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.

Norman Sannes

Nothing has changed in the past 30 years. The love affair between the Madison School Board and Madison Teachers Inc. Executive director John Matthews is still in full bloom.

The latest pending agreement to extend the existing union contract is proof. The ensuing litigation could cost Madison taxpayers a great deal. The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty has already promised to challenge this if the School Board caves to MTI.

MTI is not about our kids. It never has been (other than indoctrinating liberalism). The union’s opposition to the Madison preparatory charter school is further proof.

The School Board is supposed to be looking out for the kids and the taxpayers, but their first priority continues to be MTI and the demands from Matthews.

Related: Madison Governance Status Quo: Teacher “Collective Bargaining” Continues; West Athens Parent Union “Bargains Like any other Union” in Los Angeles.

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….”.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Ruth Conniff:

When Dane Country Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas held officials in Gov. Scott Walker’s administration in contempt this week, he was pushing back against a level of unchecked lawlessness by this administration that is “practically seditious,” says attorney Lester Pines.
Colas had already ruled a year ago that parts of Act 10 — the law that ended most collective bargaining rights for most public employees — were unconstitutional. This included Act 10’s requirement that unions hold annual recertification elections. But commissioners at the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission decided to ignore that decision. They went ahead and prepared for recertification elections for more than 400 school district and worker unions in November.
“The commissioners knew full well” they were flouting the court, Colas said, despite their cute argument that the word “unconstitutional” applied only to the specific plaintiffs in the case — teachers in Madison and city workers in Milwaukee.
As John Matthews, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., put it, Colas’ decision “is one of the most important decisions not only in public-sector labor history, but also in democracy.”
The principle here is simple. If a law is unconstitutional on its face, it’s unconstitutional in every case. That has always been understood in Wisconsin courts. And, Judge Colas pointed out, the Walker officials understood it, too.

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 School District 500K PDF

Experience and research tell us that effective educators are the single most important school based factor determining student success. The DPI Educator Effectiveness Team is dedicated to guiding the training, piloting, and implementation of a Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness System that will support and improve professional practice leading to improved student outcomes. This includes assuring that educators have access to quality data identifying individual areas of strength, as well as areas of needed improvement. The work of the Educator Effectiveness Team is grounded in the belief that every child in every classroom deserves to have excellent teachers and excellent building leaders who are supported in their ongoing professional growth.
Educator Effectiveness System: A Holistic Tool to Improve Professional Practice and Student Outcomes
DPI has worked with stakeholders to design the Wisconsin Educator Effectiveness System to improve educator professional practice in order to improve student outcomes. Several states have successfully implemented similar systems, and initial results indicate these Systems represent a vast improvement over typical educator evaluation practices. However, in order to make sure the System most positively impacts educator practice throughout Wisconsin, it is essential that educators and the public understand key aspects of the system.

Additional background at the Wisconsin DPI website and via duckduckgo.

Fabius Maximus:

To remember the loneliness, the fear and the insecurity of men who once had to walk alone in huge factories, beside huge machines. To realize that labor unions have meant new dignity and pride to millions of our countrymen. To be able to see what larger pay checks mean, not to a man as an employee, but as a husband and as a father. To know these things is to understand what American labor means.
— Adlai Stevenson, in a speech to the American Federation of Labor, New York City on 22 September 1952

Yin & Yang:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

A. David Dahmer:

MMSD School Board President Ed Hughes said that public education these days is under a lot of pointed criticism if not under an outright attack. “Initiatives like the voucher expansion program are premised on the notion that urban traditional public schools are not up to the task of effectively educating a diverse body of students,” Hughes says. “We’re out to prove that they are wrong. We agree with Superintendent Cheatham that in Madison all of the pieces are in place for us to be successful. Following the framework that she will describe to you, we set the goal for ourselves to be the model of a thriving urban school district that is built on strong community partnerships as well as genuine collaboration of teachers and staff. As we do that, we will be the school district of choice in Dane County.”
Cheatham said that Madison has a lot of great things going for it, but also had its share of challenges.
“A continually changing set of priorities has made it difficult for our educators to remain focused on the day-to-day work of teaching and learning, a culture of autonomy that has made it difficult to guaranteed access to a challenging curriculum for all students,” Cheatham said. “The system is hard for many of our students to navigate which results in too many of our students falling through the cracks.”
It starts with a simple but bold vision that every school is a thriving school that prepares every student for college, career, and community. “From now on, we will be incredibly focused on making that day-to-day vision become a reality,” she said.
“Many districts create plans at central office and implement them from the top down. Instead, schools will become the driving force of change in Madison,” Cheatham said. “Rather than present our educators with an ever-changing array of strategies, we will focus on what we know works — high quality teaching, coherent instruction, and strong leadership — and implement these strategies extremely well.”

Related: The Dichotomy of Madison School Board Governance: “Same Service” vs. “having the courage and determination to stay focused on this work and do it well is in itself a revolutionary shift for our district”.
“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’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Jill Barshay, via a kind reader email:

Since President Johnson’s War on Poverty Program in 1965, policy makers have been trying to equalize education spending across the United States. The lofty goal is for schools with lots of poor students to have access to the same resources that schools with rich kids have. But researchers and advocates for the poor have pointed to loopholes in Title I funding that effectively allow affluent schools to operate at higher levels of funding than low-income schools. For example, Marguerite Roza at the Center on Reinventing Public Education found that less money is spent on salaries in high-poverty schools than on low-poverty schools within the same district.
Because there can be so much variation in poverty within a school district (just think about the socio-economic differences between Tribeca and the Bronx), the Department of Education is making a big push to calculate exactly how much each school spends on a student. That might sound simple enough. But like any data project, the devil is in the details.
The issue is, how do you allocate administrative and other centralized expenses among schools? For example, say you have an itinerant teacher who spends a few hours at one school, then moves to another, and then another — each day of the week. To properly figure out how much of that teacher’s salary to attribute to each school, districts would need to create some sort of time-and-attendance punchcard system. But who wants to create such an expensive system or put teachers on punch cards?
I attended a boisterous and sometimes acrimonious session on this topic between district bean counters and the U.S. Department of Education at the NCES STATS-DC 2013 Data Conference on July 18, 2013. Many administrators protested the whole idea of counting pennies per school, saying it was too burdensome and impossible. They worried they would have to waste hours figuring out how to allocate all kinds of centralized activities, from computer servers to buses.

Locally, Madison spends a bit more than $15,000 per student, or nearly double the US average.

Alan Borsuk:

A second-grade teacher notices that one of her students lacks fluency when reading aloud. The first thing the teacher should do to help this student is assess whether the student also has difficulties with:
A. predicting
B. inferring
C. metacognition
D. decoding
Don’t worry if you’re not into metacognition. The correct answer is decoding — at least according to the people who put together the test teachers must pass in Massachusetts if they are going to teach children to read.
The Massachusetts test is about to become the Wisconsin test, a step that advocates see as important to increasing the quality of reading instruction statewide and, in the long term, raising the overall reading abilities of Wisconsin students. As for those who aren’t advocates (including some who are professors in schools of education), they are going along, sometimes with a more dubious attitude to what this will prove.
The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction officially launched the era of the new test for reading licenses with a memo sent last week to heads of all teacher preparation programs in the state. The memo spelled out the details of implementing a law passed in 2011 that called for Wisconsin to use the Massachusetts test. The memo included setting the passing score, which, after a short phase-in period, will match what is regarded as the demanding Massachusetts standard.
In a nutshell, after Jan. 31, 2014, anyone who wants to get a license that allows them to teach reading in Wisconsin will have to pass this test, with 100 multiple choice questions and two essay questions, aimed at making sure they are adequately prepared to do so. (Those currently licensed will not need to pass the test.)
Why Massachusetts? Because in the 1990s, Massachusetts launched initiatives, including requiring students to pass a high school graduation test, requiring teachers to pass licensure tests specific to the subjects they teach, and increasing spending on education, especially in schools serving low-income children.
At that point, Wisconsin and Massachusetts were pretty much tied, and down the list of states a bit, when it came to how students were doing. Within a few years, scores in Massachusetts rose significantly. The state has led the nation in fourth- and eighth-grade reading and math achievement for a decade. Wisconsin scores have stayed flat.

Many notes and links on Wisconsin’s adoption of Massachusetts (MTEL) elementary English teacher content knowledge standards. UW-Madison Professor Mark Seidenberg’s recommended Wisconsin’s adoption of MTEL.

Stephen Q. Cornman (PDF):

The 50 states and the District and Columbia reported $604.3 billion in revenues collected for public elementary and secondary education in fiscal year 2011 (FY 11) (table 1). State and local governments provided $528.8 billion, or 87.5 percent of all revenues; and the federal government contributed $75.5 billion or 12.5 percent of all revenues (derived from table 1 and figure 1).
Adjusting FY 10 data for inflation, total revenues decreased by 0.7 percent (from $608.4 to $604.3 billion), local revenues decreased by 1.8 percent (from $266.8 to $262.0 billion), state revenues increased by 1.0 percent (from $264.1 to $266.8 billion), and federal revenues decreased by 2.6 percent (from $77.5 to $75.5 billion) for FY 11 compared to FY 10 (derived from table 1 and table C-1, after adjusting for inflation).1
Current expenditures totaled $527.2 billion in FY 11 (table 2). Expenditures for instruction amounted to $322.5 billion, total support services accounted for $183.0 billion, food services were $20.4 billion, and enterprise operations accounted for $1.3 billion. Adjusting FY 10 data for inflation, current expenditures decreased 1.5 percent (from $535.3 to $527.2 billion) for FY 11 compared to FY 10 (derived from table 2 and table C-2, after adjusting for inflation).1
Current expenditures per pupil for public elementary and secondary education were $10,658 on a national level in FY 11 (table 3). Current expenditures per pupil ranged from $6,326 in Utah to $20,793 in the District of Columbia. Expenditures per pupil were next highest in New York ($18,834); New Jersey ($16,855); Alaska ($16,663); Connecticut ($16,224); and Wyoming ($15,815).
Adjusting for inflation, per pupil state and local revenues increased by 0.2 percent on a national basis from FY 10 to FY 11, while per pupil current state and local expenditures decreased by 1.6 percent (table 4). Adjusting for inflation, per pupil state and local revenues decreased by 1 percent or more in 28 states and increased by 1 percent or more in 14 states from FY 10 to FY 11. Per pupil current expenditures decreased by 1 percent or more in 30 states and increased by 1 percent or more in 9 states from FY 10 to FY 11.
Adjusting for inflation, current expenditures per pupil steadily climbed at least 1 percent per year between FY 96 and FY 08. However, the increases in current expenditures per pupil became smaller (less than 1 percent) from FY 08 to FY 09 and from FY 09 to FY 10; and then negative (i.e. a decrease of more than 1 percent) between FY 10 and FY 11 (derived from table 5 and figure 2).
In FY 11, instruction and instruction-related expenditures totaled $347.4 billion, or 65.9 percent, of all current expenditures for public elementary and secondary education; student support services were 29.3 billion, or 5.6 percent; administration costs were 56.3 billion, or 10.7 percent; and operations were 94.2 billion, or 17.9 percent (figure 3 and table 6).
1 FY 10 data were adjusted to FY 11 by utilizing the direct multiplier in the Consumer Price Index provided by the U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, and adjusted to a school year basis (July through June).
See Digest of Education Statistics, Advance Release of Selected 2012 Tables, Table 34. http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d11/tables/dt11_034.asp, downloaded May 29, 2013. For example, FY10 federal revenue was adjusted by multiplying 75,997,858,024 by 1.02007982097954 =77,523,881,408.
In FY 11, states reported $322.5 billion in current instruction expenditures, which included $212.8 billion, or 66.0 percent, for salaries; and $75.2 billion, or 23.3 percent, in employee benefits for teachers and teacher aides (figure 4 and derived from table 7).
Total expenditures for public elementary and secondary education were $604.2 billion in FY 11, including $527.2 billion in current expenditures, $41.0 billion in facilities acquisition and construction, $3.4 billion in land and existing structures, $6.5 billion in equipment, $8.2 billion for other programs, and $17.9 billion in interest on debt (table 8).

City of Madison, via a kind reader’s email:

Mayor Paul Soglin joined U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, other mayors and school superintendents in Washington, DC, today to discuss partnership opportunities between cities and the U.S. Department of Education to foster effective approaches to education reform.
Participating city leaders are part of a new Mayors’ Education Reform Task Force co-chaired by National League of Cities (NLC) First Vice President Chris Coleman, Mayor of Saint Paul, MN, and NLC Second Vice President Ralph Becker, Mayor of Salt Lake City, UT. Mayors Coleman and Becker formed the task force in March 2013 to explore how cities can and should be involved in local education reform efforts.
During today’s meeting, task force members highlighted the growing commitment by municipal officials across the country to promoting educational achievement.
“Mayors and elected officials can bring together all the stakeholders in the education conversation in their cities,” said Mayor Soglin. “The perspectives from mayors of cities large to small are valuable to local and national policymakers. I’m glad we had an opportunity to talk with the Secretary and his staff about the role mayors can play in education transformation.”
Local leaders shared examples of city-school partnerships they have formed in their communities in areas such as school improvement, early learning, afterschool programming, and postsecondary success.
“The trajectory of learning begins at birth and extends over a lifetime,” said Mayor Becker, who was unable to attend the meeting. “Cities now experience an unprecedented level of collaboration and discussion in formulating specific plans for postsecondary access and success and productive out-of-school time learning.”
The meeting with Secretary Duncan provided mayors with an opportunity to discuss how lessons learned at the city level can inform federal education policy. Among the key issues of concern identified by the task force are:

• Finding a “third way” in education reform that balances a commitment to accountability with a spirit of collaboration among school administrators, teachers, and cities;
• Transforming schools into centers of community that support parent engagement and provide wraparound services to children and families;
• Building on successful “cradle-to-career” models to develop a strong educational pipeline;
• Securing adequate and equitable funding for local education initiatives; and
• Promoting college access and completion.

“In this global economy, cities and towns depend on an educated workforce and schools are depending on us. We need to work together to ensure that our children graduate high school ready for postsecondary education and career success,” said NLC President Marie Lopez Rogers, Mayor of Avondale, AZ. “As city leaders, we have an important message that must be heard and we must be at the table in guiding federal and local education reform policies.”
In addition to Mayors Soglin, Coleman and Becker participants in today’s meeting included: Mayor Karen Freeman-Wilson of Gary, Indiana; Mayor Edna Branch Jackson of Savannah, Georgia; Mayor Dwight Jones of Richmond, Virginia; Mayor Pedro Segarra of Hartford, Connecticut; Riverside (Calif.) Unified School District Superintendent Rick Miller; Gary Community School Corporations Superintendent Cheryl Pruitt; and New York City Deputy Chief Academic Officer Josh Thomases.
The National League of Cities (NLC) is dedicated to helping city leaders build better communities. NLC is a resource and advocate for 19,000 cities, towns and villages, representing more than 218 million Americans.

Related:

• www.wisconsin2.org
• Budget Cuts: We Won’t Be as Bold and Innovative as Oconomowoc, and That’s Okay.
• Madison’s disastrous reading results.
• Analysis: Madison School District has resources to close achievement gap
• Status quo governance
• Minneapolis teacher’s union approved to authorize charter schools
• A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter School.
• Wisconsin State Journal columnist Chris Rickert appears to correlate the “achievement gap strategy and education outcomes with money spent. Madison has long spent more per student than most districts.
  The recent “expert review” concluded that the “Madison School District has resources to close achievement gap“.
  We have seen the results of an ongoing “same service” approach to school spending. There are no indications that this is changing.

The Madison School District’s recent rhetoric around annual property tax increases (after a significant increase in redistributed state tax dollars last year and a “return to normal” this year) is, to the ongoing observer, unsurprising. We appear to be in the Rainwater era “same service” approach to everything, from million$ spent on a partially implemented Infinite Campus to long-term disastrous reading scores.
Steve Coll’s 5 July 2013 New Yorker column nails it:

The most likely explanation is that President Obama never carefully discussed or specifically approved the E.U. bugging, and that no cabinet-level body ever reviewed, on the President’s behalf, the operation’s potential costs in the event of exposure. America’s post-September 11th national-security state has become so well financed, so divided into secret compartments, so technically capable, so self-perpetuating, and so captured by profit-seeking contractors bidding on the next big idea about big-data mining that intelligence leaders seem to have lost their facility to think independently. Who is deciding what spying projects matter most and why?

Much more on annual local property tax increases, here:

The Madison School Board should limit the school property tax hike to the rate of inflation next year, even if that means scaling back a proposed 1.5 percent across-the-board salary increase for school district employees, says member Mary Burke.
“I think in an environment where we’ve seen real wages in Dane County decrease, and a lot of people are on fixed incomes, we have to work as hard as possible to limit any increase to the inflation rate,” Burke said Tuesday in an interview.
…
But School Board discussions have focused around reducing the proposed salary hike, and cutting back on facility maintenance to pare down the $392 million proposed budget enough to bring the property tax increase to 4 or 5 percent, board President Ed Hughes told me.
The district under state law could increase its levy by as much as $18,385,847 or 9 percent. Keeping the increase to around the rate of inflation would mean an increase of less 2 percent.
…
Board member TJ Mertz can’t vote on salaries because his wife is a teacher’s aide with the school district, he told me, but he has long been outspoken in his belief in good pay for teachers to ensure the best academic achievement for students.
“As a citizen, I understand our staff needs to be compensated,” he said, adding that teachers have taken losses in take-home pay since they were required to begin making contributions to their pensions in 2011. “If the state won’t invest in our children, it has to come from the property tax,” he said.
Mertz said he would prefer a tax increase steeper than the 4 percent or 5 percent the board as a whole is focusing on. “I firmly believe the most important thing we can do is invest in our students; the question should not be what property tax levy can we afford,” he said.

I appreciate Schneider’s worthwhile questions, including a discussion of “program reviews”:

Several School Board members interviewed for this story stressed that the 2013-2014 budget will be a transitional one, before a broad re-evaluation of spending planned by Cheatham can be conducted.

Yet, it would be useful to ask if in fact programs will be reviewed and those found wanting eliminated. The previous Superintendent, Dan Nerad, discussed program reviews as well.
Madison Schools’ 2013-2014 Budget Charts, Documents, Links, Background & Missing Numbers.
The Madison School Board seat currently occupied by Mr. Hughes (Seat 7, and Seat 6 – presently Marj Passman) will be on the Spring, 2014 ballot (candidate information is available at the Madison City Clerk’s website).

Patrick O’Donnell:

The Cleveland school district’s improvement plan for 13 schools this upcoming school year will bring major changes for some and smaller, but substantial, ones for others.
Teachers will receive special training at all 13 schools, some of which will get new principals and see significant staff changes. And a few of the schools will have outside agencies come in to give the schools new styles and approaches.
All together, the district is spending more than $2 million this upcoming year on staff training and outside help to try to improve these schools, which the district has labeled “Investment Schools.”
“We’re looking to have 13 different plans for 13 unique needs,” said Eric Gordon, the district’s chief executive officer.
More changes are in the works. After the district met with staff, parents and community leaders at each of the schools in May, schools will host additional meetings over the summer to refine the plans.

Cleveland spent $15,072 per student during the 2012-2013 budget year, similar to Madison’s spending.

The Economist:

IN A small school on the South Side of Chicago, 40 children between the ages of five and six sit quietly learning in a classroom. In front of each of them is a computer running software called Reading Eggs. Some are reading a short story, others building sentences with words they are learning. The least advanced are capturing all the upper- and lower-case Bs that fly past in the sky. As they complete each task they move through a cartoon map that shows how far they have progressed in reading and writing. Along the way they collect eggs which they can use to buy objects in the game, such as items to furnish their avatar’s apartment. Now and then a child will be taken aside for scheduled reading periods with one of the two monitoring teachers.
The director of North Kenwood-Oakland school says this sort of teaching, blending software with human intervention, helps her pupils learn faster. It also allows teachers at this school–which, like other charter schools, is publicly funded but has some freedom to teach as it likes–to spend more time teaching and less time marking written work and leading pupils through dull drills of words and numbers. On top of that the school gains an accurate, continuous record of each child’s performance through the data its various programs collect and analyse.
As well as evidence from these schools, the effectiveness of particular bits of software has been studied. The Department of Education spent four years evaluating literacy programs; it concluded that Read 180, a program to help students who have fallen behind in reading, was good at combating adult illiteracy. A randomised control trial of Cognitive Tutor, which helps teachers identify weaknesses and strengths in maths, among 400 15-year-olds in Oklahoma found that children using the program reached the same level of proficiency as the control group in 12% less time.
Meanwhile, the Khan Academy, a creator of online tutorials widely used as a form of home tutoring, is beginning to provide hard evidence for why it is considered one of edtech’s rising stars. At Oakland Unity, in tough inner-city Oakland, test scores for 16-17-year-olds in algebra and geometry have risen significantly in the two years since Khan courses were introduced. These courses are now being adopted by the Los Altos school district, also in California, which is already one of the best-performing in America. Khan Academy pinpoints the way in which edtech can turn conventional education on its head: in its “flipped classroom” pupils are no longer given lectures in the classroom and set problems as homework, but watch instructional videos at home and work on problems in class, where teachers and peers can help them.

Related: Madison’s long-tem disastrous reading resultsa

Madison Times:

After two months on the job, Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham has released a report summarizing what she’s learned during her entry process and previewing the district’s planning work going forward.
“I’d like to thank our staff, parents, students and the Madison community for helping me build a shared understanding of our district’s strengths and challenges,” Cheatham said. “The work ahead will take urgency, determination and tenacity, but my experience over the past two months has made me so confident because I know that all of the ingredients for success are here in Madison.”
Over the past two months, Superintendent Cheatham has visited all 48 MMSD schools, as well as several after-school programs, alternative programs, community early childhood care and education centers, and the district’s alternative high school. Each visit included a meeting with teachers and staff, classroom observations and a meeting with the principal and members of their leadership team. In high schools, visits also included discussions with students and culminated in community meetings. The superintendent also met with parents, elected officials, community leaders, university partners, religious leaders, business leaders and union leaders.

Much more, here.

Wisconsin Elementary Teacher Prep Rating Distribution


Wisconsin Secondary Teacher Prep Rating Distribution


National Council on Teacher Quality:

Highly rated programs — The undergraduate secondary program at the University of Wisconsin – Stout is on the Teacher Prep Review’s Honor Roll, earning at least three out of four possible stars. Across the country, NCTQ identified 21 elementary programs (4 percent of those rated) and 84 secondary programs (14 percent) for the Honor Roll.
Selectivity in admissions — The Review found that 32 percent of elementary and secondary programs in Wisconsin restrict admissions to the top half of the college-going population, compared to 28 percent nationwide. Countries where students consistently outperform the U.S. typically set an even higher bar, with teacher prep programs recruiting candidates from the top third of the college-going population.
Some worry that increasing admissions requirements will have a negative effect on the diversity of teacher candidates. By increasing the rigor and therefore the prestige of teacher preparation the profession will attract more talent, including talented minorities. This is not an impossible dream: 83 programs across the country earn a Strong Design designation on this standard because they are both selective and diverse, although no such programs were found in Wisconsin.
Early reading instruction — Just 25 percent of evaluated elementary programs in Wisconsin are preparing teacher candidates in effective, scientifically based reading instruction, an even lower percentage than the small minority of programs (29 percent) providing such training nationally. The state should find this especially alarming given that Wisconsin now requires elementary teacher candidates to pass one of the most rigorous tests of scientifically based reading instruction in the country.
Elementary math — A mere 19 percent of evaluated elementary programs nationwide provide strong preparation to teach elementary mathematics, training that mirrors the practices of higher performing nations such as Singapore and South Korea. 25 percent of the evaluated elementary programs in Wisconsin provide such training.
Student teaching — Of the evaluated elementary and secondary programs in Wisconsin, 58 percent entirely fail to ensure a high quality student teaching experience, in which candidates are assigned only to highly skilled teachers and receive frequent concrete feedback. 71 percent of programs across the country failed this standard.
Content preparation — None of Wisconsin’s elementary programs earn three or four stars for providing teacher candidates adequate content preparation, compared to 11 percent of elementary programs nationwide. At the high school level, 23 percent of Wisconsin secondary programs earn four stars for content preparation, compared to 35 percent nationwide. The major problem at the secondary level is that programs’ requirements for general science or general social science certifications do not ensure that candidates are prepared in the content of every subject they will be licensed to teach, since the states licensing test requirements do not provide this assurance.
Outcome data — None of the evaluated programs in Wisconsin earn four stars for collecting data on their graduates, compared to 26 percent of evaluated programs in the national sample. In the absence of state efforts to connect student achievement data to teacher preparation programs, administer surveys of graduates and employers or require administration of teacher performance assessments (TPAs), programs that fare poorly on this standard have not taken the initiative to collect any such data on their own.

Related: “Transparency Central” National Review of Education Schools and Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review.
Erin Richards

• Some of the education programs in Eau Claire, Platteville, River Falls, La Crosse and Madison received between two and two and a half stars.
• Other programs in Eau Claire, Green Bay, La Crosse, Madison, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Platteville, River Falls, Stevens Point, Stout, Superior and Whitewater received between one and one and a half stars.
• About 1 in 3 teacher training programs reviewed restrict admission to the top half of the college-going population.
• About 1 in 4 elementary education programs reviewed prepare teacher candidates in effective, scientifically based reading instruction
• About 1 in 4 elementary ed programs reviewed provide strong preparation to teach elementary mathematics. That’s better than the national average of 19% of elementary education programs that offer strong math prep.
• No Wisconsin programs evaluated earned any credit for collecting data on their graduates, compared with 26% of programs that did so in the national sample.

Nationally, more than 200,000 candidates graduate from teacher preparation programs each year, then enter systems where teacher quality has long been a point of debate.

Finally, Wisconsin recently adopted Massachusett’s elementary teacher content knowledge licensing (English only, not math) requirements beginning in 2014 (MTEL).

Stephanie Banchero & Caroline Porter:

An educational curriculum that originally catered to the children of globe-trotting diplomats is making rapid inroads in K-12 public schools across the U.S., boosting test results and academic readiness even at inner-city schools.
An educational curriculum designed for the children of globetrotting diplomats is making rapid inroads in K-12 schools across the U.S., showing surprising improvements in test results and academic readiness even at inner-city schools. Caroline Porter has details.
Houston, Chicago, Tampa, Fla., and other cities are embracing the International Baccalaureate [SIS IB Link] program as a way to overhaul low-performing schools, attract middle-income families who might otherwise favor private schools, or offer more choice.
“It’s not a program for the elite,” said Samuel Sarabia, who runs the IB program for Houston Independent School District, where 10 schools have IB programs, including two where the majority of students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch. Five more low-income schools are in the midst of an IB conversion process run by the nonprofit International Baccalaureate group.
The program began in Geneva in the 1960s as a two-year high-school diploma offering for the children of diplomats and itinerant business executives. It later expanded into elementary- and middle-school programs.
Today, there are 1,651 IB programs in the U.S.–including 1,493 public schools–up from 503 in 2003. About 90% of them are in public schools, and most are aimed at U.S. students, not the children of diplomats.
Officials tout the programs’ emphasis on critical thinking. Unlike the traditional model of teachers imparting knowledge in a lecture format, IB programs emphasize individual and group projects governed by a philosophy of “international mindedness.” Students are required to take a second language.

The Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter school in 2012, largely sponsored by the local Urban League.

Alan Borsuk:

Time, time, time, see what’s become of Oconomowoc High School.
The nearly 1,500-student high school 30 miles west of Milwaukee attracted a lot of attention a year ago with a transformation plan: Reduce the staff, give most teachers increased workloads and pay, and implement learning approaches that call for more initiative by students and a lot of technology.
As Superintendent Patricia Neudecker (now retired) and high school Principal Joseph Moylan saw it, it was a way to tighten spending while personalizing and improving learning. As critics, including many teachers and students, saw it, it was a way to make things worse.
One year into the new reality, Oconomowoc High still stands. The critics haven’t been proved wrong, but it appears it was a pretty decent year by many measures. Change did not derail the basic flow of a healthy, energetic school and in some ways it helped. But there are signs of the stress the approach is putting on all involved, and change does not come easily.
With a bow to Simon and Garfunkel (“Hazy Shade of Winter,” of course), consider this an update focused on time, time, time.
Teachers’ time: For about a decade, the high school has used a block schedule, which means the school day is built around four longer periods rather than six or seven periods. The conventional teaching load in such a situation is three blocks a day. Many Oconomowoc teachers now teach all four blocks, which means they are in front of students just about all day.
Neudecker said the change was made to reduce staff and save money without reducing offerings to students. “We haven’t cut one program,” she said. “We have not increased our class size.”
In exchange for the heavier workload, teachers receive an additional $14,000 a year. For those affected, that has raised salaries to $50,000 at the starting level and $70,000 or more for experienced teachers.

Related: May, 2012: Budget Cuts: We Won’t Be as Bold and Innovative as Oconomowoc, and That’s Okay. Indeed. Madison appears to have mastered the art of status quo governance.

Important Press Conference – Can You Make It? – http://t.co/8VlrPf2rMD

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) June 15, 2013

DPI Superintendent, Tony Evers, and legislators who want to maintain Wisconsin’s proud system of public education, are holding a press conference on Monday, June 17 at 10 AM in the Assembly Parlor to address the recent decision by the Joint Committee on Finance to expand voucher funding at the expense of public schools. The Senate and Assembly will be voting to pass this extreme budget within weeks. Please join these folks to inform and educate the public about the negative impact that private school voucher expansion will have on Wisconsin’s public schools. Wear Red for Public Ed. We need a wall of support behind the speakers. Time is running short to stop this train wreck but we cannot allow our opposition to go unnoticed!
TIME / LOCATION: 10 am in the Assembly Parlor with Superintendent Tony Evers.

Governance change is apparently quite difficult within the present school district model.

Save our Public Schools – Voucher Action Tomorrow! – eepurl.com/Aqqqj

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) June 3, 2013

Pat Schneider:

ALEC is still at it, Julie Underwood, dean of the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, cautions in “School Boards Beware,” (PDF) a commentary in the May issue of Wisconsin School News.
The model legislation disseminated by the pro-free market American Legislative Exchange Council’s national network of corporate members and conservative legislators seeks to privatize education and erode the local control, Underwood says.
“The ALEC goal to eliminate school districts and school boards is a bit shocking — but the idea is to make every school, public and private, independent through vouchers for all students. By providing all funding to parents rather than school districts, there is no need for local coordination, control or oversight,” she writes in the magazine of the Wisconsin Association of School Boards.
Underwood, who says that Wisconsin public schools already face unprecedented change, last year co-authored a piece about ALEC’s grander plans, a “legislative contagion (that) seemed to sweep across the Midwest during the early months of 2011.”
In her recent piece, Underwood argues that a push to privatize education for the “free market” threatens the purpose of public education: to educate every child to “become an active citizen, capable of participating in our democratic process.”

Related:

• The state this year will start rating each school on a scale of 0 to 100 based on student test scores and other measurables. The idea, in part, is to give parents a way to evaluate how a school is performing while motivating those within it to improve.
• Several schools across the state — including Madison’s Shorewood Elementary, Black Hawk Middle and Memorial High schools — are part of Wisconsin’s new teacher and principal evaluation system, which for the first time will grade a teacher’s success, in part, on student test scores. This system is to be implemented across Wisconsin in 2014-15.li>And instead of Wisconsin setting its own student benchmarks, the state is moving toward using Common Core State Standards, which have been adopted in 45 other states. State schools are starting new curricula this year in language arts and math so students will be prepared by the 2014-15 school year to take a new state exam tied to this common core and replacing the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination.

Although Underwood says she generally backs most of these changes, she’s no fan of the decision announced last month that makes it easier for a person to become a public school teacher — even as those who are studying to become teachers must now meet stiffer credentialing requirements. Instead of having to complete education training at a place like UW-Madison en route to being licensed, those with experience in private schools or with other teaching backgrounds now can take steps to become eligible for a public teaching license.

“I think that’s really unfortunate,” says Underwood, who first worked at UW-Madison from 1986-95 before coming back to town as education dean in 2005.

Related:

• When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
• Many notes and links on Julie Underwood.
• The oft-criticized WKCE will soon be replaced by Wisconsin’s Common Core implementation.
• NCTQ Sues UW Ed Schools over Access to Course Syllabi.
• An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria

Stop the latest ploy by the WIGOP to destroy our public schools!The time to act is now: bit.ly/18zyVJW

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) May 30, 2013

Long term disastrous reading scores are the existential threat to our local public school “status quo” structure.



Related: Where Have all the Students Gone? Madison Area School District Enrollment Changes: 1995-2013.

Melissa Sargent, D-Madison, represents District 48 in the Assembly:

By now, most people have heard about Scott Walker’s proposal to expand the voucher school system to new districts, including Madison, yet many people aren’t clear as to what this means for our students as well as the administrators, teachers and parents. I’ve been asked by numerous constituents to give an explanation of how this would apply, in real terms, to our public education system.
The best way to break this down is in three parts: the fiscal effect on taxpayers and our public schools; a comparison between public school and private school accountability; and a comparison of the performance of students in voucher schools and public schools.
FINANCES: Madison currently has 4,202 private school students. Based on a conservative assessment of income levels, 1,387 of these students would be eligible for the voucher program. So what does this mean for Madison taxpayers?
If 1,387 private school students become voucher students, Madison taxpayers would subsidize private schools for about $3.8 million and see a reduction in state aid of that amount. The Madison district’s taxpayers would have to pay more to replace the $3.8 million, or the district would have to make $3.8 million worth of cuts in services for public school students. One thing that has been made abundantly clear to me by my constituents and other community members is Wisconsinites don’t like the idea of their taxpayer dollars going toward private education.

State Senator Fred Risser, Representative Jon Erpenbach, Representative Mark Miller:

As legislators, we hear about many important issues that will impact our state’s future. No issue we face has an impact as far reaching as the education of Wisconsin children. Providing future generations with the skills to be productive and successful must be a top priority.
Unfortunately, in the proposed state budget, corporate special interests won out over Wisconsin children.
In the proposed budget, the governor has chosen to increase voucher program funding by $94 million. The proposal also expands the voucher program to school districts with two or more “failing schools.”
Based on this language, the Madison School District would as failing, and therefore open to voucher expansion. As a result, Madison tax dollars would be invested in private, unaccountable schools, rather than its public schools.
We believe that just isn’t right. Every time a student leaves the public school and enters the voucher program, the state withholds $2,200 in funding from the public school. While it may mean one fewer student to educate, the school’s fixed costs remain the same, and the district is forced to raise property taxes to cover the difference.

Much more on vouchers, here. Madison’s long-term, disastrous reading scores.

Lisa Hansel, via a kind reader’s email:

So why haven’t we ensured that all children get a rigorous, supportive education?
This is a question I ask myself and others all the time. I think it’s more productive than merely asking “How can we?” Those who ask how without also asking why haven’t tend to waste significant amounts of time and resources “discovering” things that some already knew.
Okay, so I’ve partly answer the why question right there. Much better answers can be found in Diane Ravitch’s Left Back: A Century of Failed School Reforms, E. D. Hirsch’s The Schools We Need and Why We Don’t Have Them, and Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life.
But still, those answers are not complete.
Right now, Kate Walsh and her team with the National Council on Teacher Quality (NCTQ) are adding to our collective wisdom–and potentially to our collective ability to act.
NCTQ is just a couple months away from releasing its review of teacher preparation programs. The results may not be shocking, but they are terrifying. Walsh provides a preview in the current issue of Education Next. In that preview, she reminds us of a study from several years ago that offers an insiders’ look at teacher preparation:

The most revealing insight into what teacher educators believe to be wrong or right about the field is a lengthy 2006 volume published by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), Studying Teacher Education. It contains contributions from 15 prominent deans and education professors and was intended to provide “balanced, thorough, and unapologetically honest descriptions of the state of research on particular topics in teacher education.” It lives up to that billing. First, the volume demonstrates the paucity of credible research that would support the current practices of traditional teacher education, across all of its many functions, including foundations courses, arts and sciences courses, field experiences, and pedagogical approaches, as well as how current practice prepares candidates to teach diverse populations and special education students. More intriguing, however, is the contributors’ examination of the dramatic evolution of the mission of teacher education over the last 50 years, in ways that have certainly been poorly understood by anyone outside the profession.
Studying Teacher Education explains the disconnect between what teacher educators believe is the right way to prepare a new teacher and the unhappy K-12 schools on the receiving end of that effort. It happens that the job of teacher educators is not to train the next generation of teachers but to prepare them.

Huh? Really? How exactly does one prepare without training? Walsh goes on to explain that. But the only way to prepare yourself to comprehend the teacher educators’ reasoning is to pretend like “prepare them” actually means “brainwash them into believing that in order to be a good teacher, you have to make everything up yourself.” Back to Walsh:

Harking back perhaps to teacher education’s 19th-century ecclesiastical origins, its mission has shifted away from the medical model of training doctors to professional formation. The function of teacher education is to launch the candidate on a lifelong path of learning, distinct from knowing, as actual knowledge is perceived as too fluid to be achievable. In the course of a teacher’s preparation, prejudices and errant assumptions must be confronted and expunged, with particular emphasis on those related to race, class, language, and culture. This improbable feat, not unlike the transformation of Pinocchio from puppet to real boy, is accomplished as candidates reveal their feelings and attitudes through abundant in-class dialogue and by keeping a journal. From these activities is born each teacher’s unique philosophy of teaching and learning.
There is also a strong social-justice component to teacher education, with teachers cast as “activists committed to diminishing the inequities of American society.” That vision of a teacher is seen by a considerable fraction of teacher educators (although not all) as more important than preparing a teacher to be an effective instructor.

Kate Walsh:

Nowhere is the chasm between the two visions of teacher education–training versus formation–clearer than in the demise of the traditional methods course. The public, and policymakers who require such courses in regulations governing teacher education, may assume that when a teacher takes a methods course, it is to learn the best methods for teaching certain subject matter. That view, we are told in the AERA volume, is for the most part an anachronism. The current view, state professors Renee T. Clift and Patricia Brady, is that “A methods course is seldom defined as a class that transmits information about methods of instruction and ends with a final exam. [They] are seen as complex sites in which instructors work simultaneously with prospective teachers on beliefs, teaching practices and creation of identities–their students’ and their own.”
The statement reveals just how far afield teacher education has traveled from its training purposes. It is hard not to suspect that the ambiguity in such language as the “creation of identities” is purposeful, because if a class fails to meet such objectives, no one would be the wiser.
The shift away from training to formation has had one immediate and indisputable outcome: the onus of a teacher’s training has shifted from the teacher educators to the teacher candidates. What remains of the teacher educator’s purpose is only to build the “capacity” of the candidate to be able to make seasoned professional judgments. Figuring out what actually to do falls entirely on the candidate.
Here is the guidance provided to student teachers at a large public university in New York:
In addition to establishing the norm for your level, you must, after determining your year-end goals, break down all that you will teach into manageable lessons. While so much of this is something you learn on the job, a great measure of it must be inside you, or you must be able to find it in a resource. This means that if you do not know the content of a grade level, or if you do not know how to prepare a lesson plan, or if you do not know how to do whatever is expected of you, it is your responsibility to find out how to do these things. Your university preparation is not intended to address every conceivable aspect of teaching.
Do not be surprised if your Cooperating Teacher is helpful but suggests you find out the “how to” on your own. Your Cooperating Teacher knows the value of owning your way into your teaching style.

Related: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?.
Wisconsin has recently taken a first baby step toward teacher content knowledge requirements (something Massachusetts and Minnesota have done for years) via the adoption of MTEL-90. Much more on teacher content knowledge requirements, here.
Content knowledge requirements for teachers past & present.

The Chicago Tribune:

Indiana lawmakers are proposing huge increases in state education funding this year. Ditto those in Wisconsin.
Here in Illinois, The Deadbeat State? Just the opposite. Education funding is being strangled by the same python that is strangling the rest of state government’s finances: pension obligations. Every day that the Legislature delays the enactment of pension reform, the unfunded liability of the state’s five pension funds grows by $17 million, according to Gov. Pat Quinn’s office.
In this state, we’re not arguing about how to, say, give more money to schools because great schools drive growth and innovation, attract businesses, create jobs.
No, we’re arguing instead about which school kids will get cheated more than other school kids because state lawmakers dither on a pension fix — kids from richer districts or those from poorer districts? That’s the depressing debate we’re having.
Here’s why: In Illinois, the Legislature sets a “foundation” funding level that the state says every student needs for an adequate education. That’s the starting point for a calculation that determines how much state aid each district receives. The calculation considers each district’s local taxing ability to meet that foundation level, and also looks at how many students in the district need extra support because they’re from low-income families. Districts that have relatively lower revenue and educate relatively more higher-need students receive more state aid.

Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 Madison Rotary Speech:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Pamela Cotant:

Students at Wingra School only needed to travel across the street for a day in the outdoors as part of its annual all-school unit called Outdoor Odyssey.
Last week, students ages 5 to 14 culminated the unit by working in multi-age teams to complete a variety of challenges throughout the UW Arboretum, across Monroe Street from the school.
The challenges, created by Wingra teachers and UW Arboretum naturalists, included identifying animal skin and bones, a scavenger hunt, identifying scat and measuring the weather with different instruments made by the students.
Wearing a matching raincoat and boots with a bug design, kindergartener Leo Langer, 5, used a trowel to dig up invasive plants under the supervision of teachers and Arboretum staff. He said it was his favorite activity so far that day.
“I learned a new way to dig out (dame’s rocket) instead of just pulling stuff out with your hands,” he said.

Mike Ford:

I had my first chance to read through the new Milwaukee Public School (MPS) budget proposal yesterday, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Compared to trends of the last decade or so, things are definitely looking better for the district.
Most important, MPS is increasing their staffing in key areas next year. Despite all the talk about governance structure the most important place in education is the school itself. MPS is increasing its school level staffing by 120.8 full-time-equivalent employees in FY14. A good number of those positions, 51, are teachers and educational assistants (though on the negative side the federal sequestration is responsible for the loss of 24 title 1 teachers). The district is also adding assistant principals, safety assistants, social workers, and nurse associates in schools. All of this is particularly impressive when overall enrollment is projected to decline 1%.
So how did they do this? A big part is the aggressive action the district has taken to reduce its benefit costs. MPS notes in their budget that their average teacher salary is increasing but their “school operations and categorical benefit” rate will drop to 58.4% from almost 70% just two years ago. Part of this is due to Act 10, and part of this is due to the willingness of MPS to take needed action.

Milwaukee’s $1,170,867,945 budget will spend $15,011 for each of its 78,000 students during the 2013-2014 school year. Madison spends a similar amount per student.

Christopher Levenick:

John Kirtley smiled. It was March in Tallahassee, and the morning sun was already warming the immense crowd before him. Some 5,600 people had gathered in front of the Leon County Civic Center–more than 1,000 of whom were arriving after a 14-hour overnight bus ride from Miami. Still, the energy in the air was palpable. Excited schoolchildren clutched hand-lettered signs: “Don’t Take Away My Dreams,” “Education Through Choice.” Parents chatted with teachers as clergymen greeted newcomers. It was a diverse crowd, predominantly black and Hispanic. Kirtley knew it had gathered for a single purpose: to convince the 2010 Florida legislature to strengthen the state’s school choice program.
A little after 10 a.m., the crowd began heading east along Madison Street. Kirtley walked at the head of the procession, alongside the Rev. H. K. Matthews, an 82-year-old African-American minister who had marched in Selma. Together they proceeded by the sprawling headquarters of the Florida Department of Education. They marched past the state’s tidy Supreme Court. When the crowd ultimately reached the capitol, it was the largest political rally in the state’s history.
Charlie Crist, then the Governor of Florida, welcomed the crowd. Dignitaries lined up to address them: Al Lawson, the Democratic leader of the Florida state Senate; Julio Fuentes, president of the Hispanic Council for Reform and Educational Options; Anitere Flores, Florida state Representative. Representing the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, James Bush III proclaimed the support of the civil rights organization founded by Martin Luther King Jr. The crowd roared.
Kirtley had helped organize the march to put the legislators on notice. Since 2001, Florida had offered dollar-for-dollar tax credits to corporations that contributed to state-approved scholarship organizations. (Those organizations in turn offered partial scholarships to low-income families, giving parents the resources to pay tuition at a private school of their choice.) Funding for the program, however, had always been capped. Offering more scholarships meant passing a new cap. The school choice program was forever in jeopardy, an election away from a hostile governor or legislature.

The Madison Urban League, via a kind Kaleem Caire email:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 23, 2013
Media contact: Kaleem Caire
kcaire@ulgm.org
608.729.1249
Click Here for Urban League’s 2013-14 Agenda
State Test Scores Confirm Urban League’s Concerns and Call to Action
Madison, WI – Today, the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction released students’ results on the annual statewide achievement test, Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam (WKCE). The results confirm concerns raised by the Urban League of Greater Madison, that disadvantaged students and students of color are severely underperforming in many of Wisconsin’s public schools, particularly in the Madison Metropolitan School District.
All Wisconsin public school students completed the test in November 2012. This revised test raised the standards of performance for all students, thereby providing a more accurate picture of students who are on track to graduate from high school academically ready to succeed in college or a career. Test results show that all students, regardless of their race, socioeconomic status or disability, are struggling to achieve to high standards in Madison-area public schools.
This afternoon, the Urban League of Greater Madison joined Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, and leaders of other community organizations, at a press conference where Cheatham shared MMSD’s results. Cheatham presented data showing that an astounding 92% of African American and 85% of Latino students are reading below their grade level, and 90% of African American and 77% of Latino children are failing in mathematics. The data further showed that a large percentage of white students have fallen behind as well, with 42% are reading below grade level and 33% failing in math.
In reflecting on the scores, Darrell Bazzell, the Chair of Urban League’s Board of Directors said, “These numbers are a stark message that Madison’s public schools are at a tipping point and that our community must embrace change. The implications for our region are profound. For the sake of our community and our children, Madison can, and must, do better for all students and families.”
Bazzell further stated that, “Every citizen in our community must say that ‘we will no longer harbor these gaps; that we accept responsibility for addressing these challenges; and that we will commit to doing all that we can to ensure all of our children succeed. We must also acknowledge where we are not succeeding and commit to change in smart, innovative and effective ways that lead to real progress for our kids’.”
In response to these troubling statistics, Urban League President and CEO, Kaleem Caire, shared that, “When 90% of Black children cannot read at their grade level, we are significantly reducing the possibility of success for an entire generation. This issue negatively affects not only this generation of children, but also the vitality of our entire region. If not addressed quickly, it will affect the quality of the lives of all citizens who call Madison home.” To address these challenges, Caire said “The Urban League is working to build a pipeline of high quality cradle to career educational and employment services that positively impact the entire family, move all children towards high performance, and prepare youth and adults for career success.” He further highlighted, “We have already begun working with the Madison Schools, other area school districts, employers and community partners to ensure that we attack the persistence of underachievement and other contributing factors, such as poverty, at its core. ”
The Urban League’s 2013-14 Strategic Plan creates opportunities that will help the community overcome these challenges. Caire enthusiastically shared that, “We are a community of great people, great teachers and great families who are passionate about helping others transform their lives. But our passion now must become our reality.”
About the Urban League of Greater Madison
The Urban League of Greater Madison’s mission is to ensure that African Americans and other community members are educated, employed and empowered to live well, advance professionally and contribute to the common good in the 21st Century. We are committed to transforming Greater Madison into the Best [place] in the Midwest for everyone to live, learn, and work. We are working to make this vision a reality through a comprehensive strategic empowerment agenda that includes programs & services, advocacy, and partnerships & coalition building. www.ulgm.org
Urban League of Greater Madison | 2222 S. Park Street | Suite 200 | Madison | WI | 53713

Related: The rejected Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school
Madison’s long term disastrous reading results.
The recently released WKCE results.

USA Today Editorial:

Critics — whether district superintendents or teachers’ unions or school boards or a traveling band of academic doubters — snipe at the newcomers, arguing that they’re siphoning students and money from traditional public schools.
But as evidence from the 20-year-old charter experiment mounts, the snipers are in need of a new argument. There’s little doubt left that top-performing charters have introduced new educational models that have already achieved startling results in even the most difficult circumstances.
That doesn’t mean all charters are automatically good. They’re not. But it’s indisputable that the good ones — most prominently, KIPP — are onto something. The non-profit company, which now has 125 schools, operates on a model that demands much more of students, parents and teachers than the typical school does. School days are longer, sometimes including Saturday classes. Homework burdens are higher, typically two hours a night. Grading is tougher. Expectations are high, as is the quality of teachers and principals, and so are the results.
KIPP’s eighth-grade graduates go to college at twice the national rate for low-income students, according to its own tracking. After three years, scores on math tests rise as if students had four years of schooling, according to an independent study.

Related: Madison Mayor Paul Soglin: “We are not interested in the development of new charter schools”
.
A majority of the Madison School Board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school.
Minneapolis teacher’s union approved to authorize charter schools
.

Benjamin Scafidi:

America’s K-12 public education system has experienced tremendous historical growth in employment, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Between fiscal year (FY) 1950 and FY 2009, the number of K-12 public school students in the United States increased by 96 percent, while the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school employees grew 386 percent. Public schools grew staffing at a rate four times faster than the increase in students over that time period. Of those personnel, teachers’ numbers increased 252 percent, while administrators and other non-teaching staff experienced growth of 702 percent, more than seven times the increase in students.
That hiring pattern has persisted in more recent years as well. Between FY 1992 and FY 2009, the number of K-12 public school students nationwide grew 17 percent, while the number of FTE school employees increased 39 percent. Among school personnel, teachers’ staffing numbers rose 32 percent, while administrators and other non-teaching staff experienced growth of 46 percent, 2.3 times greater than the increase in students over that 18-year period; the growth in the number of teachers was almost twice that of students.
The two aforementioned figures come from “The School Staffing Surge: Decades of Employment Growth in America’s Public Schools.” This companion report contains more state-specific information about public school staffing. Specifically, this report contains:

Related: Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club

Matthew DeFour:

The state’s top education official warned the Legislature’s budget committee Thursday that Gov. Scott Walker’s proposal to tie funding and voucher expansion to new state report cards could undermine bipartisan reform efforts already underway.
State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers said the new report cards “aren’t ready for prime time” and will look “a lot different eight years from now.”
Evers agreed with Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, a member of the Joint Finance Committee and chairman of the Senate Education Committee, that the report cards should be used “as a flashlight and not a hammer.”

“If we use them as a hammer it’s going to make all the other transformative efforts we’re doing more difficult,” Evers said, referring to new curriculum, testing and teacher evaluation systems that were developed by a bipartisan coalition of teachers, administrators, school boards and political leaders in recent years.
“Teachers will back off,” he said.

2008: “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”. Parents, students and taxpayers might wonder what precisely the DPI has been doing since 2008? The WKCE has been long criticized for its lack of rigor.
Related: Matthew DeFour’s tweets from Mr. Evers recent budget appearance.

Matthew DeFour’s tweets tell the unsurprising story (Wisconsin Schools Superintendent Tony Evers is testifying before the State’s “Joint Finance Committee”):

Evers: If we use it as a hammer it’s going to make all the other transformative efforts we’re doing more difficult. Teachers will back off.

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Olsen: What you’re saying is report card needs to be used as a flashlight and not a hammer. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Klemke: Efficiency is good, but what we need is transformation. Evers: I agree. That’s what report cards, new tests and teacher evals are.

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Evers: Increases over last decade are close to cost of living. Efficiency measures have been put in place. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Klemke: What are you going to do to bend cost curve? You need to help me believe why your cost model isn’t high. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

LeMahieu: “We don’t think doing same old-same old for another decade is going to make it. We’re looking for something different.”

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

LeMahieu: Test scores stable and achievement gap growing over past decade, while spending grows from $9,000 to $13,000 per student #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Shilling: Rural schools that don’t receive report card scores because of size worried they won’t be eligible for incentive grants. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

GOP Rep. Dean Knudson says “key issue” facing budget comm., Legislature is whether to allow public school spending to increase

— Scott Bauer (@sbauerAP) March 21, 2013

Knudson: Won’t districts be able to avoid cuts with referenda? Evers: if we’re going to rely on referenda, the disequity will be tremendous.

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Evers on incentive grants: We should be focused on best practices and not more money for wealthy school districts. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Evers on report cards: this last year was a pilot year. It’s just not ready for prime time. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Strachota on incentive grants: We’re putting money into schools in a different way. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Evers: report cards were never meant to make high-stakes decisions, they’re deficient in high school, but they will get better. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Evers: Budget could mean new curriculum, testing, teacher evaluations in public schools “won’t happen or won’t happen well.” #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Mason: GOP keeps defunding public education and then gives us this red herring of vouchers. A generation later, Milwaukee still struggles.

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Mason: GOP keeps defunding public education and then gives us this red herring of vouchers. A generation later, Milwaukee still struggles.

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Nygren: Voucher grad rate may be no better, but spending is less. Evers: I understand it’s cheaper, but that shouldn’t be our goal.

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Nygren: to say we’re continuing to defund education simply isn’t accurate. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Darling: Why do we spend more than states that are ranked higher in Ed Week? Evers: that ranking rewards states with less local control.

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Evers: The budget as proposed creates too many winners and losers. It pits public school kids against charter and voucher kids. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Evers: $130M in GPR for roads, $64M for school incentives and $73M for vouchers should go toward increasing school aids. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Joint Finance has begun to hear testimony from State Sup. Tony Evers. #wibudget

— Matthew DeFour (@WSJExtraCredit) March 21, 2013

Related:


Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.
Madison’s per student spending is $14,547 for the 2012-2013 school year (the number ignores differences in pre-k per student costs – lower, vs “full time” students).
Watch the committee hearing.

Tony Evers WISTAX 2013 Election Interview Word Cloud:


Don Pridemore WISTAX 2013 Election Interview Word Cloud:


Links: A recent Wisconsin State Journal Evers endorsement.
wuwm.com

Three weeks from today, Wisconsin voters will decide who will oversee K-12 public education for the next four years. Incumbent state Superintendent Tony Evers faces a challenge from Republican state Rep. Don Pridemore.
Evers says he’s proud of his accomplishments over the past four years. He highlights the implementation of Common Core Standards. The national initiative sets benchmarks for students to meet in English, Language Arts and Math, to make sure they’re prepared for the workforce.
“We’re developing new assessment systems and accountability systems. We have a new reading screener we’ve implemented at kindergarten that’s been very good as far as providing information for classroom teachers to intervene early,” Evers says.
Evers says his biggest challenge has been competing with choice or voucher schools for state funding. Students in Milwaukee and Racine can attend private schools – taking with them, the tax money that would have gone to the public system. Evers opposes Gov. Walker’s plan to expand the voucher program to nine more school districts and increase funding for participating students.
“There’s a zero dollar increase for our public schools per pupil and then on the voucher side there’s a $1,400 per student increase for $73 million. To me that’s a concept that isn’t connected in any good way for our public schools,” Evers says.
Evers opponent, Republican Rep. Don Pridemore of Hartford supports the expansion of choice. He says there would not to be need for it, if public schools better prepared students. Pridemore says if he’s elected, he’ll work to expand the program statewide.

Steven Verburg:

The minimum retirement age for public employees would increase by two years under a bill proposed by a state lawmaker who said the change would reflect increasing life spans and later retirement ages in general while possibly strengthening the pension system.
Democrats and a prominent retiree group were skeptical, and the state Department of Employee Trust Funds said a thorough actuarial study was needed to make sure the change wouldn’t cause unintended problems.
Most municipal workers, state employees and teachers in the Wisconsin Retirement System must work until they are 65 years old to collect full benefits, but they can retire at age 55 with reduced pensions.
Under a bill circulated by Rep. Duey Stroebel, R-Saukville, the minimum age would rise to 57. For police and firefighters, it would increase two years to 52.
“(Current laws) have been in place for many years and have not changed to reflect increased longevity, normal life work span or the changing demographics of our state,” Stroebel said Friday in an email sent to state legislators in an effort to find co-sponsors.
Stroebel’s bill would affect only people who are under 40, so nobody would be affected for more than a decade.

Jennifer Levitz:

Massachusetts lawmakers are considering eliminating a cap on the number of charter schools that can operate in the lowest-performing school districts, including here in the capital city.
While other states also have weighed lifting caps, charter advocates point to left-leaning Massachusetts as a somewhat unlikely model for the movement. “This demonstrates that charter schools are a viable reform,” said Nina Rees, president of the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, a nonprofit aimed at advancing the movement. “If it can happen in Massachusetts, it can happen anywhere.”
Charter schools receive public funding but, unlike public schools, employ mostly nonunion teachers and have autonomy in school districts, which allows them to set their own conditions, such as longer school days. They have long been embraced by Republicans for introducing choice in education, but have been assailed by some teacher unions and others as hurting traditional public schools.

Madison appears to be going in the opposite direction.
Related: Madison Mayor Paul Soglin: We are not interested in the development of new charter schools”

Monday 3/11/13!#31113RECOMMIT with @mtimadison and @werwisconsin ! Keep fighting, never give up! Details: bit.ly/15AxzdJ

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) March 7, 2013

Pat Schneider:

It’s a painful irony for Ananda Mirilli that the School Board run she tried to use to call the community to come together to do better for Madison kids ended up embroiled in such controversy.
“I’m seeing an even bigger divide in the community, and I’m sad that we are in that place,” Mirilli told me Wednesday. “But I’m hoping to continue to work to find healing in our community. We really need to have a conversation about the achievement gap.”
Mirilli, a Latina who lost her bid for Seat 5 on the Madison School Board in the Feb. 18 primary, decided against a write-in campaign when primary winner Sarah Manski dropped out of the race just two days later. But Mirilli hasn’t given up hope that the election — despite Manski’s surprise withdrawal and the allegations of dirty politics and hypocrisy it incited — can yet be made an occasion to bring together people now sometimes working at odds to improve education in Madison schools.
And as the Restorative Justice Program manager at YWCA Madison, Mirilli is wondering if restorative justice principles might be the way to do it.
“I’m wondering if we could hold a circle — not to find out the truth, but to see how we can move forward on this,” Mirilli told me.
Mirilli says she was wrongly depicted by Manski as pro-voucher because of a supposed association with Kaleem Caire of the Urban League of Greater Madison. Caire on Wednesday resurrected allegations of double-dealing by leaders of Madison Teachers Inc. in negotiating his Madison Preparatory Academy charter proposal that was rejected by the School Board two years ago.

Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board elections, here.
I appreciate Schneider’s ability to add links to her articles. This continues to be a rare event in Madison’s traditional media circles.

“Vouchers, private charter schools, special education vouchers will fragment our community and weaken MMSD,” says GRUMPS. Thank You!

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) March 6, 2013

Much more on GRUMPS, here.

Save our Public Schools – #GRUMPS Press Conference against vouchers with a focus on Madison. 3/5 – 10:30 AMDetails bit.ly/13qKwIA

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) February 28, 2013

SAVING MADISON PUBLIC SCHOOLS
GRUMPS (GRandparents United for Madison Public Schools) will be joined by leaders from the business and non-profit sectors to speak out in support of the Madison Metropolitan School District and against legislative efforts that may weaken our schools. Vouchers, private charter schools, special education vouchers will fragment our community and weaken MMSD, a strong public school district whose doors are open to all students.
Date: Tuesday, March 5
Time: 10:30 am
Location: Madison Senior Center, 330 W. Mifflin St.
Speakers:
GRUMPS: Nan Brien, Carol Carstensen
Businesspersons: Betty Custer, Founder and Managing Partner at Custer Financial Services,
Robert Gibson, Chairman and President, Composite Rebar Technologies, Inc.
Non-profit leaders: Michael Johnson, CEO, Boys & Girls Club of Dane County; Sal Carranza, Latino Education Council of Dane County; Eileen Mershart, Retired CEO, YWCA Madison
LWV: Andrea Kaminski, Executive Director, League of Women Voters, Wisconsin
Much more on the 2013 Madison School Board elections, here.

The Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind reader’s email:

The bad news: A Harvard Study using data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) finds that Wisconsin ranks 38th out of 41 states in progress in reading and math between 1992 and 2011. Both low and high performing states from 1992 have outperformed us, and they tend to be states where serious reforms were made in instructional content and pedagogy. The top 10 show up on many lists of states with improved reading instruction: Maryland, Florida, Delaware, Massachusetts, Louisiana, South Carolina, New Jersey, Kentucky, Arkansas, and Virginia. Some of these states served as models for our recent Wisconsin legislation on early reading screening and a new reading exam for teacher licensure. A logical next step is to look at what they are doing for professional development for their in-service teachers of reading. Which leads to . . .
The good news: A committed group of 38 teachers and tutors will spend 12 Saturdays in 2013 being trained in LETRS (Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling). LETRS is a comprehensive professional development program created by Louisa Moats, the primary author of the foundational reading standards of the Common Core State Standards. LETRS is quite common elsewhere in the country: in some states it is the official state-funded development tool for teachers of reading, and in some cases it is required for certain teaching licenses. Despite its popularity and proven value, it has not been available in Wisconsin. The current opportunity is being sponsored by the Milwaukee Summer Reading Project, an initiative of Howard Fuller’s Institute for the Transformation of Learning at Marquette University. UW-Milwaukee School of Continuing Education is hosting at their conference facilities in downtown Milwaukee. The training is being presented by Alicia Sparks through the Rowland Reading Foundation, which is a LETRS affiliate site. Participants include teachers from public and charter schools in Milwaukee and Wausau, as well as tutors from a variety of literacy programs for children and adults in Milwaukee and Madison. This training is at capacity, but other communities interested in sponsoring LETRS training can contact the Rowland Reading Foundation in Middleton.

Thank you MMSD BOE ,”unanimously opposed to the Governor’s proposed expansion of Private School Voucher Programs.” Public=public.

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) February 24, 2013

Madison School Board.

Chris Rickert:

There’s also the obvious point: If seniority and degree attainment make for better teachers, why are seniority protections and automatic raises for degree attainment necessary in a collective bargaining agreement or an employee handbook?
One would think good teachers should have secure employment, dibs on choice positions and regular raises by virtue of being, well, good teachers.
I’m not drawing attention to the ridiculousness of seniority and degree-attainment perks because I think Walker’s decision to effectively end public-sector collective bargaining was a good one.
But support for these common contract provisions is one way to measure school board candidates.
There’s a difference, after all, between being pro-union and union-owned.

Focus needed on long-term educational goals by Dave Baskerville:

There is now much excitement around Madison and the state with the selection of a new Madison School District superintendent, the upcoming election of new School Board members, the expected re-election of State Superintendent Tony Evers, the rollout of new Common Core state standards, and now a vigorous debate, thanks to our governor, over the expansion of school vouchers.
The only problem is that for those of us who pay attention to classroom results and want to see our students really move out of second-class global standings, there is no mention of long-term “stretch goals” that could really start getting all of our kids — black and white, poor and middle class — reading like the Canadians, counting like the Singaporeans or Finns, and doing science like the Japanese — in other words, to close the gaps that count long-term.
Let’s focus on two stretch goals: Wisconsin’s per capita income will be 10 percent above Minnesota’s by 2030, and our eighth grade math, science and reading scores will be in the top 10 globally by 2030.
This would take not only vision, but some serious experimentation and radical changes for all of us. Can we do it? Of course, but not with just “feel good” improvement and endless debate over means to that end, and without clear global benchmarks, score cards, and political will.

www.wisconsin2.org
The New Madison Superintendent Needs to “Make Things Happen”, a Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

Barely half of the district’s black students are graduating from high school in four years. That’s a startling statistic. Yet it hasn’t produced a dramatic change in strategy.
Ms. Cheatham, it’s your job to make things happen.
Your top priority must be to boost the performance of struggling students, which requires innovation, not just money. At the same time, Madison needs to keep its many higher-achieving students engaged and thriving. The district has lost too many families to the suburbs, despite a talented staff, diverse offerings and significant resources.
Being Madison’s superintendent of schools will require more than smarts. You’ll need backbone to challenge the status quo. You’ll need political savvy to build support for action.
Your experience leading reform efforts in urban school districts is welcome. And as chief of instruction for Chicago Public Schools, you showed a willingness to put the interests of students ahead of the grown-ups, including a powerful teachers union.
We appreciate your support for giving parents more options, including public charter schools and magnets. You seem to understand well the value of strong teacher and student assessments, using data to track progress, as well as staff development.
The traditional classroom model of a teacher lecturing in front of students is changing, and technology can help provide more individualized attention and instruction. The long summer break — and slide in learning — needs to go.

Madison School Board Election Intrigue (Public!)

he top vote-getter in Tuesday’s Madison School Board primary said Friday she ran for the seat knowing she might not be able to serve out her term because her husband was applying for graduate school in other states.
Sarah Manski, who dropped out of the race Thursday, said she mentioned those concerns to School Board member Marj Passman, who Manski said encouraged her to run. Passman told her it wouldn’t be a problem if she had to resign her seat because the board would “appoint somebody good,” Manski said.
Passman vigorously denied encouraging Manski to run or ever knowing about her husband’s graduate school applications. After learning about Manski’s statement from the State Journal, Passman sent an email to other School Board members saying “I had no such conversation with her.”
“It’s sad to believe that this kind of a person came close to being elected to one of the most important offices in our city,” Passman wrote in the email, which she also forwarded to the State Journal.
Manski said in response “it’s possible (Passman) didn’t remember or it’s possible it’s politically inconvenient for her to remember.”

And so it continues, part 1.

Chris Rickert:

Shortly after Madison schools superintendent Dan Nerad resigned last year, School Board member Ed Hughes told me that when it comes to the Madison School District, “People want improvement, but they don’t want change.”
I thought about Hughes’ words last weekend after the school district announced it had hired Chicago Public Schools chief of instruction Jennifer Cheatham as Nerad’s replacement.
Cheatham is seen as the best bet for improvement — specifically to the long history of low-income and minority student under-achievement.
The question now is: Will people tolerate her changes?
Hughes told me Sunday he was “optimistic” they would. “I think she will earn teachers’ trust and inspire them to do their best work,” he said. “If she succeeds at that, everything else will fall into place.”
I hope he’s right, but I don’t yet share his optimism.
Back in 2011, it was the district’s long-standing inability to do anything bold about the achievement gap that left it vulnerable to the Urban League of Greater Madison’s bid to open its own charter school for minority and low-income students.
Madison Preparatory Academy brought the issue of the achievement gap to the fore. But the school’s rejection — largely due to opposition from the teachers union — left notoriously progressive Madison doing some uncomfortable soul-searching.

Related: And so it continues…..

Congrats to new #MMSD Supt. Jennifer Cheatham.If she respects district employees (MTI), we can succeed.We teach the children.

— Madison Teachers Inc (@MtiMadison) February 9, 2013

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

Leadership comes in different shapes and sizes. After spending time with 41-year-old Jen Cheatham and attending the community forum on Thursday, I kept thinking back to the winter day 23 years ago when 43-year-old Barry Alvarez was introduced to the Madison community and made his memorable statement about how fans interested in season tickets better get them now because they’d soon be hard to get.
Like Cheatham, Alvarez was an outsider, a rising star in a major program who was ready to take the reins of his own program and run with it. That certainly did not guarantee success, but he proved to have that rare and ineluctable something that inspired his players to raise their game, that drove them to succeed as a team because they couldn’t bear to let their coach or teammates down.
As with Barry, so with Jen. For those of us who have been able to spend time with Jen Cheatham and talk to her about her vision for our Madison schools, it is clear that whatever leadership is, she has it. What we heard time and again from those she’s worked with is that Jen is able to inspire principals and teachers to do their best possible work for the students they serve. But also like Alvarez, she’s doesn’t shy away from tough decisions when they’re necessary.

Related: Madison’s third grade reading results:

“The other useful stat buried in the materials is on the second page 3 (= 6th page), showing that the 3rd grade proficiency rate for black students on WKCE, converted to NAEP-scale proficiency, is 6.8%, with the accountability plan targeting this percentage to increase to 23% over one school year. Not sure how this happens when the proficiency rate (by any measure) has been decreasing year over year for quite some time. Because the new DPI school report cards don’t present data on an aggregated basis district-wide nor disaggregated by income and ethnicity by grade level, the stats in the MMSD report are very useful, if one reads the fine print.”

Madison School Board Needs to Address Search Fiasco:

That being the case, Cheatham would come to this position in a difficult circumstance. As Kaleem Caire, the president of the Urban League of Greater Madison, told the State Journal: “The perception of people in this community when we have one pick, they will always question the value of this woman. That’s not fair to her and not fair to our kids.”
The School Board has presided over a fiasco that board member Ed Hughes admits — in a major understatement — “has not gone as smoothly as we’d like.”
Now the board needs to get its act together.
If would be good if the board were to seek the return of the more than $30,000 in taxpayer money that was allocated for what can only charitably be referred to as a “search.” However, we don’t want the board to squander more tax money on extended legal wrangling.
The board should make it clear that it will not have further dealings with this search firm, as the firm’s vetting of applicants does not meet the basic standards that a responsible board should expect.
Perhaps most importantly, the board should engage in a serious rethink of its approach to searches for top administrators. The Madison Metropolitan School District is a great urban school district. It has challenges, especially with regard to achievement gaps and the overuse of standardized testing, that must be addressed.

Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman – August, 2009

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).
Zimman noted that the most recent State of Wisconsin Budget removed the requirement that arbitrators take into consideration revenue limits (a district’s financial condition @17:30) when considering a District’s ability to afford union negotiated compensation packages. The budget also added the amount of teacher preparation time to the list of items that must be negotiated….. “we need to breakthrough the concept that public schools are an expense, not an investment” and at the same time, we must stop looking at schools as a place for adults to work and start treating schools as a place for children to learn.”

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email:

February 6, 2013
Dear Friends & Colleagues.
As the Board of Education deliberates on who the next Superintendent of the Madison Metropolitan School District will be, and as school districts in our state and across the nation wrestle with what to do to eliminate the racial achievement gap in education, while at the same time establishing world class schools that help prepare all children to learn, succeed and thrive in the 21st century, it’s important that we not lose sight of what the research continues to tell us really makes the difference in a child’s education.
More than 40 years of research on effective schools and transformational education have informed us that the key drivers for eliminating the racial achievement gap in schools and ensuring all students graduate from high school prepared for college and life continue to be:

• An Effective Teacher in Every Classroom – We must ensure every classroom is led by an effective teacher who is committed to and passionate about teaching young people, inspires all children to want to learn, has an appropriate depth of knowledge of the content they are teaching, is comfortable teaching and empowering diverse students, and coaches all of their students to high performance and expectations. Through its Race to the Top Initiative, the Obama Administration also defined an effective teacher as someone who can improve a students’ achievement by 1.0 grade levels in one school year while a highly effective teacher is someone who can improve student achievement by 1.5 grade levels annually. Schools with large numbers of students who are academically behind, therefore, should have the most effective teachers teaching them to ensure they catch up.
• High Quality, Effective Schools with Effective Leaders and Practices – Schools that are considered high quality have a combination of effective leaders, effective teachers, a rigorous curriculum, utilize data-driven instruction, frequently assess student growth and learning, offer a supportive and inspiring school culture, maintain effective governing boards and enjoy support from the broader community in which they reside. They operate with a clear vision, mission, core values and measurable goals and objectives that are monitored frequently and embraced by all in the school community. They also have principals and educators who maintain positive relationships with parents and each other and effectively catalyze and deploy resources (people, money, partnerships) to support student learning and teacher success. Schools that serve high poverty students also are most effective when they provide additional instructional support that’s aligned with what students are learning in the classroom each day, and engage their students and families in extended learning opportunities that facilitate a stronger connection to school, enable children to explore careers and other interests, and provide greater context for what students are learning in the classroom.
• Adequately Employed and Engaged Parents – The impact of parents’ socio-economic status on a child’s educational outcomes, and their emotional and social development, has been well documented by education researchers and educational psychologists since the 1960s. However, the very best way to address the issue of poverty among students in schools is to ensure that the parents of children attending a school are employed and earning wages that allow them to provide for the basic needs of their children. The most effective plans to address the persistent underachievement of low-income students, therefore, must include strategies that lead to quality job training, high school completion and higher education, and employment among parents. Parents who are employed and can provide food and shelter for their children are much more likely to be engaged in their children’s education than those who are not. Besides being employed, parents who emphasize and model the importance of learning, provide a safe, nurturing, structured and orderly living environment at home, demonstrate healthy behaviors and habits in their interactions with their children and others, expose their children to extended learning opportunities, and hold their children accountable to high standards of character and conduct generally rear children who do well in school. Presently, 74% of Black women and 72% of white women residing in Dane County are in the labor force; however, black women are much more likely to be unemployed and looking for work, unmarried and raising children by themselves, or working in low wage jobs even if they have a higher education.
• Positive Peer Relationships and Affiliations – A child’s peer group can have an extraordinarily positive, or negative, affect on their persistence and success in school. Students who spend time with other students who believe that learning and attending school is important, and who inspire and support each other, generally spend more time focused on learning in class, more time studying outside of class, and tend to place a higher value on school and learning overall. To the contrary, children who spend a lot of time with peer groups that devalue learning, or engage in bullying, are generally at a greater risk of under-performing themselves. Creating opportunities and space for positive peer relationships to form and persist within and outside of school can lead to significantly positive outcomes for student achievement.
• Community Support and Engagement – Children who are reared in safe and resourceful communities that celebrate their achievements, encourage them to excel, inform them that they are valued, hold them accountable to a high standard of character and integrity, provide them with a multitude of positive learning experiences, and work together to help them succeed rarely fail to graduate high school and are more likely to pursue higher education, regardless of their parents educational background. “It Takes A Whole Village to Raise a Child” is as true of a statement now as it was when the African proverb was written in ancient times. Unfortunately, as children encounter greater economic and social hardships, such as homelessness, joblessness, long-term poverty, poor health, poor parenting and safety concerns, the village must be stronger, more uplifting and more determined than ever to ensure these children have the opportunity to learn and remain hopeful. It is often hopelessness that brings us down, and others along with us.

If we place all of our eggs in just one of the five baskets rather than develop strategies that bring together all five areas that affect student outcomes, our efforts to improve student performance and provide quality schools where all children succeed will likely come up short. This is why the Urban League of Greater Madison is working with its partners to extend the learning time “in school” for middle schoolers who are most at-risk of failing when they reach high school, and why we’ll be engaging their parents in the process. It’s also why we’ve worked with the United Way and other partners to strengthen the Schools of Hope tutoring initiative for the 1,600 students it serves, and why we are working with local school districts to help them recruit effective, diverse educators and ensure the parents of the children they serve are employed and have access to education and job training services. Still, there is so much more to be done.
As a community, I strongly believe we can achieve the educational goals we set for our chlidren if we focus on the right work, invest in innovation, take a “no excuses” approach to setting policy and getting the work done, and hire a high potential, world-class Superintendent who can take us there.
God bless our children, families, schools and capital region.
Onward!
Kaleem Caire
President & CEO
Urban League of Greater Madison
Phone: 608-729-1200
Assistant: 608-729-1249
Fax: 608-729-1205
www.ulgm.org

Related: Kaleem Caire interview, notes and links along with the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter school (rejected by a majority of the Madison School Board).

The Wheeler Report, via a Matthew DeFour Tweet:

Today, the Department of Administration (DOA) issued a Notice of Intent to Award letter for the Statewide Student Information System (SSIS) project. DOA issued the letter to Infinite Campus, Inc., which was the highest scoring proposer in the SSIS competitive Request for Proposal process. The state will now move into contract negotiations with Infinite Campus for the company to establish and maintain DPI’s student information system for more than 440 school districts and non-district public charter schools in Wisconsin.
Cari Anne Renlund of the DeWitt, Ross & Stevens Law Firm conducted an extensive observation of the procurement, evaluation and selection process of the SSIS. Her report concluded:
1) The SSIS procurement, evaluation and selection process was open, fair, impartial and objective, and consistent with the RFP criteria;
2) The State and the Evaluation Team carefully followed the statutory and regulatory requirements applicable to the procurement process;
3) All proposing vendors were afforded an equal opportunity to compete for the contract award; and
4) The procurement, evaluation and selection process satisfied the goals and objectives of Wisconsin’s public contracting requirements.
Further, Renlund stated the Request for Proposal (RFP) “was drafted to identify the best possible vendor for the job at the best possible price.”

many notes and links on Madison’s challenges with Infinite Campus.
A few additional notes:
1. Wisconsin firm may challenge loss of statewide school data pact

A Stevens Point company providing school software to about half of Wisconsin’s districts has lost a bid to become the supplier of a new statewide student-information system, and now it’s moving to challenge the state’s decision to go with a different vendor.
The Wisconsin Department of Administration announced Friday that it intends to negotiate a contract with Minnesota’s Infinite Campus Inc. to create a centralized K-12 student data system. In response, Stevens Point-based Skyward Inc. called the evaluation process “flawed,” while some elected officials over the weekend urged the state to reconsider its decision.
The evaluation and selection process was already under heightened scrutiny after being paused and restarted in June, after it was discovered that Skyward had been offered tax breaks contingent on it winning the statewide contract.
Based in Blaine, Minn., Infinite Campus provides student data systems to about 10% of Wisconsin’s districts, including Milwaukee-area districts such as Greenfield, Whitnall, Elmbrook and New Berlin.
Financial details of the emerging contract have not been made public, but $15 million was initially appropriated to launch the project. The overall cost to implement and maintain the system will likely be millions more than that.
The blanket K-12 student-information system for Wisconsin is important because it would allow the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction to better track student and teacher information in and between districts and schools.
Currently, each district and independent public charter school chooses its own system to track and manage student data. The robustness of these systems can vary from place to place, and none are obligated to “talk” to each other.
For the DPI, the goal is to raise the level of student performance by collecting and then synthesizing common data from all schools on everything from enrollment and student absences to discipline records and test-score results.
A common system also could assign teachers a unique identifier, allowing for richer data about their records of performance.

2. Many school districts have successfully implemented complete student systems where parents can follow a course syllabus, all assignments, attendance, notes and grades. Madison has spent millions of dollars for a system that is at best partially implemented. What a waste.
3. Kurt Kiefer was instrumental in Madison’s acquisition of Infinite Campus. Kurt is now with the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction. I like Kurt and was privileged to serve on a parent committee that evaluated student information systems. That said, I felt strongly then that no money should be spent on such systems if their use is not mandatory throughout the organization.
I wonder what sort of implementation strategies are part of this acquisition?

Motoko Rich:

In a report issued Monday, StudentsFirst ranks states based on how closely they follow the group’s platform, looking at policies related not only to tenure and evaluations but also to pensions and the governance of school districts. The group uses the classic academic grading system, awarding states A to F ratings.
With no states receiving an A, two states receiving B-minuses and 12 states branded with an F, StudentsFirst would seem to be building a reputation as a harsh grader.
Ms. Rhee said that the relatively weak showing reflected how recently statehouses had begun to address issues like tenure and performance evaluations. “We didn’t say in any way that we want to show people how bad it is,” she said in a telephone interview. “We wanted to show the progress that is being made, but in places where progress is slower to come, be very clear with leaders of that state what they could do to push the agenda forward and create a better environment in which educators, parents and kids can operate.”

Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Esther Cepeda

It’s “Too Many Tamales” season in selected classrooms. A contemporary classic by Gary Soto, it tells the story of Maria, a girl who loses her mother’s diamond ring as she and her family prepare tamales for their big holiday feast.
I discovered it with my class of first-graders when I taught English-language learners. Unfortunately, only my class experienced “Too Many Tamales.” As the holidays approached, the rest of the school read more “traditional” holiday books. Those students lost out.
My students would have missed out on themes the rest of their grade was involved in had I not insisted that the bilingual students be included in the general curriculum. The “mainstream” teachers thought this was bizarre, as if Hispanic students couldn’t possibly be expected to learn about the same topics as the other first-graders without a mountain of “culturally correct” learning materials.

Joe Rodriguez:

In a recent opinion piece, James L. Huffman requests Oregonians to ask “why those who run our public schools have seen fit to increase their own ranks at three times the rate of growth in student enrollment while allowing for a small decline in the number of teachers relative to students” (“Oregon’s schools: Are we putting money into staff at students’ expense?” Commentary, Nov. 17).
He references a report by the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice that uses data from the National Center for Education Statistics to document that K-12 personnel growth has outstripped K-12 student enrollment growth. The data are completely accurate, but the conclusions Huffman and the report reach are erroneous.
Huffman writes that some might be suspicious of the foundation as the source of the data. In reading the report’s conclusion (pages 19-22), such suspicion is justified.

Related: The School Staffing Surge: Decades of Employment Growth in America’s Public Schools:

America’s K-12 public education system has experienced tremendous historical growth in employment, according to the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center for Education Statistics. Between fiscal year (FY) 1950 and FY 2009, the number of K-12 public school students in the United States increased by 96 percent while the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) school employees grew 386 percent. Public schools grew staffing at a rate four times faster than the increase in students over that time period. Of those personnel, teachers’ numbers increased 252 percent while administrators and other staff experienced growth of 702 percent, more than seven times the increase in students.
In a recent Heritage Foundation Backgrounder, Lindsey Burke (2012) reports that since 1970, the number of students in American public schools increased by 8 percent while the number of teachers increased 60 percent and the number of non-teaching personnel increased 138 percent.
That hiring pattern has persisted in more recent years as well. This report analyzes the rise in public school personnel relative to the increase in students since FY 1992. Analyses are provided for the nation as a whole and for each state.
Between FY 1992 and FY 2009, the number of K-12 public school students nationwide grew 17 percent while the number of full-time equivalent school employees increased 39 percent, 2.3 times greater than the increase in students over that 18-year period. Among school personnel, teachers’ staffing numbers rose 32 percent while administrators and other staff experienced growth of 46 percent; the growth in the number of administrators and other staff was 2.7 times that of students.

1.2MBPDF report and,

Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Joy Pullman:

Milwaukee Public Schools plans to expand districtwide a pilot program in which schools ditch traditional letter grades. Instead of A, B, C, D and F, teachers will compare students to a list of things the state expects students to know on core subjects in each grade and mark their skills advanced, proficient, basic or minimal. It’s called a “standards-based report card.”
The idea has some merits and several significant flaws.
Parents and students benefit from objective, specific standards for academic performance. If a father knows Julia must learn to define a story’s theme in second grade, he can ask her to do so when they read together. Grading metrics can also help counter grade inflation, where teachers give students high marks they have not earned. A 2005 ACT study found high school grades inflated 12.5% between 1991 and 2003.

The Madison School District implemented the ill-advised middle school “standards – based report cards” several years ago. Unfortunately, this initiative was incompatible with the multi-million dollar “Infinite Campus” system.

Karen Vieth:

In 2010, an anti-public education documentary made its debut. Waiting for Superman features Geoffrey Canada, a controversial education “reformer” who promotes anti-union sentiment and charter schools as a solution to the struggles that face our public education system. The documentary largely appeals to the heart, as it uses weak data and a faulty premise. For this reason, another documentary made its debut in 2011. The Inconvenient Truth Behind Waiting for Superman features the New York City teachers and counters the position taken in Waiting for Superman. With this documentary shedding light on the true nature of charter schools and faux reformers like Geoffrey Canada, I would hope this matter is settled, at least for those of us who rely on real data and results to drive decisions.
Why then is the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD) listed as both a sponsor and partner of an upcoming event featuring the “legendary” Geoffrey Canada? Geoffrey Canada is the creator of the Harlem Children’s Zone. The two Charter Schools included in this zone are called “Promise Academy I” and “Promise Academy II.” Students win a spot in the schools based on a lottery. Canada believes that money is the answer for these children. The Harlem Children’s Zone invests $16,000 per student per year for expenses in the classroom, and thousands more per student for expenses outside the classroom. These expenses include student incentives, such as a trip to Disney World or the Galapagos Islands.

National Council on Teacher Quality, via a kind email:

Yesterday, a court in Minnesota delivered a summary judgment ordering the Minnesota State Colleges and University system to deliver the documents for which we asked in our open records (“sunshine”) request for our Teacher Prep Review.
At the heart of our Teacher Prep Review is a simple idea: the more information that aspiring teachers, district and school leaders, teacher educators and the public at large have about the programs producing classroom-ready teachers, the better all teacher training programs will be.
In our effort to produce the first comprehensive review of U.S. teacher prep, we’ve faced a number of challenges — perhaps the most serious of which has been the argument made by some universities that federal copyright law makes it illegal for public institutions publicly approved to prepare public school teachers to make public documents that describe the training they provide.
We want to make sure that everyone understands what this ruling does and does not mean. The Minnesota State colleges and universities system agreed with us that the syllabi we seek are indeed public record documents. Their case came down to the claim that because the course syllabi are also the intellectual property of professors, they should not have to deliver copies of their syllabi to us.
Minnesota’s open records law, the court ruled, is clear: public institutions must make documents accessible to individuals seeking them — which includes delivering copies to them. Delivering copies of these documents to us in no way, shape or form deprives the professors who created them of their intellectual property rights. NCTQ is conducting a research study, which means that our use of these syllabi falls under the fair use provision of the copyright law. This is the exactly the same provision that enables all researchers, including teacher educators, to make copies of key documents they need to analyze to make advances in our collective knowledge.

Related:

• NCTQ Sues UW Ed Schools over Access to Course Syllabi
• Georgia, Wisconsin Education Schools Back Out of NCTQ Review
• When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?

Why should parents, citizens, taxpayers and students pay attention to this type of “rulemaking” case?
WKCE (Wisconsin’s oft-criticized soft academic standards – soon to be replaced) and MTEL-90 (Wisconsin adopts Massachusetts’ teacher content knowledge requirements).
I found Ed Treleven’s article interesting, particularly the special interests funding the rule making legal challenge. I am a big fan of our three part government system: judicial, legislative and executive. That said, the Wisconsin DPI has not exactly distinguished itself over the past decade. The WKCE “tyranny of low expectations” is exhibit one for this writer.
Ed Treleven

Even before the change in the law, rules ultimately have to be approved by the Legislature.
Democrats had labeled the law a power grab by Walker when it was proposed after Walker was elected and before he took office. He signed it into law in May 2011.
The ruling came in a lawsuit brought by Madison Teachers Inc., the Wisconsin Education Association Council and others. Defendants were Walker, DOA Secretary Mike Huebsch and schools superintendent Tony Evers. Smith’s decision, however, notes that Evers also asked the court to block the law. Evers issued a statement Tuesday saying he was pleased with Smith’s ruling.
Lester Pines, who represented the teachers groups in court, said the law as applied to DPI ran counter to a unanimous state Supreme Court decision in 1996 that said the Legislature cannot give equal or superior authority to any “other officer.”

Finally, it appears that current DPI Superintendent Tony Evers is ready to roll for the spring, 2013 election. I have noticed a number of DPI related inquiries on this site. Perhaps this will be a competitive race!
UPDATE: Gilman Halsted:

The Madison teachers union was one was one of seven plaintiffs that challenged this provision of ACT 21. Union President John Matthews says he’s pleased with the ruling.
“It’s simply because of the way the Constitution defines the role of the state superintendent,” he said. “The governor has equal authority not superior authority to the state superintendent and we think because of the enterprise if you will of public education that should not be a political issue. And Judge Smith saw it our way.”
But a spokesman for the governor’s office says he’s confident that Judge Smith’s ruling will be overturned on appeal and that the governor will retain his rule making veto power. Opponents of this new executive power see it as a power grab. And although this ruling appears to limit the governor’s power over rules that affect education it leaves his authority intact for administrative rules from any other state agency. State Superintendent Tony Evers released a statement hailing the ruling and pointing out that he had proposed language that would have carved out his exemption from the governor’s rule vetoes before the law was passed.

Dave Zweifel

According to the Department of Public Instruction, 272 of the state’s 424 public school districts will receive less aid for the 2012-2013 school year than they did last year. Although there was a slight increase in general school aid overall, public schools are receiving less because Gov. Scott Walker and the GOP Legislature not only trimmed a good billion dollars from public school spending, but expanded school choice vouchers and other goodies for private institutions at the expense of public schools.
All told, the state has taken away $900 from each of its public school students in the past five years, the bulk of which has come during Walker’s two years as governor. Much of that $900 decrease has been on the backs of public school teachers, who were stripped of their union representation and forced to pay more for their health insurance and pensions. In addition, some 2,300 teacher positions were eliminated in the 2011-2012 school year.

Related: Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding.

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes

The other major change to the CBA affects the hiring process for teachers. Currently, teachers have the opportunity to seek to transfer to vacant positions at other schools until four weeks prior to the start of the school year. Once the internal transfer process has been completed, principals can select applicants for teaching positions from outside the district. It is pretty obvious that the school district was placing itself at a competitive disadvantage in hiring if it could not tell a potential new hire where he or she would be teaching until a month before school starts.
According to the new procedure that is now set forth in the CBA, teachers who find themselves surplused will be placed in new positions by the school district by May 1 of each year. Then vacant positions will be posted for internal transfers. While a change was proposed in the district’s initial bargaining proposal, the final agreement retains the requirement that principals must select an internal transfer applicant if any applicants for a vacant position possess the minimum qualifications. The internal transfer process closes on June 15 and at that point principals can choose external candidates for any positions that remain unfilled. This change represents a big step toward a hiring process that maximizes our chances to hire the kind of skilled and diverse applicants we are looking for.
As I mention above, the new agreement does not address wages. At this point we don’t have sufficient information to make any sort of decision about raising salaries for the 2013-14 school year. Most importantly, we have no idea what the governor and new legislature will do about revenue limits for the next biennium and so we don’t know whether we will be able to increase our spending and by how much, or whether we will have to cut our per-pupil spending, as was the case for the first year of the current biennium.

Much more on the Madison School District’s rather unique action, here.

Emily Bazelon:

Why New Haven’s ambitious new education strategy might actually succeed.
As the recent Chicago teacher strike demonstrated, public school systems are phenomenally difficult institutions to change. The array of competing forces–unions, politicians, parents, principals, charter schools, state and national bureaucrats–gums up many reform efforts and frustrates all but the most persistent reformers. But what’s happening in the historically troubled New Haven, Conn., public school system suggests there may be ways around this, ways that all sides can support.
In 2009, New Haven’s school district and teachers’ union signed a groundbreaking contract for the 21,000-student system. The four-year deal included a small annual pay hike–and allowed the district to give merit bonuses, close failing schools, and evaluate teachers based in part on student performance. The contract’s reform-minded provisions brought praise to a struggling urban district, from admirers including Obama’s Secretary of Education Arne Duncan, American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, and New York Times columnists David Brooks and Nicholas Kristof. Three years later, there are signs that cultural change is coming, too, in fits and starts. It’s especially evident in the district’s unusual effort to groom future leaders by handing them over to a local charter network that it used to view as an upstart threat.

New Haven will spend $370,000,000 during the 2012-2013 school year for its 20,759 students or $17,823/student. Madison plans to spend $15,132/student during the same school year.

Matt Miller

In 2011, Chicago’s public schools spent $7,946 per pupil for instructional (that is, classroom) purposes; the New Trier school district, a short ride up the road, spent $12,043, or 51 percent more. In a class of 25 kids, that’s a difference of more than $102,000. This explains why starting and maximum salaries for teachers in New Trier are much higher than in Chicago; and why the average teacher salary in New Trier is $103,000 compared with Chicago’s $71,000. (These figures are from the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability in Chicago, which tracks fiscal- equity trends.)
The point? When suburban schools pay better, have much nicer facilities and working conditions, and are filled with kids who are easier to teach (because they don’t have the many problems that come with poverty), it is no surprise that, over time, the best teachers gravitate to the best suburban schools. We are relying on the “missionary plan” to staff schools in poor neighborhoods.
The local property-tax basis of much school finance means wealthier communities can tax themselves at lower rates and still generate far more spending per pupil. New Trier has 7.5 times the property wealth per pupil that Chicago has, taxes its residents’ property at roughly half Chicago’s rate, and generates vastly more dollars per pupil.

Mr. Miller compares Chicago’s “instructional” spending, which is only a portion of spending. Chicago plans to spend $5,162,000,000 during the 2012-2013 school year for 404,151 students or $12,772/student. Madison will spend $15,132 per student during the same school year.

Sandy Banks:

It wasn’t about money. It was about respect.
That’s what Chicago teachers union president Karen Lewis kept reminding the public during the seven-day teachers strike that had parents scrambling and kept 350,000 children out of class.
But there was way more than respect at stake in the dispute. It was a clash between an impatient mayor and a demoralized teaching corps over competing visions of public schools — one side focused on job protection, the other on accountability.

Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman in a 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Joe Nocera:

“We have to find a way to work with teachers and unions while at the same time working to greatly raise the quality of teachers,” he told me recently. He has some clear ideas about how to go about that. His starting point is not the public schools themselves but the universities that educate teachers. Teacher education in America is vastly inferior to many other countries; we neither emphasize pedagogy — i.e., how to teach — nor demand mastery of the subject matter. Both are a given in the top-performing countries. (Indeed, it is striking how many nonprofit education programs in the U.S. are aimed at helping working teachers do a better job — because they’ve never learned the right techniques.)
What is also a given in other countries is that teaching has a status equal to other white-collar professionals. That was once true in America, but Tucker believes that a quarter-century of income inequality saw teachers lose out at the expense of lawyers and other well-paid professionals. That is a large part of the reason that teachers’ unions have become so obstreperous: It is not just that they feel underpaid, but they feel undervalued. Tucker believes that teachers should be paid more — though not exorbitantly. But making teacher education more rigorous — and imbuing the profession with more status — is just as important. “Other countries have raised their standards for getting into teachers’ colleges,” he told me. “We need to do the same.”

Related: When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That? and Wisconsin begins to adopt teacher content standards.

Matthew DeFour

The Madison School Board on Monday approved using an employee survey as part of its potential process for devising new employee work rules, although such a tool would be illegal if the state’s collective bargaining law is overturned, district lawyer Matt Bell said.
The School Board agreed not to issue the survey until the legal uncertainties related to last week’s court ruling overturning key parts of the state’s new collective bargaining law, known as Act 10, are resolved.
Prior to Friday’s ruling, Superintendent Jane Belmore told the board the survey results would be collected and analyzed by the Wisconsin Association of School Boards at a cost of $1,000.
The survey would ask respondents whether they “strongly disagree,” “disagree,” “agree,” “strongly agree” or have “no opinion” about questions such as “The hours I work are reasonable” and “Layoffs should be based on seniority.”
Madison Teachers Inc. executive director John Matthews said the union is opposed to the district using an employee survey.
“Let’s have people who teachers already trust providing that input,” Matthews said.

Dear WYSO Members and Families,
For the past 30 years, Mr. Tom Buchhauser has served as an exemplary music educator for over 1700 students who have played in WYSO’s Philharmonia Orchestra. At the end of the 2012-2013 season, Mr. Buchhauser will bring his productive and inspiring career at WYSO to a close.
In addition to his 30 seasons with WYSO, Mr. Buchhauser taught at Madison Memorial High School from 1966-1999, played cello for Madison Symphony Orchestra for nearly 20 years, served on the faculty of the National String Workshop for ten years and directed ensembles for the UW School of Music Pre-College Institute, the Madison Community Orchestra and the Madison Symphony Steenbock Young Artist Concerto Concerts.
He has received numerous awards for his excellence in teaching, including the Wisconsin Music Educators Conference Distinguished Service Award (1983), the National School Orchestra Association Director of the Year Award (1993), the American String Teachers Association Outstanding Service Award (1993), the Rabin Youth Arts Award (2001), and has scholarships named in his honor by the WSMA Honors Project, WYSO, and Madison Memorial High School. In 1999, Madison Metropolitan School District named the Memorial High School auditorium the “Thomas E. Buchhauser Auditorium.”
Mr. Buchhauser recently shared, “I have had many teachers and experiences that have shaped my life as a musician, teacher and conductor but none so profound as Marvin Rabin’s coming to Madison in 1966 to start WYSO and David Nelson asking me to be Associate Music Director of WYSO in 1983. It has been an honor to be part of such a great organization and I will be forever grateful to WYSO for all that it has given to me.”
We will treasure this final season with Mr. Buchhauser and applaud his tremendous efforts to embody the WYSO mission of enriching lives by providing transformational music experiences and opportunities.
Bridget Fraser
Bridget Fraser, Executive Director
Wisconsin Youth Symphony Orchestras
455 No. Park Street
Humanities Building, Room 1625
Madison, WI 53706
608-263-3320 Ext 14
bfraser@wyso.music.wisc.edu
http://wyso.music.wisc.edu

Madison Teachers’, Inc. Solidarity enewsletter 80K PDF, via a kind Jeannie Bettner email:

Major changes to the manner in which teachers are evaluated in Wisconsin are on the horizon. The criteria for teacher evaluation which was first negotiated by MTI during a 1976 strike will be replaced effective with the 2014-15 school year by a state-mandated system and criteria. Driven by President Obama’s “Race to the Top” initiative, teacher evaluation procedures are changing from those which relied primarily upon locally-developed evaluation procedures based on principal observations to state-mandated procedures requiring the inclusion of student test scores in the evaluation of teaching staff. The “Wisconsin Framework for Educational Effectiveness” is the new process required to be utilized by Wisconsin schools commencing with the 2014-15 school year. This new evaluation model will base teacher evaluations 50% on “models of practice” and 50% on “student outcomes”. A summary of this model can be found at the DPI website at http://www.dpi.wi.gov/tepdl/edueff.html.
In preparation for the 2014-15 implementation of the new evaluation model, DPI will be piloting the program with select school districts during the 2012-13 school year. Feedback from that pilot will then be utilized for modifications for a state-wide pilot in 2013-14. Feedback from that effort will then be used to tweak some more before full implementation.
The MMSD and MTI have agreed to have Madison participate as one of the pilot districts this school year. This does not mean that MTI is supportive of the model as currently designed. There are elements to the plan which certainly present concerns to many educators, especially in light of dramatic eliminations of contractual protections caused by Act 10. However, given the current political landscape, both at the State and Federal level, this may very well be the plan we will have to work with in the foreseeable future. The MTI Board of Directors concluded that it was better to participate in the pilot and offer feedback than leave that to others, provided: 1) that MTI had a say in selecting which schools participate in the pilot; 2) that teacher participation in the pilot be entirely voluntary; and 3) that the pilot will only be used to provide feedback to DPI, the MMSD and MTI and will not be utilized to evaluate staff during the pilot period. The District agreed to these provisions (the latter two of which are also mandated by DPI as part of the pilot).
The school selected to participate in the pilot is Black Hawk Middle School. The Principal has been notified and volunteers have been selected to participate. The school team will include two to three teachers who have agreed to be “evaluated” (one of whom is required to be an initial educator); one peer mentor to do informal observations and offer coaching and feedback to teachers (whose work is essentially to support the development and expertise of the teacher without doing any formal observation); and the principal who will be conducting the formal observations and the evaluation . The participants will be required to attend a three (3) day DPI training October 8-10, with two more training days to be scheduled later in the year. Participants will also be asked to attend a couple of meetings with MMSD and MTI staff along the way to provide feedback to MMSD/MTI as well.
By participating, we are hopeful that the experience and feedback provided by the participants will be utilized to make any necessary modifications to the planned evaluation system so that it can deliver on its promise to fairly and accurately measure teacher effectiveness. If not, the experience will inform our concerns and critiques.

Chris Rickert:

There are a lot of good things about public-sector unions, but solidarity for solidarity’s sake isn’t always one of them.
Wisconsin’s public-sector unions wasted no time showing solidarity with Chicago’s union teachers on Monday, when the latter hit the picket lines for the first time in 25 years.
“Their fight is really our fight,” John Matthews, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., told this newspaper. “Whether we’re talking about Scott Walker or (Chicago Mayor) Rahm Emanuel, it’s the same thing.”
Except it’s not, and already embattled public-sector unions risk credibility by insisting otherwise.
In Wisconsin, Republican Gov. Walker used his party’s takeover of state government last year to essentially push through the death penalty for most public-sector unions.
Unions that choose to take on the newly arduous task of recertifying can expect little more for their efforts than the right to bargain for raises limited to the rate of inflation.

Erin Richards:

“There’s a general recognition that our current testing regime is not getting the job done and that we always knew we were going to have to do something different,” he said. “When people understand the importance of measuring growth over time instead of raw test scores and getting testing information back to teachers in a more timely manner, I think they will look more favorably on spending money on new tests.”
Still, Kestell said $7 million was a lot, and probably would not have been considered at all two years ago when the state made significant cuts to education spending.
For the next budget cycle, he said: “It could very well happen, but it’s way too early to predict anything positive.”
The DPI’s Johnson pointed to Milwaukee Public Schools as a model district that has begun ACT testing for all juniors, setting aside time for them to take the four-hour exam in school. Though testing all juniors has lowered the district’s average ACT composite score, the move has received praise for opening opportunities to more students who may not have known they were ready for college, and for providing a broader measure of student performance.

Matthew DeFour:

Wisconsin would pay for all public high school juniors to take the ACT college admissions test starting in two years as part of a $7 million budget initiative State Superintendent Tony Evers announced Wednesday.
The proposal also includes administering three other tests offered by ACT to measure college and career readiness in high school. The tests would replace the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination, which is currently administered to 10th-graders to comply with federal testing requirements.
“We need to give our students and their families better resources to plan for study and work after high school,” Evers said. “It makes sense to use the ACT to fulfill state and federal testing requirements at the high school level with an exam package that provides so much more than the WKCE: college and career readiness assessments and a college admissions test score.”
Under the proposal, all public school ninth-graders would take the ACT EXPLORE assessment in spring of the 2014-15 school year. All 10th-graders would take the ACT PLAN test, and all 11th-graders would take the ACT and the WorkKeys tests.
The state would pay for students to take each test once. Those who want to take an ACT a second time to improve their score would have to pay for it themselves.
Also, by training all schools to administer the ACT, the proposal would help students in rural districts who lack access to certified ACT testing sites, Evers said.

Much more on the oft-criticized WKCE, here.

Julie Halpert:

WHEN ERIC WITHERSPOON became superintendent of Evanston Township High School (www site) near Chicago in 2006, he walked into a math class where all the students were black. “A young man leaned over to me and said, ‘This is the dummy class.'”
The kids at Evanston who took honors classes were primarily white; those in the less demanding classes were minority–a pattern repeated, still, almost 60 years after integration, across the nation. All of the Evanston kids had been tracked into their classes based on how they’d performed on a test they took in eighth grade.
Last September, for the first time, most incoming freshmen, ranging from those reading at grade level to those reading far above it, were sitting together in rigorous humanities classes. When I visited, students of all abilities and backgrounds met in small groups to discuss one of the required readings, which include A Raisin in the Sun and The Odyssey. This September, most freshmen will sit side-by-side in biology classes.
Mindy Wallis, the mother of a sophomore at Evanston Township High, agrees. She opposed the decision to detrack, and spearheaded a petition that advocated waiting for the results of a three-year evaluation before making changes that so substantively affected the freshman class. Angela Allyn, whose 14-year-old son just took a freshman humanities class, says her son was hungry to read more than two-thirds of The Odyssey, which was all the class required. He was encouraged by his teachers to read the entire book, but Allyn says the teachers didn’t help him navigate difficult portions during class, so she had to work with him into the late hours of the night. Her son was teased by classmates, she says, for “showing off and using big words,” something she believes wouldn’t have occurred if he’d been grouped with a similar cohort. Detracking, she contends, focuses “on bringing the bottom up–and there’s an assumption that our bright children will take care of themselves.” She acknowledges that because she’s seen as having “white privilege,” despite the fact that she put herself through school and even occasionally had to use soup kitchens to get by, she’s perceived as racist by merely making such a comment.

Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, also believes that race is part of the debate: “People who support tracking are more interested in productivity and less concerned about inequality, and people who are critics tend to focus on inequality and don’t spend too much time thinking about productivity.” Gamoran argues that schools that want to keep ability-grouping need to do a better job with the students in the lowest tracks, but he also believes that the most capable students may not always be sufficiently challenged in mixed-ability classes. “There’s no single solution,” he says. “The point is to try to address the limitations of whatever approach is selected.”

Links:

• English 10
• Small Learning Communities
• Evanston will spend $75,200,000 for 2,974 students, or $25,285/student (!) Madison will spend $15,132/student during the 2012-2013 budget year.
• Adam Gamoran notes and links.
• Madison parents’ Talented & Gifted complaint.

Arthur Thomas:

For all the changes implemented in 2011, one thing hurt enrollment at schools of education more than others, said John Gaffney, recruitment and retention coordinator at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point’s School of Education.
“The message of teachers being the problem hurt us the most,” Gaffney said.
The Act 10 legislation affected teachers’ pocketbooks – with union bargaining largely eliminated, higher deductions for benefits were imposed – and the political firestorm that resulted put teachers at the center of attention.
Maggie Beeber, undergraduate advising coordinator at the UW-Stevens Point education school, recounted a story where she was meeting with incoming freshmen. She asked the students if anyone had tried to discourage them from becoming teachers. Nearly every hand went up. Then she asked if more than five people had discouraged them. Most of the hands stayed up.
“It’s easy to follow the public discourse about teaching right now and conclude that everything is doomed,” said Desiree Pointer Mace, associate dean for graduate education at Alverno College.

Related:

• When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
• Many notes and links on Julie Underwood.
• The oft-criticized WKCE will soon be replaced by Wisconsin’s Common Core implementation.
• NCTQ Sues UW Ed Schools over Access to Course Syllabi.
• An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria

John Nichols:

The defeat AFC took was so sweeping that the group had to issue a statement Wednesday in which it “reaffirmed its support for legislators and candidates across Wisconsin who favor expanded educational options for families, following disappointing primary results last night.”
Yikes.
AFC, a group funded by billionaire right-wingers from Michigan (former Michigan Republican Party chairwoman Betsy DeVos and her husband, Amway heir Dick DeVos) and their wealthy allies across the country, poured more than $100,000 (perhaps a lot more) into “independent” campaigns on behalf of supporters of school “choice” and “voucher” schemes, which weaken public schools in Milwaukee and pave the way for privatization.
But the AFC candidates lost. Badly.
State Rep. Jason Fields, the Milwaukee Democrat whose re-election was the chief priority of AFC and its Wisconsin operative, former Assembly Speaker Scott Jensen, was defeated by community activist Mandela Barnes.

Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:

Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

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

Yasmeen Abutaleb:

The Wichita School District is just one of a growing number in the nation cracking down on teacher apparel. Jeans are banned in at least one elementary school in New York City. A school district in Phoenix is requiring teachers to cover up tattoos and excessive piercings. And several Arizona schools are strictly defining business casual.
In an increasingly diverse nation where what you wear may be the ultimate self-expression, teachers are falling victim to the same dress code rules as their students.
In most cases, schools are taking the actions because they believe some teachers are dressing inappropriately. School board members received parental complaints about teacher dress at Arizona’s Litchfield Elementary School District, Superintendent Julianne Lein says.
The move comes at a time when the number of public schools requiring uniforms has nearly doubled over the past decade to 19%, reports the National Center for Education Statistics. The center doesn’t track teacher uniforms or dress codes. But it soon may have to, as schools have moved to:

Wichita’s 2011-2012 budget was $606,000,000 for 50,103 students ($12,095/student). Madison spent 18.6% more, or $14,858/student during the 2011-2012 budget cycle.

The Montgomery Business Journal, via a kind reader’s email:

The Grundels’ success story is exactly what Montgomery Public Schools Superintendent Barbara Thompson [bing blekko clusty google] wants to hear. She wants all the district’s nearly 32,000 students to achieve, succeed and enjoy learning.
This fall, the district will launch its International Baccalaureate program and will offer a career technical education program along with seven Career Academies; a growing magnet program for both the arts and academics; and an Advanced Placement (AP) program that continues to expand at a tremendous pace.
“It is a unique pathway for our students having all those programs,” Thompson said. “It means that your child can come into this school district and be challenged at any level. Some of those pathways are going to lead to a four-year college; some will lead to a two-year college; some will lead you right into the world of work. It’s giving students those career pathways that really fit with their strength area.”
Now, you begin to see what all those pieces mean and what the big picture is. “The master plan is to bring our traditional schools up to the level of the magnets,” Thompson said. “That really is the ultimate goal in terms of what we are doing with our rigor and expectations. That is the end game.”
“These are all steps to get us there. I think kids need deliberate steps to get from places, which is why you have the pre-AP program offered at middle school because they can’t just jump into AP in high school.
“It’s why you have the Career Exploratory at middle school because once again you want to go into the Career Academies or career tech. We are making sure that every child takes the explorer test in eighth grade and that goes over their aptitude and skills so when they reach high school they are supposedly doing a four-year plan. That’s every student.”
And the programs that the superintendent has implemented the past few years as well as expanding existing ones, support, encourage and excite targeted groups of students – all students.
The programs on the surface may appear to be disjointed – what does a pre-K program have in common with an Overage Academy – but the common thread is making sure the students succeed.
The pre-K program was expanded from six to 23 programs and turned the closed McKee Elementary School into a pre-K center. Those programs may be cut to 21 because of funding.
That’s the youngest targeted group. Here’s what the district has done for other groups of students:

• Increased graduation rates, although with the state’s new method of computing graduation rates – those numbers are likely to fall as will graduation rates across the state.
• Created a sixth-grade academy to help elementary school students make the transition to middle school.
• Created a ninth-grade academy to help middle school students make the transition to high school.
• Created an Overage Academy to help struggling ninth-graders who are two or more years older than the usual students further advance in their schooling.
• Created a Credit and Grade Recovery program to provide more one-on-one teacher assistance so the students will be able to graduate – and hundreds have.
• Launched an academic magnet program at Johnnie Carr Middle School.
• Reconfigured nearly all the middle schools for grades six through eight.
• Instituted a school-wide dress code.
• Placed a pre-AP program in middle schools.
• Placed a career tech program in middle schools.
• Will launch a Mandarin Chinese program with Auburn University Montgomery that will be at the new eastside high school (in fall 2013) as well as Carr and MacMillan International Academy.
• Consolidated the district by closing some schools and using others in a different way.
• Will bring at least 15 highly qualified Teach for America teachers to the district in the fall – and they usually stay for two years.
• Has begun the process for system-wide accreditation.
• Cut $37 million from the budget over three years and turned a $2.5 million deficit into a surplus of nearly $8 million.

“It really is a puzzle and you are trying to put it together so you create this environment where learning is really exciting for students,” Thompson said. “We are trying to meet those needs of all of our students.
“When I first came here, I gave you the three Rs: relevance, rigor and relationships. All of these programs fall under that category.”
You can imagine, a system with nearly 32,000 students has a lot of needs and you can imagine that Montgomery County’s third-largest employer – about 4,500 people – has a lot of needs. Tom Salter, senior communications officer for MPS, likes to point out that if you combine the students and employees, the school district would be the 13th-largest city in the state. “With that many folks compared to a single, private school that has a hand-picked 600 or 700 in it – it’s different, but it’s not necessarily better to be in a private school.”

“relevance, rigor and relationships” – well said.
Alabama participated in the 2011 TIMSS global exam along with Minnesota and Massachusetts. Wisconsin has never benchmarked our students via the global exams. We have been stuck with the oft-criticized WKCE.
The Montgomery, Alabama schools spent $283,633,475 for 31,470 students ($9,012.82/student) while Madison spent 39% more, or $14,858 per student. The 2011-2012 budget was roughly $369,394,753 for 24,861 students.

Lori Higgins, via a kind Brian S. Hall email

School districts crushed by surging retirement costs could save as much as $250 million this school year under a contentious bill that would make retirement benefits more expensive for public school employees but give districts millions they could use to decrease class size, restore cut programs or squirrel away more money for emergencies.
On Wednesday, the state Senate is expected to take up the bill — backed by Gov. Rick Snyder — that would require current and retired school employees to dig deeper into their pockets to keep their benefits. Some employees would get reduced benefits.
Supporters say the bill, already approved by the House by a 57-47 vote largely along party lines, would help address a $45-billion unfunded liability in the Michigan Public School Employees Retirement System. Some Republicans believe it doesn’t go far enough — they want to end the pension system altogether for new employees, an extremely costly option the Snyder administration wants to study more.
The bill is hotly opposed by groups representing current and retired school employees.

Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman in a 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club:

“Beware of legacy practices (most of what we do every day is the maintenance of the status quo), @12:40 minutes into the talk – the very public institutions intended for student learning has become focused instead on adult employment. I say that as an employee. Adult practices and attitudes have become embedded in organizational culture governed by strict regulations and union contracts that dictate most of what occurs inside schools today. Any impetus to change direction or structure is met with swift and stiff resistance. It’s as if we are stuck in a time warp keeping a 19th century school model on life support in an attempt to meet 21st century demands.” Zimman went on to discuss the Wisconsin DPI’s vigorous enforcement of teacher licensing practices and provided some unfortunate math & science teacher examples (including the “impossibility” of meeting the demand for such teachers (about 14 minutes)). He further cited exploding teacher salary, benefit and retiree costs eating instructional dollars (“Similar to GM”; “worry” about the children given this situation).

Laura Waters:

Andrew J. Coulson, director of the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom, has an editorial in the Wall St. Journal this week assailing the “explosive growth” in America’s public school work force. Since 1970, he charges, student enrollment has “flat-lined,” yet the number of teachers and instructional aides has doubled, from 3.3 million to 6.4 million, with concurrent increases in costs.
Coulson writes, “America’s public schools have warehoused three million people in jobs that do little to improve student achievement–people who would be working productively in the private sector if that extra $210 billion were not taxed out of the economy each year.”
But there’s a panacea readily available: create state voucher systems to send all our kids to private schools. (Also, elect Mitt Romney because President Obama’s education agenda is an “expensive and tragic failure.”)
Whoa, Nellie!
While it’s no doubt a challenge to squish a radical paradigm shift within the confines of the WSJ’s 600-word limit, that’s no excuse for specious logic or casual disregard for facts. Worse, this sort of inflammatory rhetoric gives education reform a bad name.
For example, let’s look at Mr. Coulson’s claim that American public schools hire too many teachers and aides (i.e., have too low a teacher/student ratio), and that private schools are cheaper and produce higher-achieving students.
He writes, “If we returned to the student-staff ratio of 1970, American tax payers would save about $210 billion in personnel costs.”

Madison School Board member Ed Hughes:

There is no mystery about the size of the overall pie. The last budget under Governor Doyle appropriated $5,025,190,300 for elementary and secondary school aids for 2009-10 and $5,271,555,900 for 2010-11. Under Governor Walker’s budget, this total was cut to $4,845,083,000 for 2011-12 and $4,913,986,100 for 2012-13. So Governor Walker slashed general state aid to schools by about $538 million over the biennium. This is hardly cause for celebration.
How next year’s $4.9 billion in general state aid is split up among the state’s 424 school districts is determined by the school funding formula. I describe how the formula works here. This year, to just about everyone’s surprise, the formula has turned out to be Madison’s friend.
Last year, application of the school funding formula resulted in MMSD qualifying for about $15 million in general state aid. This amount was increased to about $43 million by virtue of the hold-harmless provision of the law that capped each school district’s reduction in state aid at 10% of the previous year’s total.
How could it be that the same formula that calculated that MMSD was entitled to $15 million in state aid in 2011-12 would determine that the district was in line for $53 million for 2012-13?

Wisconsin State Tax Based K-12 Spending Growth Far Exceeds University Funding

• usgovernmentspending.com chart & data
• Wisconsin School Finance History
• PolitiFact on the current Wisconsin budget
• Wisconsin Budget Project
• Mike Ford on “Fair Funding for Our Future”.

Lisa Wachtel, Executive Director of Curriculum & Assessment [104 Page PDF]:

Grades K-2 Literacy Walkthroughs
Background: Observations of literacy classes, or, walkthroughs, were scheduled for seventeen of MMSD’ s highest poverty elementary schools during the months of April and May. Three administrators visited each school for a half-day for a minimum of 12 hours of observation per school. All K-2 classrooms are observed for at least an hour by one of the three administrators. Second/third grade classrooms were observed in schools with multi-aged instructional designs. When substitute teachers are present, follow-up observations were attempted.
The purpose of the walk throughs was to provide schools with a baseline of literacy practices and to communicate a district snapshot of K-2 observable literacy practices when student routines and independence are well established. Although not a complete picture, the walkthroughs provided evidence of teaching emphasis, expectations, school/district implementation efforts and additional anecdotal information that might suggest potential areas for consideration.
Timeline: April16- May 25, 2012 Observations
May 30-31,2012 Meet with principals to discuss results of the observations
Observation Tool: Please see the attached document. This is an observation protocol merging documents developed by Fountas and Pinnell and Dom. This observation tool was selected because it captured the general categories of literacy instruction that would be included in a 90-120 minute literacy lesson. Observers could capture any of the elements observed during the 60 observations. An additional section, classroom environment provides a way to document materials and classroom structures.
Preliminary Findings:
1. The majority of primary literacy environments were organized around a Balanced Literacy Model. However, within that model, there was significant variation in what the model looked like. This lack of consistency was seen both within and across all 17 schools.
2. Most classrooms were organized in a planned and thoughtful manner. Attention was given to the development and use of a classroom library, individual book boxes and areas where students could work in pairs or small groups.
3. Although classrooms in most schools were thoughtfully organized, some classrooms were cluttered and there were not optimal environments for learning. It is recommended that IRTs work with teachers to create good physical environments in all classrooms.
4. Although the majority of classrooms had at least a 90 minute literacy block, some did not. Attention to direct instruction for at least 90 minutes is crucial for the success of all learners. Principals must make this a clear expectation. The literacy block must also be implemented with fidelity.
5. There was a lack of consistency both within and across grade levels based on common core standards and best teaching practices. This should be an area of emphasis for all schools. IRTs and principals will need to develop a tight structure of accountability that supports the Common Core State Standards and the Curriculum Companion tool.
6. In most cases, instruction in phonics and phonemic awareness was clearly evident. This instruction reflected the professional development both at the district and school level around phonics instruction, phonemic awareness and word work. Instruction appeared to be more systematic, targeted and focused than in previous years.
7. Guided Reading Instruction was observed in the many of the classrooms. It should be noted that in several schools guided reading did not occur five days a week. A wide range of practices were observed during guided reading. Teaching points were often unclear. Observers noted few teachers administering running records or maintaining other types of formative assessments.
8. Targeted, focused instruction around a precise teaching point is a critical component of quality literacy instruction. Focused feedback emphasizing areas of student mastery was also inconsistent. Again, consistency related to core practices as well as ongoing specific assessment practices should be apparent within and across elementary grades.
9. Professional development work should continue around the use of assessment tools. Principals must require the practice of ongoing assessment in all classrooms.
10. The development and use of anchor charts and mini lessons are critical pieces of strong core instruction. Anchor charts and mini lessons were seen in some classrooms and not in others. Professional development should address these ideas so that there is consistency across the district.
11. In many classrooms, the quality of independent student work was of concern. Teachers in all classrooms must pay careful attention to independent student work. This work must support the structure of the literacy block, be consistent with the focus of guided reading and be at each student’s independent level. Emphasis must consistently be on authentic reading and writing tasks. Work should be differentiated. Coloring, cutting/pasting and copying of other printed work would not be considered quality independent literacy work and this was seen in many classrooms (bold added).
12. Teachers were inconsistent in giving feedback to students related to specific learning. Clear, corrective feedback and/or affirmation of solid understandings will accelerate individual student learning and help learners tie the known to the new.
13. All students should also be receiving ongoing, focused feedback related to independent work and independent reading. Regular conferencing and assessment of independent reading and writing is a crucial component of a rigorous literacy curriculum.

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

Scott Jaschik:

On Thursday David Dudley did something that surprised his colleagues at Georgia Southern University. He sent all of them an open letter [300K PDF] in which he described — in detail — the extent of dysfunction he sees at the university.
He described an administration disconnected from the faculty, with oversized ambitions that could move the institution away from its teaching mission. He described a faculty governance system willing to adopt the wrong resolutions just to make the administration pay attention. And he described professors who have spent their careers at the university (in November he’ll have been there 23 years; he currently serves as chair of literature and philosophy) who feel besieged by one idea after another from administrators destined to be short-termers.
While his colleagues were a little stunned when they opened their e-mail, it wasn’t because they disagreed. “I was so happy because someone stood up and said this out loud,” said Eric Nelson, one professor. “We all have these sentiments, but no one has said so like this.”

Related: Madison Schools’ Administration has “introduced more than 18 programs and initiatives for elementary teachers since 2009”.

Ty Tagami:

DeKalb County property owners will pay more in school taxes next year while class sizes rise under an austerity budget approved by the school board Thursday.
The board voted to raise taxes. It also increased class sizes, even for special education students, while adding two furlough days for teachers and cutting the number of their aides.
The Fernbank Science Center suffered, too, but not as badly as previously proposed. The board cut $1.9 million — about 40 percent — from the center’s $4.7 million budget; Superintendent Cheryl Atkinson had recommended a $3.2 million cut.

Dekalb County schools will spend $774,600,000 to support approximately 95,958 students ($8,072/student). Madison plans to spend about $15,132 / student during the 2012-2013 budget cycle, about 46% greater than DeKalb schools.

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

When I reviewed the many sound initiatives in the Achievement Gap Plan (AGP), I came to think that a piece was missing. The plan addresses the need for our teachers and schools, our community partners, and our parents all to do their part to assist in the academic achievement of our students. Nowhere in the plan, however, do we acknowledge the basic fact that ultimately our students are the ones responsible for their own learning.
The only way students who are behind will be able to catch up is by putting in the time and effort necessary to expand their learning and increase their skills. It’s pretty simple. If we are to narrow the achievement gap in the sense that we expect students of color to achieve at the same level as white students – and not merely expect that a higher percentage of students of color will achieve proficiency as measured on standardized tests – then the students of color will have to work harder than the white students in order to make up the ground between them. There is simply no other way. The white students aren’t going to just sit around and wait for the others to reach their level.

Related: Madison Schools Administration has “introduced more than 18 programs and initiatives for elementary teachers since 2009”

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel:

If Wisconsin wants an educated workforce that can compete in a global economy, it has to stop thinking in terms of education pieces: K-12, colleges and universities, technical schools. It has to start thinking in terms of one system that students can navigate with ease to get the education they want and need, both in basic knowledge and upgrades when they want them; a system aimed at best serving their needs, offering them enrichment and skills.
An important step in that direction was taken Tuesday with the signing of a dual enrollment agreement by state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers and University of Wisconsin Colleges and Extension Chancellor Ray Cross at UW-Marathon County in Wausau. The agreement allows high school students – mostly juniors or seniors – to earn credit that can be transferred easily to state four-year universities or two-year colleges after graduation, along with many private colleges.
Evers said in an interview Tuesday that the initiative “creates some synergy between systems that have not been directly connected in the past,” according to an article by Journal Sentinel reporters Erin Richards and Karen Herzog. “Even though we’re all differently governed, we need to make our systems look more like one instead of two or three or four.”
This helps students in several ways, including reducing the cost of a college degree. That’s more important than ever in light of the increasing cost of a college education. Just last week, UW officials announced a 5.5% hike in tuition.

The devil is in the details, as always.
Much more on credit for non-Madison School District courses, here.
Wisconsin DPI:

UW Colleges and DPI announce expanded dual enrollment program
Program will allow students to take UW Colleges courses at their high schools
High school students in Wisconsin will be able to earn college credits while still in high school under a new dual enrollment program announced by the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction (DPI) and the University of Wisconsin Colleges.
Tony Evers, state superintendent of public instruction, and Ray Cross, chancellor of UW Colleges and UW-Extension, signed an agreement and announced the new statewide model for dually enrolling high school students in high school and UW Colleges courses. They spoke at a June 12 ceremony at the University of Wisconsin-Marathon County, one of the UW Colleges campuses in Wausau. UW Colleges is the UW System’s network of 13 freshman – sophomore campuses and UW Colleges Online.
Evers and Cross said the new partnership would allow students across Wisconsin to access UW Colleges courses in their high schools via classroom teachers and online. The new dual enrollment program would accelerate students’ ability to earn UW credits, reduce the cost of obtaining a college degree, and increase the readiness of high school graduates for either college or the workplace. The program should be in place no later than the 2013-14 school year.
“We’re trying to better serve high school students by bringing our University of Wisconsin courses right into their high schools in a cost-effective way,” said Cross. “We’re committed to making these UW credits as affordable as possible for high school students, their families, and the school districts.”
“More students need the opportunity to take advanced courses and earn high school and college credit simultaneously,” Evers said. “This statewide dual enrollment agreement is a great way for students to get an introduction to college coursework and earn credits before even enrolling in a school of higher education. This will increase the number of students who graduate from high school ready for college and careers.”
Additional information is contained in the complete news release. A copy of the Memorandum of Understanding is available online.

Michael Johnson, via a kind email:

Madison Metropolitan School District, Verona Area School District, United Way of Dane County, Urban League of Greater Madison & Boys & Girls Clubs of Dane County is collaborating to host a town hall meeting with one of the most respected urban school superintendents in the nation at Lafollette High School on May 26th at 1pm. Paul Vallas has raised hundreds of millions of dollars to support academic achievement, he has raised test scores in urban communities, built hundreds of schools while maintaining great working relationships with community leaders, teachers and unions. His efforts has been featured in Education Week, New York Times and hundreds of other articles profiling his work in urban school districts.
Arne Duncan the current US Secretary of Education served as his Deputy Chief of Staff and the current Superintendent of Schools in Milwaukee was his former Chief Academic Officer. During Vallas time in other cities he has led the effort to build over 175 new school buildings and renovated more than 1,000 existing buildings. According to several news outlets Paul Vallas managed consecutive years of improved reading and math scores in every school district he led. During his time in Chicago he organized the largest after school and summer programs in the nation. His education reforms produced double digit increases in test scores which was some of the highest in the nation among the 50th largest school districts in the United States. His leadership efforts was cited in two presidential state of the union addresses and CBS News highlighted that he is one of the most sought out school superintendents in the country. Recently he was invited by the Government of Chile to assume responsibility of turning around and improving test scores in 1,100 of Chile’s lowest performing schools. He was invited by the Government of Haiti to advise their Prime Minister and education team. He also served as an education adviser to London- Prime Minister Tony Blair.
Paul Vallas will share best practices, talk about school reform and take questions on how we can improve academic achievement for our kids. I hope you can join us on Saturday, May 26th at 1pm for this important discussion at LaFollette High School, 702 Pflaum Rd. Madison in the auditorium. To confirm your attendance please email Sigal Lazimy at slazimy@bgcdc.org. Thanks in advance and we look forward to seeing you! Below is a documentary of his work in New Orleans.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FLVpKpaYtRI

Directions.

Wisconsin State Journal:

Oconomowoc’s plans for next school year are undeniably bold:

• Reduce the number of teachers but pay the many who stay a lot more money for teaching an extra period.
• Use technology — including students’ own hand-held devices — to encourage and personalize learning.
• Save more than $500,000 to help balance the district’s budget without reducing class sizes or cutting programs for students.

Wisconsin will be watching closely for results.

Erica Breunlin:

The brightly colored walls of La Escuela Fratney Elementary School in Milwaukee used to reverberate the sounds of laughter and chatter as students painted their masterpieces and crafted pottery.
Today the art room echoes nothing but silence as it has stood nearly vacant all school year. In a year of budget cuts, La Escuela Fratney had to let go of its art teacher for the 2012-’13 school year, and with her, what MPS parent Jasmine Alindar describes as the “soul of the school.”
“She was and still is a very beloved member of the school community,” Alindar said. “So it was a really hard blow.”
Alindar, whose fifth-grade daughter, Alice, has attended La Escuela Fratney since first grade, said the elementary school also lacks specialized music and physical education teachers and has never offered courses in these subjects while her daughter has been enrolled.
La Escuela Fratney isn’t alone in Milwaukee Public Schools. Eighty-seven of 175 schools – many of them elementary schools – no longer have specialized teachers for art, music or physical education.

Related: 2012 WSMA State Festival Madison Area High School Student Event Counts

Patricia Neudecker:

I support the teaching profession, administration, school boards and public education. Above balancing the needs of adults, however, my main responsibility is for students and the environments necessary for their learning.
Hundreds of decisions must be made daily to support that learning environment. Some decisions are easy, obvious and routine; some are difficult, painful and even courageous. All decisions are subject to both support and criticism. In a democratic environment with local control for schools, I wouldn’t want it any other way.
A transformational plan for high school staffing was presented recently to the Oconomowoc School Board. The plan reallocates resources, human and financial, and deploys them where they are needed the most. Across seven departments at Oconomowoc High School, an original staff of 60 will be reduced to a staff of 45. The 45 teachers each will be assigned an additional class section and will be compensated $14,000 each for that addition and the loss of some preparation time within the school day.
Unfortunately, 15 positions will be eliminated and teachers will be personally affected. Some teachers are eligible for retirement, some will be reassigned based on licensure and, unfortunately, nine will be laid off. The plan also generates a recurring savings of over $500,000 annually, maintains all programs and services for high school students and does not increase class sizes.

An alternate view from Rose Locander: Gut education now, pay later

When I first read of the draconian hits to public education that the Oconomowoc Area School District is proposing, I thought this might be a belated April Fools’ joke. Who in their right mind guts their high school staff in an attempt to balance their budget?
The school district wants to reduce its high school teaching staff by about 20%. It has become obvious that the “tools” given to school districts by Gov. Scott Walker have turned into sharpened arrows directed at the heart of public education.
I have questions for the residents of Oconomowoc: Are you going to accept what is going on in your district? Is this what you want for your children? Are you willing to have overworked staff members try to help your children with key curricular subjects? Are you willing to watch as your district goes knee-deep into the abyss?

Related, in Madison: Budget Cuts: We Won’t Be as Bold and Innovative as Oconomowoc, and That’s Okay. Remarkable.

Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

The doom-and-gloomers were wrong about our public schools.
Most Dane County districts have figured out ways to avoid teacher layoffs next year despite cuts in state aid and a tight revenue cap.
The State Journal last week surveyed Dane County’s 16 main school districts on preliminary non-renewal notices, which had to be issued by April 30. Monona Grove issued notices to one full-time and seven part-time employees, and Mount Horeb delivered one layoff notice.
That was about it.
Madison, Sun Prairie, Stoughton, McFarland, Verona, Oregon, DeForest, Waunakee and Deerfield reported no layoff notices to teachers this year. Belleville reduced hours for one position, and Cambridge cut a principal position in February.

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

Another approach might be eliminating programs or initiatives that are more closely aligned to student learning. Possibilities here could include reducing our school staff who are not classroom teachers, like Reading Interventionists, Instructional Resource Teachers, and Positive Behavior Coaches. We could also eliminate special interventions for struggling readers. The reading recovery program is the best-known example. While reading recovery is backed by research that supports its effectiveness, it’s an expensive program and, at least as of a couple of years ago, we hadn’t seen in Madison the level of successful outcomes in terms of students’ reading progress that had typically been achieved elsewhere with the program.
My view is that we should have in place an established schedule for evaluating the effectiveness of our intervention programs, like Reading Recovery, and we should be willing to make difficult decisions based on what the evaluations tell us. But that evaluation and review process should be separate from our budgeting process. We shouldn’t look at cutting programs like Reading Recovery strictly as a cost-saving measure. I doubt that we’re willing to eliminate all intensive interventions for struggling readers – I don’t even know if we could do so legally – and it’s far from obvious that substituting one intensive reading intervention program for another would end up saving us all that much money.

Related: 60% to 42%: Madison School District’s Reading Recovery Effectiveness Lags “National Average”: Administration seeks to continue its use.
Much more on the Oconomowoc School District’s high school staffing an compensation plan, here.

MacIver Institute:

The MacIver Institute District Report Card takes an innovative look at the Wisconsin’s fifty largest public school districts and offers a vigorous analysis and traditional letter grading system in this unique analysis. It rates districts across several different measures to create a comprehensive look at how teachers and administrators are performing in their schools. The Report Card goes beyond the typical parochial comparison of neighboring communities to also focus on how children compete on a global level. With a dynamic global economy perpetually in front of us, a broader focus was needed to better understand how our districts stack up across many metrics.
The Report Card takes into account not only how a student is testing, but also how likely a district is to push their students to achieve more. The state has recently increased graduation requirements to include more coursework and more challenging classes. This metric works to gauge the progress that has been made in those departments. Finally, the MI District Report Card factors in a student’s basic background to better understand the challenges that a school district may face and their effectiveness as a result. Educating students from low-income families, as well as other students that have traditionally been difficult to teach, is critically important to the future of Wisconsin.
These rankings go beyond what standardized testing tells us. They take a closer look inside the classroom and assign grades based on achievement, attainment, and student population. Districts that have higher percentages of low-income and limited English proficiency (LEP) students, two factors that are traditionally linked to lower scores on state testing measures, earn extra points to address this greater degree of difficulty for their teachers.

Madison ranked 42nd out of 50 in academic achievement, 40th in student attainment, B- overall.

Philip Howard:

Successful schools don’t have a formula, other than that teachers and principals are free to follow their instincts.
America’s schools are being crushed under decades of legislative and union mandates. They can never succeed until we cast off the bureaucracy and unleash individual inspiration and willpower.
Schools are human institutions. Their effectiveness depends upon engaging the interest and focus of each student. A good teacher, studies show, can dramatically improve the learning of students. What do great teachers have in common? Nothing, according to studies — nothing, that is, except a commitment to teaching and a knack for keeping the students engaged (see especially The Moral Life of Schools). Good teachers don’t emerge spontaneously, and training and mentoring are indispensable. But ultimately, effective teaching seems to hinge on, more than any other factor, the personality of the teacher. Skilled teachers have a power to engage their students — with spontaneity, authority, and wit.

Related: Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman’s 2009 speech to the Madison Rotary Club.