Ben Casselman:

The larger challenge for schools, however, may be longer-term: attracting teachers. Tight school budgets — and the broader pushback against public-sector payrolls in many states — have squeezed teacher salaries. Average weekly wages for public school teachers have dropped 5 percent over the last five years, according to a new analysis by the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute. Moreover, teacher salaries are falling further behind those of other professions that require a college degree; the trend holds up even after accounting for more generous public-sector benefits. The growing gap could have serious consequences: As my former colleague Hayley Munguia wrote last year, evidence shows that fewer top students are going into, or staying in, teaching.

The economic recovery could ease funding pressure in the next few years. But the longer-term picture is darker. The aging of the baby boom generation will put pressure on budgets at the federal, state and local levels as governments struggle to pay for health care and other costs associated with a graying population. Much of the debate over education in recent years, including on the campaign trail, has focused on expanding access to college and preschool. But ensuring adequate funding for the years in between could prove just as important.

Spending continues to grow in Madison, now approaching $18,000 per student.

Anya Kamenetz:

Dale Farran, a researcher at Vanderbilt University, has been watching closely how that money is spent in Tennessee. She argues the programs there are flawed, and unlikely to move the needle for the poor kids who need them most.

What’s worse, Farran says, is that across states, nobody’s really watching the store when it comes to quality, so these mistakes are likely to be repeated.

“I’m so old I’m getting really grumpy about this,” she says. “I have cared about this for such a long time and it’s just making me crazy.” Farran outlines her criticisms in a new paper for the Brookings Institution.

Farran’s research team visited 139 preschool classrooms in the Memphis area and Nashville, all funded by the federal grant program. They observed the classes for a full 6 to 8 hour day to see just how the teachers and students spent their time. This is really important, because we know from other research that high quality preschool means lots of choice-based play in centers, small group instruction, and outdoor or gym play so that young children can move their bodies.

Perhaps local schools might evaluate the effectiveness of current programs (including reading) prior to simply spending more….

Annysa Johnson:

State Rep. Dale Kooyenga on Tuesday called the dismal performance of some Milwaukee Public Schools “a humanitarian issue” and defended the turnaround district he helped to create as one way to address their shortcomings.

“We cannot accept the status quo; we need to be open to change,” the Brookfield Republican told Milwaukee teachers union Executive Director Lauren Baker in a wide-ranging debate at the Marquette University Law School. “I know you disagree, but I believe this will help MPS do better.”

Baker said the “takeover district,” as she called it, could divert as much as $41 million from MPS over the next five years. In addition, she said, all of the reforms Kooyenga envisions, including intensive wrap-around services for students, could take place without usurping control from Milwaukee’s democratically elected school board.

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

OGECHI EMECHEBE:

At the direction of the Legislature, the UW System recently created the new Office of Educational Opportunity to oversee the creation of charter schools in Madison and Milwaukee without oversight from local school districts. How do you react to that?

I’m opposed to the concept. I find it objectionable that the state has allowed one person to essentially make decisions that our local community can make through school boards and allow that person to authorize who can operate a school that’s not accountable to the public but has a call on our resources. I find that offensive. It’s repugnant that they think it’s acceptable policy when I think most people in Madison would say it’s unacceptable policy.

The best defense is a good offense and having our public schools be the best public schools we can is certainly one of the strong directions that we need to emphasize. We’re fortunate to have really good schools in Madison but I think we need to do even more to bring in staff voices and parent voices into the schools to have the public own them even more. If we see proposals coming in for non-public charter entities, we can actively organize an opposition to those sorts of things if we’re concerned as a city that we don’t want to have our public dollars controlled by non-public entities without any oversight.

There have been mixed reactions to the district’s new Behavior Education Plan. What have union members said about the BEP?

Much more on Madison Teachers, Inc., here.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

(By Andrew McCuaig, English teacher, LaFollette High School)

Joining a union is an act of faith: a belief that people coming together with similar daily work lives can have an impact on those people who may have goals that don’t take into account anything but the bottom line. By joining a union, you are asserting that you were not put on this earth merely to do what you were told, but that you believe you should have a say in your own livelihood. But more than that, as a union member you believe that wealth should be more evenly
distributed, that supervisors should not have absolute power, and that the details of the actual work should be mutually agreed upon, because you cannot get that coal out of the ground, that car made, or that student to graduate without a contract that respects both sides. Renew at www.madisonteachers.org

But joining a union is also a practical matter. Wherever unions exist, wages are higher. That is one reason why corporate interests throughout history have tried to weaken unions whenever they can. Fair wages, vacation days, sick leave, maternity leave, overtime, seniority, even the notion of a 40 hour work week – all exist because of the Labor Movement, and all cut into a company’s bottom line. When you pay union dues, you are supporting a staff that bargains on your behalf, that defends you when you require defending, or, more likely, defends someone else you might not even know who has your same job and is being treated unfairly. If the accused has truly screwed up, they get due process and what’s coming to them. If they haven’t, they are not simply fired in a Donald Trump dreamworld but are given their job back. The employer, meanwhile, is given a message not to abuse its authority.

Madison teachers are now actively responding to two union-busting rules justified by our state legislature’s notion of fairness: the elimination of automatic dues deductions by employers, and the option for teachers to not pay their “fair share” dues once our contract expires on June 30th. “Fair share” dues refers to the decades-old court ruling that workers who choose not to join a union must still pay for those services that they benefit from. The recent 4-4 Supreme Court deadlock on “fair share” upholds this practice for private sector unions but doesn’t affect Wisconsin’s teachers and other public employees under Act 10. Starting this month, teachers in every Madison school will be encouraging each other to continue their membership with MTI by supplying their bank’s routing number to pay dues. Some will need convincing, and some will want to pocket their dues now that they can. This will surely cause tension among colleagues. Also causing tension will be the teacher who keeps the money and then finds himself unfairly disciplined and in need of union representation he is now not entitled to. It’s a nice divide and conquer ploy, and those responsible deserve credit for their meanness.

On the other hand, heading into this new, mean work environment gives Madison teachers a chance to come together in solidarity, to freshly justify our existence, and to educate a new generation of teachers why we have just cause, paid sick days, and other things we now take for granted. The continued existence and influence of MTI will no doubt keep the meanest politicians up at night, which is just another reason to sign up.

April 11 and April 18 editions.

Alan Borsuk:

Nicolet High School serves students from Fox Point, Bayside, River Hills and Glendale. Nicolet is both a high-performing school and a high-spending one. This year’s budget works out to more than $18,000 per student.

On April 5, voters in those communities approved allowing Nicolet, for the next six years, to spend $3.15 million a year more than the revenue cap that the state imposes on public schools. A $2.15 million a year addition to school spending that has been in place for five years ends this year.

Without the voters’ approval in the referendum, Nicolet would have cut spending by 15%, cut a dozen teachers and increased class sizes from typically about 23 to about 30, Superintendent Robert Kobylski said. The approval means about $7 per $100,000 of home value in additional taxes annually for Nicolet-area residents.

Madison is spending more than $17k per student.

Madison Teachers, Inc. (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The Department of Public Instruction receives 36,000 teacher license applications each year (initial and renewal applications). To help make this process more efficient, DPI created the Educator Licensing Online (ELO) System in December, 2013. DPI no longer accepts paper applications for license renewal; one must complete and submit the renewal application through this online system.
Don’t wait until the last minute to prepare for a license renewal. If your license is set to expire on June 30 of this year, start collecting the required documentation early. You will need to provide information about the certifications currently held (they can all be renewed), and where and when you completed your certification (you can provide multiple IHEs). If you were licensed in 2004 or after, you must have your PDP reviewed and approved. Once that is accomplished, the District will provide that information directly to DPI.
If you are renewing your license through the completion of 6 university credits, have electronic (scanned) verification available, so it can be uploaded during the application process. All applicants will need to complete a Conduct and Competency Questionnaire and will need to scan and upload an Employment Verification form (#1613) signed by MMSD Human Resources. Using the new system the first time can be confusing and frustrating. Having all the information and/or materials you need, will help to make the application process go more smoothly.
A one-time, one-year license extension is possible. Failure to renew one’s license can be considered a severance of one’s teaching contract, and will be considered a resignation by the District.
Contact MTI for assistance or questions about your license renewal. For more information visit DPI’s ELO website: http://tepdl.dpi.wi.gov/licensing/elo.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

While Act 10 limits bargaining to base wages only, all other issues and conditions of employment are addressed as part of the Employee Handbook development process. Last year, MTI worked with MMSD administration and the Board of Education to establish a new collaborative process for continued employee voice in the development of the Employee Handbook. That collaborative process commenced last summer and, after months of difficult discussions and eventual BOE approval, produced an Employee Handbook that continues the pay, benefits, and working conditions most critical to employees, while forging acceptable compromises in other areas. This summer, the joint Oversight Group of employee and management representatives will meet again to discuss, and possibly recommend, potential modifications to the Employee Handbook. Later this spring, MTI will be surveying MTI members to identify what changes they would like to see in the Employee Handbook.

Ogechi Emechebe:

The achievement gap between students of color and their white counterparts in Dane County has been an area of concern for the past several years. In addition to what the Madison School District is doing to try and eliminate the gap, a local grassroots organization is hoping to reduce the achievement gap before kids start kindergarten.

Harold Rayford, pastor of The Faith Place Church in Sun Prairie and President of the African American Council of Churches, will launch the 1800 Days initiative on Tuesday, March 29, at 6 p.m. at the Central Madison Public Library.

1800 Days is a nonprofit organization focusing on a child’s first five years of life where significant intellectual development takes place, said Rayford. The emphasis will be on early childhood development so children can be academically and intellectually equipped to start kindergarten and stay on track once in school.

Rayford said the idea came about after he volunteered as an assistant librarian in a local middle school for about four years. He said he initially began the role to help teachers interact with minority students, but over time he realized the achievement gap was an issue that needed participation from everyone in the community, including minority groups.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

Given the unique and retaliatory provisions of Act 10 that:

Any person eligible to vote in the recertification election who does not vote is counted as a NO vote;

To prevail in the election, a union must receive affirmative votes from 51% of those eligible to vote; and

For a Union to not receive at least 51% of the votes of those eligible to vote, it would not be recertified as the employees’ bargaining agent.
Thus, with so much at stake, assuring that all who are eligible to vote are aware of the importance of their vote is a high priority for the Union, and to all whom it represents. MTI had numerous volunteers, retirees and current members to assist with the important task of gaining the largest number voting as possible in the recently concluded recertification election. To be sure these individuals were not wasting their time calling and disturbing those who had already voted, MTI asked the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) for the names of those who had voted. The information should have been supplied under Wisconsin’s Open Records Law. MTI specified it did not want information as to how a person voted, only that they had voted. However, the WERC refused to comply with MTI’s request, claiming that providing the information would violate “the secrecy of the ballot.” That is not a valid claim. Who votes in any Wisconsin election is a public record. In its request, MTI specifically asked the WERC to redact any reference as to how one voted. Ironically, at the conclusion of last year’s and this year’s election, the WERC gave MTI the names of all who voted. Doing it during the election as MTI requested would be no different.

Of those eligible to vote, 82.78% voted and 98.36% of those voted for recertification.

Madison Teachers, Inc. 14 December 2015 newsletter is available here.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

“In solidarity, we move forward together” came through loud and clear as MTI-represented District employees in all five (5) MTI bargaining units voted overwhelmingly to recertify MTI as their representative. Of those voting, the teacher unit voted 98.51% to recertify (as compared to 98.46% last year) with 2,484 voting. Of those voting, the educational assistant unit (EA-MTI) voted 99.97% to recertify (as compared to 98.92% last year) with 535 voting. Of those voting, the clerical/technical unit (SEE-MTI) voted 93.71% to recertify (as compared to 94.74% last year) with 175 voting. The substitute teacher unit (USO-MTI) voted 98.41% to recertify (as compared to 97.82% last year) with 378 voting. The security assistant unit (SSA-MTI) voted 100% to recertify (the same percentage as last year) with 18 voting. In all, 82.78% of those eligible voted (as compared to 85.35% last year). MTI has not been challenged for continued representation since it became the bargaining agent for teachers in 1964. Since its creation, MTI has grown from 900 to 4,700, and has gained the reputation as one of the most successful public sector Unions in the country. It is Governor Walker’s Act 10 that forced the recertification election. MTI had to pay fees of $3,550 to the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission to conduct the election. Additional costs were experienced for educational and promotional materials related to the election which, under Act 10, must be conducted annually. MTI’s margin of victory last year and this were among the highest in the State.

The large turnout is a testament to MTI members’ appreciation and support of their Union’s accomplishments on the members’ behalf, to the hard work of the over 150 MTI Member Organizers who engaged their colleagues in conversations about their Union, and to the many members and retired members who made calls from Union headquarters reminding members to vote. MTI members clearly understand that students & staff are better served, if all “Stand Together.”
Thanks goes to all who made their voice heard loud and clear by voting!

MTI’s 23 November newsletter is available here.

Madison Teachers, Inc (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

“Beyond Measure” a film, sponsored by MTI & WEAC, paints a positive picture of what is possible in American Education. Ruth Conniff, Editor of The Progressive magazine, will facilitate a discussion following the film. The film begins at 7:00 p.m., at the Barrymore Theater. There is no charge to attend. Tickets are going fast, but can be reserved via: http://www.madisonteachers.org/beyondmeasure/

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The present condition of politics in education is gloomy. School workers report high levels of stress, health problems, and thoughts of abandoning their career. Numerous teachers in Wisconsin already have, and it’s caused a teacher shortage nationwide. Many pinpoint the source – a lack of respect for the professional by far-right legislators and governors, and that has become the new normal. However, a ray of hope broke its way through the malaise, with the announcement this fall of what has been accomplished with the Madison Metropolitan School District Employee Handbook. It is evidence of what the Right couldn’t take. While Act 10 destroyed a 50 year history of collective bargaining for Wisconsin’s public employees, save police and firefighters, it couldn’t take away the voice or the spirit of MTI’s collaborative ability. There is still power in Union.

The Employee Handbook was a result of the Union and District management working together to map out a path for the future of our students, our schools, and workers. One of the most powerful aspects of this Handbook is that it continues a grievance procedure which provides for a mutually-selected independent hearing examiner.

Also, within the Handbook is a process for its modification. Any modification will be the result of a joint employer/employee committee coming together to make a recommendation to the Board of Education. This follows a procedure similar to the process used to create the original Handbook. It honors collaboration and emphasizes the importance of workers’ voices in the workplace.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The terms and conditions of the 2015-16 MTI/MMSD Collective Bargaining Agreement relative to Parent-Teacher Conferences provides the following:

“All teachers are required to attend up to two (2) evenings for parent teacher conferences per contract year as directed by the teacher’s building administrator. Teachers participating in evening parent‐teacher conferences will be provided a compensatory day off as designated on the School Calendar in Section V‐L. In recognition of 4K, non‐ SAGE 2nd grade, non‐SAGE 3rd grade, 4th grade and 5th grade teachers having more parent‐teacher conferences due to increased class size, such teachers shall be released from the early release SIP‐aligned activities Monday during the months of November and March. At the elementary level conferences will be held in lieu of the report cards for the reporting periods in which they are held.”

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Getting Organized! MTI now has over seventy-five (75) Member Organizers including teachers, educational assistants, clerical-technical employees, substitute teachers, and retired MTI members who are committed to helping the next generation maintain their Union. Member Organizers are volunteers who serve as point persons in their building/work location to help build awareness of and support for the recertification election of MTI’s five bargaining units.

Get-out-the-vote! In political elections, voter turnout is critical. Act 10 requires 51% “YES” votes to prevail, not just a simple majority like most elections. Thus, in Union recertification elections, the number voting is even more critical than in any other election. The experiences of other Wisconsin public sector Unions show that when employees vote, they overwhelmingly vote Union YES! Where recertification elections have been lost, it is frequently because less than 51% of the eligible voters cast a ballot. Unlike political elections, in recertification elections a non-vote counts as a “NO vote.”

In MTI’s recertification election, ballots can be cast 24 hours per day, seven days per week, via phone, computer, or iPad. Voting begins at Noon, November 4, and continues through Noon, November 24. The process is quick and efficient and should take no more than a couple minutes. That said, others have reported difficulties where votes were not counted, when they failed to accurately complete each step in the balloting process. It is for that reason that MTI is providing all MTI-represented employees with detailed voting instructions on posters, flyers and palm cards.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Over the past few weeks, discussions have been occurring throughout the District about MTI’s upcoming MTI Recertification Elections. One of the most frequently asked questions by newer staff, those who are not aware of MTI’s many accomplishments on behalf of District employees, is “what is at risk if we lose our Union?” To answer, one only needs to look around Wisconsin to see what has happened to employees of other public employers where employees no longer have a collective voice in the workplace.

Act 10 enabled public sector employers to unilaterally establish what employees pay toward health insurance. In many school districts, employers increased the employee’s take-home share to 12% of the premium. Such decreases an employee’s pay up to $220 per month. MTI worked with the District last year to keep to ZERO the health insurance contribution for MTI- represented employees. And, the Union will be working with the District again this year, via the Joint MTI/MMSD Wellness Committee, to collaboratively identify potential sources for health insurance savings rather than implementing a premium co-pay. MTI-represented employees are among the very few public employees in Wisconsin who are not obligated to pay 10-12% toward health insurance premiums. What MTI achieved puts an additional $50 to $171 of take- home pay in each MTI member’s pocket each month, depending on whether they carry single or family health insurance.

For long-time teachers, educational assistants, clerical-technical staff and security assistants approaching retirement, MTI’s Contracts and the new Employee Handbook provide retiring employees with 100% of the value of their accumulated sick leave for the payment of post-retirement insurances. Many school districts have capped or reduced such benefits, given the unilateral authority granted them by Act 10, forcing longtime employees to work longer in order to afford post-retirement insurance premiums.

Alan Borsuk:

Until Thursday evening, I never dreamed I would write a “profiles in courage” piece about Wendell Harris. I apologize, Wendell. You earned it, and here it is.

Of course, an example of political courage can also be seen as an example of betrayal and broken promises. Harris will get those reactions, too. I assume he burned just about every political bridge he had when he voted for the proposal to put a Carmen high school program in the Pulaski High School building on Milwaukee’s south side.

Electrifying is a word I believe I have never used to describe a Milwaukee School Board meeting until now.

But the stakes Thursday night were high, the outcome uncertain, and the tension in the room palpable enough to lead Milwaukee Public Schools officials to bring in extra security. The proposal became an intense battle between supporters of conventional public schools and supporters of independent charter schools.

Deciding the issue meant making a statement about what kind of change is going to fly or not fly in MPS.

Carmen has two high-expectations charter schools in Milwaukee, operating under authorization of the School Board but employing its own teachers and its own education plans. Pulaski is a venerable, large high school with declining enrollment and low achievement. Its new principal, Lolita Patrick, supports the Carmen-Pulaski plan as a path to change.

If they won, advocates of the “partnership” plan would undertake the ambitious, but very difficult pursuit of a vision of these two schools creating excellence together in the same building.

More, here.

Meanwhile, Madison continues its one size fits all government schools model, most recently rejecting the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school, despite long term disastrous reading results.

Madison Teachers, Inc. (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email

After many days of detailed analysis with MMSD, the parties have agreed as to whom is eligible to vote in each of the five (5) upcoming MTI bargaining unit recertification elections. All MTI- represented employees who were identified as having actively worked for the District as of October 1, 2015 will be eligible to vote. Act 10 requires that to win recertification, the union must win 51% of all eligible voters. The following illustrates the number of eligible voters in each bargaining unit:

Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The only guarantees in life are death, taxes and MTI’s powerful advocacy for Union members, public schools and education. That amended saying is one that holds true as much now as it ever has. We know that we are facing a year filled with many challenges, but with all the change comes the potential for MTI to emerge even stronger and more united. Challenges include another recertification election, and a Handbook to become effective next July.

Even after the passage of Act 10, which was designed to kill union representation, MTI is still here and still strong. MTI staff and elected leadership will continue to provide the high level of service and strong advocacy for Union members that it has provided over the last 50 years.

MTI and other public sector unions continue to face political and economic attacks designed to destroy us and public education. These attacks have been crafted by those interested in expanding their own political, social and economic power. MTI has resisted these attacks and continues to thrive. The success of our ongoing efforts rests on each of us. Each of us are the “I” in MTI. As we begin the new school year, MTI staff and leadership will continue to assist and support all members. We look forward to working with you to strengthen and build MTI for the future.

Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The process for establishing an Individual Plan of Service (IPS) for ELL Students is being converted to a more formalized online documentation system in Oasys for the 2015-16 school year. This will help bring the District into compliance with state and federal laws. Developing an IPS includes surveying parents and delivering a language assessment for all new students. The burden for completing these plans falls on ELL Case Managers who are typically BRT or ESL teachers. The deadline for completing these Individual Plans of Service (IPS) for all ELL students is October 16, 2015. Given the tight deadline and the significant workload increase, the Office of Multilingual and Global Education (OMGE) is offering additional support as follows:

Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The anti-union legislation passed in 2011 at Governor Walker’s request requires public sector unions to undergo an annual recertification election for the union to maintain its status as the representative of all workers covered by the union. MTI has again filed petitions with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) calling upon them to conduct the election for each of MTI’s five bargaining units (teachers, educational assistants, supportive educational employees, security assistants, and substitute teachers). The elections will be conducted November 4-24, 2015.

Unlike political elections that require the prevailing candidate win only the majority of votes cast, Act 10 requires public sector unions to win 51% of all eligible votes – in each unit – for the Union to remain the certified representative. If a person represented by MTI does not vote, it is considered a “no” vote. Last year, MTI employees in each of the five bargaining units voted overwhelmingly to recertify. Now, we have to do it again. Over the summer, MTI staff, elected leaders, and member organizers began developing this year’s election plans. Additional information will be distributed as this important election approaches. It is time once again to roll up our sleeves, reach out to each other, and renew our commitment to “Our Union”, MTI.

Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Educator Effectiveness is the new educator evaluation tool required of all teachers and principals throughout Wisconsin. This new system is a new culture for MTI members: it utilizes a new language (SLO, PPG, artifacts); a new set of values (students’ academic achievement is a part of the process); and a new calendar (it’s a year-long process). And all teachers, whether or not they are being formally evaluated in a given year, will be involved in parts of the process.

Educator Effectiveness has two main parts. It balances educator practice (using the Charlotte Danielson model) with student performance outcomes. Each year, all teachers are to develop a Professional Practice Goal (PPG) and a Student Learning Objective (SLO) which must be documented in the Teachscape Software module. One aligns their PPG with an area within the Danielson model framework that the teacher wishes to develop or focus upon. It could have to do with planning, instruction, assessment, or any professional responsibility (for example: communication or collaboration). One’s SLO focuses on developing content area skills for a particular group of students you are working with. Both the PPG and SLO must be completed by October (date uncertain). The District’s website has resources relating to Educator Effectiveness https://staffdevweb.madison.k12.wi.us/educatoreffectiveness.

Alan Borsuk:

But others differ on what research shows. Without attracting much attention, SAGE is undergoing a remodeling that is likely to de-emphasize class-size reduction in favor of other efforts that supporters think will have more impact.

Unlike some other major education changes, the new SAGE didn’t emerge from behind closed doors in the middle of the night. The legislature’s Joint Legislative Council, which works on developing legislation, created a bipartisan study committee of legislators and educators that met over several months.

State Sen. Luther Olsen (R-Ripon), who chaired the group, recalled a talk he heard at a national convention of legislators by Andreas Schleicher, an influential figure in studying the success of students around the world. Schleicher cited high-quality teachers and rigorous curriculum as bigger factors in student success than small class sizes.

During the Legislative Council sessions, Sarah Archibald, an aide to Olsen at the time, presented research that said that, while small class sizes help kids, high-quality teaching and high-quality one-on-one tutoring produce more significant results. (Archibald is now an education consultant in Madison.)

“People love small class sizes,” Archibald told me. “I get it.” But class-size reduction “is more expensive and less effective than other strategies.”

“I’d rather have an effective teacher with a large class than an ineffective teacher with a small class,” she said.

Madison has tolerated disastrous reading results for decades, despite any number of programs, inclding SAGE.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

Longtime MTI activist Peg Coyne (Black Hawk), who was elected a year ago to her third term as MTI President, has decided to retire at the conclusion of the school year. Coyne also served as Union President for the 2011-12 and 2013-14 school years, was on the Union’s Bargaining Committee for 12 years (2003-2015), and on the Union’s Board of Directors for five years (2010-2015). She has taught in the District for 42 years.

As a result of her leadership during the Act 10 protests, she spoke several times around the United States, including before the Chicago Teachers Union, at an international labor conference in Minneapolis, and at a social issues conference in Osaka, Japan.

Andy Waity (Crestwood), MTI’s President-elect, will assume the Union’s Presidency at the conclusion of the school year. Given Coyne’s retirement, Waity will serve for two years. Nominations for the remainder of Waity’s At-Large position on the MTI Board will be received at the September 15 meeting of the MTI Faculty Representative Council, or can be made by contacting MTI Executive Director John Matthews (matthewsj@madisonteachers.org 608-257-0491). The election will be held at the October Council meeting. The term expires September, 2016.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

Governor Walker’s proposed Budget and the gamesmanship being played in the legislature has been compared to the game “whack-a-mole”. Representative Melissa Sargent, a champion for public education, teachers and progressive causes, said of the Budget proposals, “Just when you think we’ve averted one crisis, another initiative is introduced to threaten the progressive traditions of our state.” Sargent added, “The Budget process provides a look inside the corporate-driven policy agenda of the Republican party. Their goal is comprehensive privatization.”

That concept came through loud and clear last week, when the Republican majority on the Joint Finance Committee introduced a proposal which would enable even more funds to be diverted from money-starved public schools to private schools, by expanding the number of parents who can use a State-issued voucher to pay the cost of sending their child to a private school. The funds would come from that child’s area public school system. An investigation by One Wisconsin Now illustrates that a pro-voucher front group donated $122,000 to the campaigns of the Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee.

Senate Democratic Leader Jennifer Shilling said education must be the top Budget priority, that “the needs of children and schools must be addressed before tax breaks for the wealthy and giveaways to special interests (voucher supporters).” Shilling continued, “To fully restore the cuts our schools have seen over the past four years, we need to invest an additional $200 per student above what Walker has proposed.” While the Republican majority brags that they are adding $208 million in school aids, it amounts to only 1⁄2 of 1% over the two-year Budget, and more than 50% of that will not go to schools, but to reducing property taxes.

The Walker Budget would also enable State takeover of the Milwaukee Public Schools, and perhaps the Madison Metropolitan School District. The Budget proposal would enable a “commissioner to convert these schools to charter or voucher schools.” The “commissioner” would have the authority to fire all teachers and administrators in a school district taken over, given the provisions of the proposed law.

A recent amendment would enable anyone with any BA degree to teach English, social studies, math or science, and enable anyone – even without a degree – to teach business, art, music, agriculture or special education.

The Budget will be acted upon this month. It is time to let your objections be heard regarding the school funding crisis being created by the proposed Budget. Contact majority party members of the Joint Finance Committee:

Related: Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results, despite spending more than $15,000 per student, double the national average.

Madison Teachers, Inc.

The Joint MTI/MMSD Safety Committee is charged with evaluating the “implementation of and compliance with the District’s Behavior Education Plan(s) (BEP)” and periodically reporting to the Superintendent and MTI Board of Directors. Over the course of the 2014-15 school year, the Committee met multiple times and designed, conducted and analyzed a Survey of all school-based District staff. 1,589 employees (42% of District employees) completed the Survey, and over 600 took the time to add personal comments. A summary of the Survey findings, as well as policy recommendations (not comments), are included in the Joint Committee’s Report which can be reviewed on MTI’s website (www.madisonteachers.org).
In summary, the Report highlights significant challenges with the BEP.

While a majority of respondents (78%) understand the approach to behavior set forth in the BEP, only 18% agreed that the practices aligned with it have had a positive impact on student behavior. These results are even more pronounced among teachers at the secondary level where only 10% of middle school teachers and 9% of high school teachers agree that it has had a positive impact on student behavior. Also of major concern is that only 17% of respondents agreed that “when a student is returned to class following a behavior incident, he or she is ready to re-engage in learning”. Only 40% of respondents agreed that their school has a clear behavior support system when a student is struggling. The Survey findings reinforce employee concerns that there is insufficient staffing to support students with significant behavioral needs, and there is insufficient behavioral consequences, and insufficient training to ensure that ALL staff provide a consistent and coherent application of the BEP. Survey results also indicate that District staff believe safety in school and student behavior is at a critical stage.

Madison Teachers, Inc.

It’s that time of year when Administrators send emails, memos and letters outlining “required” trainings, professional development, and other meetings during the summer months. Often, staff are encouraged to attend meetings and trainings wherein administrators use language that does not clearly indicate that any attendance during the summer or the voluntary days for returning staff is entirely voluntary.

Addendum G of the Collective Bargaining Agreement is clear and provides that attendance at any District offered staff development opportunities during the summer recess be compensated, either with Professional Advancement Credit (PAC), extended employment salary, or payment for graduate credits (if such is offered). Addendum G also requires that such communications “clearly convey the fact that teachers will not be penalized or suffer harm for choosing not to volunteer .”

Anyone with concerns about a memo or notice from administration that seems to indicate your attendance is compulsory on a non-contract or voluntary day should contact Jeff Knight (knightj@madisonteachers.org) at MTI. MTI does not discourage voluntary participation; however, it is out of respect for MTI-represented individuals that the Collective Bargaining Agreement is clear and direct regarding one’s participation or lack thereof.
For the 20

Madison Teachers, Inc.

MTI’s Election Committee has tallied the ballots cast in last week’s MTI teacher bargaining unit general election and has certified the election of MTI officers: Andrew Waity (Crestwood) as President Elect; and the re-election of incumbents Art Camosy (Memorial) as Vice-President; Greg Vallee (Thoreau) as Treasurer; and Elizabeth Donnelly (Elvehjem) as Secretary. Officers will be installed at the May 19 meeting of the MTI Faculty Representative Council. The MTI Board of Directors consists of ten members – six officers who are elected by the general membership and four at-large representatives elected by the MTI Faculty Representative Council.

Elected to the MTI Bargaining Committee are: High School Representative – Larry Iles (West); Middle School Representative – incumbent Michael Hay-Chapman (Spring Harbor); Elementary School Representative – incumbent Emily Pease-Clem (Schenk); At-Large Representative – incumbent Susan Covarrubias (Stephens); and Educational Services Representative-High School – Karyn Chacon (East). The MTI Bargaining Committee consists of 15 members. One from each of the referenced areas is elected each year.

Molly Beck:

The added funding comes from a $250 per student special funding stream for school districts in the second year of the budget, according to the legislation package proposed by Republican co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee.

At the same time, the 1,000-student cap on the statewide voucher program would be lifted and students with disabilities would be eligible to apply for vouchers for the first time under a separate program. No more than 1 percent of a school district’s enrollment could receive vouchers, however.

The plan assures that private schools receiving school vouchers would receive about $7,200 for each K-8 student and about $7,800 for each high school student, the committee leaders said Tuesday. Walker’s proposed expansion would provide schools considerably less per student.

The voucher expansion would be paid for in a manner similar to the state’s open enrollment program for public schools — tax money would follow a student from the public district to the private voucher school. The plan could ultimately cost school districts about $48 million over the biennium, according to a Legislative Fiscal Bureau memo drafted last week for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester.

The package also proposes to adopt Walker’s budget language that prohibits the state superintendent from promoting the Common Core State Standards, and from adopting new academic standards created by the Common Core State Standards Initiative, though there are none in the works.

Erin Richards & Jason Stein:

Special-needs vouchers would allow parents of children with special needs to use taxpayer money to send their child to a private school. Standalone bills have been defeated twice in recent years, in large part because every established advocacy organization for those with disabilities have opposed the bills in public hearings.

Their chief concern: Private schools are not obligated to follow federal disability laws. They point to examples in other states where, in their view, under-qualified operators have declared themselves experts and started tapping taxpayer money to serve such students.

Critics also say the proposal would erode taxpayer funding for public schools.

Patrick Marley, Jason Stein & Erin Richards:

The GOP proposal would also phase out the Chapter 220 school integration program, put the Milwaukee County executive in charge of some low-performing Milwaukee Public Schools, create an alternative system for licensing teachers and require that high school students take the civics test given to those applying for U.S. citizenship.

Another provision would allow home-school students, virtual school students and private school students to participate in public schools’ athletic and extracurricular programs.

The plan would also reshape how the Racine Unified School Board is constituted, requiring it to have members representing different regions of the school district. Some of the students in that district are represented by Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) and Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine).

Republicans were able to come up with more money for public schools and voucher schools in part by making a $105.6 million payment to public schools in July 2017 — outside of the two-year spending plan they are developing. That means the payment wouldn’t be counted in the budget lawmakers are writing, even though taxpayers would ultimately bear those costs.

Jessie Opoien

The funds will restore a $127 million cut next year that was proposed in Walker’s budget, and will provide an additional $100 per pupil in state aid the following year.

“It was really a challenge, but it was everybody’s first priority, and we made it,” said Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills.

Darling and Rep. John Nygren, R-Marinette, said Republicans also plan to move forward with a statewide expansion of the voucher program, capped at 1 percent of the students in each district.

The expansion would be modeled after the state’s open enrollment system, and would increase the amount of per-pupil aid for taxpayer-funded voucher schools to $7,200 per K-8 student and $7,800 per high school student.

That expansion will change the amount of funds that public schools receive, but Darling and Nygren declined to say by how much it could be.

“We don’t want the schools to suffer,” Darling said. “What we want to do is have the strongest education system we can for every child.”

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

It is important for all to review the District’s social media policy before using electronic media to interact with families, students, colleagues and/or the general public. The District policy permits communication with parents and students via District-sanctioned electronic media and accounts, and cautions against interacting on your personal social media accounts or cell phones. Comments you make on Facebook, Twitter or other social media accounts that can be tracked to your work as a teacher or educational support staff can become problematic if they reflect poorly on the District or use unauthorized copies of students’ work, pictures or comments.

The policy contains the following phrase: Be advised that failure to adhere to these guidelines may result in disciplinary action. MTI strongly encourages members to review the policy and contact MTI with any questions or concerns.

www.madison.k12.wi.us/social-media-guidelines

Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

MTI Executive Director John Matthews and MMSD Asst. Superintendent for Finance Mike Barry, along with District HR Director Deirdre Hargrove-Krieghoff and Benefits Manager Sharon Hennessy, have met with representatives of the three firms (Unity, GHC and Dean Health) which provide health insurance for District employees, to plead the case that premiums should be frozen for the ensuing fiscal year. Contract renewals for the insurers are effective July 1.

In the meetings, Matthews & Barry stressed that because of the impact of State revenue controls on school boards and Governor Walker’s proposed budget, the District and its employees face severe financial problems. One way to provide relief to employees, they told insurers, is to hold health insurance premiums at their current levels. The firms pledged to respond by the end of April. While Matthews talked about the large negative impact of Act 10 on wages, Barry told the firms that Walker’s proposed Budget would cause the District a shortfall of $12.5 million and he said District management would not recommend its employees contribute to the health insurance premium.

Danielle Hauser:

When I think of the demands on teachers today, I picture the cover of the classic children’s folktale “Caps for Sale,” in which a mustachioed cap salesman falls asleep under a tree, wearing his entire stock of wares on his head. This image, unsurprisingly conjured by an elementary and middle school teacher of five years, suggests the staggering expectations policy-makers and the public have of teachers in the 21st century.

Teachers are expected to possess strong content knowledge, pedagogical expertise in rooms of diverse learners, and a heroic grasp of classroom psychology. They must close gaps in content mastery, develop students’ interpersonal skills, and create project-based learning experiences that require critical thinking and analytical reasoning. Of course, they are assumed to have artistic skill in designing inviting classroom environments and jaw dropping bulletin boards, as well as technical proficiency in integrating new media to make lessons engaging for the modern kid. They are to do all this and much more with a calm, cool demeanor, on a meager paycheck, and with minimal recognition–as teachers, our “caps” runneth over.
I spent four years teaching at Success Academy Charter Network, which recently came under attack in the New York Times for the incredible demands made of their teachers and students. And yes, Success is upfront about their unwavering commitment to excellence and setting a high bar for all involved, but what I found to be most staggering was the profound support offered to teachers to meet the demands of the day.

Lcally, Madison continues to lack K-12 diversity. a majority of the School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The Department of Public Instruction receives 36,000 teacher license applications each year (initial and renewal applications). To help make this process more efficient, DPI created the Educator Licensing Online (ELO) System in December, 2013. DPI no longer accepts paper applications for license renewal; one must complete and submit the renewal application through this online system.

Don’t wait until the last minute to prepare for a license renewal. If your license is set to expire on June 30 of this year, start collecting the required documentation early. You will need to provide information about the certifications currently held (they can all be renewed), and where and when you completed your certification (you can provide multiple IHEs). If you were licensed in 2004 or after, you must have your PDP reviewed and approved. Once that is accomplished, the District will provide that information directly to DPI.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Stephanie Simon:

Education reformers stymied by teachers unions and liberal state legislatures increasingly are turning to the courts to get their way on everything from funding charter schools to making it easier to fire teachers.

It’s an end-run strategy championed by Republican and Democratic reformers alike: When they find it hard to change policies through the political process, they reframe the issues as civil rights crusades and take them to the courts.

Locally, Madison continues its one size fits all governance approach, rejecting the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school despite long term, disastrous reading reults.

Kaleem Caire:

So far, our capital city, like so many other cities, has preferred to go another way. They have no problem limiting their investment to spending millions of dollars on safety and security strategies that focus on locking up black males and policing them. We spend more money on policing, jail and related services than we do on providing black men with scholarships for college and addressing their unique social circumstances on the front end of their lives. Our black boys are struggling from having no fathers at home and too few positive male role models in their lives who show them real love, build their confidence, teach them healthy values, demonstrate a strong work ethic and hold them accountable (in constructive and inspiring ways) to high standards of personal conduct and performance excellence. Fatherlessness is destroying the future of many black boys — and almost as fast as they come out of the womb.

Besides that, our young men are struggling to define themselves against stereotypes that pervade almost every facet of their lives. They are struggling with negative images America has of them, and the diminished view people have of their potential. Their role models now are Breezy, Yeh, Lil Wayne and a host of other rappers who limit their talents to undermining the talent development of others — except at the microphone. Unfortunately, some of our boys are being raised by 30- and 40-year-old men who see these young rappers as their role models, too.

Additionally, our young men are being raised in a community that doesn’t know what black male success really looks like. Not in mass. We don’t see it very often here, and when we do, we can’t always spot it. We’ve been conditioned to see black males as needy, incapable and unworthy. Unfortunately, that’s what some of our boys then give you — they show you the image that you saw them in. Give me a suit, a tie, a dress shirt, some dress shoes, a book bag, some great books and a place to unleash their creativity and potential, and some men and women who are great teachers, coaches and mentors, and who truly love our young black and brown men and believe in their potential, and I will give you highly confident, determined, purpose-driven and successful black males in return.

Madison continues its one size fits all governance approach, rejecting the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school despite long term, disastrous reading reults.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email:

Much like they did in enacting Act 10 a few years ago, Republican legislators once again adjourned the Committee hearing before all could be heard, and then voted to send the Right to Work Bill to the full Senate recommending that they adopt it. The Senate adopted it with all democrats and one republican (former Union member who values what the Union did for him) voting NO! The action by the Republican majority was an embarrassment to democracy. Sen. Hanson (Green Bay) said “Right to Work will destroy the middle class. That it has caused a reduction of wages and a loss of benefits in other states.”

The Bill was pushed through the Senate by Republican Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (Juneau). The Bill is nearly identical to the model recommended by conservative policy developer American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

Fitzgerald, in speaking before the Committee hearing, said his proposal would “protect every worker” from being forced to join a union. The National Labor Relations Act already does that, and has for about 75 years. In some settings like MMSD, those who decide not to join the union at their workplace pay a representation fee, because they receive the wage increases, the fringe benefits, and the other rights which the union negotiates – and the union is obligated to represent them in things like discipline and dismissal. Fitzgerald’s claim of “forced unionism” is simply NOT TRUE.
It is interesting that a coalition of over 400 employers oppose the Bill, stating that they hire skilled workers through the union’s, apprenticeship program that they depend on and works well with the unions.

Right to Work provides no rights to working people. It will result in taking the guarantees of just cause and due process away from workers. At the peril of workers and their families, it will reduce income to line the pockets of corporate executives.

Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Rights granted to an employee by the Union’s Contract are among the most important conditions of one’s employment. Those represented by MTI, in each of MTI’s five bargaining units, have numerous SENIORITY protections. Whether it is protection from involuntary transfer, being declared “surplus” (above staff requirements) or layoff, SENIORITY is the factor that limits and controls management’s action. Because of SENIORITY rights guaranteed by the Union’s Contract, for example, the employer cannot pick the junior employee simply because he/she is paid less. Making such judgments based on one’s SENIORITY may seem like common sense and basic human decency, but it is MTI’s Contract that assures it.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

JUST CAUSE does not mean “just because.” It establishes standards and procedures that must be met before an employee can be disciplined or discharged. Fortunately for members of MTI’s bargaining units, all have protection under the JUST CAUSE STANDARDS. They were negotiated by MTI to protect union members.

There are seven just cause tests, and an employer must meet all seven in order to sustain the discipline or discharge of an employee. They are: notice; reasonableness of the rule; a thorough and fair investigation; proof; equal treatment; and whether the penalty reasonably meets the alleged offense by the employee.

MTI’s various Contracts enable a review and binding decision by a neutral arbitrator, as to whether such an action by a District administrator/principal is justified. The burden of proof is on the District in such cases.

The provisions of just cause are steps every employer should be obligated to follow. Unfortunately, all administrators do not have a conscience that leads them to follow these principles. However, an MMSD administrator must follow them, because of the rights MTI members have under the Union’s Collective Bargaining Agreements.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The January 14 hearing by the Assembly Education Committee produced ONLY ONE speaker who favored the Accountability proposal, Assembly Bill 1 (AB 1), and that was the Bill’s author, Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt. During his testimony, Thiesfeldt refused to name either the person or organization who asked him to introduce it, the source of the information from which the Bill was produced, or who additional sponsors of the Bill are. Much appears to have come from the far-right group, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). Thiesfeldt did say that additional COMMON CORE STANDARDS would be added to his Accountability Bill proposal, as it proceeds through the legislative process.

Major opposition was heard from DPI policy advisor Jeff Pertl who testified that if AB 1 was in effect in 2015, $587 million in State education funds would be diverted from public schools to for-profit charter schools.
Senator Dave Hansen (Green Bay) said, “Some of the special interests in the Capitol might not like that fact, but a lot of the problems we’re seeing with AB 1 could have been avoided if a more inclusive effort had been made by the author.”

PRIVATIZATION – the goal of AB 1 was made clear as the intent of the proposal in remarks by Rep. Eric Genrich (Green Bay) who said, “Today’s hearing has made clear that this most recent effort to take over certain public schools and further privatize public education is hastily and poorly crafted. This legislation is being rammed through the legislative process without giving deference to or seeking real input from the educational professionals and local school boards who serve our school kids every day.”

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

It has been a long, well-planned attack. In 1993, in an action against their own philosophy; i.e. decisions by government should be made at the lowest possible level, the Republican Governor and Legislature began actions to control local school boards. They passed Revenue Controls on school boards to limit how much they can increase taxes. This in itself caused harm by instructional materials and textbooks becoming out-dated. School Boards had to make choices between providing “current” materials and texts, or small class sizes to enable optimum learning. Eventually, the legislated revenue controls caused a double-whammy – out-dated texts & materials and an increase in class size, because of layoffs caused by the legislated revenue controls.

Next, the Governor & Legislature enabled vouchers so those who choose to send their children to private or religious schools can use “vouchers” which cause the public school, where the child could attend, to forfeit public/tax funds to pay for the child to attend the private or parochial school.

With revenue controls crippling the means to provide the best quality education and adequate financial reward for school district employees; and vouchers taking another big chunk, Wisconsin’s Governor and Legislature say of the schools that they have been starving to cause their failure, now, because of your failure, we will close your schools and convert them to for-profit private charter schools. This plan is to appease the Koch Brothers and others, who provide large sums to buy the elections of those promoting these privatization schemes.

Assembly Bill 1, in the 2015 Wisconsin legislative session, is designed just to do what is described above, and it is on the fast-track for approval, just as Act 10 was a few years ago. If it is not stopped, it will rip the heart out of every community – the pubic school will be gone, as will quality public education for all of Wisconsin’s children. The smaller the community, the bigger the harmful impact on Wisconsin’s towns and villages because of AB 1.

Madison spends about double the national average per student.

Madison Teachers, Inc. 26 January, 2015 newsletter can be found here (PDF).

Sean Kirby:

While the District’s first annual report showed some academic improvement overall, it also identified “subgroups”—African American and Latino students and students with disabilities—as part of a more targeted effort to ramp up and enrich the education experience.

To reach them, the district is working with community leaders and groups, such as Madison Partners for Inclusive Education, a support and advocacy group founded more than a decade ago for parents who have children who attend Madison public schools and who receive special education services. Beth Moss, whose son recently left the district after receiving special education until he was twenty-one, is a member of the group.

“Our mantra is that students with disabilities should be included in the classroom with their peers as much as possible, and probably even more than what most people consider possible,” Moss says. “I think the district embraces that philosophy, but it’s not always consistently implemented in every school.”

Moss describes her experience with the schools as mostly positive but over the years as a roller coaster. She says the new strategic framework, now firmly in place and in its second academic year, aims to bring more consistency throughout the district to address the issues. Anna Moffit agrees. She has a second grader and a third grader at Thoreau Elementary, and a first grader at Midvale. All of her children receive special education services through the district. “It’s kind of like you get one thing accomplished, and then three weeks later it’s another thing,” Moffit says. “For me personally, and I can’t speak for all parents, I’m advocating all the time. In fact, I probably spend ten hours a week minimum talking with the schools, going over documents, going to meetings.”

As interim CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison, which develops and supports educational and employment opportunities for African Americans and other community members, Edward Lee says the school district’s efforts to bridge the achievement gap for black and Latino students are encouraging.

While the district has begun diversifying the workforce at both the administration and the principal level, building leadership that is more reflective of the student body, he says it has a long way to go to ensure that its staff and teachers better reflect the diversity of the student body. Alex Gee, pastor at the Fountain of Life Covenant Church and the founder and president of the Nehemiah Center for Urban Leadership Development, agrees.

“When we don’t have the right kind of diversity that we want to have, then it limits the exposure that white students have to black, Latino, Asian teachers,” Gee says. “Then it limits the role models that kids have.”

Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

For nearly 115 years, The University League of University of Wisconsin-Madison has provided opportunities for people with similar interests to get together to learn, to share information, and to form lasting friendships through interest groups, volunteer groups, social gatherings and scholarship benefits. They give more than $100,000 annually for UW-Madison student scholarships via their 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. The current president, Kay Jarvis-Sladky, is a retired MTI member.

The University League welcomes those interested. One does not need to be a graduate of, or a faculty member of, the UW or any of its university systems. For more information about The University League, its activities, and membership see www.univleague.wisc.edu.

Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Buoyed by the election which provided Republican majorities in both the Assembly (+27 majority) and the Senate (+5 majority), conservative anti-worker/anti-union legislators have announced that they will introduce Right to Work legislation when the January session begins. Right to Work laws limit collective bargaining, make it easier to outsource jobs and cut wages and benefits. Their plan was to do this in 2012, but legislators were worried that it was too soon after the 2011 protests against Act 10, and would cause public backlash. On average, workers in Right to Work states earn $7,030 a year less, according to the Congressional Research Service (6/20/12), and the rate of workplace deaths is 52.9% higher. Workers in Right to Work states are even more likely to be uninsured (16.8%, compared with 13.1% overall).

Governor Walker’s Act 10 has already done great damage to Wisconsin’s public sector workers and the economy. Act 10 has been described as “Right to Work on Steroids.” But now, the far-right is coming after the 13% of Wisconsin’s private sector workers who have the benefit of union representation. And it is because CEOs and company owners care more about big business and profits than they do about workers who create them. And, middle class families become struggling families. Right to Work will surely shrink the middle class.

Despite its misleading name, such a law does not guarantee anyone a job and it does not protect against unfair firing, i.e. it provides NO “right to work”. Rather, a Right to Work law prohibits employers and employees from negotiating an agreement – also known as a union security clause – that requires all workers who receive the benefits of a collective bargaining agreement to pay their share of the costs of the Union in representing them. A Right to Work law mandates that unions represent every employee, whether or not he or she pays Union dues. In other words, such laws enable workers to pay nothing and still get the benefits of union membership. Imagine if a Madison resident, who sends their children to MMSD schools, but can opt out of paying property taxes to finance the schools.

A Right to Work law compels dues-paying members to subsidize the cost of representation for those who opt not to pay. If a worker who is represented by a union and doesn’t pay dues is fired illegally, the Union must use resources from dues-paying members to defend the non-member even if that requires going through a costly, time-consuming litigation.

The Economist:

The main reason for the closures is financial. Catholic schools used to be financed by tuition payments, with help from the parish and archdiocese to fill the gaps. But demography has undermined this model. In 1950 76% of all Catholics lived in the north-east and the Midwest, which is where most of the schools are. Today, just under half do. In the south-west Catholics are more plentiful, but they are not sending their children to Catholic schools as European immigrants once did, because those schools do not yet exist.

Schools in the north-east and Midwest have been hit by both declining revenue and rising costs. Many parishes operate at a loss. Paedophilia scandals have added to the financial stress. Twelve dioceses and archdioceses have filed for bankruptcy since 2004. Legal fees and settlements have cost the American Catholic church billions. School buildings are ageing and expensive to maintain. Labour is dear too: half a century ago, 97% of teachers were in holy orders. Today almost all are laymen, who cost more (nuns were not so concerned about pension plans). Catholic schools also face competition from charter schools, some of which even rent space in their empty buildings. Almost all the closed Catholic schools in Detroit are now occupied by charters.

Madison spends about $17K per student….

Alan Borsuk:

everal years ago, I was writing about how the most significant debates in approaches to improving education didn’t pit Republicans against Democrats. They pitted Democrats against Democrats.

Now, the dynamic to watch is between Republicans and Republicans. Both in Washington and Madison, they have so much power now — and they have some pretty big differences within their ranks.

Early in the Obama administration, the Democratic battles could be summed as education “reformers” vs. the education establishment, including teachers unions. For Republicans, I’d call it the smaller government people vs. the demand-quality-and-results people.

For Democrats, the differences included whether to push creation of charter schools, whether to evaluate teachers in ways that include student progress measured by test scores and, in general, what to think of a rising number of schools with high demands on students when it comes to both academics and behavior.

For Republicans, the differences include whether there should be a nationwide requirement that students take standardized tests in language and math, whether the goals for what students should learn should be a matter of broad agreement or left to each state or school district (the Common Core issue) and, in general, the ways federal or state power should be used to deal with low performing schools. In Wisconsin, but not really in Washington, you can add the question of the future of private school choice.

For context, start 13 years ago, when President George W. Bush and Congress, with sweeping bipartisan support, approved the No Child Left Behind education law. The law was scheduled to be revised by Congress in 2007. And it set the goal that by the end of 2014, all children in America would be on grade level in reading and math.

It is now the end of 2014. Not only are millions of children not on grade level — it was a ridiculous goal in the first place — but Congress has never agreed on how to fix No Child Left Behind. Seven years late and no action! Also ridiculous, right?

Paul Fanlund

A nationwide exit poll on Election Day revealed that 70 percent viewed the economy as “not so good” or “poor.” Only 22 percent thought life for the next generation would be better than for this one.

Second, because those with the most education are doing better (and Madison is jammed with academic elites) we are not seen as suffering as they do, and that is noticed and resented.

Third, they see school teachers and other public employees with a level of retirement and health insurance benefits they no longer enjoy or ever did. (Among public workers, only cops and firefighters seem to get a pass for being comparatively well-compensated.)

Fourth, they are constantly told that government programs are distorted to help those who do not help themselves. Given the concentrations of minorities in the two largest cities, the racial subtext is always there. Many in outlying Wisconsin see themselves as distinctively hard-working and self-reliant and getting no government help. They do not perceive their own public education, Medicare, Social Security, highway infrastructure and so forth as the sorts of “handouts” they think flow to others.

This thesis is supported by the election results for governor, where Walker won in rural areas, small towns and suburbs, and Democrat Mary Burke mostly dominated in the dependable urban centers of Madison and Milwaukee.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF)::

Though federal and state governments are obligated to provide free public education, both fail to fully fund their financial mandates. While every child in America deserves a quality public education, the failure of federal and state governments, and the state usurping the authority of local school boards to adequately fund their schools, has placed American education in a very difficult situation over the last several decades. America must provide students with quality public schools so that the next generation can grow, prosper, and achieve. NEA’s American Education Week (www.nea.org/aew) presents all Americans with an opportunity to honor individuals who are making a difference in ensuring that every child receives a quality education for the nation’s 50 million students.

National Council on Teacher Quality:

Using evidence from more than 500 colleges and universities producing nearly half of the nation’s new teachers annually, this report answers two questions that go to the heart of whether the demands of teacher preparation are well matched to the demands of the classroom: Are teacher candidates graded too easily, misleading them about their readiness to teach? Are teacher preparation programs providing sufficiently rigorous training, or does the approach to training drive higher grades?

Complete report (PDF).

Related: When A Stands for Average. Students at the UW-Madison School of Education receive sky high grades. How smart is that?

NCTQ notes and links.

Exploring the effects of high grades (PDF):

In addition to their failure to signal learning, awarding consistently high grades may, in fact, impede learning. As a Princeton University committee on reducing grade inflation reported: “Grading done without careful calibration and discrimination is, if nothing else, uninformative and therefore not useful; at worst, it actively discourages students from rising to the challenge to do their best work.”3

Several studies find that expected high grades are associated with reduced student effort, likely leading to decreased student learning. One study found that students spend about 50 percent less time studying when they expect that the average grade in a course will be an A versus a C.4 Similarly, a study of students’ expectations (rather than behavior) found that students expected to study more (and for the class to generally earn lower grades) in more difficult courses.5 On the other hand, higher standards may not lead to greater academic perserverance: A longitudinal study that followed high school students for more than a decade found that higher standards for coursework were associated with higher test scores, although not with higher educational attainment.6

NCTQ compares the States on teacher preparation requirements.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Among the many things MTI has accomplished for its members is the advancement of rights for females.

Early in the Union’s history was MTI’s achievement of equal pay. MTI negotiated a salary schedule which recognized that the value of the work of an elementary teacher, where almost all were female in the 1960s & 1970s, is as valuable as that of a high school teacher of advanced placement physics.

The salary schedule negotiated by MTI recognizes that the task each teacher faces is about the same and the economic reward should be as well. Given this, MTI’s negotiations did away with the School Board’s created “head of household” additive pay – which went to male teachers in those days; and MTI negotiated a salary schedule which treats all teachers equally. That salary schedule proposed by MTI in the late 1960s, while periodically improved, remains in the Collective Bargaining Agreement today. The right to equal pay for equal work was extended to those in all MTI bargaining units through negotiations.

Also, in the 1960’s and early 1970s, School Board policy stated that a female employee had to “immediately notify her supervisor upon becoming pregnant” and resign when the “pregnancy began showing.” This meant a loss of income until the individual was rehired – which did not always occur – as well as a reduction in Social Security and Wisconsin Retirement System benefits, due to the lost wages.

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email:

IDA Dyslexia Handbook: What Every Family Should Know is now available online

Free Open LETRS Training An overview of the professional development program Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling. This session is especially for district administrators: superintendents, curriculum directors, special education directors, reading specialists, principals, etc. Let your district know you would like a few key people to attend!

Presented by Pati Montgomery, former executive director of the Colorado Office Of Literacy

Aimed at principals and other administrators responsible for raising reading achievement
Monday, December 8: WCTC Pewaukee
Wednesday, December 10: Madison College Truax Campus
8:00 – 3:30, lunch provided
Limit: two people per district
RSVP by November 15 to Kevin Kuckkan, 866-340-3692, kevin.kuckkan@voyagersopris.com

Lindamood-Bell Informational Session for Professionals and Parents

Learn about the Lindamood-Bell School Year Glendale Learning Clinic opening December 1st for 8 weeks: addressing dyslexia, hyperlexia, ADD/HD, and autism spectrum disorders
Thursday, November 20, 5:00 pm
Logemann Community Center, Ivy Room, 6100 W. Mequon Road, Mequon WI
Reserve your space by calling 888-414-1720 or email info@lindamoodbell.com

December repeat of Dyslexia 101 at WILDD

December 13, 9:00 – 12:00
636 Grand Canyon Drive, Madison 53719
$10
Call 608-824-8980 or email madison@wildd.org to register

Spotlight on Dyslexia: Interactive Virtual Conference from Learning Ally

Keynote speaker Dana Buchman (fashion designer and founding chair of the Promise Project); panel members Barbara Wilson (Wilson Language Corporation), Kelli Sandman-Hurley (Dyslexia Training Institute), Davis Flink (Eye to Eye), Ben Foss (Headstrong Nation), Susan Barton (Bright Solutions for Dyslexia), and Jamie Martin (Assistive Technology)
Friday, December 5, 8:30 am – 3:30 pm CST
Learning Ally members $59 ($89 after 11/15); non-members $89 ($119 after 11/15)
Discounted Early Bird registration until November 15

Ed Week Webinar Every Child Reading with Margie Gillis now available on demand; Powerpoint available at http://www.edweek.org/media/102814presentation.pdf

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

AFL-CIO Wisconsin President Phil Neuenfeldt presented MTI activist Michele Ritt with the State Union’s Public Sector Organizer of the Year Award, at last Tuesday’s MTI Faculty Representative Council meeting. Neuenfeldt commented that in spite of Governor Walker’s pledge to “divide and conquer” public sector Unions, that he sees the opposite as he travels Wisconsin. He said, “Solidarity among working people is really strong – and that it is because of activists like Michele Ritt, and Unions like MTI.” Neuenfeldt said success is built on one-to-one organizing and that MTI is in the forefront of that.

Michele enthusiastically recruited numerous new MTI members last school year and began recruiting during the summer at the school to which she transferred last school year. Last spring, Michele was elected to the Dane County Board. She also chairs MTI’s Special Education Sub- Committee.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Getting Organized! MTI now has over two hundred (200) Member Organizers including teachers, educational assistants, clerical-technical employees, substitute teachers, security assistants, and retired MTI members who are committed to helping the next generation maintain their Union. Member Organizers are volunteers who have agreed to serve as point people in their building/work location to help build awareness and support for MTI’s recertification elections.

Get-out-the-vote! In political elections, voter turnout is critical. In Union recertification elections, it is even more critical. The experiences of other Wisconsin public sector Unions show that when employees vote, they overwhelmingly vote Union YES! Where recertification elections have lost, it is because less than 51% of the eligible voters cast a ballot. Unlike political elections, in recertification elections a non-vote counts as a “no vote”.

In MTI’s recertification election, ballots can be cast 24 hours per day, seven days per week, via phone or computer, beginning at Noon on November 5 and continuing through Noon on November 25. The process is quick and efficient and should take no more than a couple minutes. That said, others have reported difficulties where votes were not counted, when they failed to accurately complete each step in the balloting process. It is for that reason that MTI is providing all MTI-represented employees with detailed voting instructions on posters, flyers and palm cards.

The MTI Recertification Election palm cards provide MTI-represented staff the phone number, web address and voting instructions. On the reverse side of the palm card, voters are asked to complete their name, work location & bargaining unit and give the completed card totheirMTIFacultyRepresentativeorMemberOrganizer.

After doing so,one will receivean“IVoted”button. Someworklocations will hold raffles using the completed palm cards. By collecting completed palm cards, your Union organizing team will be able to try to assure that the 51% threshold is met, as mandated by Walker’s Act 10, during the 20-day election period. Additional information on MTI’s recertification elections is available at www.madisonteachers.org.

Madison Teachers, Inc. PDF Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Over the past few weeks, discussions have been occurring throughout the District about MTI’s upcoming MTI Recertification Elections. One of the most frequently asked questions by newer staff, those who are not aware of MTI’s many accomplishments over the years is, “what is at risk if we lose the Union?” To answer that question, one only needs to look around the State of Wisconsin to see what has happened in other school districts where employees no longer have a collective voice in the workplace.

In many school districts, employers have increased employee health insurance premium
contributions to 12%. Such an increase would decrease an employee’s pay between $61 and $212 per month, depending on the plan the individual has selected. Your Union is currently working with the District to collaboratively identify potential sources for health insurance savings rather than implementing a premium co-pay. The five Contracts for MTI represented employees do not now mandate any employee contribution toward health insurance.

For teachers who are new parents, MTI’s Contract provides paid time off during maternity leave via a combination of personal sick leave and Sick Leave Bank benefits. Non-probationary teachers also have the Contract right to take unpaid child rearing leaves of absence for a semester, a full school year, or up to two school years should they need or desire to stay home with their child(ren) for a period of time regardless of the child’s age. Those rights could disappear or erode without a Union to advocate for them.

For longtime teachers, educational assistants, clerical-technical staff and security assistants approaching retirement, MTI’s Contracts provide retiring employees with 100% of the value of their accumulated sick leave for the payment of post-retirement insurances. Many school districts have capped or reduced such benefits, forcing longtime employees to work longer in order to afford post- retirement insurance premiums.

Other school districts have added classes to the workday (without additional pay); extended the work year (without additional pay); required mandatory evening obligations (without additional pay); reduced benefits for disabled employees; eliminated planning time; pro-rated insurance benefits based on part-time status; eliminated just cause and due process protections against unfair discipline or dismissal; and destroyed salary schedules.

MTI encourages all represented employees to spend a few moments to page through their Collective Bargaining Agreement to see the entirety of the issues that the Union has negotiated for them over the past decades. Any or all of those negotiated items would be subject to employer discretion or whim without a Union as your collective voice. Standing together, we can continue to advocate for working conditions/learning conditions that educational employees and students need. Voting to recertify is the first step towards maintaining your collective voice at work.

Robert Pondiscio & Kevin Mahnken, via a kind reader’s email:

Among opponents of the Common Core, one of the more popular targets of vitriol is the standards’ focus on improving literacy by introducing higher levels of textual complexity into the instructional mix. The move to challenge students with more knotty, grade-level reading material represents a shift away from decades of general adherence to so-called “instructional level theory,” which encourages children to read texts pitched at or slightly above the student’s individual reading level. New York public school principal Carol Burris, an outspoken standards critic and defender of leveled reading, recently published an anti-Common Core missive on the Washington Post’s Answer Sheet blog that was fairly typical of the form. Where, she wondered, “is the research to support: close reading, increased Lexile levels, the use of informational texts, and other questionable practices in the primary grades?”

The blog post, which has already been intelligently critiqued by Ann Whalen at Education Post, expanded on remarks delivered by Burris earlier this month at an Intelligence Squared U.S. debate with Fordham president Michael Petrilli and former assistant secretary of education Carmel Martin. There, too, she demanded evidence of literacy improvements arising from the use of complex texts.

A fair request and one that warrants a thorough response. But first, for the benefit of readers who are neither teachers nor literacy specialists, a quick explainer on how these two theories of reading work: In leveled reading, a teacher listens as her student reads a piece of text at a given reading level. If the child makes two-to-five mistakes per one hundred words, that is considered her “instructional” level. Zero or one mistakes means the book is too easy; six or more mistakes and that level is deemed her “frustration” level. Children are then offered lots of books at their “just right” level on the theory that if they read extensively and independently, language growth and reading proficiency will follow, setting the child on a slow and steady climb through higher reading levels. It sounds logical, and, as we will see, there are definite benefits to getting kids to read a lot independently.

By marked contrast, Common Core asks teachers to think carefully about what children read and choose grade-level texts that use sophisticated language or make significant knowledge demands of the reader (teachers should also be prepared, of course, to offer students support as they grapple with challenging books). Instead of asking, “Can the child read this?” the question might be, “Is this worth reading?”

Leveled reading is intuitive and smartly packaged (who wants kids to read “frustration level” books?), but its evidence base is remarkably thin. There is much stronger research support for teaching reading with complex texts.

What’s the source of the blind faith that Burris and others have in leveled reading instruction? “In the decades before Common Core, an enormous amount of the instruction in American elementary and middle schools has been with leveled text,” says David Liben, a veteran teacher and Senior Content Specialist at Student Achievement Partners. “The generally poor performance of our children on international comparisons speaks volumes about its effectiveness. To become proficient, students need to have the opportunity to read, with necessary support, rich complex text. But they also need to read—especially if they are behind—a huge volume and range of text types just as called for in the standards.” Students could read many of these less complex texts independently. “Instruction with complex text at all times is not what is called for, even by Common Core advocates,” Liben takes care to note.

Burris and others, however, offer a reflexive defense of leveled instruction. At the Intelligence Squared event, she claimed that “We know from years of developmental reading research that kids do best when they read independently with leveled readers.” Such surety is belied by a surprising lack of rigorous evidence. Literacy blogger Timothy Shanahan, a Distinguished Professor Emeritus of urban education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, recently detailed his discovery of the inauspicious origins of instructional level theory as a young scholar.

Made famous in Emmett Betts’s influential, now-little-remembered 1946 textbook Foundations of Reading Instruction, leveled reading theory actually emerged from a more obscure study conducted by one of Betts’s doctoral students. “I tracked down that dissertation and to my dismay it was evident that they had just made up those designations without any empirical evidence,” Shanahan wrote. When the study—which had in effect never been conducted—was “replicated,” it yielded wildly different results. In other words, there was no study, and later research failed to show the benefits of leveling. “Basically we have put way too much confidence in an unproven theory,” Shanahan concluded.

A pdf version of the post is available here, via a kind reader.

Related: Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Governor Walker’s Act 10 requires public sector unions, except police & fire, to engage in annual recertification elections, in order to retain their status as the representative of the employees in their bargaining unit. Even though MTI’s certification goes back to 1964, and it has represented MMSD employees and negotiated Contracts for them beginning with the 1964 Collective Bargaining Agreement for teachers, Walker’s signature legislation Act 10 mandates that MTI participate in a recertification election. The election by all MTI represented District employees will be conducted between November 5 and November 25 via telephone or on-line balloting (more detailed information will be forthcoming).

Why is recertification important? The recertification election will determine whether MTI will continue to be the legally recognized “certified representative” for the following year. While there were processes available in prior law for a Union’s certification to be challenged by dissatisfied employees, Walker’s Act 10 forces such elections annually. And to make recertification more difficult, unlike political elections where the candidate with the most votes wins, Act 10 requires that to win recertification, the union must win 51% of all eligible voters. Between now and November 25 we will use this space to highlight a number of reasons why recertification, and your participation in it, is important.

Reason #1- Standing Together – When one votes to recertify MTI, that individual is voting to “stand together” to support one’s profession and colleagues. A YES vote sends a message to policymakers that employee groups stand together on important issues that affect their profession, schools and students – such as reasonable class size, sufficient planning time, effective professional development, fair compensation and a host of other work-related, professional and economic issues. Standing together provides a stronger voice than one has individually.

Dave Zweiful:

Last Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal carried a front-page story about a new phenomenon in our public schools that’s a fallout from Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 — the teacher as “free agent.”

According to some, Act 10’s virtual destruction of teachers unions unleashed good teachers from the shackles of their union contracts so they can now peddle their expertise to districts that can come up with a better deal.

In fact, the story informed us, teachers with expertise in special disciplines like technology and engineering are being offered bonuses, higher salaries and better fringe benefits to jump ship — apparently sort of a mini-version of what Prince Fielder did to the Brewers a few years back.

Some districts are able to offer higher salaries to those with expertise in hard-to-fill positions because Act 10 has freed up money that had been going to teachers under union contract for pensions and health benefits.

Notes and links on Act 10, here.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Governor Walker’s signature legislation, the 2011 anti-public employee, anti-union Act 10, which took away nearly all the bargaining rights of public employees, is once again on the front burner for those represented by MTI. MTI had initially challenged the legislation and gained a Circuit Court decision from Judge Colas that Act 10 was unconstitutional. This ruling allowed MTI and the MMSD to bargain Agreements for the 2014-15 and 2015- 16 school years. Now that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has overturned Judge Colas’ decision and upheld Act 10, certain portions of Act 10 are now applicable to MTI, specifically the Act 10 requirement that public sector unions undergo a certification election to determine whether the union will maintain its status as the “certified representative” of the workers covered by the union. Under Act 10, this will have to be done each year.

Given the above, MTI has filed petitions with the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) for recertification elections for each of MTIs five (5) bargaining units (Teachers, Educational Assistants, Supportive Education Employees, Security Assistants and Substitute Teachers). The elections will be conducted in November, 2014.

Unlike political elections which require that the prevailing candidate win the majority of votes cast, Act 10’s recertification elections require a public sector union to win 51% of all eligible votes in order to remain the certified agent. This means that “non-votes” are considered “no” votes. If this standard were applied to any United States political election, with low turnout rate, no candidate would be seated (for example, Governor Walker won only about 30% of all eligible votes during the 2012 recall). Fortunately, the experience has been much different for union recertification elections in Wisconsin. During recertification elections held in 2013, over 500 local Unions representing over 56,000 teachers, secretaries, aides, bus drivers, custodial workers and other school employees resulted in a 70% turnout statewide. And an overwhelming 98% of those voting, voted to recertify their Union. But even knowing this, MTI needs every vote possible.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeanne Kamholtz email:

The Progressive Magazine is revving up its movement to save public schools. On their website, created specifically for the anti-voucher/save public schools project, www.publicschoolshakedown.org, they are pulling together education experts, activists, bloggers, and concerned citizens from across the country.

PUBLIC SCHOOL SHAKEDOWN is dedicated to EXPOSING the behind-the-scenes effort to privatize public schools, and CONNECTING pro-public school activists nationwide.

“Public School Shakedown will be a fantastic addition to the debate”, says education historian and former Secretary of Education Diane Ravitch. “The Progressive is performing a great public service by helping spread the word about the galloping privatization of our public schools”.

Patrick Jakeway

The classic novel Brave New World describes a future in which people have lost all of their liberty and in which they have become drugged robots obedient to a central authority. It also details how this control was first established. First, the rulers had to erase all history and all the people’s memory of a time before their bondage.

Today, the history of George Washington’s leadership has been erased in the new Advanced Placement (AP) U.S. History test/curriculum, taking effect in the fall of 2014. The College Board, the organization that publishes the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SAT) and AP tests, has also decided to completely blot out Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison, among others. In this newly revised course, General Washington merits one fleeting mention in one sentence, in reference to his Farewell Address.

American history without George Washington? That is like the Beatles without Paul McCartney or the Super Bowl without Vince Lombardi. A former AP U.S. history teacher, Larry Krieger, provides insightful analysis of these sweeping changes here. The rebuttal of Trevor Parker, senior vice president for AP programs at the College Board, can be found here, and Mr. Krieger’s defense here. As an aside, it should be noted that the College Board’s new president, David Coleman, is also one of the major architects of Common Core.

The 98-page College Board AP U.S. History curriculum framework can be read here. Mr. Krieger’s analysis makes clear that this deletion was by design and not by accident. The new College Board U.S. history defines the USA as a racist, genocidal, imperialist nation. Their whole point is that America is bad so of course they leave America’s heroes out.

Some examples of this theme can be observed in the “Key Concepts” of the framework enumerated in each historical period as key guidelines for teachers:

Period 1: 1491-1607

Key Concept 1.1. Before the arrival of Europeans, native populations in North America developed a wide variety of social, political and economic structures based in part on interactions and each other. (Page 31)

Translation: American Indians lived in a natural state of peace in harmony with nature before the Europeans arrived. No mention of brutal inter-tribal wars and practices such as scalping.

Period 2: 1607-1754

Key Concept 2.1 Differences in imperial goals, cultures and the North American environments that different empires confronted led Europeans to develop diverse patterns of colonization.

Section II, A: English colonies attracted both males and females who rarely intermarried with native people or Africans, leading to the development of a rigid racial hierarchy. (Page 35)

Translation: The colonizing of the New World was one large imperialist, racist scheme. No mention of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower seeking religious freedom here.

Key Concept 2.2 European colonization efforts in North America stimulated intercultural contact and intensified conflict between the various groups of colonizers and native peoples.

Section II, A: “Continuing contact with Europeans increased the flow of trade goods and diseases into and out of native communities. Teacher’s example: population collapse of Catawba Nation” (Page 38)

Translation: The imperial efforts at cultural conquest resulted in genocide of the Native Americans. Left unmentioned are the millions of people who fled European wars in the 1600s, such as the “Pennsylvania Dutch” settlers fleeing the 30 Years’ War in Germany. Not exactly an imperialist effort.

Section II, B: “The resulting independence movement was fueled by colonial elites, as well as some grassroots movements.” (Page 42)

Translation: This war was mainly driven by a lot of well-connected, self-interested rich guys. Apparently, the overthrow of a monarchy by citizen militiamen seems not to merit as overthrowing “elites.”

Sample Test Questions:

Question 1: Some historians have argued that the American Revolution was not revolutionary in nature. (Page 114)

Sample Good Answers (Page115):

“Individuals who were wealthy, powerful and influential before the event continued to possess wealth, power and influence later. George Washington, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson could serve as examples.”

Translation: The poor continued to be oppressed by the rich. George Washington, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson were rich bad guys.

“Other good responses might analyze the absence of revolutionary change for groups such as women, slaves, and Native Americans following the Revolution.” (Page 115)

Translation: The Revolution was actually bad. The Founding Fathers were racist and sexist.

So what does this “brave new history” hold for our children?

After suffering the blizzards of Valley Forge, improbably enduring for five years against the world’s superpower at that time, Great Britain, and prevailing at Yorktown, the victorious General Washington rejected all power after the War of Independence, rebuked those who would have made him king, and simply retired to his farm in Virginia. How could the College Board convince our children that our country is founded upon and hell-bent on conquest after learning about the father of our country? The answer is they could not. So the College Board had to erase the story of George Washington’s inimitable life.

The College Board explicitly instructs teachers to teach the history of the United States from the first settlers through the Declaration of Independence and into the present as being one long continuous period of racist, imperialist conflict. Thomas Jefferson is omitted from the framework. Yet “we hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” captured the spirit and hearts of a people yearning for freedom. In the words of John Adams, “the Revolution was effected before the war commenced. The Revolution was in the minds and hearts of the people.” You cannot teach young people that our nation is inherently racist and also conduct an in-depth review the historical impact of Thomas Jefferson’s writing of the Declaration of Independence, up to and including its influence on the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement. So Thomas Jefferson had to be erased. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. also was deleted.

After gaining our liberty, James Madison was one of the key people responsible for the creation of the world’s first limited government of the people, by the people and for the people. This explains leaving James Madison out of this “brave new history.” You can’t omit the founding of the American republic based on individual liberty and limited government with a Bill of Rights if you discuss James Madison’s work. So “the Father of the Constitution” had to be erased.

This is more than just an academic spat among history teachers. America today is the freest, most prosperous land the world has ever known. Everything everyone has in this country exists because of the original gift of liberty bequeathed to us by General George Washington and our Founding Fathers. Let’s also not forget that hundreds of millions, if not billions, of people around the globe owe their current freedom to the United States of America and, by extension, to our Founding Fathers.

Benjamin Franklin was asked a question upon exiting Independence Hall after finishing the Constitution. “What kind of government have you given us, Dr. Franklin?” He replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.” If your child never learns about Benjamin Franklin’s story or about how the Revolutionary War was won or about the Gettysburg Address or about the D-Day landing at Normandy (all erased in this “brave new history”), then he will never know that it is up to us to keep our Republic. It is for us the living never to forget our forefathers, who fought and sacrificed for us that we might live a life of liberty. It is for us to be dedicated here to the unfinished work they so nobly advanced.

Erasing the Founding Fathers from the premier U.S. history course for secondary students is unconscionable and intolerable. We must protect them from being erased. The list of people who make up the College Board’s Board of Trustees can be found in the Appendix below, listed alphabetically by state. Many of them are employed by public secondary school systems or state universities.

I suggest the following course of action:

If you are a parent of high school age students, boycott AP U.S. History with them together, and do not enroll.
Call-write your governor and state representatives and demand that they pass a resolution to drop the AP U.S. History course offering until the curriculum change is reversed.
Tell your state representatives that they should require each member of the Board of Trustees of the College Board who is a public employee (see list below) to renounce the new AP U.S. History course curriculum and vote to abolish it as a condition of his or her continued employment.
Consider the ACT as an alternative to the SAT for your college-bound teenager. The SAT has a dominant market position and has a powerful hold on the American mind as “the” vehicle to college. The security of this dominant position has bred arrogance in the College Board. I would not advocate that someone put his or her child’s future educational opportunities at risk; however, nowadays, universities readily accept both the ACT and SAT.

Our national anthem ends with a question. The College Board has answered and will be directing the teachers of America to instruct your children and mine that the USA is the land of the imperialist and the home of the racist. Now, you might ask yourself: will that star-spangled banner yet wave over the land of the free, or will it hang limp over the Brave New World? As for me and my children, I can confirm that the spirit of ’76 will not be erased.

Appendix

College Board of Trustees:

Arizona: Karen Francis-Begay, Asst. Vice President, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ

California: Nathan Brostrom, Executive Vice President, University of California, Oakland, CA

California: Karen Cooper, Director of Financial Aid, Stanford University

Connecticut: Caesar Storlazzi, Director of Financial Aid, Yale University

D.C.: Daniel J. Rodas, Isaacson Miller

Florida: Luis Martinez-Fernandez, Professor of History, University of Central Florida

Hawaii: Belinda W. Chung, Director of College Counseling, St. Andrew’s Priory School, Honolulu

Indiana: Pamela T. Horne, Associate Vice Provost, Purdue University, Lafayette, IN

Indiana: Mary Nucciarone, Director of Financial Aid, Notre Dame University

Illinois: Margareth Etienne, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, University of Illinois, Champaign, Illinois

Illinois: Von Mansfield, Superintendent, Homewood-Flossmor High School, Flossmor, Illinois

Minnesota: Pam Paulson, Senior Director, Perpich Center for Arts Education, Golden Valley, MN

New Mexico: Margie Huerta, Special Assistant to the President, New Mexico State University, Las Cruces, NM

New York: Shun Fang Chang, Assistant Principal, Bronx High School of Science, Bronx, NY

North Carolina: Shirley Ort, Vice Chair, Associate Provost, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina

Oklahoma: Paul W. Sechrist, Oklahoma City Community College

Pennsylvania: Maghan Keita, Chair, Villanova University, Philadelphia

Pennsylvania: Daniel Porterfield, President, Franklin and Marshall College, Lancaster, PA

Rhode Island: Jim Tilton, Director of Financial Aid, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

South Carolina: Scott Verzyl, Associate Vice President, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC

Texas: Terry Grier, Superintendent, Houston Independent School District, Houston, TX

Texas: Michael Sorrell, President, Paul Quinn College, Dallas, TX

Texas: Paul G. Weaver, District Director of Counseling, Plano Independent School District, Plano, TX

Washington: Philip Ballinger, Associate Vice Provost, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington

Washington: Chio Flores, Assistant Dean of Students, Washington State University, Pullman, WA

via Will Fitzhugh.

Janesville Gazette:

Is it good policy? Perhaps Act 10 was an overreach with its union-busting provisions, but it addressed a fiscal need in Wisconsin and the school districts and municipalities that receive state aid.

Public employee benefits had become overly generous and burdensome on employers, and Act 10 addressed that by requiring employees to contribute their fair shares. The result has saved the state and local governments millions of dollars. Those savings have helped those local governments address state aid cuts and ongoing budget challenges.

Now that the legal questions surrounding Act 10 are resolved, let’s move forward with a clear understanding that the law is here to stay and that public employers and employees still must work together to ensure that quality workers continue to provide quality services.

Sly Podcasts – Madison Teachers, Inc. Executive Director John Matthews.

Alan Borsuk:

With freedom comes responsibility.

This is one of the important lessons most parents hope their children learn, especially teenagers. OK, you got a driver’s license. You’re hot about all the things you can do. But there are an awful lot of things you shouldn’t do, and won’t do if you’re smart.

So what will teens learn from school leaders all across Wisconsin in the next few years? I’m hoping they’ll learn that with freedom comes responsibility, and I’m even somewhat optimistic that, overall, they will. That won’t be universally true. There are always the kids who just can’t resist flooring it when the light turns green.

But in most school districts, the freedom school boards and administrators were given in 2011, when Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in the legislative majorities won the battle of Act 10, has been used with restraint and good judgment. A lot of superintendents and principals, and even teachers, are seeing pluses to life without the many provisions of union contracts.

I don’t want to overstate that — there are also a large number of teachers still feeling wounded from the hostility toward educators that was amped up by the polarizing events of 2011. Many teachers are anxious about how the greater freedoms their bosses now have to judge, punish and reward will be used. There also remain serious reasons to worry about who is leaving teaching and whether the best possible newcomers are being attracted to classrooms.

David Blaska:

More mystifying is why The Capital Times would do a story focusing solely and entirely on that minority dissent. (“Act 10 is ‘textbook’ example of unconstitutionality.”) Can’t expose its tender readers to the majority opinion, apparently.

Local government here in the Emerald City has done its best to evade the law, extending union contracts into 2016. County Exec Joe Parisi likes to say the union has saved the county money. At the very least, AFSME costs its members dues. There is nothing to prevent county managers from working cooperatively with employees to determine best practices. That is Management 101.

Ditto the teachers union, plaintiff in the just-decided Supreme Court case. The teachers union — as we argued in “Hold your meetings where there is beer” — runs the County Board. Now Mary Burke’s complicity with succoring MTI — she’s got their endorsement — becomes the lead issue in the governor’s race.

If you are a Madison public school teacher who doesn’t want to make fair share payments, let me know. We’ll bring suit. Post a private message on Facebook.

Much more on Act 10, here.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Last fall, MTI asked the District to bargain Contracts for multiple years. They refused, and a Contract was negotiated for the 2014-15 school year.

After hundreds of MTI members, sporting their MTI red shirts, attended two school board meetings in late May, the Board had a change of heart – and also a change in leadership with Arlene Silveira replacing Ed Hughes. Several MTI members addressed the Board at its meetings on May 26 and 29. The Board agreed to bargain. After five days of bargaining, terms were reached for Contracts for MTI’s five bargaining units, AFSCME’s two bargaining units, and that of the Building Trades Council.

In the new Contracts, MTI was successful in retaining members’ employment security and economic security provided by Contract salary schedules and fringe benefits.

MTI’s Contracts for 2014-15 and 2015-16 are the only contracts with Wisconsin school districts, for those years. A synopsis of the new Contracts is available on MTI’s webpage www.madisonteachers.org.
MTI members ratified the Contracts last Tuesday evening

Madison Teachers, Inc. Synopsis (PDF):

HANDBOOK: Among the topics addressed in our 2013 negotiations was how the Act 10 mandated “Employee Handbook” would be developed. In last year’s negotiations MTI gained agreement with the District, that while most school boards acted unilaterally to develop the Handbook, MTI has 5 appointees to the Committee which will develop the Handbook. That agreement also provides that MTI’s 2014- 15 Collective Bargaining Agreements serve as the foundation for the Handbook. That has now been amended to provide that the 2015-16 Contracts will serve as the foundation for the Handbook. Some school boards have rolled back employee rights to the 1950’s or 1960’s, when unilaterally creating the Handbook for their school districts. For example, teachers in some districts cannot wear sandals, open-toed

shoes and women must wear skirts or dresses at least to the knee. The Janesville School Board just eliminated wages for any credits or
degrees beyond the BA.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

The value of positive employer-employee relationships being highly valued in Madison and the surrounding area has moved the County of Dane and the City of Madison to continue to negotiate contracts with their employee unions. While the 2011 legislated Act 10 was designed to strip employees of their contractual rights and benefits, Judge Colas’ ruling that much of Act 10 is unconstitutional enables bargaining to continue.

Given the value placed on positive employer-employee relationships by Mayor Soglin and the County Board, MTI, AFSCME and the Building Trades Council, all of which represent bargaining units of District employees, have petitioned the Board of Education to enter Contracts for 2015-16. The Board will consider these requests at a special meeting this Thursday, May 15.

MTI – 7, State of Wisconsin – 0
MTI representation has resulted in the dismissal of charges against all MTI members who were issued citations by the State for participating in the Solidarity Sing Along, with one case still pending. MTI provided representation because of the State depriving members of their Constitutional right to freedom of speech in protesting Act 10’s impairment of collective bargaining.

Matthew DeFour on Madison School Board Member and Gubernatorial Candidate Mary Burke:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke said Tuesday that if elected, she would eliminate the new statewide voucher program and private school tax deduction in the next budget.

Burke, a Madison School Board member, previously said she didn’t support the statewide voucher program.

In response to a question at a Wispolitics.com luncheon at the Madison Club about what she would cut in the next state budget, Burke went further, calling statewide vouchers “a new entitlement program we frankly don’t need.” She also identified the private school tax deduction as something she would cut.

“I respect people’s choice in making that, but I don’t think we should be subsidizing that choice,” Burke said, referring to sending children to private schools.

Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign issued a statement in response to Burke’s comment.

“Gov. Walker believes every child, regardless of ZIP code, deserves access to a great education, and parents should have the right to choose the best educational environment for their children, whether it’s a public, private, charter or home school,” spokeswoman Alleigh Marre wrote in an email.

Both the tax deduction and the statewide voucher program were introduced in the 2013-15 budget signed by Walker.

Uppity Wisconsin on Mary Burke (October 2013):

o, yesterday, when Mary Burke finally made a promise and told the Wisconsin State Journal that, although she opposed Walker’s statewide expansion of vouchers, she nonetheless would do nothing to remove the statewide voucher program, jaws dropped throughout Wisconsin’s progressive community:

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke said Monday she wouldn’t have expanded private school vouchers statewide, which Gov. Scott Walker did in this year’s state budget.

However, Burke said if elected she would keep the statewide program in place with a cap of 1,000 students and seek accountability for private schools receiving public funds in Milwaukee.

Vouchers a conservative entitlement program — John Skille

Elizabeth Warren’s Quiet Support for Public School Vouchers by Carrie Lucas:

If all goes right for Massachusetts Democrats in November, they will fill the seat once held by liberal lion Sen. Ted Kennedy with a school voucher supporter who has proposed radically reforming public education in America.

You won’t find a call for school vouchers on Elizabeth Warren’s campaign website. Education is listed first among the candidate’s top priorities, but the website sticks to safe, poll tested platitudes calling for “good public schools, good public universities, and good technical training” as the key to a having a competitive workforce.

Yet in her 2003 book, The Two Income Trap, Warren and co-author Amelia Warren Tyagi cite the traditional public schools system, in which children are assigned to a school based on their residence, as a key source of economic pressure for families with children. Warren and Tyagi call for system-wide reforms to break the link between where a child lives and where they go to school, and specifically make the case for a fully-funded voucher program that would enable children to attend any public school.

Sweden’s School Choice: Vouchers for All and “The notion that parents inherently know what school is best for their kids is an example of conservative magical thinking.”; “For whatever reason, parents as a group tend to undervalue the benefits of diversity in the public schools….”.

Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Among the many excellent benefits available to MTI members, guaranteed by MTI’s various Collective Bargaining Agreements, is the additional worker’s compensation benefit, i.e., benefits greater than those provided by Wisconsin Statutes.

Wisconsin Statutes provide a worker’s compensation benefit for absence caused by a work-related injury or illness, but the benefit does not begin until the 4th day of absence, and has a maximum weekly financial benefit.
MTI’s Collective Bargaining Agreements provide that one absent from work because of a work- related injury or illness will receive his/her full wage, and that it begins on day one of the absence. Further, MTI’s negotiated benefits for worker’s compensation are not limited by Wisconsin Statutes, i.e., there is no maximum. MTI’s Contracts also provide that one’s earned sick leave is not consumed by absence caused by a work-related illness or injury.

Although MTI is working to preserve this benefit, it is at risk due to Governor Walker’s Act 10.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

At the March 18 meeting of the MTI Faculty Representative Council, nominations were finalized for MTI Officers, as well as for the MTI Bargaining Committee relative to vacancies caused by terms ending in May, 2014. Nominated for President-Elect was current President Peg Coyne (Black Hawk). She will again serve as MTI President for the 2015-16 school year. Peg previously served as President during the 2011-12 school year. She is also a member of the Bargaining Committee. In addition, others nominated were Art Camosy (incumbent -Memorial) for Vice-President; Liz Donnelly Wingert (incumbent -Elvehjem) for Secretary; and Greg Vallee (incumbent – Thoreau) for Treasurer. Mike Lipp (West), who was elected last spring, will serve as President for the 2014-15 school year.

Nominated for the MTI Bargaining Committee were: High School Representative – Art Camosy (incumbent-Memorial); Middle School Representative – Nichole Von Haden (incumbent-Sherman); Elementary School Representative – Laurie Solchenberger (incumbent – Lincoln); At-Large Representative – Steve Pike (incumbent-West); Educational Services Representative-Middle School – Gabe Chavez (incumbent-Jefferson). The Bargaining Committee, from which the Bargaining Team is selected and which is the body responsible for MTI’s Teacher Contract negotiations, consists of 15 members, of which five are elected each year. MTI’s general election will be held April 28-30.

W. Michael Cox & Richard Alm

Education looms as both cause and cure for the decline of the middle class and the widening gap between rich and poor.

In today’s knowledge-based economy, poorly performing public schools leave many U.S. workers ill-equipped for jobs that pay middle-class wages.

So it follows that improving education is the only way to raise up the poor, reduce inequality and restore the American middle class.

We all want better schools — right-wingers, left-wingers, even business and labor are on board. Most proposals for improving education come down to the same thing — spend more of the taxpayers’ money.

But that’s what we’ve been doing for two or more generations, and it hasn’t worked. Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, calculates that inflation-adjusted spending per pupil more than doubled from $5,500 a year in 1970 to more than $12,500 in 2010.

…..

So why do some states have better public schools — if it’s not a matter of money? Statistical regressions using the adjusted spending and demographic data find that test scores improve significantly as parents get more education and earn higher incomes.

The intuitive story goes like this: Better educated and richer parents tend to appreciate the value of schooling. They insist on better schools for their children and stress education in the home. School districts that spend more tend to be those where the cost-of-living is higher, where income is higher and where adults are better educated.

It’s not the spending that improves scores, it’s the parents’ high expectations and emphasis on education.

Money can buy a lot in public schools — smaller classes, better teachers, modern facilities, computers and other technologies. So why hasn’t spending paid off in better educational outcomes? The biggest impediment is a government-run school system resistant to innovation, indifferent to student needs and mired in mediocrity.

Wisconsin ranks 12th in dollars spent and 24th in achievement among the 50 US states.

State Education Trends by Andrew Coulson:

ong-term trends in academic performance and spending are valuable tools for evaluating past education policies and informing current ones. But such data have been scarce at the state level, where the most important education policy decisions are made. State spending data exist reaching back to the 1960s, but the figures have been scattered across many different publications. State-level academic performance data are either nonexistent prior to 1990 or, as in the case of the SAT, are unrepresentative of statewide student populations. Using a time-series regression approach described in a separate publication, this paper adjusts state SAT score averages for factors such as participation rate and student demographics, which are known to affect outcomes, then validates the results against recent state-level National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores. This produces continuous, state-representative estimated SAT score trends reaching back to 1972. The present paper charts these trends against both inflation-adjusted per pupil spending and the raw, unadjusted SAT results, providing an unprecedented perspective on American education inputs and outcomes over the past 40 years.

Locally, Madison spends double the national average per student.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Linda Doeseckle email (PDF):

Does it matter to you when school begins in the fall? How about when and how long winter or spring break is? And, how about when the school year ends? Have you thought about how many days you work for your annual salary, or how many hours make up your school day? In members’ responses to many years of MTI bargaining surveys, all of these factors are “very important” to those in MTI’s various bargaining units.

It was MTI’s case in 1966 which gave teacher unions an equal voice in establishing all of the above. Ruling for MTI, the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled that the school calendar is a mandatory subject of bargaining, meaning that a school district in Wisconsin must negotiate with the union to determine each of the factors described above. However, Governor Walker’s Act 10 reversed the Supreme Court’s ruling, because Act 10 removed workers’ rights to collectively bargain. And now to make it worse, there is a legislative proposal to enable school boards to unilaterally increase the number of hours in a school day.

Walker’s Act 10 enables a school board without a good conscience to abuse staff, especially teachers, because teachers are paid an annual salary not on an hourly basis. MTI’s victory before Judge Colas found Act 10, in great part, to be unconstitutional, which in turn enabled MTI to negotiate Collective Bargaining Agreements for MTI’s five bargaining units for 2014-15. Walker’s appeal of Judge Colas’ decision to the Supreme Court is pending decision. District management meantime, has refused to bargain over the calendar for the 2015-16 school year. This negativity not only impacts teachers’ planning for the 2015-16 school year, but is also causing families not to be able to plan ahead. Many families often plan vacations, weddings and other family and religious events years in advance.

Madison Teachers, Inc Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email:

Section III-R of MTI’s Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement ensures that teachers are compensated for covering another teacher’s class, when a substitute is unavailable. Nearly all members of MTI’s teacher collective bargaining unit are entitled to class coverage pay whether one volunteers or are assigned by a building administrator. This is also true whether one loses planning or not. The only exceptions are the following positions: learning coordinator, instructional resource teacher, PBS coaches, literacy coaches or dean of students, team teachers when the co-teacher is absent (unless coverage results in lost planning time). Follow up with the building administrator or administrative clerk to verify that this additional time is recorded for compensation purposes. Class coverage pay is $22 per hour. Contact MTI for additional details.

Madison Teachers, Inc. (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email:

The streets of Portland resemble those of Madison in 2011, only in Portland it is the Board of Education’s failure to bargain in good faith which is causing the labor dispute.

“Fighting for the Schools Portland Students Deserve” is a predominant sign. This refers to the School Board’s failure to implement an Arbitrator’s Award which would provide additional planning time and reduce class size to provide more time for teachers to work with students and their individual learning styles; individual differences.
The District has nearly $30 million it could access to address the issues presented by the Portland Association of Teachers, but the Board refuses. Instead the Board of Education threatens to take away the early retirement (TERP) benefit, even though it saves the District significant money. Among other issues are just cause and due process standards, videotaping instruction for evaluative purposes and the District improperly using “letters of expectation” to bully teachers.
The Union plans to strike if Contract issues are not resolved by February 20.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Rights granted to an employee by the Union’s Contract are among the most important conditions of one’s employment. Those represented by MTI, in each of MTI’s five bargaining units, have numerous protections based on SENIORITY. Whether it is protection from involuntary transfer, being declared “surplus” or above staff requirements, or layoff, SENIORITY is the factor that limits and controls management’s action. Because of SENIORITY rights guaranteed by the Union’s Contract, the employer cannot pick the junior employee simply because he/she is paid less.
Making such judgments based on one’s SENIORITY may seem like common sense and basic human decency, but it is MTI’s Contract that assures it. Governor Walker’s Act 10 destroys these protections. MTI is working to preserve them.

Madison Teachers, Inc:

The Republican controlled State Senate Education Committee was forced to retract SB 286, a bill that would give away public assets to corporate run charter schools, because there was not enough votes for the bill in its current form. Objections came for both public school and voucher school supports. The bill would use high-stakes, standardized test scores, create an A-F grading system and then turn over the public school building and assets of ‘F’ rated schools to private or charter voucher school management. It even goes so far as to mandate that some percentage of schools be labeled as failing each year. It is a terrible idea with disastrous consequences for public education.
While the bill also would have required Voucher schools to have some accountability criteria, the standards are different and the consequences for failure nowhere near as punitive. If a voucher school fails using the same or similar criteria to the public school, they just can’t accept any new voucher students. They will continue to receive tax-dollars and their assets will not be seized by the state. The corporate reform interests who would benefit from this treatment object to any accountability or consequences for voucher schools, which is a significant reason why Olsen was forced to retract the bill after it had originally been scheduled for a vote on January 30. Governor Walker and his special interest cronies have waded into the discussion, demanding revisions that favor their interests. This bill is not likely to go away quietly.

Madison Teachers, Inc. eNewsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF)::

In a recent post on her blog, Diane Ravitch shared concerns about alternative routes to certification; in particular Teach for America (TFA). Her post centered on a parent’s letter to Senator Tom Harkin after her daughter had a bad experience with TFA. Ravitch posted two responses: Harkin’s actual response to the parent; and a mock response crafted by Professor Julian Vasquez Heilig, University of Texas. Harkin serves as the Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and as Chair of the Education Appropriations Subcommittee. While Harkin “read” his constituent’s letter, it is apparent he did not incorporate Close reading strategies; his mind was made up. Harkin has supported funding for TFA and even tried to weaken the definition of “highly qualified”, so as to include teachers in training (thus enabling TFA teachers to be assigned to schools). Dr. Heilig points out several of the issues with TFA, primarily the turnover rate of the teachers in this program, which our federal government funds. He also notes that while these “teachers” don’t meet the standards of highly qualified, they are the teachers being disproportionately assigned to schools serving poor and minority children. Heilig also exposes the fact that TFA has access to and direct influence over the legislative process, as they provide cost-free education staffers for legislators on the Education and Workforce Committee. TFA lobbyists working inside the Capitol? No wonder Teach for America has been able to extend its reach so efficiently into so many districts around the country.

Madison Teachers, Inc. eNewsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

UST CAUSE does not mean “just because”. It establishes standards and procedures which must be met before an employee can be disciplined or discharged. Fortunately, for members of MTI’s bargaining units, all have protection under the JUST CAUSE STANDARDS. They were negotiated by MTI to protect union members.
There are seven just cause tests, and an employer must meet all seven in order to sustain the discipline or discharge of an employee. They are: notice; reasonableness of the rule; a thorough and fair investigation; proof; equal treatment; and whether the penalty reasonably meets the alleged offense by the employee.
MTI’s various Contracts enable a review and binding decision by a neutral arbitrator, as to whether the District’s action is justified. The burden of proof is on the District in such cases.
These steps are steps every employer should have to follow.
Unfortunately, every employer is not obligated to do so. However, MMSD must follow them, because of the rights provided to MTI members by MTI’s Contracts. Governor Walker’s Act 10 destroys these protections. MTI has preserved them.

Eric Litke:

School district administrators often live in the crossfire, sandwiched between students and teachers, parents and school boards, taxpayers and state mandates. Even though salaries typically exceed $100,000, it’s a job not many want.
Those who take the job and keep it are in high demand, able to command an array of benefits and other enticements. A Gannett Wisconsin Media Investigative Team review of nearly 100 school administrator contracts around the state revealed perks including five-figure annuities, promised payouts of $60,000 or more at retirement, car allowances of at least $500 per month and bonuses of $10,000 or more for meeting performance goals, staying with the district or simply moving into the district.
“There’s a diminishing pool of people wanting superintendent jobs — mostly because of the nature of the job and the things that go with it, particularly politically — so district boards are often really focused today more on incentives to retain superintendents,” said Jon Bales, executive director of the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators.

Related: Madison School District Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham’s contract.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Sections IV-I and IV-J of the MTI Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement set forth the procedures which principals are contractually required to use when management notifies a teacher that he/she is being considered for non-renewal of contract. By Contract, the District is obligated to advise a teacher before May 1, if they are considering non-renewal. Under Wisconsin State Statutes, such a notice must be delivered to the teacher on or before May 15. Such notice could also be on one’s evaluation that must occur by April 15 per your Collective Bargaining Agreement.
MTI staff should be present at any and all meetings
between the teacher and any administrator in this regard, given that the meeting may indeed affect the teacher’s continued employment status. The teacher has the legal right to MTI representation and does not have to begin or continue a meeting without representation. See the reverse side of your MTI membership card.
For probationary teachers, a request for a hearing before the Board of Education must be submitted within five (5) days of the teacher’s receipt of the notice that the Board of Education is considering non-renewal of the teacher’s contract. For non-probationary staff, a request for arbitration must be made within fifteen (15) days of a non-renewal notice. It is extremely important for any teacher receiving such a notice to immediately contact MTI.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity eNewsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

School district employees received some encouraging news prior to winter break. Wisconsin school employees chose “UNION” by large margins. Between November 29 and December 19, 2013 the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) conducted recertification elections for over 500 local unions representing over 56,000 classroom teachers, clerical/technical workers, educational assistants, bus drivers, custodial workers and other school district employees. Over 98% of those voting, voted Union YES!
Of the 39,872 total votes cast, 39,107 voted to recertify their union, with only 765 (less than 2%) voting against recertification. Annual union recertification elections are mandated by Governor Walker’s Act 10. In his ruling in MTI’s lawsuit, Judge Colas found requiring such elections to be unconstitutional. That decision was reversed by the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice Abrahamson and Justice Walsh Bradley expressing strong dissent, in a 26 page opinion. Not surprisingly, Dane County school districts had a particularly strong showing; Monona Grove teachers had nearly 90% of all eligible voters cast ballots and, of those, nearly 96% voted Union YES. But it wasn’t only the Dane County districts that voted Union. Even those school districts in largely conservative counties voted affirmatively. Waukesha teachers voted 648-14 to maintain their Union as their certified bargaining agent; Wauwatosa teachers 367-7; and West Allis Educational Assistants voted 47-1. The largest school districts in the state also enthusiastically voted Union YES. Appleton Substitute teachers voted 159-2; La Crosse Secretaries voted 40-0; Milwaukee teachers voted 3,728-35 and Milwaukee Ed Assistants voted 875-10.

Molly Beck, via several kind readers:

Cheating on math exams at Middleton High School began years ago and focused on students sharing photographs of test questions with their peers, two letters sent to the school allege.
The letters, one purportedly from a parent and one said to be from a student, both unsigned, name no students or teachers’ classes but describe a system in which many students participated in cheating, which included the selling of test questions, first-period students sharing test questions and students calling in sick on test days and later obtaining test information.
The letters, obtained by the State Journal under the state’s Open Records Law, were sent to the school this month. Officials this month made about 250 students retake a calculus exam because of suspected cheating

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):

When a union member files a grievance it means that the member and his/her union believes that their employer has failed to live up to its end of a provision which the employer agreed to include in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. They are called “agreements” for a reason: the union and the employer pledged that what they agreed upon in negotiations is what both will live by, that it is best for the employees and the employer. A Collective Bargaining Agreement is a legally binding Contract.
Filing a grievance sets in motion a process for resolving the employee’s complaint, often a complaint which could have been resolved easily and informally through discussion. Once a grievance is filed, the union and the employer meet in a process set forth in the Collective Bargaining Agreement to discuss the reasons on which the grievance is based. When the issue cannot be resolved through discussions, the union may take the complaint to a neutral third party (an arbitrator) who will decide whether management has violated the Contract. Wisconsin law assures that union- represented employees cannot be retaliated against because of filing a grievance.
The Collective Bargaining Agreement is the Constitution of the workplace, and only unionized employees, like members of MTI, are protected by a Collective Bargaining Agreement.

Gayle Worland:

He went on to found the Kentucky Youth Symphony in Louisville, and later was hired by Boston University to start the Greater Boston Youth Symphony Orchestra, which performed for President John F. Kennedy at the White House. At age 50, Rabin was lured to Madison to help shape and lead WYSO.
Rabin received countless service awards, including the 2000 Wisconsin Governor’s Award in Support of the Arts. Both WYSO and the American String Teachers Association named awards for outstanding arts leaders in his honor.
“Marvin Rabin was the most passionate advocate for youth orchestras that the world has ever known,” said Bridget Fraser, executive director for WYSO, which plans to memorialize Rabin at its Winterfest concerts in March.
“He really believed in making music accessible, and not an elitist thing,” his son Ralph told the State Journal in a 2011 profile. “As a teacher, he makes students feel the importance of who they are and what they can become.”

A great example of what one person can accomplish. I am thankful for the many arts opportunities available to our students. Much more on Marvin Rabin, here.

Wisconsin Reading Coalition (PDF), via a kind email:

he National Center for Education Statistics has released the 2013 scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, sometimes called the “Nation’s Report Card.” While the press has rightly focused on Wisconsin’s scores for black students (lowest in the country) and the black-white gap (largest in the country), the data indicates many other areas of concern. Here are some major takeaways from the critical 4th grade reading performance:

• Wisconsin’s average score (221) in 2013 is identical to 2011, and is statistically unchanged from our first NAEP score (224) in 1992.While we have remained stagnant, many other jurisdictions have seen statistically significant increases.
• Wisconsin ranked 31st out of 52 jurisdictions that participated in NAEP this year. In 1994, we ranked 3rd.
• Since 2007, the number of jurisdictions scoring significantly lower than Wisconsin has shrunk from 21 to 11. The number scoring significantly higher has grown from 8 to 15. Wisconsin sits in the lower half of the “middle” group of 26 jurisdictions.
• Only 8% of Wisconsin students scored at the advanced level, while 32% were below basic, the lowest level.
• Compared to their peer groups nationwide, Wisconsin’s white, black, Hispanic, Asian, low income, and disabled students all scored below their respective national averages.
• Wisconsin had the lowest scores for black students in the nation.
• Wisconsin had the largest gap between white and black students in the nation.

How will Wisconsin respond?
Social and economic disadvantages affect achievement for many students, but other states do better at mitigating those realities. Wisconsin must look within the education system itself for improvement opportunities, starting with teacher preparation. Beginning in 2014, the Foundations of Reading exam will require prospective teachers to understand the science of reading that is woven through the Common Core State Standards and that is necessary for successful intervention with struggling readers. As DPI revises the regulations governing educator licensure and preparation program approval, it will be important to align them with the only comprehensive guidelines available, the Knowledge and Practice Standards for Teachers of Reading (Moats, Carreker, Davis, Meisel, Spear-Swerling, Wilson, 2010), and to encourage independent, objective program reviews for campuses. Equally important, our state and districts need to provide practicing teachers with that same knowledge of language structure and reading acquisition, and to track the impact of professional development on student performance outcomes. Programs like LETRS from Sopris Learning and the online coursework and coaching offerings from the Science of Reading Partnership deserve attention. Only then can we hope to see student outcomes begin to reflect the efforts of our dedicated educators.
The pie charts below show the breakdown of proficiency levels of Wisconsin students as a whole and broken into sub-groups. The line graphs show the trend over time in Wisconsin scores compared to Massachusetts, Florida, and Washington, D.C., where the science of reading has found a greater acceptance in education, as well as the changes in national ranking for Massachusetts, Florida, and Wisconsin.

Related: Madison’s disastrous reading results and Wisconsin adopts the MTEL-90 (Massachusetts) elementary teacher English content knowledge requirements.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Last Monday’s Supreme Court hearing, scheduled for 90 minutes, went almost four hours, given numerous comments and questions from the Justices – all seven participating to some degree. The resultant responses caused tension, such as Attorney General Van Hollen’s response to Justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s comment, “aren’t the parties’ arguments like ships passing in the night?” Van Hollen retorted that the two ships, “… are on a collision course” and “the State has a bigger ship and we shall win!”
As The Progressive editor Ruth Conniff wrote of the exchange, “That pretty much sums up the Walker Administration’s attitude toward the teachers, janitors, clerks, and municipal employees it seeks to disempower through Act 10. The state is bigger and stronger, Walker, Van Hollen, and their allies argue, and will not be deterred by public outcry, mass protests, or even the courts.”
MTI legal counsel Lester Pines, when presenting the Union’s argument resurrected the ship analogy, telling Van Hollen that, “The Titanic was a big ship too, compared to the relatively small iceberg that caused it to sink.” Pines added that the administration’s Act 10, like the Titanic, has hit an iceberg, and that the iceberg in this case is the Wisconsin Constitution.
In his argument, Pines told the Court that the fundamental argument came down to Constitutional rights. Pines’ claim led to Van Hollen claiming, “There is no constitutional right to collective bargaining.”

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Bettner Kamholtz:

In February 2011, Governor Walker, as he described it, “dropped the bomb” on Wisconsin’s public employees, the birthplace of public employee bargaining, by proposing a law (Act 10) which would eliminate the right of collective bargaining in school districts, cities, counties, and most of the public sector. Collective Bargaining Agreements provide employment security and economic security, as well as wage increases, fringe benefits, and as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Holmes said many years ago, an effective voice for employees in the workplace. Unions had achieved these rights and benefits in a half-century of bargaining. Ostensibly proposed to address an alleged budget shortfall, the Governor’s proposed Act 10 not only called for reductions in economic benefits for public employees (e.g. limits on employer contributions toward pensions and health care), but prohibited public employers from bargaining with nearly all public employees over any issue, other than limited wage increases, under which no employee could recover losses due to the increase in the Consumer Price Index. For example, under Act 10, teacher unions can no longer bargain over issues of school safety, class size, planning and preparation time, and health insurance; educational assistants can no longer bargain over salary progression, insurance coverage or training; clerical/technical workers can no longer bargain over work hours, vacation benefits or time off to care for sick children; and state workers can no longer bargain over whistle-blower protections. The intent of the Governor was to silence public employees on issues of primary importance to them and those they serve, and to eliminate their political activity. His stated extreme, no compromise, “divide and conquer” approach was to gain full power over employees. That resulted in MTI members walking out for four days to engage in political action. Soon thereafter thousands followed MTI members, resulting in the largest protest movement in State history.
MTI legally challenged Walker’s law and in September, 2012, MTI, represented by Lester Pines, and his partners Tamara Packard and Susan Crawford, prevailed in an action before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas, wherein Colas found that most of Act 10 is unconstitutional. In ruling on MTI’s petition, Colas agreed that Act 10 is unconstitutional as it violates MTI members’ freedom of association and equal protection, both of which are guaranteed by the Wisconsin Constitution. This enabled MTI to bargain Contracts for its five (5) bargaining units for 2014-15. MTI’s are among the few public sector contracts in Wisconsin for 2014-15.

Jesse Opoien:

Without trying to pin it on one magic solution — what are some of the potential solutions that are being discussed?
There’s plenty of research that says you get the most bang for your buck in investing in the early childhood grades. That probably still holds true. But at the same time, if you invested in high quality preschool and then let chips fall where they may, many of those positive effects will eventually deteriorate.
My sense is that the efforts to identify high-performing schools, high-quality schools regardless of what sector they’re in — public, charter or private — identifying the characteristics of high-performing schools regardless of sector, and trying to replicate them.
The other thing we’ve known for a long time is the single biggest within-school factor or influence on student achievement, in this order, are the quality of the teacher and the quality of the principal. Investing in ways of identifying effective teachers and helping them get better is almost always a good investment. It’s hard work, but it’s a good investment.
The other thing in terms of causes worth mentioning: there’s plenty of research that shows we have inequitable distributions of teacher quality. The higher the poverty rate, the more likely students are to be taught by a younger, less effective teacher. We can look at ways of trying to incentivize the most effective teachers to teach in the neediest schools. There are some positive signs here, but it’s nothing that’s going to be fixed over night.

Related: the rejected Madison Preparatory IB charter school.

Catherine Capellaro:

Less than a decade ago, Ravitch promoted many of the same policies she now rails against. As assistant secretary of education under George H.W. Bush, and then as head of the federal testing program, she led the charge for state and national academic standards and supported ideas of “choice” and merit pay. “I believed in those things because in theory they made a lot of sense,” Ravitch says when I ask about her dramatic about-face. “It sounds right that if you pay teachers a bonus they’ll get higher scores. It just doesn’t work.”
Ravitch went public with her change of heart in her 2010 book The Death and Life of the Great American School System: How Testing and Choice Are Undermining Education. In her new book, she uses data to rebut arguments for market-based solutions to education problems.
“When you look at the data, the test scores have never been higher in the last 40 years,” says Ravitch. “Dropouts have never been lower than they are today.”
Real gaps
“The achievement gap is real,” Ravitch told me when I brought up Madison’s racial and economic disparities.
She points to research showing the only time the black-white achievement gap has narrowed was in the late 1970s and early 1980s because of concerted efforts to desegregate schools, reduce class size, increase access to early childhood education and target federal resources to schools with low-income students.
But today’s leaders have abandoned solutions that work, says Ravitch, who comes down as hard on President Barack Obama and Education Secretary Arne Duncan as she does on conservatives. “Our policymakers have given up on reducing class size,” she adds, saying she visits classes with up to 40 students. “Are there expanding opportunities for African American families? Our society has thrown up its hands, and we’re resegregating

Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email:

The results of the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) were released today. For Wisconsin, the news on reading is much the same as it was two years ago at the last NAEP administration. 33.6% of our 4th graders reached the proficient level. Massachusetts again scored at the top, with 50.4% of its 4th graders proficient.
Wisconsin students who are Asian, black, and white, as well as students who are not eligible for a free and reduced lunch, all posted scores that are significantly lower than the national averages for those groups of students. We had no 4th grade sub-groups that scored significantly above the national average for their group.
Wisconsin’s black 8th graders had the lowest scores in the nation, falling below Mississippi and Alabama. Wisconsin’s black 4th graders had the second lowest scores in the nation, and at both 4th and 8th grade, Wisconsin had the largest gap between white and black students.
As we examine the data more fully, we will have more specifics.

Stephanie Banchero:

Fourth- and eighth-graders across the country made modest advances in national math and reading exams this year, according to data released Thursday, but proficiency rates remained stubbornly below 50% on every test.
Amid the sluggish progress nationwide, a few areas notched drastic improvements on the 2013 National Assessment of Educational Progress exams, with Tennessee and Washington, D.C., –as well as schools on military bases–the only ones achieving statistically significant gains on all tests.
Washington gained a cumulative 23 points since 2011, while Tennessee posted a 22-point jump–both compared with a 4-point national gain. The exams are scored on a 0-500 scale.
Officials in Tennessee and Washington attributed the gains to tougher classroom math and reading standards, improved teacher development and overhauling teacher evaluations.

State posts widest achievement gap in ‘the nation’s report card’ by Lydia Mulvany:

Steven Dykstra, a founding member of the Wisconsin Reading Coalition, a grassroots group devoted to reforming reading instruction, said the state needs to start imitating reforms in other states by training teachers more effectively. In the past, Wisconsin students ranked as high as third in the nation in reading.
“This isn’t a surprise. The last time we did well in reading was when everyone sucked at reading,” Dykstra said. “When some states started doing better, they very quickly left us behind.”
“Left behind” is precisely what the data shows is happening to Wisconsin’s black students:
Eighth graders, reading: 9% were judged proficient; 55% rated below basic, the most of any state.
Fourth graders, reading: 11% were proficient; 65% scored below basic, again the most of any state.
Eighth graders, math: 8% were proficient; 62% rated below basic, better than only three states.
Fourth graders, math: 25% were proficient; 30% scored below basic, again with only three states performing worse.
Henry Krankendonk, a retired Milwaukee Public Schools math curriculum planner and NAEP board member, said Wisconsin’s failure to narrow the disparity — which has existed for decades — is a challenge for Milwaukee in particular, because it has the highest concentration of minority students. Krankendonk said the problem has long been weak standards for what students should know, and he was hopeful that the recent adoption of new standards more in line with NAEP, called Common Core State Standards, would help.

Meanwhile, St. Norbert College Education Professor Steve Correia emphasized how well (!) Reading Recovery is working while discussing Wisconsin’s NAEP results on WPR. [5.6mb mp3 audio]
Related: Madison’s long term disastrous reading results.
Much more on NAEP over time, here.

Jack Craver:

Total revenue for the Wisconsin Education Association Council, the largest union in the state, dropped from $26 million in 2011 to $20 million in 2012. WEAC, which represents 80,000 teachers across the state, has for years been a great force for the Democratic Party, providing millions of dollars on attack ads against Republicans on top of legions of volunteers.
The next largest public sector union, American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, has also taken a financial hit. AFSCME Council 40, which represents county and municipal workers outside of Milwaukee County, reported its gross revenue dropping from $6.7 million in 2011 to $4.5 million in 2012. Reports for some of the other large AFSCME Councils, including Council 24, which represents state employees, are not yet available online.
Revenue for the American Federation of Teachers, which in Wisconsin largely represents academic staff at the state’s universities as well as a number of white-collar state employees, dropped from just under $4 million in 2011 to $2.6 million in 2012.
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) Local 150 — which represents many public sector healthcare professionals — saw its revenue drop from $937,000 to $783,000. Fortunately for that union, many of its members, including nurses at Meriter Hospital, are in the private sector, and are thus unaffected by Act 10.
The decrease in union money could spell serious trouble for Democrats as they try to recapture the governorship and gain seats in the state Legislature next year. Third-party ads in favor of Democrats are largely funded by labor, whether from individual unions or union-funded groups such as the Greater Wisconsin Committee or We Are Wisconsin.
With the largest unions bleeding dues, it will be hard for Democratic forces to compete with corporate-funded players on the right, such as Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce, which has already dumped $1 million into an ad buy celebrating Walker’s record as governor.

Related: WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeanie (Bettner) Kamholtz email (PDF):

Collective bargaining was restored for all city, county and school district employees by a Court ruling last week through application of an earlier (9/14/12) Court decision achieved by MTI. Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas found that Governor Walker’s appointees to the WERC, James Scott and Rodney Pasch, were in contempt of court “for implementing” those parts of Act 10 which he (Colas) previously declared unconstitutional, which made them “a law which does not exist”, as Colas put it.
The Judge told Scott & Pasch to comply with his finding of unconstitutionality or be punished for their contempt. They agreed to comply.
Judge Colas made his ruling on unconstitutionality on September 14, 2012. MTI was represented by its legal counsel, Lester Pines.
In the contempt claim, in addition to MTI, Pines represented the Kenosha Education Association and WEAC. The latter was also represented by Milwaukee attorney Tim Hawks, who also represented AFSCME Council 40, AFT Wisconsin, AFT nurses and SEIU Healthcare, in last week’s case. Also appearing was Nick Padway, who partnered with Pines in representing Milwaukee Public Employees Union Local 61 in the original case.
Judge Colas specifically ordered the WERC to cease proceeding with union recertification elections, which in his earlier ruling were found to be unconstitutional. Act 10 mandated all public sector unions to hold annual elections to determine whether union members wished to continue with representation by the union. Act 10 prescribed that to win a union had to achieve 50% plus one of all eligible voters, not 50% plus one of those voting like all other elections. The elections were to occur November 1.

Madison Teachers, Inc (PDF), via a kind Jeanie (Bettner) Kamholtz email:

Several joint committees were created in the recent negotiations over MTI’s 2014-15 Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement. The joint committees will study and potentially recommend modification of Contract terms. Each committee will report its recommendations, if any, to Superintendent Cheatham and to the MTI Board of Directors.
The Committee on Teacher Assignments will discuss potential modification of Contract Section IV-F, Teacher Assignments, Surplus, Vacancies and Transfers. MTI’s appointees are: Andy Mayhall (Thoreau), Nancy Roth (West), Karlton Porter (Cherokee) and Doug Keillor.
The Committee on Teacher Evaluation will study and make recommendations pertaining to the District’s implementation of the State-mandated teacher evaluation system, “Educator Effectiveness”. Any revisions will be incorporated into Section IV-H of the Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement and will become effective July 1, 2014. MTI’s appointees are: MTI President Peggy Coyne (Black Hawk), Andrew McCuaig (La Follette), Kerry Motoviloff (Doyle) and Sara Bringman.
The Committee on Professional Collaboration Time will discuss implementation of the MTI/MMSD Memorandum of Understanding on High School & Middle School Professional Collaboration Time. MTI’s appointees are: Art Camosy (Memorial), Karen Vieth (Sennett), Aisha Robertson (West), and Nichole Von Haden (Sherman).
The Committee on Elementary Planning Time will discuss potential modification of Section V-I-1-d, Early Monday Release and Section V-P, Planning Time. MTI’s appointees are: Nancy Curtin (Crestwood), Greg Vallee (Thoreau), Holly Hansen (Falk) and Doug Keillor.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Record keeping by an employee is important. Don’t wait for trouble to start before you begin to compile your own personnel records. Having good records is also very important, should you become involved in a grievance over your Contract rights or benefits, or in a matter involving discipline or dismissal. To enable the Union to provide the best possible protection and representation, every employee should maintain his/her own “personnel” records.
One’s file should contain such documents as: college transcripts, evaluations, accumulated sick leave and days used, direct deposit (wage) records, records of student disciplinary referrals, Wisconsin Retirement System (DETF) records, personal leave, documentation of honors and awards, notes on student accidents and confrontations with parents or administrators, copies of all correspondence with supervisor(s) and administrators, and for teachers – individual teacher contracts for each year, licenses, and teaching assignments by year with subjects taught.

Charlotte Deleste:

At a far west Madison school, the News 3 Topnotch Teacher for October 2013 is imparting on students the power that words can have on others.
In early October, Dana Munoz’ sixth-grade class at Toki Middle School was working on its class contract, an agreement about how the students are going to interact with each other for the school year.
“Those usually include things they believe about themselves or they believe about the world and that they really want to happen,” Munoz said. “It sets the tone or the foundation for the rest of the year. I refer to it all the time.”
Munoz, who’s been working at Toki for five years, teaches language arts and likes to emphasize to her students that words, whether written or spoken, can be quite powerful in good or bad ways.
“The words we say, the impact we have on others can make or break someone’s day,” Munoz says. “Not only is it important to read and write, how we relate to one another can change the world.”
Munoz chose to use her words to change the world through teaching. The University of Wisconsin-Madison graduate admits it’s not always easy.

Toki Middle School “Report Card” (PDF).

Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email:

n a very strong turnout – the most in many years – members of MTI’s five (5) bargaining units met last Wednesday and ratified Collective Bargaining Agreements covering the 2014-15 school year. While MTI President Peg Coyne chaired the meeting, the Presidents of each MTI bargaining unit made comments from the podium and conducted the vote by their respective bargaining units. They are: Erin Proctor (EA-MTI), Kristopher Schiltz (SEE-MTI), David Mandehr (USO-MTI) and Jeff Kriese (SSA-MTI).
For the current school year, MTI is fortunate to be one of four unions of school district employees which is able to continue to assure members of the rights, wages and benefits which they have available through MTI’s Collective Bargaining Agreements. Prior to Governor Walker’s Act 10, which he verbalized as designed to destroy negotiated contracts for public employees, all 423 school districts had Contracts with their employees’ unions. Those guarantees in MTI members’ employment are now assured through June, 2015.
MTI’s legal challenge of Act 10 continues to provide the right of all public employee unions (except State employees) to bargain. That right is because Judge Juan Colas found that Act 10, in large part, violated the Constitutional rights of employees and their unions. Unfortunately, most Wisconsin school boards refuse to honor Colas’ ruling. While the Governor has appealed Colas’ decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has yet to schedule oral arguments in the case. In a related case, the Commissioners of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission are charged with contempt of court for not abiding by Colas’ Order.

Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):

Some principals appear to be confused about scheduling of parent-teacher conferences. The following is the AGREEMENT between MTI and the District as regards scheduling of parent-teacher conferences, and whether or not teachers are obligated to report to school on Friday, November 15.
“Section V-M of the MTI / MMSD Collective Bargaining Agreement will be implemented by evening conferences being scheduled on two evenings after the regular school day (November 12 and 14 for 2013). No school will be scheduled for Friday of the week of evening conferences. Teachers can hold conferences for parents wishing conferences, but who could not make one of the two evenings, or teachers can agree to conference with the parent(s) at another mutually agreeable time/date. Teachers who complete all conferences during the two evenings or agree to hold conferences at times other than on Friday for those parents who could not make the evening conferences, need not report to school on Friday. Teachers will not be required to be present during the parent-teacher conference day once their parent teacher conferences are complete, or are scheduled to be completed.”