Advocates for low-income, minority students and students with special needs, including the Rhode Island Disability Law Center and The Autism Project of Rhode Island scored a major victory in Providence last week when Education Commissioner Deborah Gist announced she would scrap a plan for a three-tiered high school diploma system tied to standardized test scores.
The plan called for students with high scores to receive an “Honors” diploma, those with average scores to earn a “Regents” diploma, and ones who score “partially proficient” to be granted a basic Rhode Island diploma. Children who fail the test would have the opportunity to take it again. If they fail a second time, but other requirements are achieved, they could still graduate with a certificate.
Opponents claimed the proposal created a state-sanctioned caste system that would stigmatize struggling students and haunt them when seeking future employment or college admission. Based on recent test scores, they countered that almost all students who were poor, minorities, had disabilities, or were learning English would get the lowest tier diploma, if they even got one at all.
Gov. John Kitzhaber plans a powerful Oregon education board, connecting school funding to performance
Gov. John Kitzhaber aims to fix Oregon’s broken school funding system by consolidating power and money into a single board for all levels of education — a board that he would chair.
What youths need, he says, is a system that allows them to improve at their own pace, with funding that is targeted at schools and programs that are getting results.
On Friday, the governor ordered the creation of an investment team to design the framework for an Oregon Education Investment Board that would oversee education for children from birth through college. He will name the 12 members of the team next week.
Proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter School Budget
Urban Leage of Greater Madison:
The Urban League of Greater Madison (ULGM) is submitting this budget narrative to the Madison Metropolitan School District Board of Education as a companion to its line‐item budget for Madison Preparatory Academy for Young Men (Madison Prep). The budget was prepared in partnership with MMSD’s Business Services office. The narrative provides context for the line items presented in the budget.
Madison Prep’s budget was prepared by a team that included Kaleem Caire, President & CEO of ULGM; Tami Holmquist, Business Manager at Edgewood High School; Laura DeRoche‐Perez, ULGM Charter School Development Consultant; and Jim Horn, ULGM Director of Finance. Representative of ULGM and MMSD met weekly during the development of the Madison Prep budget. These meetings included including Erik Kass, Assistant Superintendent for Business Services and Donna Williams, Director of Budget & Planning. The budget was also informed by ULGM’s charter school design teams and was structured in the same manner as start‐up, non‐instrumentality public charter school budgets submitted to the District of Columbia Public Charter School Board in Washington, DC. DCPCSB is widely regarded as one of the most effective authorizers of charter schools in the nation.
In addition, Madison Prep’s Facilities Design Team is led by Dennis Haefer, Vice President of Commercial Banking with Johnson Bank and Darren Noak, President of Commercial Building with Tri‐North Builders. Mr. Noak is also the Treasurer of ULGM’s Board of Directors. This team is responsible for identifying Madison Prep’s school site and planning for related construction, renovation and financing needs.
……
Budget Highlights
A. Cost of Education
In 2008‐09, the Madison Metropolitan School District received $14,432 in revenue per student from a combination of local, federal and state government and local property taxes. The largest portion of revenue came from property taxes, $9,049 (62.7%), followed by $3,364 in state aid (23.3%), $1,260 in federal aid (8.7%) and $759 in other local revenue (5.3%). That same year, MMSD spent $13,881 per student on educational, transportation, facility and food service costs for 25,011 students for a total of $347,177,691 in spending.
In 2010‐11, MMSD’s Board of Education is operating with an amended budget of $360,131,948, a decrease of $10,155,522 (‐2.74%) from 2009‐10. MMSD projects spending $323,536,051 in its general education fund, $10,069,701 on food service and $8,598,118 on debt service for a total of $342,203,870. Considering the total of only these three spending categories, and dividing the total by the official 2010‐11 enrollment count of 24,471 students, MMSD projects to spend $13,984 per student.3 This is the amount per pupil that ULGM used as a baseline for considering what Madison Prep’s baseline per pupil revenue should be in its budget for SY2011‐12. ULGM then determined the possibility of additional cutbacks in MMSD revenue for SY2011‐12 and reduced its base per pupil revenue projection to $13,600 per student. It then added a 1% increase to it’s per pupil base spending amount for each academic year through SY2016‐17.
ULGM recognizes that per pupil funding is an average of total costs to educate 24,471 children enrolled in MMSD schools, and that distinctions are not made between the costs of running elementary, middle and high schools. ULGM also understands that the operating costs between all three levels of schooling are different. Middle schools costs more to operate than elementary schools and high schools costs more than middle schools.
Reviewing expense projections for middle and high schools in MMSD’s SY2010‐11 Amended Preliminary Budget, ULGM decided to weight per pupil spending in middle school at 1.03% and 1.16% in high school. Thus, in SY2012‐13 when Madison Prep opens, ULGM projects a need to spend $14,148 per student, not including additional costs for serving English language learners and students with special needs, or the costs of Madison Prep’s third semester (summer).
B. Cost Comparisons between Madison Prep and MMSD
Staffing Costs
In 2010‐11, MMSD projected it would spend $67,133,692 on salaries (and benefits) on 825.63 staff in its secondary (middle and high) schools for an average salary of $81,312. This includes teachers, principals and in‐school support staff. In its first year of operation (SY2012‐13), ULGM projects Madison Prep it will spend $1,559,454 in salaries and benefits on 23 staff for an average of $67,802 in salary, including salaries for teachers, the Head of School (principal) and support staff. In its fifth year of operation, Madison Prep is projected to spend $3,560,746 in salaries and benefits on 52 staff for an average of $68,476 per staff person. In both years, Madison Prep will spend significantly less on salaries and benefits per staff member than MMSD.
Additionally, MMSD spends an average of $78,277 on salaries and benefits for staff in its middle schools and $79,827 on its staff in its high schools.
Additional documents: budget details and Madison Prep’s Wisconsin DPI application.
Matthew DeFour:
The high cost results from the likelihood that Madison Prep will serve more low-income, non-English speaking and special education students, said Kaleem Caire, president of the Urban League of Greater Madison, which is developing the charter school. The school also plans to have a longer school year, school day and require students to participate in volunteer and extracurricular activities.
“What we’re asking for is based on the fact that we’re going to serve a high-needs population of kids,” Caire said. “We don’t know yet if what we’re projecting is out of line.”
Caire said the proposal will likely change as potential state and federal revenues are assessed.
A Republican charter school bill circulated in the Legislature this week could also alter the landscape. The bill would allow charter schools to receive approval from a state board, rather than a local school board, and those that don’t use district employees, like Madison Prep, would be able to access the state retirement and health care systems.
Much more on the proposed Madison Preparatory Academy IB Charter school, here.
Madison School District Considers 7.64% ($18, 719.470) Property Tax Increase for 2011/2012 Budget
Erik J Kass, Assistant Superintendent for Business Services:
The following analysis is done using the PMA Model information and is looking at the cost to continue budget figures that will be provided to the Board on March 14, 2011. The analysis includes the impact on the median home in Madison, and for that figure we contacted the City of Madison Assessor and were provided that value at $241,217. For comparative purposes ofthe effect on this home, we are using the assumed value from the 2010-11 analysis of$246,041 or 2%morethanthecurrentmedianvalue. Theequalizedpropertyvaluationforthe2011-12 budget year is also projected to decrease by 2.00% as part ofthis analysis.
What is the projected All Funds Property Tax Increase for the 2011-12 Budget Year?
$18,719,470 or a 7.64% increase when compared to 2010-ll actuals.
Where does the projected All Funds Property Tax Increase for the 2011-12 Budget Year come from?
Prior Decisions by the Board ofEducation:
Recurring Referendum from November of 2008: $4,000,000
4-K Levy Increase to start program: $3,554,415
Referendum Debt Service: ($2.327,900)
Subtotal: $5,226,515
Decisions to be made by the Board of Education:
Projected Revenue Limit Growth ($200 per pupil): $7,774,514
Projected Loss in State Aid: $4,515,523
Community Services Fund (MSCR and Non-MSCR): $469,460
Exempt Computer Aid (property tax relief): ($261,927)
Property Tax Chargeback ($4.615)
Subtotal: $13,492,955
Total $18, 719.470
The Madison School District’s 2010-2011 budget increased property taxes by about 9%.
Council: Strive for high grade points, not big political points
After Detroit, Milwaukee is the country’s most segregated city. The Milwaukee Public School District (MPS) has an endemic racial achievement gap, in which, in terms of aggregate statistics, African American students perform three to four years below their European American counterparts in both math and reading. Combine this with a general dearth of resources — as is common to virtually all of public education — and you have a recipe for inadequate schooling that is failing its almost 90,000 students.
The crisis in Milwaukee is indicative of the educational crisis roiling the nation. Across the United States, school districts are facing enormous budget deficits, decreasing enrollment and intense pedagogical and ideological debates questioning the very foundations of modern education. The debate is particularly vociferous here in Wisconsin, where the Wisconsin Education Association Council feels threatened by Governor Scott Walker’s educational platform. This past Tuesday, however, WEAC introduced a series of reforms it would endorse, many of which took observers by surprise, and received mixed reactions.
The reform drawing the most ire is the proposal to carve up MPS into multiple smaller districts to make them more manageable, and thus more successful. However, as pointed out by one observer, this separation of districts would probably mirror racial divisions within the city, compounding instead of alleviating racial achievement gaps.
Rhee to lawmakers: Put kids first
Michelle Rhee, a national voice on education reform, told state lawmakers Thursday that charter schools and vouchers for low-income students have a place in public education, but in a blend with strong traditional schools.
“Vouchers in and of themselves are not the answer. Charters in and of themselves are not the answer,” said Rhee, who last fall stepped down as chancellor of Washington, D.C., schools after three years in which she was both lauded and derided for her overhaul of the school system.
“The answer in my mind is a really strong traditional public school system. That has very specific strategies to turn around failing schools [and incorporates both vouchers and charters].”
Rhee is on a national tour talking about education reform, particularly teacher evaluations and performance.
Madison School District Considers Replacing Lawson HR/Financial System; School District Consortium to Dissolve
Madison School District is one of the members of the Wisconsin School Consortium (Consortium) for Human Resource/Financial Business Solution System. The other member school districts are Racine, Middleton-Cross Plains and Verona.
Madison implemented the current system solution (Lawson) in 2003-04 and began the Consortium in 2005-06. To assure that the Consortium districts are getting the best value on their HR!Financial Business application software and related services, the Consortium opted to have a competitive RFP process for the following areas:
Evaluation of K-12 business application software including our current vendor, Lawson Software Evaluation of hosting vendors related to the business application software
The RFP process began in May where there were four qualified responders. The Consortium held all day demonstrations that were both on site and electronically through involving numerous representatives from the following areas of: Human Resources, Finance, School Sites, Food Service, Community Service, and General Administration.
The Consortium then moved their consideration primarily toward two of the vendors with reference calls, another set of demonstrations for further detail clarification, site visits and a virtual site visit
At this point the Consortium members are at a consensus that they will be dissolving the Consortium where two members, Verona and Middleton-Cross Plains are looking at one solution, Racine is considering staying with the current solution, and Madison is considering moving forward with a different solution because of the improved and integrated functionality combined with cost savings.
Notes & links on Madison’s Lawson implementation, here.
Waking the sleeping education giant
he 1970 film, “Tora! Tora! Tora!,” ends with Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto sullenly observing that his nation might have “awakened a sleeping giant” in attacking Pearl Harbor. The quotation’s historical accuracy hasn’t been verified, but I’ve been thinking the same line could apply to slumbering public school teachers in Indiana.
A Facebook page, Support Indiana Teachers, has drawn close to 16,000 friends in just over a week. Granted, it takes little effort to click a computer key, but comments on the page indicate that teachers and other Hoosiers have finally taken note of the current anti-public education agenda and are angry enough to act.
Hundreds of educators and public education supporters showed up at the Statehouse rally Tuesday. We’re receiving an ever-increasing number of letters to the editor critical of the legislative assault.
Still, it’s probably too late. One lawmaker tells me that the newly elected majority in the House is so far to the right that support for public schools doesn’t register. The Senate GOP majority has been drifting further to the right with every election.
New report examines promises, pitfalls of charter school autonomy
The Center on Reinventing Public Education, via a Deb Britt email:
A new report finds that charter schools use the freedoms they have from traditional school district mandates to define and operate schools in innovative new ways. However, expectations about what a school “should look like,” the stress of tight and unstable budgets, and overwhelming administrative demands are powerful forces pulling charter schools back to traditional practice.
This report offers great reason for optimism that charter schools are well positioned to answer President Obama’s call for public schools to innovate. But it also cautions that traditional regulatory structures and weaknesses in capacity must be addressed if they are to fully meet the challenge of innovation.
Based on a four-year study of the teachers, leaders, and academic programs in charter schools in six states, Inside Charter Schools: Unlocking Doors to Student Success observes that “autonomy only creates the opportunity for high-quality schools, it by no means guarantees it.”
Author Betheny Gross, a researcher at the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) at the University of Washington, argues that autonomy makes it possible for charter schools to:
Can Breaking the Milwaukee Public Schools Down Into Smaller Districts Work When Schools are Financially Dysfunctional on a Singular Level?
One of the biggest stories of the past week has been the Wisconsin Education Association Council’s recommendation to fragment Milwaukee Public Schools into smaller districts. According to WEAC, this would create “more manageable components” as well as “drive greater accountability within the system.” However, a look at how Milwaukee’s public schools operate as separate entities suggests that these schools will run into problems regardless of the size of their district.
In 2009, Milwaukee’s schools carried over operating debts of over $8 million into the new school year. Of the 148 schools surveyed in October of 2010, 93 (62.8%) finished the preceding school year in the red. 42 of these schools racked up debts of more than $100,000. 20 more overspent their budgets by $40,000 or more.
As the MacIver Institute has previously noted, schools like Bradley Tech (running a deficit of over $750,000), Vel Phillips (-$475k), Audubon Middle (-$436k), and Wedgewood (-$382k) are some of the city’s biggest offenders. While some schools have been able to create careful surpluses with their funds, the system as a whole has shown to be flawed. In all, the city’s school-by-school deficits added up to over $10.7 million dollars in 2009-2010 alone.
Anne Arundel Board of Education approves superintendent’s budget
The Anne Arundel County Board of Education on Wednesday approved Superintendent Kevin Maxwell’s $968.6 million operating budget recommendations for next year by an 8-1 margin, after one board member unsuccessfully moved to have the budget amended and another complained that it requests too much additional spending as the county aims to be more fiscally responsible.
The board simultaneously approved the $156.9 million capital budget that gives $46.7 million to continuing construction projects at four schools, Northeast High School and Belle Grove, Folger McKinsey and Point Pleasant elementary schools. It also allocates $3.6 million for designs to replace Severna Park High School, $11 million for full-day kindergarten and pre-kindergarten additions, and $14 million for textbooks.
The operating budget for fiscal year 2012 is $37.3 million more than the previous year’s budget. It funds negotiated agreements with unions, the system’s health care obligations and 20 mentor teachers required to fulfill obligations associated with the Race to the Top federal money.
Anne Arundel spends $12,334.69 per student ($931,269,700 2011 budget for 75,500 students).
Locally, the Madison School District’s 2010-2011 budget, according to the “State of the Madison School District Report” is $379,058,945. Enrollment is 24,471 which yields per student spending of $15,490.12.
In Defense of the Blogging Teacher
Since it hit the Associated Press wires, the story has spread to more than 200 publications. Natalie Munroe, an English teacher at Central Bucks High School, was suspended and faces dismissal for what she wrote about her students and school on her personal blog “Where are we going, and why are we in this handbasket?”
Forget Mandarin. Latin is the key to success
On the face of it, encouraging children to learn Latin doesn’t seem like the solution to our current skills crisis. Why waste valuable curriculum time on a dead language when children could be learning one that’s actually spoken? The prominence of Latin in public schools is a manifestation of the gentleman amateur tradition whereby esoteric subjects are preferred to anything that’s of any practical use. Surely, that’s one of the causes of the crisis in the first place?
But dig a little deeper and you’ll find plenty of evidence that this particular dead language is precisely what today’s young people need if they’re going to excel in the contemporary world.
Let’s start with Latin’s reputation as an elitist subject. While it’s true that 70 percent of independent schools offer Latin compared with only 16 per cent of state schools, that’s hardly a reason not to teach it more widely. According to the OECD, our private schools are the best in the world, whereas our state schools are ranked on average 23rd.
No doubt part of this attainment gap is attributable to the fact that the average private school child has advantages that the average state school child does not. But it may also be due to the differences in the curriculums th
B-Schools Struggle to Get Global
Business schools like to tout their focus on globalization, but a new report from a b-school accrediting agency says most of their strategies don’t go far enough.
To boost globalization, many M.B.A. programs in the U.S. require students to complete internships abroad. Schools are also beefing up case studies that focus on international companies and partnering with foreign schools by sending faculty abroad and exchanging students.
These partnerships can be risky, according to the report, released Thursday by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. A school’s reputations could be tarnished depending on the schools it chooses. Schools also often shoulder “severe” financial costs to expand their global footprint, the report says.
Observations about Chinese (Chinese-American?) mothers
I agree with many of Bryan Caplan's views on parenting, and Yana can attest that I have never attempted a "dragon mother" style. Yet I think that Bryan is overreaching a bit in rejecting virtually all of Amy Chua's claims. The simpler view — which most Americans intuitively grasp — is that some Asian parenting styles do make kids more productive, and better at school, although it is less clear they make the kids happier. It remains the case that most people overrate how much parenting matters in a broader variety of contexts, and in that regard Bryan's work is hardly refuted. Still, I see real evidence for a parenting effect from many (not all) Asian-American and Asian families.
NJEA is Not My Public School Teacher, Says N.J.
While the majority of New Jerseyans love public school teachers, more than half believe that the NJ Education Association (NJEA) is “playing a negative role in improving public education,” according to a Quinnipiac poll released yesterday.
In addition, reports New Jersey Newsroom, 68% of residents favor implementation of a merit pay system and 62% support tenure reform. We’re more split on school choice; the poll found that by a small margin we oppose school vouchers and charter school expansion. From Maurice Carroll of Quinnipiac:
Wisconsin School Administrators Wear Many Hats; Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad tops Compensation list @ $256,715
With state aid stagnant or dropping, state revenue limits tightening, and school compensation costs outpacing revenues, school districts–particularly their administrators–face growing financial pressures. At the same time, in the never-ending search for savings, the work of administrators is receiving greater scrutiny by school boards and the public alike.
Administrators increasingly wear many hats: fiscal expert, economic forecaster, management consultant, marketer, and savvy politician. In small districts, it is no exaggeration to add bookkeeper, guidance counselor, math teacher, handyman, or coach.
How varied approaches to school administration have become is illustrated by two small northern Wisconsin districts, each with about 500 students. One has four administrators (a superintendent, a business manager, and two principals), while the other has just one (a superintendent).
The same can be found among large districts. A relatively large central Wisconsin district has 22 administrators, while a similarly sized district (about 10% more students) has 32 administrators, or nearly 50% more.
These comparisons suggest there is much taxpayers, educators, and school boards can learn about how schools and districts are managed, both in terms of expenditures and work performed…
The comprehensive article mentions:
Among full time Superintendents, highest salaries were Madison ($198,500), Green Bay ($184,000), Racine ($180,000), Milwaukee ($175,062) and Whitefish Bay ($170,850). On the other hand, 49 full-time district heads earned less than $100,000, including those in Augusta ($65,649), Florence ($85,000), Wheatland J1 ($85,517), Cameron ($86,111), Phillips ($87,000) and Wauzeka-Steuben ($87,000).
When benefits are added, districts with the highest total compensation included Madison ($256,715), Milwaukee ($243,365), Green Bay ($239,700), Franklin ($236,573) and Hamilton ($218,617). Benefits include retirement contributions, employer share of Social Security and Medicare, health, life and disability insurance and other miscellaneous benefits such as reimbursement for college courses.
A comparison of 2010 Wisconsin School Administrative costs can be viewed in this .xls file.
Request a free copy of this issue of the Wisconsin Taxpayer, here.
Stanford Corners the ‘Smart’ Market After Its Best Football Season in Years, School Chases Top Recruits With Elite Grades; Building Robots
Darren Everson & Jared Diamond:
As college football’s 2011 recruiting classes took shape last week, much of the talk was dominated by the usual question: Which team pulled in the richest talent haul? Some say it was Alabama, others Florida State.
What was not acknowledged, or even noted, was the impressive and unusual incoming class assembled by Stanford.
The school, which is coming off its best football season in 70 years, didn’t land the most physically talented class of high school football players. The consensus says their crop ranks somewhere around No. 20 in the nation among all the major college programs. What stands out about Stanford’s class is something entirely different: what superior students they are.
Wayne Lyons, a four-star defensive back from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., who has a 4.96 weighted grade-point average and likes to build robots in his spare time, is widely considered the best student among the nation’s elite recruits. When he visited Stanford, he said he was whisked to a seminar on building jet engines and to a facility where robots are built.
In Defense of Being a Kid Childhood takes up a quarter of one’s life, and it would be nice if children enjoyed it.
Amy Chua, the “tiger mother,” is clearly hitting a nerve–especially among the anxious class (it used to be called the upper class), which understands how much skill and discipline are necessary for success in the new economy.
What Ms. Chua and her critics agree on is that childhood is all about preparation for adulthood. Ms. Chua claims that her parenting methods will produce ambitious, successful and happy adults–while her critics argue that her methods will produce neurotic, self- absorbed and unhappy ones.
It took economist Larry Summers, in a debate with Ms. Chua at the World Economic Forum in Davos, to point out that part of the point of childhood is childhood itself. Childhood takes up a quarter of one’s life, Mr. Summers observed, and it would be nice if children enjoyed it.
Bravo, Larry.
Government workers don’t need unions
a href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/07/opinion/07mon1.html?_r=2&ref=opinion”>TODAY’S New York Times editorial wisely comes out against the proposal to allow states to declare bankruptcy as a union-busting, budget-saving move. (Josh Barro’s reasoning against state bankruptcy rings sound to me.) However, I think the Times’ goes wrong here:
It is true that many public employee unions have done well during a time of hardship for most Americans. The problem, though, isn’t the existence of those unions; it is the generous contracts willingly given to them by lawmakers because of their lobbying power and bloc-voting ability.
The Times‘ contention that the existence of public-employee unions is not the problem is true, if it is true, only because the unions “fix” a bargaining-power deficit public workers don’t have. Without public-sector unions, government workers would lobby their way to padded paychecks, unobtanium-plated pensions, and hermetic job security anyway. Which is just to say, government workers don’t really need unions at all. Indeed, the strategic logic behind private- and public-sector unions is fundamentally different. “The process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” as some little somebody called Franklin Delano Roosevelt put it back in 1937.
School testing shows we have no idea what’s happening in Bountiful
“The Fraser Institute released its controversial B.C. elementary school rankings today,” a TV news anchor intoned earlier this week, “and this year a school in the polygamous community of Bountiful topped the list. That’s giving opponents of the rankings more ammunition.”
The report continued with Susan Lambert, president of the B.C. Teachers’ Federation, saying that “everyone who has anything to do, credibly, with the public education system, will tell you that the rankings are worthless.” (The thousands of parents who consult the rankings don’t count, as they should have realized by now.) “It’s just another example of how … meaningless the rankings are, and that we should pay no attention to them.”
And then the Fraser Institute’s Peter Cowley rebutted: “How is it possible that … a president of a teachers’ union can say, on the basis of the evidence that shows that [the school is] doing well, for one year, in reading, writing and math skills at Grades 4 and 7, we have to invalidate those results because of [the community’s religious] beliefs?”
And that was pretty much it. It was the line most media outlets took, and it was almost completely beside the point.
Minnesota AP class results continue to improve, still behind national average
More high school seniors are taking Advanced Placement courses in Minnesota and scoring higher on the tests, but the state’s rankings are still below national averages.
According to new data from the College Board, more than 15,000 Minnesota high school seniors took an AP course last year, and nearly 10,000 of them scored at least a three on an AP test. A score of three to five usually allows students to gain college credit for that class.
Students have other options to take advanced coursework in Minnesota schools, including throughout the International Baccalaureate program. Tuesday’s report was confined to the AP program.
18.3% of Wisconsin high school seniors completed school with at least one successful AP experience. Wisconsin’s report can be found here.
Graduates, but Ill-Prepared Big Disparity Reported Between Getting a Diploma and College-Readiness Rates
New York state high-school students’ college and career readiness lags far behind the graduation rates that most school districts post, according to data from the state Department of Education.
Across the state, the graduation rate in 2009, the last year for which figures are public, was 77%. But only 41% of high-school students were prepared for a career or college, the state said. The state defines students as college- and career-ready if they score at least an 80 on the state’s math Regents exam and at least a 75 on the English Regents exam. New York students receive a high-school diploma if they achieve a score of at least 65 on Regents tests.
MacIver’s Christian D’Andrea Reacts to WEAC Reform Plans
“WEAC unveiled their strategy Tuesday in the form of a pre-emptive strike as Governor Scott Walker prepares his upcoming budget proposal, which most insiders agree will have a significant impact on school funding and the way our schools operate.
“The organization’s main focus is to break Wisconsin’s largest district into multiple pieces by 2015. According to WEAC leaders, this move would create a more manageable system in the schools that have become a collective albatross hanging from the neck of Wisconsin’s public education.
“[I]n its current configuration, we do not believe MPS can be fixed. It is simply too big,” said WEAC President Mary Bell. Bell later went on to say that despite the state union’s buy-in, the local Milwaukee Teachers’ Educational Association (MTEA) isn’t on board.
“While MPS is fraught with problems, a reduction of size won’t be a panacea, nor will it make things much clearer in Wisconsin’s largest city. While WEAC’s change of heart is refreshing given their recent track record on education reform, they are resorting to a drastic step without fully exploring their other options for reform that are politically more feasible. MPS is only the 33rd largest school district in the country by enrollment, and while some of the cities that are larger than Milwaukee nationally have their own problems, many operate successfully despite a glut of students.
Madison schools superintendent gets mixed grades as contract renewal vote looms
After 2½ years as Madison schools superintendent, Dan Nerad is still finding his footing.
For Nerad and his supporters, that’s more of a statement about Madison’s slippery and sometimes treacherous political terrain.
But among critics there is frustration that Nerad hasn’t risen to the task, particularly given the high expectations for the former social worker and Green Bay superintendent.
The two views among Madison School Board members and others in the community are circulating as the board weighs whether to extend Nerad’s contract beyond June 2012.
Supporters point to a long list of accomplishments so far despite severe obstacles — implementation of 4-year-old kindergarten after decades of discussion, development of a strategic plan that brought in dozens of community voices and expansion of dual-language immersion programs.
Student arrested after allegedly dragging ex-girlfriend out of school
Susan Troller, via a kind reader’s email
A 16-year-old Madison West High School student was arrested Friday afternoon after he allegedly dragged his ex-girlfriend out of the school and threatened to harm her in a nearby cemetery.
The teen was tentatively charged with false imprisonment, intimidation of a victim and two counts of disorderly conduct, Madison police said.
According to police, the incident was reported at about 12:15 p.m. Friday at the high school, 30 Ash St.
“The 16-year-old female victim said the boy pulled her out of school against her will and led her by the arm to a nearby cemetery where he threatened to harm her,” said police spokesman Joel DeSpain.
Madison’s Sherman & Shabazz schools were locked down briefly Tuesday.
Beating the odds: 3 high-poverty Madison schools find success in ‘catching kids up’
When it comes to the quality of Madison’s public schools, the issue is pretty much black and white.
The Madison Metropolitan School District’s reputation for providing stellar public education is as strong as it ever was for white, middle-class students. Especially for these students, the district continues to post high test scores and turn out a long list of National Merit Scholars — usually at a rate of at least six times the average for a district this size.
But the story is often different for Hispanic and black kids, and students who come from economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
Madison is far from alone in having a significant performance gap. In fact, the well-documented achievement gap is in large measure responsible for the ferocious national outcry for more effective teachers and an overhaul of the public school system. Locally, frustration over the achievement gap has helped fuel a proposal from the Urban League of Greater Madison and its president and CEO, Kaleem Caire, to create a non-union public charter school targeted at minority boys in grades six through 12.
“In Madison, I can point to a long history of failure when it comes to educating African-American boys,” says Caire, who is black, a Madison native and a graduate of West High School. “We have one of the worst achievement gaps in the entire country. I’m not seeing a concrete plan to address that fact, even in a district that prides itself on innovative education.”
What often gets lost in the discussion over the failures of public education, however, is that there are some high-poverty, highly diverse schools that are beating the odds by employing innovative ways to reach students who have fallen through the cracks elsewhere.
Related: A Deeper Look at Madison’s National Merit Scholar Results.
Troller’s article referenced use of the oft criticized WKCE (Wisconsin Knowledge & Concepts Examination) (WKCE Clusty search) state examinations.
Related: value added assessment (based on the WKCE).
Dave Baskerville has argued that Wisconsin needs two big goals, one of which is to “Lift the math, science and reading scores of all K-12, non-special education students in Wisconsin above world-class standards by 2030”. Ongoing use of and progress measurement via the WKCE would seem to be insufficient in our global economy.
Steve Chapman on “curbing excellence”.
Generation net: The youngsters who prefer their virtual lives to the real world
Children are often happier with their online lives than they are with reality, a survey has revealed.
They say they can be exactly who they want to be – and as soon as something is no longer fun they can simply hit the quit button.
The study also shows that, despite concerns about online safety, one in eight young people is in contact with strangers when on the web and often lies about their appearance, age and background.
Researchers for children’s charity Kidscape assessed the online activities of 2,300 11- to 18-year-olds from across the UK and found that 45 per cent said they were sometimes happier online than in their real lives.
The report – Virtual Lives: It is more than a game, it is your life – lays bare the attitudes of children today to the internet and includes revealing insights into how they feel when they are on the web.
Charter Location Influences Sustainability
Andy Rotherham just published a report with obvious conclusions: sustainability is impacted by location. More specifically, if you open a charter in California, you will spend a lifetime begging for money.
Find the New paper on charter school finance from Bellwether out today (pdf). Press release can be found here and The Wall Street Journal editorial page weighs-in on it here.
Andy summarizes:
Data indicates 5 percent of Rochester graduates ready for college, careers
The New York State Education Department has released data that it said indicates that not all students graduating high school are prepared to enter college or careers.
The data compares graduation rates versus college- and career-ready graduation rate calculations for general education students who entered ninth grade in the 2005-06 school year, through June 2009.
General education graduation requirements for a local diploma include a score of 65 or better on two Regents exams and 55 or better on three Regents exams. The designation of college- and career-ready is defined by graduates who received at least an 80-percent grade on the math Regents exam and 75 on the English Regents exam.
In Rochester, there was a 46.6 percent graduation rate, with only 5.1 percent of graduates being college- and career-ready, said state education officials. This compares to 49.5 and 14.7 percent, respectively, in Syracuse, and 64.5 and 22.8 percent in New York City.
The takeaway language of slang
In the Preface to his Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson informed his readers that there was one aspect of his compatriots’ discourse that he was unwilling to engage with. “Of the laborious and mercantile part of the people”, he wrote,
“the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, and in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things unworthy of preservation.”
Yet, as Johnson must have been aware, published works recording this “casual and mutable” English had existed since Thomas Harman added a glossary of canting terms to his Caveat or Warening for Commen Cursetors of 1567 and, indeed, a generation after Johnson dismissed what we would call slang as “unworthy of preservation”, a very different view was being propounded. For Francis Grose, the antiquary and former military man, author of A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published in 1785, it was a matter of regret that “terms of well-known import, at New-market, Exchange-alley, the City, the Parade, Wapping, and Newgate”, and which also “find their way into our political and theatrical compositions”, were not recorded in conventional dictionaries. Indeed Grose (as had Johnson) managed to establish a patriotic slant to his dictionary-making. Referring to a recent dictionary of “satyrical and burlesque French”, he claimed that with “our language being at least as copious as the French, and as capable of the witty equivoque”, his dictionary was fully justified. He pursued this theme further, adding that
Michigan Board of Education raises proficiency scores for MEAP and MME
Don’t be surprised if a surprising number of Michigan school districts fall short of proficient scoring after next year’s round of standardized state testing.
The Michigan Board of Education approved higher cut scores, or scores that mark proficiency, for both the Michigan Educational Assessment Program (MEAP) and Michigan Merit Exam (MME) tests at a board meeting Tuesday. According to experts, the new standards will be more honest about how well students are doing on the tests.
“It’s going to make a real difference in the share of kids who are being labeled proficient and in the share of schools passing AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress),” said Susan Dynarski, associate professor of economics, education and public policy at the University of Michigan. “Michigan has been Lake Woebegone — right now 95 percent of our third graders are labeled as proficient in math and under the new standards, it would become 34 percent.”
Laura Bush to announce 2nd education initiative from Bush Institute
The George W. Bush Institute’s second big education initiative will seek to improve graduation rates by focusing on middle school as a foundation for future success.
Former first lady Laura Bush is set to announce the initiative, called “Middle School Matters,” Wednesday in Houston at Stovall Middle School in the Aldine school district.
She says research has shown that 6th through 8th grade is a crucial time and that many high school dropouts essentially dropped out in middle school. One goal will be to ensure students are prepared for high school.
Spotlight on LIFO in New York
No one wants the big teacher layoffs that most analysts say are inevitable under our current state budget crisis. But many of us are very concerned that if such layoffs are necessary, the state’s “last in, first out” rule will mean that many of our best teachers will be forced out regardless of their qualifications and effectiveness. This could be particularly devastating for schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, where teachers tend to have fewer years of experience
A new poll shows that a majority of New Yorkers disapprove of the state’s “last in, first out” (LIFO) law that forces schools to fire the most recently hired teachers during a budget crisis, regardless of teacher quality
New Wisconsin school medication rules tie hands
Beginning March 1, public schools in Madison and across the state will be constrained in their ability to dispense medication to students and respond to health emergencies.
“Our options are now limited,” says Freddi Adelson, the Madison district’s health services coordinator.
The changes, crafted by the state Department of Public Instruction and passed by the Legislature last year, set stricter rules for dispensing medications at school than current district policy.
For instance, Madison schools now let school nurses dispense acetaminophen or ibuprofen to the students of parents who give written permission. The new rules say schools can dispense only medications
Mansfield Arabic Program On Hold
A Mansfield ISD program to teach Arabic language and culture in schools is on hold for now, and may not happen at all.
The school district wanted students at selected schools to take Arabic language and culture classes as part of a federally funded grant.
The Foreign Language Assistance Program (FLAP) grant was awarded to Mansfield ISD last summer by the U.S. Department of Education.
As part of the five-year $1.3 million grant, Arabic classes would have been taught at Cross Timbers Intermediate School and other schools feeding into Summit High School.
Parents at Cross Timbers say they were caught off-guard by the program, and were surprised the district only told them about it in a meeting Monday night between parents and Mansfield ISD Superintendent Bob Morrison.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: For Federal Programs, a Taste of Market Discipline
Wouldn’t it be nice if taxpayers could somehow get a refund for government programs that didn’t work?
Instead, the opposite tends to happen. Programs that fail to make a difference — like many of those that train workers for new jobs — endure indefinitely. Often, policy makers don’t even know which work and which don’t, because rigorous evaluation is rare in government. And competition, which punishes laggards in the private sector, is typically absent in the public sector.
But there is some good news on this front. Lately, both American and British policy makers have been thinking about how to bring some of the competitive discipline of the market to government programs, and they have hit on an intriguing idea.
Wisconsin Teachers’ Union Proposed Education Reforms
Wisconsin Education Association Council:
State officers of the Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) today unveiled three dramatic proposals as part of their quality-improvement platform called “Moving Education Forward: Bold Reforms.” The proposals include the creation of a statewide system to evaluate educators; instituting performance pay to recognize teaching excellence; and breaking up the Milwaukee Public School District into a series of manageable-sized districts within the city.
“In our work with WEAC leaders and members we have debated and discussed many ideas related to modernizing pay systems, better evaluation models, and ways to help turn around struggling schools in Milwaukee,” said WEAC President Mary Bell. “We believe bold actions are needed in these three areas to move education forward. The time for change is now. This is a pivotal time in public education and we’re in an era of tight resources. We must have systems in place to ensure high standards for accountability – that means those working in the system must be held accountable to high standards of excellence.”
TEACHER EVALUATION: In WEAC’s proposed teacher evaluation system, new teachers would be reviewed annually for their first three years by a Peer Assistance and Review (PAR) panel made up of both teachers and administrators. The PAR panels judge performance in four areas:
- Planning and preparing for student learning
- Creating a quality learning environment
- Effective teaching
- Professional responsibility
The proposed system would utilize the expertise of the UW Value-Added Research Center (Value Added Assessment) and would include the review of various student data to inform evaluation decisions and to develop corrective strategies for struggling teachers. Teachers who do not demonstrate effectiveness to the PAR panels are exited out of the profession and offered career transition programs and services through locally negotiated agreements.
Veteran teachers would be evaluated every three years, using a combination of video and written analysis and administrator observation. Underperforming veteran teachers would be required to go through this process a second year. If they were still deemed unsatisfactory, they would be re-entered into the PAR program and could ultimately face removal.
“The union is accepting our responsibility for improving the quality of the profession, not just for protecting the due process rights of our members,” said Bell. “Our goal is to have the highest-quality teachers at the front of every classroom across the state. And we see a role for classroom teachers to contribute as peer reviewers, much like a process often used in many private sector performance evaluation models.”
“If you want to drive change in Milwaukee’s public schools, connect the educators and the community together into smaller districts within the city, and without a doubt it can happen,” said Bell. “We must put the needs of Milwaukee’s students and families ahead of what’s best for the adults in the system,” said Bell. “That includes our union – we must act differently – we must lead.”
Madison’s “value added assessment” program is based on the oft-criticized WKCE examinations.
Related: student learning has become focused instead on adult employment – Ripon Superintendent Richard Zimman.
Study finds funding gap between D.C. specialty and neighborhood schools
The two public high schools, 21/2 miles apart in Northwest Washington, serve vastly different student populations. And they do it with vastly different levels of financial support, according to an analysis of school spending by a District advocacy group.
School Without Walls accepts only the city’s most accomplished students after a competitive application process that requires interviews with prospective parents as well. More than 700 students are vying for 120 spots in next year’s ninth-grade class. Those who are admitted will attend classes in a freshly renovated vintage building on the George Washington University campus. District funds per student: $10,257.
Cardozo, near 13th Street and Florida Avenue, is a neighborhood high school that takes all comers in an attendance area that includes about a dozen group homes and homeless shelters. Parole officers and social workers are sometimes the only adults who appear at the school on students’ behalf. The wiring in the cavernous 1916 building was so bad a couple of years ago that when all of the computers were turned on, power in half of the school would go out, said Principal Gwendolyn Grant.
District funds per student: $7,453.
Locally, the Madison School District’s 2010-2011 budget, according to the “State of the Madison School District Report” is $379,058,945. Enrollment is 24,471 which yields per student spending of $15,490.12.
The takeaway language of slang
In the Preface to his Dictionary of the English Language, Samuel Johnson informed his readers that there was one aspect of his compatriots’ discourse that he was unwilling to engage with. “Of the laborious and mercantile part of the people”, he wrote,
“the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, and in others utterly unknown. This fugitive cant, which is always in state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things unworthy of preservation.”
Yet, as Johnson must have been aware, published works recording this “casual and mutable” English had existed since Thomas Harman added a glossary of canting terms to his Caveat or Warening for Commen Cursetors of 1567 and, indeed, a generation after Johnson dismissed what we would call slang as “unworthy of preservation”, a very different view was being propounded. For Francis Grose, the antiquary and former military man, author of A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published in 1785, it was a matter of regret that “terms of well-known import, at New-market, Exchange-alley, the City, the Parade, Wapping, and Newgate”, and which also “find their way into our political and theatrical compositions”, were not recorded in conventional dictionaries. Indeed Grose (as had Johnson) managed to establish a patriotic slant to his dictionary-making. Referring to a recent dictionary of “satyrical and burlesque French”, he claimed that with “our language being at least as copious as the French, and as capable of the witty equivoque”, his dictionary was fully justified. He pursued this theme further, adding that
Starving Charters A new study shows the funding bias against non-traditional schools.
Look quickly and you might think that charter schools have it easy, given the celebrated documentary “Waiting for ‘Superman,'” the efforts of reformers like Michelle Rhee and Joel Klein, and the support of the Obama Administration. That’s why a report out Tuesday is a needed corrective: It demonstrates how government policies regularly discriminate against charters.
Published by Bellwether Education Partners, a reform-minded advocacy group, the report examines the finances of Aspire Public Schools, a network of 30 California charter schools with 9,800 students from kindergarten through high school. With extended school days and years, innovative curricula and other hallmarks of charter autonomy, Aspire ranks as California’s single best school system serving a majority of very poor students. Yet it operates with margins of only 0.6%, or $60 per student, which make it harder to scrape together funds to open new schools.
High-schoolers’ ‘recess’: Benefit or brain drain?
There is no limit to what you learn about schools if you listen to teachers. Did you know, for instance, that Fairfax County, the Washington region’s largest school district, is using 10 days a year of valuable instruction time on do-what-you-like recesses for high school students?
I didn’t, either. West Springfield High School physics teacher Ed Linz says this program, designed to help struggling students, is a waste. At his school, students get 90 free minutes a week, which they can use to find dates for Saturday night or check basketball scores, if they want. But his principal, Paul Wardinski, says most students do homework, work on group projects and enrich their studies. It helps teachers to be creative, he says, even if some students look for imaginative ways to goof off.
Linz disclosed the recesses to the county School Board last month. Like President Obama, he said that this is our Sputnik moment and that we can’t win the future throwing away precious class time.
Childhood: Obesity and School Lunches
A study of more than 1,000 sixth graders in several schools in southeastern Michigan found that those who regularly had the school lunch were 29 percent more likely to be obese than those who brought lunch from home.
Spending two or more hours a day watching television or playing video games also increased the risk of obesity, but by only 19 percent.
Of the 142 obese children in the study for whom dietary information was known, almost half were school-lunch regulars, compared with only one-third of the 787 who were not obese.
“Most school lunches rely heavily on high-energy, low-nutrient-value food, because it’s cheaper,” said Dr. Kim A. Eagle, director of the University of Michigan Cardiovascular Center, and senior author of the paper, published in the December issue of American Heart Journal. In some schools where the study was done, lunch programs offered specials like “Tater Tot Day,” he said.
More charters, more choices
Montgomery County is rightly proud of its public school system, which is widely regarded as one of the best in the state. Perhaps that’s why, nearly eight years after state lawmakers passed a law allowing for the establishment of charter schools — alternative institutions that receive public funds but operate independently — the Montgomery County school board has yet to approve a single application to open one.
Is that because no one has come up with a credible plan for a school that would give parents more choices for educating their children? Or is it because local school officials simply don’t want the competition?
The state school board looked into the matter last year, after Montgomery County school officials turned down the applications of two groups that wanted to set up new charter schools in the district. What they found goes a long way toward explaining why school reform advocates like the Washington-based Center for Education Reform have rated Maryland’s charter school law as one of the weakest in the nation. Despite passing important reforms last year regarding lengthening of the time it takes teachers to earn tenure and linking student test scores with teacher evaluations, lawmakers need to take another look at strengthening the state’s charter school law if Maryland is to build on those gains.
Bills assert parents’ right to home school in New Hampshire
A long-simmering dispute between the state and parents who prefer to teach their children at home is being renewed.
The House Education Committee has scheduled for Tuesday hearings on three bills on home schooling in its largest room, the House chamber. Legislation regulating home schooling has drawn large crowds over the years.
Last month, a divorced couple who couldn’t agree on how to educate their daughter took the fight to the state Supreme Court. The court is being asked if parents have a constitutional right to home school their kids. In this case, the father objected to his wife’s strict Christian teachings and wants their daughter taught at public schools. The mother prefers home schooling.
Home schooling advocates say they want less regulation over what they argue is a parent’s right.
Welcome to our urban high schools, where kids have kids and learning dies.
In my short time as a teacher in Connecticut, I have muddled through President Bush’s No Child Left Behind act, which tied federal funding of schools to various reforms, and through President Obama’s Race to the Top initiative, which does much the same thing, though with different benchmarks. Thanks to the feds, urban schools like mine–already entitled to substantial federal largesse under Title I, which provides funds to public schools with large low-income populations–are swimming in money. At my school, we pay five teachers to tutor kids after school and on Saturdays. They sit in classrooms waiting for kids who never show up. We don’t want for books–or for any of the cutting-edge gizmos that non-Title I schools can’t afford: computerized whiteboards, Elmo projectors, the works. Our facility is state-of-the-art, thanks to a recent $40 million face-lift, with gleaming new hallways and bathrooms and a fully computerized library.
Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children–all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.
Cuomo, Pushing School Cuts, Offers a Target: Superintendent Salaries
Carole G. Hankin, the schools superintendent in Syosset on Long Island, made an unexpected cameo appearance in Albany last week: Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo cast her salary as a prime example of wasteful spending by school districts.
Mr. Cuomo did not mention Dr. Hankin by name in his budget address, but he did offer her salary: $386,868, more than the pay of any other superintendent in the state. “I applied for that job,” the governor joked, adding that he had decided to run for governor, which pays $179,000, only after he had been rejected.
Mr. Cuomo’s remarks came as he presented a budget calling for a $2.85 billion reduction in local school aid, a proposal that has already drawn fierce criticism from educators. But the governor offered some criticism of his own for school officials.
Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, said that school districts had enough means to withstand the decline in state financing, and pointedly suggested that they look at whether they are spending too much on their own bureaucracy.
Wealthy donors demanding bigger voice in Catholic schools
Private philanthropists have changed the face of public education over the last decade, underwriting the rise of charter schools and promoting remedies that rely heavily on student testing and teacher evaluation.
But with much less fanfare, wealthy donors have begun playing a parallel role in the country’s next-largest educational network: Roman Catholic schools.
In New York — as in Boston, Baltimore and Chicago — shrinking enrollment and rising school deficits in recent years have deepened the church’s dependence on its cadres of longtime benefactors. Donors have responded generously, but many who were once content to write checks and attend student pageants are now asking to see school budgets, student reading scores and principals’ job evaluations.
In the jargon of education reform, they want transparency and accountability; and though the church bureaucracy has resisted similar demands from other constituents in the past, the donors are getting pretty much what they want.
Love you and leave you
Wang Tingting last saw her parents nearly two years ago, but now that they are reunited, no one knows what to say to one another. Finally, Su Taoying, Tingting’s mother, clasps her 12-year-old daughter’s hand and says, ruefully, “Next time I see you, you will be taller than me.” As they smile, the family resemblance is striking. And yet for the past five years they have not really been a family.
Wang Tingting is one of tens of millions of children in rural China growing up without their parents – parents who have decamped to the cities in order to earn a better living. Some of these children are cared for by their grandparents, but others are handed over to foster centres. Three years ago, as she was about to enter junior high school, Tingting’s parents moved her from her grandparents’ home to a foster centre in Gufeng, their remote village in the eastern province of Anhui. Nobody here found that strange: fewer than half of the children in Gufeng live with their parents, a situation repeated across several provinces in the heavily populated southern half of China.
The Chinese government estimates that there are 58 million “left-behind children”, which accounts for almost 20 per cent of all the children in China, and close to half of all children in the countryside. Their lives illustrate the price China is paying for president Hu Jintao’s goal of building a “moderately well-off society”.
Pennsylvania School voucher debate heats up
Supporters call them a matter of choice, a lifeline for children stuck in broken schools. Opponents deride them as unconstitutional and unworkable and warn that they will erode conditions in some of Pennsylvania’s most troubled schools.
The debate over taxpayer-paid tuition vouchers to help poor children find alternatives to attending the state’s weakest-performing public schools has emerged as a major item on the legislative agenda for the next six months — perhaps the major item after the state budget.
The voucher issue will come to the fore in the General Assembly on Feb. 16, when the chairman of the Senate Education Committee will lead a hearing on his bill to establish the Opportunity Scholarship and Educational Improvement Tax Credit Act.
Brewster Board of Education Addresses Cuomo’s Budget
The board also expressed concern about the $1.3 billion earmarked for education in the federal stimulus package that was supposed to be distributed in addition to the state education budget. Instead, that money was used to substitute for state education allocations.
“This is an alarming trend,” said Board President Stephen Jambor. “While it makes great headlines to blame the schools, it is underhanded to underfund us in the first place. Your state taxes keep going up the hill to Albany. We have to get busy in fighting back because push has come to shove.”
These issues have been detailed in a letter to the governor which was personally delivered by Sandbank. A copy of the letter will be posted on the district’s website.
Duluth school district troubled by downward enrollment
Anna Cook chose online education for her 7-year-old daughter this fall after an unhappy year at Lincoln Park Elementary School, where she said overwhelmed teachers and bullying made traditional school seem like “chaos.”
“I didn’t feel like my child was in a safe situation there,” Cook said. “All I could do was get her out of there.”
Cook is part of a steady stream of people choosing to leave the district. As the School Board prepares to cut $7.3 million from its budget, partly because of declining enrollment, it’s taking a look Tuesday at that number, along with where the students are going and how to get them back.
Red Plan opponents have long said angry families are sending their students in droves to neighboring districts because of the plan. But Cook’s story shows there are a variety of reasons families are seeking education elsewhere, including more choice, smaller class sizes and fresh starts.
Bill Gates: Vaccine-autism link ‘an absolute lie’
Microsoft founder Bill Gates sat down recently with CNN Chief Medical Correspondent Sanjay Gupta in Davos, Switzerland.
The billionaire philanthropist was attending the World Economic Forum to push his mission of eradicating polio by 2012. Gates, through his foundation, also pledged $10 billion to provide vaccinations to children around the world within a decade.
Gupta asked Gates for his thoughts about the alleged autism-vaccine connection. He also asked: Who holds ultimate accountability for the billions of dollars being spent on aid? Is a certain amount of corruption and fraud expected? Below is an excerpt of their conversation.
Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Ten billion dollars [pledged] over the next 10 years to make it “the year of the vaccines.” What does that mean exactly?
Cameron Criticizes ‘Multiculturalism’ in Britain
Faced with growing alarm about Islamic militants who have made Britain one of Europe’s most active bases for terrorist plots, Prime Minister David Cameron has mounted an attack on the country’s decades-old policy of “multiculturalism,” saying it has encouraged “segregated communities” where Islamic extremism can thrive.
Speaking at a security conference in Munich on Saturday, Mr. Cameron condemned what he called the “hands-off tolerance” in Britain and other European nations that had encouraged Muslims and other immigrant groups “to live separate lives, apart from each other and the mainstream.”
He said that the policy had allowed Islamic militants leeway to radicalize young Muslims, some of whom went on to “the next level” by becoming terrorists, and that Europe could not defeat terrorism “simply by the actions we take outside our borders,” with military actions like the war in Afghanistan.
HR in public schools fails students
The simplest of conversations, the most important of facts. And yet nearly six years after those images were discovered by the Madison School District, Nelson was a superintendent and had to be caught allegedly trying to solicit sex from what he thought was a 15-year-old boy online before the bizzaro world of public school human resources stood up and took notice.
I am assuming (safely, I really, really hope) that had my imagined exchange occurred, Nelson’s public schools career would have been over. There also does not appear to have been anything contractually or legally to prevent it from occurring.
Madison human resources director Bob Nadler said Nelson had an oral agreement — “not a contract” — under which, in exchange for Nelson’s resignation, the district would disclose nothing more than his dates of employment, position and salary.
These kinds of agreements happened with some frequency, according to Art Rainwater, the superintendent in Madison at the time Nelson was nabbed for porn. As to the exact circumstances surrounding how Nelson was lucky enough to get one and who it was with, well, “I honestly don’t remember,” Rainwater told me.
Not only could Madison have dropped the dime on its very own pervert; state law provides some liability protection for doing so. Employers who act in “good faith” when providing a reference are protected unless they knowingly lie or provide a reference maliciously or violate the state’s blacklisting statute, according to Marquette University Law School Associate Professor Paul Secunda.
Rickert deserves props for contacting former Madison Superintendent Art Rainwater (who now is employed – along with others from the Madison School District – at the UW-Madison School of Education) on this matter.
Another Closed Session on Madison’s Superintendent Review….. Sixth since August, 2010
The Madison Board of Education:
2. Evaluation of the Superintendent pursuant to Wis. Stat §19.85(1)(c)
Much more on Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad, here.
This search reveals that there have been six closed session meetings since August, 2010 on the Superintendent evaluation. I wonder how this frequency conflicts with the public’s right to know?
Race to Nowhere Plays @ Madison West High School 2/8/2011
via a kind reader’s email:
A concerned mother turned filmmaker aims her camera at the high-stakes, high-pressure culture that has invaded our schools and our children’s lives, creating unhealthy, disengaged, unprepared and stressed-out youth. Featuring the heartbreaking stories of young people in all types of communities who have been pushed to the brink, educators who are burned out and worried that students aren’t developing the skills they need, and parents who are trying to do what’s best for their kids, Race to Nowhere points to the silent epidemic in our schools: cheating has become commonplace; students are disengaged; stress-related illness and depression are rampant; and many young people arrive at college and the workplace unprepared and uninspired.
In a grassroots sensation already feeding a groundswell for change, hundreds of theaters, schools and organizations nationwide are hosting community screenings during a six month campaign to screen the film nationwide. Tens of thousands of people are coming together, using the film as the centerpiece for raising awareness, radically changing the national dialogue on education and galvanizing change.”
Join us for a screening of this new documentary
RACE TO NOWHERE
on February 8 at 7:30 PM at the Madison West Auditorium
TICKETS: $10 ONLINE AND $15 AT THE DOOR http://rtnmadisonwest.eventbrite.com
Want more info?
http://www.RaceToNowhere.com
What school vouchers have bought for my family
I worried constantly about my daughter Jerlisa when she attended our neighborhood elementary school. I knew that I wanted a better education for her, but I didn’t know how to make that happen. In 2005, I took a chance and applied to the D.C. Opportunity Scholarship Program. Little did I know how much more than $7,500 I would be gaining.
I grew up in the District and attended D.C. public schools. Jerlisa started off the same way. We enrolled her at Gibbs Elementary School for kindergarten, and as the years went by she started to fall behind. There was so much going on around the school and in the classroom. Every morning, I walked with her to school, and every afternoon I waited outside the school gates to walk her home again. She got teased for that, but I was worried about the drug dealers, addicts and bullies in the neighborhood. I didn’t have any other choice. I had to make sure she was safe.
When Jerlisa was in fifth grade, she became anxious and didn’t want to return to school. It was clear to me she wasn’t getting the help that she needed. That’s when I received fliers about the Opportunity Scholarship Program. Although I didn’t know everything about the OSP, I knew I had to do something different, even if it meant getting out of my comfort zone. When you’re a single mother on a fixed income, sometimes simple things like filling out your name, address or income on a form can be a scary thing to do.
Postponing Mandatory Teacher use of Madison’s Infinite Campus System
Background information: In 2010, the Board approved a number of administrative recommendations geared toward increasing usage of the Infinite Campus System. The current timeline requires all high school teachers to use grade-level appropriate Infinite Campus teacher tools by the end of the fourth quarter of the 2010-2011 school year.
The administration has been notified by the vendor that significant changes will be made to the Infinite Campus interface in July 2011. Accordingly, if training sessions were to continue as required to meet the current deadline, those same teachers would have to be trained on a new interface only months later.
It would be more prudent to wait until the new interface is available and require full implementation of the Infinite Campus teacher tools at the high schools by the end of the second quarter of the 2011-2012 school year.
D. BOE action requested: Postpone mandatory use of Infinite Campus teacher tools at the high schools until the end of the second quarter of the 2011-2012 school year.
Much more on the Madison School District’s implementation of Infinite Campus, here.
A January, 2010 usage survey.
The system originally lifted off during the fall of 2007. I wonder how much has been spent on it without full use? This type of system can be a useful way for parents, teachers and students to communicate – if it is used…..
A Walk Around Emory University
The Escalating Arms Race for Top Colleges
It is no secret that the children of certain families (and we all know who we are) are primed to take a disproportionate share of the places at the best–or at least the most prestigious–colleges. That’s because we’re already sending our kids to the kinds of excellent schools that help prepare them for admission to such colleges.
But just in case our children don’t quite have the stats to make it into, say, Georgetown or UNC on their own steam, you can bet that we, as parents, will do everything in our power to make it happen. We are all caught up in a crazy arms race, where the order of the day (to borrow a useful term from the Cold War) is “escalation dominance.”
It May Be a Sputnik Moment, but Science Fairs Are Lagging
Rarely have school science fairs, a source of pride and panic for generations of American students, achieved such prominence on the national stage. President Obama held one at the White House last fall. And last week he said that America should celebrate its science fair winners like Sunday’s Super Bowl champions, or risk losing the nation’s competitive edge.
Yet as science fair season kicks into high gear, participation among high school students appears to be declining. And many science teachers say the problem is not a lack of celebration, but the Obama administration’s own education policy, which holds schools accountable for math and reading scores at the expense of the kind of creative, independent exploration that science fair projects require.
Should Everyone Go to College?
In a report issued on February 2nd, Harvard researchers question the value of ‘college for all.’
According to the co-authors of the report, Academic Dean Robert Schwartz and Ronald Ferguson, a Senior Lecturer at Harvard, the US’s four-year colleges are failing students by focusing too much on classroom-based academics and not adequately preparing students for careers. The proposal has sparked immediately concern from educators as it raises the ‘specter of tracking,’ in which students (often from lower-income or disadvantaged backgrounds) are ‘channeled unquestioningly into watered-down programs that curtail their prospects,’ according to EdWeek.
Currently, 42 percent of 27-year-olds in the US have no more than a high school degree. Only 30 percent of Americans earn a bachelor’s degree by the time they are 27. President Obama has stated that he wants to improve the nation’s college graduation rate to 60 percent in 10 years (ABC News). The US now ranks in 12th place in the world for college graduates, In comparison Canada’s college graduation rate is 55.8 percent; in South Korea and Russia, the rate for college graduates is 55.5 percent, according to statistics from the College Board.
Jamie Oliver Still at Odds With Los Angeles Schools
A little over two weeks after celebrity cook Jamie Oliver started shooting the second season of his Food Revolution reality TV show at the Westwood-based Jamie’s Kitchen, the Los Angeles Unified School District remains at odds with the production company about letting the show shoot in district schools.
However, Robert Alaniz, spokesperson for the district said that officials have been meeting with Oliver’s team.
“He’d be more than welcome, but sans cameras,” Alaniz said, adding that district officials simply believe that the school district is no place for a reality television show.
Idaho Superintendent of Schools Luna’s proposed changes to education opposed by local school board
Pocatello-Chubbuck School District 25 has officially come out against an education reform plan backed by State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Luna, arguing it adds new costs at a time when the state can’t cover existing expenses.
School board members, who hosted a special meeting Tuesday to discuss the plan, even took exception with the name of Luna’s plan, called “Students Come First.”
“The legislation itself is insulting in its title, thinking that any one of the school boards in this state would not put children first,” board members wrote in the document they authored outlining their position on the plan.
They noted past policy changes, including core standards and heightened graduation requirements, involved considerable input and time for research. Luna’s proposed legislation, they argue, wasn’t based on sufficient input or extensive research. They suggest implementing pilot programs to test various aspects of the plan, which could be used to measure success or as a basis for modifications.
What football can teach school reformers
The Birmingham school board plans to hire 60 Teach for America teachers over the next three years in an effort to bring more innovation to low-performing schools.
TFA is a privately run program that recruits recent college graduates, gives them five weeks of training in how to teach and sends them across the country for two years to work in largely under-performing schools.
In addition to paying their salaries, the Birmingham school system will also pay $5,000 per year per new hire to TFA for training.
On Jan. 15, I sat with my son, and 70,000 others, watching Auburn University celebrate winning the BCS national football championship because what my alma mater has just done could be a great example for Superintendent Witherspoon and members of the Birmingham school board.
Texas High School Freshman Sends Robot to School in His Place
This is so awesome. A school district in Knox City, Texas has allowed a student with a severe illness that keeps him at home to attend classes like a normal freshman by using a Vgo telepresence robot. My son’s school had to have a meeting with the school board to let me GIVE them technology.
The boy is named Lyndon Baty and he suffers from polycystic kidney disease, and treatment for the disease has left his immune system suppressed. The poor immune system means he can’t be around other kids to attend classes.
Rhode Island education chief says schools can’t put off improvements
Education Commissioner Deborah A. Gist is putting the brakes on regulations that require high school students to reach at least “partial proficiency” on state tests in order to graduate. She’s pushing the 2012 deadline back two years.
But she says Rhode Island’s high schools can’t continue to dole out diplomas to students who cannot read, write or compute at a high-school level.
Schools must do more to help students reach the higher goals, and state education officials must find better ways to support schools, she says.
“We need people to understand we are not putting a two-year pause in place,” Gist said in an interview Friday.
Madison 4K enrollment begins Monday
Enrollment begins Monday for Madison’s new 4-year-old kindergarten program that begins next fall.
Parents of children who turn 4 on or before Sept. 1 can register at their local elementary school between 1 p.m. and 6 p.m. for the half-day, tuition-free program.
Arab World Built Colleges, but Not Jobs Unemployment, Broad Among Region’s Angry Youth, Is High Among Educated
The anger of demonstrators in Tunisia and Egypt runs, too, through 25-year-old Saleh Barek al-Jabri.
Mr. Jabri, the son of a Yemini bus driver, says he answered his government’s call for young people to study petroleum engineering, enrolling in a course at Yemen’s Hadhramaut University for Science and Technology. Officials visited his school to offer encouragement. An oil minister came through to promise jobs. Mr. Jabri excelled, finishing fifth in his class.
But after graduating last year, he has yet to find work. Classmates with family connections got what few jobs existed. Mr. Jabri moved to Yemen’s capital, San’a, where he shares a single room with two other unemployed recent graduates.
“I had dreams,” Mr. Jabri says. “They’ve all evaporated.”
The two paths to success
The recent WSJ article on the supposedly Chinese style of parenting has generated a lot of interesting discussion. The most amusing commentary comes from The Last Psychiatrist, who also points out that Amy Chua, the “Chinese” mother, was actually born in America. There were also claims that the WSJ misrepresented her views, which may or may not be true, but is ultimately irrelevant since it’s the ideas that are being debated.
Here’s the part of the article that interests me:What Chinese parents understand is that nothing is fun until you’re good at it. To get good at anything you have to work, and children on their own never want to work, which is why it is crucial to override their preferences. This often requires fortitude on the part of the parents because the child will resist; things are always hardest at the beginning, which is where Western parents tend to give up. But if done properly, the Chinese strategy produces a virtuous circle. Tenacious practice, practice, practice is crucial for excellence; rote repetition is underrated in America. Once a child starts to excel at something — whether it’s math, piano, pitching or ballet — he or she gets praise, admiration and satisfaction. This builds confidence and makes the once not-fun activity fun. This in turn makes it easier for the parent to get the child to work even more.
Wisconsin Legislature mulls changes to open enrollment program
As families begin to enroll their students Monday in virtual schools or neighboring districts through the state’s open enrollment process, the Legislature is debating changes to the program.
The Senate approved a bill this week that would extend the enrollment period from three weeks in February to three months, starting this year. The bill still needs approval in the Assembly and the governor’s signature.
The changes would make it easier for parents who want to enroll their students in public schools outside their own district, but may not be thinking about that decision in February, said Sen. Luther Olsen, R-Ripon, who introduced the bill.
Democrats opposed the changes, however, saying the wider window will cause administrative hassles and uncertainty for school districts about proper staffing levels as they try to budget for the next school year.
Much more on open enrollment, here.
Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton lays out K-12 education plan
Gov. Mark Dayton pledged Friday to increase funding for K-12 education and laid out a plan that focuses on early learners and reducing achievement disparities between student groups.
But there was no detail on how much the plan would cost or how it would be accomplished with the state facing a $6.2 billion deficit.
Dayton deferred questions about funding to his Feb. 15 budget presentation, saying Friday’s announcement was about fulfilling a campaign pledge to provide more money to schools.
He’ll propose increasing aid each of the next two years, he said, “no excuses, no exceptions.”
Dayton promised last year as a candidate to spend more on schools every year, but softened that stance because of the state’s financial problems.
Dayton’s seven-point education plan, titled “Better Schools for a Better Minnesota,” calls for investment in early-childhood initiatives — led by Education Commissioner Brenda Cassellius — and all-day kindergarten, as well as a push to increase the number of children ready for kindergarten and to ensure all children are reading by third grade.
Universities On The Brink
Higher education in America, historically the envy of the world, is rapidly growing out of reach. For the past quarter-century, the cost of higher education has grown 440%, according to the National Center for Public Policy and Education, nearly four times the rate of inflation and double the rate of health care cost increases. The cost increases have occurred at both public and private colleges.
Like many situations too good to be true–like the dot-com boom, the Enron bubble, the housing boom or the health care cost explosion–the ever-increasing cost of university education is not sustainable.
Brooklyn School Meeting Draws Protest
Hundreds of protesters descended on Brooklyn Thursday, laying bare the deep philosophical divide that has become central to the Bloomberg administration’s education policy: whether the city should fix failing schools or shut them down.
The dichotomy came to a head this week as the Panel for Educational Policy met twice to vote on whether to shutter 22 schools deemed failures because its students can’t read or do math on grade level.
The panel, which is populated mostly by Bloomberg appointees, voted to close 10 schools at its meeting Tuesday and was expected to vote to close the other 12 Thursday night.
The administration and charter-school advocates argue that some schools are such failures they must be shut down completely and replaced with new schools. Students are allowed to register at the new schools, but for the most part, the new schools start up with different teachers and administrators. The city maintains that the new schools are more effective.
Parents protest longer academic year for Catholic schools
Several dozen parents protested Thursday outside the Los Angeles archdiocese plans for a longer academic year at Catholic schools.
The parents from at least eight schools are unhappy that church officials plan to extend the school year by 20 days to 200 days a year.
“Children need a break to rejuvenate and the time to try things they can’t during the school year because they’re overloaded,” said Michelle Boydston, whose daughter attends St. Paul the Apostle School in Westwood. “Children need time to play outside, to sit, climb a tree, read a book. Our school is doing a very good job in terms of educating students. They don’t need another 20 days.”
For the archdiocese, the strategy is intended to improve the education program and provide an incentive for parents to choose to remain in Catholic schools, which charge tuition.
New Jersey Voucher Bill Fact-Check
NJ’s voucher bill, the Opportunity Scholarship Act, is the big education news story today. Assembly Bill 2810 will be the subject of a hearing today before the Assembly Commerce and Economic Development Committee and proponents and opponents are going to the mattresses. Excellent Education for Everyone (E3) is running print ads that begin, “My school is failing me! I go to one of the worst schools in New Jersey. There are 80,000 kids just like me. The New Jersey Education Association wants to me to stay here. Will you help me get out?” New Jersey Teachers Association is running its own ad campaign, and has put out this set of talking points for parent leaders to use to lobby against the bill, which passed through the Senate Education Committee last month. (Here’s coverage from The Wall Street Journal and NJ Spotlight.)
Ending the education wars
Recently retired New York City schools chancellor Joel Klein made headlines this week when he told the Times of London that “it’s easier to prosecute a capital-punishment case in the U.S. than terminate an incompetent teacher.” The New York Post blared, “Joel: Easier to ax a killer than a teacher.” The prize for most sensational probably goes to Liz Dwyer’s headline, “Joel Klein Compares Teachers to Murderers.”
There’s plenty of scorched earth between Klein’s words and these headlines, reflecting how unnecessarily polarized the education reform wars remain, even over the smallest changes in policy.
Lessons for Online Learning
Advocates for virtual education say that it has the power to transform an archaic K-12 system of schooling. Instead of blackboards, schoolhouses, and a six-hour school day, interactive technology will personalize learning to meet each student’s needs, ensure all students have access to quality teaching, extend learning opportunities to all hours of the day and all days of the week, and innovate and improve over time. Indeed, virtual education has the potential not only to help solve many of the most pressing issues in K-12 education, but to do so in a cost-effective manner. More than 1 million public-education students now take online courses, and as more districts and states initiate and expand online offerings, the numbers continue to grow. But to date, there’s little research or publicly available data on the outcomes from K-12 online learning. And even when data are publicly available, as is the case with virtual charter schools, analysts and education officials have paid scant attention to–and have few tools for analyzing–performance. Until policymakers, educators, and advocates pay as much attention to quality as they do to expansion, virtual education will not be ready for a lead role in education reform.
Educating the Mayor
I learned Mayor is having an informational briefing tomorrow morning about charter schools. It will be done by two staff from the Center for Reinventing Public Education from UW. Now this is fine but I will say that the CRPE is not exactly neutral on charters (the majority of their research is around it with them being in the pro column). Of course, it is a little odd use of time in a state that has no charter law and has turned it down three times.
When I saw the e-mail yesterday, I called and asked if I could come and listen. The staffer was very nice, said no and then said he would check. I was told today, sorry but no.
The issue isn’t so much that I can’t go. I’m sure there won’t be any other media there but I operate on the “it doesn’t hurt to ask” policy.
Speaking of Mayors, I’ve invited the four candidates for Madison Mayor to chat about education topics. Should they respond affirmatively, I will post the video conversations here.
Carol Moseley Braun Answers: As Mayor of Chicago, How Will You Fix Education?
1. What criteria will you use in selecting the next CEO of the Chicago Public Schools?
I support hiring a superintendent for the Chicago Public Schools with a strong and proven track-record in education. Strong managerial skills and the ability to work with community leaders, parents, and teachers will also be extremely important qualities I will consider as mayor.
2. What will you do to keep the students who are in Chicago Public Schools safe?
I believe schools must be places where the community comes together. Parents, local businesses, community organizations, and local law enforcement must all play a role in providing a safe and secure space of learning for Chicago’s youth. As Senator, I was sponsor of the Midnight Basketball program, which brought local youth together with local police officers. I will provide an educational curriculum with more art, drama, and music classes to keep more students in school and engaged in activities to keep the gangs at bay. In addition, vocational training will provide students with the skills to be more competitive in the workforce and less likely to join gangs.
LIFO is Bad for Kids
“The sponsor of a bill that would make teacher effectiveness the main determining factor during layoffs says that the proposal is worth billions of dollars in school improvement,” the AP in the Tacoma News Tribune reported last week. Senator Rodney Toms thinks seniority protections in teacher contracts that result in last-in-first-out (LIFO) doesn’t make sense for kids.
There’s nothing out there that I could do this year that makes a multibillion-dollar difference in education other than this legislation,” he said. “To leave billions of dollars on the table because we like the status quo is unacceptable.”
Tom said any other initiative aimed at improving student learning as much as one that ensures the best teachers remain in the classroom would cost the state billions of dollars. In other words, if his proposal is ignored and the system remains unchanged, a big potential savings would be lost, he argues.
Tom’s bill, Senate Bill 5399, would require school districts facing layoffs to first lay off teachers who received the lowest average evaluation ratings during their two most recent evaluations, based on a formula that gives a weight of 60 percent to the most recent evaluation and 40 percent to the previous one.An AIE release today supports Sen. Toms bill:
Honesty on Application Essays
While this particular website might be new, the idea is hardly innovative. That there are entrepreneurs willing to traffic in essays is no secret to anyone who evaluates admission applications for a living. And if the evidence and anecdotes of déjà vu experienced by admission officers are any indication, such sites probably do a brisk business. In that sense, the public premiere of a new outfit would border on prosaic if it weren’t for the fervent and opposing arguments that inevitably follow:
“Access to essays levels the playing field and helps students from schools with lackluster college counseling programs compete in today’s take-no-prisoners admission wars!”
“The sale of essays promotes plagiarism and diminishes the capacity of students to think for themselves!”
If the first claim is misguided (and conventional wisdom among admission professionals suggests that it is), the second one is incomplete. Yes, plagiarism is a nasty potential byproduct of these businesses. And reliance on samples of other people’s work to create one’s own can certainly constrain rather than inspire. But there’s also an important practical point that usually gets overlooked:
5 Seek 2 Deerfield, WI School Board Seats
In Deerfield, five candidates are running for two 3-year terms on the Deerfield School Board. The top four vote-getters in the Feb. 15 primary will advance to the April 5 general election.
Los Angeles Schools’ Panel Looking at Race Issues
Acknowledging that the achievement gap between African-American students and those of other races has persisted far too long, the Los Angeles Unified School District has established an African-American Education Working Committee designed to help create a plan to replicate “best practices” district-wide.
The 25-member committee has met twice since it was formed in mid-January, and has yet to determine specifics on what practices will be implemented and how.
But, committee member and Community Coalition lead organizer for youth programs Tonna Onyendu said “The beginning has been about introducing everyone to what the task force is about, and what the purpose is and why we are convening. Then we also made sure we were all on the same page in terms of what the goals of the task force are, which is to improve the educational outcome of African-American students within LAUSD.”
Warning: This Game Is Not for Children
In the middle of this winter of our discontent, the rearrangement of a state education Board may be going unnoticed by busy, weary families. But changes announced this week for the state Board of Regents has a whole lot to do with the future opportunities these families can expect for their children, whether they realize it or not. Chairman Robert Flanders, who provided strong leadership as an unwavering supporter of the bold reform vision of state Education Commissioner Deborah Gist, is stepping down and former House Majority Leader and friend to unions and union lawyers, George Caruolo, is Governor Chafee’s pick for new Board Chairman.
Though it may be unfair to prejudge incoming appointments, it’s a foregone conclusion to state that for the Board to lose Judge Flanders and the equally strong Gist supporters Angus Davis and Anna Cano-Morales all at once spells setbacks for the Gist engine for sure. But to characterize this as a victory for the Chafee-Union alliance, and a defeat for the lightning rod Commissioner is to miss the shameful truth. After all, if the leadership of the teachers’ unions wants to reclaim their turf as the unnamed but fully operating Commissioners of Education, what record of victory are they actually trying to reclaim?
West Virginia State superintendent candidates
Deputy State Schools Superintendent Jorea Marple believes pre-kindergarten through 12th-grade education in West Virginia has reached a pivotal point, and the state’s current direction for schools is just beginning to show benefits.
Mark Manchin, executive director of the state School Building Authority, wants to develop policies that help provide a “high-quality, 21st Century education” for children. He also promises to help support teachers and school administrators, provide safe and up-to-date school buildings and work with state lawmakers and the governor to ensure the state Board of Education’s agenda is advanced.
Carolyn Long, chairwoman of the West Virginia University Board of Governors, believes her experience in both higher education and other public schools could help bring “these two cultures together” to serve the needs of West Virginia.
Walker gives Madison Preparatory IB Charter School a better chance
Gov. Scott Walker just gave a boost to the Urban League of Greater Madison’s intriguing proposal for an all-male charter school.
As part of his state budget address late Tuesday afternoon, Walker said he wants to let any four-year public university in Wisconsin create a charter school for K-12 students.
That gives the Urban League of Greater Madison a second potential partner for its proposal, should the Madison School Board reject the League’s idea.
Kaleem Caire, president and CEO of the Urban League, has made a powerful case for an all-male charter school with high standards, uniforms and a longer school day and year.
Charter schools are public schools allowed more freedom to try new things in exchange for greater accountability for results.
K-12 Tax & Spending Climate: Education & Accountability at the Pentagon
On 4 August 1822, James Madison wrote a letter to W.T. Barry about the importance of popular education and, by inference, the importance of the relationship of the First Amendment to the task of holding an elected government accountable for its actions. He concluded his opening paragraph, setting the tone for the entire letter, by saying, “A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”
Nowhere is the farce and tragedy feared by James Madison more evident than in the national debate over if, or how much, the defense budget should be cut back as part of our efforts to reduce the deficit. With the defense budget at war with Social Security, Medicare, and needed discretionary spending in education, investments in infrastructure, and elsewhere, it is a tragedy that must be undone if we are to protect our middle class way of life.
Related: A Madison Maintenance referendum audit?.
Consolidation Of Schools And Districts
Craig Howley, Jerry Johnson, and Jennifer Petrie:
Arguments for consolidation, which merges schools or districts and centralizes their management, rest primarily on two presumed benefits: (1) fiscal efficiency and (2) higher educational quality. The extent of consolidation varies across states due to their considerable differences in history, geography, population density, and politics. Because economic crises often provoke calls for consolidation as a means of increasing government efficiency, the contemporary interest in consolidation is not surprising.
However, the review of research evidence detailed in this brief suggests that a century of consolidation has already produced most of the efficiencies obtainable. Indeed, in the largest jurisdictions, efficiencies have likely been exceeded–that is, some consolidation has produced diseconomies of scale that reduce efficiency. In such cases, deconsolidation is more likely to yield benefits than consolidation. Moreover, contemporary research does not support claims about the widespread benefits of consolidation. The assumptions behind such claims are most often dangerous oversimplifications. For example, policymakers may believe “We’ll save money if we reduce the number of superintendents by consolidating districts;” however, larger districts need–and usually hire–more mid-level administrators. Research also suggests that impoverished regions in particular often benefit from smaller schools and districts, and they can suffer irreversible damage if consolidation occurs.
For these reasons, decisions to deconsolidate or consolidate districts are best made on a case-by-case basis. While state-level consolidation proposals may serve a public relations purpose in times of crisis, they are unlikely to be a reliable way to obtain substantive fiscal or educational improvement.
How Race Relates to College Grad Rates
Even while some minorities are surging ahead, others are trailing far behind.
Higher education has always been the golden ticket to better fortunes. So you’ve gotta wonder: Who’s cashing in, who’s stagnating, and why? The answers are all contained in a must-see interactive infographic showing college graduation rates across the country, created by the Chronicle of Higher Education.
We’ll get to the nuances of the story behind the data in a second, but let’s look at how the map works. You get to see a color coded scale showing what portion of each county in the U.S. has a college degree — the bluer the county, the more people are college graduates. And for every county, you can see a detailed chart, showing exactly how it stacks up against others:
California student suspended after he calls teacher fat on Facebook
A California high school student was reportedly suspended after updating his Facebook status with rude remarks about a teacher’s weight.
High school sophomore Donny Tobolski reportedly referred to his biology teacher, Mr. Cimino, as a “fat a– who should stop eating fast food, and is a d—–bag” after Cimino assigned his classes three times more homework than usual in December 2010, Mashable.com reports.
Sacramento’s Mesa Verde High School was notified of the Facebook post and reportedly suspended Tobolski for one day on charges of “cyberbullying.”
According to the San Franciso Chronicle, the American Civil Liberties Union then sent a letter to school authorities asserting that Tobolski had been within his right to free speech when posting the “fat a–” comment to Facebook.
The value of humanities
Throughout its 900-year history, Oxford University has survived the Bubonic Plague, the English Civil War, and a host of other maladies. Oxford Vice Chancellor Andrew Hamilton takes solace in the University’s resilient history as he grapples with the decision by the UK coalition to slash funding for higher education by 80%:
[The budget cuts] are pretty bad. The challenge for us obviously is the speed with which we have to confront the issues that result from them… One of the proposals that has been recently passed by government in the UK is to allow the cost of undergraduate education charged to students to rise. And again, that is happening in a very short period of time. Changes of this significant kind-I think we would all much prefer to be able to manage the cuts and manage any rise in tuition fees that will occur over a longer period, but we’re not being given that luxury. We’re going to have to manage them over a very short period of time, as little as two or three years. And that is going to be quite the challenge.
Oregon Governor Proposes in State K-12 Tax Dollars
Fears of having to make millions of dollars in budget cuts at Oregon school districts were fueled Tuesday when Gov. John Kitzhaber proposed a K-12 education allocation of $5.56 billion for the next biennium.
Local school district officials said the amount would be insufficient to support existing services at schools, and they continued to hold out hope that the Legislature would augment that number.
One-time federal stimulus funds in this biennium helped to postpone some of the cuts districts now face, and education lobbyists are urging the Legislature to backfill what’s lost in stimulus funds, so that total K-12 funding would reach $5.8 billion for the biennium.
“We were expecting this,” said Ashland schools Superintendent Juli Di Chiro. “We are hoping the Legislature will see differently. At the minimum, we need level funding.”
The Medford School District, with 12,300 students, expects cuts of $13.5 million to $14 million from its $90 million budget, under the governor’s budget proposal.
Prepare your middle-schooler for college
Even in middle school, there are a few easy things (and some more challenging steps) students can do to up their chances at a college admission. Join Jay Mathews to discuss these tactics.
Houston School District offering free SAT testing in class
All high school juniors in the Houston Independent School District will have the chance to take the SAT college entrance exam in class for free this April.
Typically, students only can take the SAT on Saturdays or Sundays. HISD officials say the district will be only the third in the country to offer the in-class testing — which should significantly increase the number of students taking the exam.
Nearly 5,000 of HISD’s graduates in 2010 — less than half — took the SAT, according to the district. It’s likely other students took the ACT exam, which most colleges accept as well, but that number wasn’t immediately available for the Class of 2010.
Teacher Licensure in Wisconsin – Who is Protected: The Parents or the Education Establishment?
Mark Schug & Scott Niederjohn:
It has been 10 years since Wisconsin overhauled an old set of rules for state teacher licensure (PI 3 and PI 4) and replaced it with a new set called PI 34. At the time of its approval in 2000, PI 34 was warmly welcomed by state leaders and legislators from both sides of the aisle. It was praised as a way to create a new generation of Wisconsin teachers.
The purpose of this report is to assess PI 34 in an effort to learn whether it has made good on these high expectations.
The underlying issue in this assessment has to do with occupational licensure. Why is it widespread in many states including Wisconsin? There are two viewpoints. The first is that consumers don’t have enough information to make judgments regarding the purchase of services from members of certain occupations. Licensure, according to this view, serves as a means to protect consumers from fraud and malpractice.
The second argument is made by economists. It opposes the first. Prominent economists claim that licensure benefits members of various occupations more than it benefits consumers. It does so by limiting access to the occupations in question, thus reducing competition. Those seeking protection from barriers of this sort believe that the various regulations will eventually enhance their incomes. The costs to consumers include reduced competition and restricted consumer choice.
…
PI 34’s weaknesses far outweigh its strengths. The weaknesses include the following:
- PI 34 undervalues the importance of subject-matter knowledge in initial training programs for teachers and in teachers’ professional development activity.
- PI 34 imposes an overwhelming regulatory system–dwarfing, for example, the regulatory system governing licensure for medical doctors.
- PI 34 rules for licensure renewal fail to ensure that renewal will depend on demonstrated competence and professional growth. These rules create incentives for pro forma compliance, cronyism, and fraud.
- PI 34 sets up high barriers (a single, proprietary avenue) for entrance into teaching. It makes licensure conditional on completion of approved training programs requiring, normally, at least two years of full-time enrollment in education coursework. Many highly trained professionals contemplating career changes are deterred by these requirements from becoming teachers, despite demand for their services.
- PI 34 has no built-in measures for linking teacher licensure to teacher competence. Wisconsin has no evidence that any incompetent teacher has ever been denied licensure renewal.
- PI 34 enables education producers (WEAC and the DPI) to dominate the licensure system. In this system, parents and students are marginalized.
- PI 34 is particularly onerous for educators in large urban districts like Milwaukee, where producing academic gains is a challenging problem, and school principals, struggling to hire competent teachers, would benefit greatly from a flexible licensure system.
Related: An Email to Madison Superintendent Dan Nerad on Math Teacher Hiring Criteria.
New York Governor Cuomo Proposes Slight Cuts to Education Spending
Mr. Cuomo’s plan, particularly his hard line on public-school spending, drew criticism from teachers’ unions and Democrats, who control the Assembly.
The budget would lower total spending on education and Medicaid to levels slightly below current-year amounts. For local governments that relied on stimulus money, the governor’s budget will feel like a bigger cut. The budget pain is especially tough for New York City schools, which would see state aid cut by hundreds of millions of dollars.
The governor’s plan would freeze higher-education spending and general aid to localities. He also seeks to squeeze $1 billion out of state agencies. Spending on public employee pensions, health insurance and other benefits would increase by $474 million, an 8% rise over the current fiscal year.
Mr. Cuomo, who has said he wants to create a lower-cost pension for new employees, did not include such plans in his budget, saving the battle for another day.
The Thomas Beale Cipher: A Modern Take on an Old Mystery
It’s the stuff of legends: A group of men comea across what would be today worth $65 million in gold and silver while on expedition in early-19th-century New Mexico territory. Then, they transport said treasure thousands of miles and bury it in Virginia. One of them, named Thomas Jefferson Beale, leaves three ciphertexts, simply strings of comma-separated numbers, with an innkeeper in Virginia, who forgets about it for more than 20 years.
One day, the innkeeper, realizing that Beale isn’t coming back, opens the box and tries to solve the riddle. Frustrated, he then tells the story and passes along the texts to a friend, J.B. Ward, who cracks one of the three ciphertexts, but not the one that actually gives the precise location of the treasure. More than a hundred years go by, and no one can solve the remaining two ciphers, not even with the benefit of modern computers, and the treasure, if it exists, may still be out there, waiting in the mountains of Virginia.
Picking up on this unsolved mystery, modern storyteller Andrew S. Allen created a short film The Thomas Beale Cipher, a refreshingly modern take on this century-old mystery. In Allen’s story, Professor White, a cryptographer who has recently run into some poor luck, has figured out a way to solve the Beale ciphers. But this knowledge is dangerous, and federal agents are hunting him down.
Think twice About an MBA
Business schools have long sold the promise that, like an F1 driver zipping into the pits for fresh tyres, it just takes a short hiatus on an MBA programme and you will come roaring back into the career race primed to win. After all, it signals to companies that you were good enough to be accepted by a decent business school (so must be good enough for them); it plugs you into a network of fellow MBAs; and, to a much lesser extent, there’s the actual classroom education. Why not just pay the bill, sign here and reap the rewards?
The problem is that these days it doesn’t work like that. Rather, more and more students are finding the promise of business schools to be hollow. The return on investment on an MBA has gone the way of Greek public debt. If you have a decent job in your mid- to late- 20s, unless you have the backing of a corporate sponsor, leaving it to get an MBA is a higher risk than ever. If you are getting good business experience already, the best strategy is to keep on getting it, thereby making yourself ever more useful rather than groping for the evanescent brass rings of business school.
