Annysa Johnson:

Milwaukee Public Schools has until June 23 to respond to an invitation from County Executive Chris Abele and his Opportunity Schools commissioner, Demond Means, to partner with them in a plan to turn around some of Milwaukee’s poorest performing schools.

Means has told MPS that rejecting the deal could force him to bring in an outside operator to run the schools as dictated in state law. But school reform advocates and observers in Milwaukee and around the country say that would be tougher than it sounds, and may not yield the results the Legislature envisioned when it created Means’ post.

Charter school operators generally prefer to create schools from the ground up, rather than take over existing operations, they said. In addition, the lack of seed money, the lower per-pupil funding for charter schools, Milwaukee’s competitive school market and highly charged political environment could make it difficult to attract quality operators.

OGECHI EMECHEBE:

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

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

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

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

Much more on Madison Teachers, Inc., here.

Alan Borsuk:

A couple of weeks ago, Means outlined a plan in which an unknown number of schools (maybe three?) would be designated to be part of the new program — and the agency that would run them would be MPS itself, with oversight from an independent school operator.

The teachers would be MPS employees, the money to run the schools (at the charter school funding rate, which is about $2,000 less than what MPS itself gets) would go to MPS and the schools would go back to being regular MPS schools in five years if performance improved.

There are ideas for programs at the schools raised in Means’ proposal, which generally are in-line with the “community schools” initiative that MPS itself is trying to grow. This involves extending more services to students and their families, while making changes to academic programs.

I spoke to many of the key players last week. Just about everyone is edgy and uncertain what’s going to happen next.

Related: “an emphasis on adult employment“.

Annysa Johnson:

The city’s decision to move forward with the state-mandated sale of vacant or surplus Milwaukee Public School buildings to competing operators will hinder the district’s own reform efforts and its ability to serve returning students when private voucher and charter schools go belly-up, an MPS spokesman said Saturday.

The common council on Friday — acting under a threat of a lawsuit by school choice proponents — set the stage for the sale of as many as seven buildings, under a procedure dictated by a new state law.

“We are disappointed and concerned that this latest development may limit our ability to continue to grow programs with a track record of success that families in our community are seeking,” MPS spokesman Tony Tagliavia said in an email to the Journal Sentinel.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, a conservative public interest law firm that had threatened to sue the city if it did not comply with the statute, issued a statement lauding the vote.

Dave Baskerville (7 April 2016)

Mr. Ed Hughes, Member, MMSD Board 4/7/16

Ed, I finally got around to reading your “Eight Lessons Learned” article in the 3/9/16 edition of CT. Interesting/thanks. As you know from our previous discussions, we have similar thinking on some of the MMSD challenges, not on others. For the sake of further dialogue and to continue your tutorial style (‘learned’, ‘not learned’) without my trying to be either facetious or presumptious., let me comment as follows:

LESSON ONE. “It’s Complicated”. Certainly agree, but not an excuse for catching up with the rest of the First World. Did you learn that? Challenges which you rightly say are ’multiyear and multipronged’ become far more complicated when there is not a clearcut, long term direction for a company or system. It seems that every responsible board of private/public or NGO institutions has that responsibility to the CEO (read Superintendant).

You talk of improvement (kaizen), but “better” for the status quo alone is not enough when we have been falling behind for several generations. What you apparently did not learn is that with our global rankings and radical changes in technology and the future world of work, serious transformation of our system is needed?

LESSON TWO. “No Silver Bullet”. There can be 1~3 long term goals, but agree, 426 WI school districts need to figure out in their own ways how to get there. (And where things are measured, they are more often done. Dare you provide, as 300 HSs around the country and 14 in WI have done, the PISA tests for all of our MSN 15 years olds. $15,000 per HS, and indeed, does that ever prod Supt’s, and citizens to set their goals long term and higher! And execute!)

LESSON THREE. “Schools Are Systems”. Agree with Gawande that “a system-wide approach with new skills, data-based, and the ability to implement at scale” is needed. Look at Mayo Clinic where my wife and I spend too much of our time! As you say, a significant cultural shift is required. But what you did not learn is what he said later: “Transformation must be led at the top”. That means clearly articulating for the CEO, staff and public the long term destination point for rigorous achievement and the quantitative means to measure. You did not learn that it does not mean getting involved in the vast HOW of ‘defining the efforts of everyone’, innovation, implementation and details. A good CEO and her team will handle all of that.

LESSON FOUR. “Progress Requires Broad Buy-in”. True. Yet, are you not as a Board getting way into the nitty gritty issues, while at the same time not having a clear long term goal with a Scorecard that not only educators can comprehend but all of us citizens? You did not learn that much of strategy and most all of tactics is not a Board’s prerogative to dwell in/muck around in. But the responsibility to articulate a few goals and a scorecard to vigorously monitor for the broader public is a critical constituency responsibility for the MMSD and the broader buy-in.

LESSON FIVE. “Buy-in can’t be bought”. Agree, many business values are not relevant in education.. But to me , what was not learned from the Zukerberg:Newark disaster was rather that you cannot transform a poorly performing system by simply pouring many more resources and monies into it and enabling/enhancing the status quo. (Believe now in San Francisco, Zuckerberg has learned that as well.)

LESSON SIX. “No substitute for Leadership”. Certainly. That’s why I give you folks a rough time! But your reference to a balance of ‘the best system’ and’ teacher /staff commitment’ is valid. Very much mutually needed for global achievement. And you certainly should be discussing those with Jen, as she sees fit.. But it’s not primarily your Board responsibilities. Again to repeat, by mucking around too much in those Supt. Management, and tactical areas and completely missing the long term, measurable goals/ direction, you have not learned the most critical Board role as I outlined in Lesson One above. In addition where management meets political or union road blocks to substantial progress towards those goals, boards must often step in.

And I would add in most institutions, charisma does not transfer. Milt McPike was a great leader that I’m sure considerably improved the achievement levels at East HS. But is not the Purgolders back to mediocre? If the MMSD Board would have had a transformed system with very clear long term goals for East with a PISA Scorecard that involved the public, I’m betting Milt’s accomplishments would be being built on. If we lose Jen in the next few years, I fear likewise. (Or better, you really challenge her with some 20 year global targets, get out of the way, and maybe she’ll stay with us that long.)

LESSON SEVEN. “Improvement Takes Time”. Of course. But you have simply not learned a sense of urgency. Finland, South Korea, Japan, Shanghai-China, etc….are not going to just watch and wait for 20 years our MMSD kids to catch up. They are all forthrightly after further improvement. Those countries unlike you MMSD Board Members really believe/expect their kids can be trained with the best in the world. Very high expectations! You look at where investment in the world is made…where in the USA millions of jobs lack needed skilled people….why over 65% of the UW-MSN doctoral/ post doc students in almost all of the critical science, engineering and math courses are non-Americans. You have not learned, ED, that a long term direction AND urgency must go together!

LESSON EIGHT. “Incremental progress is good progress”. Agree, lurching about in goals/system approach is not good. A “sustainable school…and coherent approach guided by a system-wide vision…” is good. But as said above, you’ve not learned that your ‘incremental progress’ is not enough! The MMSD approach essentially does not recognize the global job market our kids will walk into. Does not recognize that 20 years hence 65% of the careers now do not exist. ( So only major achievement/competency in the basics {MATH, Science, Reading} will provide some assurance of good work/salaries/further trainability during their lifetime.) That with todays transformation of technology, STEM and blue collar jobs as well as universties will definitely require those kinds of skills for social mobility and self-sufficiency.

That’s it for now. See you at the Club, give me a call if you wish to discuss further,
And either way, best regards,

Dave Baskerville (608-259-1233) www.stretchtargets.org.

Much more on Ed Hughes, here.

Unfortunately, Madison’s monolithic, $17K+ per student system has long resisted improvement. We, as a community have tolerated disastrous reading results for decades, rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB Charter school and astonishingly, are paying to expand our least diverse schools (Hamilton middle and Van Hise elementary) via a 2015 referendum….

Further reading, from 2005! When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before.

2006! “THEY’RE ALL RICH, WHITE KIDS AND THEY’LL DO JUST FINE” — NOT!

Two of the most popular — and most insidious — myths about academically gifted kids is that “they’re all rich, white kids” and that, no matter what they experience in school, “they’ll do just fine.” Even in our own district, however, the hard data do not support those assertions.
When the District analyzed dropout data for the five-year period between 1995 and 1999, they identified four student profiles. Of interest for the present purpose is the group identified as high achieving. Here are the data from the MMSD Research and Evaluation Report from May, 2000:

Group 1: High Achiever, Short Tenure, Behaved
This group comprises 27% of all dropouts during this five-year period.
Characteristics of this group:

Finally, a few of these topics arose during a recent school board member/candidate (all three ran unopposed this spring) forum. MP3 audio.

Change is hard and our children are paying a price, as Mr. Baskerville notes.

Tampa Bay Times:

One of the most controversial elements of HB 7029 is a move to create more school choice even though there already are ample choices for students and parents in many school districts. The bill would allow parents from any school district in the state whose child is not suspended or expelled to enroll their child in any public or charter school that has an open seat. There are several reasonable parts of the provision, including giving preferential treatment to students who move because of their parents’ military assignment or who seek transfers because of court proceedings such as divorces. But on balance, open choice would create havoc for local districts. It also would create a bias toward students whose families have the time and resources to take them to the school of their choice miles away — even across county lines. It would not help poor children who could benefit from attending higher-performing schools with open seats or special programs but don’t have reliable transportation to get there.

Charter schools

There is another break for charter schools in the bill, although it’s not as generous as supporters originally sought. The bill would allow charter schools to receive capital funding within two years of being established instead of the three years required now. Reducing the time frame would shortchange taxpayers who deserve more proof that a charter school is sustainable and produces solid educational results before it gets construction money. Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Nice-ville, attempted to make it more difficult for charters to get state money, particularly if they have ties to private or for-profit entities, but unfortunately lost in horse trading among lawmakers. What remains would make charters even less accountable and foolishly siphon more money from traditional public schools.

Alan Borsuk:

Point one: If Milwaukee has demonstrated anything to the nation with its long, broad and deep school choice offerings, it is that school quality is generated far more at the level of individual schools than sector by sector.

There are MPS schools where students score much above the Milwaukee averages and, in a few cases, above the state averages. There are voucher schools where that is true. And the same for charter schools. And there are MPS, voucher and charter schools with scores that raise major questions about the school.

Nobody has a monopoly on success or failure. It’s really a school-by-school subject — and, often times within schools, a classroom-by-classroom subject, with some teachers leading their students to much better outcomes than others.

Point two: There’s little reason to find joy in the overall scores, no matter the sector. Third- through eighth-graders in independent charter schools did better than voucher and MPS students for language arts (also generally labeled, “reading”). That means about a third of the charter kids were rated proficient or advanced, compared with a quarter, give or take several points, of other kids.

Robin Lake:

The question the UCLA report tries to answer is important: Do charter schools use overly harsh discipline practices? There are serious negative consequences for students who are subjected to harsh discipline practices, including loss of learning time, negative self-image, and an increased likelihood of disengagement and dropping out of school. Serious research is needed both to understand where students are being hurt and how schools can do much better. Unfortunately, this report creates more confusion than clarity.

At CRPE, we are committed to an honest assessment of equity and performance in charter schools and we are as interested as anyone in calling out bad actors. CRPE has worked diligently with a panel of research experts to develop principles for how to draw fair comparisons on discipline between charter schools and traditional public schools so that legitimate problems can be tackled head on: The UCLA report disregards most of these principles.

Our expert panel agreed that comparisons must be apples to apples—among individual schools, not between schools and whole districts; among schools serving the same grade levels and demographic groups; and among schools in communities with similar rates of student attendance and school completion. Student behavior issues and penalties must also be defined consistently and recorded in ways that, for example, distinguish between a student’s tenth offense and her first, and between a one-period exclusion from class and a two-week suspension from school. Without appropriate comparisons, one school that is doing a better job than similar schools can actually appear to be doing much worse, and vice versa.

David Blaska:

You want local control? The ultimate local control pushes decision-making down to the family kitchen table. The Republican state government gave the UW System authority to create charter schools that are independent of the school district. This is something that the Madison School District asked for, however unknowingly, when it denied Madison Urban League’s proposed Madison Prep charter school.

Under this UW aegis, the state per-pupil stipend follows the student to the independent charter school.

One bright spot: Madison schools Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham appears to get it. “My intent is to make [the independent charters] obsolete — that our schools will be serving students so well that there isn’t a need.” (Quoted here.)

Doug Erickson:

Gary Bennett, a former public school teacher, will begin April 1, according to the UW System.

He will establish and lead the new Office of Educational Opportunity, an entity proposed by Darling and other Republican legislators and approved last year as part of the state’s biennial budget process.

The office will have the ability to bypass local school boards and directly authorize new charter schools in districts with more than 25,000 students. Currently, that’s just Madison and Milwaukee.

A majority of the Madison school board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school several years ago.

Unfortnately, Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results, despite spending more than $17k/student during the 2015-2016 school year.

Citizen Ed:

The first student I met at Summit Sierra charter school in Seattle was sharp, soft-spoken, and confident. I visited on a day when students were working independently on their goals, so I was imposing on her time, but she was gracious about the interruption.

She walked me through Summit’s computer based program that keeps track of all the work she completes toward gaining admission to a college program. As a parent I saw the benefit of such a program immediately. She never has to wonder if she is on track. The program provides real time information that keeps her on the same page with her parents and teacher. No need to wait for a report card or teacher’s conference.

Every six weeks students have “expeditions,” which is an elective two week period where students can pursue subjects they care about like videography, cooking, civics, or topical focus areas like criminal justice, the stock market, or the Holocaust. For each area the school connects students with community experts.

Personalization is a key feature at Summit. Each student has a well-developed personal learning plan driven by their own interests, dreams, and goals. It’s a vision of education many schools say they want, but one few achieve for more than a pocket of lucky kids.

Often when I go into a school I see the disparity between their brochure and their reality. Websites promise lots of fanciful bells and whistles (a charter school on roller skates!) but you get in the building and notice kids are dead in the eyes, teachers are curt, and the surroundings are grim.

It’s always a good feeling to find a school with high ceilings, lots of sunlight, buoyant students, and staff who appear to have a good time. Summit is that kind of school.

Peggy Noonan:

If you are an unprotected American—one with limited resources and negligible access to power—you have absorbed some lessons from the past 20 years’ experience of illegal immigration. You know the Democrats won’t protect you and the Republicans won’t help you. Both parties refused to control the border. The Republicans were afraid of being called illiberal, racist, of losing a demographic for a generation. The Democrats wanted to keep the issue alive to use it as a wedge against the Republicans and to establish themselves as owners of the Hispanic vote.

Many Americans suffered from illegal immigration—its impact on labor markets, financial costs, crime, the sense that the rule of law was collapsing. But the protected did fine—more workers at lower wages. No effect of illegal immigration was likely to hurt them personally.

It was good for the protected. But the unprotected watched and saw. They realized the protected were not looking out for them, and they inferred that they were not looking out for the country, either.

The unprotected came to think they owed the establishment—another word for the protected—nothing, no particular loyalty, no old allegiance.

Mr. Trump came from that. . . . You see the dynamic in many spheres. In Hollywood, as we still call it, where they make our rough culture, they are careful to protect their own children from its ill effects. In places with failing schools, they choose not to help them through the school liberation movement—charter schools, choice, etc.—because they fear to go up against the most reactionary professional group in America, the teachers unions. They let the public schools flounder. But their children go to the best private schools.

This is a terrible feature of our age—that we are governed by protected people who don’t seem to care that much about their unprotected fellow citizens.

John King:

But there are still so many young people out there like me, children whose paths to school have been marked by burdens no young person should have to bear. We owe it to those children to make school for them what it was for me.

That’s why I feel such urgency about the work of education. That’s what led me to help found a school and then a school network. And it’s what drove me in my tenure as the Deputy Commissioner and then Commissioner of Education in New York State.
Roxbury Prep, the first school I co-founded, and one that is filled with young people from backgrounds like mine, became one of the highest-performing urban middle schools in the commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Uncommon Schools network that my colleagues and I created now includes nearly fifty high-performing urban schools, and impacts the lives of thousands of low-income students every day. And as a result of my tenure in Albany, I am proud to say that New York is now a

A majority of the Madison school board rejected the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school serval years ago. This, despite the government funded schools’ long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Alexander Russo:

On Friday morning, this shocking video was published in the Metro Section of the New York Times. On a surreptitious cell phone video, Success Academy Charter Schools (SA) Charlotte Dial berates a student.

If you haven’t already stopped to watch it, you should do so now. It’s only about a minute long. (No time? Not to worry. There’s a GIF version of the key moment further down.)

In an accompanying story, education reporter Kate Taylor wrote that “Interviews with 20 current and former Success teachers suggest that while Ms. Dial’s behavior might be extreme, much of it is not uncommon within the network.”

On Friday afternoon, SA held a press conference to rebut the Times’ coverage and to suggest that the problem was much more isolated than it appeared from the video: “We can’t seem to get a fair shake from the so-called paper of record,” said SA head Eva Moskowitz.

But the Times rejected the high-profile attempt to discredit its reporting, and subsequently posted a roundup of reader comments and classroom expert views. Then came a slew of Tweets, “hot takes” and a couple of explainers from mainstream outlets including Vox and the Washington Post.

Now having read most of the relevant materials, spoken to the Times deputy editor who was in charge of the piece, and gotten some additional explanations from SA itself, there are several key questions that remain unanswered, including:

1) Did the videotape and the accompanying stories of high-pressure teaching at SA schools really make the case that these kinds of practices are characteristic/common problems within the SA charter network — and if so are they any more common than they might be at other comparable NYC public schools?

2) How well or poorly did the Times and SA respond to what was a high-pressure situation for both organizations? What else might they have done to make their cases more compelling and useful to the public and the kids attending these schools?

As you’ll see below, my take is that both organizations could – should – have done better, and, the focus of this site being education journalism rather than PR strategy, that the Times in particular might have taken a few relatively easy steps to be even more careful and thoughtful than it was apparently trying to be.

Chris Rickert:

Charter schools that overhaul the usual public school model — such as the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy, which the school board rejected in 2011 — are another approach. Madison has not embraced the charter school movement with nearly as much vigor as some other districts with race- and income-based achievement gaps.

This is not to say other districts that have adopted these or other more radical changes have shown consistent success.

Some ideas for improving public education have a basis in research, while others have proven only anecdotally effective.

Carol Carstensen, a former Madison School Board member who also was instrumental in getting Schools of Hope started, said she’s not aware of evidence that charter schools, on the whole, make more progress than traditional public schools.

By contrast, the “summer slide” and need for remedial education in the fall, especially for low-income students, have long been documented and seem a pretty good rationale for year-round school.

Despite spending more than most ($17,000+ per student during the 2015-2016 school year), Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Greg Richmond:

Is it worth your time to consider the argument behind a new report that contrasts school choice with the subprime mortgage bubble? Yes, but dig beyond its face to the deeper ideology at its core.
A new front has opened in the education reform wars and if you are reading this, you should decide which side you are on.

Opponents of charter schools have begun to argue that the growth of charter schools shares characteristics with the growth of the housing bubble that collapsed in 2008. Just as the housing bubble ultimately burst, causing harm to many homeowners and to the economy, we are asked to believe that the growth of charter schools will also collapse and harm children and the general public.

The foundation text for this argument is a 28-page paper written by four professors. The paper provides a high-level summary of changes in mortgage lending practices, dating back to the 1970s, and compares those changes to certain claims about the attributes of charter schools. The four authors are professors of education, not finance or economics. The paper itself is heavily footnoted, not with reference to empirical research, but with references to newspaper columnists and bloggers. Those same columnists and bloggers are now promoting the paper as credible research, in a less than virtuous circle.

Julia Thiel:

Salgado is president and CEO of the Instituto del Progreso Latino, an organization that works to provide education, training, and employment opportunities for Latinos in Chicago. The 46-year-old has received numerous awards for his work, including, most recently, the MacArthur Foundation “genius” grant.

…..

run two charter schools, one focused on health care [the Health Sciences Career Academy]. Hospitals in the area said, “You’re doing a good job with nurses; we need doctors and surgeons.” They’re having to bring in talent from all over the world in order to meet their needs. Why can’t our kids achieve that?

A big part of the reason is they have to start thinking about it from seventh and eighth grade. Their parents are like mine—they’re factory workers, restaurant workers. They have to have course work that gets them ahead, because they’re going to have to compete for spots in nursing school or med school. So we created a school focused on incorporating a bunch of health-care courses, so that the kids that graduate really understand the human body.

Barry Garelick, via a kind email:

I attended an “Ed Camp” recently. This is one of many types of non-professional development and informal gatherings where teachers talk about various education-related topics. The camp I attended was free of charge and took place at a charter school that prided itself on a student-centered approach to learning. In keeping with the school’s focus, the camp also took a student-centered approach which it boasted about in its announcement, calling the event an “unconference”. It stated that the Ed Camp “is not your traditional educational conference; sessions will be created by attendees.”

And that’s exactly what happened. Participants wrote ideas for sessions on Post-It notes which were placed on a whiteboard. The conference organizers then put the Post-It notes in categories that formed various sessions which were then led by whomever wanted to lead them.
– See more at: http://www.educationnews.org/k-12-schools/a-math-teachers-day-at-ed-camp/#sthash.YzUfm9L7.dpuf

Eva Moskvitz:

Success Academy Charter Schools, New York City’s largest network of free charter schools, has recently been the center of controversy over its policies on student behavior. Our critics accuse us of pushing out children who might pull down our test scores, and in doing so creating what some call “a kindergarten-to-prison pipeline.” In reality, our attrition rates are lower than those of the district schools. How then do our students, chosen by lottery and mainly children of color, routinely outperform even students from wealthy…

Local4:

Gov. Rick Snyder will ask lawmakers to direct $70 million more a year over a decade to Detroit’s school district to address $715 million in operating debt.

Snyder says if nothing is done and the troubled state-run district has “financial defaults,” Michigan will be on the hook for more in the future. He warned Monday that every other K-12 district would face higher retirement system bills.

Snyder first outlined his plan to divide the district in two nearly six months ago. He expects to propose legislation this month and is hopeful the Republican-controlled Legislature will act by year’s end.

His plan would allow an education manager to close the city’s low-performing traditional or charter schools. Snyder is dropping plans for a mandatory common enrollment system, instead favoring a voluntary approach.

Alisa Robinson

After serving as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools from 2012 to 2015, Barbara Byrd-Bennett was recently forced to resign from her position in the wake of a scandal over her approval of a major school leadership development contract with her former employer. Now that Byrd-Bennett’s tenure at the head of the third largest school district in America has ended, it’s a good time to assess the legacy she leaves CPS.

Little about that legacy can be seen as positive. Nearly every major decision that Barbara Byrd-Bennett made as the CEO of Chicago Public Schools benefited wealthy white power brokers at the expense of poor and working-class black students, parents and teachers.

During her three years as CEO, she closed an unprecedented number of predominantly black neighborhood schools and fired hundreds of black teachers while opening charter schools run by wealthy white members of the corporate education reform movement and approving a $20.5 million contract for her former employer, SUPES Academy, an organization whose co-owner has an alleged history of using overtly racist and predatory language in emails to students.

Her time in Chicago was defined by an exacerbation of the school system’s racial and economic inequality. Time and again, wealthy whites gained while poor blacks lost. And, in spite of her position at the top of this prejudicial system, the final black loss was hers.

David Dahmer:

Two facts that we know to be true: One, children who can read, who love to learn, and who can work effectively with others will be best prepared to lead happy lives and raise happy and healthy families as adults. Two, many children of color in low-income families don’t start their learning in accredited childcare centers and quickly fall behind their peers. Most never catch up.

Kaleem Caire, founder and president of One City Early Learning Center on Madison’s south side, knows that his new endeavor will help create opportunities for struggling young people and their parents. One City Early Learning Centers believes in the old adage that it takes a village to raise a child.

“It’s huge to be able to say that in South Madison we have this organically grown thing created by a native Madisonian from Fisher Street who was born and raised in the area,” Caire told Madison365. “It gives some inspiration to what we are doing, but the focus is really trying to get these kids ready for school.

Related: Kaleem Caire and the rejected Madison Preparatory academy IB charter school.

Laura Waters:

But you have to understand where I’m coming from. My parents were both UFT members (my dad was a high school teacher and my mom was a high school social worker) and we practically davened to Albert Shanker, AFT’s founder. I knew all the words to Woody Guthrie’s labor hymn, “There Once was a Union Maid” (who never was afraid of goons and ginks and company finks…). I sang it to my kids too. What do you expect from an education-obsessed New York Jew from a union household?

During the 1960’s, ‘70’s, and ‘80’s there was no divide between education reform and union fidelity. If you were a UFT member than you were devoted to improving student outcomes. Everyone, or almost everyone, was on the same side.

And now we’re here, fraught with division. De Blasio ran on a platform that explicitly opposed the “creation of new charter schools” or the “co-location of charter schools within public schools” despite a waiting list of 43,000 names. He’s made enemies of Gov. Cuomo, a fellow Democrat, almost entirely through divergent education agendas, and Eva Moskowitz, who runs the most outstanding and popular group of charter schools in the city. Most importantly, he appears willing to sacrifice minority children’s educational opportunities to stay within the good graces of UFT.

We live in a political world of lobbyists and special interests, of PAC’s and Citizens United. But elected representatives, especially the leader of one of the most educationally-troubled cities, have an absolute obligation to separate politics from policy. I think de Blasio is a good man but I think he’s crossed that line.

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results despite spending double the national average per student.

Related: Madison’s schwerpunkt.

Dan Dempsey:

A study, entitled “The Mirage,” was based on surveys of 10,000 teachers and 500 school leaders, along with interviews with more than 100 staff involved in teacher development. The surveys and interviews were conducted in three large school districts and a mid-sized charter school network.

PD costs were found to average $18,000 per student per year. Based on findings, it is estimated that the 50 largest U.S. school districts alone spend about $8 billion annually on teacher development, far more than was previously thought.

Given the large increase in instructional time, it is extremely hard to believe that the new fidelity of implementation to the new K-5 Everyday Math textbook series and associated professional development accompanying the adoption were of any value.

There was NO … observable, measurable progress toward an ambitious standard for teaching and student learning due to this fall 2007 adoption of EDM materials and accompanying professional development.

It is way past time to REEVALUATE existing professional learning supports and programs.

It would also be a good idea to use relevant data in the selection of textbooks and materials.

Charles Chieppo: Teaching Teachers: Big Costs, Little Payoff:

Given that it’s become a truism that teacher quality impacts student learning more than any other variable within the four walls of a school, the results of a new study of teachers’ professional development programs are particularly troubling. There are two main takeaways from the report by TNTP, a nonprofit formerly known as The New Teacher Project: Taxpayers invest a lot more resources in teacher development programs than previously thought, and there is no link between these programs and improved classroom performance.

That second finding, in particular, will have a positive impact if it prompts school districts to clearly define what teacher effectiveness looks like and to measure professional development programs in terms of how they help teachers get closer to that goal.

The study, entitled “The Mirage,” was based on surveys of 10,000 teachers and 500 school leaders, along with interviews with more than 100 staff involved in teacher development. The surveys and interviews were conducted in three large school districts and a mid-sized charter school network.

Alan Borsuk:

That said, I’d call the Kettle Moraine School District the real thing, for three reasons.

First, the 4,400-student district in western Waukesha County has a strong commitment to get the broadest perspective on how its students are doing. Talking about student performance, Superintendent Patricia Deklotz said, “Our results are generally high, but compared to whom?”

How about: Compared to the highest-performing education systems on the planet?

Kettle Moraine has been at the forefront of a still-small movement in Wisconsin and nationwide to compare student performance at a school level against the world. The way to do that is through use of the OECD Test for Schools, a version of the international test that underlies almost everything you’ve seen about how American kids are doing compared to kids in Finland, Singapore and so on.

For the past two years — and, very likely, again in the coming school year — a representative sample of students at Kettle Moraine High School took the OECD test. Last year, a sample of students at KM Perform, a charter school within the district, also took the test.

Overall, the results for the main high school were OK in the first year — not great in reading, better in math and science. School leaders thought one reason scores weren’t higher was simply that students didn’t try their hardest. Results aren’t reported for individual students and carry no consequences for them.

In the second year, participating students got a sales job on why they should give the test their best effort — they got T-shirts, water bottles and pep talks about being the team from Kettle Moraine competing with the world. For the main high school, math and science scores stayed about the same and reading scores jumped significantly. For KM Perform, which is smaller and has an arts emphasis, results were even better.

Overall, the Kettle Moraine students did much better than the United States. If Kettle Moraine was a country, it would be among the top performers in the world.

Meanwhile, nothing of the sort has occured in Madison, where disastrous reading results have long been tolerated.

Jim Epstein:

New York released its annual test scores this week, and Success Academy, the city’s rapidly expanding charter school network, posted remarkable results. Again.

Success Academy schools did well in English—68 percent of students were proficient, compared with 30 percent in the city over all—but in math, the scores were astonishing. Ninety-three percent of Success Academy test-takers were proficient in math, compared with 35 percent citywide.

To put that into perspective, of the 1,282 public schools tested, just 12[*] were part of the Success Academy network, or 1 percent of the total. Yet 5 out of the 10 schools that scored highest in math were part of the Success Academy network. Of the 20 schools that did best in math, 9 were part of the Success Academy network. All twelve schools in the network were ranked in the top 40 for math. Results of this sort were unheard of before Success Academy arrived on the scene.

Eva Moskowitz:

Not only does playing games in school develop the kind of social and emotional skills that translate to adult success, it’s also a means by which special needs kids without vocal agility can demonstrate their ability in nontraditional ways. In this video interview, Success Academy Charter Schools CEO Eva Moskowitz shares how playing chess allowed her son the chance to shine. She also delves into the need for schools to allow different types of children with different strengths and growth areas their own opportunities to learn and excel.

Kate Taylor:

Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has been out of office for a year and a half, but his influence over New York schools is practically as strong as ever.

A group devoted to continuing his education agenda and founded in part by his longtime schools chancellor, has become one of the most powerful forces in Albany by pouring millions into lobbying and adroitly exploiting rivalries in state politics.

The organization, StudentsFirstNY, and another group with a similar focus called Families for Excellent Schools have formed a counterweight to teachers’ unions, long among the top spenders in the state capital. This year alone, the groups saw major elements of their platforms come to pass, such as tying teacher evaluations more closely to test scores, adding hurdles to earning tenure and increasing the number of charter schools, measures all unpopular with the unions.

Andy Hawf:

That is not to say we haven’t achieved great things. We have expanded and protected parents’ right to choose their children’s schools through a citywide unified enrollment system. We have created a city in which independent charter schools and charter management organizations are enthusiastically and successfully serving a population much more at risk than that of the traditional school district. And while people in cities like New York and Washington, D.C. argue over whether charter schools should “backfill,” our charter schools are already serving all students, accepting them year-round, and creating innovative programs for students with significant disabilities.

So, what does this mean? And what does it mean for the next 10 years?

Mitch Henck:

Gee, Kaleem Caire and other black community leaders fought for Madison Prep. It was a proposed charter school aimed at serving young males, mostly black and Hispanic, to be taught predominantly by teachers of color for more effective role modeling.

Berg and several white conservatives in Madison, along with moderate John Roach, supported Madison Prep. It was voted down by white progressives, 5-2.

In 1983, white progressives voted for the Midvale/Lincoln and Randall/Franklin pairing plan 4-3. Berg joined conservative Nancy Harper and board president Salter in opposing the busing plan.

Gee says poor performance and bad behavior can be related to children of color feeling lost in an unfamiliar environment. That can lead to children “working” the teachers or pushing the envelope more than what would happen if teachers of color and similar culture could relate to parents and command more respect in class.

As reported in this paper last Sunday, Gee spoke to Madison School Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham and other school officials about his ideas to close the achievement gap. “They didn’t run out of the room,” Gee said.

It’s not clear if Madison’s education establishment will budge on Gee’s ideas, which include recruiting more parent leaders and working with employers to train young entrepreneurs.

Possible de-regulation of Wisconsin charter school authorizations has lead to a bit of rhetoric on the state of Madison’s schools, their ability to compete and whether the District’s long term, disastrous reading results are being addressed. We begin with Chris Rickert:

Madison school officials not eager to cede control of ‘progress’:

Still, Department of Public Instruction student achievement data suggest independent charter schools overseen by UW-Milwaukee since 1999 provide better educations than Milwaukee public schools.

And if the UW System gets the authority to create a new office for approving charter schools in Madison, it wouldn’t be the first time a local or state government function was usurped by unelected and allegedly unaccountable people at higher levels of government who are aiming to eliminate injustice. U.S. presidents sent federal authorities to the South during the civil rights era. Appointed state and federal judges have been asked to overturn local and state abortion-related ordinances and laws. Last year, a federal judge struck down Wisconsin’s voter-approved gay marriage ban.

The injustice in the Madison School District is, of course, its decades-long failure to close achievement gaps between white students and students of color and between middle class and poor students.

Cheatham told this newspaper that “we are making progress on behalf of all children.”

Apparently, the district feels it should be the only educational organization in Madison with the opportunity to make such progress.

That’s because control over education might be as high a priority for the district as improving education.

David Blaska:

It is a worthy debate, for there is little doubt that the full school board, its superintendent, its teachers union, the Democratic Party, Mayor Soglin, and probably the majority of Madisonians share Ed’s sentiments. For the festive rest of us, the white lab coats at the Blaska Policy Research Werkes have developed an alternative Top Ten, dedicated to the late Larry “Bud” Melman.

1) Attack the motives of your adversaries. “What’s tougher is buying into [the] interpretation that the Joint Finance Committee Republicans are the good guys here, struggling mightily to do what’s right for our kids,” Ed Hughes says. “My much different interpretation is that the Joint Finance proposal is simply another cynical attack on our neighborhood public schools and is motivated both by animus for Madison and by an unseemly obsession with privatizing public education, particularly in the urban areas of our state.”

Unseemly! Particularly in urban Milwaukee, where the public school district as a whole has received a failing grade from the Department of Public Instruction, and in Madison, with a yawning chasm between black and white student achievement.

2) Nobody asked our permission. Ed complains that nobody consulted MMSD about its “strategies for enhancing student achievement, promising practices, charter school philosophy, or anything else.” Um, sometimes results speak louder than pretty words on paper, Ed.

Madison School Board Member Ed Hughes:

So we have two contrasting interpretations of the proposal. As it happens, I am right and Rickert is wrong. To help Rickert see the error of his ways, here’s a Letterman-like list of the top ten reasons why the Joint Finance proposal to establish a so-called “Office of Educational Opportunity” within the office of the UW System President is a cynical ploy to stuff Madison with charter schools for the sake of having more charter schools rather than a noble effort to combat injustice:

Mr. Hughes, in 2005:

This points up one of the frustrating aspects of trying to follow school issues in Madison: the recurring feeling that a quoted speaker – and it can be someone from the administration, or MTI, or the occasional school board member – believes that the audience for an assertion is composed entirely of idiots.

Finally, then Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman, in 2009:

Zimman’s talk ranged far and wide. He discussed Wisconsin’s K-12 funding formula (it is important to remember that school spending increases annually (from 1987 to 2005, spending grew by 5.10% annually in Wisconsin and 5.25% in the Madison School District), though perhaps not in areas some would prefer.

“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).

Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Mike Atonucci:

For those who are in – or, in my case, marginally associated with – the business of public education, it is easy to assume that others share your enthusiasm equally. We are constantly told that education is one of the nation’s top issues, we spend vast amounts of money on it, and we argue about it incessantly.

The delicious irony is that time and again we discover that the general public is paying virtually no attention to any of it. They are highly uneducated about education.

Poll after poll over the years have indicated that Americans don’t know how much we spend on education, don’t know what a charter school is, don’t know what teachers make, and now, don’t know what the Common Core State Standards are.

Alex Hernandez:

The families of 21,000 New York City students applied for 1,000 openings at public charter schools run by the nonprofit Achievement First. And 22,000 students hoped to land one of 2,300 slots at Success Academy Charter Schools.

During school enrollment season, families are telling school districts exactly which public schools they want their children to attend. To paraphrase former NBA player Rasheed Wallace, “[school choice] don’t lie.”

Molly Knefel:

When he was young, Cadeem Gibbs was really into school. Bright, curious, and naturally rebellious, he enjoyed arguing the opposing point of view in a classroom discussion just to see how well he could do it. “I was always academically inclined,” says the Harlem native, now 24. “I always wanted to learn.”

But there were plenty of stressors in his young life—a violent upbringing, a household in poverty—and the struggle to navigate them pulled him away from his education. He started getting into trouble and ended up in the juvenile justice system at the age of 12. That first contact with “the system” began a 10-year cycle of incarceration that ended only when Gibbs was released from an upstate New York prison two years ago, at the age of 22. He was just a sixth grader when first arrested, but he would never complete a school year as a free child again.

Americans believe that education is the great equalizer, the key that opens the door to a better future and lifts young people out of poverty. And this is true, to an extent—those who finish high school or college have lower unemployment rates and higher incomes than those who don’t. But while people who don’t complete their education are more likely to stay in poverty, they’re also more likely to come from poverty. In the 21st century, so-called reformers have emerged to prescribe everything from charter schools to iPads in order to boost poor students’ educational achievements.

Nate Silver:

When I was a freshman at the University of Chicago in 1996, I heard the same thing again and again: Do not leave the boundaries of Hyde Park. Do not go north of 47th Street. Do not go south of 61st Street. Do not go west of Cottage Grove Avenue. 1

These boundaries were fairly explicit, almost to the point of being an official university policy. The campus police department was not committed to protecting students beyond the area,2 and the campus safety brochure advised students not to use the “El” train stops just a couple of blocks beyond them unless “traveling in groups and during the daytime.”

What usually wasn’t said — on a campus that brags about the diversity of its urban setting but where only about 5 percent of students are black — was that the neighborhoods beyond these boundaries were overwhelmingly black and poor. The U. of C. has, for many decades, treated Hyde Park as its “fortress on the South Side,” and its legacy of trying to keep its students within the neighborhood — and the black residents of surrounding communities out — has left its mark on Chicago.

Related: the expansion of Madison’s least diverse schools, despite long term disastrous reading results and the rejection of the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school.

Rachel Cohen:

Twice a week for 30 minutes, fifth graders at KIPP Washington Heights, a charter school in New York City, attend “character class.” Each lesson is divided into three parts, according to Ian Willey, the assistant principal who teaches it. First, students find out what specific skill they’ll be focusing on that day. “This morning we’re going to learn how to set a long-term goal,” Willey might tell them. Next, students are asked to practice the skill. In this case, students may imagine they have a long-term project to complete, and then work to construct a timeline with incremental deadlines. In the final part of the lesson, students would take time to collectively reflect. “What was hard about this exercise?” Willey might ask. “What went well? Did anyone feel nervous? What did you do when you felt nervous?” And because part of KIPP’s mission is to help build character, the students would then classify their new skill as one or more of KIPP’s seven targeted character goals. In this example, the students were learning “grit.”

Few ideas inspire more debate in education circles than grit, which means having dedication to and passion for long-term goals. Angela Duckworth, a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, first popularized the concept in 2007; she believes that if we can teach children to be “grittier” in schools, we can help them achieve greater success. Paul Tough, a journalist who published a 2012 bestseller, How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character, also brought grit into the national spotlight. Many policymakers and school leaders have since jumped at the idea. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan praised Tough’s “fantastic book”—arguing that teaching skills like grit “can help children flourish and overcome significant challenges throughout their lifetimes.” Districts all over the country are exploring how they can incorporate grit into their curriculum. In 2013, Duckworth was awarded $625,000 by the MacArthur Foundation to continue researching ways to cultivate grit in schools.

Danielle Hauser:

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

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

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

Eva Moskowitz:

This week, 1.1 million children in New York State will take Common Core-aligned standardized tests amidst a growing national revolt against testing.

Standardized tests don’t measure real learning, just superficial test-taking skills, and our obsession with them is destroying our nation’s schools by taking away from real learning.

As the mother of a high school student who just took the SATs, I can empathize with those holding such views. But, as the head of a network of charter schools, I know these tenets of the anti-testing movement to be false.

My schools are known for our students’ high test scores. Although we admit students by lottery, 94 percent of our eighth graders pass the English exam compared to 14 percent in central Harlem, where most of these students come from. Some believe we accomplish these results by a laser-beam-like focus on test prep at the expense of overall education. They’re wrong.

Robert Pondsco:

If you don’t live in New York City or within the education policy universe, Eva Moskowitz might not be on your radar screen. She should be. With a recent front page piece in The New York Times about the extraordinary results posted by her network of 32 Success Academy charter schools and how those results were achieved, Moskowitz is the most controversial figure in American education today.

She’s also a devastatingly effective political player whose name is on every credible short list of candidates to be New York’s next mayor, and deservedly so. Her successful battles with incumbent Mayor Bill de Blasioare becoming legendary.

But she’s as much educator as politico. When New York adopted more rigorous, Common Core-aligned tests two years ago, scores slumped statewide, including at most of Gotham’s successful charter schools. But Success Academy soared. While just 29 percent of New York City students met the new, higher English standards last year, 64 percent of those attending Success Academies were proficient; in math, they nearly tripled the weak city-wide performance. A stunning 94 percent of Success Academy students, mostly low-income children of color, made the grade.

Tap to view a larger version of these images.

Martin F. Lueken, Ph.D., Rick Esenberg & CJ Szafir, via a kind reader (PDF):

Robustness checks: Lastly, to check if the estimates from our main analysis behave differently when we modify our models, we conduct a series of robustness checks in our analysis. We estimate models with alternate specifications, disaggregate the spending variable by function, and examine an alternate data set that includes one year of school-level expenditures. Details about these approaches and their results are described and reported in Appendix B. As with our main analysis, we did not find conclusive evidence to indicate that marginal changes in spending had a significant impact on student outcomes.

Conclusion: We do not find reliable evidence in the data that a systematic relationship exists between additional spending and student outcomes. These results are similar to a larger body of research on the effectiveness of spending. Economist Eric Hanushek (2003), for example, systematically reviewed research on the effectiveness of key educational resources in U.S. schools. In examining the impact of per-pupil educational expenditures, he tallied the statistical significance and impact of 163 estimates on the impact of spending on student outcomes and found that 27% of these estimates were positive and statistically significant, while 66% were not statistically significant, meaning no impacts were detected.

Advocates for keeping the status quo argue for increasing education spending to solve problems with our education system. But, it is not the case that resources alone will bring about improvement – even substantial infusions of resources, as was the case with Kansas City’s experience. One plausible explanation may be that districts have reached what economists call diminishing returns. This occurs when an organization reaches a point where additional dollars spent do not produce proportional benefits, holding everything else constant. For example, a dollar spent on education in developing counties, such as India, is more likely to have a greater impact than in Wisconsin – or elsewhere in the United States – which spends more than most of the developed world.

This raises a question for policymakers: Has Wisconsin hit a wall where an additional dollar in education spending will not bring improvements in student outcomes? The results of our research indicate that this may be the case.

….

Funding disparities between schools
As Figure 8 shows, significant disparities in public funding exist among traditional public schools and both private schools in the choice program and independent public charter schools. The amount that independent charters and choice schools receive is set by state law. Currently, the amount of a voucher for the choice programs is $7,210 for K- 8 and $7,856 for grades 9-12.

Independent charters in Milwaukee receive the same amount (state law reflects that). Public school districts, on average, receive $12,512 per pupil. Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) receives $14,333 per pupil (Figure 8).

This disparity is not new. Since 2000, expenditures increased for public schools statewide by 3% while it decreased for independent charter and private schools in the parental choice program by 7% to 8% (adjusted for inflation, i.e. “real”).43 Notably, revenues for MPS increased by 15% in real terms.

Locally, Madison spends double the national average per student, or more than $15K annually, yet has long tolerated disastrous reading results.

Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry:

The tragedy of the discussion around “school choice” in America is the hidden presumption that “school choice” doesn’t exist already. But it does — for the privileged. This is not only a matter of the privileged being able to afford private schools, but also the fact that, through the public school catchment system, the real estate market is really the market for schools. Every family in America wants to buy a house in a place where there are good schools. Every commonwealth tries to boost real estate values by improving schools. That’s how the system works. The rich get school choice, the poor get… whatever.

The drive for school choice is not a drive to turn schools into a marketplace, it’s only to give the poor a way to access the preexisting market, which is currently closed off to them.

Charter schools are a step in the right direction, but the future should belong to K-12 spending accounts, whereby parents can spend their tuition dollars not just on a specific school but on a broad panel of educational activities, including internships, apprenticeships, and more. Families could pool accounts together and the poor and disabled would received fatter accounts.

I wholeheartedly agree. Madison is exhibit 1. Decades of monolithic K-12 governence combined with spending double the national average per student has failed to address its long term disastrous reading results.

Hank Long:

Public schools are required by state and federal law to accept students with disabilities and to make appropriate accommodations for their learning.
So when a district – despite its best of intentions – fails to meet the individual educational needs of such students, where are the students and their families to turn?

That’s an issue Amy Christensen-Bruce grappled with for years before she discovered Academy of Whole Learning. The private school located in St. Louis Park primarily serves students with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Christensen-Bruce said it was the first school that was able gain her confidence that the unique needs of her now fourth-grade son – who has autism – were being met.
Whether he was enrolled at a local public school or a charter school, Christensen-Bruce said her child struggled to learn at the rate she knew he was capable of.

LS Hall:

More than a decade ago, Milwaukee was ground zero of the education reform movement. Starting with a controversial private school voucher program launched in 1990, Wisconsin’s largest city went on to embrace not only vouchers, but charter schools and a series of reform initiatives in the Milwaukee Public Schools, one of the lowest-performing in the nation.

The Walton Family Foundation has been at the center of much of that work. Over the last decade, the funder has lavished more than $30 million in grants on school reform efforts in Milwaukee, supporting such organizations as Teach For America and Schools That Can Milwaukee, a nonprofit that promotes innovation and reform in private, charter, and traditional public schools.

But after years of such commitment, Walton is stepping back from Milwaukee. The funder announced it was redirecting its education grant-making activities to “places that we believe are most ripe for improving our education system.”

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email:

We had a great time at our campaign kick-off event for One City Early Learning Centers at the CUNA Mutual Conference Center on March 6! More than 350 friends and champions for children joined us on a Friday night to learn about our plans to raise $1.4 million to establish a new type of preschool in the Madison area.

One City will take a two-generation community impact approach to providing young children with the learning and developmental experiences they need to become compassionate and high potential learners, leaders and students in school and life, and to be reading-ready by the time they reach kindergarten.

Attendees learned about our three strategic priorities:

1. Empowered and Happy Children
2. Strong and Happy Families, and
3. Healthy and Resource-Filled Neighborhoods

We shared our educational approach and plans for establishing One City’s Parent University and Family Resource Network. We highlighted the partnerships we are developing to support strong families and cultivate talented and successful children. We also shared how One City will be an active partner in efforts to continue the revitalization of South Madison. We want to ensure that children in our neighborhood and preschool are raised in safe, sustainable and enriching environments, and that parents have access to high quality, affordable and accessible early education opportunities for their children while they work and continue their education.

Additionally, Forward Community Investments announced their purchase of the South Madison Day Care facility for One City. This marks the first time FCI has purchased property and made such an investment in their 19-year history. The details of this unique partnership inspired everyone in attendance and we raised $40,126 towards our goal that night!

Thank you for your support, encouragement and partnership. We appreciate you! We also thank and appreciate CUNA Mutual Group Foundation, Forward Community Investments and Urban Assets Consulting for hosting and supporting the event, and supporting the launch of One City.

Building the Bridge to a Bright Future for Kids.

Onward.

Kaleem Caire
Founder, President & CEO
kcaire@onecityearlylearning.org
Phone: 608.268.8004

LEARN MORE

To take a virtual tour of our preschool (pre-renovation), which is located at 2012 Fisher Street on Madison’s South Side, click here.

To view photographs of our kick-off event, click here. As Dr. Frank Byrne, the recently retired president of St. Mary’s Hospital noted, “One City was here in this room this evening. It was beautiful.”

To review and download the PowerPoint presentation we gave at the kick-off event, and that many in attendance expressed an interest in obtaining, click here. To arrange a presentation, please contact Quinn Heneghan at quinn@urbanassetsconsulting.com or 608.819.6566.

To view a list of our early supporters, our Bridge Builders, click here.

Give what you can. We’ve had investors contribute $10, $10,000 and $50,000. We want as many people, businesses and institutions to contribute as possible so we can (a) achieve our fundraising goal, (b) get our school opened by September 1, 2015 and (c) live out the meaning and intent of our name – One City coming together to invest in the potential and future of its children.

To make your tax-deductible investment in One City and join our list of Bridge Builders – click here. You can also download and complete our pledge form by clicking here and mailing it along with your contribution (payable to One City Early Learning) to:

One City Early Learning Centers
c/o Scholz Nonprofit Law
16 North Carroll Street, Suite 530
Madison, WI 53703
Phone: 608.268.0076

Related:

Madison’s long term, disastrous reading results.

Kaleem Caire attempted to create the Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School. Unfortunately, it was rejected by a majority of the Madison School Board.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Madison spends about double the national average per student.

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

Matthew Albright:

Wilmington’s school system needs sweeping changes if its children are to escape the poverty and crime threatening their futures, a committee created by Gov. Jack Markell said Monday.

The Wilmington Education Advisory Council’s recommendations would drastically rework how the city’s schools are managed, funded, and operated. They include:

Removing the Christina and Colonial School Districts from the city

Placing a hold on the approval of new charter schools until the state can design a comprehensive plan for how they should grow

Changing the way schools are funded in Delaware to funnel more resources to high-poverty schools

Creating an office of education in Wilmington government to give city officials more say in what happens in schools.

“Now is the time to act and to do so in ways that will strengthen Wilmington education for decades to come,” wrote Tony Allen, a senior Bank of America executive and the council’s chairman, in a letter to school and city leaders. “The benefits of these actions for Delaware and its largest metropolitan center cannot be overstated.”

Susan Dynarski:

There are enormous inequalities in education in the United States. A child born into a poor family has only a 9 percent chance of getting a college degree, but the odds are 54 percent for a child in a high-income family. These gaps open early, with poor children less prepared than their kindergarten classmates.

How can we close these gaps? Contentious, ambitious reforms of the education system crowd the headlines: the Common Core, the elimination of teacher tenure, charter schools. The debate is heated and sometimes impolite (a recent book about education is called “The Teacher Wars”).
Yet as these debates rage, researchers have been quietly finding small, effective ways to improve education. They have identified behavioral “nudges” that prod students and their families to take small steps that can make big differences in learning. These measures are cheap, so schools or nonprofits could use them immediately.

Luisa Kroll, via a kind Erich Zellmer email:

A vision for the future of education sits within a converted church in the heart of a working-class neighborhood in northern Houston, abutted by auto parts stores and a heat treatment plant. At YES Prep North Central, homogeneity reigns: Of the 953 middle and high schoolers at the 11-year-old charter school, 96% are Hispanic, and a similarly large majority live at or below the poverty line. The kids are dressed the same–blue or khaki pants with school-issued polo shirts. But most important, their outcomes are uniform, too: 100% of graduates get into a four-year college, as the university pennants lining the hallways suggest.

Gliding into the school, 44-year-old Carrie Walton Penner sticks out from the students–older, blonder and, in jeans and a black wrap jacket, more polished than the young collegiate uniforms she weaves through. She’s also the granddaughter of Wal-Mart founder Sam Walton, the daughter of current company chairman Rob Walton, an heir to the largest family fortune, to the tune of $165 billion, in the entire world. And as the family’s point person on education issues, she’s arguably the most powerful force in the charter school movement. “How long is the longest-serving teacher?” she asks the school director, amid a flurry of questions. “Is there step-up pay and pay for performance?”

Alan Borsuk:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Danny Garrett:

The focus of the meeting was improving education in the United States. Participants had the opportunity to attend break-out sessions and learn more about the challenges and opportunities facing education in the U.S. A variety of viewpoints were expressed; some presenters/attenders favor the Common Core standards and approach, while other presenters/participants strongly oppose this approach. I found the conference to be very informative. I left the meetings maintaining a strong resolve that states control education within their borders, and that educational standards, resources and funding must increase if we are serious about improving education.

I also believe that charter schools and other alternative approaches to education merit consideration in certain circumstances. In addition, we need to promote and emphasize career, technical and vocational educational programs; every student is not going to attend college and our current system is generally not adequately preparing students who make up this category.

I spoke with several constituents, state legislators and University of Alabama System personnel about the decision by UAB’s administration to terminate its football program. If UAB is going to continue to emphasize and grow undergraduate programs and attract more resident students, I believe that athletic programs – especially football – are important to achieving this strategy. I wrote a letter to UAB President Dr. Ray Watts, urging him to work with the city of Birmingham, corporations and individuals in the metropolitan area to identify ways to financially support and continue the football program. I plan to continue to explore and better understand the issues surrounding Dr. Watts’ decision and recommendation.

Dropout Nation, via a kind reader:

Yesterday’s revelation by Washington Free Beacon of documents detailing how secretive progressive outfit Democracy Alliance coordinated its unsuccessful efforts to elect Democratic candidates during this year’s election cycle have certainly stirred discussion. After all, for all the carping of progressive groups (especially education traditionalists) this year over the role of David and Charles Koch in financing political campaigns, the report by Lachlan Markey show that they are also far too willing to leverage money in their campaigning — and even go around campaign finance laws to do so. This includes the Democracy Alliance members working with Catalist LLC, the data hub for the Democratic National Committee, to use the party’s donor and voter data to quietly coordinate their efforts.

Yet school reformers should pay great heed to Markey’s report as well as to the documents revealed. Why? Because they also offer a guide on how the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers are co-opting progressive groups in order to defend their declining influence over education policy.

As Dropout Nation readers know by now, the NEA and AFT have long been key donors to progressive outfits willing to do their bidding. In 2013-2014 alone, the AFT gave $25,000 each to Progressive States Network, Progress Michigan, and Netroots Nation, while handing out another $60,000 to Center for Popular Democracy’s Action Fund, which has campaigned against the expansion of charter schools and so-called “privatization” of American public education. In 2012-2013, NEA contributed $332,000 to Progress Now; $100,000 to Progressive States Action, an affiliate of the Progressive States Network; and and $30,000 to the Leadership Center for the Common Good Action Fund, one of the now-defunct ACORN’s many spinoffs.

George Joseph:

Over the summer, FBI agents stormed nineteen charter schools as part of an ongoing investigation into Concept Charter Schools. They raided the buildings seeking information about companies the prominent Midwestern charter operator had contracted with under the federal E-Rate program.

The federal investigation points to possible corruption at the Gulen charter network, with which Concept is affiliated and which takes its name from the Turkish cleric Fetullah Gulen. And a Jacobin investigation found that malfeasance in the Gulen network, the second largest in the country, is more widespread than previously thought. Federal contracting documents suggest that the conflict-of-interest transactions occurring at Concept are a routine practice at other Gulen-affiliated charter school operators.

The Jacobin probe into Gulen-affiliated operators in Texas, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, and California found that roughly $4 million in E-Rate contract disbursements and $1.7 million in Department of Education Race to the Top grantee awards were given to what appear to be “related parties.” Awarding contracts to firms headed by related parties would seem to violate the FCC’s requirement that the school’s bidding process be “competitive” as well as “open and fair.”

Related: Philadelphia Schools, Another Year, Another Crisis.

Erin Richards:

How long you’ve lived in Milwaukee and Wisconsin likely correlates with how you heard of Howard Fuller.

As director of Marquette University’s Institute for the Transformation of Learning and board chair of charter school Milwaukee Collegiate Academy? Young, or recent transplant.

As the former superintendent of Milwaukee Public Schools and initial champion of the Milwaukee private-school voucher program? You’re older or familiar with education matters.

As the former head of Milwaukee County’s Health and Human Services Department, former dean of general education at the Milwaukee Area Technical College, or former secretary of the department of employment relations under then-Gov. Anthony Earl? You’re a lifer.

In a new book, Fuller discloses details about the rest of his extensive career — graduating from North Division High School, becoming a community activist in the South, founding an all-black university in North Carolina, advocating for African liberation, even briefly selling life insurance before quitting with an outrageous exit speech.

Tutankhamun Assad, via a kind reader:

I am a blue collar African-American man and the proud father of two black boys. I enjoyed reading the Rev. Alex Gee’s eloquent piece about racial disparities, and the many spot-on articles that have followed. While fully appreciating the concern exhibited by the white community for these very real issues, I have to ask: What is the role of the African-American community in these racial disparities? Are we enabling the drivers of disparity by lowering our own expectations? Where is the honest conversation about our accountability in helping reduce those disparities?

I attended many of the disparity meetings and noticed one glaring omission: the secret truths we as African-Americans understand about what is oppressing our culture and our refusal to discuss what we do to sabotage our own cultural advancement. We fully expect transparency and accountability from white Madison, so why can’t we be honest with ourselves? For instance, while we expect many things from the school system — and it is glaringly obvious it is failing us — it should be equally obvious that we are failing ourselves. We are sending children out of the house who are not prepared to survive, much less thrive.

The African-American community needs to talk about three topics that have not been addressed: 1. The public demeanor of our youth. Too often black adults see disgraceful behavior exhibited by our children and we simply stand by and allow it to continue. In malls, schools, at sports functions, or in any public place, our children often are not conducting themselves as if we have taught them how to behave. We must admit this and acknowledge that we are responsible for said behavior. How many of us have challenged kids about their behavior? Then again, when a responsible adult talks to us about our children’s actions, we respond with this: “You talk to me, not my kid!” Well, where were you when your kid was acting out? We want the whole community to baby-sit our kids, but then we get mad when someone attempts to functionally act as a parent. Far too frequently we sabotage positive African-American role models in our communities, all the while genuflecting to the white power elite.

Related: The proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School, rejected by a majority of the Madison School Board.

Madison 2005 (reflecting 1998):

When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before
On November 7, Superintendent Art Rainwater made his annual report to the Board of Education on progress toward meeting the district’s student achievement goal in reading. As he did last fall, the superintendent made some interesting claims about the district’s success in closing the academic achievement gap “based on race”.

According to Mr. Rainwater, the place to look for evidence of a closing achievement gap is the comparison of the percentage of African American third graders who score at the lowest level of performance on statewide tests and the percentage of other racial groups scoring at that level. He says that, after accounting for income differences, there is no gap associated with race at the lowest level of achievement in reading. He made the same claim last year, telling the Wisconsin State Journal on September 24, 2004, “for those kids for whom an ability to read would prevent them from being successful, we’ve reduced that percentage very substantially, and basically, for all practical purposes, closed the gap”. Last Monday, he stated that the gap between percentages scoring at the lowest level “is the original gap” that the board set out to close.

Unfortunately, that is not the achievement gap that the board aimed to close.

In 1998, the Madison School Board adopted an important academic goal: “that all students complete the 3rd grade able to read at or beyond grade level”. We adopted this goal in response to recommendations from a citizen study group that believed that minority students who are not competent as readers by the end of the third grade fall behind in all academic areas after third grade.

As of 2013, the situation has not changed, unfortunately.

Madison, 2014, the view from Milwaukee:

The largest state teachers union, the Wisconsin Education Association Council, gave $1.3 million last month to the Greater Wisconsin Committee, a liberal group that has been running ads critical of Walker. Two of WEAC’s political action committees have given a total of $83,128 to Burke directly.

On the other side, the American Federation for Children said last year in a brochure that in the 2012 elections in Wisconsin, including the recalls that year, it had spent $2.4 million supporting pro-voucher candidates.

Along with family members, Dick and Betsy DeVos have given about $343,000 to Walker since 2009. The Grand Rapids, Mich., couple made their fortune in the marketing firm Amway and now support the voucher school movement.

The elections are critical because in general, each candidate’s stance on the issue of vouchers is largely dictated by their political party affiliation. If Republican candidates maintain control of both houses and the governor’s seat, voucher-friendly legislation is more likely to pass.

Democrats are trying to take control of the state Senate. Republicans hold the chamber 17-15, with one GOP-leaning seat vacant. Republicans have a stronger majority in the Assembly and the election is unlikely to change that.

Senate Democrats would oppose the expansion of voucher schools until standards and requirements are established that put those private schools on the same footing as public schools, Senate Minority Leader Chris Larson (D-Milwaukee) said.

…….

Walker on Wednesday also challenged Burke’s record on the Madison School Board.

He noted that the graduation rate for black students in Madison is lower than the graduation rate for black students in MPS.

Walker said Burke has had a chance to use his Act 10 law to save the taxpayers millions in Madison, and put those dollars toward alleviating the achievement gap.

“She’s failed to do that,” Walker said.

Burke responded that Madison is a fiscally responsible district that is one of the few in the state operating under its levy cap.

Madison still has a contract because the teachers union there challenged the Act 10 law in court, and a circuit court judge ruling initially swung in its favor. The teachers union subsequently bargained a contract this year and next year with the district.

Then this summer, the Wisconsin Supreme Court upheld Walker’s Act 10 law.

Madison 2014, gazing into the mirror:

Gov. Scott Walker took the campaign against Democratic opponent Mary Burke to her front door Wednesday, accusing the one-term Madison School Board member of not doing enough to improve black students’ graduation rates in Madison.

Walker argued that the Madison School Board could have put more money toward raising graduation rates and academic achievement if it had taken advantage of his controversial 2011 measure known as Act 10, which effectively ended collective bargaining for most public workers, instead of choosing to negotiate a contract with its teachers union for the 2015-16 school year earlier this summer.

“Voters may be shocked to learn that the African-American graduation rate in Madison (where Mary Burke is on the board) is worse than in MKE,” Walker tweeted Wednesday morning.

Burke shot back that Walker’s comments were “short sighted” and showed “a lack of knowledge” of how to improve student academic achievement.

In 2013, 53.7 percent of black students in Madison graduated in four years. In Milwaukee, the rate was 58.3 percent, according to state Department of Public Instruction data. That gap is smaller than it was in 2012, when the 4-year completion rate among black students was 55 percent in Madison and 62 percent in Milwaukee.

Overall, the 2013 graduation rates for the two largest school districts in Wisconsin was 78.3 percent in Madison and 60.6 percent in Milwaukee.

Under Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham, the district has made progress in the last year toward improving overall student achievement, Burke said in a call with reporters. School Board president Arlene Silveira also said Wednesday the district has started to move the needle under Cheatham.

“Is it enough progress? No. We still have a lot of work to go, and whether you’re talking about African-American (graduation rates) in Madison or talking about (rates) in Milwaukee, they are too low,” Burke said. “But the key to improving student learning, that anyone who really looks at education knows, is the quality of the teacher in the classroom.”

Decades go by, yet the status quo reigns locally.

A few background links:

1. http://www.wisconsin2.org

2. Wisconsin K-12 Spending Dominates “Local Transfers”.

3. Mandarins vs. leaders The Economist:

Central to his thinking was a distinction between managers and leaders. Managers are people who like to do things right, he argued. Leaders are people who do the right thing. Managers have their eye on the bottom line. Leaders have their eye on the horizon. Managers help you to get to where you want to go. Leaders tell you what it is you want. He chastised business schools for focusing on the first at the expense of the second. People took MBAs, he said, not because they wanted to be middle managers but because they wanted to be chief executives. He argued that “failing organisations are usually over-managed and under-led”.

Mr Bennis believed leaders are made, not born. He taught that leadership is a skill—or, rather, a set of skills—that can be learned through hard work. He likened it to a performance. Leaders must inhabit their roles, as actors do. This means more than just learning to see yourself as others see you, though that matters, too. It means self-discovery. “The process of becoming a leader is similar, if not identical, to becoming a fully integrated human being,” he said in 2009. Mr Bennis knew whereof he spoke: he spent a small fortune on psychoanalysis as a graduate student, dabbled in “channelling” and astrology while a tenured professor and wrote a wonderful memoir, “Still Surprised”.

2009: The elimination of “revenue limits and economic conditions” from collective bargaining arbitration by Wisconsin’s Democratically controlled Assembly and Senate along with Democratic Governer Jim Doyle:

To make matters more dire, the long-term legislative proposal specifically exempts school district arbitrations from the requirement that arbitrators consider and give the greatest weight to revenue limits and local economic conditions. While arbitrators would continue to give these two factors paramount consideration when deciding cases for all other local governments, the importance of fiscal limits and local economic conditions would be specifically diminished for school district arbitration.

A political soundbyte example:

Candidate Burke’s “operating under its levy cap” soundbyte was a shrewd, easily overlooked comment, yet neglects to point out Madison’s property tax base wealth vs. Milwaukee, the District’s spending levels when state revenue limits were put in place and the local referendums that have approved additional expenditures (despite open questions on where the additional funds were spent).

I hope that she will be more detailed in future comments. We’ve had decades of soundbytes and routing around tough choices.

Madison’s challenges, while spending and staffing more than most, will continue to be under the political microscope.

I hope that we see a substantive discussion of K-12 spending, curriculum and our agrarian era structures.

The candidates on Education:

Mary Burke:

Education has always offered a way up to a good job and a better life. It’s the fabric of our communities, and it’s the key to a strong economy in the long term.

As co-founder of the AVID/TOPs program, a public-private partnership that is narrowing the achievement gap for low income students, Mary knows that every Wisconsin student prepared to work hard can realize their dreams if given the support they need. By bringing together area high schools, the Boys & Girls Club, technical colleges, businesses and the University, Mary made a real difference for students, many of whom are the first in their family to attend college. The first class graduated last spring, and in September, over 90% of those students enrolled in post-secondary education.

Mary believes Wisconsin schools should be among the best in the nation—and she knows that making historic cuts isn’t the way to do it. She’ll work every day to strengthen our public education system, from K-12 to our technical colleges and university system. Mary strongly opposed the statewide expansion of vouchers—as governor, she’ll work to stop any further expansion, and ensure that all private schools taking public dollars have real accountability measures in place.

Scott Walker:

“We trust teachers, counselors and administrators to provide our children world-class instruction, to motivate them and to keep them safe. In the vast majority of cases, education professionals are succeeding, but allowing some schools to fail means too many students being left behind. By ensuring students are learning a year’s worth of knowledge during each school year and giving schools the freedom to succeed, Wisconsin will once again become a model for the nation.” — Scott Walker

For years, Wisconsin had the distinction of being a national leader in educational reform. From the groundbreaking Milwaukee Parental Choice Program to policies aimed at expanding the role of charter schools in communities across the state, Wisconsin was viewed as a pioneer in educational innovation and creativity.

Wisconsin used to rank 3rd in fourth grade reading, now we’re in the middle of the pack at best with some of the worst achievement gaps in the nation.

Fortunately, Wisconsin has turned a corner and is once again becoming a leader in educational excellence by refocusing on success in the classroom. This has been done by pinpointing the following simple but effective reforms:

• Improving transparency
• Improving accountability
• Creating choice

We are working to restore Wisconsin’s rightful place as an education leader. Our students, our teachers, and our state’s future depend on our continued implementation of reform.

A look at District spending:

Per student spending: Milwaukee’s 2013-2014 budget: $948,345,675 for 78,461 students or $12,086/student. Budget details (PDF).

Madison plans to spend $402,464,374 for 27,186 students (some pre-k) this year or about $14,804/student, 22% more than Milwaukee. Details.

And, finally, 2010: WEAC: $1.57 million for four senators.

The Capital Times:

The statistics on African-American achievement have been so grim throughout the years that in 2010, Kaleem Caire, at the time the CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison, put forth a proposal for a charter school designed to help African-American students surmount the achievement gap. It was ultimately rejected by the Madison School Board in 2011 after a bitter fight.

It’s against this backdrop that Madison School District Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham took over the top job in spring 2013. In her first year, Cheatham earned favorable remarks from many in the community for her smart, focused and flexible approach, with a talent for connecting with teachers, the School Board, parents and city leaders alike.

Madison School District superintendent Jennifer Cheatham listens during a meeting at Madison Central Library.

In the 2013-2014 school year, she revised the discipline policy to reduce the number of suspensions and expulsions in favor of practices that let students stay in school, own up to misconduct, and learn how to better conduct themselves in the future. Many education equity advocates see changes in school discipline policies, like those adopted under Cheatham, as key to closing the achievement gap.

Related: Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results.

2004: When all third graders read at grade level or beyond by the end of the year, the achievement gap will be closed…and not before

Reviewed by: Moira McLaughlin:

In Washington, D.C., about 43 percent of students attend charter schools, and only 25 percent attend their assigned neighborhood schools. Washington parents have choices. What does all this choice mean for public education, local author Sam Chaltain wonders in his new book, “Our School.”

“In this new frontier,” Chaltain asks, “will the wider array of school options help parents and educators identify better strategies for helping all children learn — strategies that can then be shared for the benefit of all schools? Or will the high stakes of the marketplace lead us to guard our best practices, undermine our colleagues, and privatize this most public of institutions?”

“Were the Common Core authors serious about ‘college-readiness,’ they would have taken their cue from publisher Will Fitzhugh, who for decades has been swimming against the tide of downgraded writing standards (blogging, journal-writing, video-producing). To this end, he has been publishing impressive student history papers in his scholarly journal, The Concord Review. The new (CC) standards, to Fitzhugh, enable ‘students to be ignoramuses who may be able to talk glibly about their instant New Deeper critical analysis of selected test passages.’ They will, however, ‘not have enough knowledge to do them a bit of good in college or at any workplace.’ They are effectively being taught the art of propaganda through multimedia rather than the art of writing from a knowledge base in history….”

Mary Grabar, via Will Fitzhugh:

The word “doing” appears frequently in the NCSS guidelines, as it does in the Department of Education’s 2012 report, “A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy’s Future,” which was criticized roundly by the National Association of Scholars for using civics education to promote radical activism and anti-Americanism in higher education, instead of providing a knowledge base in history, civics, and geography.

In 2009, when I attended the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) conference, I learned that most of the educators bristled at the idea of following educational “standards.” Most of the sessions involved sharing strategies for formally adhering to standards, while covertly turning students into activists for radical causes. Among these were repeal of immigration laws, statehood for Washington, D.C., and acceptance of Islam as superior to Christianity. Instead of being given a knowledge base in history, civics, and geography, students were emotionally manipulated into being advocates, attending protests, and lobbying legislators.

Flash forward to 2014. Now the objectives of these social studies teachers are the objectives of Obama’s Department of Education. The Common Core “standards” for math and English Language Arts are the law in 45 states. Those for science and social studies have been written, but are still voluntary.

Eschewing traditional forms of knowledge acquisition and writing (the old standards), “The College, Career, and Civic Life (C3) Framework for Social Studies State Standards: State guidance for enhancing the rigor of K-12 civics, economics, geography, and history” promote the idea of doing social studies. Yes, “doing.”

The word “doing” appears frequently in the guidelines, as it does in the Department of Education’s 2012 report, “A Crucible Moment: College Learning & Democracy’s Future,” which was criticized roundly by the National Association of Scholars (myself included) for using civics education to promote radical activism and anti-Americanism in higher education.

In order to advance similar activism, the authors of the K-12 “C3 Framework” caricature traditional education as pouring knowledge into students who are passive vessels. But traditional, classical education, founded on a firm base of knowledge, is the kind that works and best prepares students for adult life. It incorporates three levels of learning outlined by the Atlanta Classical Academy charter school, as taken from their successful petition before the Board of Education:

Grammar Stage (mastery of key foundational facts, rules, and tools, imparted by teachers who are experts in their subject);
Logic Stage (mastery of relationships, categories, and order to create coherent frameworks);
Rhetoric Stage (communication and reasoning).

Notably, Common Core skips the first step, reducing it to a haphazard process of “discovery”—a hallmark of progressive education. The cart is put before the horse through “experiential” learning, where students “practice the arts and habits of civic life.”

There is no sense that students should first acquire a solid foundation of historical knowledge. Rather, students are left to do “inquiry” with “Four Dimensions”: 1) “developing questions and planning inquiries;” 2) “applying disciplinary concepts and tools;” 3) “evaluating sources and using evidence;” and, 4) “communicating conclusions and taking informed action.”

It can hardly be said that children are capable of “taking informed action.” Yet the cover photographs of the report draft (dated April 9, 2013) reveal the authors’ aims by showing children in a public forum, looking at a globe (perhaps plotting their next business move in the “twenty-first century workplace”?), and in a group leaning over plans (mimicking modern-day advertisements of the corporate working world). The final photo shows a street protest with signs saying, “No” to toxic waste.

Such photos belie the authors’ claim that “Advocates of citizenship education cross the political spectrum” and are “bound by a common belief that our democratic republic will not sustain unless students are aware of their changing cultural and physical environments; know their past; read, write, and think deeply; and, act in ways to promote the common good.” Rather, these advocates use children for their own aims, placing adult burdens on them, while denying them a real education.

The Objectives for Second Grade

Age-inappropriateness also becomes evident in a table called “Suggested K-12 Pathway for College, Career and Civic Readiness Dimension 1.” It states that “by the end of grade 2” (emphasis added) the student will construct compelling questions and “explain why the compelling question is important to the student” and “identify disciplinary concepts found or implied in a compelling question.” (A note explains, “Students, particularly before middle school, will need considerable guidance and support from adults to construct questions that are suitable for inquiry.” Of course, they would need “guidance.” That’s where the teacher can impose her own, leading questions.)

The second-grader, furthermore, in a mind-boggling quest, must “make connections between supporting questions and compelling questions” and “identify ideas mentioned and implied by a supporting question” and then “determine the kinds of sources that will be helpful in answering compelling and supporting questions.”

Writing assignments do not follow an age-appropriate progression, either. Dimension 4, “Communicating Conclusions,” calls for second-graders to “construct an argument with reasons” and “present a summary of an argument using print, oral and digital technologies.” High school seniors are to do similar tasks in a slightly more sophisticated form, for example, in constructing arguments, using multiple sources, and acknowledging counterclaims and evidentiary weaknesses.

What can a “college-ready” senior do?

While second-graders are asked to “think like historians,” the high school senior is asked to perform unscholarly tasks, such as presenting “adaptations of arguments and explanations that feature evocative ideas and perspectives on issues and topics to reach a range of audiences and venues outside the classroom using print and oral technologies (e.g., posters, essays, letters, debates, speeches, reports, maps) and digital technologies (e.g., internet, social media, digital documentary).” Even essays and reports get buried amidst posters, social media, and digital documentaries.

The authors refer back to the English Language Arts (ELA) standards for guidance, but these are vague and loose, for example, Standard 7, which “focuses on ‘short as well as more sustained research projects based on focused questions.” The social studies standards also go back to the ELA’s emphasis on “Speaking and Listening Standards,” wherein “students engage one another strategically using different forms of media given a variety of contexts in order to present their knowledge and ideas.” As if these were really vigorous, the authors cite “examples,” such as participating in a “range of conversations and collaborations with diverse partners” and making “strategic use of ‘media and visual display’ when presenting.”

This is hardly preparation for college work in the traditional sense. Traditional work would involve sifting through historical material knowledgeably, and compiling it in the well-reasoned format of a scholarly paper. Were the Common Core authors serious about “college-readiness,” they would have taken their cue from publisher Will Fitzhugh, who for decades has been swimming against the tide of downgraded writing standards (blogging, journal-writing, video-producing). To this end, he has been holding contests and publishing impressive student papers in his scholarly journal, The Concord Review. The new standards, to Fitzhugh, enable “students to be ignoramuses who may be able to talk glibly about their instant New Deeper critical analysis of selected test passages.” They will, however, “not have enough knowledge to do them a bit of good in college or at any workplace.” They are effectively being taught the art of propaganda through multimedia rather than the art of writing through a knowledge base in history, civics and geography.

The new social studies standards are not surprising, considering the work of social studies teachers behind the scenes at conferences and elsewhere. They now have an administration that supports their radical aims. Consider the members of the “writing team” of this report, including this large majority:

Kathy Swan, lead writer/project director: associate professor of curriculum and instruction at the University of Kentucky, and coauthor of And Action! Doing Documentaries in the Social Studies Classroom. Her research focuses on “standards-based technology integration, authentic intellectual work, and documentary-making in the social studies classroom.”

Keith C. Barton, professor of curriculum and instruction and adjunct professor of history at Indiana University and co-author of Doing History: Investigating with Children in Elementary and Middle Schools and Teaching History for the Common Good.

Flannery Burke, associate professor of history at Saint Louis University who specializes in environmental history, the history of the American West, and gender studies.

Susan W. Hardwick, professor emerita of geography at the University of Oregon and co-host of the Annenberg/PBS series The Power of Place.

John Lee, associate professor of social studies education at North Carolina State University and co-director of the New Literacies Collaborative, http://newlit.org (connected to Linda Darling-Hammond).

Peter Levine, Professor of Citizenship & Public Affairs at Tufts University, author of Engaging Young People in Civic Life, and a proponent of left-wing “civic engagement.”

Karen Thomas-Brown, associate professor of social studies and multiculturalism at the University of Michigan-Dearborn with research interests in “neoliberalism and the impact of globalization on the operation of secondary urban centers in developing countries.”

Cynthia Tyson, professor in the College of Education and Human Ecology at The Ohio State University, “where she teaches courses in multicultural and equity studies in education; early childhood social studies; and multicultural children’s literature.”

Bruce VanSledright, professor of history and social studies education at the University of North Carolina, Charlotte. His research focuses on “doing history.”

Merry Wiesner-Hanks, professor of history, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, with a special interest in women’s and gender history.

Mary Grabar, Ph.D., has taught college English for over twenty years. She is the founder of the Dissident Prof Education Project, Inc., an education reform initiative that offers information and resources for students, parents, and citizens. The motto, “Resisting the Re-Education of America,” arose in part from her perspective as a very young immigrant from the former Communist Yugoslavia (Slovenia specifically). She writes extensively and is the editor of EXILED. Ms. Grabar is also a contributor to SFPPR News & Analysis.

Kaleem Caire, via a kind email:

This will be my final report to the community as the president & CEO of the Urban League of Greater Madison. Today, former Madison Police Chief Noble Wray will take over as the interim leader of this great organization and I will spend the remainder of this month supporting his transition, ironing out my new path, drinking these wonderful green smoothies and enjoying more frequent trips to the gym and bike rides around town.

We have accomplished a great deal since I joined the organization on March 29, 2010. We increased the size, diversity and strength of our staff to meet increased community needs, invested more in their professional growth and development of our team members than ever before, and improved their compensation to be more consistent with the market rate for their positions. We also provided full-time employment to five team members who completed our job training programs.

Highlights of our other accomplishments:
Increased our industry-specific, skill-based training academies from one to five, adding Customer Service & Sales, IT, Food Service and Construction Trades Academies. We continue to operate the highly regarded Health Administration Training Program (HATP) and are exploring adding academies in facilities maintenance, coding and lab tech as well.
Added the Featured Employer Program, adding 40 new employer partners in just the last 18 months who are dedicated to hiring talent through the Urban League. Since January 2010, graduates of Urban League training programs have earned more than $17.2 million in salaries and wages, and yielded more than $3.5 million in paid taxes. We’ve also grown from serving 183 adults in 2009 to 1,731 in 2013 through our four-tiered workforce development strategy.

Launched the Urban League Scholars Academy, which is presently offering an extended day high school preparatory program to 127 sixth and seventh graders attending three Madison middle schools who have academic enrichment needs.

Tutored more than 2,500 children annually in 17 middle and high schools across four Madison area school districts, utilizing more than 900 skilled volunteers; prepared more than 300 students for success on the ACT college entrance exam; and launched a partnership with the Madison Metropolitan School District to identify young men and women who’ve dropped out of school and help them complete high school, prepare for the workforce, secure jobs and continue their post-secondary education.

Created the annual Workplace Diversity & Leadership Summit, Wisconsin’s largest training ground in workplace diversity for employers and career professionals, and the Urban League Jazz Cabaret, a new annual fundraiser. To learn more about the upcoming Summit on May 9th which we are co-hosting this year with the Madison Region Economic Partnership, click here.
Completed a comprehensive analysis of the needs and aspirations of residents of three important South Madison neighborhoods and hosted several community events that have brought together hundreds of residents to celebrate and work together, and build a strong South Madison community.

Established the Urban League of Greater Madison Young Professionals Chapter which will bring together an unprecedented number of diverse young professionals at its first ever Emerge Gala on March 29, 2014. To learn more and purchase tickets, click here.

Built one of the strongest and most diverse teams and Board of Directors among nonprofits in Greater Madison, and cultivated talented leaders who are doing great things within the Urban League and other organizations they have gone on to work for and lead.

Among our greatest achievements also was our effort to establish the Madison Preparatory Academy charter schools for young men and women. Though our vision was not realized, in pushing for the school we spearheaded an unprecedented and necessary conversation about the state of education for African American and low income children that has moved a community and a school district to become more engaged and accountable than ever.

It has been an honor and a pleasure to stand on the shoulders of the Urban League leaders and team members who’ve come before me, and serve this great organization and the Greater Madison region. Thank you for all the encouragement and support you’ve shown me and our team, and thank you for all that you do for our community as well. The Urban League is poised to accomplish great things for the community for years to come.

…and don’t forget to provide your sponsorship and buy your tickets to the YP’s Emerge Gala and Economic Development, Leadership & Diversity Summit. The League can’t succeed without your financial contribution, continued active engagement, and support.

To the Future. Onward.

Kaleem Caire
President & CEO
Urban League of Greater Madison

Much more on Kaleem Caire and the rejected Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school.

Peggy Noonan:

What a small and politically vicious man New York’s new mayor is. Bill de Blasio doesn’t like charter schools. They are too successful to be tolerated. Last week he announced he will drop the ax on three planned Success Academy schools. (You know Success Academy: It was chronicled in the film “Waiting for Superman.” It’s one of the charter schools the disadvantaged kids are desperate to get into.) Mr. de Blasio has also cut and redirected the entire allotment for charter facility funding from the city’s capital budget. An official associated with a small, independent charter school in the South Bronx told me the decision will siphon money from his school’s operations. He summed up his feelings with two words: “It’s dispiriting.”

Some 70,000 of the city’s one million students, most black or Hispanic, attend charter schools, mostly in poorer neighborhoods. Charter schools are privately run but largely publicly financed. Their teachers are not unionized. Their students usually outscore their counterparts at conventional public schools on state tests. Success Academy does particularly well. Last year 82% of its students passed citywide math exams. Citywide the figure was 30%.

These are schools that work. They are something to be proud of and encourage.

Mr. de Blasio’s move has caused considerable personal anxiety and widespread public anger. The Daily News on Thursday called the nearly 200 Success Academy students who now have no place to go the mayor’s “educational orphans.” A reporter spoke to distraught families. “I wanted the best for my daughter,” said Rakim Smith, 40, a cable technician from Harlem whose daughter Dymond is a sixth-grader at Success Academy Harlem Central Middle School. “Now they’re trying to take it away.” “I don’t know where else I can send my son so that he can have the same level education,” said Fatoumata Kebe of the Bronx, whose 11-year-old son, Ousmane, goes to Harlem Central.

Pat Schneider:

Yet some of those strategies have been used by the school district for years, and the results have not been good, Hughes acknowledged. “The results have been disappointing not just because African-American kids are achieving at lower rates than white kids, but because our African-American kids are doing worse than African-American kids in Beloit, than African-American kids in Racine. We ought to be able to do better than that.”

Madison has long spent more per student than most Wisconsin school districts. Unfortunately, the District’s disastrous reading results continue.
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Related: The rejected Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school.

Edward Luce:

If you want to enliven a parent-teachers evening in Washington, DC, raise the subject of Michelle Rhee, the city’s former schools chancellor. Most education officials toil in obscurity. Rhee is a national celebrity. Some see her as an unflinching champion of US education reform and a bold opponent of the powerful teachers’ unions. Others revile her as a mouthpiece of billionaire philanthropists and advocate of school privatisation. People tend to have strong views about Rhee.
In 2008, when Rhee was in the midst of overhauling Washington’s classrooms, she was pictured on the cover of Time magazine holding a new broom – “How to Fix America’s Schools”, it said. Anyone who failed to grasp the symbolism was disabused two years later by Waiting for “Superman”, an award-winning documentary by Davis Guggenheim that depicted the rise of the US charter school movement – union-free, publicly-funded schools that select students by lottery. Many are also privately-funded. Rhee, who promoted the spread of charter schools in DC, was one of the movie’s stars. In one scene she offers to fire a public school principal on camera. She goes ahead and sacks the unfortunate woman. No shrinking violet is Rhee.
I await her arrival in some trepidation. We are meeting at DC Coast, a well-heeled modern American restaurant in downtown Washington that was one of Rhee’s haunts before she moved to Sacramento, where her husband, Kevin Johnson, the former basketball star, is mayor. She also has a home in Nashville where her two children live with her former husband, Kevin Huffman, who is education commissioner of Tennessee – the same role Rhee played in DC. She spends much of her life flying between the two cities.
I have taken a table upstairs away from the clamour of the main dining area. Rhee, who is 43, turns up precisely on time. Dressed in a smart blue and cream business suit, she shakes my hand briskly and sits down. I apologise for plonking my smartphone under her nose and mutter something banal about how the iPhone’s audio now rivals the best tape recorders. “Samsung seems to be holding its own as well,” she replies.
Rhee, who was raised in Toledo, Ohio, by first generation Korean parents, is fluent in the language and clearly proud of her heritage. As a child she was sent to Korea for a year, where she says she learnt the virtue of hard work. “They were tough with the children but it didn’t affect their self-esteem,” she says. “Coming from America I was used to being told everything I did was great. Korea was a shock to my system.” Lately, Korean-Americans have flourished in the US almost as much as South Korea has on the world stage. I suggest that Rhee must be the most famous Korean-American around. “Oh, I don’t think so,” she says looking a little flustered. “There’s, um, comedian Margaret Cho,” she says. “Then there’s that guy who heads Dartmouth College, what’s his name?” Jim Yong Kim, now president of the World Bank? “Yes, that’s the one.”

Jay Matthews:

New research on the nation’s largest and best-performing charter school network has a dull title — “Student Selection, Attrition, and Replacement in KIPP Middle Schools” — but it adds fuel to a fierce national debate over why KIPP looks so good and whether schools should follow its example.
No charter school network has been researched as much as KIPP, which has 125 schools and 39,000 students in 20 states and the District. Most of the studies say its schools have had large and positive impacts on student achievement when compared to regular public schools. But some smart critics, including scholars Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation and Gary Miron of Western Michigan University, have found a potential glitch in the analysis.
Most KIPP campuses are fifth-through-eighth-grade middle schools. Students arrive far below grade level but flourish because of KIPP’s longer school days and years and careful teacher selection, training and support.
Nonetheless, some KIPP parents move away or decide KIPP is not right for their children. Kahlenberg and Miron say that inflates the average scores of students who stay, compared to regular schools: At KIPP schools, they argue, lower-performing students who leave early are not replaced by incoming low scorers as they are in regular schools.

The Wall Street Journal:

It has come to this in California’s saga over “parent-trigger” education reform: A local school board is openly defying a judge’s order, with one member declaring “If I’m found in contempt of court, I brought my own handcuffs, take me away.” So now the stalwarts of the status quo will break the law rather than allow parents school choice.
A California Superior Court judge ruled last month that several hundred parents in Adelanto, California had successfully pulled the nation’s first parent trigger to force change at their children’s failing public school. The judge “commanded” the Adelanto school board to let the parents “immediately begin the process of soliciting and selecting” proposals to transform Desert Trails Elementary into a charter school.

CT state Sen. Toni Boucher:

Gov. Dannel P. Malloy maintains that education reform is the “civil rights issue of our time.”
Yet, the Education Committee chairs recently passed a watered down version of the governor’s original bill. The committee bill was heavily influenced and, many feel, was crafted by special interests behind closed doors.
There are provisions that all sides agree on such as the ability to hire teachers from other states by removing barriers; increased early childhood education slots for priority districts; and increasing grants for charter schools and non-Sheff magnet schools, but much more is left to be negotiated.
Areas still outstanding include: