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Nothing will change if we do nothing — or more of the same
For the last 17 months, I have followed the commentary and misinformation shared about our organization’s proposal to establish Madison Preparatory Academy.
Some who have written and commented about our proposal have been very supportive; others don’t think Madison Prep should exist. With less than 24 hours until the Madison School Board votes on the school, we would like to bring the public back to the central reasons why we proposed Madison Prep in August 2010.
First, hundreds of black and Latino children are failing to complete high school each year. In 2009, the Madison School District reported that 59 percent of black and 61 percent of Latino students graduated. In 2010, the percentage of graduates dropped to 48 percent for Black and 56 percent for Latino students. This not only has an adverse impact on our young people, their families and our community, it results in millions in lost revenue to the Madison district every year.
Second, in 2010, just 20 percent of the 387 black and 37 percent of the 191 Latino seniors enrolled in the district completed the ACT college entrance exam. The ACT is required for admission by all public colleges and universities in Wisconsin. Unfortunately, just 7 percent of black and 18 percent of Latino student who completed the ACT were “ready for college.” This means that only 5 of 387 black and 13 of 191 Latino students were academically ready for college.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.
Find a way to make Madison Prep work
The Madison School Board Monday night needs to work out the necessary details to make the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy a reality.
There’s absolutely no question that our school system, long deemed to be one of the best in the country for a vast majority of its students, is failing its African-American students and, as board member Ed Hughes recently pointed out, we need to accept that fact and be willing to give the Urban League an opportunity to show us a better way.
Still, it needs to be done carefully and not by yielding to heated tempers and ill-informed finger-pointers. This, after all, is not about conservatives vs. liberals, as some would gleefully proclaim, or even union supporters against those who believe unions lurk behind every failure in American education. It’s about honest philosophical differences among well-meaning people on how best to educate our children during troubling economic times.
Yet, more importantly, despite the enormous hurdles, it has got to be about the kids and finding a way for them to succeed.
Though there are difficult issues to overcome, there’s no need for the board and the Madison Prep advocates to draw lines in the sand. There surely is a middle ground that can honor the union contract, maintain a level of accountability at an acceptable cost to the taxpayers, and give the final OK to open the school.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory IB charter school, here.
Class Matters. Why Won’t We Admit It?
HELEN F. LADD and EDWARD B. FISKE
NO one seriously disputes the fact that students from disadvantaged households perform less well in school, on average, than their peers from more advantaged backgrounds. But rather than confront this fact of life head-on, our policy makers mistakenly continue to reason that, since they cannot change the backgrounds of students, they should focus on things they can control.
No Child Left Behind, President George W. Bush’s signature education law, did this by setting unrealistically high — and ultimately self-defeating — expectations for all schools. President Obama’s policies have concentrated on trying to make schools more “efficient” through means like judging teachers by their students’ test scores or encouraging competition by promoting the creation of charter schools. The proverbial story of the drunk looking for his keys under the lamppost comes to mind.
The Occupy movement has catalyzed rising anxiety over income inequality; we desperately need a similar reminder of the relationship between economic advantage and student performance.
The correlation has been abundantly documented, notably by the famous Coleman Report in 1966. New research by Sean F. Reardon of Stanford University traces the achievement gap between children from high- and low-income families over the last 50 years and finds that it now far exceeds the gap between white and black students.
Data from the National Assessment of Educational Progress show that more than 40 percent of the variation in average reading scores and 46 percent of the variation in average math scores across states is associated with variation in child poverty rates.
International research tells the same story. Results of the 2009 reading tests conducted by the Program for International Student Assessment show that, among 15-year-olds in the United States and the 13 countries whose students outperformed ours, students with lower economic and social status had far lower test scores than their more advantaged counterparts within every country. Can anyone credibly believe that the mediocre overall performance of American students on international tests is unrelated to the fact that one-fifth of American children live in poverty?
Yet federal education policy seems blind to all this. No Child Left Behind required all schools to bring all students to high levels of achievement but took no note of the challenges that disadvantaged students face. The legislation did, to be sure, specify that subgroups — defined by income, minority status and proficiency in English — must meet the same achievement standard. But it did so only to make sure that schools did not ignore their disadvantaged students — not to help them address the challenges they carry with them into the classroom.
So why do presumably well-intentioned policy makers ignore, or deny, the correlations of family background and student achievement?
Some honestly believe that schools are capable of offsetting the effects of poverty. Others want to avoid the impression that they set lower expectations for some groups of students for fear that those expectations will be self-fulfilling. In both cases, simply wanting something to be true does not make it so.
Another rationale for denial is to note that some schools, like the Knowledge Is Power Program charter schools, have managed to “beat the odds.” If some schools can succeed, the argument goes, then it is reasonable to expect all schools to. But close scrutiny of charter school performance has shown that many of the success stories have been limited to particular grades or subjects and may be attributable to substantial outside financing or extraordinarily long working hours on the part of teachers. The evidence does not support the view that the few success stories can be scaled up to address the needs of large populations of disadvantaged students.
A final rationale for denying the correlation is more nefarious. As we are now seeing, requiring all schools to meet the same high standards for all students, regardless of family background, will inevitably lead either to large numbers of failing schools or to a dramatic lowering of state standards. Both serve to discredit the public education system and lend support to arguments that the system is failing and needs fundamental change, like privatization.
Given the budget crises at the national and state levels, and the strong political power of conservative groups, a significant effort to reduce poverty or deal with the closely related issue of racial segregation is not in the political cards, at least for now.
Rick Hess’s Critique of Achievement-Gap Mania
By Reihan Salam
I’ve been eagerly awaiting the release of the latest issue of National Affairs, which includes Rick Hess’s fascinating and at times provocative discussion, or perhaps I say “devastating takedown,” of “achievement-gap mania.” The following paragraph gives you a hint as to Hess’s conclusion:
In essence, NCLB was an effort to link “conservative” nostrums of accountability to Great Society notions of “social justice.” The result was a noble exercise hailed for its compassion. The sad truth, however, is that the whole achievement-gap enterprise has been bad for schooling, bad for most children, and bad for the nation.
I found his discussion of the neglect of advanced and gifted education particularly convincing, as well as his recounting of how the “delusion of rigor” has undermined quality control across many domains. Hess ends his essay with an accounting of where “achievement-gap mania” has left the politics of K-12.
(1) Reforming education has become someone else’s problem:
First, achievement-gap mania has signaled to the vast majority of American parents that school reform isn’t about their kids. They are now expected to support efforts to close the achievement gap simply because it’s “the right thing to do,” regardless of the implications for their own children’s education. In fact, given that only about one household in five even contains school-age children — and given that two-thirds of families with children do not live in underserved urban neighborhoods, or do not send their kids to public schools, or otherwise do not stand to benefit from the gap-closing agenda — the result is a tiny potential constituency for achievement-gap reform, made up of perhaps 6% or 7% of American households.
Because middle-class parents and suburbanites have no personal stake in the gap-closing enterprise, reforms are tolerated rather than embraced. The most recent annual Gallup poll on attitudes toward schooling reported that just 20% of respondents said “improving the nation’s lowest-performing schools” was the most important of the nation’s education challenges. Indeed, while just 18% of the public gave American schools overall an A or a B, a sizable majority thought their own elementary and middle schools deserved those high grades. The implication is that most Americans, even those with school-age children, currently see education reform as time and money spent on other people’s children.
(2) Reforming education for the majority of students who come non-poor families is seen as somehow unnecessary:
Second, achievement-gap mania has created a dangerous complacency, giving suburban and middle-class Americans the false sense that things are just fine in their own schools. Thus it’s no surprise that professionals and suburbanites tend to regard “reforms” — from merit pay to charter schooling — as measures that they’ll tolerate as long as they’re reserved for urban schools, but that they won’t stand for in their own communities. …
Gap-closing strategies can be downright unhelpful or counterproductive when it comes to serving most students and families, and so can turn them off to education reform altogether. Longer school years and longer school days can be terrific for disadvantaged students or low achievers, but may be a recipe for backlash if imposed on families who already offer their kids many summer opportunities and extracurricular activities. Policies that seek to shift the “best” teachers to schools and classrooms serving low-achieving children represent a frontal assault on middle-class and affluent families. And responding to such concerns by belittling them is a sure-fire strategy for ensuring that school reform never amounts to more than a self-righteous crusade at odds with the interests of most middle-class families.
This is one reason why Hess rightly bristled at the crusader mentality that informs films like the recent Waiting for ‘Superman.’
Is it ‘merit pay’ if nearly all teachers get it?
A state program meant to give only effective Minnesota teachers merit pay raises instead appears to be rewarding nearly all the teachers participating in it with more money.
The program, called “Q Comp,” is one of Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s top initiatives to improve schools, and many educators say it is strengthening teacher evaluations and training. But others are questioning whether Q Comp has just become a cash handout.
In 22 school districts whose Q Comp practices were examined by the Star Tribune, more than 99 percent of teachers in the program received merit raises during the most recent school year.
Only 27 of the roughly 4,200 teachers eligible did not get a pay raise.
The state gave schools $64 million to spend on Q Comp, which stands for quality compensation, during the 2007-08 school year. Pawlenty is now proposing to increase spending on the program by $41 million next year. But some lawmakers are questioning that step.
“Why should we expand it statewide when there is no evidence that it’s improving anything?” asked Rep. Mark Buesgens, R-Jordan.
“Let’s quit the charade, let’s give every district another $300 per pupil, and quit bluffing.”
Pawlenty’s spokesman Brian McClung defended the program Friday as “a move towards greater emphasis on student achievement and the measures that lead to [it].” He added, “Ideally Q Comp would demand more, but we had to compromise with a Legislature that was uncomfortable going further.”
Test data suggest that, so far, students in school districts in at least their third year of Q Comp have not shown more improvement in reading and math than students in schools not participating in the program.
The Minnesota Department of Education asserts that it is too early in the program’s life to make substantive comparisons about how Q Comp is affecting student achievement. In a statement Friday, Education Commissioner Alice Seagren said the department has faith in the program.
“We believe that Q Comp will lead to higher levels of student achievement, students who are college-and-work ready upon graduation, and a larger supply of qualified workers for our state’s employers,” she said.
School superintendents, meanwhile, say the money involved–up to $260 per pupil this year–has been a major draw in an era of budget cuts.
Update on the Harlem Children’s Zone
Bear Market for Charities
Mike Spector
Wall Street Journal
NEW YORK — Geoffrey Canada has spent decades building a strategy for saving poor children from crime-ridden streets and crumbling public schools.
His “Harlem Children’s Zone” now serves thousands of kids, some of whom are showing impressive test scores. He has attracted the attention of the new White House because of his charity’s model: Instead of tackling problems here and there, the program envelops an entire neighborhood, with services ranging from parenting classes to health clinics to charter schools.
But Wall Street’s meltdown and money manager Bernard Madoff’s alleged financial fraud threaten the donor base that bankrolls Mr. Canada’s work. Facing declining revenues, he’s had to lay off staff and cancel plans to expand. He says he doesn’t yet “have a Plan B” for replacing his Wall Street support, which had reached upwards of $15 million annually.
Mr. Canada’s difficulties show how dependent nonprofits can become on certain steady donors, and how their plans can be derailed when those revenues dry up. It underscores the challenges facing nonprofits, which grew and proliferated amid the bull-market earlier this decade.
Today, the U.S. boasts more than one million nonprofits, up from about 774,000 ten years ago. Their biggest donations come from corporations, foundations and the ultra-wealthy. Many have been hit hard by the deepening recession. A drop in charitable contributions could shutter as many as 100,000 nonprofits over the next year, says Paul Light, a professor at New York University’s Wagner School of Public Service.
Mr. Canada, a 57-year-old social worker, calls his strategy the “conveyor belt,” because it aims to give children an intensive experience in a succession of programs until they graduate from college. Children in pre-kindergarten are taught foreign languages, for instance. From there, children enter Mr. Canada’s charter schools with longer school days and a calendar lasting until the first week of August.
The approach is starting to deliver results. Last year, nearly all the third-graders in Mr. Canada’s charter schools scored at or above grade-level in math, better than recent citywide averages. Eighth-graders outperformed the average New York student in math, according to New York state data.
“The math thing is just so far above anything I’ve ever seen,” says Roland Fryer, a Harvard economist who heads a new education lab. “The real hard work is to figure out why it’s working and whether that kind of thing can be exported so we can help more kids.”
President Barack Obama’s advisers met with Mr. Canada recently to learn more about his approach. Mr. Obama said during the campaign that he wants to create “promise neighborhoods” modeled on Mr. Canada’s charity in 20 cities across the U.S. Today, that initiative remains part of the White House’s publicized agenda.
Read more …
Breaks my heart to post this.
Doggie Biscuit for Kohn: Author rips testing, other sacred classroom concepts
Rising test scores are no reason to celebrate, author Alfie Kohn told teachers at the Utah Education Association (UEA) convention on Friday.
Schools that improve test scores do so at the expense of other subjects and ideas, he said.
“When the scores go up, it’s not just meaningless. It’s worrisome,” Kohn told hundreds of educators on the last day of the convention. “What did you sacrifice from my child’s education to raise scores on the test?”
Kohn, who’s written 11 books on human behavior, parenting and schools, spent nearly two hours Friday morning ripping into both established and relatively new education concepts. He slammed merit pay for teachers, competition in schools, Advanced Placement classes, curriculum standards and testing–including Utah’s standards and testing system — drawing mixed reactions from his audience.
“Considering what we hear a lot, it was pure blasphemy,” said Richard Heath, a teacher at Central Davis Junior High School in Layton.
Kohn called merit pay–forms of which many Utah school districts are implementing this year–an “odious” type of control imposed on teachers.
“If you jump through hoops, we’ll give you a doggie biscuit in the form of money,” Kohn said.
DCPAC Dan Nerad Meeting Summary
A video tape of the entire presentation and discussion with Dr. Nerad may be viewed by visiting this internet link: https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/archives/2008/09/ madison_superin_10.php
Dan Nerad opened his remarks by stating his commitment to efforts for always continuing change and improvement with the engagement of the community. He outlined four areas of focus on where we are going from here.
- Funding: must balance district needs and taxpayer needs. He mentioned the referendum to help keep current programs in place and it will not include “new” things.
- Strategic Plan: this initiative will formally begin in January 2009 and will involve a large community group process to develop as an ongoing activity.
- Meet people: going throughout the community to meet people on their own terms. He will carefully listen. He also has ideas.
- Teaching and learning mission: there are notable achievement gaps we need to face head-on. The “achievement gap” is serious. The broader mission not only includes workforce development but also helping students learn to be better people. We have a “tale of two school districts” – numbers of high achievers (including National Merit Scholars), but not doing well with a lot of other students. Low income and minority students are furtherest away from standards that must be met. Need to be more transparent with the journey to fix this problem and where we are not good. Must have the help of the community. The focus must be to improve learning for ALL kids, it is a “both/and” proposition with a need to reframe the issue to help all kids move forward from where they are. Must use best practices in contemporary assessment, curriculum, pedagogy and instructional methods.
Dr. Nerad discussed five areas about which he sees a need for community-wide conversations for how to meet needs in the district.
- Early learning opportunities: for pre-kindergarten children. A total community commitment is needed to prevent the ‘achievement gap’ from widening.
- High schools: How do we want high schools to be? Need to be more responsive. The curriculum needs to be more career oriented. Need to break down the ‘silos’ between high school, tech schools and colleges. Need to help students move through the opportunities differently. The Small Learning Communities Grant recently awarded to the district for high schools and with the help of the community will aid the processes for changes in the high schools.
- School safety: there must be an on-going commitment for changes. Nerad cited three areas for change:
a. A stronger curriculum helping people relate with other people, their differences and conflicts.
b. A response system to safety. Schools must be the safest of sanctuaries for living, learning and development.
c.Must make better use of research-based technology that makes sense.
- Math curriculum and instruction: Cited the recent Math Task Force Report
a. Good news: several recommendations for curriculum, instruction and policies for change.
b. Bad news: our students take less math than other urban schools in the state; there are notable differences in the achievement gap.
- Fine Arts: Cited recent Fine Arts Task Force Report. Fine arts curriculum and activities in the schools, once a strength, has been whittled away due to budget constraints. We must deal with the ‘hands of the clock’ going forward and develop a closer integration of the schools and community in this area.
The New Affirmative Action
In another time, it wouldn’t have been too hard to guess where Frances Harris would have ended up going to college. She has managed to do very well in very difficult circumstances, and she is African-American. Her high school, in the Oak Park neighborhood of Sacramento, was shut down as an irremediable failure the spring before her freshman year, then reopened months later as a charter school. Midway through high school, her father developed heart problems and became an irritable fixture around the home. She also discovered that he was not actually her biological father. That was a man named Leroy who, when her mother took Harris to see him, simply said his name was George and waited for her to leave. In Harris’s senior year, her mother lost her job at a nursing home and the family filed for bankruptcy.
Harris somehow stayed focused on teenage life. She earned an A-minus average and she distinguished herself as a debater. Her basketball teammates sometimes teased her for using big words, but they also elected her co-captain. As she led me on a tour of her school and her neighborhood one day this summer, she introduced me around with an assured ease that most adults can’t manage, even if her sentences are peppered with “like,” “you know” and “Oh, my God.” Her bedroom in the bungalow she shares with her parents is a masterpiece of teenage energy, the walls covered with her prom-queen tiara, her purple-and-white basketball jersey (No. 3) and photos of her friends. “The hardest part of high school,” she says, “was to be smart and cool at the same time.” She decided her dream college was the University of California, Los Angeles.
Ten or 20 years ago, Frances Harris almost certainly would have been admitted. Her excellent grades might not have even been necessary, because Berkeley and U.C.L.A. — the jewels in the U.C. system — accepted almost all of the African-Americans who met the basic application requirements. To an admissions officer, Harris would have seemed like gold: diversity and achievement, wrapped up in a single kid.
The HOPE (Having Options in Public Education) Coalition
The HOPE (Having Options in Public Education) Coalition is a grassroots group of concerned parents, educators, and community members who believe creating and sustaining new educational options would strengthen MMSD. New options in public schools would benefit students, families, teachers, and our community. Options are needed because “one size does not fit all”! The diversity of students’ backgrounds and learning styles requires a diversity of learning models.
The HOPE Coalition met last week to discuss the superintendent search. We found 3 characteristics to be important for our incoming superintendent. Using the points below, and/or your own words, please make your voice heard! You may copy and paste the below paragraphs if you are pressed for time. The superintendent should:
- be an innovative problem solver. The candidate should have a demonstrated record of running a district that has successfully implemented new ideas and creative approaches (charter schools, magnet schools, 4K, etc.) to serve a diverse population of learners. The new superintendent should be committed to offering a variety of educational models within public schools so that families have options that can address the needs of students with a wide range of strengths, interests and learning styles.
- demonstrate a collaborative leadership style. The candidate should have a history of fostering open, frequent communication with parents and other taxpayers; non-profit organizations; university faculty; and city, county and state government officials. The new superintendent should build collaborative partnerships that bring parents, teachers and community members together for the benefit of students.
- cultivate a climate of less centralized authority throughout MMSD. The candidate should empower staff both at the district and individual school sites, giving them the authority to use their specific expertise to its fullest potential. The superintendent should allow local school administrators the flexibility to run their school, in collaboration with teachers, so that it most effectively addresses the needs of the students and families that it serves. School-based decisions may involve curriculum, budgeting, staffing, extracurricular programming, etc.
Make your voice heard…
… to the Board! Email them all (comments@madison.k12.wi.us) or contact them individually (go to www.mmsd.org/boe and scroll down to find contact information). This may be the most influential means of sharing your opinion!
… to the consultants hired for the search! Complete their survey by going to www.mmsd.org/topics/supt and scrolling down to find the link to it. You will also find information about the community input sessions. Please attend one! and tell us your impression of how successful it was.
Encourage friends, neighbors, and coworkers to make their voices heard too! Please contact Sarah Granofsky (s.granofsky@gmail.com) or Lauren Cunningham (cunningham.lauren@sbcglobal.net) with any questions or suggestions, or if you would like to learn more about HOPE for Madison.
Private Firm Finds Profits in Special Ed
Mark Claypool left social work jaded by how special education students were shuffled around and ignored in public schools. He had one radical idea: The best way to teach special education students would be to turn a profit while doing it.
“It would have been more traditional to do this in a not-for-profit fashion,” Claypool said. “But the CEO for a not-for-profit walks around with his hand out all day long to keep the doors open and the lights turned on. I didn’t want to do that.”
Claypool founded Educational Services of America in Nashville in 1999 as one of the few companies even attempting to make money by running special education private schools.
With programs in 16 states, ESA owns and operates more than 120 private and charter schools. It hires the teachers and sets up the curriculum for about 7,800 students with learning, developmental or behavioral problems.
Critics from within public education have said it’s wrong and ineffective to turn a profit off special education students, but the company generated $75 million in revenue this year, and Claypool expects revenue to grow to $90 million next year. The privately owned company would not disclose profits.
“The first ingredient in education reform is to tell parents the truth.”
National Alliance for Public Charter Schools:
OK, so the Lieberman/Landrieu/Coleman bill is technically second out of the gate, but [this one] really gets the NCLB reauthorization debate started. Making its debut at a Senate-side shindig featuring Chancellors Klein (NY) and Rhee (DC), the Lieberman-led proposal lays done some important markers, to wit:
- Lets schools move away from input-driven “Highly Qualified Teachers” rules and toward a new standard based on effectiveness in the classroom
- Permits growth measures in Adequate Yearly Progress, and fund the technologies needed to move rapidly toward measuring student-level longitudinal gains
- Morphs NAEP’s governing body into a new commission that would write voluntary standards – – and make states tell parents about the gap between their own state assessments and prevailing national norms
More sunshine is better. Props to Madison Magazine for taking a closer look at our local schools.
On Early Childhood Education
Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel Editorial Board:
Kindergarten for 3-year-olds has been a smash hit at Bruce Guadalupe Community School on Milwaukee’s near south side, where, bucking what is supposed to be their fate, low-income students perform at a high academic level.
Jill Matusin, who teaches 5-year-olds at the charter school, swears by 3K.
“The difference – it was amazing,” she says of two sisters in her classroom in successive years – one who started in 5K and the other in 3K. The sister with the head start was far more advanced in numbers, colors, language and social skills.
The results so impressed Bruce Guadalupe that it is set to open four more 3K classrooms this fall – setting a splendid example for the state, which must boost preschool education, particularly for needy children. This strategy would narrow, if not close, the gaps in academic achievement between the poor and the middle class, whites and blacks, Anglos and Latinos.
Decades of study have led educators to this consensus: When aimed at kids from lower-income families, quality early childhood education boosts academic attainment, high school graduation rates, college attendance and future wages, and it reduces truancy, crime and teenage pregnancies.
Board of Education Activity in 2006-07
A few weeks ago, the Madison BOE received a summary of what the board and its committees had done in its meetings during the past year. I am posting the entire document as an extended entry as community information. It provides a lot more detail, a good overview, and a glimpse at the pieces that didn’t make it into the print and broadcast media.
Rating Education Gains
Achievement Gaps, Advanced Placement Exams, Demographic Shifts and Charter Schools: What Do They Add Up To for Students?
We seem to be doing a bit better educating our most disadvantaged students. But many educators think that is not enough.
The numbers displayed in the graphic smorgasbord known as “The Condition of Education 2007,” from the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics, reveal the struggles of a generation to make schools work for all children.
Enrollment in publicly funded day care increased significantly from 1991 to 2005. The portion of black children using such services rose from 58 percent to 66 percent. For Hispanic children, the figure rose from 39 percent to 43 percent; for non-Hispanic whites, from 54 percent to 59 percent.
More public day care does not necessarily mean more learning is going on, although the quality of such centers appears to be improving as more states increase support for pre-kindergarten classes and in some cases make them available to all who want them. The relatively low number of Hispanic children in such programs might be a problem, as improving their grasp of English is crucial to the educational success of the largest minority group.
Democrats for Education Reform
A money manager recently sent an e-mail to some partners, congratulating them on an investment of $1 million that yielded an estimated $400 million. The reasoning was that $1 million spent on trying to lift a cap on the number of charter schools in New York State yielded a change in the law that will bring $400 million a year in funding to new charter schools.
The money managers who were among the main investors in this law — three Harvard MBAs and a Wharton graduate named Whitney Tilson, Ravenel Boykin Curry IV, Charles Ledley, and John Petry — are moving education-oriented volunteerism beyond championing a single school. They want to shift the political debate by getting the Democratic Party to back innovations such as merit pay for teachers, a longer school day, and charter schools.
Democrats for Education Reform website.
An Update
The Studio School Charter School:
In a couple of years I hope to take another try at leading a charter school initiative. I continue to read so much educational research and literature that strongly supports The Studio School concepts. As you know, we spent some time looking into ways to create TSS as a private school but just couldn’t see how it could be affordable to everyone and be sustainable. Even as a sliding-scale-tuition cooperative, there would have to be some tuition paid and that leaves out so many children. It still looks as though a charter school is the best alternative. So maybe there will be some changes in our school district and administrators/ board members will become more actively supportive of charter schools, innovation, and the Studio School concept. Am I overly optimistic?
Programs in my home:
Currently, I’m working with some people to piece together a rather eclectic “menu” of educational programs (art, Spanish, yoga, tutoring, early childhood, etc.) in my home that is licensed for child care for ages 4 – 17. The programs being offered are philosophically aligned with the Reggio Approach – experiential, child-centered, multi-modal learning. I don’t have a final name for this yet but the concept is that of a “learning studio” that offers a variety of enriching programs that will provide children with a variety of “languages” for learning and expressing their ideas. (This summer I am offering an Art & Architecture program for 5-8 year old children on Wednesday mornings and we will be working with recycled materials.) If the “eclectic” studio concept is successful, the plan is to move the program out of my house into a public space in the next year or so. I recently met with someone involved in the Hilldale Mall redevelopment project and a location there might be a possibility down the road. And/or it could be offered through community centers or other neighborhood organizations. It’s also my hope that if I could somehow provide real life examples of the Reggio Approach to teaching and learning, people might be better able to envision the amazing positive impact it could have in an elementary school.
Community Partnerships:
I intend to continue meeting with people who are interested in new educational initiatives and who might want to work together to create programs and schools that include the arts & technology for all Madison children. So I want to keep reaching out to neighborhood groups and community members. Please let me know if you run into any folks who might be interested in talking with me about this and I will be happy to contact them. Thanks
Nancy Donahue
ndonahue@tds.net
I have a few comments on separate courses for students of different abilities
I think that it is important to have opportunities for advanced students to obtain seperate instruction is subjects they excel in. It is my belief that by doing this we don’t sacrifice diversity, we actually increase it.
My logic is as follows. If gifted students are not given the challenge they need in school, they will not achieve as much as they can. If the public schools are not able to provide for these childern, then parents of gifted kids will pull them out of school. Unfortunately, only involved parents with money will have the ability to give their kids the alternative education like private school. Thus, the public schools will be left with few children at the top end of the education spectrum since it can’t provide for them.
My belief that this is true comes from my home town in California. We have one elementary school in a wealthy area that is known to have much better educational opportunities for students. Parents in other districts constantly try to move their children to this school. Due to declining enrollment, other school districts have stopped letting students switch schools. To still provide for the children, the school in the wealthy area became a charter school. Now, parents can move their children there without incident. But, the other public schools are left without their brightest students. If the other public schools could provide for their brightest, the public schools would include all of the students.
How can we help poor students achieve more?
As a teacher-centered lesson ended the other morning at Midvale Elementary School, about 15 first-graders jumped up from their places on the carpeted rug and dashed to their personal bins of books.
Most students quickly settled into two assigned groups. One read a story about a fox in a henhouse with the classroom teacher, and another group, headed by a UW-Madison student teacher, read a more challenging nonfiction book about a grandmother who, as one child excitedly noted, lived to be 101.
In addition to this guided reading lesson, one boy sat at a computer wearing headphones, clicking on the screen that displayed the words as a story was read aloud to him, to build word recognition and reading stamina. Two other boys read silently from more advanced books. Another boy received one-on-one help from a literacy coach conducting a Reading Recovery lesson with him.
“I think what’s so important is that this program truly meets the needs of a variety of students, from those who are struggling to those who are accelerated,” says Principal John Burkholder.
Students Voice Flaws in DC
Students from D.C. public and charter schools crammed into the chambers of the city’s John A. Wilson Building yesterday, clutching sheets of paper with stories of crumbling buildings, a textbook shortage and absent athletic and arts programs.
And they expressed fear that little will change, even if Mayor Adrian M. Fenty (D) succeeds in taking control of schools.
Donnell Kie, a sophomore at Ballou Senior High School, said it should not be too much for students to want safe buildings, up-to-date libraries, books when school opens in the fall and music, arts and foreign language programs.
Let the Money Follow the Student
Only by empowering parents to choose their children’s schools can Mayor-elect Fenty achieve his goal of a quality education for every child. He should increase public school choices, lift the arbitrary cap on the number of charter schools allowed in DC, and expand the district’s nascent but promising school voucher program.
Poor teaching quality, one of the District’s worst problems, is exacerbated by public school administrators who prefer to hire education majors instead math and science majors, even though the latter make better teachers in their subjects. Giving parents the ability to choose which public schools get their money discourages these and other counterproductive practices, as Harvard economist Caroline Hoxby has found.
BOE Progress Report for December
Happy Holidays to everyone! Despite the cold weather, the Madison Board of Education continues its work.
Additional Notes on “What it Takes to Make a Student”
Last night at the Hunt Institute retreat for North Carolina legislators, the former governor, Jim Hunt, handed out copies he’d underlined to everyone there, urging the legislators to “read every word.”
Schools like KIPP and Amistad [Clusty on Amistad] that succeed in educating low-income students tend to do three things well, Education Gadfly points out.Students are required to be in school longer-much longer-than their peers in traditional public schools.
Pupils are tested, and re-tested, to measure achievement. Lesson plans, teaching strategies, even whole curricula are adjusted based on how well, or poorly, students are learning what they should. Moreover, teachers are closely monitored and constantly working to improve their skills.
Students’ behavior and values are aggressively shaped by school leaders and instructors.
What is complicated, however, is implementing these changes within today’s rule-bound, bureaucratic system, with its collective bargaining constraints, bureaucratic regulations, and the inertia of 100-plus years of public education. It’s no coincidence that all of Tough’s profiled schools are charters, and as such have the freedom to do things differently and take control of their own destinies. In turn, this greater autonomy allows them to attract many top-notch, talented, and energetic teachers who are willing to work long hours for mediocre pay because they yearn for a results-oriented, break-the-rules environment. Replicating this atmosphere in the traditional system would be hard-maybe even impossible. But expanding charter schools–and getting more good ones-is no easy feat, either.
Dennis Doyle adds a few thoughts.
“Still Left Behind”?
The schools that are achieving the most impressive results with poor and minority students tend to follow three practices. First, they require many more hours of class time than a typical public school. The school day starts early, at 8 a.m. or before, and often continues until after 4 p.m. These schools offer additional tutoring after school as well as classes on Saturday mornings, and summer vacation usually lasts only about a month. The schools try to leaven those long hours with music classes, foreign languages, trips and sports, but they spend a whole lot of time going over the basics: reading and math.
Second, they treat classroom instruction and lesson planning as much as a science as an art. Explicit goals are set for each year, month and day of each class, and principals have considerable authority to redirect and even remove teachers who aren’t meeting those goals. The schools’ leaders believe in frequent testing, which, they say, lets them measure what is working and what isn’t, and they use test results to make adjustments to the curriculum as they go. Teachers are trained and retrained, frequently observed and assessed by their principals and superintendents. There is an emphasis on results but also on “team building” and cooperation and creativity, and the schools seem, to an outsider at least, like genuinely rewarding places to work, despite the long hours. They tend to attract young, enthusiastic teachers, including many alumni of Teach for America, the program that recruits graduates from top universities to work for two years in inner-city public schools.
Third, they make a conscious effort to guide the behavior, and even the values, of their students by teaching what they call character. Using slogans, motivational posters, incentives, encouragements and punishments, the schools direct students in everything from the principles of teamwork and the importance of an optimistic outlook to the nuts and bolts of how to sit in class, where to direct their eyes when a teacher is talking and even how to nod appropriately.
……….
At KIPP’s Bronx academy, the sixth, seventh and eighth grades had proficiency rates at least 12 percentage points above the state average on this year’s statewide tests. And when the scores are compared with the scores of the specific high-poverty cities or neighborhoods where the schools are located — in Newark, New Haven or the Bronx — it isn’t even close: 86 percent of eighth-grade students at KIPP Academy scored at grade level in math this year, compared with 16 percent of students in the South Bronx.
………..
Toll put it this way: “We want to change the conversation from ‘You can’t educate these kids’ to ‘You can only educate these kids if. …’ ” And to a great extent, she and the other principals have done so. The message inherent in the success of their schools is that if poor students are going to catch up, they will require not the same education that middle-class children receive but one that is considerably better; they need more time in class than middle-class students, better-trained teachers and a curriculum that prepares them psychologically and emotionally, as well as intellectually, for the challenges ahead of them.
The most malignant element of the original law was that it required all states to achieve proficiency but then allowed each state to define proficiency for itself. It took state governments a couple of years to realize just what that meant, but now they have caught on — and many of them are engaged in an ignoble competition to see which state can demand the least of its students.
The evidence is now overwhelming that if you take an average low-income child and put him into an average American public school, he will almost certainly come out poorly educated. What the small but growing number of successful schools demonstrate is that the public-school system accomplishes that result because we have built it that way. We could also decide to create a different system, one that educates most (if not all) poor minority students to high levels of achievement.
But there are still those few schools, mostly charters, that really do seem to have found the right formula: high standards, a structured instructional approach, character education, long hours, great teachers and development of a esprit d’corps.
And while Tough laments the fact that teacher unions have constrained the growth of charter schools, it is clear that there is little, if anything, these schools are doing that could not be done in a unionized school – unless of course we expect that schools that rely on teachers working twice the hours (15 or 16 a day, he says) can be replicated systemwide without increasing teacher salaries proportionally. (In fact, those strategies are precisely what the UFT and Chancellor Crew built into the Extended Time Schools back in the 90s, and many of them are working today in the UFT Charter Schools in East New York.)
Job Opening: WCSA EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
The Wisconsin Charter Schools Association, headquartered in Madison, is seeking an Executive Director to assume the leadership role with the statewide organization.
See Responsibilities of the Executive Director, Qualifications, and Application Information
To be considered in the initial application review process, a cover letter and resume must be submitted by December 15, 2006 to:
Barbara Horton, Chair
Executive Director Search Committee
Wisconsin Charter Schools Association
PO Box 1704
Madison, WI 53701 – 1704
WCSA Website
Milwaukee Property Taxes Increase 7.7%
The “tax freeze” continues. Alan Borsuk:
At the heart of a decision by Milwaukee Public Schools officials to increase property taxes for schools by 7.7% was a choice not discussed in public:
Millions of dollars that had been freed up within the $1.15 billion budget for the 2006-’07 school year could be used to hold down the tax increase. Or they could be used to increase spending by $78.90 per student across the MPS system – totaling almost $6.7 million.
Administrators and a split School Board on Tuesday went with the increased spending.
Labeled a “one-time rebate” in MPS budget documents, the payments will go to all the schools in the traditional MPS system and to charter schools staffed by MPS employees.
That will help ease a financial squeeze that is harming education in the city, MPS officials say. The money will allow schools to do such things as restore teaching or safety aide positions that were cut going into this year, MPS Superintendent William Andrekopoulos said Wednesday.
The Madison School District’s property taxes will rise 5.8% with the arrival of December’s tax bills. Local school property taxes had been relatively flat the past few years due to redistribution of income, sales taxes and fees via state aids and to some extent flat enrollment and the revenue caps.
Change in Federal Rules Backs Single Sex Public Education
The Bush administration is giving public school districts broad new latitude to expand the number of single-sex classes, and even schools, in what is widely considered the most significant policy change on the issue since a landmark federal law barring sex discrimination in education more than 30 years ago.
Two years in the making, the new rules, announced Tuesday by the Education Department, will allow districts to create single-sex schools and classes as long as enrollment is voluntary. School districts that go that route must also make coeducational schools and classes of “substantially equal” quality available for members of the excluded sex.
The federal action is likely to accelerate efforts by public school systems to experiment with single-sex education, particularly among charter schools. Across the nation, the number of public schools exclusively for boys or girls has risen from 3 in 1995 to 241 today, said Leonard Sax, executive director of the National Association for Single Sex Public Education. That is a tiny fraction of the approximately 93,000 public schools across the country.
Andrew Rotherham notes that Hilary Clinton has long supported single sex education.
If I were superintendent
If I were the superintendent of the MMSD, I’d set the following as my highest management priorities:
1. Move the MMSD administration out of Stage 1 and toward Stage 5 on leadership and partnerships;
2. Focus on the MMSD’s core mission: education. That might mean finding other agencies to provide MSCR functions and summer food programs, for example;
3. Design and implement a budget system that allows for assessment and control of operational and curriculum expenditures by the board;
4. Innovate for achievement, beginning by initiating pilot projects staring with curriculum and charter schools and partnerships with other educational institutions to give MMSD students a wider range of academic choices.
Hopefully, others will post thoughts on what their priorities might be as superintendent.
Deal is a Lesson in Education Politics
Six weeks ago, Deshawn Hill and I walked into Pacific Dining Car and caught a glimpse of democracy in action: A.J. Duffy and Robin Kramer having a late evening chat.
Duffy’s the charmingly cocky boss of Southern California’s biggest teachers union. Kramer is the mayor’s charmingly clever chief of staff. I’ll remind you who Hill is later. For now, let’s stick to the boss and the chief.
Kramer tells me the meeting was a coincidental bump-into-each-other thing. But seeing those two together at the city’s power-broker steak palace resonated with a hunch I’d been harboring: All those months of teachers union squawking about Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa’s plans to take over the Los Angeles Unified School District were mainly for show.
Because he’s a teacher, though, his motives conflict.
Like you, I think good teachers are heroes who deserve more money and respect and smaller classes and more control over what they teach. I understand why many people have a hard time accepting that their kids’ teachers’ interests don’t always overlap with students’ interests. In protecting a teacher’s interests, a union often adds to the bureaucratic bloat.
Since I began reporting this column in January (and in the 17 years I’ve followed my children through L.A. Unified schools) the most righteously frustrated people I’ve met have tended to lash out at two villains: the district bureaucracy and the union to whom so many board members and bureaucrats are beholden.
Even many teachers say privately that they’re disgusted that unions erect barricades against merit pay, charter schools and administrators’ ability to move experienced teachers to the schools at which they’re most needed. Hear enough stories about just how hard it is to fire an utterly incompetent teacher, and you begin to wonder why the public tolerates unelected union power brokers in their children’s lives at all.
Mike Antonucci has much more, including notes from Racine here.
Extending the Class Day
Demands for more tests and more academic rigor are spurring schools to consider something that makes most students shudder: more time in class.
Massachusetts is paying for longer days at 10 schools this year. Minnesota is considering whether to add five weeks to the school calendar. A smattering of schools nationwide, including schools in Iowa, North Carolina and California, already have increased the time some students spend in class.
The argument that students should spend more time in school isn’t new.
“A Nation at Risk,” the landmark 1983 report dissecting America’s education challenges, recommended that schools run seven hours (up from about six today) and 200 to 220 days (up from a current average of 180) to accommodate more rigorous instruction. KIPP charter schools, started in 1994, rely on longer days and Saturday school to teach students.
But the argument is gaining support as increased math and English testing required by the federal No Child Left Behind law has forced schools to focus on the basics at the expense of the arts, physical education and recess.
Per Pupil Spending Parity
The city spends the equivalent of about $11,000 per child in its regular public schools.
Charter schools in the city receive $5,859 per child in cash and the rest in services that the school system provides, such as special education and food.
Two city charter schools, City Neighbors and Patterson Park Public, appealed that formula to the state school board in 2005, saying it limited their ability to choose how to provide services.
The state school board ruled in the charter schools’ favor, and the city school system appealed that decision in court.
“All we’re asking for is parity,” said Bobbi Macdonald, president of the City Neighbors board. “We’re not asking for anyone to spend more money on charter school kids.”
Via Joanne.
Fallacy
Many of you probably read John Stossel’s polemic in the Sunday Wisconsin State Journal (9/3/06). I’d reprint here, but I don’t want to give it a wider readership than it already has. Instead I want to say few words about a central fallacy in the thinking of Stossel (and many others who wish to destroy public education). Contrary to their rhetoric, PUBLIC EDUCATION IS NOT A MONOPOLY.
I’m not talking about the fact that many fine non-public schools thrive (although that’s true), what I want to do is remind people of the important distinctions between the public and private spheres, between government and enterprise (these distinctions aren’t quite the same, but they are close enough for the purposes here). Education is a public matter, a government function because we have for 150 years (more-or-less, depending on the state and locality) we have wanted it that way.
There were and are many good reasons why this is the case. At base, education is – like garbage disposal, safe food and drugs, efficient roads, airline safety, clean water and much else – too important to be left to the vagaries of the market. At one point Stossel quotes an economist praising the “unpredictability” of the market as a source of innovation. That’s fine for producing a better mousetrap, but in schools (as in all the other examples listed) the stakes are too high to let greed be the motive force. I hear “unpredictability” and think of the children in scam voucher schools who lost out so someone could profit. The successes and innovations of capitalism are the successes of greed. The failures of capitalism are the failures of greed. Tainted milk, like bad charter schools in Milwaukee, was profitable; the market did its work by inducing more people to sell tainted milk. It isn’t the all powerful and all wise market that makes sure our children have safe milk — profit is profit, the market doesn’t care — it is the government. Schools were once all private or semi-private, but this – like tainted milk – was not satisfactory and in a democracy things that aren’t satisfactory can be changed.
Democracy is one key to why education is a public matter. If you read the words of those 19th and early 20th century men and women who created and expanded public education, you can sense both their fears and faith. Democratic self-government was a new thing and many scoffed at the idea that “the masses” were capable of the tasks. There was a very real fear of rule by the ignorant mob. But there was also a faith that given the tools their fellow-countrymen (and later women) would be up to the job. The most basic tool was literacy and more broadly education. The state of our political culture may induce many to think that these optimists were wrong about the potential for self-government or perhaps that public education has failed in this mission. I feel that way sometimes, but the republic has survived and the experiment isn’t over. I don’t think we should abandon the basic idea, I think we should work to improve our execution. And since public education is democratically governed (another reason that terming it monopoly is a misnomer), we have the means to make our calls for improvement heard.
Democracy also requires a sense of belonging to the community and the nation. There has long been a tension between the Pluribus and the Unum. America has always been diverse and group identities have threatened to overwhelm a sense of common purpose. When German children went to German schools and Presbyterian children went to Presbyterian schools and rich children went to elite schools and many children went to no school at all (or to charity schools), there was very little to bind them together and much to pull them apart. By making schools public and “common,” the school promoters sought to bolster the Unum. We also struggle with these issues and have arrived in a slightly different place where most of us desire schools to respect group identities, teach respect for group identities (multiculturalism) as well cultivate our commonalities. Finding the balance is not easy and never finished. That cultivating the common is necessary and that the best place to do this is in democratically controlled public schools seems beyond question to me.
Interestingly, capitalism is another reason why public education was considered essential to the health of the nation. There has always been a desire for trained workers and for people to be trained for work, but that isn’t the most interesting or important way that public schools support capitalism. Capitalism is a system of winners and losers. Democracy depends on a rough sense of egalitarianism – “All men are created equal.” So there is another tension here and public education helps resolve it. With free public education, equality becomes “equality of opportunity” and eventually “equality of educational opportunity” (as in the Equal Educational Opportunities Act of 1974). The promise (unfulfilled to a great degree) of equality of opportunity through education further binds the nation together, diffuses the resentments of existing inequalities and provides hope for mobility. Without this, capitalism would be constantly threatened by the “losers.”
Disciples of the market like Stossel rarely address a basic premise of their philosophy and that is that greed and only greed can produce progress and improvement. They see schools that aren’t as good as they should or must be and see “introducing market forces” as the only solution. I don’t hold this dark view of human nature or society. I think that we can be genuinely altruistic; I think that we can work together (cooperation) instead against each other (competition) to produce better schools and a better world. The people who founded public education were far from perfect and filled with self-interested motives, but at the core most shared this belief and I would point to their creation (as imperfect as it is) as evidence that they were right.
TJM
Milwaukee Superintendent’s “Mission Impossible”
The new episode, starring William Andrekopoulos and debuting in many schools near you on Sept. 5, will feature:
- Increased pressure on teachers, students and schools, as well as on the mission leader, to get better results from kids.
- More competition from schools outside MPS, including voucher and charter schools.
- Smaller staffs in many MPS schools, and a lot of nervousness at schools about how things are really going.
- A group of schools bearing the new label “SMAART” (and that’s not a compliment).
Where The Data Aren’t (And Are!)
While critiquing a cage-match point that my colleague Kevin Carey made Sherman Dorn raises an important and overlooked issue. When it comes to data in education there are really two problems. The first, pretty well known, is that there is a real lack of data to answer a bunch of important questions in a serious empirical way. Two great examples, the back and forth on charter schools and the fact that we have to debate roughly how many students graduate from American public schools and use estimates to figure it out. What other $450 billion dollar industry can’t give you a decent denominator on productivity?
But the second, which Sherman gets at, is that in some cases there is good data but no one is using it to ask and answer interesting and important questions…That’s a more overlooked and subtle problem of incentives and politics but it’s an enormous missed opportunity. What’s the point of putting these powerful state data tracking systems in if no one is going to use them to ask and try to answer, best we can, some tough questions…
More here. There’s been some discussion of these issues related to the recently released ACT scores.
Charting A New Course
More than half of 53 public schools expected to be open in New Orleans by early September — 31 schools — will be run independently under state and local charters issued to a dozen different organizations. Charter schools receive public funding and must meet public academic standards, but have great leeway in hiring staff, setting salaries, choosing a curriculum and managing daily operations. Some groups run the schools themselves, while others have hired private companies to do so. Proponents say charter schools’ independence fosters innovation and better academic performance, while critics contend that empirical studies don’t show charters to be superior to more traditional schools. Regardless of that debate, many people in New Orleans see charter schools as the key to a once-in-a-lifetime chance to remake New Orleans’s public education system, and to eke some good out of the horror that was Katrina.
“This is truly an opportunity to hit a restart button,” said Leslie Jacobs, vice president of the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education. “We’re taking advantage of that opportunity to design for the long term a very different model based on public-school choice.”
In Kindergarten Playtime, a New Meaning for ‘Play’
THE word “kindergarten” means “children’s garden,” and for years has conjured up an image of children playing with blocks, splashing at water tables, dressing up in costumes or playing house. Now, with an increased emphasis on academic achievement even in the earliest grades, playtime in kindergarten is giving way to worksheets, math drills and fill-in-the-bubble standardized tests.
Nowhere are the demands greater than at Achievement First East New York Charter School in Brooklyn, which holds classes through this month. On a recent Friday morning, 20 kindergartners in uniforms of yellow shirts and blue jumpers or shorts, many yawning and rubbing their eyes, filed into the classroom of Keisha Rattray and Luis Gonzalez. Some sat in plastic chairs lined up before the teachers for phonics and grammar drills, while others sat at computer screens, listening through headphones to similar exercises.
Legalizing Markets in Happiness and Well-Being
Four years ago I moved my family to Angel Fire, New Mexico, to create a charter high school. Two teachers with whom I had previously worked ten years earlier in Alaska moved to New Mexico to work at the school I was creating. By the second year of the school, we had the created the highest ranked public high school in New Mexico based on Jay Mathews’ Challenge Index. The third year, we ranked among the “Top 100 Best Public High Schools” on Newsweek’s list.
But at that point, I had been forced out by the state of New Mexico because I was not a licensed administrator. When I had moved to New Mexico charter school administrators did not need a license. But the law had changed, and I would have needed seven years’ experience as a licensed public school teacher in order to enter an administrative licensure program. Despite the fact that my work as an educator has been praised by leading educational theorists and practitioners, and despite the fact that I have achieved spectacular results, it is not legal for me to lead a charter school in New Mexico. Moreover, beyond spectacular academic results, my focus as an educator is always first and foremost on developing adolescent happiness and well-being. It is inexcusable that it is not legal for me to lead schools. We need to legalize markets in happiness and well-being.
“Is the Democratic elite turning against the teachers’ unions?”
Eduwonk thinks so. Some evidence (and not just from Eduwonk): 1) Democratic Governor-in-waiting Eliot Spitzer of New York has endorsed opening more independent charter schools–which are typically not unionized to the same degree as public schools–after a study showed many of them to be doing better than their traditional public competitors.** 2) Speaking at the recent fancy Aspen Institute event, former Clinton official (and now New York City schools chancellor) Joel Klein made a “case that teachers-union contracts are the main obstacle to improving urban education,” according to Mort Kondracke:
“The contract protects the interests of adults at the expense of kids,” he told a rapt audience, describing how it bars pay differentials based on student performance and service in difficult schools; makes it impossible for principals to fire underperforming teachers; and allows teachers to choose their own professional development tracks, regardless of supply-and-demand needs, such as those for more math and science teachers.
Weighted Student Funding
Everyone agrees that education funding today is a mess. Most disadvantaged students don’t receive the funding they need; red tape and overhead waste time and money; and new types of education options, like charter schools, are starved for dollars. Unfortunately, until now, so-called solutions have consisted of nothing more than soothing slogans and gimmicks.
But a broad, bipartisan coalition now urges a new method of funding our public schools–one that finally ensures the students who need the most receive it, that empowers school leaders to make key decisions, and that opens the door to public school choice. It’s a 100 percent solution to the most pressing problems in public school funding–and it’s called Weighted Student Funding.
Nancy Salvato comments on the report.
2006 Condition of Education Statistics
National Center for Education Statistics:
This website is an integrated collection of the indicators and analyses published in The Condition of Education 2000–2006. Some indicators may have been updated since they appeared in print
Chester Finn has more:
–A huge fraction of U.S. school children now attend “schools of choice”: more than half of K-12 parents reported in 2003 that they had the “opportunity” to send their kids to a “chosen public school.” It appears that 15 percent actually sent them to a “chosen” public school (including charter schools), to which must be added the 10 to 11 percent in private schools, the 1 to 2 percent who are home schooled, and what seems to be 24 percent who moved into their current neighborhood because of the schools. Though there is some duplication in those numbers, it looks to me like a third to a half of U.S. schoolchildren’s families are exercising school choice of some sort.
–Class-size data are elusive but it’s easy to calculate the student/teacher ratio in U.S. public schools, which has been below 17 to 1 since 1998. Even allowing for special ed, AP physics, and 4th year language classes with 5 kids in them, one may fairly ask why a country with fewer than 17 kids per public-school teacher remains obsessed with class-size reduction. (When I was in fifth grade, the national ratio was about 27:1.)
–Total expenditures per pupil in U.S. public schools reached $9,630 in 2003—up 23 percent in constant dollars over the previous 7 years. At 17 kids per teacher, that translates to almost $164,000 per teacher. Why, then, are teachers not terribly well paid? Because (using the NCES categories) the U.S. spends barely half of its school dollars on “instruction.”
Joanne does as well.
Marshmallows and Public Policy
A longtime reader emailed David Brooks most recent column:
Around 1970, Walter Mischel launched a classic experiment. He left a succession of 4-year-olds in a room with a bell and a marshmallow. If they rang the bell, he would come back and they could eat the marshmallow. If, however, they didn’t ring the bell and waited for him to come back on his own, they could then have two marshmallows.
In videos of the experiment, you can see the children squirming, kicking, hiding their eyes — desperately trying to exercise self-control so they can wait and get two marshmallows. Their performance varied widely. Some broke down and rang the bell within a minute. Others lasted 15 minutes.
The children who waited longer went on to get higher SAT scores. They got into better colleges and had, on average, better adult outcomes. The children who rang the bell quickest were more likely to become bullies. They received worse teacher and parental evaluations 10 years on and were more likely to have drug problems at age 32.
Lots of Mischel test links here. Sara has more on this at the Quick and the Ed.
“I have private preference but a public purse”
My 5-year-old daughter, Elizabeth Virginia, now attends a private school that teaches foreign language and arts and offers after-school music and dance classes. But tuition is forcing me to look at Atlanta Public Schools next year for kindergarten.
When I first started researching where to send Elizabeth next year, I was looking for private schools that offered tuition assistance. I also sent an e-mail, however, to my Atlanta Board of Education representative asking him to sell me on taking my child out of private school and placing her into public school. His energetic reply made me look at Atlanta schools.
Report Card on American Education
American Legislative Exchange Council:
LEC has released its newest edition of The Report Card on American Education: A State by State Analysis 1983-1984 to 2003-2004. The Report Card contains over 50 tables and figures that display in various ways more than 100 measures of educational resources and achievement. It strengthens the growing consensus that simply spending more taxpayer dollars on education is not enough to improve student achievement. In addition, the report includes analysis on numerous factors that affect the public education system, including demographics, school choice and charter school initiatives.
full report[pdf]
Weekly Email Message
Carol Carstensen:
Parent Group Presidents:
MEMORIAL AND WEST AREA SCHOOLS: NOTE FORUM DESCRIBED UNDER MAY 8.
BUDGET FACTOID:
The 2006-07 proposed budget is on the district’s web site (www.mmsd.org/budget). The Executive Summary provides an overview of the budget. The list of specific staff cuts is found on pages 3 & 4 of Chapter 3, Department & Division Reports.
None of the cuts are good for the district or for the education of our children but they are required to keep the budget in compliance with the state revenue caps. Since there is likely to be considerable discussion about the cut affecting the elementary strings program, I wanted to provide a little additional information. The administration is proposing to continue the current structure (strings once a week for 45 minutes) for 5th graders only. Additionally, there is a recommendation to have a committee of district staff and UW music education specialists develop a new approach for K-5 music that will include, for all students, experience playing an instrument.
There are forums on the budget scheduled for Tuesday, May 2 at 6:30 p.m. at LaFollette and Tuesday, May 9 at 6:30 at Memorial.
Program on Vouchers Draws Minority Support
Washington’s African-American mayor, Anthony A. Williams, joined Republicans in supporting the program, prompted in part by a concession from Congress that pumped more money into public and charter schools. In doing so, Mr. Williams ignored the ire of fellow Democrats, labor unions and advocates of public schools.
“As mayor, if I can’t get the city together, people move out,” said Mr. Williams, who attended Catholic schools as a child. “If I can’t get the schools together, why should there be a barrier programmatically to people exercising their choice and moving their children out?”
School-choice programs have fervent opponents, and here, public school officials worry that the voucher program will diminish the importance of the neighborhood school, though the program serves only a relative few of the district’s 58,000 students. National critics of school choice like Reg Weaver, president of the country’s largest teachers’ union, the National Education Association, accused voucher supporters of “exploiting the frustration of these minority parents to push for a political agenda” intended to undermine public schools.
Educational Flatline in Math and Reading Bedevils USA
Despite nearly 30 years of improvements in U.S. children’s overall quality of life, their basic academic skills have barely budged, according to research led by a Duke University sociologist.
The “educational flatline,” as measured by scores on math and reading exams, defies researchers’ expectations, because other quality-of-life measures, such as safety and family income, have improved steadily since 1975.
More recently, even areas that had worsened in the 1970s and 1980s, such as rates of teen suicide, have improved dramatically, so researchers had expected that education improvements would soon follow. They didn’t.
2006 Child Well-Being Results.
The Educational Flatline, Causes and Results:The Education Flatline: Causes and Solutions
- The Education Flatline: Overview , by Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill
- A Short History of School Reform , by David T. Gordon
- The Role of PreK-3 in Improving School Achievement , by Gene Maeroff
- Charter Schools and No Child Left Behind: An Oncoming Collision? , by Bruno Manno and Martin West
- The Case for National Curriculum, National Standards, and National Tests , by Diane Ravitch
- If Wishes Were Horses: The Reality behind Teacher Quality Findings , by Kate Walsh
From the Wall Street Journal‘s Opinion Journal
CROSS COUNTRY
Black Flight
The exodus to charter schools.
BY KATHERINE KERSTEN
MINNEAPOLIS–Something momentous is happening here in the home of prairie populism: black flight. African-American families from the poorest neighborhoods are rapidly abandoning the district public schools, going to charter schools, and taking advantage of open enrollment at suburban public schools.
Today, just around half of students who live in the city attend its district public schools. As a result, Minneapolis schools are losing both raw numbers of students and “market share.” In 1999-2000, district enrollment was about 48,000; this year, it’s about 38,600. Enrollment projections predict only 33,400 in 2008. A decline in the number of families moving into the district accounts for part of the loss, as does the relocation of some minority families to inner-ring suburbs. Nevertheless, enrollments are relatively stable in the leafy, well-to-do enclave of southwest Minneapolis and the city’s white ethnic northeast. But in 2003-04, black enrollment was down 7.8%, or 1,565 students. In 2004-05, black enrollment dropped another 6%.
Science Standards Mediocre, Study Finds
Fordham Foundation criticizes focus on ‘discovery learning.’
More than two-thirds of states have science standards that earn a C grade or worse for their quality, in part because they overemphasize “discovery learning,” the idea that students should be encouraged to acquire knowledge through their own investigation and experimentation, a study issued last week concludes.
Too many of those standards—documents that spell out what students are expected to know—also present science in a sprawling, unorganized way that is short of facts and content, according to the report by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation.
By Sean Cavanagh, Education Week, December 14, 2005
Raising Expectations in Watts
One place where such heroic work is taking place is the Watts Learning Center (WLC) charter school, one of the most improved charter schools in California.
From 2000 to 2005, the WLC rose from a low test-score ranking to a level near the state’s proficiency target score of 800. The K-5 charter school was able to defy low expectations and accomplish this feat with a student population nearly all African American and low income. In an example of what the President called “the soft bigotry of low expectations,” these two factors are too often considered indicators of educational failure. WLC charter school proved defied that expectation.
Gene Fisher, founder and president of WLC, says that the school’s mission is to create a culture of learning and high expectations for students, parents, faculty and staff. He points out that, “The job of our teachers includes an emphasis on a proven curriculum while also reinforcing these high expectations – a belief that students can and will succeed.”
The school uses the structured phonics-based Open Court reading program. WLC chose Open Court before the Los Angeles Unified School District adopted the same program. Open Court emphasizes continuous review and practice of already learned material. Sandra Fisher, the school’s executive director, says that it is important that the curriculum be structured because so many students lack structure in their lives.
Links:
- Great Schools Data on the Watts Learning Center
- Watts Learning Center
via Joanne
Disintegrating District: Los Angeles
Evan George writing in LA Alternative:
But on November 15th, Jefferson saw a new kind of disruption: a march organized by the students and parents of Small Schools Alliance, to protest what they see as indifference to the inadequate learning environment at Jefferson. More than 500 marchers converged on LAUSD headquarters with a petition of 10,000 signatures calling for the district to relinquish control of Jefferson High School and transform it into six independent charter schools to be operated by Green Dot Public Schools, a local, non-profit charter school developer, created by former Democratic party activist—and Rock the Vote founder—Steve Barr.
Green Dot, which currently operates five high schools in the Los Angeles area, has vied for control of Jefferson High School for nearly a year and a half. Charter school critics—and there are many—have long decried Romer’s own association with the Charter School Movement. As reported in this paper back in February of 2003, Romer then supported a contentious bill aimed at resurrecting the controversial Belmont Learning Center as a risky charter school program.
“I think the Left, which I’m a member of, has to pull our heads out of our xxxxx and come up with some solutions, and stop defending failed systems. Especially un-democratic, centralized bureaucracies that are not effective,” says Barr in an interview with L.A. Alternative. “We have no answers for the education issue. Our answer is to give more money to a failed centralized system?”
Here is an eduprediction: One way or another, things are going to change at Jefferson, Barr has let the genie out of the bottle and it’s not going back in. And that is his endgame anyway, improving things. Those parents want fresh ground now that they know it’s out there.
Barr has this old fashioned notion that the public schools are supposed to be a way up the economic ladder a few rungs — for the kids not the adults.
via Eduwonk
Weekly Email From Board President Carol Carstensen
Parent Group Presidents:
BUDGET FACTOID:
The Qualified Economic Offer (Q.E.O.) law provides that a district which offers its teachers a combined salary and benefit package of at least 3.8% can avoid going to binding arbitration. The practical impact is that a district must offer at least 3.8%. Over the 12 years of revenue caps, the Madison district has settled at about 4.2% with MTI that means the total increase of salary and benefits (including health insurance) has been about 4.2%. This year the settlement was 3.98%.
Competing for Students
Catholic and private schools in Dayton have seen a 20 percent decline in enrollment over the past five years in the face of changing demographics and intense competition from charter schools, which are tuition-free public schools run by private operators.
Board Votes to Create Equity Task Force
Schools to take closer look at equity
Task force could lead to budget war
By Matt Pommer, The Capital Times
November 1, 2005
The Madison School Board created an “equity” task force Monday, setting the stage for a possible budget war over programs like elementary school strings and foreign language instruction in middle schools.
President Carol Carstensen said the board had been “skirting difficult issues” in budget preparations.
The board has been in favor of equality and directing resources to the neediest population, but “we have not used our power to allocate resources to our neediest children,” she said.
The citizens task force was given a March 31 target date for a report, time enough to influence the development of the School Board’s 2006-07 budget. Twelve people – three from each high school attendance area – will be named to the task force.
In light of state budget controls, it becomes more difficult to fund program like strings and foreign language in middle school, Carstensen said.
Board member Juan Lopez said the School Board has been “responsive” to organized groups rather than focused on equity. For example, the strings program is important, but he asked, “Is it equitable? No.”
Groups may come to the board with a plea for an additional charter school, Lopez noted. That may not be equitable, but the board responds to a political push, he suggested.
Abha Thakkar, a member of the Northside Planning Council and the East Attendance Area PTO Coalition, urged the board to appoint the task force. She said in a “time of prosperity” it is easy to continue programs that help just some of the students in the district.
Helping the pupils from poor families is not just an east side or north side issue, she indicated. “It’s a districtwide issue,” she said, in urging adoption of the task force.
After the meeting, she told The Capital Times she was pleased by the creation of the task force. But she was most pleased at the lengthy board discussion before the vote.
“They finally fessed up to the issue,” she said.
Board member Lawrie Kobza said the equity issue was the reason she ran for the board. “Maybe it’s difficult to define equity,” she said.
Can we Talk 2
I previously wrote about the lack of information received via email, internet, etc…from the school district. Since I posted that blog the District has been “experimenting” with two software systems they deem worth evaluation by parents and staff and are asking for feedback. (please go to the www.Madison.k12.wi.us for more info)
But not all the communication problems with MMSD have to do with modern technology. Let me give some examples……..
Maryland’s Education Reform Guidelines
Maryland Lt. Gov. Michael S. Steele released his blueprint for education reform yesterday, a series of 30 recommendations that call for schools to be graded and teachers to be paid for performance.
Members of the 30-person Governor’s Commission on Quality Education in Maryland recommended efforts to promote charter schools but rejected school vouchers, a far more divisive topic
Full Report (PDF)
New Vision of Public Education
Information sent to me by Senn Brown, Secretary
Wisconsin Charter Schools Association.
Read about the new vision of public education in Milwaukee at: http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/jun05/334378.asp .
Nuestro Mundo: muy bueno
Doug Erickson, WI State Journal reporter, writes about Nuesstro Mundo, MMSD’s bi-lingual charter school – Two-language school is seen as muy bueno
Who will invite me to talk with them?
Thank you to Troy Dassler, Marisue Horton, and others who commented on my report on the meeting of the Long Range Planning Committee on Monday, June 6.
Several people objected to my characterization of the some of the presentations as nasty and bitter. I know that it’s hard to perceive Leopold leaders and supporters as anything but polite, but I was shocked when they launched into immediate denunciations of Ruth Robarts and Lawrie Kobza, blaming them for the defeat of the referendum.
Post mortem on Leopold referendum
Joan Knoebel offered her thoughts on how to win support for the operating referendum, and I whole-heartedly second them.
On the Leopold referendum, I’d ask the board and supporters to do two things:
1) Lay out three or four alternative locations and configurations for a new Westside school, draw possible boundaries, develop cost projections, and then debate which alterantive seems to be the most likely to achieve academic excellence on the West side.
2) Invite organizations or individuals to propose a charter school on the Westside. Several people suggested a charter or magnet school, so let’s see whether one might emerge as the best option for providing excellent education in the area.
Current overcrowding is not an issue at Leopold. Leopold is overcrowded, but I’ll vote no again on a second school at Leopold if its supporters rotely drone, “This is the only option. This is the only option. This is the only option.”
Blocking Reform
Joanne Jacobs:
From the Huffington Post: Mike Piscal, founder of the very successful View Park Prep charter school in the low-income, minority Crenshaw District of LA names names in analyzing why 3,950 ninth graders at South LA’s four major high schools turn into 1,600 graduates, 900 college freshmen and 258 college graduates. More here.
This is related: Shanghai Jiaotong University won the recent ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest. The US hasn’t won since 1997. The University of Illinois finished 17th, CalTech,Duke and MIT finished 29th while UW-Madison earned an honorable mention.
DPI News
Wisconsin DPI announced the formation of an advisory council on Charter Schools (PDF) and High Schools – via wispolitics Meanwhile, on the campaign trail, WEAC plans to spend $358K to support incumbent Libby Burmaster, more than the $313K (Burmaster = 250K, Underheim = 64K) both candidates have raised to date – via Alan Borsuk!
Mary Battaglia’s recent post asks what this government body does (Johnny Winston adds a comment).
Real Community Leadership
Ive noticed in several postings that people have criticized the Madison School Board for lack of leadership. I believe that true leadership happens in the community and then comes to the board level for action. This has been the case in many actions that have been taken place in the past, present and will undoubtedly be the case in the future. All of these actions have had or will have a profound impact on the Madison Metropolitan School District.
Fifty-one years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court eliminated formal school segregation in Brown v. Board of Education. Twenty-five years later, this ruling forced the Madison School District to dramatically change how it educated elementary students. In 1979, South Madison residents lead by Dr. Richard Harris filed a lawsuit with the federal Office of Civil Rights concluding that the Madison School Board had knowingly created and perpetrated racial isolation by closing schools and changing boundaries on the city’s heavily populated minority South Madison. This lead to the creation of a task force that created the current school pairings we know today.
This community leadership has also lead to new initiatives such as Nuestro Mundo Community School, the districts dual-language charter school. This school is responding to Latino community leaders concerns regarding the changing demographics in the city and school district. English speaking families wanting to expose their children to Spanish and Latino culture are also enrolling their children in the school.
In addition to Nuestro Mundo, the Madison School Board is supporting the building of Wexford Ridge Community Center on the grounds of Jefferson Middle and Memorial High Schools. Wexford Ridge Neighborhood Center currently runs adult and youth programming out of a two-bedroom apartment. Again, community leaders and residents supported the proposal that initially didnt have the support of the Superintendent or a majority of the board. I am proud to state that voting for this proposal was one of my first acts as a member of the school board.
In the near future, on April 11th the School Boards Partnership Committee will convene a meeting to discuss a proposal from a group of parents to form a girls hockey program. This program will be a cooperative effort with girls from Memorial, West, East and LaFollette as well as schools outside of Madison being able to participate on one team. I am in favor of this program because it allows girls to participate positively in athletics and uses parents creativity and community resources to fund the proposal.
In conclusion, the school board is elected to lead the school district, however, it is the community that truly leads schools. It is the above stated community initiatives that lead me to believe that the real leadership comes from the community, not solely from school board members. I look forward to seeing what future initiatives come from the community, so we can work together to make them happen for the betterment of the Madison Metropolitan School District.
San Diego Superintendent Alan Bersin & No Child Left Behind
Haven’t yet had your fill of political shenanigans in California? Then keep an eye on San Diego where one of the nation’s longest serving urban superintendents is facing political trouble. National implications as this episode shows what can happen when push comes to shove on NCLB.
Superintendent Alan Bersin is poised to reorganize several of the city’s chronically underperforming schools. At two of the three schools a majority of teachers have voted to make the schools charter schools to help facilitate this and at all three 60-80 percent of parents voted to do the same. Remember, these are not schools that didn’t do well “on a single test” but schools that have not done right by students for years.
California Bilingual Litmus Test
Susan Estrich – former Dukakis campaign manager and USC Professor takes California Democrats to task for pushing out one of their own over bilingual education:
But unlike much of Silicon Valley, he is a passionate Democrat, and his issue is public education. He has twice served as president of the State Board of Education. The idea that Democrats could reject him had me checking the local headlines this morning twice, to make sure that this wasn’t some joke edition. Have these people lost their minds? This is the most talented guy on the team, not to mention that he’s responsible for about $15 million to Democratic campaigns in the last couple of cycles.
Then I got it. Cut to the chase.
This isn’t about qualifications or performance. So what if he killed himself for the last five years working on the Board of Education, running all over the state encouraging charter schools, using his own money when necessary to help provide start-up funds, while running a multimillion dollar business as his day job?
He failed the bilingual education litmus test.
Mickey Kaus has more.
MMSD Board Policy Changes – Administration Proposes Eliminating Equity Policy / Northside PTO Coalition Says No, Not a Good Idea
Mixed in with other MMSD Board business on December 6, 2004 was a change to District Policy 9001 regarding equity.
From the Board Agenda – X Other Business – Item C.
It is recommended that the Board approve: 1) the changes that are attached relative to Board Policy 9000A and 9000B which have to do with a Code of Conduct for employees and Board members; 2) the deletion of Board Policy 9001 regarding equity; and 3) the changes that are attached relative to Board Policy 10,000 regarding charter schools.
The Northside PTO Coalition opposed the MMSD Administration proposal to eliminate the Equity Policy. Board members decided to postpose a decision on this policy and asked the administration to rework the policy with consideration given to equity issues.
This is the second time in little over a month that a policy change raised concern among the public. Earlier, the District administration had proposed eliminating the policy that required professionals to be included in the hiring of teachers in certain aeas: physical education, special education, fine arts, for example.
Fine arts teachers said they needed this professional help to ensure the quality teaching professionals are hired in specific areas.
Maybe the Board needs to consider an interim step in the policy revision process that first passes through a Board committee if the change is more than simple updating.
Download press release file
Barb Williams on The Harlem Project
Barb Williams forwarded a recent letter to the NY Times Magazine regarding the June 20, 2004 article: “It Takes a Hood” on The Harlem Project:
Of the many efforts aimed at interrupting the effects of poverty on kids’ lives, none has left me more hopeful than Paul Tough’s piece on The Harlem Project. Geoffrey Canada, to my mind, has got it right. His focus on poor black kids’ success in school, his goal to reach those least likely to succeed, and his preference for programs that emphasize accountablility are not new. But combine that with his plans for a charter school with longer days, a longer school year and a demanding curriculum (despite rifling the feathers of the teachers’ union) while having in place a network of support had me, a sometimes sad cynic, rooting him on. Maybe one day kids like Janiqua Utley will be guaranteed the kind education Canada envisions, rather than land on a waiting list. And perhaps Canada has identified what needs to be in place in order for children to imagine their own possibilities–unconstrained by their circumstances–and the means to realize them. We ought to pay very close attention. I salute Canada.
Copenhagen Consensus Project on The Learning Deficit
Harvard’s Lant Pritchett writes in a new paper for the Copenhagen Consensus Project:
There are many ways to press forward this kind of systemic reform, Mr Pritchett argues. Vouchers and a �market� for education might work well in some circumstances, but other approaches could achieve good results too in some cases: school autonomy (as granted to �charter schools� in the United States, for instance), decentralisation of control, community management, and the use of non-government providers, could all, Mr Pritchett argues, serve the goal of structural reform that he regards as necessary if the application of extra resources is to succeed.
One striking indication of how easy it is to spend money fruitlessly in education comes from the rich countries. According to one study cited by Mr Pritchett, Britain increased its real spending per pupil by 77% between 1970 and 1994; over the same period, the assessment score for learning in maths and science fell by 8%. Australia increased its real spending per pupil by 270%; its pupils� scores fell by 2%. Extra spending by itself is likely to be no more successful in the poor countries than it has been in the rich.
Reading Instruction Workshop
2004 DIRECT INSTRUCTION TRAINING AND CONFERENCE
August 9-10, 2004
Edgewood College Campus
Madison, Wisconsin
- Direct Instruction Training for both Beginning and Advanced
- Sessions Specially Designed for Deaf/Hard of Hearing Teachers
- College Credit Available
- Great New Location
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Sara Tarver, Ph.D., Professor, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Issues and Debates about Direct Instruction
FEATURED PRESENTER
Terry Dodds, Author of the new High-Performance Writing Program
OTHER PRESENTERS
Tonja Gallagher, M.S., Doctoral Student and Teaching Assistant, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Jane Jung , Ph.D., Second Grade Teacher, Lapham School, Madison,WI
Dolores Mishelow, former principal in Milwaukee, WI
Norm Mishelow, principal of Barton School in Milwaukee, U.S. Dept. of Ed. Blue Ribbon Award Winner
Beverly Trezek, Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, Madison
Chris Uelmen, M.S., Curriculum Coordinator, Core Knowledge Charter School, Verona, WI
Forbidden Fruit and the Classroom
The Biden administration initially sought to remove those questions, saying it wanted to avoid data duplication, but it backtracked after fierce criticism it was doing so as a sop to teachers unions. Consequently, the question will be included on future questionnaires, but, as of today, the Department of Education “has no data,” a spokesperson told RCI. These days, from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon, even a cursory review of local news reporting brings disquieting revelations of teachers accused of or arrested for alleged sexual relations with a student. In just the past month:
- In California, multiple students filed a lawsuit against a male music teacher who had taught at three different schools in the San Jose area. The teacher is already serving prison time for previous convictions in sexual misconduct cases with students.
- In New Jersey, a female middle school teacher was arrested for an alleged ongoing sexual relationship with a student.
- In Texas, a male teacher was arrested for allegedly having a sexual affair with a 12-year-old student.
- In Illinois, a female substitute teacher faces charges of “grooming and predatory criminal sexual assault” for an alleged relationship with a sixth-grader.
- In Washington, the arrest of a male high school teacher on charges of sexual misconduct with a minor represented a repeat nightmare for a school district that previously had a psychologist convicted on the same charges.
- Just last weekend, a 36-year-old New Jersey teacher was arrested on multiple assault charges involving a sexual relationship with a teenage student.
These stories hold a lurid appeal to some. Sensational accounts of seductions of students by teachers, typically by high school female teachers, are tabloid catnip. The topic has provided material for standup comics, Hollywood writers, and pop tunes that didn’t begin or end with Van Halen’s 1984 hit “Hot For Teacher.”
Classical ed — seen as ‘a white child’s education’ — is thriving in the Bronx
Are the liberal arts conservative?, asks Emma Green in a New Yorker story about the revival of “classical education.” A growing number of classical-ed charter and private schools are offering “a traditional liberal-arts education, often focusing on the Western canon and the study of citizenship.”
Unlike many traditional public schools, “classical schools prize memory work, asking students to internalize math formulas and recite poems,” she writes.
Reading lists aren’t trendy. “One New York City public-high-school reading list includes graphic novels, Michelle Obama’s memoir, and a coming-of-age book about identity featuring characters named Aristotle and Dante,” writes Green. “In classical schools, high-school students read Aristotle and Dante.”
At Brilla, a charter-school network in the South Bronx, the middle school is calm and phone free, she writes.
An update on Wisconsin’s Literacy changes
IMPORTANT ACT 20 LITERACY UPDATE
TODAY, council MAY soft-approve first batch of reading curriculum. (DPI and legislature must agree.)
District/charter/voucher that pick them get partially reimbursed. If not, they pay for new Themselves.
NOT recorded, so follow this thread!
— Quinton Klabon (@GhaleonQ) January 12, 2024
Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-
—-
Underly and our long term disastrous reading results….
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Legislation and Reading: The Wisconsin Experience 2004-
“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
Commentary on Milwaukee College Prep Programs
Milwaukee’s college prep programs have shown improvement in growing academic achievement for Hispanic children, but not Black students. And access to programs are often too limited to create institutional change across the city.
Those findings are part of a recent report by the Black and Latino Ecosystem and Support Transition, or BLEST, Hub at Marquette University which highlights the Black and brown college student perspective.
The group began in 2019 as a collaboration of Marquette, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee Area Technical College and Milwaukee Public Schools to build a greater understanding of the needs of Black and brown students in Milwaukee.
As Milwaukee’s Hispanic population has grown over the last 20 years, there have been increasing efforts by many charter and choice high schools and the city’s universities to intentionally interact with Latino students.
Over the last decade, Cristo Rey, two of the Carmen Schools and St. Augustine Preparatory Academy opened on the city’s south side. During that same time, Hispanic enrollment increased 114 percent at Marquette University and 76 percent at UW-Milwaukee, the report found.
Walter Lanier, CEO of the African American Leadership Alliance of Milwaukee and one of the founders of the BLEST Hub, said the strides made for Hispanic students are good. But Black students continue to need support.
Accountability and the Wisconsin DPI
According to DPI, Holy Redeemer did not submit its September 2021 enrollment audit in a timely manner. The school also failed to timely submit its 2021-22 Fiscal & Internal Control Practices Report, which determines if the school has sound fiscal and internal control practices.
These practices include paying vendors and employees on time, completing employee background checks and other practices required for participation in the choice program.
Instead of withholding payment, DPI and Holy Redeemer entered into a settlement agreement and the school agreed it would provide all required reports in the future.
But, in 2022 and in 2023, the school failed to meet due dates and provided incomplete reports, according to DPI.
Holy Redeemer Christian Academy has participated in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program since the 1998-99 school year.
In the latest state school district report card for academic year 2021-22, Holy Redeemer failed to meet expectations, receiving an overall score of 28.4 percent.
“Well, it’s kind of too bad that we’ve got the smartest people at our universities, and yet we have to create a law to tell them how to teach.”
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
Commentary on taxpayer funded K-12 Choice
First, rigorous, knowledge-building contentworks. Across the K–12 continuum, mastery of rigorous content exercises an independent, positive impact on young people’s opportunities. When American schools fail to provide this, they are leaving one of the most powerful levers off the table.
In practice, this means that while a wide variety of public and private schools should be eligible for public funding and free to operate as they see fit, all should be held accountable for covering a basic corpus of knowledge. Mastery of this content should be assessed in all schools through rigorous exams, the results of which provide clear signals to parents and teachers about each student’s strengths and weaknesses, and to the public about each school’s.
Second, parents need help. A hands-off approach leaves too many parents behind. Many well-resourced families can navigate the choices and identify high-powered options. But almost 40% of parents in urban contexts are functionally illiterate, with limited social networks. Surveys of parents in high-choice systems, and research on individual voucher programs like Washington, D.C.’s, show that parents newly empowered to exert agency on behalf of their children’s education face a steep learning curve. As one of the country’s foremost scholars of educational opportunity Patrick Wolf put it, parents don’t need information—“they need a person.” Nonprofits are springing up in the United States to fill this person-to-person need, but some pluralistic countries build “parent navigators” in from the beginning.
Furthermore, as conservatives increasingly acknowledge, the market logic that works so well for commodities can falter when applied to more complex contexts. We humans can get attached to people, places, and things that do not serve us well—including schools. Conversely, markets eagerly dispose of things to which we might rightly be attached. Closing a school may be the right thing for any number of reasons, but it inevitably leads to collective grief, anxiety, and sometimes outright resistance from community leaders or lobbyists. Kevin Huffman, commissioner of education for Tennessee from 2011–2015, tells a harrowing story of what he called his “abject failure” to shut down “the worst performing [charter] school in Tennessee,” in the face of such pressures.
The US Test Mess
Now, consider what has transpired over the past twenty years in the USA. We were headed in the direction of other countries’ testing system structures at the turn of the millennium, with state-led consequential achievement tests for students administered only every few grade levels.[1] Plus, we benefitted from two competing college admission tests, whose scores could be submitted for consideration simultaneously to thousands of universities worldwide. [2]
Then came three disruptions, each of which, I would argue, served to undermine the utility of US educational testing.
First came passage of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act (2001–2002), which imposed a federal mandate on all public schools (including charters). The NCLB insistence on annual administrations of tests across seven grade levels virtually guaranteed lax security: teachers administer tests in their own classrooms to their own students and principals manage the distribution and collection of test materials in their own schools. Then, we judge schools and teachers based on those NCLB test scores they themselves proctor.
Pandemic taxpayer funded k-12 spending and the teachers
While teacher shortages dominated education news coverage during the summer, the tremendous amount of federal pandemic-relief money that states and school districts are pouring into the profession—and the funding’s substantial consequences for longstanding policies and practices in the more-than-three-million-member occupation—has received far less attention. Local education agencies are on pace to spend as much as $20 billion on instructional staff under the 2021 federal American Rescue Plan, making teachers the single largest investment under the plan nationwide.
To understand state and local policymakers’ strategies for bolstering teaching resources in the wake of the pandemic, FutureEd analyzed the Covid-relief spending plans of 5,000 school districts and charter organizations representing
74 percent of the nation’s public-school students. And we examined additional documents and conducted a range of interviews to gauge how the nation’s 100 largest school districts plan to reinforce their teaching ranks with American Rescue Plan aid.
The result is a comprehensive picture of state and local spending of recovery resources on the nation’s teaching force. And it’s clear that momentum is building behind several spending strategies with important policy implications, including an emerging commitment to extra pay for longer hours, and bonuses that break with traditional pay schedules to combat widespread teacher shortages.
Associate Director Phyllis Jordan and Policy Analyst Bella DiMarco researched and wrote the report. Nathan Kriha provided research assistance. And Merry Alderman, Molly Breen, Jackie Arthur provided editorial and design support.
Notes on the NEA’s $377 million budget, and teacher pay
America’s largest labor union is the National Education Association (NEA), organized in 1906 with a congressional charter “to elevate the character and advance the interests of the profession of teaching; and to promote the cause of education in the United States.”
One hundred and sixteen years later, the average individual U.S. teacher salary is $60,909, just below the median household income of $67,521 for the country in 2020, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Inadequate teacher pay has long been a staple of NEA rhetoric and advocacy, as seen in this April 29, 2019, statement by then-NEA President Lily Ekelsen Garcia:
“Across the nation educator pay continues to erode, expanding the large pay gap between what teachers earn and what similarly educated and experienced professionals in other fields earn.
“Educators don’t do this work to get rich, they do this work because they believe in students. But their pay is not commensurate with the dedication and expertise they bring to the profession.”
Given the NEA’s frequently professed concern about low teacher pay, critics wonder why the union spends so little of the $377 million it received mostly in dues paid by 2.9 million members in 2021 on “representational activities”—that is, bargaining for better pay and working conditions for rank-and-file classroom teachers.
Rather interesting
A majority of the taxpayer supported Madison School Board rejected (2011) Kaleem’s proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB charter school. Consider the implications for the many children…
Mandates, closed schools and Dane County Madison Public Health.
The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
WEAC: $1.57 million for Four Wisconsin Senators
Friday Afternoon Veto: Governor Evers Rejects AB446/SB454; an effort to address our long term, disastrous reading results
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
When A Stands for Average: Students at the UW-Madison School of Education Receive Sky-High Grades. How Smart is That?
Beyond Conspiracy Theory – The Sick History of Public Education
Zay:
Funding America’s New Education
John D Rockefeller donated over $100 million dollars (equivalent of over $3bn in today’s dollars) to establish the General Education Board in 1902, and also to fund universities and teacher’s colleges across the nation. Andrew Carnegie chartered the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1905. Both organizations had the explicit purpose of helping to bolster institutional schooling across the US. Though the aims of these men may appear altruistic (It should be noted Rockefeller only had two years of actual school attendance and Carnegie had none), their actual motives were of a different intent. Frederick Taylor Gates, who Rockefeller put in charge of daily operations of the General Education Board, had the below excerpt from the Board’s internal memos reprinted in his book The Country School of To-morrow:
“In our dreams…people yield themselves with perfect docility to our molding hands. The present educational conventions fade from our minds, and unhampered by tradition we work our own good will upon a grateful and responsive rural folk. We shall not try to make these people or any of their children into philosophers or men of learning or men of science. We have not to raise up from among them authors, educators, poets or men of letters. We shall not search for embryo great artists, painters, musicians nor lawyers, doctors, preachers, politicians, statesmen, of whom we have ample supply. The task we set before ourselves is very simple…we will organize children…and teach them to do in a perfect way the things their fathers and mothers were doing in an imperfect way.”
Ellwood P Cubberley, dean of the Stanford School of Education, was monumental in shaping educational practices across the US and was “perhaps the most significant theorist of educational administration of his day.” He worked directly and intimately with the Rockefeller General Education board on how to bring scientific management into public schooling. Cubberley wrote in his 1916 treatise, Public School Administration:
“Our schools are, in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products… The Specifications of manufacturing come from the demands of twentieth-century civilization, and it is the business of the school to build its pupils according to the specifications laid down.”
The Rockefeller board explicitly worked to bring standardized and compulsory education out of the industrialized urban centers of the North and into the cities of the south and vast rural areas across the country. Additionally, the Rockefellers along with the Carnegie trusts worked to implement and expand standardized testing as the means in which schools could procure funding from both the public and private sector.
Remarks of the time will reflect on the success of these titanic influences. Edward A Ross, an esteemed economist and president of the American Sociological Association noted in his book bluntly titled Social Control: “The schooling of the young is a long-headed device to promote order” The goal of such a system is “To collect little plastic lumps of human dough from private households and shape them on the social kneading-board.”
“The permanent bureaucracy felt they knew better”
After all, they were experts, while the president, in their estimation, was an ignoramus, or worse, unfit for office. For example, during Trump’s first impeachment, a parade of senior officials, many serving on the White House’s National Security Council or in the State Department, testified against their boss, making clear that their understanding of Ukraine was superior to his, liberating them to undermine his policies.
But I witnessed the death of democracy up close and personal. President Trump selected me to run the U.S. Agency for Global Media, which is responsible for all government international broadcasting. At a budget of about $850 million a year, USAGM is made up of five broadcasters: Voice of America, Cuba Broadcasting, Middle East Broadcasting Networks, Radio Free Asia, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. Together, they reach over 350 million people a week in over 70 languages.
I’ve been told that the day after Trump was elected, the senior leadership of USAGM held a meeting to decide how best to block Trump from assuming authority over the agency, as they deemed Trump dangerous and unqualified. The White House selected me in March 2017, two months after President Trump was sworn in. Agency leadership, along with others in the federal bureaucracy and eventually Democrats in the Senate, blocked my confirmation for three years and three months. I finally walked through the door of USAGM in June 2020 for the final eight months of the Trump presidency.
My goal, my only goal, was to return the news services to their legally mandated mission: to report news that is “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” (in the words of the VOA charter, which is U.S. law), and to promote American ideals like democracy and human rights around the world. In this modest, nonpartisan goal, I was doomed from the start. The USAGM permanent bureaucracy was ready to undermine every move of my administration, with the help of their allies in the media, Congress, and the courts, as well as pro bono lawyers. After all, they had been preparing for years while my nomination languished.
To give a few highlights. On my first day, I removed or caused to resign the heads of the five networks, as was my explicit right under law, and as is a common practice among incoming CEOs in the private and public sector. This move was clearly nonpartisan, as I had removed Republicans as well as Democrats, and they were essentially political appointees. The purpose was a clean start. The media portrayed this as “the Wednesday night massacre,” though only five out of 4000 employees left. They repeated their claims that I intended to turn USAGM into “Trump TV,” which they had manufactured the day after the White House selected me in March 2017.
Every subsequent act of my administration was not only blocked, but lied about and used to discredit me personally and the Trump administration generally. My efforts were treated as an attack that merited the strongest counterattack from my purported employees. Out of innumerable examples, let me offer only one.
Related: “They’re all rich, white kids and they’ll do just fine” — NOT!
Anti-Racism as Office-Politics Power Play: a Canadian Academic Case Study
Last week, 53 top Canadian academic administrators convened in Ottawa for a biannual membership meeting of Universities Canada, a group dedicated to “providing university presidents with a unified voice for higher education.” The 89-page meeting agenda, which was leaked to me after the event, makes for an interesting read.
The pandemic has been a challenging period for Canadian universities, as the adoption of virtual classrooms has caused some families to wonder whether the traditional bricks-and-mortar education model is worth the price. Many Canadian schools are financially dependent on foreign students, an income source that’s now in flux thanks to COVID. In April, Laurentian University in Ontario declared itself insolvent, cut dozens of programs, and laid off about 100 professors—an unprecedented development.
And yet none of these issues is listed on the October 27th Universities Canada meeting agenda. Laurentian University isn’t mentioned at all, in fact. And the only substantive reference to the COVID pandemic consists of an aside to the effect that “women are disproportionately being impacted negatively during the pandemic.” Instead, all of the agenda’s main action items are dedicated to social justice.
The first item updates attendees on Universities Canada’s multi-year effort to draft a statement on “Social Impact Principles.” A subsequent action item details the “Scarborough National Charter,” a documentaimed at “mov[ing] from rhetoric to meaningful concrete action to address anti-Black racism and to promote Black inclusion.” There’s also a related item titled “Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion,” under which members were asked, by formal motion, to affirm their commitment to an affirmative-action doctrine known as “Inclusive Excellence.”
Advocating Parent and Student K-12 choice
Among the policies the POWER paper recommends:
Promoting the existing open enrollment process to inform parents of their options
Providing curriculum transparency so parents can enroll or transfer with full understanding of what’s being taught
Eliminating the per-pupil funding disparities between choice, charter and brick and mortar students
Expanding school choice to all areas of the state and eliminating the income limits for participants
Permitting alternative licensure, and loan forgiveness/reduced tuition for Education students who teach in Wisconsin
2017: West High Reading Interventionist Teacher’s Remarks to the School Board on Madison’s Disastrous Reading Results
Madison’s taxpayer supported K-12 school district, despite spending far more than most, has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results
“An emphasis on adult employment”
Wisconsin Public Policy Forum Madison School District Report[PDF]
Booked, but can’t read (Madison): functional literacy, National citizenship and the new face of Dred Scott in the age of mass incarceration.
Commentary on spending more for less: K-12 tax & spending climate
The latest: The House Appropriations Committee last week voted to slash federal support for charters by nearly a tenth, from $440 million to $400 million, in a spending plan that nearly doubles overall education spending to $102 billion.
It’s Time to Examine the District’s Education Governance
Our country and city are in a unique moment where we are taking a fresh look at things, from police brutality to inequities in our criminal justice system. But one thing that’s not getting coverage, because we don’t see photographs or viral clips, is that the District’s schools are not working for students of color, English Language Learner students, or students with disabilities.
Consider the facts:
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Math
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Only 21% of Black students meet or exceed expectations, compared to 79% of White students.
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16% of at-risk students, 23% of English learners, and 7% of students with disabilities met or exceeded expectations.
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English Language Arts
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Only 28% of Black students meet or exceed expectations, compared to 85% of White students.
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21% of at-risk students, 20% of English learners, and 8% of students with disabilities meet or exceeded expectations
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Teacher Turnover
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The District has the highest teacher turnover rate in the country. A quarter of our teachers leave our school system every year. Over half of our DCPS teachers leave within three years, and 70% leave within five years.
The only way we could consider this system successful is by just considering white students, who make up 16% of DC’s public schools.
The Big Tech Extortion Racket
Popular histories present the Boston Tea Party as a rebellion against taxes. Yet what the colonists objected to more than anything was the idea of an all-powerful corporate middleman regulating commerce. They viewed the 1773 protest in Boston Harbor as a victory for liberty and a blow against the British East India Company’s trade monopoly.
That corporation owed its dominance not to any proprietary advantage but to an exclusive British government charter. The artificial nature of this power was made clear soon after the Congress of the new United States signed a peace treaty with Britain. Six weeks later, the American ship Empress of China sailed from New York, bound for Canton. When the ship returned, its traders sold tea and porcelain on the open market. Without the active backing of the British state, the East India Company could not stop the sale—let alone determine who sold what, or where and how they sold it, in America.
But around the middle of the nineteenth century, Americans began to develop technologies that could not be broken into component pieces. This was especially true of the railroad and the telegraph. These expensive and complex networks were built across vast areas of land and required large teams of people to operate. This made the earlier solution to monopolies—dissolution—impossible. If Americans planned to take full advantage of these technological advances, they would have to regulate the actions of the corporations that controlled them.
Such corporations posed one overarching challenge: they charged some people more than others to get to market. They exploited their control over an essential service in order to extort money, and sometimes political favors. The system of “discriminations made between individuals . . . is the most serious evil connected with our present methods of railroad management,” the Yale professor Arthur T. Hadley explained in 1885. “Differences are made which are sufficient to cripple all smaller competitors. . . and concentrate industry in a few hands.”
Americans found the answer to this problem in common law. For centuries, the owners of ferries, stagecoaches, and inns had been required to serve all customers for the same price and in the order in which they arrived. In the late nineteenth century, versions of such “common carrier” rules were applied to the new middleman corporations.
Many taxpayer supported K – 12 school districts use Google and Facebook services., including Madison.
Going to elite Indian colleges improves earnings, but not test scores
GRADUATES FROM higher-ranked universities tend to earn more money. That is well known. What is less understood is why. One theory is that these schools are better at imparting knowledge—employers might reasonably offer higher salaries to new hires they believe are better qualified. An alternative theory is that admission is a form of signalling. Prestigious colleges are selective. Their students may not learn anything particularly useful, but are paid more because simply getting accepted to a leading college gives employers the impression that they are talented.
A new paper by Sheetal Sekhri of the University of Virginia adds further evidence for the latter theory by looking at the wages of university graduates in India. There, pupils in their final year of secondary school sit a leaving exam known as the Senior Secondary School Examination. Those who score well enough are eligible for admission to India’s well-regarded public colleges; those who fall short enrol at less-prestigious private colleges. India is atypical in that its college students have to take standardised exit exams. These tests give researchers a good opportunity to see whether highly ranked universities do a better job of educating their students than average ones.
‘Wary’ Teachers Now Opposed to Both Online and In-Person Classes, Threaten To Strike
With public school districts nationwide beginning to cancel in-person learning for the fall semester in answer to COVID-19 transmission fears, a number of teachers unions already are moving the goalposts.
According to The New York Times, educators in the hard-hit states of Florida and California might be “wary of returning to class” this back-to-school season, but that concern hasn’t stopped them from shooting down alternatives such as virtual learning.
Widely promoted as the logical alternative to traditional learning, online video instruction was a go-to for many public institutions when coronavirus-related lockdowns first took effect in late March. Several major teachers unions now argue, however, that the practice was stressful, distracting and detrimental to learning — and they want to see their educators provided with alternatives or a reduction in labor hours this fall should virtual learning become the standard.
Railing against such requests Friday, Corey DeAngelis, the director of school choice at the Reason Foundation, a nonprofit libertarian think tank based in Los Angeles, told The Western Journal that the teachers unions’ moving of the goalposts with regard to re-opening is “almost beyond parody,” perfectly highlighting a deep need for competition in the primary education sector.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Lockdown Socialism will collapse
I’ve seen headlines about polls showing that people are afraid of restrictions being lifted too soon. To me, it sounds as if they prefer what I call Lockdown Socialism.
Under Lockdown Socialism:
–you can stay in your residence, but paying rent or paying your mortgage is optional.
–you can obtain groceries and shop on line, but having a job is optional.
–other people work at farms, factories, and distribution services to make sure that you have food on the table, but you can sit at home waiting for a vaccine.
–people still work in nursing homes that have lost so many patients that they no longer have enough revenue to make payroll.
–professors and teachers are paid even though schools are shut down.
–police protect your property even though they are at risk for catching the virus and criminals are being set free.
–state and local governments will continue paying employees even though sales tax revenue has collapsed.
Expanding Course Access (SB 789) Will Empower Families for Post-COVID Education
SB 789, which improves upon the outdated “Part-Time Open Enrollment” program — allows any elementary, middle, or high school student to take up to two courses at any other school, including public, public charter, and private. And this happens all without the student ever dis-enrolling from their school. This could allow students to take courses at any nearby school “in-person” — or at a school across the state “virtually.” SB 789, led by Senator Alberta Darling and Representative Jeremy Thiesfeldt, received bipartisan support in its passage in the Assembly and now awaits a vote in the Senate.
Even before COVID, Wisconsin had a course access problem. Too many students in rural and urban K-12 schools simply do not have access to important courses. 60% of public high schools in Wisconsin do not offer intro computer science. Surveying AP courses offered at all traditional Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) high schools, 95% do not offer computer science, 84% do not offer economics, and 84% do not offer physics. In Northeastern Wisconsin, a survey of high schools found that 100% do not offer Spanish or economics, and 78% do not offer government or computer science. All of this is directly related to Wisconsin’s K-12 educational woes — struggling urban and rural schools, major racial achievement gaps, and too many graduates not equipped for the workforce.
Related: credit for non-MMSD courses.
Is the MPS Tax & Spending Increase Referendum Good for Milwaukee?
– via a kind reader.
Milwaukee annual per student $pending:
Public: just over $14K
Charter: just over $9k
Voucher: just under $9k
“The problems have less to do with funding and more about policies and practices”. Mission vs organization.
Madison’s taxpayer supported school district spends around $19 to 20K/student and is planning a substantial tax and spending increase referendum. This, despite tolerating long term, disastrous reading results.
Aunt Becky and the ‘Underpaid Teachers’ Myth
There’s plenty of money out there. As we have recently seen, private-school parents will spend outrageous sums to help their kids get ahead. Consider Full House actress Lori Loughlin, whose two daughters attended Marymount, an all-girls Catholic high school in Los Angeles that charges annual tuition of $37,000. As if to cement the point that money was no object when it came to her daughters’ education, Ms. Loughlin is currently under federal indictment for paying a $500,000 bribe to University of Southern California officials to admit her daughters, based on the fiction that they were collegiate-level rowers. Now Ms. Loughlin — like fellow actress Felicity Huffman and dozens of others indicted on similar charges — faces jail time.
But one thing private schools don’t throw money at is teacher salaries. The school that Loughlin’s daughters attended pays its teachers around $53,500 per year, 33 percent less than the $80,000 median annual salary of Los Angeles public-school teachers. (The EPI study is based on weekly wages, calculated in the case of teachers over the length of the school year rather than the entire calendar year.)
The same goes for the millions of other helicopter parents and tiger moms who pay private-school tuition in hopes of getting their child into First Choice University. If paying higher teacher salaries would buy their kids a better chance, why don’t they demand an increase? In 2011–12, the most recent year for which data are available, the median full-time teacher in a non-religious private school earned a base salary of $38,000, 24 percent less than the $50,000 base salary for the median non-charter public-school teacher. Parochial-school teachers earned even less, at just $35,000 per year.
“We’re not convinced lowering standards for grading is the answer.”
We’re not convinced lowering standards for grading is the answer. Yet offering students more chances to retake tests and get some credit for late work sounds fair and could help more freshmen advance. A smooth transition from middle to high school is crucial. So is good attendance.
High-quality teaching through professional development, peer coaching and better evaluations are important. Despite its flaws, the Act 10 limits on unions have given school principals more flexibility to consider and hire minority applicants.
Districts such as Madison should allow more charter and specialty schools. A year-round schedule would stop the summer slide in learning.
Our schools need more minority teachers and other enhancements to bolster success.
The Price of Wisconsin’s Elementary Reading Teacher Mulligans
It’s #NAEPday. Data dive done already. (Wisconsin has reclaimed its place at the top for lowest average scale scores in reading for its 4th and 8th grade black students.) Now to observe where the robust convos are vs. where crickets will be chirping. https://t.co/0qCSwtylFu
— Chan Stroman (@eduphilia) October 30, 2019
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Despite continuous attacks from @GovEvers, @ewarren and others, #CharterSchools in MKE continue to outperform MPS traditional schools (Below are the 4th grade #NAEP math results). #SchoolChoice pic.twitter.com/aSNJYaaBz3
— Will Flanders (@WillFlandersWI) October 30, 2019
My Question to Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers on Teacher Mulligans and our Disastrous Reading Results.
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
Commentary on Religious Liberty in the United States
Today, I would like to share some thoughts with you about religious liberty in America. It’s an important priority in this Administration and for this Department of Justice.
We have set up a task force within the Department with different components that have equities in this area, including the Solicitor General’s Office, the Civil Division, the Office of Legal Counsel, and other offices. We have regular meetings. We keep an eye out for cases or events around the country where states are misapplying the Establishment Clause in a way that discriminates against people of faith, or cases where states adopt laws that impinge upon the free exercise of religion.
From the Founding Era onward, there was strong consensus about the centrality of religious liberty in the United States.
The imperative of protecting religious freedom was not just a nod in the direction of piety. It reflects the Framers’ belief that religion was indispensable to sustaining our free system of government.
In his renowned 1785 pamphlet, “Memorial and Remonstrance Against Religious Assessments,” James Madison described religious liberty as “a right towards men” but “a duty towards the Creator,” and a “duty….precedent both in order of time and degree of obligation, to the claims of Civil Society.”
It has been over 230 years since that small group of colonial lawyers led a revolution and launched what they viewed as a great experiment, establishing a society fundamentally different than those that had gone before.
They crafted a magnificent charter of freedom – the United States Constitution – which provides for limited government, while leaving “the People” broadly at liberty to pursue our lives both as individuals and through free associations.
This quantum leap in liberty has been the mainspring of unprecedented human progress, not only for Americans, but for people around the world.
In the 20th century, our form of free society faced a severe test.
There had always been the question whether a democracy so solicitous of individual freedom could stand up against a regimented totalitarian state.
That question was answered with a resounding “yes” as the United States stood up against and defeated, first fascism, and then communism.
Commentary on Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers’ proposed budget
Today WILL is releasing “A Deep Dive into Governor Evers’ K-12 Budget Proposal” that goes through nearly every single education proposal in Evers’ budget while utilizing new research as well as LFB analysis and JFC testimony. For each proposal, we explain how it impacts schools and students across Wisconsin.
We dive deep into nearly every provision in his budget, from his infamous voucher freeze – which would cost Wisconsin $110 million in lost economic benefits – to the ending of the Special Needs Scholarship Program – that has a 56% higher parental satisfaction score than public schools for educating students with disabilities. The report looks at lesser known provisions, such as new private school accreditation requirements, new teacher licensing requirements, changes to the early college credit program, the elimination of the private school tuition tax deduction, and more mandates from Madison on local school districts.
Evers’ budget should concern parents and lawmakers alike. It would end school choice as we know it – freezing the expansion of vouchers and charters but also implementing stifling regulations that would halt the growth of private schools in the choice program. It also goes after Wisconsin’s incredibly popular Open Enrollment Program, limiting funding increases for the program and making it less desirable for public schools to participate. Evers’ budget would exacerbate Wisconsin’s teacher shortage problem, making it harder for teachers to work at private and public schools. All in all, Evers’ budget:
Commentary on the taxpayer supported Madison K-12 climate
Would that there have been a few more courageous citizens. These names come to mind for lack of courage:
Dave Cieslewicz. The former mayor has condemned identity politics on his Isthmus column; he could have spoken up.
The Madison police union considered endorsing Blaska because he is the only candidate on the local ballot who speaks out for the police. But the union chickened out. Worse, the unionized cops endorsed Satya Rhodes-Conway, Progressive Dane, for mayor! She subscribes to every shackle the Berkeley consultants propose placing on police!
Madison Teachers Inc. None of the candidates you endorsed pleaded for patience until the police finished their investigation into the Whitehorse middle school incident. Instead, those candidates acquiesced with their silence as the superintendent and school board president Mary Burke threw “Mr. Rob” under the school bus and forced his resignation without once getting his side or the many witnesses who took his side, including the other students.
Sheriff David Mahoney foolishly endorsed Ali Muldrow even before the candidate filing deadline. Muldrow, of course, wrote Progressive Dane’s cops-out-of-schools manifesto. Mahoney is either a fool or and a shill.
The Madison Chamber of Commerce. No, Blaska did not make a direct appeal to these guys but at some point they’re going to have to jump in the mosh pit to save our schools.
Wisconsin State Journal for their non-endorsement for Seat #4. The edit page acknowledged “Blaska is right that a police officer should stay in each main high school to promote safety, and that disruptive students should be accountable for their actions. But he goes out of his way to provoke Madison liberals and score political points, while offering few solutions.”
Few solutions? Blaska was the only candidate on the April 2 ballot who strongly advocated:
abolishing the Behavior Education Plan;
returning control of the classroom to teachers,
and keeping cops in the schools.
All as the most effective way to ending the racial achievement gap and to allow teachers to teach and kids who want to learn to succeed.
Blaska also promoted more school district charters, whether instrumentality or not.
Yeah, all that was a provocation to Madison liberals. These are things MMSD can actually control and would have profound impact. Ask yourself this: what solutions did any of the other candidates propose? … Still waiting. … Other than Ali Muldrow’s dance classes for seventh graders? No, I can’t, either.
‘Behavior plan sets up kids for failure’
Related: “THE DATA CLEARLY INDICATE THAT BEING ABLE TO READ IS NOT A REQUIREMENT FOR GRADUATION AT (MADISON) EAST, ESPECIALLY IF YOU ARE BLACK OR HISPANIC”
Madison Parents, you do have a choice
Parents, you do have a choice, thanks to Tommy Thompson, Scott Walker and the Republican legislature.
Low income choice
If you are low-income, you can participate in the WI Parental Choice Program. Your annual household income for a family of three must not exceed $45,716. Application period ends April 20.
Unfortunately, state law mandates that no more than 4% of the pupil membership of a public school district may participate in the WPCP. The DPI conducts random drawings.
Much more on open
Enrollment, charter~/a< and voucher student options.
“An emphasis on adult employment”.
“The data clearly indicate that being able to read is not a requirement for graduation at (Madison) East, especially if you are black or Hispanic”
Could you pass a teacher licensing test?
1. Which of the following is true of qualitative measures of text complexity?
A. They describe statistical measurements of a text.
B. They rely on computer algorithms to describe text.
C. They involve attributes that can be measured only by human readers.
D. They account for the different motivational levels readers bring to texts.
“The correct answer is C. The qualitative attributes are subjective and can only be evalauted by a human reader (i.e. “predictability of text”). A and B are incorrect because they refer to quantitative attributes of text complexity, while D focuses on matching the reader to text and task.”
2. The only prime factors of a certain number are 2, 3, and 7. Which of the following could be the number?
A. 18 X 28
B. 20 X 21
C. 22 X 63
D. 24 X 35
“The correct answer is A. The question requires an understanding of how to find factors and multiples of numbers. The prime factorization of 18 is 2 X 32 and the prime factorization of 28 is 22 X 7. So the prime factorization of 18 X 28 is 23 X 32 X 7.”
Related: The DPI, lead by Mr. Evers, granted thousands of elementary teacher reading content knowledge requirement exemptions.
HS Graduation Rates Go Up Even as Students and Teachers Fail to Show Up
Phelps reflects a national trend in which high schools across the country have both high absenteeism and high graduation rates. A recent national study by the U.S. Department of Education showed that about one in sevenstudents missed 15 days or more during the 2013-14 school year – the year before the national high school graduation rate hit an all-time high of 84 percent.
Students aren’t the only ones not showing up – absenteeism is also common among teachers. The Thomas B. Fordham Institute, an education think tank, foundthat in 2013-2014, at least one-fifth of traditional public-school teachers missed more than 10 days in 32 of the 35 states studied. According to federal data, in 2015, more than 41 percent of Rhode Island’s teachers were absent more than 10 days of the year. That was an increase from under 40 percent in 2013, but Rhode Island’s graduation rate nevertheless has hit an all-time high.
“It’s really easy to graduate more kids,” said David Griffith, a policy associate at the Fordham Institute. “You just graduate them.”
RealClearInvestigations contacted departments of education in all 50 states seeking to compare their school attendance rates with their graduation rates. Eleven provided comparable school-by-school data for 2016-2017, and in almost all of them, the same trend was present: Many schools had high rates of chronic absenteeism – students missing 10 percent or more of the school year for any reason – while still reporting high rates of students who graduated from high school in four years.
Among those states – California, Connecticut, Indiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, and Tennessee – it wasn’t hard to find schools where roughly a third of the students were chronically absent:
“And I am going to call it Madison Prep.”
Critics were also concerned about Madison Prep’s operating costs — totaling $11,000 per student — and its reliance on non-union staff in the wake of Wisconsin’s Act 10, a state law that severely limited collective bargaining rights of teachers and other state employees which passed early in 2011.
Caire said despite the challenges, building Madison Prep would have been an opportunity for the district to respond to the longstanding concerns of African-American parents for better educational outcomes for their children.
“How could (the Madison School Board) question us like that? (They) hadn’t gotten this thing right in two to three decades,” Caire said.
“Black kids were not getting what they needed. Black community members felt that and it’s real,” he said. “White community members said we were trying to tell them that their system doesn’t support black kids… a whole lot of it was about that.”
In December 2011, hundreds of people on both sides of the Madison Prep debate crowded the auditorium at Madison Memorial High School to appeal to the Madison School Board. Ultimately, the Board voted 5-2 against the charter proposal.
“It actually made me feel like Madison was no longer my home, going through that,” Caire said. “A lot of friends I had, to this day, after that experience don’t hang out with me like they used to. I miss that… unfortunately, there were some casualties with that whole episode.”
Ed Hughes, former Madison School Board president who was one of the two members who voted in favor of Madison Prep [Incorrect], agreed.
“It was an eye-opening experience for me. I had been on the board for a few years, but there was not previously an issue like that, one that highlighted the school district’s failure to educate children of color,” Hughes said.
“It took someone like (Caire) to come in, request the data, put it out, and say, ‘The school district is failing in some really significant ways and no one is doing anything about it.’ It is a real credit to him that he got people talking about the issue and starting to focus on it.”
Current Madison School Board member T.J. Mertz is an instructor at Edgewood College who blogs extensively about K-12 education issues in the city. Before joining the board, Mertz voiced his concerns about Madison Prep’s funding structure and pedagogical approach in his blog.
In an interview with the Cap Times, Mertz acknowledged the Madison Prep debate illuminated MMSD’s shortcomings in serving low income, African-American students, but it bolstered the rift between black families and the district.
“I think the campaign around Madison Prep shed more heat than light on the issues. It certainly called attention to it, but also created difficulties in district and community members working together,” Mertz said.
“I implored him, ‘Don’t make it harder for African-American families to work with the school district,’” Mertz said regarding a conversation he had with Caire early on in the Madison Prep charter process.
Correction: Mr. Hughes voted against Madison Prep, along with Beth Moss, Mary Passman, Arlene Silveira and Maya Cole.
Lucy Mathiak and James Howard voted for it.
Much more on the 2011 Madison School Board’s rejection of Madison prep, here.
Superintendent Jennifer Cheatham: “without; being held accountable to district standards”. Madison has long tolerated disastrous reading results.
Finally, Madison spends far more than $11k per student….
