Search Results for: Madison teachers, inc
“This year alone, LAUSD will spend $314 million on [retiree healthcare] benefits, which is the equivalent of more than $500 per pupil or $12,500 per teacher. Those costs are project to rise significantly over time.” –
Chad Aldeman: Consider the graph below, using data from the Census Bureau’s Public Education Finances reports. From 2001 to 2016, LAUSD increased overall spending by 55.5 percent, but its spending on salaries and wages increased just 24.4 percent. Meanwhile, employee benefit costs soared 138 percent. LAUSD is an extreme example, but this situation is playing […]
“Folks, we have a huge reading crisis”
Alan Borsuk: 20 percent. That is roughly the percentage of Milwaukee students, both in public and private schools, who were rated proficient or advanced in reading in tests in spring 2018 — and it’s about the same figure as every year for many years. Folks, we have a huge reading crisis. There may be more […]
School Board member James Howard not running for re-election (2019)
Negassi Tesfamichael: The three-term School Board member said he is most proud of helping further MMSD’s work on diversity and inclusion. Howard said he wished the School Board could have approved several more major initiatives that he said would have helped students of color. Howard, the only black man on the School Board, is currently […]
Grade Inflation Commentary
Cory Koedel: I enjoyed reading Fordham’s recent study by Seth Gershenson on a topic that has always been high on my list of interests: grade inflation. Grade inflation has a number of important implications for education policy at the K–12 and postsecondary levels, but is notoriously difficult to measure. Some of the more compelling evidence […]
At first optimistic talking points at Milwaukee Public Schools, then things got quiet
Alan Borsuk: So I went to one of the sessions. It was at James Madison Academic Campus on Wednesday. My definition of a conversation involves at least two people talking to each other. A “community conversation,” I would expect, would give people a chance to offer their thoughts and exchange ideas. Not this one. I […]
Commentary on Wisconsin K-12 Governance and the November, 2018 Election
<a href=”https://madison.com/ct/news/local/education/democratic-legislators-look-to-make-big-changes-to-state-education/article_882a0ddd-3671-5769-b969-dd9d2bc795db.html”>Negassi Tesfamichael</a>: <blockquote> Many local Democratic state legislators say much of the future of K-12 education in Wisconsin depends on the outcome of the Nov. 6 election, particularly the gubernatorial race between state superintendent Tony Evers, a Democrat, and Republican Gov. Scott Walker. Legislators spoke at a forum at Christ Presbyterian Church Wednesday night, […]
“Less discussed in Wisconsin is the tremendous impact that economic status has on student achievement”
Will Flanders: Less discussed in Wisconsin is the tremendous impact that economic status has on student achievement. A school with a population of 100% students who are economically disadvantaged would be expected to have proficiency rates more than 40% lower than a school with wealthier students. Indeed, this economics achievement gap is far larger in […]
Wisconsin DPI: “We set a high bar for achievement,” & abort Foundations of Reading Teacher Content Knowledge Requirement}
Molly Beck and Erin Richards: “We set a high bar for achievement,” DPI spokesman Tom McCarthy said. “To reach more than half (proficiency), we would need to raise the achievement of our lowest district and subgroup performers through policies like those recommended in our budget, targeted at the large, urban districts.” The new scores reveal […]
More Regulation of School Choice a Mistake
Will Flanders: Calls for more regulation of Wisconsin’s school choice programs have been getting louder. Making the claims that performance isn’t consistent enough, generally on standardized tests, they argue that government—or some outside entity—needs greater control of school entry and school exit in the state. However, a new study by Corey DeAngelis of the Cato […]
Grade Inflation Commentary
Cory Koedel: I enjoyed reading Fordham’s recent study by Seth Gershenson on a topic that has always been high on my list of interests: grade inflation. Grade inflation has a number of important implications for education policy at the K–12 and postsecondary levels, but is notoriously difficult to measure. Some of the more compelling evidence […]
Gubernatorial Candidate Tony Evers Proposal: Spend 12.3% (10%?) more taxpayer funds on Wisconsin K-12 school districts; while killing substantive reading improvement efforts.
Jessie Opoien: Evers, a Democrat, is asking for $1.4 billion in additional funds for the state’s K-12 schools in the 2019-21 budget. The $15.4 billion request, submitted by Evers on Monday, comes less than two months before Walker and Evers will meet on the ballot — and Evers’ budget letter includes a swipe at the […]
Teacher Compensation Commentary
Nick Gillespie: You can read the study here. Allegretto and Mishel argue that teacher demonstrations and shortages around the country are driven by the fact that educators in K-12 public schools are making less money compared to other college graduates and “professionals” over the past several decades. “The teacher wage penalty was 1.8 percent in […]
Election and K-12 Governance Commentary
Jessie Opoien: Two Republican leaders in the state Legislature said Wednesday that state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Evers — a Democrat challenging Republican Gov. Scott Walker in November — didn’t take the lead on urging lawmakers to pass legislation making it easier to revoke the licenses of teachers who behave inappropriately. Senate Majority Leader […]
Wisconsin DPI hasn’t revoked teacher’s license in 1 out of 5 immoral conduct cases
Matthew DeFour: The Department of Public Instruction has declined to revoke the license of a teacher accused of immoral conduct 88 times, or in only one out of every five cases, since State Superintendent Tony Evers took office a decade ago. In a greater number of cases, 150 out of the 432 investigations opened since […]
Milwaukee’s Public School Barricade: The bureaucracy defies a state law on selling vacant buildings
The Wall Street Journal: Teachers’ unions and their liberal allies are desperately trying to preserve the failing public school status quo. Witness how the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) system is defying a state mandate to sell vacant property to charter and private schools. Milwaukee’s public schools are a mess. Merely 62% of students graduate from […]
Politics, Civics and K-12 Climate: Newton, MA Commentary
Ilya Feoktistov: It was late on a cold and snowy New England evening in February 2017, and Newton North history teacher Isongesit Ibokette was venting at his keyboard about the new guidelines for avoiding bias in teaching. They had been sent out by Newton North’s principal that morning, prompted by the general ill will among […]
How Effective are Tennessee’s Teacher Preparation Programs?
Education Consumers foundation: Tennessee’s Value Added Assessment System has been in place since 1995. It enables users to estimate the success of teachers, schools, and districts in lifting student achievement and it does so in a way that permits statistically fair comparisons. Since 2007, the Tennessee Higher Education Commission has published a report card that […]
How LeBron James’ new public school really is the first of its kind
Christian D’Andrea: Several reform-minded schools have carved similar paths for I Promise to follow. The Knowledge is Power Program, better known as KIPP, has created the nation’s largest network of charter schools by catering to marginalized students with longer class hours, increasing access to teachers, and a tough but accommodating schedule for students. Rocketship Public […]
Commentary on Wisconsin’s Reading Challenges
Alan Borsuk: Overall, the Read to Lead effort seems like the high water mark in efforts to improve how kids are taught reading in Wisconsin — and the water is much lower now. What do the chair and the vice-chair think? Efforts to talk to Walker were not successful. Evers said, “Clearly, I’m disappointed. . […]
Support modifications to the Wisconsin PI-34 educator licensing rule
Wisconsin Reading Coalition E-Alert: We have sent the following message and attachment to the members of the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules, urging modifications to the proposed PI-34 educator licensing rule that will maintain the integrity of the statutory requirement that all new elementary, special education, and reading teachers, along with reading specialists, […]
LAUSD’s Fiscal Crisis Can’t be Blamed on Charter Schools or Declining Enrollment
Lisa Snell: Los Angeles Unified School District has lost 245,000 students over the last 15 years. Officials frequently claim charter schools are taking students and causing LAUSD’s budget crisis in the process. But a new report shows the district’s spending, including its hiring of more administrators as enrollment drops, is to blame. A new Reason […]
Requesting action one more time on Wisconsin PI-34 teacher licensing
Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email: Thanks to everyone who contacted the legislature’s Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules (JCRAR) with concerns about the new teacher licensing rules drafted by DPI. As you know, PI-34 provides broad exemptions from the Wisconsin Foundations of Reading Test (FORT) that go way beyond providing flexibility for […]
Discussing less than 1% of the Milwaukee School District’s $1,170,000,000 budget
Annysa Johnson: “Eighty-eight cents of every dollar we spend is in the schools, so every reduction we make will impact schools directly,” said Driver, who had brought forward a number of potential cost-saving measures, including changes to employee benefits and busing, that were rejected by board members. “It’s very difficult to make those choices. But […]
Fighting to stay in the middle class
Kirkus Review: The middle class is endangered on all sides,” argues journalist Quart (Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers, and Rebels, 2014, etc.), executive editor of the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, a nonprofit journalism group. In this highly thoughtful and compassionate account, she describes the forces that are making the traditional aspects of […]
Why American Students Haven’t Gotten Better at Reading in 20 Years
Natalie Wexler: Cognitive scientists have known for decades that simply mastering comprehension skills doesn’t ensure a young student will be able to apply them to whatever texts they’re confronted with on standardized tests and in their studies later in life. One of those cognitive scientists spoke on the Tuesday panel: Daniel Willingham, a psychology professor […]
Red-State Teacher Unrest Just Keeps Spreading
Ed Kilgore: Eight Kentucky school districts — including those in Louisville and Lexington — are closed today as teachers stay home to protest the GOP legislature’s destructive “reforms” of their pension system. Oklahoma teachers are planning to strike on Monday despite winning a $6,100 pay raise. And Arizona teachers rallied at the state capital on […]
Commentary on the US Taxpayer Supported School System
Sarah Jones: Education, Betsy DeVos once said, is an “industry.” “It’s a battle of Industrial Age versus the Digital Age. It’s the Model T versus the Tesla. It’s old factory model versus the new internet model. It’s the Luddites versus the future,” she told a SXSWEdu audience in 2015. Three years later, she’s the secretary […]
In some respects, Michigan’s continued (reading) decline should come as no surprise
Education Trust- Midwest (PDF): This decline has come as state leaders have invested nearly $80 million to raise third-grade reading levels — and during the same period when many other states that also adopted higher standards for teaching and learning produced notable learning gains for their students in the same metric. In some respects, Michigan’s […]
We are La Follette
Amber Walker: Whether gaining a specialized skill, navigating the college application process, or mastering high- level classes or a language, these four La Follette students are a part of key MMSD initiatives designed to help students succeed academically. Cap Times reporter Amber C. Walker shadowed the four over the course of several days throughout the […]
What School Choice Means for Democrats in the Age of Trump
Shavar Jeffries: With President Donald Trump and U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos driving the public dialogue toward their far-right, for-profit privatization agenda, an alien from another planet could be forgiven for landing here and assuming that “school choice” is the priority of only the Republican Party — or that Democrats are in retreat when […]
Public education funding inequity
US Commission on Civil Rights: On behalf of the United States Commission on Civil Rights (“the Commission”), I am pleased to transmit our briefing report, Public Education Funding Inequity in an Era of Increasing Concentration of Poverty and Resegregation. The report is also available in full on the Commission’s website at www.usccr.gov. The report examines […]
Tackling Inequality in Gifted-and-Talented Programs
Max Nisen, via a iind reader: In many places around the U.S., low-income and minority children are significantly underrepresented in gifted-and-talented programs. This seems to be the case whether the process for identifying gifted children relies on teacher referrals for screening, or on evaluations arranged and paid for independently by parents. So what happens when […]
“The Grant Made Me Do It”: Federal rules distort local education policy
Badger Institute: When a van used for transporting special education students in the Pulaski School District near Green Bay had piled on the miles and was due to be replaced, district officials thought the common-sense thing to do would be to reuse the van for lower-priority purposes, such as hauling athletic equipment and making deliveries […]
Committee on police in schools hears student demands and grapples with next steps
Amber Walker: The Madison School Board’s ad-hoc committee on educational resource officers is about halfway through its 15-month process to review, evaluate and make recommendations about the use of police in schools. At its most recent meeting last Wednesday, committee members heard about 40 minutes of public comments. Most of the remarks were from members […]
Redistributed Wisconsin K-12 tax dollars grow in latest legislative plan
Molly Beck: Overall, Walker proposed $11.5 billion for schools, including the $649 million increase. A spokesman for budget committee co-chairwoman Sen. Alberta Darling, R-River Hills, said the Joint Finance Committee reduced the increase to $639 million because of reductions to funding proposed by Walker for rural school districts and for schools in the Milwaukee School […]
Governance Transparency: Our view: Howard County’s acting superintendent has an excellent plan for handling public information requests — put it all in public view
Baltimore Sun:: The Howard County Public School System might not deserve a failing grade for how well it has kept the public informed over the years, but it sure hasn’t merited any A’s either. That was more or less the conclusion of the state’s public access ombudsman last year, and it wasn’t hard to see […]
DPI Plans To Reduce Wisconsin’s Teacher Content Knowledge Requirements
Wisconsin department of public instruction, via a kind reader: Through its work with stakeholder groups, the Department has identified administrative rule changes that help school districts address teacher shortages, beginning with CHR 16-086 which became effective on June 1, 2017. Additional changes to PI 34 are being advanced by the Department which build upon the […]
Curriculum Matters
Liana Loewus, via Will Fitzhugh:: [FIRST: make sure students read nothing, so they will have nothing to write about. SECOND: focus on skills, so they will not care about what they are writing. THIRD: repeat until they hate writing and remain unable to do it well—WF] ============== Students have a lot of free-writing in journals. […]
Wisconsin Lawmaker: Lack of rigorous goals contributed to state’s achievement gap (decades go by)
Molly Beck: The huge gap in average academic achievement among racial groups in Wisconsin is likely a result of state education officials not setting rigorous goals to address the problem years ago, the chairman of the Senate Education Committee said Wednesday. Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, said Wednesday that state lawmakers and education officials did not […]
A different tune: Unschooling families pursue their own educational path
Amber Walker: Marie thought the “one-size-fits-all” model of public schools would not work for their kids. “I wanted them to be able to explore their individuality and find out what they really love to do,” she said. “Schools tend to tell you what you are not good at and then make you work harder at […]
Kaleem Caire’s Weekly Talk Show (Tuesdays, 1:00p.m. CST)
Over the last 20 years, I have been a guests on several dozen local and national radio and television talk shows across the U.S., and abroad. Tom Joyner, Joe Madison, George Curry, Laura Ingraham, Tavis Smiley, Don Imus, Rush Limbaugh, Juan Williams, Armstrong Williams, Sean Hannity & Alan Colmes, Jean Feraca, Vicki McKenna, Carol Koby, […]
New Jersey Teacher Last In/First Out Governance Lawsuit Update
Matthew Frankel, via a kind email: Friends – As we only try to curate and update you on some of the most informative stories regarding this NJ LIFO Lawsuit – I did want to flag these three items for your files: 1.) Here is a moving testimonial interview today showcasing one of the Newark parents […]
Radical change for struggling schools? It’s reliably doable.
Mitchell Chester and John White: But without exception and irrespective of the policies involved, the radical changes we’re describing happened because local leaders had the courage to insist that schools operate in conditions politically difficult to achieve, but essential to success. Those conditions include: * Leadership: Every success we’ve seen involves empowering a new leader […]
Children’s Rights and Voices in Changing Times
Kaleem Caire, via a kind email: A Professional Development Seminar for Parents, Teachers and Community Educators; You don’t want to miss this! Presented by Dr. Elizabeth Blue Swadener Professor of Justice and Social Inquiry (and Education Policy), and Associate Director of the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. Thursday, March 9, 2017 5:45pm […]
Notes on the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction Superintendent Election
Annysa Johnson: Evers, 65, said his large margin Tuesday reflected Wisconsin voters’ commitment to public education. But he could face a tough fight ahead, he said, if Holtz attracts funding from school reform proponents across the country. “They both vowed to go after national voucher money, and I assume that will be Mr. Holtz’s M.O.,” […]
In an age of robots, schools are teaching our children to be redundant (reading?)
George Monbiot: In the future, if you want a job, you must be as unlike a machine as possible: creative, critical and socially skilled. So why are children being taught to behave like machines? Children learn best when teaching aligns with their natural exuberance, energy and curiosity. So why are they dragooned into rows and […]
Relaxing Wisconsin’s Weak K-12 Teacher Licensing Requirements; MTEL?
Molly Beck: A group of school officials, including state Superintendent Tony Evers, is asking lawmakers to address potential staffing shortages in Wisconsin schools by making the way teachers get licensed less complicated. The Leadership Group on School Staffing Challenges, created by Evers and Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators executive director Jon Bales, released last […]
Stepping Across: Making the Transition from Home to School
One City Institute for Early Learning: A Professional Development Seminar for Parents, Teachers and Community Educators Presented by Dr. Gloria Ladson-Billings Kellner Distinguished Professor of Urban Education Department of Curriculum and Instruction University of Wisconsin-Madison Thursday, December 1, 2016 5:45pm to 7:30pm Lincoln Elementary School 909 Sequoia Trail, Madison
Wisconsin Education Superintendent Tony Evers faces re-election amid big GOP wins, union membership losses
Molly Beck: John Matthews, former longtime executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., called Evers a “hero” and said he deserves to be re-elected. He said Wisconsin “residents know of his advocacy for their children.” “That said, I do worry that the far right and the corporations which want to privatize our public schools and make […]
Teacher shortage is payback for anti-teacher attitudes
Dave Zweifel: Many in Wisconsin are convinced that the teacher shortage here stems from Gov. Scott Walker’s and the Republican Legislature’s Act 10, the 2011 legislation that not only made it illegal for teachers’ unions to bargain, but required them to shoulder part of the load for their benefits, which resulted in take home pay […]
WEAC is selling its headquarters
Molly Beck She said the union has shifted staffing to a “new regional structure,” creating 10 regions to which members belong instead of a centralized location in Madison. Brey would not say how many members are in the union. “After all, our union isn’t a building. Our union is teachers and support professionals who work […]
Politics, rhetoric, Achievement And Charter Schools
Thomas Sowell The one bright spot in black ghettos around the country are the schools that parents are free to choose for their own children. Some are Catholic schools, some are secular private schools and some are charter schools financed by public school systems but operating without the suffocating rules that apply to other public […]
Analysis: Unions Have Cash But Not Partners In Fight Against MA Charter Proposal
Mike Antonucci: Save Our Public Schools, the Massachusetts campaign fighting to retain the state’s cap on charter schools, describes itself as “a grassroots organization of families, parents, educators and students.” But a glance at its campaign finance disclosure shows it to be almost devoid of families, parents, and students, and includes educators only to the […]
The Great Massachusetts Charter Schools Debate
Rachel Slade In November, Massachusetts voters will decide whether the Department of Elementary & Secondary Education (DESE) can raise the cap on the number of charter schools allowed, or increase enrollment in existing charters in underperforming districts. If the referendum is approved, the city of Boston—which currently has 27 Commonwealth charter schools that operate independently […]
Commentary On K – 12 Tax And Spending Policies
Ben Casselman: The larger challenge for schools, however, may be longer-term: attracting teachers. Tight school budgets — and the broader pushback against public-sector payrolls in many states — have squeezed teacher salaries. Average weekly wages for public school teachers have dropped 5 percent over the last five years, according to a new analysis by the […]
A Critique Of 4K $pending
Anya Kamenetz: Dale Farran, a researcher at Vanderbilt University, has been watching closely how that money is spent in Tennessee. She argues the programs there are flawed, and unlikely to move the needle for the poor kids who need them most. What’s worse, Farran says, is that across states, nobody’s really watching the store when […]
Milwaukee K-12 Governance Debate
Annysa Johnson: State Rep. Dale Kooyenga on Tuesday called the dismal performance of some Milwaukee Public Schools “a humanitarian issue” and defended the turnaround district he helped to create as one way to address their shortcomings. “We cannot accept the status quo; we need to be open to change,” the Brookfield Republican told Milwaukee teachers […]
How referendums expand the gap between haves and have-nots
Alan Borsuk: Nicolet High School serves students from Fox Point, Bayside, River Hills and Glendale. Nicolet is both a high-performing school and a high-spending one. This year’s budget works out to more than $18,000 per student. On April 5, voters in those communities approved allowing Nicolet, for the next six years, to spend $3.15 million […]
Harold Rayford hopes to narrow achievement gap by addressing early childhood developme
Ogechi Emechebe: The achievement gap between students of color and their white counterparts in Dane County has been an area of concern for the past several years. In addition to what the Madison School District is doing to try and eliminate the gap, a local grassroots organization is hoping to reduce the achievement gap before […]
Supporting Public School Choice, Rather Than One Size Fits All
Alan Borsuk: Until Thursday evening, I never dreamed I would write a “profiles in courage” piece about Wendell Harris. I apologize, Wendell. You earned it, and here it is. Of course, an example of political courage can also be seen as an example of betrayal and broken promises. Harris will get those reactions, too. I […]
Commentary On Class Size Vs Teacher Qualifications
Alan Borsuk: But others differ on what research shows. Without attracting much attention, SAGE is undergoing a remodeling that is likely to de-emphasize class-size reduction in favor of other efforts that supporters think will have more impact. Unlike some other major education changes, the new SAGE didn’t emerge from behind closed doors in the middle […]
Proposed Changes To Wisconsin k-12 Governance & Curricular Requirements
Molly Beck: The added funding comes from a $250 per student special funding stream for school districts in the second year of the budget, according to the legislation package proposed by Republican co-chairs of the Joint Finance Committee. At the same time, the 1,000-student cap on the statewide voucher program would be lifted and students […]
In Defense of Success Academy
Danielle Hauser: When I think of the demands on teachers today, I picture the cover of the classic children’s folktale “Caps for Sale,” in which a mustachioed cap salesman falls asleep under a tree, wearing his entire stock of wares on his head. This image, unsurprisingly conjured by an elementary and middle school teacher of […]
To block union power, school reformers try courts
Stephanie Simon: Education reformers stymied by teachers unions and liberal state legislatures increasingly are turning to the courts to get their way on everything from funding charter schools to making it easier to fire teachers. It’s an end-run strategy championed by Republican and Democratic reformers alike: When they find it hard to change policies through […]
Bring back plan for all-male school to help black Boys
Kaleem Caire: So far, our capital city, like so many other cities, has preferred to go another way. They have no problem limiting their investment to spending millions of dollars on safety and security strategies that focus on locking up black males and policing them. We spend more money on policing, jail and related services […]
Our annual education report delves into the district’s second year of a unified direction
Sean Kirby: While the District’s first annual report showed some academic improvement overall, it also identified “subgroups”—African American and Latino students and students with disabilities—as part of a more targeted effort to ramp up and enrich the education experience. To reach them, the district is working with community leaders and groups, such as Madison Partners […]
Education and class: America’s new aristocracy
The Economist: WHEN the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination line up on stage for their first debate in August, there may be three contenders whose fathers also ran for president. Whoever wins may face the wife of a former president next year. It is odd that a country founded on the principle of hostility […]
“Children at Catholic schools do better than the neighbourhood public schools in standardised tests despite spending thousands of dollars less per student.”
The Economist: The main reason for the closures is financial. Catholic schools used to be financed by tuition payments, with help from the parish and archdiocese to fill the gaps. But demography has undermined this model. In 1950 76% of all Catholics lived in the north-east and the Midwest, which is where most of the […]
Wisconsin Education Political Commentary
Alan Borsuk: everal years ago, I was writing about how the most significant debates in approaches to improving education didn’t pit Republicans against Democrats. They pitted Democrats against Democrats. Now, the dynamic to watch is between Republicans and Republicans. Both in Washington and Madison, they have so much power now — and they have some […]
School unions vital defenders of public education
Madison’s Capital Times This fall, 305 local union organizations representing public school teachers, support staff, and custodial workers held recertification elections in school districts across the state. Despite everything that Walker has done to undermine them, more than 90 percent of the local unions were recertified. Indeed, according to the Wisconsin Education Association Council, 97 […]
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: No end in sight to Wisconsin’s politics of resentment
Paul Fanlund A nationwide exit poll on Election Day revealed that 70 percent viewed the economy as “not so good” or “poor.” Only 22 percent thought life for the next generation would be better than for this one. Second, because those with the most education are doing better (and Madison is jammed with academic elites) […]
Teacher Education: Easy A’s
National Council on Teacher Quality: Using evidence from more than 500 colleges and universities producing nearly half of the nation’s new teachers annually, this report answers two questions that go to the heart of whether the demands of teacher preparation are well matched to the demands of the classroom: Are teacher candidates graded too easily, […]
Reading Resources & Conferences
Wisconsin Reading Coalition, via a kind email: IDA Dyslexia Handbook: What Every Family Should Know is now available online Free Open LETRS Training An overview of the professional development program Language Essentials for Teachers of Reading and Spelling. This session is especially for district administrators: superintendents, curriculum directors, special education directors, reading specialists, principals, etc. […]
‘We have to do better’ – Trenton school officials seek reversal of low test scores
Jenna Pizzi: For students from third to eighth grades, achievement has remained stagnant over the last five years. Last school year, the district had 26.9 percent of third graders ranked as proficient or above in language arts. That proficiency stayed in the low 20 percent range for grades four through seven. In eighth grade, 42.2 […]
Shift in NJEA’s stance on charter schools fraught with tension
Laura Waters: The New Jersey Senate Education Committee heard testimony on Sen. Teresa Ruiz’s new charter school bill on Oct. 16. One of the lobbyists there was New Jersey Education Association President Wendell Steinhauer. As he approached the podium you couldn’t help but feel sorry for him. This well-spoken and diplomatic head of New Jersey’s […]
Technology in Schools (Reading?)
Meghan Murphy: For an entire school year Hillsborough, New Jersey, educators undertook an experiment, asking: Is the iPad really the best device for interactive learning? It’s a question that has been on many minds since 2010, when Apple released the iPad and schools began experimenting with it. The devices came along at a time when […]
Leveled reading: The making of a literacy myth
Robert Pondiscio & Kevin Mahnken, via a kind reader’s email: Among opponents of the Common Core, one of the more popular targets of vitriol is the standards’ focus on improving literacy by introducing higher levels of textual complexity into the instructional mix. The move to challenge students with more knotty, grade-level reading material represents a […]
The Single Best Idea for Reforming K-12 Education; ” Stop Running the system for the sake of the system”
Steve Denning: I have been asked for my “single best idea for reforming K-12 education”. When you only have one shot, you want to make it count. So I thought I would share my idea here, in case anyone has a brighter insight. Root cause: factory model of management To decide what is the single […]
Commentary on Wisconsin’s Act 10
Dave Zweiful: Last Sunday’s Wisconsin State Journal carried a front-page story about a new phenomenon in our public schools that’s a fallout from Gov. Scott Walker’s Act 10 — the teacher as “free agent.” According to some, Act 10’s virtual destruction of teachers unions unleashed good teachers from the shackles of their union contracts so […]
A teacher ‘marketplace’ emerges in post-Act 10 Wisconsin; Remarkable
Molly Beck: “The great irony is that Act 10 has created a marketplace for good teachers,” said Dean Bowles, a Monona Grove School Board member. Fellow board member Peter Sobol said though the law was billed as providing budget relief for school districts and local government, it could end up being harder on budgets as […]
College Board Erases the Founding Fathers. Protect the Spirit of ’76.
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 […]
Education Issues & The Wisconsin Governor’s Race
Molly Beck: As governor, Burke said she would seek to improve the high school experience for students to decrease the number of students who drop out or leave without much direction. “I see too much — we have either students who are not graduating or not engaged in their learning along with students who graduate but […]
“Value-added measures are the Mark of the Devil”
Caitlin Emma: Eskelsen García already has fiery words for the feds, who she holds responsible for the growing use of “value-added measures,” or VAMs, an algorithm that aims to assess teacher effectiveness by student growth on standardized tests. The idea has gained traction under the Obama administration through waivers from No Child Left Behind and […]
Over 100,000 African-American Parents Are Now Homeschooling Their Children
Dr. Jawanza Kunjufu: We hear so much about the plight of Black children and their low test scores. We have not heard that African American children who are homeschooled are scoring at the 82% in reading and 77% in math. This is 30-40% above their counterparts being taught in school. There is a 30% racial […]
School Board answers to MTI, not to students, taxpayers —
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 […]
Local, National & Global School Voucher Perspectives
Matthew DeFour on Madison School Board Member and Gubernatorial Candidate Mary Burke: Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mary Burke said Tuesday that if elected, she would eliminate the new statewide voucher program and private school tax deduction in the next budget. Burke, a Madison School Board member, previously said she didn’t support the statewide voucher program. In […]
Choice, Not More Spending, Is Key To Better Schools; Wisconsin 12th in Spending, 24th in Achievement
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 […]
A Look At Compensation Packages for Wisconsin School District Superintendents
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.
The Achievement Gap as Seen Through the Eyes of a Student
Robin Mwai and Deidre Green Simpson Street Free Press The achievement gap is very prevalent in my school on a day-to-day basis. From the lack of minority students taking honors classes, to the over abundance of minority students occupying the hallways during valuable class time, the continuously nagging minority achievement gap prevails. Upon entering LaFollette […]
Anonymous letters allege cheating in place for years at Middleton High
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
WYSO founding conductor and music educator Marvin Rabin dies
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: 2013 Reading Report Card
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.
UW researcher surprised by ‘magnitude of grimness’ of Wisconsin achievement gap
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.
Schools expert Diane Ravitch warns Wisconsin off Common Core standards
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
NAEP Wisconsin Results & Commentary with a Remarkable Reading Recovery Booster
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.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.
Wisconsin public-sector unions report big drops in revenue
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.
Pushing back against Republican lawlessness over Act 10
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.
Power of words pivotal in Toki teacher’s classroom
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).
“Educator Effectiveness” Presentation
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.
On this Labor Day, let’s remember what unions have done for America
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“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).
