Search Results for: Dane county madison public health
Swine flu vaccinations likely to be offered in Dane County public schools
In Dane County, vaccinations for the H1N1 virus likely will be offered to students at public schools this fall — but stay tuned for details.
The Dane County Immunization Coalition — a broad group of health providers that also includes school district representatives — will meet Tuesday to discuss logistics for administering the vaccine, which isn’t expected to arrive here until mid- or late-October, said Judy Aubey of the Madison-Dane County Public Health Department.
The coalition, Aubey said, will look to guidelines from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to determine who should be first in line for immunizations, which are given in two doses, 21 to 28 days apart. Unlike the seasonal flu vaccine, which traditionally focuses on the old and the young, the priority groups for H1N1 immunizations include pregnant women, adults in regular contact with infants under 6 months old, health care workers and children and young adults ages 6 months through 24 years.
So schools could be key players, Aubey said. “There are 80,000 kids in Dane County schools and we certainly don’t have the numbers to carry this ourselves,” she said. “We are going to need help.”
Since April, the Madison school district has been communicating closely with the health department on swine flu issues, and that partnership will continue into the fall and beyond, said Freddi Adelson, health services coordinator for the district.
The Madison School District’s 2009 Strategic Planning Team
Members include:
Abplanalp, Sue, Assistant Superintendent, Elementary Schools
Alexander, Jennifer, President, Chamber of Commerce
Atkinson, Deedra, Senior Vice-President, Community Impact, United Way of Dane County
Banuelos, Maria,Associate Vice President for Learner Success, Diversity, and Community Relations, Madison Area Technical College
Bidar-Sielaff, Shiva, Manager of Cross-Cultural Care, UW Hospital
Brooke, Jessica, Student
Burke, Darcy, Elvehjem PTO President
Burkholder, John, Principal, Leopold Elementary
Calvert, Matt, UW Extension, 4-H Youth Development
Campbell, Caleb, Student
Carranza, Sal, Academic and Student Services, University of Wisconsin
Chandler, Rick, Chandler Consulting
Chin, Cynthia, Teacher, East
Ciesliewicz, Dave, Mayor, City of Madison
Clear, Mark, Alderperson
Cooper, Wendy, First Unitarian Society
Crim, Dawn, Special Assistant, Academic Staff, Chancellor’s Office, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Dahmen, Bruce, Principal, Memorial High School
Davis, Andreal, Cultural Relevance Instructional Resource Teacher, Teaching & Learning
Deloya, Jeannette, Social Work Program Support Teacher
Frost, Laurie, Parent
Gamoran, Adam Interim Dean; University of Wisconsin School of Education
Gevelber, Susan, Teacher, LaFollette
Goldberg, Steve, Cuna Mutual
Harper, John, Coordinator for Technical Assistance/Professional Development, Educational Services
Her, Peng,
Hobart, Susie, Teacher, Lake View Elementary
Howard, James, Parent
Hughes, Ed, Member, Board of Education
Jokela, Jill, Parent
Jones, Richard, Pastor, Mt. Zion Baptist Church
Juchems, Brian, Program Director, Gay Straight Alliance for Safe Schools
Katz, Ann, Arts Wisconsin
Katz, Barb, Madison Partners
Kester, Virginia, Teacher, West High School
Koencke, Julie, Information Coordinator MMSD
Laguna, Graciela, Parent
Miller, Annette, Community Representative, Madison Gas & Electric
Morrison, Steve, Madison Jewish Community Council
Nadler, Bob, Executive Director, Human Resources
Nash, Pam, Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools
Natera, Emilio, Student
Nerad, Dan, Superintendent of Schools
Passman, Marj, Member, Board of Education
Schultz, Sally, Principal, Shabazz City High School
Seno, Karen,Principal, Cherokee Middle School
Sentmanat, Jose, Executive Assistant to the County Executive
Severson, Don, Active Citizens for Education (ACE)
Steinhoff, Becky, Executive Director, Goodman Community Center
Strong, Wayne, Madison Police Department
Swedeen, Beth, Outreach Specialist, Waisman Center
Tennant, Brian, Parent
Terra Nova, Paul, Lussier Community Education Center
Theo, Mike, Parent
Tompkins, Justin, Student
Trevino, Andres, Parent
Trone, Carole, President, WCATY
Vang, Doua, Clinical Team Manager, Southeast Asian Program / Kajsiab House, Mental Health Center of Dane County
Vieth, Karen, Teacher, Sennett
Vukelich-Austin, Martha, Executive Director, Foundation for Madison Public Schools
Wachtel, Lisa, Executive Director of Teaching and Learning
Zellmer, Jim, Parent
Much more here.
The Strategic Planning Process Schedule [PDF]
Madison school cafeterias have “impressive” safety records
While there’s no controlling what happens once kids get their hands on the food, some of the safest public places to buy meals are Madison school cafeterias.
A review of Madison-Dane County Health Department records of Madison school cafeteria inspections showed that school scores were far better than the average restaurant score. Out of 164 Madison cafeteria inspections, 49 resulted in a perfect score of zero and 115 found no critical violations.
To put that in perspective, the average score for restaurants hovers around 20, and anything above 50 is viewed as troublesome. Madison school cafeterias averaged 3.3 over the past four years. The worst school score — Spring Harbor Middle School with a score of 22 in 2005 — was on par with restaurants. And the next two years Spring Harbor scored a perfect zero.
Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad’s Remarks at a Dane County Public Affairs Council Event
Watch the 70 minute presentation and discussion or listen to this 29MB mp3 file
I took a few notes (with apologies for their brevity):
Revisit strategic plan in January with local stakeholders. Preferred to lead with strategic plan but budget came first.
Hopes (MMSD) literacy programs are maintained.
He wants to listen to the community.
The District’s mission is teaching and learning.
The District has several strengths and some notable weaknesses, including achievement gaps.
Schools have a broader mission than workforce development, including helping students be good people.
Achievement gap is a significant issue. There is a compelling need to face an issue that affects Madison’s viability. These are not quick fix kind of issues. We need to talk more openly about this.
If I speak openly, I hope that people will be supportive of public education.
He wishes to reframe conversation around improvements for all students.
Five areas of discussion:
- 4k community conversation
- SLC grant (More here). Use the grant to begin a conversation about high schools. The structure has been in place for over 100 years. Discussed kids who are lost in high school.
- Curriculum can be more workforce based. Green bay has 4 high schools aligned with careers (for example: Health care).
- Revisit school safety
- Curriculum
– safety plan and response system
– schools should be the safest place in the community
– technology is not the complete answer
– math task force; Madison high school students take fewer credits than other Wisconsin urban districts
– reaffirms notable math achievement gap- Fine Arts task force report: Fine arts help kids do better academically,
Erik Kass, Assistant Superintendent of Business Services:
Discussed budget gaps.
Plans to review financial processes.
He previously worked as a financial analyst.
Goal is to provide accurate, honest and understandable information.Jonathan Barry posed a useful question (46 minutes) on how the current MTI agreement prohibits participation in alternative programs, such as Operation Fresh Start (“nobody shall educate that is not a member of Madison Teachers”). Barry mentioned that a recent United Way study referenced 4,000 local disconnected youth (under 21). This topic is relevant in a number of areas, including online learning and credit for non-MMSD courses. This has also been an issue in the local lack of a 4K program.
Dane County, WI Schools Consider MAP Assessement Tests After Frustration with State WKCE Exams
Waunakee Urges that the State Dump the WKCE
Andy Hall takes a look at a useful topic:
From Wisconsin Heights on the west to Marshall on the east, 10 Dane County school districts and the private Eagle School in Fitchburg are among more than 170 Wisconsin public and private school systems purchasing tests from Northwest Evaluation Association, a nonprofit group based in the state of Oregon.
The aim of those tests, known as Measures of Academic Progress, and others purchased from other vendors, is to give educators, students and parents more information about students ‘ strengths and weaknesses. Officials at these districts say the cost, about $12 per student per year for MAP tests, is a good investment.
The tests ‘ popularity also reflects widespread frustration over the state ‘s $10 million testing program, the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination.
Critics say that WKCE, which is used to hold schools accountable under the federal No Child Left Behind law, fails to provide adequate data to help improve the teaching methods and curriculum used in the classrooms.
They complain that because the tests are administered just once a year, and it takes nearly six months to receive the results, the information arrives in May — too late to be of use to teachers during the school year.
The testing controversy is “a healthy debate, ” said Tony Evers, deputy state superintendent of public instruction, whose agency contends that there ‘s room for both WKCE and MAP.
….
“It ‘s a test that we feel is much more relevant to assisting students and helping them with their skills development, ” said Mike Hensgen, director of curriculum and instruction for the Waunakee School District, who acknowledges he ‘s a radical in his dislike of WKCE.
“To me, the WKCE is not rigorous enough. When a kid sees he ‘s proficient, ‘ he thinks he ‘s fine. ”
Hensgen contends that the WKCE, which is based on the state ‘s academic content for each grade level, does a poor job of depicting what elite students, and students performing at the bottom level, really know.
The Waunakee School Board, in a letter being distributed this month, is urging state legislators and education officials to find ways to dump WKCE in favor of MAP and tests from ACT and other vendors.
- More on WKCE scores – Missing Students
- 2006 MMSD WKCE Scores: A Closer Look
- “Schools should not rely on only WKCE data to gauge progress of individual students or to determine effectiveness of programs or curriculum”
- The Fordham Foundation has given Wisconsin’s state standards a “D”.
- Imperial College Ditches A Levels and Sets its own Entrance Exam
Where to Educate Your Child? Madison Area is #2
Via a reader’s email: David Savageau (Contributing Editor of Expansion Management Management):
Three out of 10 of us either work in an educational institution or learn in one. Education eats up 8% of the Gross National Product. Keeping it all going is the biggest line item on city budgets. Whether the results are worth it sometimes makes teachers and parents–and administrators and politicians–raise their voices and point fingers.
In the 1930s, the United States was fragmented into 130,000 school districts. After decades of consolidation, there are now fewer than 15,000. They range in size from hundreds that don’t actually operate schools–but bus children to other districts–to giants like the Los Angeles Unified District, with three-quarters of a million students.
Greater Chicago has 332 public school districts and 589 private schools within its eight counties. Metropolitan Los Angeles takes in 35 public library systems. Greater Denver counts 15 public and private colleges and universities. Moving into any of America’s metro areas means stepping into a thicket of school districts, library systems, private school options and public and private college and universities.Here are some of their top locations:
- Washington, DC – Arlington, VA
- Madison, WI
- Cambridge-Newton-Framingham
- Baltimore -Towson
- Akron, OH
- Columbus, OH
- Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY
- Syracuse, NY
- St. Louis, MO
- Ann Arbor, MI
The Madison area has incredible resources for our children. The key of course, is leveraging that and being open to working effectively with many organizations, something Marc Eisen mentioned in his recent article. Madison’s new Superintendent has a tremendous opportunity to leverage the community from curricular, arts, sports, health/wellness, financial and volunteer perspectives.
Related:
- Where have all the students gone?
- Madison School District small learning community Grant application(s) and history.
- My Life and Times with the Madison Public Schools.
- Update on Credit for Non-MMSD Courses.
The Madison area, which includes all of Dane County as well as immediately adjoining areas, was awarded A+ for class size and spending per pupil in public schools, and for the popularity of the city’s public library.
The greater Madison area scored an A for being close to a college town and for offering college options.
Private school options in the greater Madison area were graded at B+.
There has been some confusion in the response to the rankings because they lump together numerous school districts — urban, suburban and rural.The engineering-based program is just one example of the district’s willingness to bring college-level learning to his high school students. That effort appears to be paying off nationally, WISC-TV reported.
“It reinforces that what we’re trying to do as a district and as an area is working,” said Granberg. “And it’s getting recognized on a national level, not just a local or state level.”
“This is not a community that accepts anything but the best and so that bar is always high,” said Madison Metropolitan School District Superintendent Art Rainwater.
Rainwater also credits the ranking to teacher development programs.
“We spend an awful amount of time and an awful amount of effort working with our teachers in terms of how they deliver instruction to individual children,” said Rainwater.
He said the school district will continue to improve techniques, focusing on the needs of every student.
Concessions Made in Advance of MTI Negotiations by a Majority of the Madison School Board
It will be interesting to see how voters on February 20 and April 3 view this decision by a majority of the Madison School Board: Should the Board and Administration continue to give away their ability to negotiate health care benefits ($43.5M of the 2006/2007 budge) before MTI union bargaining begins? Read the 2005 MMSD/MTI […]
Pam Cross-Leone Seat 3 Madison Board of Education
Since 1992, Pam Cross-Leone has quietly, effectively and tirelessly worked as a parent volunteer in the Madison schools. Pam welcomed the homeless children at Emerson Elementary, working to make them part of the school in every way. When Sherman Middle School and East High School experienced the problems that come with rapid changes in students […]
Announcement from Madison School Board President Johnny Winston, Jr. (and the 04 / 07 elections)
Via a Johnny Winston, Jr. MMSD email: It is with great humility that I announce that I have been elected to serve as President of the Madison School Board. I am honored to have the opportunity to provide leadership to our school district and community. Serving as President is the culmination of part of a […]
Affordable Health Care: Four Wisconsin Proposals
A forum hosted by Progressive Dane and The Edgewood College Human Issues Program. Thursday, April 6th 6:30 to 8:30 at Edgewood College’s Anderson Auditorium, in the Predolin Humanities Center. Access to health insurance has become a national crisis, but there are bold, creative proposals to fix it. Please join us to hear four great proposals […]
2006 Candidate Forum Audio/Video: Dane County Public Affairs Council
Dane County Public Affairs Council2006 Madison School Board Candidate Forum.View [video] or listen [mp3 audio] to the entire event, or read each question below and view the candidate responses.
MMSD and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County Expand Mentoring Program
The Madison Metropolitan School District and Big Brothers Big Sisters of Dane County are expanding the SOL Mentor Program to Leopold Elementary and Cherokee Middle Schools. The SOL Mentor Program continues to serve Latino, Spanish-speaking students at Frank Allis Elementary and Sennett Middle Schools and aims to match an additional 75 students with adult volunteers […]
Shephard: Madison Schools WPS Insurance Proves Costly
Jason Shephard emailed a copy of his article on Madison Schools’ Healthcare costs. This article first appeared in the June 10, 2005 issue of Isthmus. The Isthmus version includes several rather useful charts & graphs that illustrate how the Madison School District’s health care costs compare with the City and County. Pick it up.
A Pro Lockdown Ohio Gubernatorial Candidate
Liz Skalka There’s no existing model for Acton’s candidacy — she’s the only Covid-era health director using that experience as a springboard to run for a top statewide office, at a time when the only sitting U.S. governor who was previously a physician is Democrat Josh Green of Hawaii. How voters ultimately assess her will […]
The Deadly Cost of Ideological Medicine
Megan McArdle: In more than 20 years of covering policy, I have witnessed some crazy stuff. But one episode towers above the rest in sheer lunacy: the November 2020 meeting of the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices. Sounds boring? Usually, maybe. But that meeting was when the committee’s eminent experts, having considered a range of vaccine rollout […]
The Democrat Party, Schjools, Outcomes and Truth
Raul Emanuel “Democrats need to be honest with parents, too: We shuttered schools for too long in response to the pandemic, and we need to stop looking at our shoes and hoping no one highlights our role in the devastating consequences.” —— Covid era Dane County Madison Public Health Mandate and Lockdown policies. Waiting for an analysis of […]
How scientists misled the world about Covid’s origins
Matt Ridley: Let me place you inside a taxi travelling to Geneva airport on 12 February 2020. Inside the cab are two people. One is Dr Peter Daszak, the $400,000-a-year head of the EcoHealth Alliance, an organisation that boasted about funnelling millions of dollars to the Wuhan Institute of Virology to harvest wild bat viruses and do […]
“Five years after lockdowns began, those who opposed them from the start remain unredeemed and “cancelled,” despite being correct, leaving me angry”
Jennifer Sey: The Boston Globe published a review of the book “In Covid’s Wake” about a week ago. The book, while being praised as redemptive for those of us who pushed back early and often, provides no such redemption. While I’ll admit I haven’t read it, I’ve read the review several times now. It allows […]
Covid mandates: “When they ran into dissent, they squelched it”
David Sharfenberg: And the people who should have held them to account — the academics and journalists charged with speaking truth to power — too often fell down on the job. The costs of the shutdowns were enormous: trillions of dollars in deficit spending to stave off economic ruin; massive learning loss, concentrated among the […]
Covid Response at Five Years: Introduction
Brownstone Institute: “This is the way the world ends,” T.S. Eliot wrotein 1925. “Not with a bang but a whimper.” Ninety-five years later, the pre-Covid world ended with a nationwide sigh of submission. Democrats remained silent as government mandates transferred trillions of dollars from the working class to tech oligarchs. Republicans dithered as states criminalized church […]
How the pandemic response destroyed the learning culture in one Baltimore high school
Jennifer Gaither The name Baltimore City College may not mean much to the rest of the world, but it means a whole lot to people who live in Baltimore. Baltimore City College, or “City,” founded in 1839, is the third oldest public high school in the nation and is typically ranked in the top high […]
Wellness: “Gain of Function Research“
By W. Ian Lipkin and Ralph Baric: What worries us is the insufficient safety precautions the researchers took when studying this coronavirus. Research laboratories have different levels of security, based on its categorization on a biosafety level scale, from BSL-1, the lowest, to BSL-4. Lower-security labs are used for studying infectious agents that either don’t cause disease in […]
The Fauci Conspiracy
James B. Meigs In other words, our public health officials, abetted by a politicized media, manufactured an airtight consensus on both Covid science and policy. This consensus was largely immune to scientific evidence or concerns about the real-world impacts of draconian policies. But not everyone joined the lockstep march on Covid. Stanford University’s Jay Bhattacharya, […]
Fauci Stumped on Child-Masking Evidence in Testimony, Admitted Lack of Scientific Basis for Six-Foot Distancing
James Lynch: “Did you see any studies that supported 6 feet?” a subcommittee staffer followed up. “I was not aware of studies that — in fact, that would be a very difficult study to do,” Fauci conceded. Upon further questioning, Fauci said six feet was “an empiric decision that wasn’t based on data or even […]
“I was wrong. We in the scientific community were wrong. And it cost lives”
Kevin Bass; I can see now that the scientific community from the CDC to the WHO to the FDA and their representatives, repeatedly overstated the evidence and misled the public about its own views and policies, including on natural vs. artificial immunity, school closures and disease transmission, aerosol spread, mask mandates, and vaccine effectiveness and safety, especially among the young. All of these were scientific mistakes at the time, not […]
“There is actually no role for lockdowns,”
Joe Nocera and Bethany McLean Michael Osterholm, the prominent epidemiologist at the University of Minnesota, also doesn’t think lockdowns did any good. “There is actually no role for lockdowns,” he says. “Look at what happened in China. They locked down for years, and when they finally relaxed that effort, they had a million deaths in two weeks.” […]
How Sweden proved the world wrong about lockdown
Fredrik Andersson and Lars Jonung The evidence is clear: authoritarian restrictions did not save more lives. In 2020, countries across the world followed in the footsteps of China and locked down hard against Covid-19. Liberties were drastically curtailed. As was economic activity, forcing governments to borrow tens if not hundreds of billions of pounds each to […]
Civics: Canada’s Trudeau overturned on use of the “emergencies act”
Elizabeth Nickson: And just like that, Canada’s storied Liberal Party, in power for one hundred years, the country’s self-described “natural governing party,” is done. Before the ruling this week, Pierre Polievre’s Conservatives were projected to win 222 seats, according to Angus Reid’s January 21st poll, with the Liberals at 53 seats. Trudeau’s partner-in-crime, the fetching […]
New documents strengthen—perhaps conclusively—the lab-leak hypothesis of Covid-19’s origins.
Nicholas Wade: The day is growing ever closer when Washington may have to add to its agenda with Beijing a nettlesome item it has long sought to avoid: the increasingly likely fact that China let the SARS2 virus escape from the Wuhan lab where it was concocted, setting off the Covid-19 pandemic that killed some […]
Covid Lockdowns: “another mistake we made”
This is absolutely astonishing 😳 Francis Collins admits the massive, unnecessary “collateral damage” from their botched covid public health response was due to an elitist beltway-centric myopic POV …oopsie! pic.twitter.com/ofXggcz5jB — Erich Hartmann (@erichhartmann) December 28, 2023 I watched the full Francis Collins interview about masking, lockdowns, school closure, Great Barrington Declaration and what he […]
“Why the Covid inquiry is a farce”
Jonathan Sumption: The Covid-19 inquiry’s terms of reference are as broad as could be, but it has only one useful purpose. Lockdowns and other aggressive government interventions were an unprecedented and untested experiment with the lives and wellbeing of each one of us. We need to know what they achieved, if anything. We need to […]
‘The Singular Cruelty of America Toward Children’
James Freeman: The best way to prevent politicians and bureaucrats from ever again inflicting on American kids the learning losses, social isolation and staggering financial burden of the Covid lockdowns is to ensure a just reckoning for the destruction they caused. Perhaps this is beginning to happen. John Fensterwald reports in the Bakersfield Californian: This […]
Yes, the pandemic-era school closures were a disaster
James Pethokoukis: A brief reminder: Back in the summer of 2020, I tried to hammer home the point that preventing kids from going to school full-time and in-person during the coming school year would be a terrible idea with serious consequences for the kids and the country. School is more than just a place where […]
Sweden during the Pandemic: Pariah or Paragon?
Johan Norberg: Sweden was different during the pandemic, stubbornly staying open as other countries shut down borders, schools, restaurants, and workplaces. This choice created a massive interest in Sweden, and never before have the foreign media reported so much about the country. Many outsiders saw it as a reckless experiment with people’s lives. In April 2020 President […]
Our pandemic outcome would have been better with more debate, less censorship.
Holman Jenkins: Our steps did not significantly impede its spread even as our efforts miraculously quashed the annual flu. In year two, despite vaccination, as many Americans died as in year one. Yet further healthcare meltdowns were avoided. Vaccines clearly saved lives; if lockdowns and masking mandates contributed by keeping people alive until they could be vaccinated, […]
Millions of kids are missing weeks of school as attendance tanks across the US
BIANCA VÁZQUEZ TONESS Across the country, students have been absentat record rates since schools reopened during the pandemic. More than a quarter of students missed at least 10% of the 2021-22 school year, making them chronically absent, according to the most recent data available. Before the pandemic, only 15% of students missed that much school. All […]
Civics: Power Grabs and Covid era mandates
The biology of a virus shouldn’t be political. Medical questions in general shouldn’t be. Like, there isn’t a left- and right-wing way to do a heart transplant. The problem arises when “science” is used to justify a power grab. A good discussion would separate the two. — Balaji (@balajis) June 18, 2023 Mandates, school lockdowns […]
Civics: taxpayer funded Facebook censorship
Mark Zuckerberg says it was challenging to censor COVID misinformation because the scientific establishment was frequently wrong, which ultimately undermined public trust: “Just take some of the stuff around COVID earlier in the pandemic where there were real health… pic.twitter.com/y0ZaX4kmCE — KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) June 9, 2023 Related: Dane County Madison Public Health mandates.
The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?
Bret Stephens: The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous. “There is just no evidence that they” — masks […]
The Mask Mandates Did Nothing. Will Any Lessons Be Learned?
Bret Stephens: The most rigorous and comprehensive analysis of scientific studies conducted on the efficacy of masks for reducing the spread of respiratory illnesses — including Covid-19 — was published late last month. Its conclusions, said Tom Jefferson, the Oxford epidemiologist who is its lead author, were unambiguous. “There is just no evidence that they” — masks […]
Civics: Mandates vs “laws”
I recently saw a sign prominently posted in a Madison restaurant that said: “Wear a Mask, it’s the law”. This is a teaching moment. The current Dane County Madison Public Health mask requirement is a mandate, not (yet) a law. The status of said mask requirement is the subject of law fare and activism. Some […]
Mandates for thee but not for me
This is Rhode Island @GovDanMcKee last night at a Gala — just hours after he extended The State of Emergency in Rhode Island for the sole purpose to keep children masked in schools. Fact: the V doesn’t prevent transmission. Where is our General Assembly?#abuse #UNMASKOURCHILDREN pic.twitter.com/419q0U32Br — Jody Stone (@TheStonesEG) November 14, 2021 Related: Dane […]
Civics: Voters Are Done With COVID-19 and Pandemic-Powered Officials
JD Tuccille: Americans have shifted back to favoring a more hands-off approach for government in addressing the nation’s problems after a rare endorsement of a more active role last year,” Gallup reported in mid-October. “Last year marked only the second time in Gallup’s 29-year trend that at least half of Americans endorsed an active role for […]
The Great Barrington Declaration One Year On
Phil Magness and Phillip W. Magness: From October 2-4, 2020, the American Institute for Economic Research hosted a small conference for scientists to discuss the harms of the Covid-19 lockdowns, and maybe hint at a path back to normal life. Organized by Martin Kulldorff, Sunetra Gupta, and Jay Bhattacharya, the conference made a scientific case for shifting […]
Uncontrolled Spread: Science, Policy, Institutions, Infrastructure
Future: One thing’s for sure — with this COVID crisis, we’re at an inflection point between old and new technology — whether it’s in how we make vaccines, or how we apply the fields of synthetic biology and genetic epidemiology in public health response. So now’s the time to look both backward, and forward, to […]
A new study suggests that almost half of those hospitalized with COVID-19 have mild or asymptomatic cases.
David Zweig: At least 12,000 Americans have already died from COVID-19 this month, as the country inches through its latest surge in cases. But another worrying statistic is often cited to depict the dangers of this moment: The number of patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in the United States right now is as high as it has been since the beginning of February. It’s even […]
Prep sports: Area programs’ plans for the fall (or alternative spring) seasons
Art Kabelowsky: A list of decisions made by schools in the Wisconsin State Journal core coverage area on whether to play fall or alternative spring seasons in various high school sports. Prep football 2020: Who’s playing in the fall, and who’s waiting for spring A list of football programs in area and region conferences, and […]
School in Western India paints village walls to conduct classes
WION: But, teachers in Nilamnagar, western India, have started a unique initiative to make sure that children don’t miss out of learning due to technological shortfalls. They have set up outdoor classrooms for a total of 1,700 students for age group 6-16, where a small group gather around painted walls, which are used for teachings. […]
Middleton High School student’s petition asks for pass/no pass grading during virtual learning
Scott Girard: Many districts moved to pass/no pass grading in the spring during the sudden switch to virtual as the COVID-19 pandemic forced unexpected closures. But with more time to plan and build their virtual learning environments, schools are moving back to letter grades for high school students this fall. The Middleton-Cross Plains Area School District, […]
Biden says school reopening a national emergency
Alexa Mencia: Joe Biden delivered a speech in Delaware Wednesday on the issue of safely reopening America’s schools, which he says is a “national emergency.” In his second speech in three days, the Democratic presidential candidate outlined his plan to keep students and teachers safe during the pandemic. The remarks come ahead of a planned trip […]
Acting collectively and systemically for equity in pandemic schooling
Maxine McKinney de Royston and Erica O. Turner: Let’s be clear: an uncontrolled COVID-19 pandemic, anti-Black racism, xenophobia, climate crises and economic collapse are deepening existing inequities. A large body of research, including our own, shows that students of color are systematically denied access to safe and high-quality education. Maxine’s article, “I’m a Teacher, I’m […]
Disrupted Schooling Spells Worse Results and Deeper Inequality
The Economist: Of the 50 largest school districts in America, 35 plan to start the coming term entirely remotely. The opportunity to squelch the virus over the summer has been lost, upending plans for “hybrid” education (part-time in-person instruction). This means more than just child-care headaches for parents. The continued disruption to schooling will probably […]
Protecting union jobs rather than giving parents $3,000 to educate the children
Liv Finne: Most schools in Washington will remain closed this fall. Some school districts are tightening their belts in anticipation of the COVID-19 budget cuts that are coming. Last week Governor Inslee bypassed the legislature and the decisions of local school districts to protect the jobs of union school bus drivers. He’s made sure money […]
19-year-old activist helps spearhead youth-led Black Lives Matter movement
Shanzeh Ahmad: A 2018 graduate of West High School, Obuseh comes from a military family and moved to Madison in 2016 after having lived in Germany for some six years. Her younger brother is about to start his sophomore year at West. Before Germany, they lived in Delaware, Alabama and Georgia, where Obuseh was born […]
School “opening”, Election Posturing and K-12 “advocacy”
There seems to be a rhythm to the text message touch attempts. Related: Catholic schools will sue Dane County Madison Public Health to open as scheduled Notes and links on Dane County Madison Public Health. (> 140 employees). Molly Beck and Madeline Heim: which pushed Dane County this week not to calculate its percentage of positive tests […]
The media needs to stop spreading fear about ‘pandemic pods’
Chris Stewart: Are they a saving grace for families displaced from traditional schooling or yet another mirage hiding serious educational inequities. Like most things it matters who you ask. Much of the media coverage of pods has shown a deceptively white face which predictably has drawn significant warnings of widening gaps in educational outcomes. I understand the concerns, but […]
MMSD tells some staff to accept in-person child care reassignment or resign
Scott Girard: He added that MTI “recognizes the need” for supporting families through child care, but believes safety remains the top priority. MTI has also asked the district to seek volunteers, including within the teaching workforce, to staff in-person services and is encouraging all staff to get a COVID-19 test prior to working with students […]
Who Is to Blame for the Catastrophe of COVID School Closures?
Alexander Nazaryan You wrote about this issue a lot at the time. Why, years later, did you feel compelled to write a book? I very early observed my kids just withering away in the gray light of their Chromebooks alone in their bedrooms. And while it seemed reasonable initially to have schools closed, particularly because […]
covid era mandates, open records and outcomes
Alina Chan: Resulting subpoenas uncovered a conspiracy to avoid legally mandated oversight by deleting all emails “relating to origin”. The ranking Democrat called this a “stain on the legacy”. It’s not partisan. —- A substantive analysis of taxpayer funded Dane County Madison public Health’s mandates and outcomes is long overdue
The Disaster of School Closures Should Have Been Foreseen
David Zwieg: At the time of the initial closures, in mid-March, COVID was spreading quickly, but large areas in the U.S. were absent any known cases. Still, to the extent that a planned response to influenza was an appropriate universal pandemic guide, these closures were aligned with the CDC’s most recent update to its pandemic […]
K-12 Tax & $pending Climate: Falling property values and rising taxes in Chicago
JD Busch: According to Chicago Contrarian, a property currently paying $25,000 in annual property tax (common for properties worth $750K-$1.25MM) will fork over an additional $4,685 annually based on the proposed 18.75% tax hike. And while the real estate market hasn’t yet processed this latest curveball (it’ll take a few months for closed transactions to reveal […]
Covid policy review: Dr. Anthony Fauci transcribed interview
Select Subcommittee: SOCIAL DISTANCING: The “6 feet apart” social distancing recommendation forced on Americans by federal health officials was arbitrary and not based on science. Dr. Fauci testified that this guidance “sort of just appeared.” MASKING: Dr. Fauci testified that he did not recall any supporting evidence for masking children. Mask-wearing has been associated with […]
“Collins implored a group of esteemed international scientists to produce a paper that would discredit the lab leak theory of COVID-19’s origins”
Peter Laffin: Twice during the call, Fauci prodded Dr. Kristian Andersen, a Danish evolutionary biologist, to lead the effort. In a subsequent email obtained by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, Collins urged the swift production of the paper. In his view, the absence of a strong case for a “natural origins” theory […]
Nice Article on some Parenting Costs; Deeper Dive?
Natalie Yahr cites a University of Wisconsin Survey of families with young children. Conducted by the UW Survey Center and analyzed by UW-Madison’s La Follette School of Public Affairs, the survey went to around 3,500 people across the state. Researchers compared the responses of participants who have children under age 6 with those who don’t. […]
Diving into the disastrous response to the Covid pandemic
John Tierney: Today I’m joined by the author of a terrific new book on this subject, Joe Nocera, a journalist whose work I’ve admired for decades in magazines and books. Joe is a longtime op-ed columnist for The New York Times. He’s now a columnist for The Free Press, and he’s the co-author of the new book, The […]
K-12 tax & spending climate: tax revenues grow, but $pending grows faster
Jeff Stein: From August 2022 to this July, the federal government spent roughly $6.7 trillion while bringing in roughly $4.5 trillion. That represents a total increase in spending of 16 percent relative to last year and a 7 percent decrease in revenue, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. The deficit fell dramatically […]
Wisconsin schools that went remote for longer saw expanded gaps in graduation rates
Baby Vinick: Wisconsin schools that had a longer period of virtual or hybrid learning during the pandemic saw graduation rates rise among wealthier students and fall among those at an economic disadvantage, a new study found. The study from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, published in the journal Educational Researcher, analyzed data from 429 public high schools in […]
Commentary on lockdowns and their implications
The bigoted prejudice of American public health that kids were covid superspeaders – even after early evidence from Iceland and Sweden showed otherwise – is the root cause of the tsunami of accelerated learning loss and generational inequality the US will face in coming years. — Jay Bhattacharya (@DrJBhattacharya) May 23, 2023 Related: “mandates” from […]
“Even the ancients warned that democracies can degenerate toward autocracy in the face of fear”
Gorsuch redeemed himself today. What a glorious indictment of our governments and leaders — and our sheepish people. On the record. Preserved for history. pic.twitter.com/YMj29rKPeG — Marina Medvin 🇺🇸 (@MarinaMedvin) May 19, 2023 Taxpayer supported mandates via unelected administrators: Dane County Madison Public Health.
Notes on special education staffing
Monica Sager and Susanti Sarkar Medill News Service: Since the COVID-19 pandemic forced children to stay at home for months on end, students lagged in social development. This was especially seen in kindergartners entering school for the first time, and it put an extra strain on teachers. One of the reasons students with disabilities fell […]
We can’t solve problems if our children can’t read
Kaleem Caire: I have grave concern for our children in Dane County and Wisconsin. We face no greater long-term crisis in America than the widespread underperformance, diminishing motivation and poor preparation of children and young people in our nation’s K-12 schools, and the rapidly declining number of educators available to teach our children. Student performance […]
Governance: Cashiered Navy Officers (consequences! No Mulligans?)
Jeff Schogol: The Navy believes it is worth publicly disclosing whenever admirals in particular have been disciplined for misconduct in order to maintain the public’s trust and confidence in the Department of the Navy’s integrity, Mommsen said. Generally, that standard also applies in cases when allegations of misconduct against commanding officers, executive officers, and senior […]
“Expert” idiocy on teaching kids to read
Robert Pondiscio: Calkins’s work mostly disregards this fundamental insight, focusing students’ attention in the mirror instead of out the window. For low-income kids who are less likely to grow up in language-rich homes and don’t have the same opportunities for enrichment as affluent kids, the opportunity costs of Calkins’s “philosophy” are incalculable. Endless hours of class time […]
“anti-meritocratic, oriented away from standardized tests, gifted and talented programs and test-in elite schools”
Ruy Teixeira: Finally, there is perhaps the key issue for many Asian voters: education. It is difficult to overestimate how important education is to Asian voters, who see it as the key tool for upward mobility—a tool that even the poorest Asian parents can take advantage of. But Democrats have become increasingly associated with an […]
Taxpayer supported Wisconsin DPI and free speech
MD Kittle: The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction has long been a haven of leftist thought and policy. Increasingly, the agency has become politically weaponized in the pursuit of its woke diversity, equity and inclusion agenda. Most recently, DPI launched an investigation into a Milwaukee Public Schools counselor whose alleged crime is that she spoke passionately in […]
New ‘discoveries’ of the harm caused by school closures are as disingenuous and politically motivated as the original policies themselves
Alex Gutentag: The collapse of educational pathways and structures has had a particularly brutal effect on the poorest students, who can least afford to have their schooling disrupted. High-poverty schools had the lowest levels of in-person instruction, causing low-income students to fall even further behind their more affluent peers. The entirely foreseeable ways in which bad COVID-19 […]
“no significant relationship between mask mandates and case rates”
Ambarish Chandra and Tracy Beth Høeg Our study replicates a highly cited CDC study showing a negative association between school mask mandates and pediatric SARS-CoV-2 cases. We then extend the study using a larger sample of districts and a longer time interval, employing almost six times as much data as the original study. We examine […]
Civics: “Covid Truth…“
Russel Blaylock: The federal Care Act encouraged this humandisaster by offering all US hospitals up to 39,000dollars for each ICU patient they put on respirators. despite the fact that early on it was obvious that the respirators were a major cause of death among these unsuspecting, trusting patients. In addition, the hospitals received 12,000 dollars […]
Mulligans all around
Chris Rickert: After failing to get a waiver from the state’s minimum instructional hours requirement, the Madison School District has devised a plan for the last week of this school year that will allow students getting Cs or better at its four main high schools to forgo getting that minimum amount of instruction. The district […]
“Little evidence was found that more spending affects student performance”
Will Flanders: Here are the biggest findings: Students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program continue to outperform their public-school peers. Proficiency rates in private choice schools were 4.6% higher in English/Language Arts (ELA) and 4.5% higher in math on average than proficiency rates in traditional public schools in Milwaukee. Charter school students in Milwaukee continue […]
“Essentially, that meant kids were not being taught to read at all”
Ronald Kessler: Essentially, that meant kids were not being taught to read at all. Whole language proponents even said that when children guessed wrong, they should not be corrected. “It is unpleasant to be corrected,” Paul Jennings, an Australian whole language enthusiast, said. “It has to be fun, fun, fun.” But reading, like devising algebraic […]
Parental Rights vs Taxpayer Supported Organs
Eugene Volokh: The claims arise out of “UPMC’s purported disclosure of their confidential medical information to [child protection authorities] for the purpose of targeting them with highly intrusive, humiliating and coercive child abuse investigations starting before taking their newborn babies home from UPMC’s hospitals shortly after childbirth.” Scott Girard: At issue is an April 2018 […]
Advocating transparency in the origins of COVID 19
Neil Harrison and Jeffrey Sachs: This lack of an independent and transparent US-based scientific investigation has had four highly adverse consequences. First, public trust in the ability of US scientific institutions to govern the activities of US science in a responsible manner has been shaken. Second, the investigation of the origin of SARS-CoV-2 has become […]
The excellence gap and underrepresentation at America’s most selective universities
Michael J. Petrilli The connection between the excellence gap and affirmative action should be obvious. College administrators would not have to twist themselves into knots to find ways to admit more Black, Hispanic, and low-income students into highly selective institutions were it not for the pervasiveness of the excellence gap. Consider: In 2015–16, the most […]
$pending more for less: K-12 budgets grow amidst declining enrollment
By Shawn Hubler All together, America’s public schools have lost at least 1.2 million students since 2020, according to a recently published national survey. State enrollment figures show no sign of a rebound to the previous national levels any time soon. A broad decline was already underway in the nation’s public school system as rates of birth […]
“Low state capacity”: spending more for less
Helen Dale America’s dysfunctional airports are instances of widespread low state capacity. And this is bigger than airports. Low state capacity can only be used to describe a country when it is true of multiple big-ticket items, not just one. State capacity is a term drawn from economic history and development economics. It refers to a government’s […]
Spending more on facilities amidst enrollment decline and long term, disastrous reading results
Scott Girard: Officials outlined a total of $28 million in additional costs to the School Board Monday night. Of that, $11 million is related to high inflation, $9 million is for additional mechanical and electrical work and $8 million for additional environmental projects. MMSD chief financial officer Ross MacPherson said those costs are likely to be […]
Restoring pandemic losses will require major changes in schools and classrooms, superintendents say
Paul Hill & Kate Destler: The solutions will require new modes of spending, performance measurement, and school oversight, as well as much greater flexibility in teacher hiring, training, and work. Superintendents and school-board leaders can’t make these changes all by themselves. They’ll need serious help and new thinking from governors, state legislators, the federal government, […]
“We found that districts that spent more weeks in remote instruction lost more ground than districts that returned to in-person instruction sooner,”
Johannes Schmidt: A new study has found that although “high-poverty schools” suffered large losses in achievement by switching to remote learning during the coronavirus lockdowns, districts that remained largely in-person lost relatively little ground. The report, titled “The consequences of remote and hybrid instruction during the pandemic,” was published by a team of researchers from the Center […]
‘The Vindication of The Great Barrington Three’ Panel Transcript: LLS London Meeting Feb 2022
Link: But what else can you achieve with a lockdown? The supposition of the non-Zero COVID crowd was that you could suppress infection. You can’t: there’s only a few things you can do with any kind of intervention. You can either get rid of the pathogen – unrealistic – or you can try and suppress it. But if you suppress it for a particular period of time, it’s going to come […]
Howard Fuller on the Biden Administration’s efforts to reduce k-12 diversity
Dr Howard Fuller: Let me cite some of the specific concerns I have: First, the proposed rule to demand that charter schools partner with a local district is obviously aimed at ending their independence and forcing them under the control of the traditional public school system. Charters should be free to determine whether partnering with […]
“FDR told us that Pearl Harbor was “a day of infamy,” not an episode in which the US Navy was caught with its pants down”
Antonio: Perspectives on reality of course vary according to the ideals and institutions involved. It doesn’t matter to the French what the Anglo-Saxons think of Napoleon. The events of the Napoleonic era have been conformed to the ideals and institutions of French republicanism in a way that frankly seems strange to me (as an honorary […]
“The fact that everybody else is doing something different, I think that’s OK,” Wald said. “It doesn’t trouble me so much. I think we’re doing the right thing.”
Scott Girard: Districts have varied in their approach to pandemic health and safety measures, with some making decisions at the School Board level and others leaving it to administrators. With a few exceptions, the Madison School Board has mostly left it to administrators, including on the mask mandate. Christina Gomez Schmidt, the School Board member […]
Commentary on the 2022 Wisconsin Gubernatorial Candidates, K-12 Education and prospects
Libby Sobic: Gov. Tony Evers’s recent vetoes put him at a historic rate of total vetoes compared to previous governors. Of the more than 100 vetoes he executed a week ago Friday, about a quarter were related to education. In many veto messages, the governor cited his previous role as state schools superintendent. Yet his […]
Declining student count vs Growing $pending
Mike Antonucci: We have heard a lot about educator shortages recently, but over the past few weeks the media have sounded the alarm over a different shortage: students. The Associated Press, Washington Post, Chalkbeat, Politico and The 74 are national outlets that highlighted steep declines in K-12 public school student enrollment and the dangers of layoffs and deep budget cuts when federal […]
Mandates and closed schools: yet another experiment on our children
David Leonhardt Across much of the Northeast, Midwest and West Coast, school buildings stayed closed and classes remained online for months. These differences created a huge experiment, testing how well remote learning worked during the pandemic. Academic researchers have since been studying the subject, and they have come to a consistent conclusion: Remote learning was […]
The Countless Failures of Big Bureaucracy
Donald Devine: Ludwig von Mises’ Yale University Press classic Bureaucracy explains in a relatively few pages the difference between public and private-sector bureaucratic management. The private sector can measure what is going on in large hierarchies of bureaucracy below its CEO simply by asking whether each unit is making a profit. The public sector has no equivalent measuring […]
The price of lockdown mandates: “The value to in-person learning was larger for districts with larger populations of Black students”
Rebecca Jack, Claire Halloran, James Okun and Emily Oster: We estimate the impact of district-level schooling mode (in-person versus hybrid or virtual learning) in the 2020-21 school year on students’ pass rates on standardized tests in Grades 3–8 across 11 states. Pass rates declined from 2019 to 2021: an average decline of 12.8 percentage points […]
Notes on politics and the achievement gap
Daniel Lennington and Will Flanders Last week, Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly put out a press releasebroadly outlining her plans to address Wisconsin’s racial achievement gap. While it is perhaps a positive to finally see the superintendent addressing the failings of Wisconsin’s public schools, this release offers a disturbing window into the way […]
Wisconsin Gov Evers’ Mulligans run their course?
Libby Sobic: Gov. Tony Evers’s recent vetoes put him at a historic rate of total vetoes compared to previous governors. Of the more than 100 vetoes he executed a week ago Friday, about a quarter were related to education. In many veto messages, the governor cited his previous role as state schools superintendent. Yet his […]
