182 office
Angling for attention: Teacher devised board game to make geometry fun
Chris Dyer’s students want to know if, when he becomes rich and famous, he’ll let them swim in his pool.
Dyer, an eighth-grade math teacher at Cherokee Middle School on Madison’s west side, developed a board game while student teaching at the school that was picked up by an international educational products manufacturer and has now sold more than 2,000 copies.
The game, Angleside School Adventure, teaches kids how to measure angles. While learning to play the game in class one recent afternoon, student Oscar Hernandez, 14, wondered aloud whether Dyer is a millionaire yet. Dyer laughed and assured his students that, if he becomes a millionaire, he’ll still be teaching them.
Many of Dyer’s students say he is the best math teacher they’ve had.
“He’s pretty good at explaining things to people who don’t know,” said 13-year-old Allison Ballard. “And for the people who do know, he just lets them go ahead.”
St. Maria Goretti Student Faces Weapons Charge
A 14-year-old Madison teen faces weapons charges after he allegedly brought a pellet gun to St. Maria Goretti School on Thursday morning.
The student was tentatively charged with possession of a dangerous weapon by a person under the age of 18 and also was tentatively charged with burglary after admitting committing other crimes, including a residential burglary from 2007, police said. Madison police said a school staff member found a black, plastic pellet gun in the student’s backpack.
The student “claimed he did not mean to bring the weapon to school and had forgotten it was in his backpack,” said police spokesman Joel DeSpain. “But the investigating officer was also told the suspect might have threatened to shoot another student.”
St. Maria Goretti is a K-8 parochial school at 5405 Flad Ave. on the city’s West Side.
Low Income Student Advance Placement (AP) Wisconsin Incentive Grant
Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction:
Wisconsin has won a $2.2 million grant to expand Advanced Placement to low-income students.
Wisconsin’s $2.2 million federal Advanced Placement Incentive Program grant will target 46 eligible middle and high schools, benefitting about 26,600 students.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction’s “Blended Learning Innovations: Building a Pipeline for Equity and Access” grant from the U.S. Department of Education will support a multipronged approach for students from eligible middle and high schools throughout the state. Poverty rates in participating districts range from 40 percent to 83 percent. Statewide, 35 percent of students are economically disadvantaged based on family income levels that qualify them for free or reduced-price school meals.
In the recent Advanced Placement Report to the Nation, Wisconsin had the Midwest’s highest participation rate (24.2 percent) for 2008 graduates taking one or more Advanced Placement exams while in high school. Of the 15,677 graduates who took Advanced Placement exams, 973 students, or just 6.3 percent, received a fee waiver because they were from economically disadvantaged families.
State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster noted that the grant employs strategies that engage students at various times in their educational planning and preparation. “We want to increase our support for students so they are ready for the academic challenges of Advanced Placement coursework,” she said. “Staff development and business, community, and family partnerships are major components of our effort.”
The three-year grant targets 19 high schools and 27 middle schools located in three cooperative educational service agencies (CESAs) and the Madison Metropolitan School District. CESA 7 is headquartered in Green Bay, CESA 9 is headquartered in Tomahawk, and CESA 11 is headquartered in Turtle Lake. The CESAs will coordinate activities associated with the grant.
Related: Dane County AP Course Offering Comparison.
What’s Memorial Done Lately?
Madison Memorial has had a pretty good couple of weeks. Last night the boys basketball team won its sixth straight Big Eight conference championship in a rollicking and highly-entertaining showdown with conference runner-up Madison East. Last week, Memorial’s boys swimming team won the state championship. Today’s State Journal reports that Memorial senior Suvai Gunasekaran will be heading off to Washington as one of the 40 finalists in the Intel Science Talent Search. And last week Memorial senior violinist Ben Seeger was the winner of the Steenbock Youth Music Award in the Bolz Young Artist Competition.
It’s also worth pointing out that Suvai will be joined by Gabriela Farfan of West at the Intel Science Talent Search (and so MMSD is supplying 5% of the nation’s finalists), and that Ben was joined in the Bolz Young Artists Competition finals by Alice Huang of West (the overall winner) and Ansel Norris of East (and so MMSD supplied 75% of the finalists in this statewide competition).
Madison schools – a diversity of excellence.
Bethel Lutheran Church looks at opening a downtown school
Developer Randy Alexander has been a member of Bethel Lutheran Church [Map] downtown for eight years. He grew up with a strong faith-based culture and says having a moral compass is critical for raising children.
“And where better to do that than in a Christian school?” he asked.
That’s a big part of why Alexander is part of a church committee to study the market feasibility of a kindergarten through fifth-grade school at the downtown church, 312 Wisconsin Ave. [Map] It’s familiar territory for Alexander, whose Alexander Co. specializes in urban infill projects. It recently developed the Capitol West condominiums downtown and is building the Novation Campus business park in Fitchburg.
If Bethel decides to go ahead and start a school, it would become one of about 30 private elementary schools in the Madison area, most of them religiously affiliated.
Matthew Kussow, executive director of the Wisconsin Council of Religious and Independent Schools, said the dismal economy is an obstacle for anyone looking to start a school now. Overall, state private school enrollment for the 2008-09 school year saw a slight decline, he said.
“We are sort of bracing ourselves for a steeper decline for 2009-2010 as the full effects of this economy are being felt,” Kussow said, adding that he won’t know specifically until the spring how many kids are re-enrolling in non-public schools. There are about 900 of them in the state, and they historically enroll about 10 percent of the total student body.
But Kussow also said that in general, private religious schools have a built-in following. So if Bethel identifies a need and believes it can get enough kids to start the school, in the long run, a church school is usually very successful, he said.
More choices are a good thing.
Middleton-Cross Plains students embrace creative problem soloving
Each year, students from the Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District head over to the Memorial Union on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus to spend a day stretching their mind.
The activity emphasizes creativity, teamwork and problem solving skills.
Fourth- and seventh-grade students from the district participate on two different days. The event is run by staff members who work with gifted and talented programs in the district– Ruth Frawley, Kelle Anderson, Jacki Greene, Cheryl Saltzman and Amy Weber.
The creative problem solving day is designed to “give them an opportunity to get away from their normal environment and work with a small team,” said Anderson, gifted and talented research teacher in Cross Plains.
“It tests your mind skills,” said Derek Rogeberg, a seventh-grader from Glacier Creek Middle School.
For the recent event, 120 fourth-graders and 120 seventh-graders came from Elm Lawn, Northside, Park, Sauk Trail, Sunset Ridge and West Middleton elementary schools and Glacier Creek and Kromrey middle schools.
Dane County schools tighten security measures
The Verona School District is planning to become the first in Dane County to lock all doors at some schools and require visitors to appear on camera to receive permission to enter, and the first to require that high school students display identification badges at all times. Many students support the moves, even as others question whether they’re really needed in the community that calls itself “Hometown, USA.”
In Middleton, educators are deep into discussions that could lead to asking taxpayers for $3.5 million for cameras, other equipment and remodeling projects to tighten security at their 10 schools. Madison school officials have begun a major review of security measures that by spring could lead to proposals to control the public’s access to that district’s 48 schools.
These are signs that despite tight budgets, Wisconsin educators are pushing ahead in their efforts to keep schools safe — efforts that took on added urgency with the 2006 slaying of Weston High School principal John Klang by a student, and other tragedies across the nation.
Related: Gangs & School Violence forum and police calls near Madison high schools: 1996-2006.
ACLU Report Reveals Arrests At Hartford-Area Schools On Rise
ACLU:
Police arrests of students at Hartford-area schools are on the rise, according to a new American Civil Liberties Union report released today, a trend that disproportionately impacts children of color.
The ACLU report, entitled “Hard Lessons: School Resource Officer Programs and School-Based Arrests in Three Connecticut Towns,” also shows how the use by school districts in Hartford, East Hartford and West Hartford of school resource officers who are not adequately trained and whose objectives are not clearly defined leads to the criminalization of students at the expense of their education.
The report’s findings are just the latest examples of a disturbing national trend known as the “school to prison pipeline” wherein children are over-aggressively funneled out of public schools and into the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
“Our goal is to ensure that everyone has an equal opportunity to receive a quality education,” said Jamie Dycus, staff attorney with the ACLU Racial Justice Program and the primary author of the report. “Relying too heavily on arrests as a disciplinary measure impedes that goal and only serves to ensure that some of our most vulnerable populations are criminalized at very young ages before alternatives are exhausted that could lead to academic success.”
According to the report, students in West Hartford and East Hartford are arrested at school at a rate far out of proportion to their numbers. During the 2006-07 school year, for example, black and Hispanic students together accounted for 69 percent of East Hartford’s student population, but experienced 85 percent of its school-based arrests. In West Hartford during the same year, black and Hispanic students accounted for 24 percent of the population, but experienced 63 percent of the arrests.
Related:
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?
William Fitzhugh, Editor of Concord Review Presentation
William Fitzhugh, Editor of Concord Review. Varsity Academics®
The video of this presentation is about 1 1/2 hours long. Click on the image at left to watch the video. The video will play immediately, while the file continues to download. MP3 Audio is available here.
We are pleased to have William Fitzhugh, Editor of The Concord Review, present this lecture on history research and publication of original papers by high school students.
From an interview with Education News, William Fitzhugh summarizes some items from his Madison presentation:
“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.
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.
With Democrats in charge, Wisconsin teacher pay cap could bite the dust
I don’t think it’s any secret that we think the QEO should be eliminated,” said Bell, whose union spent more than $2 million to help Democrats win control of the Assembly this fall. “It’s not productive for our school districts or my members.”
The union appears to have found a willing partner in the next Legislature. Already, state schools superintendent Libby Burmaster has included repealing the QEO in her budget request to Doyle. Carrie Lynch, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, said Decker supports a repeal, and Senate Democrats voted for it in the last budget. Assembly Speaker-elect Mike Sheridan, D-Janesville, said Democrats in his house would be “looking at it very closely.”
But Beloit homeowner Dwight Brass said he feared school boards would end up allowing teachers’ pay to rise too much, and with it property taxes. “The trend would be the school board would want to avoid conflict” with the union, he said.
Dan Rossmiller, a lobbyist for the Wisconsin Association of School Boards, said removing the QEO while leaving revenue caps in place would mean disaster for schools. Their main expense — teacher salaries — would grow much faster than their revenues would be permitted to grow, he said.
“It’s certainly going to mean cuts in teachers’ positions if it does go away,” he said of the QEO.
Bill Gates: “breaking large high schools into smaller units, on its own guaranteed no overall success”
Excerpt: “A main strategy of the schools, breaking large high schools into smaller units, on its own guaranteed no overall success, Gates said.
He said the New York City small schools were an example of successes in raising high school graduation rates — but a disappointment in that their graduates were no likelier than any city student to be prepared to go onto college.
Gates said the small number of successful schools did well not because they were structured as small schools, but because they enacted many different innovations: improved teaching quality, a longer school day, innovative instructional tools, a focus on tracking student achievement data.”
The implementation of “Small Learning Communities” in Madison has not been without controversy.
Sun Prairie parents turn up heat on school boundaries, and board responds
Eight months after the Sun Prairie School Board capped a hugely divisive debate over elementary boundaries by deciding to bus town of Bristol children to Westside school, Bristol parents are demanding further review.
After the March decision some School Board members said they wanted to form a committee to look long-term at elementary boundaries and related issues such as socio-economic and racial balance between buildings.
The committee never materialized.
Edgewood students study St. Croix River
Edgewood High School students presented their research findings last week at the St. Croix River Research Rendezvous — concrete evidence of their days of wading knee deep, navigating through dense brush and searching forests for mushrooms.
Eleven students in Edgewood’s advanced environmental field education class spent two weeks this summer studying mussel, rusty crayfish, mushroom, beaver and frog populations in Minnesota’s enormous St. Croix State Park. A first for the school, seven of the students will present their research at the Rendezvous at the Warner Nature Center at Marine on St. Croix, Minn.
The National Park Service at the St. Croix National Scenic Riverway, which is in eastern Minnesota and northwestern Wisconsin, will include the students’ research in data it is compiling.
“It was hard — messy. You’re out there every day … all hours,” said Arial Shogren, a senior this year who studied crayfish. “Our work does get used and that’s exciting.”
Referendum Climate: Fiscal Policy Report on the Nation’s Governors
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.
Interactive whiteboards bring technology to students’ fingertips
Dane County school districts with interactive whiteboards include Madison, Sun Prairie, Waunakee, Middleton-Cross Plains, Verona, Oregon, McFarland, Stoughton, Cambridge, Mount Horeb and Monona Grove.
Many students have a natural affinity for interactive whiteboards, which are a hybrid between an old-fashioned chalkboard and a computer.
Whatever can be shown on a computer can be projected onto the whiteboard, about six feet wide and four feet tall.
“It’s got that technological kind of buzz to it that really attracts them,” said Jeff Horney, learning coordinator at Cherokee on the city’s West Side. The school has four interactive whiteboards and more are on the way, thanks to help from foundation grants and the school’s Parent Teacher Organization.
And West High School has received a $91,000 grant from the California-based Tosa Foundation to replace dusty chalkboards with interactive whiteboards.
In Aegerter’s classroom, seventh-grader Clayton Zimmerman showed his classmates every step of a science experiment, tapping his finger on the screen’s images to remove a stopper from the top of a bottle and drag it off to the side.
Wisconsin “School Lawsuit Facts” Site Posted by PR Firm
MILWAUKEE, WI, September 30, 2008 . . . Five Wisconsin school districts (the “Districts”) filed suit in Milwaukee County Circuit Court yesterday seeking to rescind their $200 million investment with Stifel Nicolaus & Company, Inc. (“Stifel”) and the Royal Bank of Canada (“RBC”). They allege $150 million in losses to date.
The Districts contend Stifel and RBC either knowingly or negligently misrepresented and omitted crucial details in transactions made by the Districts to secure funding for their Other Post-Employment Benefit (OPEB) liabilities by failing to disclose or concealing their true risks. The Districts contend such investments were unsuitable for a public trust fund. They further allege Stifel and RBC collected large fees and realized massive cost savings while effectively positioning the Districts as guarantors of an ultra-risky portfolio of assets.
The school districts include: Kenosha Unified School District; Kimberly Area School District; School District of Waukesha; West Allis – West Milwaukee School District and Whitefish Bay School District. In addition to Stifel Nicolaus and RBC, the school districts have also included James M. Zemlyak of Elm Grove in the complaint. During the time of the transaction Zemlyak was the Chief Financial Officer and Co-Chief Operations Officer for Stifel.
Madison Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Erik Kass was most recently with the Waukesha School District. Amy Hetzner and Paul Soglin have more.
Roger Frank Bass on Two Crises: Wall Street & Education:
One, $700 billion is peanuts. Low-end estimates of educational outlays are more than $400 billion per year — that’s $5.2 trillion during a child’s K-12 education, more than seven times what the government will spend to prop up “free” enterprise. (The Global Movement for Children, using United Nations data, states that the 80 million children not receiving education could be schooled for about $15 billion per year.) And, like our financial institutions, U.S. education performs less well than in virtually all developed countries despite per-student outlays that are some of the highest anywhere. In military terms, this is a clear and present danger.
Along with bankrolling failures, the parallels include lax oversight. Just as Wall Street was craftily packaging collateralized debt obligations and hedge funds, state- and local-education agencies were bundling worthless test scores into triple-A public relations.
Just as the Securities and Exchange Commission and other regulatory agencies failed to monitor their charges, Departments of Public Instruction and those responsible for our children’s education never demanded the transparency needed to evaluate the substandard data behind ever riskier instructional methods. When a stock market falls apart, at least we can pick ourselves up and keep going. When education falls apart, we won’t have the intellectual capital to move forward. Economic growth begins with knowledge, not money. Ask India.
These events provide timely and useful dinner conversation fodder with our children:
- “What do you think happened to the baby-sitting money deposited into the bank yesterday?”
- “What will you do one day if the money is not there?”
- “Where does the money come from?”
Stained-glass window will honor school library aide
One year ago today, as she walked across Cherokee Drive to her job, school library assistant Becky Sue Buchmann was killed by a motorist dropping off his son at Cherokee Middle School.
Buchmann, 48, parked across the street from the Near West Side school on Cherokee Drive — a common practice for staff at the school — and was hit as she walked across to the school mid-block.
Since then, students and staff have raised thousands of dollars to build a stained glass window in her honor, but the traffic patterns outside the school remain unchanged.
Great Teaching, Not Buildings, Make Great Schools
As happens in many urban school systems, D.C. school and D.C. Council officials have been in a tiff over the repair and renovation of aging buildings. Nobody wants children to walk into schools with peeling paint, leaky roofs and windows that won’t open. Many inner-city educators believe such neglect sends the dispiriting message that nobody cares about these kids.
But are fresh plaster, up-to-date wiring and fine landscaping real signs of a great school?
Take a look at the 52-year-old former church school at 421 Alabama Ave. in Anacostia. Teachers say some floors shake if you stomp on them. Weeds poke out from under the brick walls. Yet great teaching has occurred inside. Two first-rate schools, the Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School and the KIPP DC: AIM Academy, have occupied that space in the past few years, and the Imagine charter network, also with a good record, is opening a school there. Or check out the School Without Walls, a D.C. public high school sought out by parents with Ivy League dreams. Its building, now being renovated, was a wreck, but inside, students embraced an A-plus curriculum.
How about the suburbs? Drive past the rust-stained, 44-year-old campus at 6560 Braddock Rd. in the Alexandria area of Fairfax County. Dean Tistadt, chief operating officer of Fairfax schools, says the place needs an electrical upgrade. A lot of windows should be replaced. He is sorry that his crews can’t do the major work until 2012. It doesn’t look like a place I would want to send my kids, yet the sign in front says it is the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, maybe the best public school in America.
Ten years ago, I wrote a book about high schools with golden reputations in some of the country’s most expensive suburbs. They were full of Advanced Placement classes and fine teachers, but I was astonished at how bad some of the buildings were. Mamaroneck High School, in one of the most affluent parts of Westchester County, N.Y., had three 66-year-old boilers that repeatedly broke down and many clocks that didn’t work. La Jolla High School, north of San Diego, full of science fair winners, was a collection of stained stucco classrooms and courtyards of dead grass.
Matthews is right, great teaching is key. Somewhat related, it will be interesting to see what Madison’s new far west side elementary school’s (Olson) enrollment looks like this month.
Preschool programs feel kindergarten squeeze
More parents opt for ‘free’ classes for 4-year-olds
Patti Zarling @ Green Bay Press-Gazette:
Kindergarten classes for 4-year-olds through a few area public school systems haven’t started yet, but some local private preschools already are losing students.
Two local programs are ending or on the verge of it, saying they can’t afford to maintain preschools, partly because of the launch of public 4-year-old kindergarten.
A few area school districts, including Ashwaubenon, Green Bay and West De Pere, are starting 4-year-old kindergarten programs this fall.
Advocates say the programs provide education and school-preparation to students regardless of family income. But critics liken the programs to free babysitting and worry that districts will dumb down curriculum.
Green Bay has more than 800 children enrolled so far in its 4-year-old kindergarten program for 2008-2009; Ashwaubenon has more than 100 and West De Pere has 178. State rules require districts to partner with private day cares to receive state grants for the programs.
Recently arrived Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad spent most of his career in the Green Bay Schools.
School Board to Focus on Money
In the first major test for newly hired Superintendent Daniel Nerad, Madison school officials this week will begin public discussions of whether to ask voters for additional money to head off a potentially “catastrophic” $8.2 million budget gap for the 2009-10 school year.
The Madison School Board’s meetings in August will be dominated by talk of the possible referendum, which could appear on the Nov. 4 ballot.
The public will be invited to speak out at forums on Aug. 12 and 14.
Related:
- Madison School District Budget history. The current 2008-2009 budget is $367,806,712, up from $339,685,844 in 2007-2008 (the 08/09 budget includes $17M for a new far west side school). The “final” budget numbers typically change a number of times throughout the year as new tax revenues appear (schools receive tax dollars via local property taxes, redistributed state income and sales taxes and some federal income taxes. Formulas, legislation and grants often change, including those based on enrollment).
- Listen to Monday evening’s referendum discussion via this 28MB mp3 audio file
- There has been some progress in addressing the district’s much discussed health care costs
- Tax & spending referendum climate.
Props to the District for finding a reduced spending increase of $1,000,000 and looking for more (The same service budget growth, given teacher contract and other increases vs budget growth limits results in the “gap” referred to in Hall’s article above). Happily, Monday evening’s referendum discussion included a brief mention of revisiting the now many years old “same service” budget approach (28mb mp3, about 30 minutes). A question was also raised about attracting students (MMSD enrollment has been flat for years). Student growth means additional tax and spending authority for the school district.
The Madison school board has been far more actively involved in financial issues recently. Matters such as the MMSD’s declining equity (and related structural deficit) have been publicly discussed. A very useful “citizen’s budget” document was created for the 2006-2007 ($333M) and 2007-2008 ($339M) (though the final 2007-2008 number was apparently $365M) budgets. Keeping track of changes year to year is not a small challenge.
Global Academy Magnet School from the Verona, Middleton Cross Plains, Belleville, McFarland, Mount Horeb and Oregon School Districts
Seth Jovaag via a kind reader’s email:
Local school officials took another early step Monday toward creating a Verona-based magnet school that could offer area high school students specialized classes they might not get otherwise.
With Madison Area Technical College searching for a new place to build a campus in southwestern Dane County, six area school districts are lining up behind the idea of a “Global Academy,” where high schoolers could learn job skills and earn post-secondary credits.
The Verona Area school board Monday approved the spending of $6,750 to hire a consultant to put together a detailed plan for how the six districts could work with MATC – and possibly the University of Wisconsin – to create such a campus.
That money will pool with similar amounts from five districts – Oregon, Belleville, Mount Horeb, McFarland and Middleton-Cross Plains – eager to see MATC land nearby, too.
The consultant, expected to start Aug. 15, will be asked to hone the concept of the school, including how it could be organized and how the consortium would work together.
Though the academy is currently little more than a concept, board member Dennis Beres said that if it comes to fruition, it could be a huge addition for the district.
Administrators from six Dane County school districts are planning to create a program called The Global Academy, a hybrid of high school and college courses offering specialized skills for high school juniors and seniors.
The consortium of districts includes Verona, MiddletonCross Plains, Belleville, McFarland, Mount Horeb and Oregon.
The Global Academy would offer courses in four career clusters: architecture and construction; health science; information technology; and science, technology, engineering and mathematics.
“We really see a need for vocational and technical programs and career planning,” said Dean Gorrell, superintendent of Verona Schools. “It’s tough to keep those going.”
Smart. Related: Credit for non-MMSD Courses.
Use technology to connect students around the world
Des Moines Register Editorial:
Elementary students in Sioux City and Wales have been getting together occasionally for years to talk about holiday traditions, sports and school lunches, said Jim Christensen, distance-learning coordinator at the Northwest Area Education Agency in Sioux City. They’ve made presentations and held interactive question-and-answer sessions.
“It’s easy to say, ‘What does that have to do with the curriculum?’ But it has everything to do with learning to communicate and a perspective on the world that’s unbelievable,” he said.
Colin Evans, head teacher of the school in Wales, echoed those thoughts in an e-mail: “Exchanging e-mails or written letters and photographs would be a poor substitute for these experiences. This has brought a whole new dimension to the curriculum… Use of technology is uniting two schools 6,000 miles apart into one global classroom.”
Related: Credit for Non Madison School District Courses.
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.
Stats show alarming growth in violent racial and girl-on-girl incidents, including Blair’s ‘Day of Six Fights’
The expulsion of four elementary school students for bringing knives onto campus and a rise in violence involving female African-American students have left city and school officials scrambling for solutions.
Records obtained by the Pasadena Weekly show that more than half of the 31 students expelled from the start of the school year through March were African American, and 11 of those 17 kids were girls, including five former students of Blair International Baccalaureate Magnet School who were involved in what has come to be known by teachers, students and administrators as “The Day of Six Fights” on Feb 18.
Although all those incidents involved weapons or violence or both, and a multijurisdictional board had been working since October on combating instances of youth- and gang-related violence, that information was not shared with the former 14-member Committee on Youth Development and Violence Prevention — even though that board included two sitting members of the Board
of Education, which ultimately approved all of the expulsions.
Further, the Pasadena Unified School District has few programs in place to address the rise in violence and no facilities available to help with the increase in expulsions from the district’s elementary schools.
The Madison School District’s Security Coordinator, Luis Yudice mentioned increased school violence involving girls during meeting on West High School / Regent area neighborhood crime last fall.
Kids making a difference: Sport for Africa CAR WASH June 28th at Middleton Cycle
Bulleh Bablitch via email:
Project Liberia inspires students to give
Middleton/Madison, Wis. — With the Summer in full bloom, it would be easy for any area high school student to spend his or her time sleeping away their summer and hanging out with their friends. But for one group of students at Middleton High School, there is no time like the present to start a new project, aimed at helping those in need halfway around the world.
For the past six weeks, this group of students have been collecting used sports equipment for children in the country of Liberia, all in the name of helping the youth of this nation, which is recovering from a 15-year civil war, learn how to see each other as teammates rather than enemies. Now that they have collected the items, it is time to raise the money needed to ship the items to Liberia.
156 Wisconsin Schools Fail to Meet No Child Left Behind Standards
The number of Wisconsin schools that didn’t meet standards set by the federal No Child Left Behind Act and could face sanctions increased from 95 to 156 this year, including the entire Madison Metropolitan School District.
Of the 156 schools on the list released Tuesday by the state Department of Public Instruction, 82 were in the Milwaukee Public School district. Seven of the schools on the list were charter schools.
Besides individual schools on the list, four entire districts made the list for not meeting the standards. That lists includes the school districts of Beloit, Madison, Milwaukee and Racine.
Bill Novak (Interestingly, this Capital Times article originally had many comments, which are now gone):
Superintendent Art Rainwater told The Capital Times the list is “ludicrous,” the district doesn’t pay attention to it, and the district will do what’s best for the students and not gear curriculum to meet the criteria set by the federal government.
“As we’ve said from the day this law was passed, it is only a matter of time before every school in America is on the list,” Rainwater said. “It’s a law that impossible to meet, because eventually if every single student in a school isn’t successful, you are on the list.”
No Child Left Behind allows states to set their own standards. The Fordham Institute has given Wisconsin’s academic standards a “D” in recent years. Neal McCluskey has more on states setting their own standards:
NCLB’s biggest problem is that it’s designed to help Washington politicians appear all things to all people. To look tough on bad schools, it requires states to establish standards and tests in reading, math and science, and it requires all schools to make annual progress toward 100% reading and math proficiency by 2014. To preserve local control, however, it allows states to set their own standards, “adequate yearly progress” goals, and definitions of proficiency. As a result, states have set low standards, enabling politicians to declare victory amid rising test scores without taking any truly substantive action.
NCLB’s perverse effects are illustrated by Michigan, which dropped its relatively demanding standards when it had over 1,500 schools on NCLB’s first “needs improvement” list. The July 2002 transformation of then-state superintendent Tom Watkins captures NCLB’s power. Early that month, when discussing the effects of state budget cuts on Michigan schools, Mr. Watkins declared that cuts or no cuts, “We don’t lower standards in this state!” A few weeks later, thanks to NCLB, Michigan cut drastically the percentage of students who needed to hit proficiency on state tests for a school to make adequate yearly progress. “Michigan stretches to do what’s right with our children,” Mr. Watkins said, “but we’re not going to shoot ourselves in the foot.”
Madison’s Leopold and Lincoln elementary schools were among the list of schools failing to attain the standards, marking the first time that a Madison elementary school made the list.
Three Madison middle schools — Sherman, Cherokee and Toki — also joined the list, which continued to include the district’s four major high schools: East, West, La Follette and Memorial. Madison’s Black Hawk Middle School, which was on the list last year, made enough academic progress to be removed from it.
Dane County, WI Schools Consider MAP Assessement Tests After Frustration with State WKCE Exams
Waunakee Urges that the State Dump the WKCE
Andy Hall takes a look at a useful topic:
From Wisconsin Heights on the west to Marshall on the east, 10 Dane County school districts and the private Eagle School in Fitchburg are among more than 170 Wisconsin public and private school systems purchasing tests from Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit group based in the state of Oregon.
The aim of those tests, known as Measures of Academic Progress, and others purchased from other vendors, is to give educators, students and parents more information about students ‘ strengths and weaknesses. Officials at these districts say the cost, about $12 per student per year for MAP tests, is a good investment.
The tests ‘ popularity also reflects widespread frustration over the state ‘s $10 million testing program, the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination.
Critics say that WKCE, which is used to hold schools accountable under the federal No Child Left Behind law, fails to provide adequate data to help improve the teaching methods and curriculum used in the classrooms.
They complain that because the tests are administered just once a year, and it takes nearly six months to receive the results, the information arrives in May — too late to be of use to teachers during the school year.
The testing controversy is “a healthy debate, ” said Tony Evers, deputy state superintendent of public instruction, whose agency contends that there ‘s room for both WKCE and MAP.
….
“It ‘s a test that we feel is much more relevant to assisting students and helping them with their skills development, ” said Mike Hensgen, director of curriculum and instruction for the Waunakee School District, who acknowledges he ‘s a radical in his dislike of WKCE.
“To me, the WKCE is not rigorous enough. When a kid sees he ‘s proficient, ‘ he thinks he ‘s fine. ”
Hensgen contends that the WKCE, which is based on the state ‘s academic content for each grade level, does a poor job of depicting what elite students, and students performing at the bottom level, really know.
The Waunakee School Board, in a letter being distributed this month, is urging state legislators and education officials to find ways to dump WKCE in favor of MAP and tests from ACT and other vendors.
- More on WKCE scores – Missing Students
- 2006 MMSD WKCE Scores: A Closer Look
- “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”
- The Fordham Foundation has given Wisconsin’s state standards a “D”.
- Imperial College Ditches A Levels and Sets its own Entrance Exam
Why Free Markets Have Little to Do with Inequality
Many Europeans believe liberal economic reforms are incompatible with social justice. The US and the UK, they point out, have more liberal markets for products and labour than in continental Europe – but also higher levels of poverty and income inequality. European countries therefore face a choice. They can either free their product and labour markets and accept the downsides or they can protect social solidarity by resisting Anglo-American neo-liberalism.
But the belief that market liberalisation increases social inequalities is not borne out by the evidence. The UK certainly has higher levels of poverty and inequality than France or Germany. But pointing this out is just selective use of evidence to support a predetermined conclusion. If there were a strong correlation between levels of market liberalisation and social outcomes, one would expect to see the pattern replicated across the European Union – not just in a carefully selected group of countries.
Is such a pattern discernible? No. The nation with the lowest levels of poverty and income inequality in the EU, as well as the lowest rate of long-term unemployment, is Denmark – a country with competitive product markets and some of the least restrictive labour laws. Countries with the worst social outcomes (Greece, Italy and Portugal) all have restrictive product and labour market laws. Liberalisation, it seems, no more threatens social justice than regulation guarantees it.
So what explains these differences in social outcomes? The answer, one might think, must be differences in spending by governments. Social spending is certainly high in egalitarian countries such as the Nordics. But it is just as high in France, where social inequalities are more marked. Likewise, it is as high in the supposedly heartless UK as it is in the egalitarian Netherlands. Contrary to popular belief, the UK is not governed by a callous minimal state.
Somewhat related: local discussion on Madison’s Equity Task Force.
Some of California’s most gifted students are being ignored, advocates say
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:
- Value Added Assessment (Report Cards)
- Wisconsin DPI Academic Standards (DPI Website).
- Bruce King’s evaluation of West High School’s Small Learning Community initiative and pushback at East High over planned curriculum changes.
- Lucy Mathiak’s 2006 post on Madison dropouts who tested at the high end of the scale.
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.
General Vang Pao’s Last War
Early in 2007, the Madison School Board decided to name a new far west side elementary school after Vang Pao. This decision became ingreasingly controversial after Pao was arrested as part of a plot to overthrow the Laos Government (the school has since been named Olson Elementary). 
Tim Weiner, author of Legacy of Ashes digs into this latest chapter in the Hmong / US Government relationship:
The case against Vang Pao grew out of a sting operation, a crime created in part by the government itself. What evidence there is rests largely on secretly recorded conversations led by an undercover federal agent, and while the transcripts implicating some of the co-defendants in the case seem damning, the agent barely met Vang Pao. The talk between them was brief; though Vang Pao may have dreamed aloud of a glorious revolution in Laos in years gone by, his role in the conspiracy charged by the government may be hard to prove. The government presents the case as a clear-cut gunrunning conspiracy in violation of the Neutrality Act, which outlaws military expeditions against nations with which the United States is at peace. But the old general’s defenders contend that the case against him is the consequence of a misguided post-9/11 zeal. If convicted in a trial, the former American ally could face the rest of his life in prison. And already his indictment has apparently emboldened Laotian and Thai authorities to crack down on the beleaguered Hmong who remain in refugee camps or in hiding in the jungles of Laos.
The government has a checkered record of late in its sting operations against people subsequently charged with planning acts of political terror. In 2006, to take one example, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales announced that a joint terrorism task force had broken up a plot to “levy war” and to blow up the 110-story Sears Tower in Chicago. In that case, as two trials have shown, an F.B.I. informant known to the defendants as Brother Mohammed created some of the key evidence — leading the group in an oath of loyalty to Al Qaeda, for instance. He provided them with plans and plots and gave them military gear like combat boots. The defendants never had contact with actual terrorists, never obtained weapons or explosives. Two juries have failed to see the logic of the case; a federal judge has had to declare two mistrials. (The government plans to try the case a third time.)
The sting operation against Vang Pao exhibits some similar traits. It has also dismayed a number of American intelligence officers who worked with the Hmong against the army of North Vietnam in the 1960s and 70s. “We taught him how to do these things — to fight political warfare, to try to defeat the enemy,” I was told by Larry Devlin, a former C.I.A. station chief who worked with the general in Laos. “We helped Vang Pao learn to do some of the things that he and his troops are now charged with.”
Britannica on the Hmong.
2008 Presidential Scholar Semi-Finalists
Presidential Scholars Program:
Wisconsin
WI – Appleton – Theresa S. Ryckman, Appleton West High School
WI – Germantown – Travis J. Serebin, Germantown High School
WI – Madison – Reuben F. Henriques, West High School
WI – Madison – Brian W. Ji, James Madison Memorial High School
WI – Madison – Laurel A. Ohm, West High School
WI – Menomonee Falls – Evan E. Mast, Menomonee Falls High School
WI – Menomonee Falls – Angela M. Zeng, Hamilton High School
WI – Racine – Adam J. Barron, Jerome I. Case Sr High School
WI – River Falls – [ * ] Kacey R. Hauk, St. Paul Conservatory for Performing Artists
WI – River Hills – Lisa R. Koenig, University School of Milwaukee
WI – Saukville – Spencer D. Stroebel, Cedarburg Senior High School
WI – Waukesha – [ * ] Adam G. Blodgett, Interlochen Arts Academy
National list.
National list2008 Scholars.
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:
- 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;
- 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
- 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.
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.
2008 MMSD Joe Thomas Community Service Awards
On April 14, the Madison Metropolitan School District’s Board of Education honored eight students with the Joe Thomas Community Service Award. The award was initiated in 1995 to honor the memory of a highly respected minority services coordinator at West High School.
The award recognizes high school seniors who have made a measurable impact through community service, demonstrate commitment to high academic standards and go above and beyond expectations.
The 2008 Joe Thomas Community Service Award winners are: Marcus Thomas Chavous, Tony Freiberg, Allison Freid, Amadou Fofana, Tiffany Jones, Dorothea McDonald, Namratta Sehgal and Darnell Small.
Read more at at The Capital City Hues.
Congratulations to each of these outstanding young people!
Wisconsin Heights among districts looking at consolidation
Wisconsin Heights, a cash-hungry school district on the western edge of Dane County, is among a growing number of area school systems considering consolidation to deal with financial pressures.
Kay Butcher, a Wisconsin Heights School Board member who backed two referendums rejected by voters this year and last year, said it’s important to start discussions with other districts.
“I brought up the issue of consolidation because I feel if we can’t pass a referendum, we have to find an alternative,” said Butcher, who raised the issue at an April 14 board meeting.
“I wouldn’t say that there’s anybody out there that’s gung-ho about the idea, but we have to talk about what are we going to do.”
The board is scheduled to continue that discussion tonight as part of a wide-ranging look at options for the district, which faces a budget shortfall estimated at $500,000 to more than $700,000 in the 2008-09 school year and larger deficits in later years.
An interesting “District” oriented perspective. The real question: what’s best for the students?
Sadly, kids’ struggle with writing goes on
In light of West High School Principal Ed Holmes’s budgetary decision to shut down the Writing Lab after almost 40 years in existence, I share this recent column from Barbara Wallraff, who writes the column Word Court.
America’s eighth-graders and high school seniors got their writing “report cards” the other day — the results for the writing part of the 2007 National Assessment of Educational Progress were announced. Just a third of eighth-grade students and a quarter of high school seniors are “proficient” in writing. Oh, dear! And yet federal authorities consider this encouraging news — that’s how bad the situation is.
Granted, the average scores are a few points higher than they were when the test was given in 2002. And the improvement is almost across the board, at least among the eighth-graders. Students in every ethnic group except American Indians are doing better, and the gap white and black eighth-graders is narrowing. Also granted, better is better — and mountains of behavior modification research demonstrate that praising successes is a more effective way to bring about change than criticizing failures.
But still, isn’t cheering because a third of the kids are doing well like congratulating ourselves that we made it a third of the way to the finish line in a race? Or that we managed to pay a third of our bills? Speaking of thirds, a 2003 survey by the College Board concluded that a third of employees at America’s blue-chip corporations are pretty bad at writing and need remedial training. And speaking of writing, can everybody see the handwriting on the wall? The message is terribly disheartening. Writing isn’t just a skill that people tend to need to earn a good living — it’s one of our basic means of communication.
The question is what to do about the two-thirds or three-quarters of our young people who are less than proficient. Keeping on doing whatever we’ve been doing isn’t suddenly going to start yielding different results. Admittedly, the sorry state of America’s writing skills is a vast, long-term problem to which experts have devoted whole careers. So who am I to propose a solution?
Writing is different from other skills. In math, you either get the concept or you don’t. In history, you either know who did what when or you don’t. But writing isn’t right or wrong, just better or worse. Learning to write is something each of us does individually, in our own way — which makes me suspect that sweeping initiatives, no matter how brilliant and well-funded (hah!), aren’t what’s needed.
May I suggest, instead, that anybody who has the time , energy and interest in young people encourage them, one at a time, to write — and read? (Reading skills and writing skills go hand in hand.) Ask kids to write you emails. Lend them a favorite book , and tell them what the book has meant to you. Ask them about what they’ve been reading.
If you’re a parent, you’re probably doing this for your own kids, and you probably know the statistics about what a huge advantage it gives kids if their parents take an interest in their education. If you’re only, or also, a concerned citizen — well, there are plenty of kids who aren’t lucky enough to be growing up in your family. Wouldn’t it make you proud to help a few of them?
For more:
- The Nation’s Report Card: Writing 2007
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – State black 8th-graders rank worst in nation in writing
- New York Times – In Test, Few Students Are Proficient Writers<
- Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – ‘Worst’ rank doesn’t belong to kids alone
‘A truly great man’: Milt McPike dies at 68
McPike Battled Rare Adenocystic Cancer. After battling cancer, popular former Madison East High School principal Milton McPike died on Saturday night.
The Madison Metropolitan School District said that McPike passed away overnight at a hospice care facility, WISC-TV reported.
Family, friends, former staff and students said that they’re remembering McPike as a man many called an educational hero.
For 40 years, McPike made his life educating youth. He spent 28 of those years in the Madison school district. For five years, he was an assistant principal at West High School, then as principal at East High School for 23 years.
“I’ve seen so much success through kids who everybody else has given up on,” McPike said in a 1992 interview.
He shared his secrets on building relationships with his students.
Milton McPike, a giant in the Madison educational community, died Saturday night at HospiceCare Center in Fitchburg, surrounded by his family. He was 68.
At 6-foot-4, the former San Francisco 49er cut an imposing figure at East High School, where he served as principal for 23 years.
McPike was diagnosed with adenocystic carcinoma, a rare cancer that attacked his sinus area.
Superintendent Art Rainwater called McPike “a truly great man” and “an icon in our community.”
“Milt was first of all a tremendous person. He was obviously extremely well respected and a talented educator,” Rainwater said. “He led East for 23 years and really and truly was not only important to East High School, but was also important to our community.”
Even after he retired from East in 2002, McPike continued to contribute to the community by being a member of the University of Wisconsin System Board of Regents and recently heading a gang task force in Dane County, Rainwater said. “So his loss will be deeply felt.”
Clusty Search: Milt McPike.
School Cell Phone Policy
As it stands, Madison school district policy strictly forbids students from having cell phones in school. The Student Senate will recommend to the School Board next month that phones be allowed to be used before and after school and during lunch.
“I don’t know many teenagers who would like to be separated from their cell phone,” said Laura Checovich, 17, president of the Student Senate and a student at West High School.
“Right now, the current policy is that you could be expelled just for having one in your backpack or in your pocket. We thought that was pretty drastic and thought it needed to be looked at again,” she said.
Some students leave their cell phones in their lockers, but Checovich estimates that between 80 and 90 percent of students keep their phones in their pockets or backpacks, which is prohibited under current school policy.
The School Board directed the Student Senate in December to research and recommend potential changes to district policy on cell phone use in schools. The Senate’s recommendations will be confined to policy in the high schools. The Senate will present its findings to the board at a 5 p.m. meeting April 14 at La Follette High School.
A Summary of April 1 School District Referendums
In what has become a semi-annual exercise in public solicitation — some might call it survival — scores of the state’s 426 school districts will ask voters for more money April 1.
Forty-one districts will be holding referendums to issue bonds or exceed state-mandated revenue limits. The requests are in addition to the 14 school referendums in last month’s primary. (Of those, six passed and eight failed.)
The districts are not just asking for money to build schools. They need it to fix roofs, update textbooks, upgrade computers and, in some cases, just keep up the upkeep.
Administrators have led citizens, some querulous, others just curious, on tours of buildings to point out the leaks, the rust, the crumbling concrete.
In southwestern Wisconsin, six school districts have the unfortunate coincidence of asking for extra cash at the same time as the area technical college.
Officials increase security at Toki Middle School
Madison school officials on Tuesday said they ‘re strengthening security at Toki Middle School to calm concerns from staff members and parents that the building is becoming too chaotic.
Beginning today, Toki will get a second security guard and also will get a dean of students to assist with discipline problems. The guard is being transferred from Memorial High School, while the dean of students is an administrative intern who has served at La Follette High School.
“I think very shortly Toki will get back on its feet, ” said Pam Nash, the Madison School District ‘s assistant superintendent overseeing middle and high schools.
The moves come a week after about 100 parents, school staff members and top district officials attended an emotional, three-hour Parent Teacher Organization meeting at which speakers expressed fears about safety and discipline at the West Side school.
via Madison Parents’ School Safety Site.
Channel3000:
Police were called to Toki 107 times last school year for incidents that included 17 disturbances, 11 batteries, five weapons offenses and one arson, WISC-TV reported.
So far this year, police have been called to 26 incidents. The district security chief said the school is safe, though, and he warned the numbers can be misleading.
There was no way to compare those numbers to police calls at other Madison middle schools because the district doesn’t keep that data itself. But the district security chief said they are working on that.
Toki PTO President Betsy Reck said “it’s a start,” but she said she believe there needs to be a clearly defined “behavior plan” posted immediately that shows appropriate behaviors and the consequences if they are not followed.
Reck said she wants consistent consequences applied to negative behavior.
Wisconsin teenagers compete for academic honors
After months of practice and grueling drills, 180 Wisconsin teenagers will converge on Madison next week to face tough competition.
For these young people, the contests are academic, not athletic. They’ll be competing in the finals of the Wisconsin Academic Decathlon, which this year includes Dane County teams from McFarland and Sun Prairie high schools.
It’s among a growing number of academic extracurricular activities that help students flex their brains, polish their skills and pump up pride in their schools and communities.
After six straight state championship years, with nearly half of last year’s winning team returning, what worries could face Waukesha West High School’s Academic Decathlon team going into next week’s state competition?
“We talk about the New England Patriots,” West’s veteran decathlon coach Duane Stein said. “We think anybody can fall on any day.”
So the nine members of West’s team have been staying late at school and studying in their spare time to try to avoid repeating at Wisconsin’s academic Super Bowl the performance of a certain undefeated football team that lost its final game of the season.
They’re not the only ones hard at work, however.
Parents “Ready for Monday’s Boundary Battle”
A ciritical meeting on Monday night could decide the fate of where some Madison students will go to school.
VIDEO: Watch The Report
On Sunday, some West Side parents prepared for battle, concerned that they are becoming a swing neighborhood, WISC-TV reported.
The area at issue is located near the WISC-TV studios and is referred to as the “Channel 3 Area” by the Madison Metropolitan School District. If the current recommended plan is passed, their neighborhood children would be moved to the fourth elementary school in 15 years.
“It was Huegel, Orchard Ridge, Chavez, Mold, then new school,” said one concerned parent.
Parents in the neighborhood gathered together on Sunday night to share their talking points and prepare to fight for their neighborhood school.
Susan Troller has more here.
Thinking about the Next Few Decades: “Let Us Light A Candle While We Walk, Lest We Fear What Lies Ahead”
Many people look to the future with fear. We see this fear throughout the web. Right-wing sites describe the imminent end of America: overrun by foreigners, victim of cultural and financial collapse. Left-wing sites describe “die-off” scenarios due to Peak Oil, climate change, and ecological collapse – as the American dream dies from takeover by theocrats and fascists.
Most of this is nonsense, but not the prospect of massive changes in our world. But need we fear the future?
The past should give us confidence when we look ahead. Consider Dodge City in 1877. Bat Masterson is sheriff, maintaining some semblance of law in the Wild West. Life in Dodge is materially only slightly better from that in an English village of a century before. But social and technological evolution has accelerated to a dizzying pace, and Bat cannot imagine what lies ahead.
Well worth reading as Madison prepares for a new Superintendent and two new school board members.
