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A Study of Core-Plus Students Attending Michigan State University



Janet Mertz recently mentioned (along with UW Placement’s James Wollack recently) this paper by Richard Hill & Thomas Parker [750K PDF]:

The latest, December 2006 issue of the American Mathematical Monthly, an official publication of the Mathematical Association of America, contains an 18-page article entitled “A study of Core-Plus students attending Michigan State University” by Richard Hill and Thomas Parker, professors at MSU who teach pre-service high school math teachers.
They state that, “as the implementation progressed, from 1996 to 1999, Core-Plus students placed into, and enrolled in, increasingly lower level courses; this downward trend is statistically robust (p<.0005). The percentages of students who (eventually) passed a technical calculus course show a statistically significant (p<.005) decline averaging 27 percent a year; this trend is accompanied by an obvious and statistically significant increase in percentages of students who placed into low-level and remedial algebra courses. The grades the Core-Plus students earned in their university mathematics courses are also below average, except for a small group of top students. ACT scores suggest the existence but not the severity of these trends."

Core-Plus is used in some Madison High Schools. Much more on math here.




High School Redesign Notes



As Arlene has reached out to the community for suggestions about the Redesign of the high schools, let me share a couple of thoughts:

  1. It’s too late. The students that are behind in 5th grade rarely catch up. The 2/3 combinations are by far the worst academic combination for elementary students, yet we continue this practice to save money, and to save SAGE. I understand the pull out combination system is a great way to deal with cost and transient students….but does it really help? Can’t we negotiate with the Union to allow 4 year kindergarten? This is really annoying that we have to bow to the Union for the sacrifice of the lower income students.
  2. The middle school years has a great resource of teachers. My children have had teachers that felt students are undergoing hormonal warfare and felt they should teach less so as not to upset the students. As I quote a teacher my child had in a “Charlie Brown teachers voice”, “Less is more and as long as they learn a couple of concepts during the year I feel I have done my job”. This fortunately is not the normal approach my children have received. Most of the Jr. High teachers have been focused on preparing the students for Memorial. I wonder if this is the model for most of the Jr. High Schools throughout the district?
  3. The district currently has the highest number of National Merit Scholar graduates in the state, I would assume we send hundred of students to college each year and those that are from higher income families do well. I wonder if the problem is less racial gap and not more economic gap. Please follow the link to the following Newsweek article released by the North Carolina Democratic Party….http://ncdp.org/node/1081. This is an article about how North Carolina kept their struggling students, drop out prone students and low income students engaged in high school by offering them an option to attend a local community college (MATC) and receive not only their HS diploma upon graduation but also an associate degree in an area of interest so that staying in school had meaning….and graduating means getting a real job. Currently all we can offer students that graduate from high school is they will have a diploma and they can essentially get the same jobs in this area with or without that diploma….with an associates degree they can make more than their teachers in computer repair, Xerox repair, IT, health associate degrees and others. Please think about raising the standards and the options for the struggling students, not lowering the standards for the top tier students. This IDEA and a proven method could benefit the entire community and raise the standard of living for lower income families. Please read this article.



Video of 29-Nov-2006 MUAE Meeting with Supt. Rainwater



The Madison United for Academic Excellence (MUAE) meeting of 29-November-2006 offered a question and answer session with Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater.
After opening remarks by Jeff Henriques, the Superintendent summarized his goals, rationale and approach to the high school redesign project, and discussed
his prior experience as a teacher and principal.

The video

QT Video
 of the meeting is 183MB, and 1 hours and 30 minutes long. Click on the image at left to watch the video.
The video contains chapter headings which allow quick navigation to sections of the meeting. The video will play immediately, while the file continues to download.

The topics covered during remarks and the question and answer session are

  • Assessment, differentiation, grouping, school redesign
    • Differentiation training in elementary school
    • Investment in training, coaching, Teaching and Learning
  • What to do when teacher refuses to differentiate.
  • Evaluating Teachers
  • Student assessment and WKCE
  • Maintaining quality control and teacher skills
  • Lighthouse schools
  • Differentiation in Math
  • Limits of flexible grouping
  • View of NCLB
  • Math curriculum and its evaluation
  • Evaluating differentiation
  • Assessing high achieving students
  • NCLB and the growth model
  • West English 9 and 10
  • Using WKCE to inform instruction



Revamping the high schools



Isthmus’ Jason Shepard covers the story:
Curriculum changes halted as district eyes study group
JStanding in front of a giant projection screen with his wireless remote control and clip-on microphone, Madison School Superintendent Art Rainwater on Monday unveiled his grand vision for Madison’s four major high schools. But the real backdrop for his presentation before the Madison school board was the criticism of changes implemented last year at West High and proposed this year at East. Both involved reducing course offerings in favor of a core curriculum for all students, from gifted to struggling.
Rainwater stressed his intention to start from scratch in overhauling all aspects of the education provided at West, East, Memorial and La Follette, whose combined enrollment tops 7,600 students. The move follows consolidation of practices in the city’s elementary and middle schools. But it may prove more challenging, since the high schools have a longstanding tradition of independence.
Over the next two years, Rainwater would like a steering committee of experts to study best practices in high school education. Everything, Rainwater stresses, is on the table: “It’s important we don’t have preconceived notions of what it should be.”
Heterogeneous classes, which until last week were the district’s preferred direction for high school changes, are, said Rainwater, “only one piece” of the redesign. But curriculum changes are clearly going to happen.
“It’s not acceptable anymore to lecture four days a week and give a test on Friday,” Rainwater declared. Teachers must learn how to teach students, rather than teach content.
The 50 parents and teachers in the audience reacted coolly, judging from the comments muttered among themselves during the presentation and the nearly two-hour discussion that followed.
Tellingly, the biggest applause came when board member Ruth Robarts said it was “high time we as a board start talking about high school curriculum.” Robarts chastised Rainwater for not including teachers and parents on the steering committee, which will “reinforce a perception that is not in our favor.” She said the district was giving critics only two options: accept the changes or “come down and protest.”
On Nov. 16, East Principal Alan Harris unveiled plans to eliminate several courses in favor of core classes in ninth and 10th grades. Attendees said the plan was presented as a “done deal.” In e-mails to the board, parents called the plan “short-sighted and misguided,” and one teacher warned: “Don’t do it.”
Rainwater, apparently recognizing the damage to parent and teacher relations, sent a memo to principals last week.
“I am asking you to cease any significant programmatic changes at each of your schools as this community dialogue progresses,” he wrote. “We need a tabula rasa mentality that will allow for a free flow of ideas, an opportunity to solidify trust in our expertise, and a chance at a solid, exciting product at the end.”
The four high schools will remain under their current programs until the steering committee gets to work. Chaired by Pam Nash, deputy superintendent of secondary schools, it will include several district administrators as well as experts from the UW-Madison, Edgewood College and MATC.
Rainwater sought to assure board and audience members that teachers and parents will have ample opportunity for input. His plan calls for three separate periods of public comment, after which subcommittees will make revisions. The school board will then vote on the recommendations after additional hearings and debate.
“You get better input if people have something to react to,” Rainwater said, adding that involving teachers in all stages would be impractical, because it would be difficult to cover their teaching assignments. That comment drew a collective groan from teachers in the audience.
Rainwater’s call for a revamping of the city’s high schools suggests the current approach isn’t working. And that poses a dilemma for school officials. The district likes to tout its record number of National Merit semifinalists and state-leading ACT scores as proof that its high schools are successful. Many parents worry that those high-end benchmarks are under attack.
But Madison’s schools continue to fail countless kids — mostly low-income and minority students. This is a profound challenge hardly unique to Madison, but one that deserves more attention from policymakers.
Research in education, the starting point for Rainwater’s steering committee, offers promising solutions. But the district risks much in excluding teachers from the start, since inevitably they will be on the front lines of any change. And excluding parents could heighten the alienation that has already prompted some middle- and upper-class families to abandon the public schools.
While struggling over details, most board members conceptually support the study. During their discussion Monday, Lawrie Kobza cut to the chase.
“What is the problem we’re trying to solve?” she asked. “And is this how we solve this problem?” Kobza professed not to know the answer. But these are the right questions to ask.
http://www.thedailypage.com/isthmus/article.php?article=4919




School Board to discuss future of high schools



From The Capital Times:

A discussion regarding the future of Madison’s high schools is back on the agenda for tonight’s School Board meeting.
The controversial item, which involves curriculum changes and other proposals, is scheduled as part of a special board meeting at 8 p.m. in the Doyle Administration Building, 545 W. Dayton St.
In an officers meeting last week, School Board President Johnny Winston Jr. removed the topic of high school redesign from tonight’s agenda, saying that he felt the process was not far enough along to produce a productive discussion.
But when other School Board members said that they would prefer keeping the subject on the agenda for tonight’s meeting, Winston agreed to return it to the lineup of topics.
The special session will follow meetings of the communications committee at 5 p.m., the human resources committee at 6 p.m. and the finance and operations committee at 7 p.m.
Later tonight, the board also is expected to go into a closed-door discussion of the negotiation strategy regarding Madison Teachers Inc., the teachers union.




More Than English 10: Let’s REALLY Talk About Our High Schools



First, I want to say BRAVO, RUTH, for putting it all together and bringing it on home to us. Thanks, too, to the BOE members who overrode BOE President Johnny Winston Jr’s decision to table this important discussion. Finally, deepest thanks to all of the East parents, students and teachers who are speaking out … and to the many West parents, students and teachers who have also spoken out over the past few years.
As we begin what will hopefully be a thoughtful and thoroughgoing community-wide conversation about what’s going on in our high schools, I’d like to clear up some muddiness about what’s happened at West in the past few years. I think it’s important to have our facts straight and complete. In doing so — and in comparing what’s happened at West to what’s now going on at East — I’d like to draw on the image of an animal experiment (that apparently never happened). In one condition, a frog is put into a bath of cool water, the temperature is gradually raised to boiling, and the frog dies without a struggle. In another condition, a frog is put into a bath of boiling water, immediately jumps out, and lives to tell the tale. As I see it, West was put in the first condition. The administration implemented small changes over the course of several years, with the ultimate goal of turning 9th and 10th grades into two more years of middle school. Students and parents were lulled into thinking that everything was O.K. because, hey, what’s one small change? East, in contrast, has been put in the second condition. There, the administration seems to have the same goal of turning 9th and 10th grade into two more years of middle school, but has introduced all of the changes at once. Like the frog placed in the boiling water, East has been shocked into strong reaction.

(more…)




More on the Kalamazoo Promise: College for Free



The Kalamazoo Promise program has drawn 985 students to their K-12 system. Jamaal Abdul-Alim recently visited the city to learn more:

The program is as much a social experiment aimed at leveling the playing field of access to higher learning as it is an economic development initiative meant to generate school revenue, boost the economy and reverse the effects of a middle-class flight – some say “white flight” – that began in the 1960s and continued after the 1973 court-ordered desegregation of the city’s public schools.
Students and parents in Kalamazoo believe the program has made children’s educational futures so secure that some have scrapped their college-savings plans to buy household items, such as TVs.
Teachers say students and parents are showing more concern about their children’s performance in school.
Home sales are up, and enrollment in the public school system – roughly 11,000, down 40% from four decades ago – is on the upswing. The 985 new students this school year brought an additional $7.5 million in state aid, and the district hired 50 new teachers. No new taxes were levied because of the promise.




School math books, nonsense, and the National Science Foundation



David Klein:

Problem: Find the slope and y-intercept of the equation 10 = x – 2.5.
Solution: The equation 10 = x – 2.5 is a specific case of the equation y = x – 2.5, which has a slope of 1 and a y-intercept of –2.5.
This problem comes from a 7th grade math quiz that accompanies a widely used textbook series for grades 6 to 8 called Connected Mathematics Program or CMP.[1] The solution appears in the CMP Teacher’s Guide and is supported by a discussion of sample student work.
Richard Askey, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, reported, “I was told about this problem by a parent whose child took this quiz. The marking was exactly as in the text.”[2] Students instructed and graded in this way learn incorrect mathematics, and teachers who know better may be undermined by their less informed peers, armed with the “solution.” This example is far from the only failing of CMP. Among other shortcomings, there is no instruction on division of fractions in the entire three year CMP series, and the other parts of fraction arithmetic are treated poorly.[3]
Is CMP just an anomaly? Unfortunately not. CMP is only one of more than a dozen defective K-12 math programs funded by the National Science Foundation. More specifically, the NSF programs were created and distributed through grants from the Education and Human Resources (EHR) Division within the NSF. In contrast to the NSF’s admirable and important role in supporting fundamental scientific research, the EHR has caused, and continues to cause, damage to K-12 mathematics education.

Notes and links on math curriculum. Audio / Video from the recent math forum.
Connected Math is widely used within the Madison School District resulting in no small amount of supplementing by teachers, students and parents.




Jacob Stockinger: A ‘yes’ vote for schools ensures a better future



This is one of the best things I read recently on support for public education.
TJM
Jacob Stockinger: A ‘yes’ vote for schools ensures a better future
By Jacob Stockinger
There is a lot I don’t know about my parents. But I do know this: They would never have voted no on a school referendum.
They grew up in the Depression, then worked and fought their ways through World War II.
They saw how the GI Bill revolutionized American society and ushered in the postwar economic boom. They knew the value of education.
If the schools said they needed something – more staff, another building, more books – then they got it.
I am absolutely sure my parents and their generation thought there was no better way to spend money than on schools. Schools meant jobs, of course – better jobs and better-paying jobs. But schools also meant better-educated children, smart children. And schools were the great equalizer that meant upward social mobility and held a community together. Schools guaranteed a future: Good schools, good future. Bad schools, bad future.
Schools were the linchpin, the axis of American society. That’s the same reason why they would never have questioned a teacher’s judgment over one of their own children’s complaints. Teachers were always right because they were the teachers.
And the reason I can still remember the name of the local superintendent of schools – Dr. Bruce Hulbert – was because my parents spoke of him with awe and respect as a man who was not looking to steal from their checking account but instead to help their children.
It’s probably the same reason I can recall so many of my teachers’ names – Mrs. Cuneo, in whose second-grade class I took part in the Salk polio vaccine trials, and Mr. Firestone, my sixth-grade teacher who made me memorize the multiplication tables and then sing in Gilbert and Sullivan’s “The Pirates of Penzance.” And so on right though high school and undergraduate school and graduate school.
I find myself thinking of my parents now, wondering what they would do in the current atmosphere of criticism and even hostility directed at the schools.
They were middle-class, not wealthy, so when they paid taxes, it was not always happily but it was always with gratitude. They believed that paying taxes was a patriotic duty, the price you paid for living in a privileged, free and – in those days – increasingly egalitarian society.
Taxes were the cement that held us together, the concrete expression of the social contract. Taxes, they felt, were a form of insurance that guaranteed life would get better for everyone, especially for their own children.
But they knew value, and they knew that no dollar buys more value than a dollar you spend on educating a child.
Of course, times have changed.
Things are more expensive. And we have forgotten what life was really like – for the poor, for the elderly, for ethnic minorities, for the disabled – when we had the small government and low taxes that today’s Republicans have bamboozled people into thinking were the good old days. My parents, and their parents, knew better.
But whatever fixes we need now, we should not deprive the children.
Yes, I see room for changes.
•We need to shift the burden of funding from the property tax. I think the income tax is more appropriate, along with a sales tax. And what would be wrong with just a plain old education tax?
•We need to correct the feeling that the public has been lied to. School spending keeps going up and up, but we keep seeing reports that American students have become less competitive internationally. Is someone crying wolf?
Let me suggest that a lot of the confusion has to do with bookkeeping. I would like to see the health costs for special education come from the state Department of Health and Family Services budget. I would like to see how much money goes for actual curriculum and instruction. Call it truth in spending.
Mind you, I am not suggesting that special education is wrong or too expensive. It is important for us to provide it. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^But we should have a better idea of just how much everything costs and whether some areas benefit because others are shortchanged.
•We need to stop lobbying groups like the Wisconsin Millionaires Club – I’m sorry, I mean Wisconsin Manufacturers & Commerce – from luring money away from other social programs for socialized business disguised as free market capitalism.
•We need to become prouder of paying taxes because they are, despite some instances of waste or mismanagement, generally very good deals. If you want Mississippi taxes, are you really ready for Mississippi schools and Mississippi health care and Mississippi arts?
•We need to make Washington pay its fair share of education costs. If we can fight wars as a nation, we can educate children as a nation.
So for the sake of myself, my parents and the children, I will vote yes on the Nov. 7 referendum for Madison’s schools. I urge you to do the same.
Jacob Stockinger is the culture desk editor of The Capital Times. E-mail: jstockinger@madison.com
Published: November 1, 2006




Seeking an equal say in schools’ future



Carla Rivera:

By the end of the day one thing was clear: Parents, teachers and community organizations want an equal say in determining how the district will be remade.
illaraigosa acknowledged as much in his opening remarks to the group of 100 or so people, who represented church groups, businesses, human services agencies, city and county departments, law enforcement, city councils and numerous schools.
“This issue of ‘mayor control’ is a misnomer,” he told the meeting — billed as an education retreat — at the Doheny campus of Mount St. Mary’s College near downtown. “This is the perfect example of a partnership. I don’t need to bring 200 people together if I was just going to do it alone.”

A close observer of the Madison public education scene for a number of years, I’ve seen this tension grow, something reflected in recent referenda results and board elections.
On the one hand, we have statements from top Administrators like “we have the children” to teachers, on the other; staff and parents very unhappy with a top down, one size fits all approach to many issues (see the most recent example of substantive changes without public discussion). Parental interest and influence (the use of the term influence does not reflect today’s current reality) ranges from those who are extremely active with respect to systemic issues and those active for individual children to various stages of participation and indifference.
In 2006, I believe that parents and citizens continue to have a much smaller role in our K-12 public system governance than they should, given our children’s interests and the District’s source of funds such as property taxes, fees, sales and income taxes recycled through state and federal spending. Madison’s school climate is certainly not unique (Nielsen’s Participation Inequality is a good read in this context).
Peter Gascoyne asked some useful questions in response to Gene Hickok’s recent Washington Post piece. I “think” that Hickok was driving in the direction of a much more substantive parental role in education.




The Politics of K-12 Math and Academic Rigor



The Economist:

Look around the business world and two things stand out: the modern economy places an enormous premium on brainpower; and there is not enough to go round.
But education inevitably matters most. How can India talk about its IT economy lifting the country out of poverty when 40% of its population cannot read? [MMSD’s 10th Grade Reading Data] As for the richer world, it is hard to say which throw more talent away—America’s dire public schools or Europe’s dire universities. Both suffer from too little competition and what George Bush has called “the soft bigotry of low expectations”.

Thursday’s meeting between Madison School Superintendent Art Rainwater, the MMSD’s Brian Sniff and the UW Math department included two interesting guests: UW-Madison Chancellor John Wiley [useful math links via the Chancellor’s website] and the Dean of the UW-Madison Education School. Wiley and the Ed School Dean’s attendance reflects the political nature of K-12 curriculum, particularly math. I’m glad Chancellor Wiley took time from his busy schedule to attend and look forward to his support for substantial improvements in our local math program.

(more…)




A Recipe to Fix School Funding



Andy Hall
Wisconsin State Journal
October 4, 2006
On a moonlit autumn evening, talk turned Tuesday to a “perfect storm” that might actually help Wisconsin fix its school-funding mess.
“Everything is coming together in an election year,” Thomas Beebe, outreach specialist for the nonprofit Institute for Wisconsin’s Future, told 17 Madison School District parents and activists who gathered at the Warner Park Community Recreation Center to discuss why Wisconsin schools always seem to be running out of money, and what to do about it.
The Institute for Wisconsin’s Future helped establish the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, a coalition of 122 organizations and school districts, including Madison’s, focusing on school-finance reform.
Beebe, a former official at the state Department of Public Instruction, who served on the Fort Atkinson School Board, said prospects are brighter now than any time in the past decade because increasing numbers of the state’s 425 public school districts are reporting serious financial problems because of state revenue limits imposed since 1993.
In addition, Beebe said, a state task force headed by UW-Madison researcher Allan Odden soon will recommend major changes in how Wisconsin pays for its schools, and a bipartisan Wisconsin Legislative Council panel is exploring school financing for the first time in a decade.
A top goal, Beebe said, would be to radically shift Wisconsin’s philosophy. The education budget would be based on what’s needed to adequately educate all children, including those with special needs, rather than forcing schools to make do with whatever amount of money is available through a formula.
But to make the storm happen, Beebe said, the public will need to push political candidates and public officials into taking stands – including support of controversial proposals to boost school funding by raising the sales tax, eliminating some sales tax exemptions, raising corporate income taxes, and other means.
“I think Tom is exactly right,” Barbara Arnold, a former Madison School Board president who two years ago served on a governor-appointed task force on education reform, said after the session sponsored by the East Attendance Area PTO Coalition.
Matt Calvert, a parent of a Lapham Elementary first- grader and a Marquette Elementary third-grader, said he’s pleased with the schools and their teachers, but he’s troubled by discussions of reducing a music program and increasing class sizes.
“It’s getting to the point now that it’s pinching,” Calvert said.
Madison School Board member Carol Carstensen agreed that prospects for reform are brightening, but she also warned that big changes will require sacrifice.
“There’s no real solution without additional funds,” she said.




GOP likes (and will keep) school spending caps



Some people believe that the Wisconsin Legislature just doesn’t understand how revenue caps affect Wisconsin schools.
I’m sorry to say, legislators know very well how caps control spending and they’re happy about it.
“In GOP Plays Politics With Property Taxes,” The Capital Times’ Matt Pommer wrote in December 2004:

Republicans sought to recapture the anti-tax banner by imposing tougher spending limits on school districts than the current revenue controls. The unionized teachers had supported Doyle, and toughening the already-in-place spending limits seemed like a nifty political move. Doyle vetoed the tougher spending limits.

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Schools Of Hope – Tutors Needed



[Not part of the “farewell series,” much more important]
TJM
SCHOOLS OF HOPE ? TUTORS NEEDED
09/28/06
WISC-TV
There are a number of factors that have contributed to the historic closing of the achievement gap in Madison schools including small class sizes and talented and well trained teachers. But there’s no disputing the United Way of Dane County-led Schools of Hope project and the hundreds of tutors it has mobilized have played a crucial role. So crucial that a significant decrease in tutors would put the hard won gains at risk. We believe this community won’t let that happen.
United Way, and Schools of Hope partners RSVP and the Urban League are conducting training for tutors right now. Tutors need no prior experience or training, just the interest to devote a little time to helping en elementary school child with reading or a middle school child with algebra. 104 volunteers registered this week. But at least another hundred are needed. The next training is Tuesday October 3 from 4:00 to 6:00 at the Memorial Union. Schools of Hope is a community success. It works because of you. It’s that important. Help if you can.




Notes & Links on MTI – WEAC Relations



A reader involved in these issues sent this link [strong language warning] [Mike Antonucci’s website]:

WEAC felt MTI had overstepped its authority and, in an effort to punish MTI, unilaterally terminated the 1978 affiliation agreement. MTI claimed WEAC could not take such action, and sought arbitration. WEAC resisted, and MTI sued WEAC to compel arbitration. After losing in county court, MTI won its point in state and federal appeals courts.
From July 18-20, 2006 – more than five years after the SCEA incident – attorneys for MTI and WEAC crossed swords in front of arbitrator Peter Feuille of the University of Illinois. EIA has obtained a copy of the transcript, and the proceedings not only provided a detailed and enlightening look at the history and internal politics of WEAC, but supplied yet more evidence that the bonds of unionism are sometimes composed of dollar bills, and little else.

MTI’s website | WEAC. Alan Borsuk has more.




Third Friday Counts



The official Download fileThird Friday Counts were distributed to the Board of Education last night (and shared with the Advocates for Madison Public School list serve this morning). Contrary to dire predictions and assessments (see here: and here), the district is growing. This will mean some increased funding under the current formula and that is good news.
However, the reassignments of the first weeks reveal how the continued tight budget situation limits flexibility in ways that disrupt schools, teachers, families and children.
I believe that this growth is further evidence that passage of the referendum is necessary; that the time to act is now at the beginning of the projected upswing in enrollments.
TJM




Enrollment projection errors create school turmoil



Susan Troller:

But because the projected enrollment numbers don’t match the actual numbers of students at Stephens this year, one grades 2-3 classroom is being dropped, with students assigned to other classrooms and Bazan’s job at Stephens eliminated.
The same scenario is playing out at five other elementary schools where teachers and sections are being eliminated due to smaller than expected student populations, district spokesman Ken Syke said. Meanwhile, nine elementary schools are over projected enrollments and will be adding sections to address bursting-at-the-seams populations.
The district will add 10 classes at these schools to add capacity. Four teachers will be hired, in addition to shifting teachers from the under-enrolled schools.
Schools where classes are being eliminated include Crestwood, Falk, Kennedy, Randall, Schenk and Stephens. Schools that are adding teachers include Glendale, Hawthorne, Lake View, Mendota, Marquette, Muir, Sandburg, Thoreau and Leopold. Two teachers will be added at Leopold, which had a particularly large increase in students.




Return to Basics in Teaching Math



Critics of “Fuzzy” Methods Cheer Educators’ Findings; Drills Without Calculators. Taking Cues from Singapore.
John Hechinger:

The nation’s math teachers, on the front lines of a 17-year curriculum war, are getting some new marching orders: Make sure students learn the basics.
In a report to be released today, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics, which represents 100,000 educators from prekindergarten through college, will give ammunition to traditionalists who believe schools should focus heavily and early on teaching such fundamentals as multiplication tables and long division.
The council’s advice is striking because in 1989 it touched off the so-called math wars by promoting open-ended problem solving over drilling. Back then, it recommended that students as young as those in kindergarten use calculators in class.
Those recommendations horrified many educators, especially college math professors alarmed by a rising tide of freshmen needing remediation. The council’s 1989 report influenced textbooks and led to what are commonly called “reform math” programs, which are used in school systems across the country.
Francis Fennell, the council’s president, says the latest guidelines move closer to the curriculum of Asian countries such as Singapore, whose students tend to perform better on international tests. There, children focus intensely on a relative handful of topics, such as multiplication, division and algebra, then practice by solving increasingly difficult word and other problems. That contrasts sharply with the U.S. approach, which the report noted has long been described as “a mile wide and an inch deep.”
If school systems adopt the math council’s new approach, their classes might resemble those at Garfield Elementary School in Revere, Mass., just north of Boston. Three-quarters of Garfield’s students receive free and reduced lunches, and many are the children of recent immigrants from such countries as Brazil, Cambodia and El Salvador.
Three years ago, Garfield started using Singapore Math, a curriculum modeled on that country’s official program and now used in about 300 school systems in the U.S. Many school systems and parents regard Singapore Math as an antidote for “reform math” programs that arose from the math council’s earlier recommendations.
The Singapore Math curriculum differs sharply from reform math programs, which often ask students to “discover” on their own the way to perform multiplication and division and other operations, and have come to be known as “constructivist” math.

Links:

Strong parent and teacher views on the MMSD’s math strategy may well spill over to non-support for referendums and incumbent board members, particularly in light of increasing UW Math Department activism on this vital matter.




Fordham Foundation: Wisconsin DPI Academic Standards = D-



Alan Borsuk:

It’s the fourth time in three months that a national study has accused state officials of shirking their responsibilities, particularly to minority students and those from low-income homes. Two national education reformers said Monday that Department of Public Instruction officials have misled citizens about their work to improve the quality of education in Wisconsin.
The report being released today by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation in Washington uses harsh terms in critiquing the standards that are intended to guide instruction in Wisconsin schools. “Depth is nowhere to be found,” it said of the science standards. “This document has no structure or method,” it said of the world history standards. “Skimpy content and vague wording,” it said in describing the math standards.
In June, a different group ranked Wisconsin No. 1 in the country in frustrating the goals of the federal No Child Left Behind law. Also in June, a third organization focused on Milwaukee and Wisconsin as examples of places where more inexperienced – and therefore, less proficient – teachers are disproportionately assigned to high-needs schools. And two weeks ago, the U.S. Department of Education rejected as inadequate Wisconsin’s plans for dealing with federal requirements that every student have a “highly qualified” teacher.
Is there a drumbeat in the bad grades for Wisconsin’s efforts to raise the bar in education?
Not surprisingly, DPI officials disagreed on almost every point. Tony Evers, the deputy state superintendent of public instruction, said the DPI was moving forward in addressing the concerns in all of the reports, was meeting all the requirements of federal law, and had made closing the achievement gaps in Wisconsin a high priority.
He said that, separate from the Fordham report, the DPI was getting started on redoing the state’s academic standards, which have not changed in a decade or so.
Evers said if there is a theme common to the four reports, it is that all are premised on creating more of a national system of standards and testing for students, something Wisconsin educators do not favor.

Bill Chrisofferson has moreas does former Madison Mayor Paul Soglin.




ED.Gov: New Report Shows Progress in Reading First Implementation and Changes in Reading Instruction



US Department of Education:

Children in Reading First classrooms receive significantly more reading instruction and schools participating in the program are much more likely to have a reading coach, according to the Reading First Implementation Evaluation: Interim Report, released today by the U.S. Department of Education. The report shows significant differences between what Reading First teachers report about their instructional practices and the responses of teachers in non-Reading First Title I schools, which are demographically similar to the Reading First schools.
“The goal of Reading First is to help teachers translate scientific insights into practical tools they can use in their classrooms,” Secretary Spellings said. “The program is helping millions of children and providing teachers with high-quality, research-based support. As we push towards our ultimate goal of every child reading and doing math on grade level by 2014, Reading First is a valuable help to our efforts.”
The report shows Reading First schools appear to be implementing the major elements of the program as intended by the No Child Left Behind legislation. Reading First respondents reported that they made substantial changes to their reading materials and that the instruction is more likely to be aligned with scientifically based reading research; they are more likely to have scheduled reading blocks and spend more time teaching reading; they are more likely to apply assessment results for instructional purposes, and they receive professional development focused on helping struggling readers more often than non-Reading First Title I schools in the evaluation.

Reading First funds, subject to some controversy, were rejected by the Madison School District a few years ago. UW’s Mark Seidenberg wrote a letter to Isthmus addressing reading last year (.doc file). More on Seidenberg.
Madison School Board Superintendent Art Rainwater wrote an email responding to a Wisconsin State Journal’s Editorial.




Sun Prairie Cuts Health Care Costs & Raises Teacher Salaries – using the same Dean Healthcare Plan



Milwaukee reporter Amy Hetzner:

A change in health insurance carriers was achieved by several Dane County school districts because of unique circumstances, said Annette Mikula, human resources director for the Sun Prairie School District.
Dean Health System already had been Sun Prairie’s point-of-service provider in a plan brokered by WEA Trust, she said. So, after WEA’s rates increased nearly 20% last year and were projected for a similar increase this year, the district negotiated a deal directly with Dean.
When the Dean plan goes into effect Sept. 1, the district’s premiums will drop enough that it can offer a starting salary $2,000 above what it paid last school year and yet the health plan will stay the same, Mikula said. Several other Dane County districts also have switched to Dean.
“I don’t see that our teachers made a concession because really the only thing that’s changing in theory is the name on the card,” she said. “But for the name on the card not to say WEA is huge.”
According to the school boards association, fringe benefits made up 34% of the average teacher’s compensation package in the 2004-’05 school year vs. 24% less than two decades before.

Sun Prairie School District website.

Jason Shephard noted earlier this year that the most recent attempt by the Madison School District to evaluate health care costs was a “Sham(e)”:

Last week, Madison Teachers Inc. announced it would not reopen contract negotiations following a hollow attempt to study health insurance alternatives.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but anyone who suggests the Joint Committee on Health Insurance Issues conducted a fair or comprehensive review needs to get checked out by a doctor.
The task force’s inaction is a victory for John Matthews, MTI’s executive director and board member Wisconsin Physicians Service.
Losers include open government, school officials, taxpayers and young teachers in need of a raise.
From its start, the task force, comprised of three members each from MTI and the district, seemed to dodge not only its mission but scrutiny.
Hoping to meet secretly until Isthmus raised legal questions, the committee convened twice for a total of four hours – one hour each for insurance companies to pitch proposals.
No discussion to compare proposals. No discussion about potential cost savings. No discussion about problems with WPS, such as the high number of complaints filed by its subscribers.

The Madison School Board recently discussed their 2006/2007 goals (my suggestsions). The Wisconsin State Journal noted that there are some early positive signs that things might change.




University Student Reading Buddies



Reader Reed Schneider emails this:

A plan to have 40 Spring Arbor University students serve next year as “reading buddies” for struggling first-graders in Jackson Public Schools could be a win-win situation.
The Jackson school board recently cut three Reading Recovery teacher positions to help trim its $1.86 million deficit.
JPS will obtain the services of 40 people who plan to make education their future profession, at a very low cost — $1,800 to transport the Spring Arbor students to elementary buildings. The remaining cost of the $69,780 program will go toward various training programs for teachers in the district. Overall, the district will save $221,287 over the Reading Recovery program.

“I’m sure there are a couple thousand students in the UW-Madison School of Education. With numbers like that, you could save many $100,000’s by getting rid of Reading Recovery and still have two teachers for every former RR kid.”




Local Population Growth, Student Numbers and Budget Implications



Wisconsin State Journal Editorial:

Imagine what would have happened if a city the size of Beloit had sprung up in Dane County over the past five years.
That’s almost what happened. Dane County’s population grew by 31,580 from 2000 to 2005, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates released last week.
No other Wisconsin county gained as many people.
The population increase extended a trend. Over the past 15 years Dane County has gained 91,000 people, almost equal to the population of Kenosha, Wisconsin’s fourth largest city. Projections call for the growth to continue.

Barb Schrank:

MMSD Lost 174 Students While the Surrounding School Districts Increased by 1,462 Students Over Four School Years. Revenue Value of 1,462 Students – $13.16 Million Per Year*
MMSD reports that student population is declining. From the 2000-2001 school year through the 2003-2004 school year, MMSD lost 174 students. Did this happen in the areas surrounding MMSD? No. From the 2000-2001 through the 2003-2004 school year, the increase in non-MMSD public school student enrollment was 1,462 outside MMSD.
The property tax and state general fund revenue value of 174 students is $1.57 million per year in the 2003-2004 MMSD school year dollars (about $9,000 per student). For 1,462 students, the revenue value is $13.16 million per year. Put another way, the value of losing 174 students equals a loss of 26-30 teachers. A net increase of 1,462 students equals nearly 219 teachers. There are more subtleties to these calculations due to the convoluted nature of the revenue cap calculation, federal and state funds for ELL and special education, but the impact of losing students and not gaining any of the increase of students in the area is enormous.




Change



Some interesting changes in the Madison School Board’s Governance this week:

  • Renewed administrator contracts for one year rather than the customary two years. Via Sandy Cullen:

    The administration had proposed a two year wage and benefit package for administrators, but School Board President Johnny Winston Jr. said board members did not want to be locked into increases for a second year.
    The 3.98 percent increase for the 2006-07 school year – which includes a base salary increase of 2.18 percent – is equal to what teachers received last year and is the maximum allowed under the state’s Qualified Economic Offer, or QEO, Rainwater said.

    Administrator compensation and contract term been discussed previously.

  • Voted (7 – 0) to use the low bid architect for the planned Linden school (some $200K less than the Administration’s suggested award winner based on points). Construction of Linden is part of a planned November 2006 referendum.
  • Began to address health care costs – via Sandy Cullen:

    The Madison School Board on Thursday took what members hope will be a first step toward lowering health-care costs for district employees.
    In unanimously approving a 3.98 percent increase in wages and benefits for administrators for the 2006-07 school year, board members also reserved the right to make changes in health insurance providers that would offer the same level of coverage at a lower cost to the district. Cost savings would be used for salary increases for administrators and other district needs.

The Wisconsin State Journal has more:

Voters sought change in recent Madison School Board races, and they are getting the first positive stirrings of it.
There are fewer long, tedious speeches and less of the factionalism that has marred board work in past years. There is more substantial questioning and less contentiousness. Split votes don’t have to lead to finger pointing and personal attacks.
And last week the board took a first step toward lowering health care costs.
Lawrie Kobza has spearheaded the shift since her election a year back. And rookie board members Lucy Mathiak and Arlene Silveira, who took office last month, seem to be helping.




Weighted Student Formula : Putting Funds Where They Count in Education Reform



This is an excerpt from the conclusion of an recent paper posted on the Education Working Paper Archive by Bruce S. Cooper, Timothy R. DeRoche, William G. Ouchi, Lydia G. Segal, and Carolyn Brown. WSF stands for Weighted Student Formula, a means of budgeting that assigns money to students based on a number of factors instead budgeting by position or building. The Equity Formula in Madison is similar in some ways, but recent budget cuts have left very little money to be distributed. To read the full paper click here.
TJM
IV. Twelve Suggestions for Successful Implementation of WSF
Based on lessons learned from Edmonton, Seattle, and Houston, we have compiled the following list of “commandments” that may be useful to districts beginning to implement a WSF system. By following these guidelines, district leaders can ensure that the WSF program allocates funds equitably and provides local educators with the right kinds of incentives.
Distribute as much as possible of the operating budget via the WSF. Schools will feel the impact of budgetary discretion only when they have significant resources at their disposal.
Avoid subsidies for small schools. If small schools are to succeed, they must do so within the same per-pupil budget as larger schools.
Phase-in the financial impact of WSF over 2-3 years. Schools need time to prepare for the significant budget changes that often result from the implementation of WSF. Pilot programs may not be effective, since they can pit schools against one another.
Phase-in the use of actual teacher salaries over 5-10 years. Schools need an extended period of time to address the complex financial consequences of their hiring decisions.
Establish a public forum for making weighting decisions. Weighting decisions must be driven by the educational needs of different types of students. Principals, district administrators, parents, and teachers must all accept the weights as valid.
Base funding on a mixture of enrollment and attendance. Schools should receive a financial incentive to improve attendance rates. However, policies should not penalize schools that serve students with high rates of truancy.
Fund secondary schools at a higher base rate than elementary schools. Historically, secondary schools have required more funds per student than elementary schools, and WSF should reflect this difference.
Give schools information on expenditures as soon and as often as possible. To make responsible spending decisions, principals must have access to up-to-date financial information. Financial systems must be transparent, accurate, and up-to-date.
Make it easy for schools to purchase from outside vendors. When schools are allowed to purchase products/services from outside vendors, Central Office units must compete for business and therefore push themselves to improve services. Credit cards allow schools to make instantaneous spending decisions.
Provide appropriate support and oversight for principals and support staff. To operate in a world of budgetary discretion, new principals need management training. Each school may need one highly-trained support person to serve as the site’s business manager.
Allow parents to choose the public school that best fits their needs. Public school choice complements a WSF system by creating a financial incentive for schools to improve their educational programs, thereby attracting more students (and more dollars). Weightings ensure that schools have an incentive to recruit and serve students with special needs.
Share information on school performance with educators and parents. Decision makers must see the educational consequences of their spending decisions. Since WSF empowers schools to target programs to the local student population, local educators need accurate, up-to-date information on student achievem




Push for changes in school financing



A letter to the editor
Dear Editor: I appreciated Susan Troller’s recent article where she examined the impact of eroding budgets on schools and classrooms throughout Madison. Unfortunately, this situation is not unique to Madison schools.
The repeated cutting of school budgets is strongly affecting classrooms, teachers and students in scores of school districts throughout Wisconsin. I feel confident that Madison schools, and many other school districts, are years past cutting the “frills” from their budgets school boards and administrators are now forced to make cuts that truly affect the quality of education that our children are receiving.
These current cuts, and inevitable future cuts, are a direct result of statewide school finance restrictions that have been placed on local communities by our state Legislature since the mid-1990s. School funding is extremely complicated, and I won’t begin to try to explain it here. What I will do, however, is invite readers to educate themselves on this very important issue. A good place to begin is the Web site of the Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools, www.excellentschools.org.
After we better educate ourselves, we need to have conversations with our neighbors, our friends, our school personnel and our policy makers. School financing, as it currently exists, is not going to change unless we help to make it change. And if our current school financing system does not change, then our schools will cease to be the national leaders that they still are today. And the ones who truly will lose out are our children.
I encourage readers to learn about school financing and to engage in positive dialogue with others so that we can quickly find creative solutions.
Barbara Katz
Madison
Published: May 26, 2006
The Capital Times




“Controversy Aside, State Embraces Charter Schools”



Sandy Cullen:

School used to be a struggle for seventh-grader Justin Fobes, who said he was getting “straight F’s” before enrolling at the River Crossing Environmental Charter School in Portage last fall.
“I just couldn’t sit still,” said Justin, 13.
At River Crossing, Justin is now getting A’s and B’s. And he no longer has trouble sitting still, Justin said, adding, “They actually tire you out.”
Every Friday, the middle school’s 18 students literally have a field day – doing everything from a controlled prairie burn to restoring wetlands. Such hands-on approaches to learning are fueling the rapid increase in public charter schools in Wisconsin and other states as teachers, parents and others seek to help students not succeeding in regular classrooms.




Schools in seven Wisconsin metro areas rated highly



Seven metropolitan areas of Wisconsin are in the top 25 metros for public schools in the country, according to a survey ranking U.S. school districts with 3,300 students or more. The survey was conducted by Expansion Management Magazine, a monthly business publication for executives of companies that are actively looking to expand or relocate facilities within the next three years. The seven metropolitan areas of Wisconsin—Sheboygan (5), Eau Claire (7), Madison (8), Wausau (11), Appleton(16), Oshkosh-Neenah (20), and Fond du Lac (24)—appeared in a list of the 25 Top Metros for Public Schools. Schools in these areas, plus Green Bay and La Crosse, were named to the magazine’s 5-Star Public Schools Metros list.
“I am extremely proud of Wisconsin teachers and students for their dedication to quality teaching and learning, and their hard work shows in this survey of the best metropolitan school systems in the nation,” said State Superintendent Elizabeth Burmaster. “Our students, overall, consistently score among the very best in the nation on the major college entrance exams and high school graduation rates. This affirmation of the quality of Wisconsin schools from an independent, unbiased study, underscores our students’ dedication to excellence in learning and academic achievement, and the support they
receive from their teachers, families, and communities.
“Public education in Wisconsin is moving forward, supported by our early learning and classsize reduction programs. This recognition tells us that we are on the right track and must continue to invest in education, pre-kindergarten through university. Our sustained efforts as students, educators,parents, community volunteers, and citizens will ensure that our students graduate with the knowledge and skills they need to succeed in postsecondary education, the workplace, and as citizens of our 21st century global society,” she said.
The magazine rated the metro area schools as a way of providing a basis for executives to compare the type of work force they are likely to encounter in various communities around the country. Using the data from its 15th annual Education Quotient ratings, which compared 2,800 secondary school districts throughout the country, Expansion Management grouped school districts into Metropolitan
Statistical Areas (MPAs). Public schools in those 362 MPAs were compared according to a variety of categories, including college admission test scores, graduation rates, beginning and average teacher
salaries, per pupil expenditures, and student-teacher ratio.
Bill King, chief editor of Expansion Management Magazine, speaking to the importance of quality schools to business success, said, “Today’s workers, most of whom are high school graduates, must possess skills far beyond those needed just a generation ago. Clearly, the quality of the public schools is a pretty good indicator of the type of manufacturing work force a company is likely to encounter in a
particular community.”
NOTE: A list of the Best Overall U.S. Metros for Public Schools with 3,300 students or more, according to Expansion Management magazine, follows.
Top Metros for Public Schools
1. State College, Pa.
2. Ithaca, N.Y.
3. Lawrence, Kan.
4. Iowa City, Iowa
5. Sheboygan, Wis.
6. Charlottesville, Va.
7. Eau Claire, Wis.
8. Madison, Wis.
9. Columbia, Mo.
10. Harrisonburg, Va.
11. Wausau, Wis.
12. Ames, Iowa
13. Missoula, Mont.
14. Grand Forks, N.D.-Minn.
15. Billings, Mont.
16. Appleton, Wis.
17. Bloomington, Ind.
18. Flagstaff, Ariz.
19 Glens Falls, N.Y.
20. Oshkosh-Neenah, Wis.
21. Blacksburg-Christianburg-Radford, Va.
22. Jonesboro, Ark.
23. Burlington-South Burlington, Vt.
24. Fond du Lac, Wis.
25. Ocean City, N.J
For further information, contact Joseph Donovan, Communications Officer, DPI, 608.266.3559




Speak Up For Strings – Thanks for Emailing the School Board: Keep The Emails Coming



MMSD’s School Board meets tonight to discuss the 2006-2007 school budget. There are no public appearances on tonight’s agenda, but the Madison community can continue to email the School Board in support of elementary strings at: comments@madison.k12.wi.us. Thank you to the parents and community who have attended the public hearing and who have sent emails to the School Board in support of elementary strings for Madison’s 9- and 10-year old students.
Cutting elementary strings will hurt low-income children! Keep the emails coming in support of about 550 low-income children who signed up for elementary strings – no other organization in Madison or Dane County offers an academic year long class that teaches this many children how to play an instrument. Madison School Board: Let’s work together to enhance this learning experience for our children; not tear it down and not tear it down before hearing from and working with the community.
I support restoring elementary strings to 2x per week, and I support forming a community task force on elementary strings and fine arts education to build fine arts education in Madison, not continue to tear it down. I reject late spring reports from the District administration that are clearly biased against this course and have not engaged teachers, music professionals, the community in the preceding 4 years! It’s not a administrative staffing issue, but it is poor, poor planning. We’ve had revenue caps since the early 1990s, and the Superintendent has been cutting fine arts since 1999 with no long-term plan in place, no community task force formed.
Call for an end to unfair cuts to elementary strings – cut 50% last year. No other high demand, highly valued course has been targeted in any year let alone year in and year out for cuts for 5 springs!
The state needs to take action on school financing; Madison needs the MMSD School Board to take action on elementary strings and fine arts educationl. Work with the community – please start now!




End Near for Reading Recovery in MMSD?



The reduction of over $680,000 of ESEA Title 1 entitlement grant dollars challenges the district to change the way students and teachers are supported under Title 1. The current direct service model of student support cannot be supported in the long run with current funding. The administration will use the first semester of next year to develop a new model. (Page 252, Department & Division Detailed Budgets)

The MMSD uses Title 1 money to fund Reading Recovery. Does the statement above mean the end of Reading Recovery in the district?




A day as a Regent sparks new pride



A reader emailed this article: Verona High School Student Kristen Zubke visits Madison West High School for a day [April 2006: full student newspaper 25MB]:

On Monday, March 27th, I took it upon myself to shed a little light on our neighboring rivals, the Madison West Regents. I was shadowing a friend, but I guess you could say I did a little undercover investigating just to see if I really felt the Wildcat shame as I previously professed. My day was in one word, shocking. Overall I witnessed a school that strongly resembled an outrageous metropolitan school such as that seen on the television show, Boston Public. Despite its many obvious downfalls, there are indeed perks to being a Regent, yet in the end, my appreciation of Verona went up after seeing the chaos at West. I may not openly be proud of Verona’s reputation, but our education morphed my shame into pride.

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Speak Up for Strings Tonight: Public Appearances at Board Public Hearing On the Budget – 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 9th at Memorial High School



Dear Madison Community,
Children and parents are encouraged to speak in support of elementary strings and to bring their instruments to tonight’s School Board public hearing on the budget if they would like to play. My husband, Fred Schrank, who is the principal bassist with the MSO and who teaches orchestra to elementary and middle school children in the district, will be there. I’ve asked him if he would accompany those children who might want to play for the School Board to show their support for the course. The public hearing begins 6:30 p.m at Memorial High School, 201 S. Gammon Road, Auditorium [map].
For your information – the School Board takes students who want to speak for 3 minutes (or play for 3 minutes) first. I also have signs and will have colored markers for students or others who want to make signs for the School Board to see.
The Superintendent’s proposal to cut Grade 4 strings is unacceptable, incomplete and would put in place a music curriculum planning process AFTER the cut is made to Grade 4 strings instruction. His conceptual idea is to plan to offer elementary children experiences with varied instruments in the 07-08 school year when Grade 5 strings would be cut and there would be no more elementary strings. That’s a curious idea. Why? Current General Music practice is to offer children experiences on different instruments – so the planning would not result in any meaningful curriculum change except the elimination of elementary stringed instrument instruction. What kind of plan would that be? No community planning took place this year for music education, which DPI recommends as best practice for standards based curriculum planning – include professionals and the community in the effort. The only plan is to cut Grade 4 strings, with planning for next steps to follow. Without good planning and good information – bad practice and bad decisions follow.
My question: Where’s the planning been for the past year, for the past 5 years? Our kids deserve better. Hundreds of children and community members have spoken in support of the elementary strings course over the years and emails and support for this course remain strong as demonstrated by the children once again this year through their enrollment in this course – over 1,700 children in September (550+ low income children who will be hurt the most by this cut).
After 5 springs of advocating for this course, I’m exasperated and annoyed; but when I listen to children and parents tell their stories about their hopes and dreams, I get reinvigorated as I was last night after listening and speaking. Last night, Ruth Robarts, Shwaw Vang and Lucy Mathiak spoke strongly in support of the program and in working on strings through the Performance and Achievement and the Partnership Committees. I think the idea to collaborate among board committees is novel and appropriate for Fine Arts – and may be for other areas. I feel involving the community – music and art professionals, parents, organizations in the process is critical to the long-term success of fine arts education in Madison, especially in tight financial times.
Also, Lawrie Kobza, School Board Vice President, reminded the Superintendent that the School Board had additional options to his proposal to consider – the Superintendent’s options plus keeping the course the same as this year or restoring the course to what it was two years ago (2x per week for 45 minutes).
So, please, if you have time tonight, come and Speak Up For Strings! Even if it’s only to stop in on your way to and from another event (it’s that crazy time of year with concerts, sporting games, dances and preparation for graduations taking up lots of time) and register with the Board in support of the course. I’ll be there to help with registering to speak in support, or simply registering your support. Each person’s presence makes a difference – individually and collectively!
Best,
Barbara Schrank
P.S and FYI – the Supt.’s proposed Grade 4 strings cut would not affect any current teachers and would be made through retirements and resignations. However, 1,700 children would lose something they dearly value that provides them with so much. I think, over time, our community will lose even more.




Why Does Elementary Stringed Instrument Instruction Matter? One Reason – Student Demand is Strong



I sent the following letter to the School Board last week after reviewing data and text on elementary strings sent to the School Board by the Fine Arts Coordinator. In late March, I spoke before the School Board about working together on strengthening strings and fine arts education and hoped that we would not see another spring of “surprise reports.” Shwaw Vang and others thought this was a good idea, but I guess the administration did not agree. Following my talk, the Superintendent sent a memo to the School Board with a proposal to eliminate elementary strings the end of next school year and offer General Music.
For the past five springs, in one form or another, reports on strings have been presented to the School Board, which present data and give reasons why not to teach strings. These reports are all prepared by top administrators with basically no input from or curriculum review by teachers, parents, students, the community. No other data are presented in the same manner and with as much detail as this course – none, which I find troubling. Courses are dropped for lack of enrollment, which is not the case with elementary strings. Also, no other academic course has come before the School Board year after year for cuts – not even open classroom, ropes, wrestling.
I have MMSD historical data on strings from when the course was first introduced. In spite of the administration’s best efforts to cut the course,

  • demand from students remains strong and
  • the community still values the course.

In a comment, Lucy Mathiak wrote: “As a board member, I do not see the issue as strings vs. math vs. athletics, which is how the annual budget pageant usually works. I see the issue as strings and math and athletics vs. cost overruns in building projects, growth in business services, and expenditures for contracted services that may or may not benefit our schools.
Attacking strings, or extracurriculars, or sports, will not put teachers, librarians, and other key staff into schools. Nor will it repair curricula that are of questionable efficacy. If we want good schools, the conversation starts with what is in the budget — ALL of the budget — and whether the budget supports the kind of programs that we value in our schools.” I strongly agree with her statement, because focusing on ALL of the budget keeps the focus on what’s important – student learning and achievement. An increasing body of research and experience shows studying an instrument positively affects student achievement. If so, why isn’t the School Board working with the community to strengthen fine arts education.
Dear School Board Members,
You recently received some statistical information from the District Fine Arts Coordinator on string instrumental enrollment for Grades 4-12 that was in response to a question from Ms. Carstensen on enrollment.
I feel the information presented could have been titled, “Reasons [the Administration Wants] to Cut Elementary Strings,” which, of course I found strange and inconsistent with data on this course and how other data are presented to the School Board [for issues/practices the administration supports].
I would like to provide you with some additional information that I believe provides a bigger picture and shows how this course has grown as the District has changed:

  1. Historical Enrollment:

    [Please excuse me, I don’t know how to change the x axis to years. Year 1 is 1969 and the last year is 2005.] This data was kept in the Fine Arts Department by those overseeing the elementary strings enrollment. I have a copy of the original chart, which I would be happy to provide MMSD if they cannot find a copy of this information..
    The dip around year 23 (1991) was due to a proposal to cut elementary strings and the later dip around year 29 was due to the inability to replace an FTE. You can see the strong growth in the course following a proposal to cut the course. During the 1990s enrollment grew, peaking in the early 2000s at 2,049. Even with the Superintendent’s proposals to cut the course, demand for instruction remains strong. During the same time period in the 1990s, low-income and minority enrollment in the elementary grades increased (while total enrollment in elementary school declined). Even with the proposed cuts to elementary strings since 2002, enrollment has stayed strong, consistently about 50% of 4th and 5th grade students participate. This course is a high demand, highly valued course as growth in enrollment continues to show.
  2. Elementary Strings – Demographics and Over Time:
    When you look at the statistics you received on elementary strings – I would recommend that you look at the entire course over time as well as student groups over time (cohorts). If you look at the course over time, you see increases in demographics at all grade levels as you see increases in low-income and minority in the total student population – that’s moving in the right direction and teachers deserve praise for this. In fact, if you look at the low-income (%) enrollment in Grade 4 strings this year – that percentage is 2.8% lower than the percentage of low-income students in the entire Grade 4 this year.
    Also, when students go from Grades 5 to Grade 6, they have another choice of instrument to study – a band instrument. When you look at the historical enrollment in instrumental music from grades 5 to 6, you will see an increase in students opting to play an instrument in Grade 6. Elementary strings plays a role in preparing students to read music and to perform with other students in an ensemble. The curriculum is an instrumental curriculum from Grades 4-12. [Low income children have no other viable option to learn how to play an instrument – $2,000 per year for lessons and instrument rental.]

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Citizens ask District to Spare School Programs



The Madison School Board held a public hearing last night on the Distirct’s proposed 332.9M+ 06/07 budget last night. Maggie Rossiter Peterman:

Sean Storch pleaded with members of the Madison School Board on Tuesday night not to cut teachers in the district’s four high school alternative education programs.
Storch, 28, and another teacher work with about 20 “at- risk” ninth-graders in the Connect program at La Follette High School.

Channel3000 has more.




Better MMSD budget process? Maybe next year.



The National School Board Association argues that local school boards exist to translate the community’s educational goals for its children into programs and to hold staff accountable for the quality and effectiveness of the programs:

Your school board sets the standard for achievement in your district, incorporating the community’s view of what students should know and be able to do at each grade level. Your school board also is responsible for working with the superintendent to establish a valid process for measuring student success and, when necessary, shifting resources to ensure that the district’s goals are achieved.

Don’t expect to see that kind of process as the Madison School Board adopts a $383.7M budget for 2006-07.
On April 24, 2006, Superintendent Art Rainwater presented his proposed budget for 2006-07 to the school board. MMSD Proposed Balanced Budget for 2006-07 To the credit of the administration, the documents are better organized and provide more detail than in recent years.
Nonetheless, the board’s adoption of next year’s budget will likely be an unsatisfying process for parents and the community. I say this because the Madison board has again skipped the decision-making steps that are necessary for budget decisions to occur within a framework that we can all understand and support.
Long before the school board tries to evaluate a budget, the board should have translated the community’s vision for the education of its children into specific, measurable goals for student achievement. Key Work of School Boards
We don’t have such goals except for third grade reading, completion of algebra and geometry and attendance. What kind of budget commitment should we make to offering a comprehensive high school program? We don’t know, because we have set no standards for the “challenging, contemporary curriculum” that we claim is a strategic priority for the district. What funds should we commit to fine arts education? We don’t know, because we have no achievement goals in the arts or any other curriculum area. Should we cease funding a “Race and Equity” position at the $100,000 a year level? We don’t know because we don’t have objectives for the position to accomplish.
The board should also have developed a shared understanding of how data will be used to evaluate the district’s progress toward meeting its goals.
We don’t determine which data will be used in decisions about educational programs or any other aspect of the budget. Should we cease the “same service” approach to the teaching of reading? Should we continue to invest in “instructional coaches” who teach teachers how to present the Connected Math program? Again, we don’t know. The administration claims that its curriculum decisions are data-driven. However, the administration does not share the student achievement data behind our “same service” approach or proposed new programs nor has the board agreed to rely on whatever data that the administration may use in its internal analysis.
As the result of the April elections, the board has two new members: Lucy Mathiak and Arlene Silveira. Both promised to focus on standards and accountability during their campaigns. Maybe next year will be better. That’s important because the fuss that occurs each spring as the board struggles to “restore” programs or staff that the superintendent has cut should not occur. We should not be on the defensive–always having to create our own individual rationales for replacing cut items or changing programs. We should be on the offensive—judging the superintendent’s budget against the goals that we have set for our programs and the measurements of effectiveness that we have agreed on.
Please stay tuned.
Ruth Robarts
Member, Madison School Board




Work on education gap lauded



From the Wisconsin State Journal, May 2, 2006
ANDY HALL ahall@madison.com
Madison made more progress than any urban area in the country in shrinking the racial achievement gap and managed to raise the performance levels of all racial groups over the past decade, two UW- Madison education experts said Monday in urging local leaders to continue current strategies despite tight budgets.
“I’ve seen districts around the United States, and it really is remarkable that the Madison School District is raising the achievement levels for all students, and at the same time they’re closing the gaps,” Julie Underwood, dean of the UW- Madison School of Education, said in an interview.
Underwood said she’s heard of no other urban district that reduced the gap so significantly without letting the test scores of white students stagnate or slide closer to the levels of lower-achieving black, Hispanic or Southeast Asian students.
“The way that it’s happened in Madison,” she said, “is truly the best scenario. . . . We haven’t done it at the expense of white students.”
Among the most striking trends:
Disparities between the portions of white and minority students attaining the lowest ranking on the state Third Grade Reading Test have essentially been eliminated.
Increasing shares of students of all racial groups are scoring at the top levels – proficient and advanced – on the Third Grade Reading Test.
Graduation rates have improved significantly for students in every racial group.
Underwood commented after one of her colleagues, Adam Gamoran, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, presented a review of efforts to attack the racial achievement gap to the Schools of Hope Leadership Team meeting at United Way of Dane County.
Gamoran told the 25- member team, comprised of community leaders from the school system, higher education, nonprofit agencies, business and government, that Madison’s strategy parallels national research documenting the most effective approaches – one-to-one tutoring, particularly from certified teachers; smaller class sizes; and improved training of teachers.
“My conclusion is that the strategies the Madison school system has put in place to reduce the racial achievement gap have paid off very well and my hope is that the strategies will continue,” said Gamoran, who as director of the education-research center oversees 60 research projects, most of which are federally funded. A sociologist who’s worked at UW-Madison since 1984, Gamoran’s research focuses on inequality in education and school reform.
In an interview, Gamoran said that Madison “bucked the national trend” by beginning to shrink the racial achievement during the late 1990s, while it was growing in most of America’s urban school districts.
But he warned that those gains are in jeopardy as Wisconsin school districts, including Madison, increasingly resort to cuts and referendums to balance their budgets.
Art Rainwater, Madison schools superintendent, said Gamoran’s analysis affirmed that the district and Schools of Hope, a civic journalism project of the Wisconsin State Journal and WISC-TV (Ch. 3) that grew into a community campaign to combat the racial achievement gap, are using the best known tactics – approaches that need to be preserved as the district makes future cuts.
“The things that we’ve done, which were the right things to do, positively affect not just our educationally neediest students,” Rainwater said. “They help everybody.”
John Matthews, executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., the teachers union, and Rainwater agree that the progress is fragile.
“The future of it is threatened if we don’t have it adequately funded,” Matthews said.
Leslie Ann Howard, United Way president, whose agency coordinates Schools of Hope, said Gamoran’s analysis will help focus the community’s efforts, which include about 1,000 trained volunteer tutors a year working with 2,000 struggling students on reading and math in grades kindergarten through eight.
The project’s leaders have vowed to continue working until at least 2011 to fight gaps that persist at other grade levels despite the gains among third- graders.
“I think it’s critical for the community to know that all kids benefited from the strategies that have been put in place the last 10 years – the highest achievers, the lowest achievers and everybody in between,” Howard said.
“To be able to say it’s helping everyone, I think is really astonishing.”




Speak Up For Strings – Starting May 9th



Please Help Save Elementary Strings!!!
How: Ask the New School Board –
Work with the Community to Build Fine Arts Education!
When: Starting May 9th
Other districts facing fiscal and academic achievement challenges have had successes maintaining and growing their fine arts education – through strategic planning, active engagement and real partnerships with their communities. School districts in Arizona, Chicago, New York, Texas and Minneapolis are looking for innovative ways to preserve and to grow fine arts education when facing tight budgets.
What does MMSD do?

For the 5th spring, elementary strings are at risk. Superintendent Rainwater is proposing to eliminate elementary strings – to cut Grade 4 strings next year and Grade 5 strings the following year. NO other high demand, highly valued academic course is targeted in next year’s budget – NONE.

Hundreds of students, parents, teachers and community members understand the value of this course for young children and have shown their public support for this course before the School Board each spring. We need to remind the new School Board, once again, of the value of this course – to our students’ growth and achievement, to our community.
Facts:

Enrollment Doubled – In the 1990s, course enrollment doubled to slightly more than 2,000 students – at the same time the low income and minority elementary student population increased. Approximately 50% of 4th and 5th graders elect to participate in elementary strings.
Low Income Enrollment Grew – Over time, low-income enrollment in elementary strings has grown. This year, the percentage of low-income children enrolled in Grade 4 strings is higher than the percentage of low-income children in that grade enrolled in the district. No other private/public organization in Madison teaches 550+ low-income children how to play an instrument at a higher level and to perform in ensembles.

You Can Help:
Speak to the School Board – bring signs, play your instrument
When: Tuesday, May 9, 2006 – 6:30 p.m., Memorial High School Auditorium [map]
Write to the School Board – comments@madison.k12.wi.us – and ask them

  1. to reject the Superintendent’s proposal as inadequate, and
  2. to work with Madison by forming a community fine arts committee to address fine arts educations issues, such as strings, so kids can get the personal and academic benefits of fine arts education.

Five years of targeting strings is unacceptable, short-sighted and goes against a) what the research shows strings does for children’s growth, development and academic achievement, b) what’s being done in other areas in MMSD, and b) what the community values for our children’s education.
For more information, email: savestrings@charter.net




Cieslewicz State of the City speech



Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz spoke at yesterday’s Rotary club meeting. His 3416 word state of the city speech included 159 directly related to our local public schools:

8. We need to work more seamlessly to maintain our excellent public school system.

Our public schools have recently been ranked the third best in the nation. Yet, they face unprecedented challenges as they work to educate more children that come from impoverished families and more children with special needs. I am very aware that we elect a school board to make these decisions and it is not my intent to overstep my authority, but I do recognize that good schools are vital ingredients in healthy neighborhoods. We will renew our efforts to work with the school district, with parents and teachers to make sure that city government and the schools are pulling together, not working at cross purposes. For instance, the decisions the City regarding new housing development has a significant impact on school attendance and boundary issues. Our recently-adopted Comprehensive Plan notes the importance of city and school planning staff working together.

Kristian Knutsen attended the speech.




Concern about quality of 3rd quarter report cards (cont.)



Expressions of parent concern over the quality of third-quarter report cards for students in Madison’s elementary schools continue. Parents at Thoreau School joined parents from other schools who have wondered why their children make so little progress in the third quarter of the year in many subject areas that no information on progress can be provided to their families. Another Parent Concerned About Third-Quarter Report Cards and Can We Talk 3: 3rd Quarter Report Cards
Here is a letter from Thoreau parents to the Assistant Superintendent for Elementary Schools.

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Fifth Verse – Same, Sorrowful Tune: Superintendent Proposes to Elminate Elementary Strings



Other districts facing fiscal and academic achievement challenges have had successes maintaining and growing their fine arts education – through strategic planning, active engagement and real partnerships with their communities. In Tuscon, AZ, with a large low income and hispanic population, test scores of this population have climbed measurably (independent evaluations confirmed this). This state has received more than $1 million in federal funding for their fine arts education work. School districts in Chicago, New York, Texas and Minneapolis have also done some remarkable work in this area.
In my opinion, the administration’s music education work products and planning efforts this year are unsatisfactory, unimaginative and incomplete. In spite of research that continues to demonstrate the positive effects on student achievement (especially for low income students) and the high value the Madison community places on fine arts, the administration continues to put forth incomplete proposals that will short change all students, especially our low-income students, and the administration does its work “behind closed doors.”
Three or four weeks ago, I spoke at a board meeting and said I thought we needed to do things differently this year – Shwaw Vang and other board members supported my idea of working together to solve issues surrounding elementary strings. Apparently, the administration saw things differently. Since my public appearance the Superintendent has issued two reports – one eliminating elementary strings replacing K-5 music with a “new, improved” idea for K-5 music and a second report with enrollment data presented incompletely with an anti-elementary strings bias. Teachers had no idea this proposal or data were forthcoming, saw no drafts, and they did not receive copies of statistics relevant to their field that was sent last week to the School Board. Neither did the public or the entire School Board know these reports were planned and underway. During the past 12 months, there were no lists of fine arts education priorities developed and shared, no plans to address priorities, processes, timelines, staff/community involvement, etc. String teachers received no curriculum support to adjust to teaching a two-year curriculum in 1/2 the instructional time even though they asked for this help from the Doyle building, and they never received information about the plans for recreating elementary strings in the future. None.
I don’t feel the Superintendent proceeded in the manner expressed to me by Mr. Vang nor as demonstrated by the School Board’s establishment of community task forces over this past year on a number of important issues to the community. Madison’s love of fine arts lends itself well to a community advisory committee. I hope other Board members support Mr. Vang’s community team approach, rejecting the Superintendent’s recent music proposal as incomplete and unacceptable.
In his fifth year of proposals to eliminate elementary strings, the Superintendent is proposing a “new and improved” K-5 music that is not planned for another year, but requires elimination of Grade 4 strings next year. The recent proposal, once again, was developed by administrators without any meaningful involvement of teachers and no involvement of the community. Elementary strings and fine arts education are important to the community. The Superintendent did not use a process that was transparent, well planned with a timeline, open and involved the community.
Music education, including elementary string instruction, is beneficial to a child’s developing, learning and engagement in school. However, music education, also directly supports and reinforces learning in math and reading. Instrument instruction does this at a higher level and that’s one of the reasons why MMSD’s music education curriculum introduces strings in Grade 4, following a sequence of increasing challenges in music education. In fact, all the points made in the Superintendent’s “new” K-5 music program, including multicultural experiences, exist in MMSD’s current music curriculum. The only thing “new” in the Superintendent’s proposal is the elimination of elementary strings.
It is not acceptable to say that we have to do something, because we have to cut money. Also, this is not about some folks being able to “yell” louder than others. To me, this is about five years that have been wasted – no planning, no community involvement, no shared visions. Our kids deserve better. Let’s get started on a new path working together now.

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West HS English 9 and 10 Again — No Child Moves Ahead



Several of us received the following email today from Ted Widerski, MMSD TAG (“Talented and Gifted”) Resource Teacher for Middle and High Schools. Ted has been working with other District and West HS staff to find a way to allow West 9th and 10th graders who are advanced in English to grade accelerate in English, whether through the INSTEP process or some other method.
Here is what he wrote:

Parents –
On Wednesday, April 12th, Welda Simousek and I met with Pamela Nash, Mary Ramberg, Mary Watson-Peterson, Ed Holmes, and Keesia Hyzer to discuss In-STEP procedures for students in English 9 and/or 10. Through this discussion, it became clear that there was no reasonable method available at this time to assess which students might not need to take English 9 or 10 because part of what is learned in English classes comes through the processes of analysis, discussion, and critical critiquing that are shared by the entire class. An alternative assessment approach was discussed: having students present a portfolio to be juried. This approach would require a great deal of groundwork, however, and would not be available yet this spring. It will be looked at as a possibility for the future.
Please keep in mind that it is the intention of West High School to offer meaningful and challenging English courses for all levels of students. It is also the usual TAG Classroom Action Summary and In-STEP approach to have students be present in a classroom for a period of time before it is possible to assess whether they are extremely beyond their classroom peers and need a different option. Welda will follow up with teachers and students in the fall to ascertain progress for students during the first semester. The use of the Classroom Action Summary and In-STEP approach (with a brainstorming of possible options) will be reviewed again at the end of semester one.
Please feel free to contact me with further questions.

Ted Widerski
Talented and Gifted Resource Teacher
Madison Metropolitan School District

I replied to Ted (copying many others, including parents, Teaching and Learning staff, Art Rainwater, Pam Nash, the BOE, and West HS staff), saying that this is a case of unequal access to appropriate educational opportunities because of how poorly West HS provides for its 9th and 10th graders who are academically advanced in English, as compared to the other three high schools.
Here is my reply:

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Promises Betrayed



Five years ago we moved to Madison. A big factor in this decision was the expectation that we could rely on Madison public schools to educate our children. Our eldest went through West High School. To our delight the rigorous academic environment at West High transformed him into a better student, and he got accepted at several good public universities.
Now we are finding this promise betrayed for our younger children. Our elementary school appears to be sliding into disarray. Teachers and children are threatened, bullied, assaulted, and cursed at. Curricula are dumbed down to accommodate students who are unprepared for real school work. Cuts in special education are leaving the special needs kids adrift, and adding to the already impossible burdens of classroom teachers. To our disappointment we are forced to pull one child out of public school, simply to ensure her an orderly and safe learning environment.
Unless the School Board addresses these challenges forcefully and without obfuscation, I am afraid a historic mistake will be made. Madison schools will slip into a vicious cycle of middle class flight and steady decline. The very livability of our city might be at stake, not to mention our property values.
To me the necessary step is clear. The bottom five to ten percent of students, and especially all the aggressive kids, must be removed from regular classes. They should be concentrated in separate schools where they can receive the extra attention and intensive instruction they need, with an option to join regular classes if they are ready.

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Legality of teacher bargaining unit questioned



Sandy Cullen:

A behind-the-scenes dispute over whether Madison School Board member Lawrie Kobza should be allowed to vote on the district’s next teachers contract has led to her questioning the legality of the teachers bargaining unit.
That, in turn, has brought charges from Madison Teachers Inc. that Kobza is trying to break up the teachers bargaining unit.
The issue of whether Kobza – whose husband is employed as a high school soccer coach under the MTI teachers contract -should recuse herself from negotiating and voting on the 2007-2009 contract was raised last fall by School Board member and former MTI president Bill Keys.

Owen Robinson has more.




KEEP DIVERSITY IN THE CLASSROOM



The school board race has exposed beliefs among some citizens that I thought I had escaped by moving to a progressive city.
The people of Madison should be proud of the school board’s efforts to create a real world environment for our kids in the classroom, a real world made up of all types of learners of all economic backgrounds. To say that a teacher cannot teach a variety of students in the same classroom is an insult to Madison’s teachers.
Creating homogeneous classrooms would harm all students because it would deprive them of learning the skill and art of “getting along” with those who are different. The attitude that students should be segregated is outdated and prejudicial. It is also against the law. Students learn and absorb so much more in school than the content of a lesson.
I will vote for Arlene Silveira and Juan Jose Lopez because they are committed to maintaining an inclusive environment in our classrooms.
– Beth Moss, Madison
Letter to the Editor
Wisconsin State Journal, March 30, 2006




The real race and the real story



Lets face it. We all take sides whether in the school yard, the Board room or the School Board Race.
Already, we see the lines of division. The Mathiak/Cole group on one side, the Lopez/ Silveira group on the other. What is ultimately at stake is the best interests of our children.
What do we do? In the case of the School Board race, I believe it all comes down to Who gets to run the show. And blame is at the root of it all.
As I look over all the candidates, skills, commitment, ability to articulate, ability to form solid opinions and positions I know who I will vote for. But when I lift the covers and look underneath something smells very fishy to me, it looks like one of the factions in the School Board race wants to change Superintendents. The BLAME game. We hear statements like, “We got here because he is in bed with the Teachers Union”; or “He doesn’t make good fiscal decisions”; or “He is responsible for cutting this or that, that “I” want for my child!”
An opinion piece in the April 1 Wall Street Journal by the School Board President of the Glen Ridge Board of Education in Glen Ridge, NJ states the case very well. She says “…Anyone with even a passing familiarity with New Jersey’s property tax woes knows that the real problem is not superintendents’ contracts, but legislators’ unwillingness to fix a school funding system that is irretrievably broken…” She went on, “Superintendents are responsible to local boards and taxpayers and on call 24/7. They build budgets, negotiate contracts, meet with parents, serve as the ‘public face’ of their districts, deal with facilities and construction projects, hire, evaluate and mentor administrators, observe teachers, and much more.”
On April 4 we have decision to make. Do we start over, as Ms. Cole says, and tear down what we have? Or, as Ms. Silveira says, do we build from a strong foundation? Do we bring in new talent as urged by Ms. Mathiak who has no public service record, or go with a proven child advocate, namely Juan Jose Lopez, who has a solid track record in the district?
These are the questions we must ask ourselves. We need to remember; when challengers to the current system say that we are spending more than we take in, keep in mind who made that misleading claim since our own legislature has mandated spending caps and rules that FORCE us to spend more annually than we take in. Some $8 million more.
This is not the fault of the Board or the Superintendent. And, although candidates for “change” Cole and Mathiak — state that they want to review the budget for more effective ways to use existing funds, I doubt that the current School Board hasn’t already examined all the options. Ms. Cole wants some type of 5 year plan to deal with the $40 million budget. That still leaves $8 million less per year to run the public schools. Ms. Mathiak, who wants to sell the Doyle building, is essentially saying, ?OK, here are a few bucks for this year and a de-centralized administration for the future. This makes no sense at all. It is hard enough to find the right person in one building let alone the communication nightmares we will would encounter as the school staff tries to work together from disparate locations.
The only plan that will help the budget crisis that our schools are in is for us citizens to elect public officials, local and statewide, who will give us more realistic budgets for our schools!
What to do. I am biased. I want stability, I want representatives that know change comes not from wholesale “slaughter” of our current system during an ongoing fiscal crisis, but from within. I want representatives for MY CHILDREN and ALL THE CHILDREN of Madison. I will vote for stability and sanity. Please join me in voting for the best interests of our children and vote on April 4 for Juan Lopez and Arlene Silveira.
David Wandel,
Past PTO President, Midvale/Lincoln,
Commissioner, Community Services Commission and Community Activist




Endorsements come in many colors



In campaigning for the Madison School Board, I learned something that may be useful for voters. There are two very different kinds of political endorsements.
Endorsements that candidates seek. Some candidates seek the endorsement of organizations. In these situations, the organizations endorse the candidate only if the candidate passes its litmus tests. Madison Teachers Inc. (MTI) has this kind of process. Candidates are invited to complete a very long and detailed questionnaire and must appear before the Political Action Committee (PAC) to explain their answers. Endorsed candidates receive direct financial assistance from the PAC and help with the campaign (leafleting neighborhoods and get-out-the-vote phone banks). The PAC also buys “independent” radio and newspaper ads supporting the endorsed candidate.
Endorsements that candidates do not seek.. There is, however, a second kind of endorsement. Candidates who run as “independents” do not seek organizational endorsements and PAC funds. They do not make promises to move the organization’s agenda forward. They make clear that they are not seeking PAC funds. Nonetheless, the organization decides independently to support the candidate. The organization decides without consulting the candidate. It exercises its independent right to buy ads in support of a candidate. In the April election, ads from the “Get Real” organization are an example of the second kind of endorsement.
Big picture? Independent candidates–as in the April 4 school board race—offer value choices to voters. They stand as individuals. They ask for support for their goals. The only promises that they make are the promises to the voters. If elected, they are free to work for the values that the voters shared. They are not in the position of the candidates who owe their election, at least in part, to organizations that have their own interests.




For The Record



Sunday 10 a.m., Channel 3’s For the Record will feature a debate among the four candidates for school board.
Here is my email to Neil Heinen regarding the station’s coverage including a discussion of some of the issues at stake in the race: To: Neil Heinen Subject: Sunday show
Dear Neil,
A new post up on SIS (https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/) discusses a debate at East yesterday covered by your station. Thank you for this and for dedicating Sunday’s show to the race.
One point that I’m not sure was reported correctly however, is the assertion in your coverage that the current board has not said who they support. The five-member majority has clearly stated their support for Silveira and Lopez (who is of course part of that majority and a candidate) while Robarts and Kobza have stated their support for Mathiak and Cole.
This race truly is for control of the majority and will dictate how we go forward on matters of heterogeneous classrooms (the dismantling of honors and possibly AP at West is part of that), school boundary changes, the construction of new and closure of existing schools, budget concerns, how to responsibly provide teachers health insurance, etc.
The Silveira/Lopez line is that Mathiak and Cole are focused merely on “process”. This significantly minimizes what’s at stake. The board is currently divided and removed from community input. For instance, when a school board member can’t get an item on the agenda because she’s in the minority, or she can’t get information she has requested from the superintendent, we’ve got closed, dysfunctional governance. Mathiak and Cole may not always vote the same with each other or Kobza or Robarts, but the four of them are dedicated to transparency and public participation. With that, I believe the community will be better informed and more likely to support the hard decisions facing our district as we go forward into a land of $40 million more in budget cuts over the next five years.
But there’s an even bigger topic that might be coming up soon. I’d appreciate if you could ask the candidates what they’d look for in a new superintendent. Rainwater has made no secret of his plan to retire in the not too distant future and it’s no stretch to believe that the next board majority will determine whether we hire someone like Art or someone who is less, shall we say, autocratic/didactic, someone who takes his direction FROM the board on policy matters rather than dictating it TO them?
Let me close by focusing on hetergeneous classes. The trend everywhere else is to have more not less AP and honors classes. I met a woman recently who is an education professor at Marquette. She was shocked to learn of MMSD’s policy changes, pointing out that in Milwaukee even the most impoverished schools have AP, with the focus being how to increase participation by more students, especially minority students. Extending the K-8 model into high school is irresponsible. The data clearly indicate that this model is failing our students. Indeed, even at West, the internal data show that the one-size-fits-all English 9 and now English 10 doesn’t work as advertised. Our children attend Stanford and Macalester. Almost all their classmates have had the full range of AP courses in their high schools, even those coming from small towns. Especially in science and math, this is critical. Success after MMSD is a measure that doesn’t get much play, but it really should be the ultimate measure of our students’ success, not just those who go on to college and post-graduate careers, but all our students. Are they prepared to participate meaningfully in society. Do they have the skills they need to be good critical thinkers, to make informed decisions.
As our district grows increasingly more diverse ethnically, and as the disparity socieconomically widens, we have to ask whether we can meet all students’ needs with the little red school house approach, if that model ever worked in a town our size. More important, perhaps, will be how the community will perceive this—a posting a few months back on SIS looked at the district’s demographic data and demonstrated that brain flight has already happened out of the West HS district. Folks will be voting with their feet if they feel those setting policy don’t care about all the children.
How we see ourselves and whether Madison continues to draw new folks to our community depends heavily on the strength of our schools. Obviously I believe we need a fresh start, but however you come down on it, the stakes are high.
Best,
Joan




Channel 3000 on the school board election



Yesterday, Juan Jose Lopez and I had the honor of debating in Mr. Borowski’s AP American Government and Politics class. The debate was open to anyone at East High School who wanted to attend. The students organized it, wrote and asked the questions, and managed one of the best debates that we’ve had since the campaign season began. Kudos to East and the class. Here is the Channel 3000 report ( Neil Heinen’s Sunday morning show will be taped dialogue with all 4 candidates)
School Board Candidates Face Off In Debate
Two Seats Are Open On Board
UPDATED: 9:25 am CST March 31, 2006
MADISON, Wis. — School board candidates up for election next Tuesday brought their debate to a Madison high school classroom on Thursday.
Incumbent board member Juan Jose Lopez and challenger Lucy Mathiak debated in a Madison East High School civics class.
During the debate, the students asked questions about some of their concerns, including curriculum questions about math and advanced placement classes.
Candidates responded by expressing their hopes and intentions for the district, WISC-TV reported.
Lopez said that he supports where the district is headed and that focusing on certain expectations have translated into the schools’ success.
“I’ve focused on student achievement. Student achievement is one of the most important things for young people in this community,” he said. “We value public education. We value excellence. We value what’s important to our young people in this community. Our public schools are No. 1 because that’s what we value.”
Mathiak said that she supports changes in district policy on things like the budget. She said that it’s important to plan for the future to keep the city’s schools ahead of the curve, WISC-TV reported.
“In Madison, we take a lot of pride in having strong schools,” she said. “We have excellent teachers, we have very strong programs, but I don’t think we can afford to be complacent. And by that, I mean we cannot afford to sit back and think that we have always had great schools so we always will”
Retiring school board member Bill Keys said that what’s at stake in this election is really an attitude toward public education.
“It’s going to have a decades-long impact to make the right kind of vote,” Keys said. “They should make an informed vote. They should read the literature.”
The two open seats for the school board have four candidates. Mathiak and Lopez are competing for one seat and Maya Cole and Arlene Silveira for the seat that Keys is vacating.
Lopez and Silveira have endorsements from Madison Teacher’s Inc., the teachers’ union. Mathiak and Silveira have been endorsed by the Capitol Times in their respective races.
The current board is split on who it will endorse, WISC-TV reported.




John Nichols: Maya Cole’s no closet conservative



Capital Times, March 30, 2006
By John Nichols
Paul Wellstone has been dead for a long three years, and yet there is rarely a national political debate that does not cause me to think: What would Wellstone do?
The late Minnesota senator was an epic political figure, who fought not just against right-wing Republicans but against those in his own Democratic Party who would warp it into a pale reflection of the GOP. Wellstone’s willingness to challenge the accepted political “wisdom” of the moment often put him at odds with folks he expected or at least hoped would be his supporters.
Madison School Board candidate Maya Cole, a graduate of “Camp Wellstone,” the candidate training program developed by the former senator’s family and friends to train a new generation of rabble-rousing contenders, knows that feeling. She’s a passionate progressive who has poured her energies into struggles to stop the war in Iraq, reduce gun violence, defend voting rights, challenge racism and reorder economic priorities so that society will be more just.

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Response to Betzinger et al on Heterogeneous Grouping



March 29, 2006
To the Editor of the Capital Times:
I read with interest the March 28 letter from Betzinger et al regarding heterogeneous grouping.
Using inflammatory “tracking” vs. “inclusion” rhetoric, the authors clearly misrepresent my position on the current debate, which was posted through the Isthmus on-line questions to candidates two weeks ago. I have stated my position in front of the board and in several forums attended by their group. I also have asked for dialogue with Barb Katz on more than one occasion and she has declined my request to learn more about her position.
Under the circumstances, I can only believe that the authors would prefer not to be confused by the record, which is:
Mathiak: Despite noble rhetoric in favor of this plan, I have deep reservations about the current push for “mixed ability grouping” (a.k.a. “heterogeneous grouping”). The district has failed to clarify whether the goal is to achieve a perfect demographic balance in each classroom or address the historic segregation of Madison’s advanced academic programs.
These are two very different objectives that would require different strategies to succeed.
Since 2000, the district has known that 27% of high school drop outs scored above the 84th percentile in the 5th grade math test; this group includes a large number of low income and minority students. If the district wanted to desegregate advanced academics it would require:

  • Early testing of all students to identify and nurture high ability students of color and low income students.
  • Reform of the middle school and high school guidance system to encourage rather than discourage advanced classes among students of color and low income students.
  • Creation of enough places in advanced classes to accommodate all students capable of success.

If the goal is to achieve a perfect population mix, we need to have a plan that meets the needs of all of the students in that mix. This means addressing several factors identified in successful models but which are not part of Madison’s current public school practice including:

  • The ability to control who attends the school and under what terms
  • The ability to require teachers to be trained in and to implement differentiated curriculum (one expert recently testified that this takes ten or more years to put in place).
  • Generous levels of in-stepping for students who are significantly above grade level.
  • Adequate numbers of support staff — social workers, psychologists, learning disabilities specialists, librarians, TAG specialists, and other core staff — to allow teachers to teach to all levels.



REFLECTIONS ON ISTHMUS ARTICLE, “THE FATE OF THE SCHOOLS” BY 22 PARENTS AND COMMUNITY MEMBERS



Last Thursday, the Isthmus newspaper published an extensive article by Jason Shepard entitled “The Fate of the Schools.” While the article covered many areas of interest regarding the school district and the upcoming school board elections, we have significant concerns about the way in which the article was written. These concerns include:
CONTEXT:
• The data in the article were used inappropriately. This story compares Madison’s schools with the small, suburban, middle-class districts surrounding it. A more comparable study would have looked at other districts with similar proportions of low-income students, such as Green Bay, LaCrosse, Racine and Milwaukee. The data also was not dis-aggregated. If it had been, it would have revealed that Madison’s white, non-poor children do as well as and even surpass both Dane County and larger districts in Wisconsin. Of that group, 96% of the “non-low-income” students scored proficient or advanced.
• Additionally, MMSD has 35% of the county’s 3rd graders – and 70% of the county’s low-income 3rd graders. On the math scores quoted in the article, it wasn’t pointed out that while Madison “only matches” the state average, Madison’s overall poverty rate is 30 percent higher. Madison continues to score above state and national averages on the ACT exam each year, despite the fact that more low-income and non-white students are taking the exam each year. MMSD had 69% of all the National Merit Semifinalists in the county this year (with only about 40% of the students).
SOURCES:
• The top sources of information listed in the article when talking about diminishing public support for MMSD and data on the schools come from two sources: talk radio and the SIS blog, neither of which are primary sources. Also, no grassroots parent groups or civic groups were interviewed other than SIS. And, no educational experts from curriculum and instruction at UW-Madison were interviewed, yet it is listed as the number one Graduate School of Curriculum and Instruction in the United States (U.S. News and World Report, 2006).
• We acknowledge that many families have opted-out of the district, for a variety of reasons. However, the overall trends for enrollment in and outside of Madison also reflect the growth and availability of new housing. It is very difficult to pull out whether the bulk of the enrollment choices were based on perceived educational quality of MMSD or for a larger house with more young families in the neighborhood. Just as anecdotal evidence from SIS and other sources indicate disengagement from MMSD, we could assert, with just as much authority that, based on our own experiences with people we know, families continue to move into MMSD for its breadth of instruction, diversity, and high quality teachers and staff.
ACCURACY:
• On the issue of equity, MMSD should not be blamed for segregated housing in Madison. And in fact, many of the board members have supported increased resources to schools with high poverty rates, not just Ruth Robarts and Lawrie Kobza. The formation of a new equity task force came from Carol Carstensen. Lawrie Kobza voted against its formation.
We raise these concerns in the interest of fairness, to give our fellow SIS readers a broader understanding of the issues covered in the article.
Submitted by: Francoise Davenport, Kirsten Engel, Jerry Eykholt, Kristina Grebener, Andrew Halada, Denise Halada, Molly Immendorf, Barbara Katz, Ed Kuharski, Jane Lambert, Randy Lambert, Beth Moss, Duncan Moss, Marge Passman, Lisa Pugh, Thomas Purnell, Fred Swanson, Beth Swedeen, Terry Tuschen, Barbara Wagner, Margaret Walters, and Andrea Wipperfurth.




Task Forces Are an Important Mechanism for Bringing People With Different Perspectives Together to Work on Important Issues – What About Music and Art Education?



Tonight the School Board’s Performance and Achievement Committee will discuss a status report on the elementary strings class, which they received last Thursday.
This report describes the current course, but the report a) is not an assessment of the course and b) says nothing about the future of the course. (Mr. Rainwater told me the committee only asked for a status report.) I have been one of hundreds of advocates for this course over the past 5 springs, and I see the same thing unfolding again this year that I have in the 4 previous springs without any work from the preceding year on this academic course. This course is much loved by generations of people who live in Madison, many who do not have children in the schools but do vote.
Not included with the status report is a draft vision statement developed by a group of string teachers. It’s long, needs more discussion with string teachers and the community (all string teachers have seen this) but with this draft statement a) these teachers tried to come up with something meaningful, which top management asked them to do and b) these teachers have had less than two hours of group time to even discuss what the future could be and that ended abruptly in December with no further next steps. These same teachers were given no time to work together on what adjustments needed to be made to curriculum when class time is cut in half. In June, they asked the interim FAC, who forwarded this request to Supt. Rainwater. The meetings did not take place. I don’t feel this should happen, especially when drastic curriculum changes are being considered.
For five years, hundreds of students, parents, community members and community organizations have asked for your help – either restructuring the course of redesigning this course, but working with the community in some way to keep arts strong, because it’s so important for achievement.
I and others have been strong proponents of making the course work in our current financial situation. Over these five years, I feel we have lost opportunities to develop relationships which are important for acquiring funds, to assess and redesign the K-5 music education curriculum, to develop funding sources for small group lessons for children afterschool to further strengthen what they learn during the school day.
Last year the elementary strings course reached about 1,800 students in 27 schools. Nearly 600 children (42% of the low income children in Grades 4 & 5 participated in this course). This year the course is teaching 1,650 students. The status report does not say how many low income. I do know from conversations with the Fine Arts Coordinator and with teachers that more low income children indicated an interest in taking elementary strings than were in the class for many reasons, I am sure.
I think elementary strings is an example where there have been hundreds of advocates for keeping this course, but minimal positive response and support from the School Board to bring the professionals and advocates together to work on this and other music and art issues. We have task forces for boundary changes, afterschool, live animals in the classroom, equity, etc. Given the community’s love of the arts, such a task force seems right for the arts.
I’d like to see the dialogue change this year for elementary strings and for music and art education to one where we talk about how can we work together. I would like to see the School Board consider a community task force under the oversight of the Performance and Achievement and the Partnership Committees that would bring advocates for music and art education and professionals together to work on this issue. I would like to see such a committee work on short-term issues re the elementary strings course, but also develop a 5 year fine arts strategic community plan. I have spoken with teachers, music organizations, private music teachers, the Fine Arts Coordinator and the Superintendent about the need for this. I have heard positive responses from community members and teachers, interest from the Fine Arts Coordinator.
I feel such a committee needs to be led by well-known community leaders who support the arts and arts education in the schools, because developing relationships within the community will be important for partnerships and possible fundraising.
I also think such a committee is important for credibility and for continuity. Over 5 years, MMSD has had 3 fine arts coordinators with one year without a fine arts coordinator. In spring 2003, the last fine arts coordinator was getting up to speed, in the 04-05 school year a teaching team was to help with coordination when the fine arts coordinator position was cut but this group was not put in place, and now the district has a new fine arts coordinator, who is working hard, meeting the community, teachers, helping in many ways. I think this is a critical position on the district and an important member to be on a community fine arts education committee.
Lastly, without classes during the day for elementary strings, there is no way to reach as many low-income children as the course currently reaches. Also, the district loses something special. Hundreds of children have asked the Board for help. I hope they do.
I will commment on this at the School Board meeting tonight. I have taken to writing on the blog vs. speaking at School Board meetings, because, after 5 years, and personal attacks, it takes too much out of me.




Longtime advocates for academic rigor and educational excellence back Mathiak and Cole



Recent post from the Madison United for Academic Excellence (MUAE) list serve:
Dear MUAE Friends,
When we volunteered to oversee a District-wide “TAG” parents email list back in 2002, it was in part to help out the District “TAG” staff and in part to make the list available for explicit “TAG” advocacy efforts. We never expected that it (or we) would become explicitly political; but then, never in million years did we expect to have the crystal clear choice in BOE candidates that we have before us this year.
As fellow members of this on-line community, we think you need to know that Juan Lopez — however laudable his other views and positions may be — has the most extreme and consistent anti-“TAG” voting record of any BOE member who has served on the Board in the ten years that we have been involved with the issues. Juan once actually said to Jeff in a budget-focused BOE meeting, when Jeff was arguing in support of “TAG” funding, something like “Jeff, why should I support this? It has nothing to do with minority students.” Not surprisingly, Juan has shown absolutely no interest whatsoever in the District dropout data that we have “put out there” many times in the past three years.
In very stark contrast, we first met Lucy Mathiak almost ten years ago, when we were still relatively new Franklin ES parents. We had attended a couple of District-wide “TAG” parent meetings and wanted to do some organizing and educating within the Franklin community. Someone gave us Lucy’s name as a very well-informed east side parent and excellent speaker. We invited her to a meeting; she came; she educated us about Standard t and how to influence our school’s SIP (“School Improvement Plan”); and she inspired us to greater things, as both parents and education advocates. In a word, we were thrilled last fall when we learned that Lucy had decided to run for School Board.
It is our firm belief that if the District’s academically talented and motivated students are to have a fighting chance at having their educational needs met in our schools, they need a strong voice and representation on the BOE. They need someone on the BOE who understands their lived experience; someone who understands the issues facing the District in a way that includes them. Lucy Mathiak thoroughly understands these students, their needs, and the issues, in part, because she has lived them as a parent. As we see it, Lucy has the experience, the knowledge, the commitment, and the deep confidence to make sure that the brightest students of all colors and backgrounds are well taken care of by the Madison schools. In our opinion, no one else even comes close. For voters who care about academic excellence for all, the choice couldn’t be more clear.

VOTE FOR LUCY MATHIAK FOR MADISON SCHOOL BOARD SEAT #2 ON TUESDAY, APRIL 4.
What about the race for Seat #1? The truth is, we do not know either Maya Cole or Arlene Silveira nearly as well as we feel we know Juan and Lucy. Nevertheless, we know who we are voting for.
Consider the following paragraph from an op ed piece of Arlene’s that appeared in the Wisconsin State Journal in January:

Racial and economic achievement gaps.
The School Board must address differences in proficiency levels and graduation rates between racial and ethnic groups. In addition to continuing efforts such as School of Hope, small class sizes and cultural competence training opportunities for teachers and support staff, we must develop partnerships with community groups and provide venues for parents to come together to help the district find ways to allow all children to succeed. With the high mobility rates of some students, we must look at ways to help stabilize students’ school experience. The board cannot be proud of the district’s progress until all groups of students achieve equal success in all academic disciplines throughout their school careers.

(bold added)

Frankly, that last line scares us. We have asked Arlene more than once what she means by it, but she has yet to respond. Arlene is openly pro-heterogeneous classrooms, we know that; but her vision sounds like Camazotz, the evil place in “A Wrinkle In Time.”
In contrast, we have spoken at length with Maya about her candidacy, her vision for the BOE and the District, and her own experiences as a parent. It is our very strong impression that she has started down the road that the rest of us are already on and that — like Lucy — she “gets it.” Maya is a courageous and independent thinker who will insist on data and documentation and who will not be cowed by bullies. She understands the need for increased transparency and increased accountability on the BOE and in the District administration. She does not support cookie-cutter curricula. She does not support heterogeneous classes. Like Lucy, she wants to find ways to increase minority participation in “high end” classes, not get rid of the classes according to some misguided notion of what constitutes educational equity. If you care enough about rigorous curricula and high academic standards to be on this list serve, then Maya Cole is the one for you.
VOTE FOR MAYA COLE FOR MADISON SCHOOL BOARD SEAT #1 ON TUESDAY, APRIL 4.

There is one more reason why we are voting for Lucy and Maya on April 4. As longtime observers of the Madison School Board, we are deeply concerned about the culture of bullying and secrecy that exists in the Doyle Building and on the BOE. We feel it has paralyzed the Board and rendered it completely ineffective. We are convinced that a change of BOE membership is the only way to bring back respectable and respectful behavior — not to mention increased transparency of operations and a thoroughgoing accountability to the public — to the task of educating our children.
Many thanks for your consideration,
Laurie Frost, Ph.D., and Jeff Henriques, Ph.D.
West HS and Hamilton MS Parents
Former Franklin-Randall ES parents
Former Franklin-Randall PTSO Board member (Diversity and Community-Building Committee Chair) (LF)
West HS PTSO Board Member (Treasurer) (JH)
Advisory Board Member, Wisconsin Center for Academically Talented Youth (WCATY) (LF)
Madison United for Academic Excellence




The fate of the schools



Will the Madison district sink or swim?
April 4th elections could prove pivotal

At the end of an especially divisive Madison school board meeting, Annette Montegomery took to the microphone and laid bare her frustrations with the seven elected citizens who govern Madison schools.
“I don’t understand why it takes so long to get anything accomplished with this board!” yelled Montgomery, a Fitchburg parent with two children in Madison’s Leopold Elementary School. She pegged board members as clueless about how they’ve compromised the trust of the district’s residents.
“You don’t think we’re already angry? What do we have to do to show you, to convince you, how angry we are? If I could, I’d impeach every single one of you and start over!”
Impeachment isn’t being seriously considered as solution to the Madison Metropolitan School District’s problems. But infighting and seemingly insurmountable budget problems have increasingly undercut the board’s ability to chart a positive course for Madison schools.

And that’s not good, given the challenges on the horizon for a district of 24,490 kids with a $319 million budget. These include declining enrollment of upper- and middle-class families; continuing increases in low-income families and racial minorities; an overall stagnant enrollment which limits state funding increases; and prolonged battles with parent groups over everything from boundary changes to curriculum choices.
By Jason Shepard, Isthmus, March 23, 2006

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SHOULD LEOPOLD EXPANSION BE PAID FOR OUT OF THE OPERATING BUDGET?



A proposal is before the Madison Metropolitan School Board to approve a $2.8 million addition to Leopold funded under the revenue caps. The Board may vote on this proposal on Monday, March 27. While the Leopold overcrowding is a serious problem that absolutely must be addressed, the question for the Board is whether this should be addressed by cutting an additional $343,000 (the yearly debt service on the $2.8 million loan) from programs and services from our operating budget.
What would we have to cut to pay for this? We don’t know yet, but examples of items that could be proposed for cuts include:

  • Elimination of the entire elementary strings programs (approx. $250,000)
  • Elimination of High School Hockey, Gymnastics, Golf, and Wrestling ($265,000)
  • Reduction of 4 Psychologists or Social Workers ($277,000)
  • Reduction of 7 Classroom Teachers ($350,000)

While no one wants to pit one educational need against another, that is what happens in the budgeting process when we are constrained by revenue caps. Paying for necessary physical improvements to Leopold now out of the operating budget means that other programs will be cut. On the other hand, failure to make those physical improvements now out of the operating budget means that either Leopold students will be required to deal with very overcrowded conditions without any assurance that a referendum to pay for a solution to the overcrowding will pass, or that boundary changes will have to be made that will affect many students in the West attendance area.
Difficult decisions must be made on what to fund out of our operating budget, and ultimately it comes down to a question of how we prioritize our District’s different educational needs. I would appreciate readers’ thoughts (click the comments below) on how to prioritize these needs and whether they believe the Leopold expansion should be paid for out of the operating budget.




MMSD Staffing Resources/Cuts Go To Schools April 3rd – Where’s the School Board, Where’s the Board Governance?



It’s nearly the end of March, and there’s a strange quiet at the Madison School Board. Every March for the past five plus years has meant public School Board discussions and meetings about next year’s budget, budget cuts and referendum. Earlier this year, Superintendent Rainwater informed the School Board there would be budget discussions throughout the month of March. Yet, here we are at the end of March – silence on a $320+ million budget, but cuts are being planned just out of the public’s eye while pets in the classroom take front and center stage.
Funny – isn’t there a school board election on April 4th?
On Monday, April 3rd, on the eve of the 2006 spring school board election, MMSD school principals will receive their staffing allocations for the 2006-2007 school year according to the District’s published budget timeline (updated March 15, 2006). The administration will provide school principals with the number of staff they will have for next year, and the principals will need to provide the Human Resources Department of MMSD with information on April 10th about how they will use the staff – number of teachers, social workers, psychologists, etc. For the most part principals have little say about how their staffing is allocated, especially in the elementary school. These dates are driven in part by teacher contract requirements for surplus notices and layoff notices that are due in late May.
Earlier this year, the Superintendent advised the School Board that $8 million in cuts will be needed next year. That means the staffing allocations going out on April 3rd will need to include these cuts. There are also plans afoot to avoid a referendum to add an addition to Leopold and borrow the money in a way that does not require a referendum. However, this approach will negatively affect the operating budget. The estimated additional cost will mean $350,000 in cuts on top of the $8 million in cuts estimated for next year. Where will those $350,000 in additional cuts come from – you can expect more cuts in teachers in the classroom, districtwide classes such as elementary strings, social workers, TAG resources, books, larger class sizes.
In opinion, this is one of the worst, closed budget processes I have seen in years. On March 9th, I blogged about five points that I feel are important considerations in a budget process, especially when we are in a financial crisis. Our School Board majority is missing most, if not all of them and will not even discuss budget items in March! Parents and the community ought to be alarmed. Madison will have to pass referendums to keep our schools strong in these punative financial times that Madison and all WI schools are facing. Conducting Board budget business in this way – behind closed doors, will not build community confidence and will not pass referendums!
I asked Superintendent Rainwater where was the cut list and what budget was he using to determine the allocations. He said this year the Board would be discussing cuts in the context of the entire budget? Huh? Decisions about cuts and reductions in allocations are being made now – what budget is being used? Why isn’t the School Board publicly discussing the budget? Who’s making the decisions and governing the school district – not the current School Board majority. We need a School Board majority that will do the business the public entrusted them with and who will do their work in public.




Candidates agree education is at crossroads



Madison School Board candidates Juan Jose Lopez and Lucy Mathiak look at what is happening in schools here in very different ways, but on at least one issue they are in complete agreement: Public education here and throughout the Badger State is at a critical crossroads.
But the two candidates vying for School Board Seat No. 2, which Lopez has held since 1994, have quite distinct notions about the nature of the challenges facing the Madison Metropolitan School District.
By Susan Troller, The Capital Times, March 21, 2006

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What’s an AYP Rating? And Why it Matters



Eduwonk:

Most everyone in the political and policy world was fixated on all the “what does it mean” questions about Sunday’s NYT Mag story on Mark Warner. But there was also some chattering about the Outlook spread on No Child Left Behind in the Wash. Post. It was well done including reactions from DC-area principals, an NCLB primer by Jay Mathews, and a map of DC-area schools (pdf) not making “adequate yearly progress” or AYP.

But despite the primer, readers might have been left wondering about these adequate yearly progress targets. That’s understandable, it’s confusing, and they’re not the result of a single calculation. Instead, it’s a multi-step process with opportunities to increase or decrease the level of difficulty at each one. It goes something like this:

First, the state chooses a test to use. This can be a pre-existing test used elsewhere, a custom-designed one based on the state’s standards, or a combination of the two. Obviously, the degree of difficulty is a big issue here.

Second, the state decides what the cut score on the test will be for a student to be “proficient” as well as “basic”, “advanced”, and any other delineations of performance the state wants to have. In other words, how many questions does a student need to answer correctly? For No Child Left Behind the most important category is proficient because that is what the law’s “adequate yearly progress” ratings are based on. There are several methods for determining cut scores. What’s most important to remember about them is that they all rely on professional judgment. There is no revealed source of truth about what a fifth-grader or a high school student needs to know and be able to do. At the risk of oversimplifying too much, the three most common methods are based on using expert judgment from a panel of experts to come up with cut scores, comparing and contrasting how various groups of test takers do on the test, and scaling the questions from easy to hard and determining various delineations for performance along the scale. Again, plenty of chances to increase or reduce the level of difficulty in this process.

But, while newspapers commonly report the percentage of students passing a test, they rarely report on what the cut scores are and when and how they are set. The composition of the professionals involved also matters a lot. Is it just K-12 teachers, or outside experts for instance representatives of higher education, too? Lack of attention to this process is unfortunate because there is plenty of opportunity for mischief and a state with a difficult test and a high cut score, say 40 out of 50, is going to have different results than a state with an easier test or a low cut scores. But, cut scores of half to 2/3 of the questions correct in order to be “proficient” are not at all uncommon. All this is public information or can be obtained through a FOIA. And it’s all extremely relevant to all this.

Dick Askey commented on test scores vis a vis local, state and national results here.




Maya Cole endorses healthy Homegrown Lunches



The following commitment by Maya Cole seems particularly important to post given the lively discussion on healthy food:

I enthusiastically endorse the Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch Food Policy Recommendations, and I will work to win adoption of the recommendations if I have the opportunity to serve on the Board of Education of the Madison Metropolitan School District (MMSD).
Wisconsin Homegrown Lunch is a grassroots program whose goal is to enhance the Madison public schools’ existing meal programs by introducing fresh, nutritious, local and sustainably grown food to children, beginning in the city’s elementary schools. The program, like similar “farm-to-school” programs around the country, will provide an opportunity for children to reconnect with their natural world and will help establish a stable market for local farmers and processors.

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April 2004 West High School Math Teacher Letter



Susan Lochen, Madison West High School (co-signed by other West math teachers: Janice Cis, Keith Knowles, Carol Michalski, Jackie Hubbard, Daniel Boyland, Artie L. Orlik, Stephen Lang, Stephen Land, Tim Goldsworthy):

Moreover, parents of future West High students should take notice: As you read this, our department is under pressure from the administration and the math coordinator’s office to phase out our “accelerated” course offerings beginning next year. Rather than addressing the problems of equity and closing the gap by identifying minority math talent earlier, and fostering minority participation in the accelerated programs, our administration wants to take the cheaper way out by forcing all kids into a one-size-fits-all curriculum.
It seems the administration and our school board have re-defined “success” as merely producing “fewer failures.” Astonishingly, excellence in student achievement is visited by some school district administrators with apathy at best, and with contempt at worst. But, while raising low achievers is a laudable goal, it is woefully short-sighted and, ironically, racist in the most insidious way. Somehow, limiting opportunities for excellence has become the definition of providing equity! Could there be a greater insult to the minority community?

I’d forgotten (unfortunately) about this letter. School Board Seat 1 candidate Maya’s post below included a link to these words. The current school board majority has not addressed these critical questions….




WI School Funding Update



Funding reform resolution introduced — your chance to act
Funding system continues to erode quality education
School-funding reform calendar
The Wisconsin Alliance for Excellent Schools (WAES) is a statewide network of educators, school board members, parents, community leaders, and researchers. Its Wisconsin Adequacy Plan — a proposal for school-finance reform — is the result of research into the cost of educating children to meet state proficiency standards.
*************
Funding reform resolution introduced — your chance to act
School-funding reform is finally in front of the Wisconsin Legislature. Where it goes now is up to you.
Wednesday, March 1, a press conference was held in the Assembly Parlor in the Capital (http://www.thewheelerreport.com/releases/Mar06/Mar1/0301demsschoolfunding.pdf) to introduce a joint resolution (http://www.excellentschools.org/events/ReformResolution/School%20Funding_AJR.pdf) calling for a new funding system by July of 2007. The call for reform is based on a set of core principles that include adequate resources to prepare all children for high school graduation, additional resources for children and communities with special circumstances, and a reduced level of local property taxes.

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NCLB Area Comments



Kurt Gutknecht and Bill Livick pen an interesting article, published recently in the Fitchburg Star:

Several teachers at area schools did not return calls asking for their opinion on the act. Administrators were less reluctant to weigh in.
The principal of a Madison middle school, who did not want to be identified, gave a qualified endorsement to the act for focusing on essential skills and for including all students.
“They’re reasonable standards. A student can’t solve problems if she can’t read well,” the principal said.
Madison schools have a good foundation in addressing the needs of all students, which predated the act, according to the principal. Of greater concern was the act’s requirement that specialists teach every content area, which could force many qualified teachers from the profession. Although it’s not unreasonable to focus on formal teaching standards, “it seems ludicrous” because “many of our most effective teachers are generalists,” said the principal, particularly when there’s no funding for training.
The requirements of the act have “terrified” some teachers, who fear being labeled as ineffective and are concerned about teaching in a school that’s labeled as having failed, according to the principal.

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Math Forum Audio / Video and Links



Video and audio from Wednesday’s Math Forum are now available [watch the 80 minute video] [mp3 audio file 1, file 2]. This rare event included the following participants:

The conversation, including audience questions was lively.

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What a Sham(e)



Jason Shephard, writing in this week’s Isthmus:

Last week, Madison Teachers Inc. announced it would not reopen contract negotiations following a hollow attempt to study health insurance alternatives.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but anyone who suggests the Joint Committee on Health Insurance Issues conducted a fair or comprehensive review needs to get checked out by a doctor.
The task force’s inaction is a victory for John Matthews, MTI’s executive director and board member Wisconsin Physicians Service.
Losers include open government, school officials, taxpayers and young teachers in need of a raise.
From its start, the task force, comprised of three members each from MTI and the district, seemed to dodge not only its mission but scrutiny.
Hoping to meet secretly until Isthmus raised legal questions, the committee convened twice for a total of four hours – one hour each for insurance companies to pitch proposals.
No discussion to compare proposals. No discussion about potential cost savings. No discussion about problems with WPS, such as the high number of complaints filed by its subscribers.
Case closed. Never did the task force conduct a “study” and issue a “report” of its “findings,” as required by last year’s contract settlement.
Conspiracy theorists point to the power of Matthews – both in getting the district to play dead and in squelching any questions about conflicts of interest based on, as reported last week, his $13,000 income from WPS.
While the school board is often accused of dodging tough issues, this tops the list. A change in insurance could have resulted in higher pay for teachers and, some argue, could save the district millions in the long run.

Background links and articles here. Link to current school board members. Governance is another significant issue in the April 4, 2006 Madison School Board election.




Making One Size Fit All: Rainwater seeks board input as schools cut ability-based classes



Jason Shephard, writing in this week’s Isthmus:

Kerry Berns, a resource teacher for talented and gifted students in Madison schools, is worried about the push to group students of all abilities in the same classrooms.
“I hope we can slow down, make a comprehensive plan, [and] start training all teachers in a systematic way” in the teaching methods known as “differentiation,” Berns told the Madison school board earlier this month. These are critical, she says, if students of mixed abilities are expected to learn in “heterogeneous” classrooms.
“Some teachers come about it very naturally,” Berns noted. “For some teachers, it’s a very long haul.”
Following the backlash over West High School replacing more than a dozen electives with a single core curriculum for tenth grade English, a school board committee has met twice to hear about the district’s efforts to expand heterogeneous classes.
The school board’s role in the matter is unclear, even to its members. Bill Keys told colleagues it’s “wholly inappropriate” for them to be “choosing or investigating curriculum issues.”
Superintendent Art Rainwater told board members that as “more and more” departments make changes to eliminate “dead-end” classes through increased use of heterogeneous classes, his staff needs guidance in form of “a policy decision” from the board. If the board doesn’t change course, such efforts, Rainwater said, will likely be a “major direction” of the district’s future.

Links and articles on Madison West High School’s English 10, one class for all program. Dr. Helen has a related post: ” I’m Not Really Talented and Gifted, I Just Play One for the PC Crowd”

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Full Funding Of Schools An Empty Promise



Wisconsin State Journal :: OPINION :: A6
Wednesday, February 22, 2006
KRISTINE LAMONT
We all say we want great public schools.
Yet we continue to fight amongst ourselves for an ever diminishing pot of money for our public schools.
We blame board members, parents, students, teachers, retired individuals, businesses, administrators, homeowners, renters and everyone — except those who have put us in this position.
About 13 years ago, our state senators and representatives made a promise to Wisconsin citizens. A law controlling school revenue was passed. It allowed school districts to increase revenue by a small percentage — less than inflation and certainly less than heating, gas and health care costs have increased.
The only way around this mandate was to have school districts ask and beg for money year after year in the form of referendums, which pit children against taxpayers.
School districts, large and small, took up this mandate and spent the first few years cutting the services that did the least harm to students. Those years are long gone.
Very quickly schools were forced and continue to cut and cut. Schools are now cutting the programs that make Wisconsin schools great — gifted classes, remedial classes and smaller class sizes.
Revenue controls were supposed to be temporary while our state leaders worked on an equitable way to fund schools. No one can argue the fact that if you give schools less money than inflation, you are expecting schools to get rid of programs. What has been going on for the last 13 years?
I have been keeping my promises. Have they? Bills have been introduced to remedy this travesty, but nothing has changed. Schools keep cutting. Our children receive a smaller piece of the pie while living in one of the richest countries in the world.
Thirteen years is a long time to put off work that was promised. The children graduating from high school this year started as kindergarteners 13 years ago. We have our third governor, a new president, men and women have gone to war, died, and come home. What has been done?
I have seen a lot in the news about trying to change the hunting age for children, or how to help families pay for college, but nothing to remedy public schools.
Whether one agrees or disagrees with the hunting age, properly funding our schools should be at the top of our priority list.
We all realize that our public schools are the founding blocks of our democracy. All of us benefit, whether we attended public schools, or our doctor did, or the person helping us at the store. A democracy needs superior public education. Just look at democratic countries without this.
Could it be that the promise our state leaders made was never intended to be kept? Maybe we don’t want “all” children to have good schools. Maybe we’re worried our good schools will help minority and low-income children achieve. Maybe we want rural or inner city or suburban or all public schools to close.
My taxes have been paying the salaries of our state leaders. We have waited too long for an equitable plan to fund school. I wait with voter pen in hand.
\ Lamont is the mother of a Madison middle school student.




Florida & Iowa: Pay for Performance Teacher Bonus Proposals



Donna Winchester & Ron Matus:

The Board of Education is expected today to approve a proposal that would give some teachers a bonus equal to 5 percent of their salary. The extra pay would be based solely on their ability to show student learning gains on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test.
But the biggest impediment could be lack of teacher support. Unlike Denver officials, who worked closely with the teacher’s union, Florida education officials didn’t consult with the state teachers union until after they had a draft of their plan.
When performance pay is “forced on teachers, you have a war,” said Allan Odden, professor of educational administration at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And if you’re having a war, it’s unlikely to be an incentive to improving student learning.”

Jonathan Roos:

A commission would be created to design the new compensation program, which would likely include the measurement of student improvement over a year’s time as a yardstick of how well a teacher is performing.
Democrats reacted cautiously to the Senate Republicans’ merit pay initiative.
“I think the responsible course of action would be for us to first come to agreement on what such a program would entail,” said Vilsack.




Alliances Are Unconventional In School Board Primary Race




Madison school politics make for some strange bedfellows.
Take the case of the Feb. 21 primary race for the School Board, in which three candidates are vying for the seat left open by incumbent Bill Keys’ decision not to seek re-election.
The marketing manager of a Madison-based biotechnology giant has been endorsed by the powerful Madison teachers union and Progressive Dane. Meanwhile, an activist stay-at-home mom who helped put pink paper locks on legislators’ doors to protest concealed carry legislation is aligned with voices in the community that challenge the district’s status quo. As a critic of the board’s budget, she has struck a chord with some conservatives.
And then there’s the unanticipated late entrant into the race who forced the primary to be held, a UW doctoral candidate in medieval history who arrived in Madison last August.
By Susan Troller, The Capital Times, February 16, 2006

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By Invitation Only: How the MMSD-MTI Health Insurance Task Force Limited Its Options



In June of 2005, when the majority of the Madison School Board approved the two-year collective bargaining agreement with the teachers union, the agreement included a task force to study and make recommendations on possible changes in health insurance coverage for the teachers, the majority of the district’s employees. Task force members would be the superintendent and his appointees and John Matthews, exuective director of Madison Teachers,Inc. (MTI) and his appointees. They were to issue a report no later than February 15, 2006.
From the beginning, the task force provision was a great deal for the teachers union. It was risk-free. If the parties could identify health insurance savings, the savings would go directly to increase teacher wages during 2006-07. The parties would re-open the contract to switch dollars from this important fringe benefit to wages. If not, the teachers would keep the current coverage and current wages.
A gain for the district was not so easy to identify. Superintendent Art Rainwater talked about the potential health insurance savings as a benefit in future negotiations. Lowering health insurance costs during 2006-07 would allow the district to continue high quality health insurance coverage for its teachers (as we should) and go into future negotiations with a reduced base for health insurance costs. With health insurance costs for all employees running at about $35M per year, any longterm reduction would help the board redirect significant dollars to school programs and staff.
If the task force had used the year to take a comprehensive, objective look at health insurance alternatives for the teachers, the school board might expect an important report this week. It would tell the board how dollars currently going to health insurance could be used for wage increase at no loss in quality of care for district employees. I don’t expect anything like that because we have not seen a serious effort to seek out alternative insurance proposals and evaluate them and the board has exercised no oversight or direction.
The task force has met twice at MTI headquarters, on January 11 and January 25. It did not solicit a wide range of proposals for health insurance for the teachers.
Instead, the task force invited the current providers, Wisconsin Physicians Services and Group Health Cooperative, plus Dean Care and Unity to make presentations. They did not invite Alliant (whose insurance is good enough for MMSD administrators and the custodial union), Physicians Plus (a very competitive local provider with a doctors’ network that overlaps the current providers), the State Health Plan (open to school districts) or WEA-IT (a company associated with the Wisconsin Education Associations Council). John Matthews, who continues to serve on the Board of Directors for WPS, did most of the questioning of the insurance companies at the task force meetings. The gist of his questions for Dean Care and Unity were whether they could provide what WPS currently provides, according to him.

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Revolution on Wheels: High Tax States See a Stealth Migration Out



Related to Johnny Winston, Jr.’s post below, Karen Hube notes a significant outbound migration from many high tax states [Wisconsin is ranked 5th in tax burden as a % of per capita income (11.4%)] including Minnesota to South Dakota:

NOT SURPRISINGLY, MANY STATES are feeling the drain of fleeing taxpayers. At a time of serious competition between states for jobs and tax revenues, “states with high taxes are losing their wealthiest and most successful taxpayers, as well as businesses, and they’re not creating as many jobs,” says Dan Clifton of Americans for Tax Reform.
Serious fiscal troubles started for most states after the stock market tanked in 2000. “They had been matching their spending habits with the flood of revenues that came in during the boom years of the 1990s,” Clifton says. “When that spigot got turned off, many states were incapable of moderating their spending to match the new reality.”
In 2000 states were still flush enough to cut taxes by a net $5.8 billion for fiscal year 2001. But shortly after, in a scramble to boost revenues, states started raising taxes.

Johnny’s point is important: Schools must diversify their revenue sources while using existing resources as efficiently as possible. This includes trying to use all sources, including, as Ed Blume pointed out, federal funds, such as the $2M in Reading First money. WISTAX notes that Wisconsin’s rose 10% last year. Finally, Neil Heinen notes that Wisconsin’s state budget has a “structural deficit“.
Bobbi raises a useful point regarding the construction of new schools: the existing $320M+ operating budget is spread over more facilities, which as several teachers have mentioned to me, has implications for current facilities.




Carol Carstensen’s Weekly Update



BUDGET FACTOID:
Of the MTI-represented employees in the district, more than 50% take their health insurance with Group Health (the lowest cost of any of the HMO’s).
February 6th MEETINGS :
5 p.m. Finance & Operations Committee (Johnny Winston Jr., chair):
Report on the $100 Budget exercise in January 173 people participated in the exercise; their responses indicated that their highest priorities were: Academic Achievement and Specialized Services (special education, English as a Second Language).
Doug Pearson, in charge of buildings and grounds for the district, gave a presentation explaining that a combination of factors (drought in the Midwest, Hurricane Katrina and increased oil prices) have resulted in a huge increase in construction costs. As an example, when the district built Chavez (2000-01), construction costs were estimated at $85/sq.ft. today the estimate to build a new school is estimated to cost $162/sq.ft. These increases also affect all of the district’s maintenance projects.
6 p.m. Performance & Achievement Committee (Shwaw Vang, chair)
The Committee heard presentations about the elimination of tracking in the West High Biology course (begun in 1997) and in East High Algebra/Trig (started in 2004). In both cases the changes were the result of discussions by the teachers at the school and supported by staff from downtown. Likewise, both reported that they felt that they were serving all students more effectively and that their classes were more representative of the entire student enrollment. The Committee will continue looking at this topic.

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Good goals, flawed reasoning: Administration Goes Full Speed Ahead on English 10 at West High



At January and February school board meetings, Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater reported on the administration’s plan to go ahead with one English course for all tenth graders at West High School starting in 2006-07. The goal of the plan is to increase academic opportunity for students of color. The mechanism is to teach all students the same curriculum, leaving it up to teachers to “differentiate” their approach and give equal challenge to every student. The school board has taken no action on this plan and does not plan to adopt, modify or otherwise vote on the plan before it is implemented.
I support the goal. I am not convinced, however, that the mechanism is based, as claimed, on the best research. The presentations to the Performance and Achievement Committee have raised my level of doubt.
At the January 30 meeting, the board heard from a University of Wisconsin expert. His published research on the subject of differentiated teaching concluded that more research is needed on this subject. Where the expert found successful differentiated teaching in high schools,the circumstances of the schools were far different from the circumstances at West High School. For example, successful “differentiated” classes occurred in schools where administration could match the skills and motivation of the teachers to the classes and where students vied for spots in the classrooms. We have a staff based on seniority and teacher options within the seniority system and must accept all students at tenth grade level into the program.
We were asked to consider the Biology I/ Advanced Biology I program at West High as a basis for making the change in the English program. In that program, approximately 20 students qualify for the advanced course and all others take Biology I. We were told that taking Biology I (rather than the advanced course) had not prevented a high percentage of West students from becoming National Merit Semi-Finalists. Never mind that the tests used for selecting the semi-finalists do not test science skills. At best, this correlation shows that taking Biology I did not harm the high-scoring students skills and aptitudes in non-science areas.
Two of our teachers made more persuasive arguments for caution in moving to “differentiated” courses. One cited research showing that the teacher training for these courses is a five to ten-year process. The other teacher gave us the factual background necessary to analyze the administration’s proposal. That teacher’s testimony follows.

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Gangs, Schools & City Government



Paul Soglin & Mary Kay Battaglia:

When I posted Teachers Strike in Madison: Thirty Years Later January 27, 2006, Mary commented:

While failing public schools are linked to the high number of low income students attending them, you may be interested in some MMSD data. If you go to the MMSD web site and look under their data you will find that in 1991 Madison’s elementary schools had a total %low income of 24.6%. In 2005 that number almost doubled to 42.4%. Our schools are in a crisis of becoming just another urban school in trouble. That’s almost double in 14 years.
Why is it that Madison city government is so UNinvolved with the schools? It seems to me for growth and economic stability the two should have a better working relationship. The district is clueless to the growth and the city does not seemed concerned with informing the district or working to help crisis areas of the city to help both the school and neighborhood. Allied is an example where they could work together. Mary Kay Battaglia

And this week Channel 3 WISC is running a series, Experts: New Street Gangs Rising In Dane County.

Mary Kay previously wrote about this here. Lucy Mathiak followed up on that post here.




School Board Candidate Take Home Test, Week 3



Isthmus:

Here’s the third round of the Take-Home Test, the weekly question and answer session Isthmus is conducting with this spring’s candidates for the Madison Board of Education.

Here are this week’s questions:




MMSD School Board’s Philosopy of Education – community responsibility



Point 5 in the Madison Metropolitan School District’s Philosophy of Education says:
We believe that students, parents, school personnel, members of the BOARD, and the general public share the responsibility for the total educational program of the School District. We believe that this responsibility requires cooperation, effort, and dedication if the youth of the school community are to receive the learning opportunities necessary for them to become effective citizens in a free society.
I would like to see the School Board keep this point in mind when discussing heterogenous classes, changes to curriculum, redesigning middle school. Other school districts use on-going broader-based public coalitions when changes are being considered and as changes are being made leading up to board decisions.
The School Board took a positive step in this direction with the long-range planning task forces, and I hope this will extend to other areas in a meaningful way. I’d only add that the issues and timelines for the long-range planning task forces needed to extend beyond the task force work so next steps were better understood by all, including all board members.
Too often the School Board’s approach seems to be the board and admin. vs. them (teachers, parents, for example) on any number of topics (heterogenous classes at the Board meeting tonight and social studies curriculum at West High tonight but over the past few years there have been issues – fine arts curriculum, math, reading, open classroom) rather than working toward approaches/solutions and bringing the various knowledgable, interested and concerned parties together. I think a change in conversation and how we work together is warranted, because we will have to pass referendums. This is not simply a case of folks not happy with decisions. I think the feelings run much deeper, and the implications for successful referendums are not good if we continue in this manner and that worries me.




MMSD School Board Says They Don’t Do Curriculum: WI State Law Says Otherwise



The Madison School Board is directly and legally responsible for the curriculum taught in their district. The WI Administrative Code, which is law, sets forth the legal requirements for public instruction. Public Instruction, Chapter PI 8.01 (Download Admin. Code Public Instruction – School Standards)says:
2. Each school district board shall develop, adopt and implement a written school district curriculum plan which includes the following: a. A kindergarten through grade 12 sequential curriculum plan in each of the following subject areas: reading, language arts, mathematics, social studies, science, health, computer literacy, environmental education, physical education, art and music.
Does this mean the Madison School Board is responsible for designing and creating curriculum and curriculum plans? No, of course not. I feel, however, they are responsible a) for making sure a process is in place so that academically rigorous, sequential curriculum plans are developed and evaluated regularly for meeting stated goals (and with opportunity for public comment along the way) and b) for approving curriculum plans developed under the guidance of the administration. How does the process currently this work? It’s not publicly clear, perhaps, because the Madison School Board has no written curriculum board policy and no written administrative procedures (that I could find and I’ve asked – see below) for the development and approval of curriculum plans.
I have been told by board members the Superintendent and his staff “do curriculum,” because they are the experts. What does that mean? Of course, we hope they are the experts; and, being experts in education administration, we hope and expect they use the teachers and other professionals who are experts in their field to develop curriculum plans using a well defined process that is clear and known by all. Yet, the sentiment from the board that was heard again in the their discussions of heterogenous classes is simply, “We don’t do curriculum.” When I first heard this type of statement from board members several years ago, I was puzzled and then I found the WI Admin. Code, which identifies the Board’s responsility over approval of curriculum plans. My question for the Madison School Board is: How do and will you execute your legal responsibility? How can the School Board make this clear to the public? Written board policies and procedures that are discussed and approved by a school board are how board members spell out publicly how they will execute their legal responsibilities. I feel such policies and procedures for curriculum, which ties directly with a board’s top priority of student achievement, would be illuminating and helpful for the board, public, teachers, administrators, etc.

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Notes from Performance & Achievement Meeting on Ability Grouping



At this past week’s meeting, Adam Gamoran from the UW Center for Educational Research spoke to the Board about ability grouping. Dr. Gamoran talked about how ability grouping often ends up grouping students by race and SES because these students enter school having had different early childhood experiences and different educational opportunities (recall Donna Ford discussing the number of books in the homes of low income and middle income families).
Dr. Gamoran noted that there are often differences in the classroom experiences of high and low ability groups of students in regards to teacher expectations, academic rigor, and teacher ability.
He also emphasized that there is no simple solution to the achievement gap. Heterogeneous or homogeneous grouping by themselves will not reduce the gap in achievement. However, there are some clear cut solutions that are obvious according to Dr. Gamoran.

  1. No more dead end classes like general math for the low ability students;
  2. high academic expectations for students of all ability levels; and
  3. teachers should not be assigned in a way that results in only the newest and least experienced teachers working with the low ability students, in other words, all students deserve quality instruction.

In discussing heterogeneous grouping, Dr. Gamoran noted that differentiation is hard work for teachers, and they need a lot of support and training in order to be successful.
Dr. Gamoran also shared an example of a school where heterogeneous grouping was successful. This was a school that was 51% free and reduced lunch, but because the school had a strong, dynamic leader and had gotten grants, they were able to recruit a top notch staff. Not only was the principal able to select which teachers worked in the school, but approximately half of the student body had to go through an interview process to get into the school, so this magnet school was selective about its teachers and its students. Class size was kept to 15 students and instruction went at a fast pace. Students who were struggling were expected to attend tutoring sessions on Saturdays. I think there was an expectation that parents would be involved in their student’s education, but I am not sure about that.
Obviously the situation in the Madison schools is different from this ideal, and that’s why I think it is important for the Board and the administration to hear from students and parents what it is like in the classroom. I should add that Bill Keys was very annoyed that the Board was even discussing this issue because he believes that the Board has no place in the classroom. According to Mr. Keys this is the responsibility of the teachers and administrators and they know better than the members of the Board what should be done in the classroom. However, I would argue that the teachers and administrators don’t know any better than the Board does about what happens in the classroom, and they certainly don’t know what it is like for high ability students in those classes. Those of us who have sat around the kitchen table while our children talk about their boredom, frustration, and lack of challenge need to help them understand and make our voices heard.




30 Years of Clout: MTI’s John Matthews & the ’76 Teacher’s Strike



Susan Troller:

The key architect behind that transformation was the tough young executive director of Madison Teachers Inc., John Matthews, who had come to Madison eight years earlier from Montana.
Thirty years later, Matthews is still tough and, more than ever, still casts a powerful shadow across the public education landscape of Madison as a tireless and relentless advocate for teachers. With Matthews at the helm, MTI has remained a dominant force in education and labor.

Former Madison Mayor (currently with Epic Systems – Verona) Paul Soglin weighs in as well.




MTI Endorsements



Madison Teachers Inc’s PAC, MTI Voters endorsed [pdf] Juan Jose Lopez (Seat 2 vs. Lucy Mathiak) and Arlene Silveira (Seat 1 vs Maya Cole or Michael Kelly) for Madison School Board. Learn more about the candidates here. Cole and Mathiak have posted their responses to MTI’s candidate questions.
These endorsements have historically included a significant amount of PAC campaign support. Prior election campaign finance reports are available on the City Clerk’s website (scroll to the bottom).




Non-Renewal (or Contract Extension) of MMSD Administrative Contracts is Not About the Value of Administrators’ Roles



Administrators are a vital and integral part of any responsibly operating organization, including MMSD. If I feel that way, why would I would like to see the School Board consider making decisions that would keep options for staff reductions open until later in the budget process? Given that no multi-year strategic, budget or staffing plans are in place, I would like the School Board to discuss what their options are at this time or is the only option moving to one-year contracts for a majority of administrators. I urge the Board to maintain their decision-making flexibility at this time in the annual budget process.
Two years ago, as I was learning more about MMSD’s operations, I came across the end of January date (which is based on WI law, but I don’t know the specifics or how MMSD’s Human Resources applies the policy) to notify administrators of contract extensions for one year or non-renewal (I haven’t found all the definitions). I felt then the school board’s authority to make budgetary decisions was diminished if the passing of this date meant the board was “locked” into multi-year personnel commitments for administrative employees at the start of the budget process.

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Board of Education Meetings and Agendas, week of January 9



NOTES:
This version includes the address/location of the joint insurance committee meeting on Wednesday.
Also, note that the agenda for the Board-Common Council Liaison meeting on Wed. night is of interest to the two attendance area task forces that are due to report in this month.
_____________________
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 11, 2006
1:00 p.m. Madison Metropolitan School District/Madison Teachers Inc.
Joint Insurance Committee
1. Call to Order
2. Options regarding Health Insurance Benefits for Certain Madison School District Employees
3. Adjournment
Madison Teachers Inc.
Large Conference Room
821 Williamson Street
Madison, WI 53703
—————————————————————————
6:30 p.m. Special Meeting of the Madison School Board and the Memorial
and West Attendance Areas Demographics and Long Range Facility Needs Task
Force
Doyle Administration Bldg
Room 103
545 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53703
—————————————————————————
7:00 p.m. Common Council/Board of Education Liaison Committee
1. Approval of Minutes dated November 16, 2005
2. Public Appearances
3. Announcements
There are no announcements.
4. New Developments/Growth in the City of Madison and Implications for
Madison Schools
5. Housing Patterns Impact on Student Enrollments in Madison Schools
6. Madison Schools with Declining Enrollments
7. Other Business
There is no other business.
8. Adjournment
Doyle Administration Bldg
McDaniels Auditorium
545 W. Dayton St.
Madison, WI 53703




State Superintendent’s PK-16 Institute on Service-Learning and Citizenship



The 2006 State Superintendent’s PK-16 Institute on Service-Learning and Citizenship, in conjunction with the Dialogues with Democracy Conference, will be held February 2, 2006 at the Marriott West in Madison. Julie Rodriguez Chavez, granddaughter of late civil rights and farm labor leader, Cesar Chavez, will deliver the keynote presentation.

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West HS students speek/speak out on English 10



Here are two stories from the December 23, 2005, issue of the West HS student newspaper, The Regent Review. I reprint them here just as they appear in print (that is, with all misspellings, grammatical errors, etc.). (Note: the faculty advisor for The Regent Review is West HS English teacher Mark Nepper. Mr. Nepper has been involved in the development of English 10. Some of you may recall that Mr. Nepper joined English Department chair Keesia Hyzer in presenting the plans for English 10 at the November 7 West PTSO meeting.)
From the front page: “A new English 10 expected for next year,” by CI, a senior at West HS and co-editor of the student newspaper:

In an attempt to bridge the minority gap and continue with the smaller learning communities, Madison West High will tentativly be changing to a core English for all sophomores.
Ed Holmes, current West High principal, says he is doing his best to continue our tradition as a “School of Excellence.” To achieve this ideal excellence, Holmes recognizes that he not only has to raise the standards of the struggling students but also continue to push accelerated students to be better each day.
The goal is to have this new English ciriculum continue to push West’s excellence. The cirriculum will incorporate the current classes of FWW, IWW, With Justice for All, Writers in their Time, and Modern Literture. Now students will read and learn writing habits at the same time so that they can incorporate the new techniques that they are learning into the papers that they write.

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An End to the Blame Game



This is an article by Martha McCoy and Amy Malick which was published in the December 2003 journal of the National Assocation of Secondary School Principals. The Madison Partners in Special Education are very interested in using this as a tool to engage the MMSD school board, staff and various parent groups in productive dialogue. The link follows below and the entire article is an extended entry.

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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%.

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THE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL COUNSELING: COUNSELING THE GIFTED AND TALENTED



Below is an excerpt from the book entitled: THE HANDBOOK OF SCHOOL COUNSELING: COUNSELING THE GIFTED AND TALENTED. It has not yet been published (so you get to read it first). It is written for school counselors, who I believe are very integral to student success. The authors of this book are Corissa C. Lotta, PhD; Barbara A. Kerr, PhD; and Erica A. Kruger, MS. I have been corresponding with Dr. Lotta at the University of Wisconsin-Madison regarding the use of on-line curricula for gifted students. Enjoy.

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The Next Retirement Time Bomb



Milt Freudenheim and Mary Williams Walsh:

The pressure is greatest in places like Detroit, Flint and Lansing, where school systems offered especially rich benefits during the heyday of the auto plants, aiming to keep teachers from going to work in them. Away from those cities, retiree costs may be easier to manage. In the city of Cadillac, 100 miles north of Grand Rapids, government officials said they felt no urgent need to cut benefits because they promised very little to begin with. Instead, Cadillac has started putting money aside to take care of future retirement benefits for its 85 employees, said Dale M. Walker, the city finance director.
Ohio is one of a few states to set aside significant amounts. Its public employee retirement system has been building a health care trust fund for years, so it has money today to cover at least part of its promises. With active workers contributing 4 percent of their salary, the trust fund has $12 billion. Investment income from the fund pays most current retiree health costs, said Scott Streator, health care director of the Ohio Public Employee Retirement System. “It doesn’t mean we can just rest,” he said. “It is our belief that almost every state across the country is underfunded.” He said his system plans to begin increasing the employee contributions next year.

The Madison School District’s Health insurance costs have been getting some attention recently:

  • WPS Insurance proves Costly – Jason Shepherd
  • “Important Facts, Text and Resources in Consideration of Issues Relevant to Reducing Health Care Costs in the Madison Metropolitan School District In Order to Save Direct Instruction and Other Staffing and Programs for the 2005-06 School Year” – Parent KJ Jakobson
  • MMSD/MTI Joint Insurance Committee is holding the first in a series of meetings to discuss healthcare costs at MTI’s office on January 11, 2006 @ 1:00p.m. via the BOE Calendar
  • Many more health care related blog posts are available here



Education for ALL Children



Art Rainwater:

The Madison Metropolitan School District has been a leader in creating inclusive educational opportunities for children. Since the District’s closing of Badger School in 1977, there has been steady progress toward fully including our children with disabilities in the general educational experience in our schools. Most children with disabilities now attend their neighborhood school where special education and classroom teachers work collaboratively to ensure that the learning experience is appropriate for every child in the classroom.
The sense of community and relationships between students with and without disabilities that develop in the school setting set the stage for many of our disabled citizens to join a pluralistic society as adults. Our community at large is enriched by providing valuable opportunities for children with disabilities to move into the world of work and be productive citizens.




Statewide Advocacy Effort for Gifted and Talented Education



AP:

the state Department of Public Instruction to create rules forcing Wisconsin schools to offer uniform programs for gifted and talented students.
State law already requires districts to identify students who qualify as gifted and talented and offer appropriate programming.
But Todd Palmer, a Madison attorney spearheading the parents’ effort, said Thursday schools have pulled resources away from those programs because of ongoing budget problems. The parents filed a petition for rulemaking, a rarely used option to ask the agency to create new rules.

DPI Petition:

My name is Todd Palmer and I am a parent of three students enrolled in Wisconsin public schools.  I am writing to ask for your help on a matter which should not take more than several minutes of your time. 
Specifically, I am asking you to sign a Petition requesting that DPI promulgate rules to govern public school districts in providing access to appropriate and uniform programs for pupils identified as gifted and/or talented.  This Petition was filed with DPI on November 29, 2005 under the signatures of several parents and educators.  However, this effort could use additional support from you.  This would involve a minimal effort on your part, but has the potential to greatly benefit your children and/or students. 

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Wright Middle School Charter Renewal – Leopold?



I’ve attended a couple of the East / West Task Force Meetings (props to the many volunteers, administrators and board members who’ve spent countless hours on this) and believe that Wright Middle School’s facilities should be part of the discussion, given its proximity to Leopold Elementary (2.2 miles [map], while Thoreau is 2.8 miles away [map])
Carol Carstensen’s weekly message (posted below) mentions that Wright’s Charter is on the Board’s Agenda Monday Night. Perhaps this might be a useful time to consider this question? Carol’s message appears below:

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WSJ: Texas School Finance Lesson



Wall Street Journal Review and Outlook:

The Texas Supreme Court did the expected last week and struck down the statewide property tax for funding public schools. But what was surprising and welcome was the Court’s unanimous ruling that the Texas school system, which spends nearly $10,000 per student, satisfies the funding “adequacy” requirements of the state constitution. Most remarkable of all was the court’s declaration that “more money does not guarantee better schools or more educated students.”
In one of the most notorious cases, in Kansas City, Missouri in the 1980s, a judge issued an edict requiring a $1 billion tax hike to help the failing inner-city schools. This raised expenditures to about $14,000 per student, or double the national average, but test scores continued to decline. Even the judge later admitted that he had blundered.

LA education writer Paul Ciotti wrote in 1998 about the Kansas City Experiment:

In fact, the supposedly straightforward correspondence between student achievement and money spent, which educators had been insisting on for decades, didn’t seem to exist in the KCMSD. At the peak of spending in 1991-92, Kansas City was shelling out over $11,700 per student per year.(123) For the 1996-97 school year, the district’s cost per student was $9,407, an amount larger, on a cost-of-living-adjusted basis, than any of the country’s 280 largest school districts spent.(124) Missouri’s average cost per pupil, in contrast, was about $5,132 (excluding transportation and construction), and the per pupil cost in the Kansas City parochial system was a mere $2,884.(125)
The lack of correspondence between achievement and money was hardly unique to Kansas City. Eric Hanushek, a University of Rochester economist who testified as a witness regarding the relationship between funding and achievement before Judge Clark in January 1997, looked at 400 separate studies of the effects of resources on student achievement. What he found was that a few studies showed that increased spending helped achievement; a few studies showed that increased spending hurt achievement; but most showed that funding increases had no effect one way or the other.(126)
Between 1965 and 1990, said Hanushek, real spending in this country per student in grades K-12 more than doubled (from $2,402 to $5,582 in 1992 dollars), but student achievement either didn’t change or actually fell. And that was true, Hanushek found, in spite of the fact that during the same period class size dropped from 24.1 students per teacher to 17.3, the number of teachers with master’s degrees doubled, and so did the average teacher’s number of years of experience.(127)

More on Ciotti
Madison Schools Superintendent Art Rainwater “implemented the largest court-ordered desegregation settlement in the nation’s history in Kansas City, Mo” Google search | Clusty Search




Thoreau Boundary Change Grassroots Work



Erin Weiss and Gina Hodgson (Thoreau PTO) engage in some impressive grassroots work:

November 28, 2005
Dear Thoreau Families, Staff, Teachers and Friends,
Now is the time for you to get involved in the MMSD redistricting process! This Thursday, December 1 at 6:30pm, a Public Forum will be held at Cherokee Middle School. This forum is being sponsored by the Board of Education in conjunction with the District’s Long Range Planning Committee and Redistricting Task Force. Please come to this forum to hear about the progress of the Redistricting Task Force, but more importantly, to share your opinions and ideas.
On the following pages is a brief description of the current Task Force ideas (as of November 28). Please bear with us if all the information presented below is not completely accurate. These ideas are changing rapidly and we are doing our best to summarize them for you with the information that is currently available. Please know that Al Parker, our Thoreau Task Force Representative, has been working hard for Thoreau school at Task Force meetings. He is a strong supporter of our school as it exists today.

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Liveitprogram.com



Did anyone else read Michael O’Shea in Sunday’s Parade this weekend? Only one state, Illinois, has PE mandatory in K – 12 and 40% of our elementary schools throughout the nation no longer set aside time for recess. See www.actionforhealthkids.org or www.liveitprogram.com.
Is it me or is there a reason students are heavier, and is there a reason 1/4 of students attending American schools take some form of mood altering medication?
My happy, busy 2nd grade son, who loves school and gets along well with his peers, has been the subject of well meaning teachers requesting an ADHD evaluation. Are we treating kids so they can survive an 8 hour day without activity? Is this in the best interest of our children or to accommodate the “union approved schedule”?
My son has P.E. three times a week and recess for 25 minutes in an 8 hour day 4 days a week. He is 8. I take more breaks from work than he does. We (the nation) really don’t get it. I look at the people I currently know who are successful as adults and not many of them sat still for 8 hours a day without activity, creativity, and pure frustration from adults around them nor were they medicated or prevented from physical activity due to budget cuts and testing. I can include in this list

  • my physician husband, (76 stitches by the time he was 10),
  • my cardiac surgeon brother-in-law, (who was told by teachers over and over he would never succeed because he never sat still as is his the same with his son),
  • my lawyer cousin who was always fighting those in authority (as is his son).

Not one of these adults were medicated as children but everyone of their children have been asked to be evaluated for ADHD. I don’t disapprove of meds to help a real problem and I have seen the devastation of mental illness in my own family but students that love school, and have positive relationships at school, do we do them a disservice by turning to meds first?
We should let them move first then see what happens. I don’t encourage hostile, ill behaved students but are we encouraging growth, creativity within unique students that succeed by eliminating movement? We need to let kids move so they can concentrate.
Let’s keep Madison kids moving so they can think.




Channel 3000 story on School Nurses



The following story aired on Channel 3/9 a few weeks ago and was recently posted on the Channel 3000 web site. This story discusses the impact of cutbacks of in-school staff, in this case school nurses, and reflects a serious issue that affects all of our schools. I urge you to read the extended story, which includes data on the number of students with serious chronic medical conditions in our schools.
When I was growing up, the school nurse was the lady in sturdy shoes and white opaque stockings who administered hearing and vision exams. We avoided her like the plague.
Today’s school nurses are a far cry from what I grew up with in the 1960s and 1970s. They often are the primary health care providers for students. For students with chronic diseases, trained nurses are the key link between families and schools. In many of our schools, nurses provide gently used clothing – everything from underwear to mittens – for students who come to school without proper clothing, or who need emergency replacement clothing. They serve as de facto counselors for students who visit them with health problems that may come from stress at school or at home.
School Nursing Shortage Affects Madison Students
POSTED: 12:50 pm CST November 22, 2005
UPDATED: 10:30 am CST November 23, 2005
In the Madison School District, up to 700 kids a day need medical attention. But as News 3’s Dawn Stevens reported, sometimes the person taking care of them doesn’t have official medical training.

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School’s anti-war assignment canceled



A letter-writing campaign by third-graders at Allis Elementary School encouraging an end to the war in Iraq was canceled because it violates School Board policy, district officials said Tuesday.
Julie Fitzpatrick, a member of the 10-teacher team that developed the project for the school’s 90 third-grade students in five classes, said the assignment was intended to demonstrate citizen action, one of the district’s standards in social studies.
By Sandy Cullen, Wisconsin State Journal, 11/23/05

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Strong, Consistent Middle School Academics



As I listened to the Pam Nash’s (Assistant Superintendent for Secondary Schools) presentation on the Middle School Redesign to the Performance and Achievement Committee last night, I was thinking of an academic/elective middle school framework applied across the district that would be notable in its rigor and attractiveness to parents and some next steps. Personally, I consider fine arts and foreign language as core subject areas that all students need and benefit from in Grades 6-8.
Have at it and comment with your wish list/ideas, education and support for students, developing a few more options/strategies.
Possible “common” structure in middle school that next year could look like:
6th – math, social studies, language arts, science on a daily basis plus two unified art periods (one is A/B phys ed and music plus 4 one quarter units).
7th – math, social studies, language arts, science, foreign language on a daily basis plus two unified art periods (one is a/b phys ed and music plus 4 one quarter units)
8th – math, social studies, language arts, science, foreign language on a daily basis plus two unified art periods (one is a/b phys ed and music plus 2 half semester units

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Sanderfoot on Ed Lite



Parent Alan Sanderfoot wrote a letter to the Isthmus Editor on Katherine Esposito’s recent article: Ed Lite: Madison Middle Schools Serve Up an Uninspiring Academic Menu:

Dear editor,
Thank you for publishing Katherine Esposito’s article about Madison’s middle schools (“Ed Lite,” Nov. 11, page 12). Please allow me, however, to correct some mischaracterizations in her piece.
On the contrary, my daughter Olivia did not “bail” from Sherman when she transferred to O’Keeffe. Her mother and I worked diligently during her entire 6th grade year at Sherman trying to get the school and teachers to address her unique academic and social needs. Throughout the year, we met with Olivia’s team of three teachers, the learning coordinator, the guidance counselor and administrators. Much was discussed, but little action followed.

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