Search Results for: Madison teachers inc
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 […]
MTI Recertification Election Procedures Set
Madison Teachers, Inc. (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email After many days of detailed analysis with MMSD, the parties have agreed as to whom is eligible to vote in each of the five (5) upcoming MTI bargaining unit recertification elections. All MTI- represented employees who were identified as having actively worked for the District […]
A Message from MTI President Andrew Waity
Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): The only guarantees in life are death, taxes and MTI’s powerful advocacy for Union members, public schools and education. That amended saying is one that holds true as much now as it ever has. We know that we are facing a year filled with many […]
ELL Case Management in Oasys What You Need to Know
Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): The process for establishing an Individual Plan of Service (IPS) for ELL Students is being converted to a more formalized online documentation system in Oasys for the 2015-16 school year. This will help bring the District into compliance with state and federal laws. Developing an […]
Renew Your Commitment to MTI: Recertification Elections Again this Fall
Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): The anti-union legislation passed in 2011 at Governor Walker’s request requires public sector unions to undergo an annual recertification election for the union to maintain its status as the representative of all workers covered by the union. MTI has again filed petitions with the Wisconsin […]
Educator Effectiveness Evaluation System
Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): Educator Effectiveness is the new educator evaluation tool required of all teachers and principals throughout Wisconsin. This new system is a new culture for MTI members: it utilizes a new language (SLO, PPG, artifacts); a new set of values (students’ academic achievement is a part […]
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 […]
MTI President Peg Coyne Retires; President-elect Andy Waity Assumes Presidency
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email: Longtime MTI activist Peg Coyne (Black Hawk), who was elected a year ago to her third term as MTI President, has decided to retire at the conclusion of the school year. Coyne also served as Union President for the 2011-12 and 2013-14 school […]
Commentary on Wisconsin K-12 Tax & Spending Policies
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email: Governor Walker’s proposed Budget and the gamesmanship being played in the legislature has been compared to the game “whack-a-mole”. Representative Melissa Sargent, a champion for public education, teachers and progressive causes, said of the Budget proposals, “Just when you think we’ve averted one […]
MTI-MMSD Joint Safety Committee Releases Report on Behavior Education Plan (BEP)
Madison Teachers, Inc. The Joint MTI/MMSD Safety Committee is charged with evaluating the “implementation of and compliance with the District’s Behavior Education Plan(s) (BEP)” and periodically reporting to the Superintendent and MTI Board of Directors. Over the course of the 2014-15 school year, the Committee met multiple times and designed, conducted and analyzed a Survey […]
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 […]
Mixing Work and Social Media
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): It is important for all to review the District’s social media policy before using electronic media to interact with families, students, colleagues and/or the general public. The District policy permits communication with parents and students via District-sanctioned electronic media and accounts, and cautions against […]
MTI & District Working to Freeze Health Insurance Premiums
Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): MTI Executive Director John Matthews and MMSD Asst. Superintendent for Finance Mike Barry, along with District HR Director Deirdre Hargrove-Krieghoff and Benefits Manager Sharon Hennessy, have met with representatives of the three firms (Unity, GHC and Dean Health) which provide health insurance for District employees, […]
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 […]
Wisconsin DPI Electronic Teacher Licensing
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): The Department of Public Instruction receives 36,000 teacher license applications each year (initial and renewal applications). To help make this process more efficient, DPI created the Educator Licensing Online (ELO) System in December, 2013. DPI no longer accepts paper applications for license renewal; […]
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 […]
Right to Work is Not about Rights; it is Wrong for Wisconsin
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email: Much like they did in enacting Act 10 a few years ago, Republican legislators once again adjourned the Committee hearing before all could be heard, and then voted to send the Right to Work Bill to the full Senate recommending that they adopt it. […]
What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? SENIORITY
Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): Rights granted to an employee by the Union’s Contract are among the most important conditions of one’s employment. Those represented by MTI, in each of MTI’s five bargaining units, have numerous SENIORITY protections. Whether it is protection from involuntary transfer, being declared “surplus” (above staff […]
What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? Just Cause
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): JUST CAUSE does not mean “just because.” It establishes standards and procedures that must be met before an employee can be disciplined or discharged. Fortunately for members of MTI’s bargaining units, all have protection under the JUST CAUSE STANDARDS. They were negotiated by MTI […]
Accountability Bill Really Enables STATE TAKEOVER
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): The January 14 hearing by the Assembly Education Committee produced ONLY ONE speaker who favored the Accountability proposal, Assembly Bill 1 (AB 1), and that was the Bill’s author, Rep. Jeremy Thiesfeldt. During his testimony, Thiesfeldt refused to name either the person or organization […]
Commentary on Wisconsin’s K-12 Tax, Spending & Governance Climate
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): It has been a long, well-planned attack. In 1993, in an action against their own philosophy; i.e. decisions by government should be made at the lowest possible level, the Republican Governor and Legislature began actions to control local school boards. They passed Revenue Controls […]
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 […]
Opportunity for Involvement: The University League Invites You to Become a Member
Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): For nearly 115 years, The University League of University of Wisconsin-Madison has provided opportunities for people with similar interests to get together to learn, to share information, and to form lasting friendships through interest groups, volunteer groups, social gatherings and scholarship benefits. They give more […]
Divide and Conquer Part II: “Right to Work” is Dead Wrong
Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF): Buoyed by the election which provided Republican majorities in both the Assembly (+27 majority) and the Senate (+5 majority), conservative anti-worker/anti-union legislators have announced that they will introduce Right to Work legislation when the January session begins. Right to Work laws limit collective bargaining, make […]
“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 […]
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) […]
American Education Week November 16-22
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):: Though federal and state governments are obligated to provide free public education, both fail to fully fund their financial mandates. While every child in America deserves a quality public education, the failure of federal and state governments, and the state usurping the authority of […]
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, […]
MTI Achievement of Equal Rights for Women
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): Among the many things MTI has accomplished for its members is the advancement of rights for females. Early in the Union’s history was MTI’s achievement of equal pay. MTI negotiated a salary schedule which recognized that the value of the work of an elementary […]
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. […]
MTI’s Michele Ritt Honored
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): AFL-CIO Wisconsin President Phil Neuenfeldt presented MTI activist Michele Ritt with the State Union’s Public Sector Organizer of the Year Award, at last Tuesday’s MTI Faculty Representative Council meeting. Neuenfeldt commented that in spite of Governor Walker’s pledge to “divide and conquer” public […]
‘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 […]
Voter Turn-out Needed for MTI Recertification Elections
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): Getting Organized! MTI now has over two hundred (200) Member Organizers including teachers, educational assistants, clerical-technical employees, substitute teachers, security assistants, and retired MTI members who are committed to helping the next generation maintain their Union. Member Organizers are volunteers who have agreed […]
What’s at Risk Without MTI?
Madison Teachers, Inc. PDF Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): Over the past few weeks, discussions have been occurring throughout the District about MTI’s upcoming MTI Recertification Elections. One of the most frequently asked questions by newer staff, those who are not aware of MTI’s many accomplishments over the years is, “what is […]
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 […]
Vote YES to RECERTIFY MTI – November 5-25, 2014
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): Governor Walker’s Act 10 requires public sector unions, except police & fire, to engage in annual recertification elections, in order to retain their status as the representative of the employees in their bargaining unit. Even though MTI’s certification goes back to 1964, and […]
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 […]
Act 10 Bites Again: MTI Recertification Elections to Commence this Fall
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): Governor Walker’s signature legislation, the 2011 anti-public employee, anti-union Act 10, which took away nearly all the bargaining rights of public employees, is once again on the front burner for those represented by MTI. MTI had initially challenged the legislation and gained a […]
New Resource to Fight the “Ed Reform Machine”
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeanne Kamholtz email: The Progressive Magazine is revving up its movement to save public schools. On their website, created specifically for the anti-voucher/save public schools project, www.publicschoolshakedown.org, they are pulling together education experts, activists, bloggers, and concerned citizens from across the country. PUBLIC SCHOOL SHAKEDOWN is dedicated […]
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 […]
Commentary on the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s Recent Act 10 Decision
Janesville Gazette: Is it good policy? Perhaps Act 10 was an overreach with its union-busting provisions, but it addressed a fiscal need in Wisconsin and the school districts and municipalities that receive state aid. Public employee benefits had become overly generous and burdensome on employers, and Act 10 addressed that by requiring employees to contribute […]
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 […]
MTI Preserves, Gains Contracts Through June, 2016
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): Last fall, MTI asked the District to bargain Contracts for multiple years. They refused, and a Contract was negotiated for the 2014-15 school year. After hundreds of MTI members, sporting their MTI red shirts, attended two school board meetings in late May, the Board […]
MTI, AFSCME and Building Trades Petition for 2015-16 Contracts
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): The value of positive employer-employee relationships being highly valued in Madison and the surrounding area has moved the County of Dane and the City of Madison to continue to negotiate contracts with their employee unions. While the 2011 legislated Act 10 was designed […]
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 […]
What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? Worker’s Compensation
Madison Teachers, Inc. via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): Among the many excellent benefits available to MTI members, guaranteed by MTI’s various Collective Bargaining Agreements, is the additional worker’s compensation benefit, i.e., benefits greater than those provided by Wisconsin Statutes. Wisconsin Statutes provide a worker’s compensation benefit for absence caused by a work-related injury […]
Nominations Finalized for MTI Officers & Bargaining Committe
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF): At the March 18 meeting of the MTI Faculty Representative Council, nominations were finalized for MTI Officers, as well as for the MTI Bargaining Committee relative to vacancies caused by terms ending in May, 2014. Nominated for President-Elect was current President Peg Coyne […]
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 […]
What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? School Calendar
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Linda Doeseckle email (PDF): Does it matter to you when school begins in the fall? How about when and how long winter or spring break is? And, how about when the school year ends? Have you thought about how many days you work for your annual salary, […]
Use It or Lose It – Class Covering Pay
Madison Teachers, Inc Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email: Section III-R of MTI’s Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement ensures that teachers are compensated for covering another teacher’s class, when a substitute is unavailable. Nearly all members of MTI’s teacher collective bargaining unit are entitled to class coverage pay whether one volunteers or are […]
Teacher Strike Looms in Portland, Oregon
Madison Teachers, Inc. (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email:
The streets of Portland resemble those of Madison in 2011, only in Portland it is the Board of Education’s failure to bargain in good faith which is causing the labor dispute.
“Fighting for the Schools Portland Students Deserve” is a predominant sign. This refers to the School Board’s failure to implement an Arbitrator’s Award which would provide additional planning time and reduce class size to provide more time for teachers to work with students and their individual learning styles; individual differences.
The District has nearly $30 million it could access to address the issues presented by the Portland Association of Teachers, but the Board refuses. Instead the Board of Education threatens to take away the early retirement (TERP) benefit, even though it saves the District significant money. Among other issues are just cause and due process standards, videotaping instruction for evaluative purposes and the District improperly using “letters of expectation” to bully teachers.
The Union plans to strike if Contract issues are not resolved by February 20.
What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? SENIORITY
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):
Rights granted to an employee by the Union’s Contract are among the most important conditions of one’s employment. Those represented by MTI, in each of MTI’s five bargaining units, have numerous protections based on SENIORITY. Whether it is protection from involuntary transfer, being declared “surplus” or above staff requirements, or layoff, SENIORITY is the factor that limits and controls management’s action. Because of SENIORITY rights guaranteed by the Union’s Contract, the employer cannot pick the junior employee simply because he/she is paid less.
Making such judgments based on one’s SENIORITY may seem like common sense and basic human decency, but it is MTI’s Contract that assures it. Governor Walker’s Act 10 destroys these protections. MTI is working to preserve them.
SB286 – Corporate Education Thievery Disguised as “Accountability”
The Republican controlled State Senate Education Committee was forced to retract SB 286, a bill that would give away public assets to corporate run charter schools, because there was not enough votes for the bill in its current form. Objections came for both public school and voucher school supports. The bill would use high-stakes, standardized test scores, create an A-F grading system and then turn over the public school building and assets of ‘F’ rated schools to private or charter voucher school management. It even goes so far as to mandate that some percentage of schools be labeled as failing each year. It is a terrible idea with disastrous consequences for public education.
While the bill also would have required Voucher schools to have some accountability criteria, the standards are different and the consequences for failure nowhere near as punitive. If a voucher school fails using the same or similar criteria to the public school, they just can’t accept any new voucher students. They will continue to receive tax-dollars and their assets will not be seized by the state. The corporate reform interests who would benefit from this treatment object to any accountability or consequences for voucher schools, which is a significant reason why Olsen was forced to retract the bill after it had originally been scheduled for a vote on January 30. Governor Walker and his special interest cronies have waded into the discussion, demanding revisions that favor their interests. This bill is not likely to go away quietly.
Commentary on Alternative Teacher Licensing Models
Madison Teachers, Inc. eNewsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF)::
In a recent post on her blog, Diane Ravitch shared concerns about alternative routes to certification; in particular Teach for America (TFA). Her post centered on a parent’s letter to Senator Tom Harkin after her daughter had a bad experience with TFA. Ravitch posted two responses: Harkin’s actual response to the parent; and a mock response crafted by Professor Julian Vasquez Heilig, University of Texas. Harkin serves as the Chair of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions and as Chair of the Education Appropriations Subcommittee. While Harkin “read” his constituent’s letter, it is apparent he did not incorporate Close reading strategies; his mind was made up. Harkin has supported funding for TFA and even tried to weaken the definition of “highly qualified”, so as to include teachers in training (thus enabling TFA teachers to be assigned to schools). Dr. Heilig points out several of the issues with TFA, primarily the turnover rate of the teachers in this program, which our federal government funds. He also notes that while these “teachers” don’t meet the standards of highly qualified, they are the teachers being disproportionately assigned to schools serving poor and minority children. Heilig also exposes the fact that TFA has access to and direct influence over the legislative process, as they provide cost-free education staffers for legislators on the Education and Workforce Committee. TFA lobbyists working inside the Capitol? No wonder Teach for America has been able to extend its reach so efficiently into so many districts around the country.
What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? Just Cause; Wisconsin Labor History Society’s High School Essay Contest Submission Deadline February 14
Madison Teachers, Inc. eNewsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):
UST CAUSE does not mean “just because”. It establishes standards and procedures which must be met before an employee can be disciplined or discharged. Fortunately, for members of MTI’s bargaining units, all have protection under the JUST CAUSE STANDARDS. They were negotiated by MTI to protect union members.
There are seven just cause tests, and an employer must meet all seven in order to sustain the discipline or discharge of an employee. They are: notice; reasonableness of the rule; a thorough and fair investigation; proof; equal treatment; and whether the penalty reasonably meets the alleged offense by the employee.
MTI’s various Contracts enable a review and binding decision by a neutral arbitrator, as to whether the District’s action is justified. The burden of proof is on the District in such cases.
These steps are steps every employer should have to follow.
Unfortunately, every employer is not obligated to do so. However, MMSD must follow them, because of the rights provided to MTI members by MTI’s Contracts. Governor Walker’s Act 10 destroys these protections. MTI has preserved them.
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 […]
Nonrenewal of Contract
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):
Sections IV-I and IV-J of the MTI Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement set forth the procedures which principals are contractually required to use when management notifies a teacher that he/she is being considered for non-renewal of contract. By Contract, the District is obligated to advise a teacher before May 1, if they are considering non-renewal. Under Wisconsin State Statutes, such a notice must be delivered to the teacher on or before May 15. Such notice could also be on one’s evaluation that must occur by April 15 per your Collective Bargaining Agreement.
MTI staff should be present at any and all meetings
between the teacher and any administrator in this regard, given that the meeting may indeed affect the teacher’s continued employment status. The teacher has the legal right to MTI representation and does not have to begin or continue a meeting without representation. See the reverse side of your MTI membership card.
For probationary teachers, a request for a hearing before the Board of Education must be submitted within five (5) days of the teacher’s receipt of the notice that the Board of Education is considering non-renewal of the teacher’s contract. For non-probationary staff, a request for arbitration must be made within fifteen (15) days of a non-renewal notice. It is extremely important for any teacher receiving such a notice to immediately contact MTI.
Union? Yes!
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity eNewsletter via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):
School district employees received some encouraging news prior to winter break. Wisconsin school employees chose “UNION” by large margins. Between November 29 and December 19, 2013 the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission (WERC) conducted recertification elections for over 500 local unions representing over 56,000 classroom teachers, clerical/technical workers, educational assistants, bus drivers, custodial workers and other school district employees. Over 98% of those voting, voted Union YES!
Of the 39,872 total votes cast, 39,107 voted to recertify their union, with only 765 (less than 2%) voting against recertification. Annual union recertification elections are mandated by Governor Walker’s Act 10. In his ruling in MTI’s lawsuit, Judge Colas found requiring such elections to be unconstitutional. That decision was reversed by the Supreme Court, with Chief Justice Abrahamson and Justice Walsh Bradley expressing strong dissent, in a 26 page opinion. Not surprisingly, Dane County school districts had a particularly strong showing; Monona Grove teachers had nearly 90% of all eligible voters cast ballots and, of those, nearly 96% voted Union YES. But it wasn’t only the Dane County districts that voted Union. Even those school districts in largely conservative counties voted affirmatively. Waukesha teachers voted 648-14 to maintain their Union as their certified bargaining agent; Wauwatosa teachers 367-7; and West Allis Educational Assistants voted 47-1. The largest school districts in the state also enthusiastically voted Union YES. Appleton Substitute teachers voted 159-2; La Crosse Secretaries voted 40-0; Milwaukee teachers voted 3,728-35 and Milwaukee Ed Assistants voted 875-10.
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
What Does Your MTI Contract Do for You? The Right to File a Grievance
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeanie Kamholtz email (PDF):
When a union member files a grievance it means that the member and his/her union believes that their employer has failed to live up to its end of a provision which the employer agreed to include in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. They are called “agreements” for a reason: the union and the employer pledged that what they agreed upon in negotiations is what both will live by, that it is best for the employees and the employer. A Collective Bargaining Agreement is a legally binding Contract.
Filing a grievance sets in motion a process for resolving the employee’s complaint, often a complaint which could have been resolved easily and informally through discussion. Once a grievance is filed, the union and the employer meet in a process set forth in the Collective Bargaining Agreement to discuss the reasons on which the grievance is based. When the issue cannot be resolved through discussions, the union may take the complaint to a neutral third party (an arbitrator) who will decide whether management has violated the Contract. Wisconsin law assures that union- represented employees cannot be retaliated against because of filing a grievance.
The Collective Bargaining Agreement is the Constitution of the workplace, and only unionized employees, like members of MTI, are protected by a Collective Bargaining Agreement.
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.
Act 10: “Attorney General to Public Employees: We Will Crush You”
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):
Last Monday’s Supreme Court hearing, scheduled for 90 minutes, went almost four hours, given numerous comments and questions from the Justices – all seven participating to some degree. The resultant responses caused tension, such as Attorney General Van Hollen’s response to Justice Ann Walsh Bradley’s comment, “aren’t the parties’ arguments like ships passing in the night?” Van Hollen retorted that the two ships, “… are on a collision course” and “the State has a bigger ship and we shall win!”
As The Progressive editor Ruth Conniff wrote of the exchange, “That pretty much sums up the Walker Administration’s attitude toward the teachers, janitors, clerks, and municipal employees it seeks to disempower through Act 10. The state is bigger and stronger, Walker, Van Hollen, and their allies argue, and will not be deterred by public outcry, mass protests, or even the courts.”
MTI legal counsel Lester Pines, when presenting the Union’s argument resurrected the ship analogy, telling Van Hollen that, “The Titanic was a big ship too, compared to the relatively small iceberg that caused it to sink.” Pines added that the administration’s Act 10, like the Titanic, has hit an iceberg, and that the iceberg in this case is the Wisconsin Constitution.
In his argument, Pines told the Court that the fundamental argument came down to Constitutional rights. Pines’ claim led to Van Hollen claiming, “There is no constitutional right to collective bargaining.”
MTI’s Act 10 Case before Supreme Court Today (Recently)
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Bettner Kamholtz:
In February 2011, Governor Walker, as he described it, “dropped the bomb” on Wisconsin’s public employees, the birthplace of public employee bargaining, by proposing a law (Act 10) which would eliminate the right of collective bargaining in school districts, cities, counties, and most of the public sector. Collective Bargaining Agreements provide employment security and economic security, as well as wage increases, fringe benefits, and as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Holmes said many years ago, an effective voice for employees in the workplace. Unions had achieved these rights and benefits in a half-century of bargaining. Ostensibly proposed to address an alleged budget shortfall, the Governor’s proposed Act 10 not only called for reductions in economic benefits for public employees (e.g. limits on employer contributions toward pensions and health care), but prohibited public employers from bargaining with nearly all public employees over any issue, other than limited wage increases, under which no employee could recover losses due to the increase in the Consumer Price Index. For example, under Act 10, teacher unions can no longer bargain over issues of school safety, class size, planning and preparation time, and health insurance; educational assistants can no longer bargain over salary progression, insurance coverage or training; clerical/technical workers can no longer bargain over work hours, vacation benefits or time off to care for sick children; and state workers can no longer bargain over whistle-blower protections. The intent of the Governor was to silence public employees on issues of primary importance to them and those they serve, and to eliminate their political activity. His stated extreme, no compromise, “divide and conquer” approach was to gain full power over employees. That resulted in MTI members walking out for four days to engage in political action. Soon thereafter thousands followed MTI members, resulting in the largest protest movement in State history.
MTI legally challenged Walker’s law and in September, 2012, MTI, represented by Lester Pines, and his partners Tamara Packard and Susan Crawford, prevailed in an action before Dane County Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas, wherein Colas found that most of Act 10 is unconstitutional. In ruling on MTI’s petition, Colas agreed that Act 10 is unconstitutional as it violates MTI members’ freedom of association and equal protection, both of which are guaranteed by the Wisconsin Constitution. This enabled MTI to bargain Contracts for its five (5) bargaining units for 2014-15. MTI’s are among the few public sector contracts in Wisconsin for 2014-15.
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.
Act 10: Wisconsin Employment Relations Commissioners in Contempt of Court
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter via a kind Jeanie (Bettner) Kamholtz email (PDF):
Collective bargaining was restored for all city, county and school district employees by a Court ruling last week through application of an earlier (9/14/12) Court decision achieved by MTI. Circuit Court Judge Juan Colas found that Governor Walker’s appointees to the WERC, James Scott and Rodney Pasch, were in contempt of court “for implementing” those parts of Act 10 which he (Colas) previously declared unconstitutional, which made them “a law which does not exist”, as Colas put it.
The Judge told Scott & Pasch to comply with his finding of unconstitutionality or be punished for their contempt. They agreed to comply.
Judge Colas made his ruling on unconstitutionality on September 14, 2012. MTI was represented by its legal counsel, Lester Pines.
In the contempt claim, in addition to MTI, Pines represented the Kenosha Education Association and WEAC. The latter was also represented by Milwaukee attorney Tim Hawks, who also represented AFSCME Council 40, AFT Wisconsin, AFT nurses and SEIU Healthcare, in last week’s case. Also appearing was Nick Padway, who partnered with Pines in representing Milwaukee Public Employees Union Local 61 in the original case.
Judge Colas specifically ordered the WERC to cease proceeding with union recertification elections, which in his earlier ruling were found to be unconstitutional. Act 10 mandated all public sector unions to hold annual elections to determine whether union members wished to continue with representation by the union. Act 10 prescribed that to win a union had to achieve 50% plus one of all eligible voters, not 50% plus one of those voting like all other elections. The elections were to occur November 1.
Joint MTI/MMSD District Committees; MTI Survey
Madison Teachers, Inc (PDF), via a kind Jeanie (Bettner) Kamholtz email:
Several joint committees were created in the recent negotiations over MTI’s 2014-15 Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement. The joint committees will study and potentially recommend modification of Contract terms. Each committee will report its recommendations, if any, to Superintendent Cheatham and to the MTI Board of Directors.
The Committee on Teacher Assignments will discuss potential modification of Contract Section IV-F, Teacher Assignments, Surplus, Vacancies and Transfers. MTI’s appointees are: Andy Mayhall (Thoreau), Nancy Roth (West), Karlton Porter (Cherokee) and Doug Keillor.
The Committee on Teacher Evaluation will study and make recommendations pertaining to the District’s implementation of the State-mandated teacher evaluation system, “Educator Effectiveness”. Any revisions will be incorporated into Section IV-H of the Teacher Collective Bargaining Agreement and will become effective July 1, 2014. MTI’s appointees are: MTI President Peggy Coyne (Black Hawk), Andrew McCuaig (La Follette), Kerry Motoviloff (Doyle) and Sara Bringman.
The Committee on Professional Collaboration Time will discuss implementation of the MTI/MMSD Memorandum of Understanding on High School & Middle School Professional Collaboration Time. MTI’s appointees are: Art Camosy (Memorial), Karen Vieth (Sennett), Aisha Robertson (West), and Nichole Von Haden (Sherman).
The Committee on Elementary Planning Time will discuss potential modification of Section V-I-1-d, Early Monday Release and Section V-P, Planning Time. MTI’s appointees are: Nancy Curtin (Crestwood), Greg Vallee (Thoreau), Holly Hansen (Falk) and Doug Keillor.
Keep Your Own “Personnel” Records
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):
Record keeping by an employee is important. Don’t wait for trouble to start before you begin to compile your own personnel records. Having good records is also very important, should you become involved in a grievance over your Contract rights or benefits, or in a matter involving discipline or dismissal. To enable the Union to provide the best possible protection and representation, every employee should maintain his/her own “personnel” records.
One’s file should contain such documents as: college transcripts, evaluations, accumulated sick leave and days used, direct deposit (wage) records, records of student disciplinary referrals, Wisconsin Retirement System (DETF) records, personal leave, documentation of honors and awards, notes on student accidents and confrontations with parents or administrators, copies of all correspondence with supervisor(s) and administrators, and for teachers – individual teacher contracts for each year, licenses, and teaching assignments by year with subjects taught.
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).
MTI Perseveres, Gains Contracts Through June, 2015
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter (PDF), via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email:
n a very strong turnout – the most in many years – members of MTI’s five (5) bargaining units met last Wednesday and ratified Collective Bargaining Agreements covering the 2014-15 school year. While MTI President Peg Coyne chaired the meeting, the Presidents of each MTI bargaining unit made comments from the podium and conducted the vote by their respective bargaining units. They are: Erin Proctor (EA-MTI), Kristopher Schiltz (SEE-MTI), David Mandehr (USO-MTI) and Jeff Kriese (SSA-MTI).
For the current school year, MTI is fortunate to be one of four unions of school district employees which is able to continue to assure members of the rights, wages and benefits which they have available through MTI’s Collective Bargaining Agreements. Prior to Governor Walker’s Act 10, which he verbalized as designed to destroy negotiated contracts for public employees, all 423 school districts had Contracts with their employees’ unions. Those guarantees in MTI members’ employment are now assured through June, 2015.
MTI’s legal challenge of Act 10 continues to provide the right of all public employee unions (except State employees) to bargain. That right is because Judge Juan Colas found that Act 10, in large part, violated the Constitutional rights of employees and their unions. Unfortunately, most Wisconsin school boards refuse to honor Colas’ ruling. While the Governor has appealed Colas’ decision, the Wisconsin Supreme Court has yet to schedule oral arguments in the case. In a related case, the Commissioners of the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission are charged with contempt of court for not abiding by Colas’ Order.
Parent-Teacher Conferences
Madison Teachers, Inc. Newsletter, via a kind Jeannie Kamholtz email (PDF):
Some principals appear to be confused about scheduling of parent-teacher conferences. The following is the AGREEMENT between MTI and the District as regards scheduling of parent-teacher conferences, and whether or not teachers are obligated to report to school on Friday, November 15.
“Section V-M of the MTI / MMSD Collective Bargaining Agreement will be implemented by evening conferences being scheduled on two evenings after the regular school day (November 12 and 14 for 2013). No school will be scheduled for Friday of the week of evening conferences. Teachers can hold conferences for parents wishing conferences, but who could not make one of the two evenings, or teachers can agree to conference with the parent(s) at another mutually agreeable time/date. Teachers who complete all conferences during the two evenings or agree to hold conferences at times other than on Friday for those parents who could not make the evening conferences, need not report to school on Friday. Teachers will not be required to be present during the parent-teacher conference day once their parent teacher conferences are complete, or are scheduled to be completed.”
Act 10 Subject to Further Judicial Ruling, WERC Chastised
Madison Teachers, Inc., via a kind Jeannie Bettner email:
MTI prevailed last year in a Circuit Court decision in which Judge Juan Colas found much of Act 10, what Governor Walker referred to as his “bomb” on public employee unions, to violate the Constitution. That decision is on appeal to the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Meanwhile, the Walker administration and his appointed Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission has simply thumbed their nose at Colas’ ruling and vowed to continue forcing unions to conduct annual elections, wherein a union is decertified if it does not receive 50%+1 of those eligible to vote, not just 50%+1 of those voting as in every other election.
In a September 17, 2013 ruling, Judge Colas told Governor Walker and the Wisconsin Employment Relations Commission’s commissioners that a Circuit Court decision, while they may not like it or agree with it, is precedential and must be followed throughout the State. Colas said, “The question here is not whether other courts or non-parties are bound by this court’s ruling. It is whether the defendants are bound by it.” WERC was a named defendant in MTI’s suit, so as all defendants to a lawsuit are, and in a case in which the statute was found facially unconstitutional, they (WERC) are barred from enforcing Act 10 under any circumstances, against anyone.
A New Resource to Fight the “Ed Reform Machine” and Save Public Schools
Madison Teachers, Inc. Solidarity Newsletter, via a kind Jeannei Bettner email (PDF):
As school resumes, The Progressive Magazine is revving up the movement to save public schools. On their new web site, created specifically for the anti-voucher/save public schools project, www.publicschoolshakedown.org, The Progressive is pulling together education experts including Diane Ravich (education historian and former Assistant Secretary of Education), activists, bloggers, and concerned citizens from across the country.
PUBLIC SCHOOL SHAKEDOWN is dedicated to EXPOSING the behind-the-scenes effort to privatize public schools, and CONNECTING pro-public school activists nationwide.
“Public School Shakedown will be a fantastic addition to the debate”, says Diane Ravitch. “The Progressive is performing a great public service by helping spread the word about the galloping privatization of our public schools.”
“Free public education, doors open to all, no lotteries, is a cornerstone of our democracy. If we allow large chunks of it to be handed over to private operators, religious schools, for-profit enterprises, and hucksters, we put our democracy at risk”, Ravitch adds.
That’s where Public School Shakedown comes in. While there are already groups such as the National Education Policy Center doing terrific research on education privatization and its effects, and bloggers writing pointed, hilarious reports, there is still not a great deal of understanding in the general population of how the education privatization movement works.
Teachers understand that the attack on public education is an attack on the very heart of our democracy. Yet the “school choice” movement has succeeded in setting the terms of the conversation. To the unknowing layperson, “school choice” and “education reform” sound like benign policy goals that aim to improve children’s access to high-quality education.
The time is right for a journalistic platform like The Progressive to put the pieces together.
From its base in Madison, The Progressive has made the attack on public schools a primary focus of its reporting.
Wisconsin is ground-zero for the school voucher movement. The first school voucher program started in Milwaukee back in 1990. But the last few years of the Walker Administration really brought home the importance of this issue.
The 2011 protests called attention to the public as to how much is at stake – a great public school system, open to all, and a democracy – not just a pay-as-you-go system of winners and losers that leaves the poor and middle classes behind.
“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).
“The School District of Choice in Dane County”
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.
District administrators balk at calculating how much each school spends per student
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.
Wisconsin hopes to mirror Massachusetts’ test success for teaching reading
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.
Inflation-adjusted current expenditures per pupil for public elementary and secondary education in the United States: Fiscal years 1996-2011
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).
Mayor Paul Soglin Discusses Education Reform with U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan
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.
Stagnant School Governance; Tax & Spending Growth and the “NSA’s European Adventure”
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).
Cleveland school district plans staff changes, training and new approaches for 13 ‘Investment Schools’
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.
Catching on at last: New technology is poised to disrupt America’s schools, and then the world’s
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.
Entry Plan Report summarizes strengths, challenges, and planning efforts
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.
Big “take-aways” about teacher preparation in Wisconsin
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).
More US Schools Go International
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.
One year in, Oconomowoc High School staff, students adjusting to change
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.
